Saturday Night Random-ness

Random #1
The new television ads for Slumdog Millionaire are touting it as the most moving love story of the season. There a great shots of kisses and long, soulful looks against a soundtrack of almost riotous Bollywood music. Now, I have no problem with the characterization of this movie as a love story because it certainly is that. But it's also, in many ways, for large stretches of the movie, a deeply disturbing movie. It's about a guy's love for a girl and about his run on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire; but it is also about orphan brothers from the slums of Mumbai and the things they need to do and are forced to do to survive. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy the movie (I actually loved it). I'm just saying these new commercials are a bit dishonest.

Random #2
What kind sick, twisted universe do we live in that gives your child a 102 degree fever at 3am that then drops to 100 by 7am and 98 by the time you get to the pediatrician's drop-in hours at 8am? What the hell is that?

Speaking of hell--is there any more hellish place that drop-in hours on a Friday morning? Exhausted parents (because we've been up all night) with grumpy, germy kids all trying to get seen by the doctor before the weekend. We love our pediatrician and have no complaints at all about the care we get. But the 90 minutes we sat before we got to see the doctor (all to find out Frances *doesn't* have strep throat, just some random virus) even had me a little testy.

Random #3
I'm reading Order of the Phoenix with Frances. This is her first time through it (when we tried to read it aloud to her when it first came out, she told us it was too scary and, therefore, inappropriate for poppets; she said the same thing about Revenge of the Sith and still refuses to see it; this is heartbreaking to her father and I, but I digress) and my third time. Two things strike this time around. First, there is no way I would let my kid go to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It is a crazily scary and dangerous place. I suppose parents don't really know what's going on because Umbridge is monitoring all lines of communication and isn't letting out any bad news, but still. How many times does Voldemort have to attack Harry in or around Hogwarts before parents say enough?

Second, if Frances wrote fan fiction, she'd write great Mary Sue stories about her adventures with Fred and George Weasley and Lee Jordan. I used to, along with my best friend from middle school, write Mary Sue fic about our adventures with Bon Jovi and Whitesnake.