burntcopper | Dec. 22nd, 2003

Had the neighbourhood party, aka sunday before xmas held at our house with scary amounts of food and drink - a fair bit left over because several people were absent. Was the usual. Lots of drinking, eating, talking, the younger members as usual shutting themselves in the study with my dvd collection - this year the choice being Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark and Legally Blonde. I popped in occasionally, and during one of the lines of Legally Blonde, the older members were so glad that some of the dialogue and innuendo was going straight over the six-year-olds' heads. Quite scary how you may think you have no scruples about what small children watch, but come getting responsibility for people at least ten years younger than you, (ie, young enough to be your kids - and it's amusing how the 'young enough to be your kids' age gap has significantly shrunk over the past ten years. I remember when you had to factor in at least sixteen years to consider that phrase useable. These days 11/12 is fine... ) suddenly your 'oh no, you're not bloody watching *that*' inner censor comes on. It's like how it really does dawn on you that Angel/anything past Buffy S3 is really not suitable viewing for under-14s. It's not just the sex, violence, etc, (your view on what's suitable violence for them to watch is scarily low) but the whole overtone of the situations changes. A character can say a line which everyone above a certain age would take to mean one thing, but anyone under that age just wouldn't get it. Claire and Rachel, my babysat lot, had been given the first season of Angel by an aunt. We watched the ep where Cordelia gets her new apartment, and from their comments, there's just so much they don't get about what's going on, or find it a bit overly horror for them. Which makes me look back on my childhood viewing of Porridge, Spender, Yes Minister/Prime Minister, Blackadder and so on and wonder just how much I absorbed but didn't quite comprehend.

Tomorrow is late shift. *joy*. The cough is no better. Must post parcel to Newcastle with pressies in for cousins. Everything's wrapped, the room has gotten a bit of a tidy due to a load of junk being dumped in here during the party, and I came back up and thought 'aargh, must at least get rid of the other junk....' which mostly consisted of picking up stuff and sorting it into place rather than general floor-spillage.

After xmas, must go on ebay and sell a large proportion of my doubled vids (the ones bought on dvd) as it's a fucking pain having to reconfigure the cable and vid wires just to watch a vid. Also get rid of a lot of comics and make a list of dvds wanted amongst the horde of unwanted xmas pressies I foresee going up on there...

Also need to make note to watch The Snow Queen on Sky One on 27th/28th, it being one of my favourite fairytales along with The Goose Girl and Beauty and the Beast, partially because I want to see how well they succeed with it, especially with modernisation Americanisation factors.