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The 1991 novel written by Bret Easton Ellis…

Or the film from 2000 directed by Mary Harron…

Click! click! click! read my review after the jump…

Hands down, it has to be the book, Christian Bale is a great actor, but sadly for me the film did not capture the intense tension and confusion that comes from Patrick Bateman’s character.

As happens a lot with movies inspired by novels, what is implied in the novel is directly stated in the movie, leaving less opportunity for the audience to reflect.

Also the book also has some really useful and practical day-t0-day tips that the movie skips over, for instance, as part of Patrick’s narcicistic internal train of thought, you can learn the proper way to tone and moisturise your skin (which I failed to pick up even after sharing a bathroom with my cute flatmate for an entire year - but she did make a great singing while brushing teeth partner - thanks Kei! and he also gives out good general style advice, for example the how to match a belt to shoes and shirt - handy! (Although I don’t wear shirts much.)

My supervosor from University once warned me not to ever read the book or see the movie becase they were both disgusting and repulsive and pointless. I tend to agree with her about the movie, but the book makes for perfect vacation reading - interesting enough to dip in and out, but not so compelling that you will read it cover-to-cover in a single sitting.

Linky goodness

Book on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Psycho
Film on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Psycho_(film)
Book on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/American-Psycho-Bret-Easton-Ellis/dp/0679735771/
DVD on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/American-Psycho-Christian-Bale/dp/B00008RV1L/

Personal Secret Plans (PSPs) - again Liz associated, back at Air New Zeland a group of us would go down to the wharf (often with Scott and me getting Burger King haha) and talk about various great ideas that we would never get around to doing. Liz and I took it a little further, and have started quite a few PSPs. They are a great hobby because at the very least you end up learning a lot about something that you’d otherwise not know.

Which leads onto

OpenID - I’ve known what OpenID is since it started coming up in TechCruch articles, but I’ve never really taken the time to learn how it works. It’s actually really interesting and quite amazing! There are some neat things you can go like make a domain you have control over (like your blog) into your OpenID by deligating all the identity stuff to an OpenID provider. Chances are you have an OpenID already from some web servce (and if you don’t it’s easy and free to create one). To make your blog your open id all you have to do is paste in some metatags to the page you want to use as your open id. Full instructions can be found here: http://simonwillison.net/2006/Dec/19/openid/

RPX - (this is turning into a pretty geeky TiLT) If you’re making a web based application (perhaps as part of a PSP?? it’s likely you’ll want to identify the people who are using it. You could get people to sign up with yet another username and password, but with open id you can let them sign in with another existing account. I tried using the ruby-openid gem to do this, but couldn’t get it to work - lots of compatability errors between different versions of rails and the gem. But then I found RPX (https://rpxnow.com/) which lets you implement OpenID by simply signing up (there is a free option) copying some JavaScript to your file and then (using a RPX Ruby class) verify the openid details - with just a few lines in your controller:

Honorable mentions: Gnocchi (I made some for dinner tonight with a nice tomato sauce), cheap flights (I’m going to Auckland and Melbourne next month woop!), friends getting married (so there are good excuses to use cheap flights

Radio New Zealand National

I’ve been a real grandpa lately and listening to a lot of radio. There are have been some great shows on RNZ National lately, which I’ve also been downloading to listen later. Here are two picks:

Cookbooks and Cultural Identity in the 20th Century - This was the third and final in a series of Macmillan Brown lecture by Prof Helen Leach from the University of Otag. She it’s a great anthropology of New Zealand society by looking at cookbooks created for various fundraisers during the 20th century. [MP3]

Children of the Pass (recorded in 1983) - An amazing woman called Nancy Sutherland talks about the settlement of French Pass in the Marlborough Sounds where she lived as a child. She’s a great talker and gets very excited, and like many older people I think there is a bit of exaggeration happening here, but it’s all good fun. She’s amazingly candid, at one point she describes her period as being a “pain in the pinny” which I though was hilarious! [MP3]

Joan Armatrading

Incidentally, this song was also played on National Radio this week on Tuesday morning. I’d forgotten how much I loved it so jumped onto iTunes and got it right away

Gevulde Koeken

I’m seriously addicted to these Dutch style treats. I’ve eaten 3 just typing this post! Mmmm just look at this picture on wikipedia… don’t they look great? Here is a recipe in case you want to try making your own.

I think it’s telling, that even before things are going pear-shaped, the caller sounds frustrated after the first question.

Gala Darling How could I start my own Things I Love Thursday without a tip of the hat to Gala Darling and her weekly hit of positivity and cupcake love?!

The lady on C4 She shakes her fist and warns you with a karate chop when a show that recommends parental guidance is about to start. She gives me a giggle everytime

Update: I made a Facebook fan page for the C4 warning lady. Share the love and become a fan!

Many Moons by Janelle Monáe No other song gets me dancing around the room pretending to be an andriod than Janelle Monáe!

Waiting for Feburary to watch Doubt The latest Meryl Streep movie. I’m such a Meryl Fan that my facebook page lists my religion just as “Meryl Streep”. She really is amazing!

Thursday Body Attack at Les Mills Hereford Street Bevan James Eyles is the greatest instructor, such a great asset to Les Mills. Even if I’ve had a stinker of a day I always get a great lift from his Thursday Attack class.

Steph at C1 Espresso on High Street in Christchurch She welcomes you by name everytime you come in. So nice, and she makes great coffee! Incidentally today on my first visit they were playing papa was a rolling stone, which is another reason to TiLT C1.

Honorable mentions Summer fruit in general, peaches, nectarines and cherries cherries cherries! Turkish rugs, and reading great books sitting in the sun at Rapaki beach (p.s. just as a totally weird coincidence I have to metion that as I was typing ‘Rapaki’ above, I woman at the cafe downstairs from my window said ‘Rapaki’… weirdness!)

On the way down I stopped off in Dunedin to spend a night with Ursula and Anubhav. They live in the St Kilda/St Clair area so after Anubhav had finished work it was a quick drive along the Otago Peninsula to find some penguins!

Anubhav and Ursula

Penguins!

On New Year’s Eve itself I was at the bach at Kaka Point and it looked like it was going to be thunderstorms, but later in the evening it finally cleared up and I took the short drive to Nugget Point to watch the sunset

Lighthouse at end of Nugget Point

Looking back from the point

On New Year’s day I took a short walk in the Catlins forest river track. It was a nice walk, but because the bush was so dense there wern’t many spots where you were actually by the river

Catlins River Track

New job, moving cities, (and house)

I left the Interactive team at Datacom Systems around January/February 2008 (wow I can’t even remember the exact month) with no particular goal in mind. However, I had to move out of my flat, and thought that it would be a good time to move on - even though I didn’t know what exactly I was moving on to, but thought that a road trip around the South Island might be a good place to start.

My friends Chris & Makeda had recently opened a cafe so I spent a busy week being a cafe helper-outer. It was fun, and I loved it - but only because I knew I was only there for a week. I’m not sure I could go back to full time hospitality work again.

I flew down to Christchurch and house-sat, and fed the cat for Dad and Karen while they were both overseas. They have a great view of the Southern Alps and I started thinking it might be nice to spend a year in Christchurch, I sent my resume to LeftClick, and DesignIndustry and accepted a job offer as an Customer Experience Analyst at LeftClick. This meant that I’d officially moved to Christchurch and so I also found a new place to live.

My first car

I’d manged to go without needing a car in Auckland (although I did have a Vespa) but with the intention of spending more time in the mountains in Canterbury I needed some wheels. I ended up with a Mazda Capella Wagon, my first ever car! It’s quite ugly, but so far amazingly reliable, and because I don’t like it very much I don’t worry about accidentally reversing into trees etc (not that I make a habit of that).

Broken River Ski Club

Megan at LeftClick got me excited about the Broken River Ski Area - mainly because I spent a bit of time complaining about amazingly long lift queues at Turoa and Whapakapapa during last season. They have a volunteer scheme where you put hours in and get a season pass. I did a (very) little bit of work working with their online marketing strategy.

Travel

Only one international trip to Thailand with Chells at the start of the year. It was great! Thailand photos on Flickr. Very keen to return. Lots of domestic travel, innumerable trips to Wellington (mostly for work meetings) but also two very rushed trips to Auckland. One for the baptism of Chris and Makeda’s baby, and another just for a chance to catch up with friends.

Aerobics!

WingKi introduced me to BodyAttack in BrisVegas, but I thought I was pretty happy with my general gym weights and cardio routine. Well, the most convenient gyms in Christchurch are Les Mills gyms so I joined with them, and within weeks I’d ditched my regular programme in favour of Les Mills classes (Attack, Pump, Combat, and Step). It was so much fun I even went along for their recruitment intake, but didn’t make the cut. I felt bitter for a while, and almost held a grudge but I’m locked into a 12 month contact, and anyway the classes are so fun! I’ve had some issues with telling people that I’m going to aerobics classes, but they really have been great. I’ve not had any migraines to speak of since starting classes and stopped seeing a chiropractor, however - I still have Buddha belly.

Injurys and illness

Broken River broke (and dislocated) my thumb on notorious nutcracker lifts, luckily it was the end of the season so didn’t miss out too many days. Two doctors saw my thumb within 30 mins of the accident on Broken River but they thought that it was just swelling, and it was only after two weeks that I didn’t have full strength back that I went to another Doctor who had xrays and found that I was actaully broken and dislocated. Lots of local blocks and laughing gas later they tried to reset it, but the bone had already started healing too much so there wasn’t much to do. Because the bones had already started heading I only had to have a cast on for two weeks, which was a relief because I almost went mad with the whole plastic bag showering thing.

Apart from that I also had a mystery virus that gave me a rash and a fever for a few days. Blood tests narowed it down to a bunch of common virus families but we didn’t go any further since I was already getting better.

Gigs

Only 4 concerts this year. I always seem to plan to go to a lot more than I end up going to. Anyway. January was Girl Talk, which was fun, but I have to admit I like listening to the album as much as the live show. Feburary was PJ Harvey to promote her new White Chalk album. I went with the lovely Kei and we got very emotional and had to squeeze each others hands!  Dudley Benson in March. At the Christchuch Catherderal. Amazing Venue, but not the greatest seats so couldn’t see a lot. October was Blackaliscious. It was pretty good, but I felt a little embarrassed for the New Zealand Hip Hop scene (or at least Christchurch) when people weren’t really getting into it DJ Baku was the (unheard to me) opening act - and was amazing!

Photos

I also started taking photos again, and it’s been a lot of fun. I’m not back to the old days of University where I tool a camera pretty much *everywhere* but I’ve still been having some fun.

Blogging

I [re]started blogging again in 2008! My tip to anyone starting a blog: Don’t write your first post about what you will be blogging about. In fact, don’t even think about that, just start writing!