Dear Charlie:

Gah. Loooooong weekend. Weird weekend.

'Nuff said.

I just realized I haven't blogged for a week. No wonder I've missed blogging! I can't explain it, folks. I've just been busy. And out of town for the weekend.

*grins*

I watched Shark Tale. Got a kick out of it. Not the best CG movie ever, of course, but vastly entertaining and I just adore Will Smith. *grins* Sounds really, really weird, but he reminds me of my brother.

*shrugs* Go figure.

Anyway, I'm thinking about renting Alien vs. Predator. I'm kinda torn. I still can't figure out how they took two R-rated franchises and made them into a PG-13 combo flick. Whiskey tango foxtrot, one-niner?

I've also been toying with the idea of cutting my hair again. I should warn you that I go thru this whole "shear the locks" thing every couple of years. The deal is, it's easier to take care of, to color, to wash and dry and such when it's short. I think it's also more flattering, probably. But...it's longer now than it's been since I was a kid, and I really like it long.

If I cut it, I won't be able to put it up, to french braid it, to really do anything but make it curly. Yeesh. I can't bear my hair in my face, so that's a big negative.

*shrugs* I think I'll just put off any decision until summer. I really like it long, but if I can't stand it in summer, I'll cut it chin length again. I know this sounds stupid and petty, but to me, it's a big deal. I mean, if I cut it as short as I'm thinking, I'll be hacking off nearly two feet of length. That's a lot of hair. And it took a while to grow it out.

So, I'm procrastinating. *grins* Hey! At least I made a decision to procrastinate!

Sidebar:

Due to popular demand...*boggles a moment that anyone wants to read her pig-swallow*...I'm gonna do a few movie blurbs. *grins* God, I love movies, and I've actually watched several new ones over the past week!

---

HERO

While I'm not sure I liked this movie overall, I was absolutely fascinated with it. I love how, for each different version of each story, they picked a different color to symbolize. The RED version was a particular favorite, though I gotta agree with the conqueror's interpretation of it. Broken Sword and Snow were not so petty and stupid as that.

A lot of people don't like the mystical martial arts, but, again, I was fascinated. I particularly liked the comment MUCH later on about how, while The Nameless One and Sky had battled in their minds, The Nameless One and Broken Sword battled in their hearts. It gave a beautiful, symbolic cast to all the aerial feats, ne?

But if you ask me straight out, "Did you like it?", I'm not really sure what I'll say. I did enjoy it, and I have watched it three times, but that's more to watch the fight scenes again, to appreciate the grace and skill required for wire work, and the visual scope of the film. If that's liking it, then hell yeah, I liked it.

*grins*

---

I, ROBOT

Okay, so it crapped on the book and I'm a big Isaac Asimov fan. I still thought this movie kicked some serious ass. Before I so much as popped the DVD into the player, I told myself I'd watch this movie as something separate from the book. It worked.

First of all, it's Will Smith, for whom I'll always have a soft spot. Second, he did some of his best acting ever in this flick. Third, the effects kicked serious ass, and boy, did Lanning EVER pimp out his special model NS-5! Sonny was, in the movie's favorite word, UNIQUE.

It is a foregone conclusion that someone brilliant enough to write the three laws will see the eventual, inevitable conclusion drawn by the unemotional logic of a machine. This concept is why people so fear artificial intelligence, though we continually strive for it. See the Terminator movies. Stephen Spielberg's dark fairy tale, AI. And I, Robot.

They're all commentary on our time, folks, and my better nature sees them as good-natured warnings for the future.

However, as a simple movie without any other meaning therein, I, Robot kicks ASS.

---

CONSTANTINE

Heh, THIS piece of work is an instant must-buy in my book. I like movies where, even though I can extrapolate what must happen and often guess the next plot jump, something still manages to surprise me. *laughs*

And Keanu Reeves didn't take himself too seriously, which cracked me up to no end. He's a wise-crackin, rude, obnoxious, I-believe-because-I-have-to-but-I-don't-have-faith type jerk who just so happens to save little girls from soul-eating demons. But he doesn't do it for the little girls. He does it for himself.

Ah, THERE'S the rub.

Plus, I am WAY impressed by how they portrayed the angel [won't name said angel because that would take a little of the thrill from it, ne?]. When I first saw the angel, I thought it was a girl dressed up in a suit. It took a moment for the truth to sink in -- they'd done something RIGHT. Angels are neither male NOR female! This one is as androgenous as a lump of clay, but no less beautiful for all that. In fact, I think they capture that androgenous beauty with something like sheer perfection.

And Rachel Weiss [is that spelled right?] had a pretty tough role to handle, but she landed it with her usual panache. I think my beloved sister, in particular, will be interested in her character, if for no other reason than that she's a cop who must deal with things otherworldly. *grins*

No, this movie won't shock the hell out of you, but it will keep you both entertained and interested, and the visual effects are both masterfully done and put on with a somehow aching clarity. The scene toward the end where everything is stopped but one character particularly illustrates this clarity. It's almost haunting, but I'm not sure that's the word I want.

This isn't a scary movie.

It's damn near a religious experience. *big grin*

Funny Sidebar:

Well, I just spent an amazingly fun hour outside smashing the piss out of some gone-soft apples. *big grin* 'S been a while since I seriously batted (pumpkin and a few walnuts aside), and I'm kinda happy that I still have a knack for it.

Plus, the explosions were pretty damn cool. Applesauce shower, man. *smirk*

So, the aluminum bat Dave got me for sorta-Christmas has turned out to be LOTS of fun. *grins* And the birds and various beasties outside will probably love us for leaving apple pieces and juicy goop everywhere.

All in all, a great way to spend a winter afternoon.

Oh, yeah. And we played outside in short-sleeves. *rolls eyes* In February.

Unusual weather we're havin', ain't it?

Dear Charlie:

Several things on my mind tonight, folks.

Do you ever get the Enzyte theme song stuck in your head? It's just so damn CATCHY. *whistles* GAH! See?

On another note, Dave has renamed Spunk. He now calls her Clarice. As in, "Get down off the couch, Clarice." In his best Hannibal Lector voice.

And, much to my shame, I've started doing it, too. *laughs* It seems to fit!

On a better note, I watching the luscious Luther Reigns on SmackDown even as I type. Forgive any drool that makes its way into this post. The LEGS....

Good God, he's a hoss....*blinks*

Anyway...um...where was I?

Oh! I'm stuck on the horns of a dilemma. I have two possible endings for the short story I'm writing for Xodtica, and neither one will bully its way to the fore. *grins* I wrote the bulk of it in two sittings, but these last...oh...two pages are just cheesing me off. It's like both endings are already written in my head. I just have to pick one.

But which one?

*shrugs* I'm also finishing a short story I started several months ago to hold in reserve as an alternative. If the newer one doesn't fit what the editor had in mind, I want to have another option on hand, ne? *grins* I try to plan ahead.

Hmm...now he's all sweaty. You know, spandex really is a privilege, and Luther Reigns has earned it in spades....

Ahem! *big grin*

I had lovely, lovely dreams last night. Don't remember them, but I woke up feeling like a million bucks. They made me happy, ne?

Could have been that I had such a great evening last night. I rarely go to any movie on opening weekend and never on opening night, but I made an exception last night for one of the following reasons:

1) a friend on an internet message board lives maybe five miles away, and we've been kinda jokingly planning to meet up somewhere,

2) her husband has connections to get movie tickets for kid prices, or

3) Constantine came out.

Can you guess which reason? Okay, so it's an amalgum of the three, but I really wanted to meet Pesh. *grins* She's a riot on the message board, and I had no doubt she'd be a riot in person. So, Dave and I decided to head for Constantine's opening night.

*grins*

Great time. Pesh rules. Her husband's a riot. We laughed our asses off and were probably some of those people I complained about last time I went to the theater, ne? Heh. I dunno about her, but I couldn't help myself. I had to comment and laugh and have a good ol' time.

Then, we stood out in front of the theater and talked until almost 1:30 in the morning. Heh.

Good times, folks. Good times.

Dear Charlie:

Glory be, I survived!

Man, I really dislike Valentine's Day. I didn't want to splooge on everyone else's holiday, though, so I just stayed away. *sheepish* Hermitude has its perks, even if they're not for the hermit.

At any rate, I'm back now that the dreaded PINK day is over.

I'm sure you're all relieved.

Lots of stuff happened over the week. Let's see....

1) I get to write a short story for the Xodtica website. Woo-hoo! It'll be free to everyone who visits the site, which is hella cool. Published again, if all goes well! *does a little dance* Now...let's just see what I've come up with. *pales*

2) I watched a slue of movies -- Hero, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, Darkness, and I, Robot -- that I hadn't seen before. That was pretty cool. More about them in another post, probably.

3) I cracked a few people up -- even made my beloved sister spit coffee on her monitor [figuratively, I hope]. That's been LOTS of fun. *big grin*

4) I had a bad dream the other night. Not one of the physical leftovers ones, and not a NIGHTMARE, per se, but a very bad, very upsetting dream.

Hm...I know I did WAY more than that, but that's basically the gist of it. That'll keep everyone updated on the major stuff, at least. Heh.

Dear Charlie:

O.o

This is what you look like when you graduate from Catatonic State.

I am in the weirdest frickin mood I have ever been in. Antsy as hell. Fidgety. Twitchy. I don't know what the deal is, but it's weirding me out.

Restless.

GAH.

At like 4:00 this afternoon, I had the sudden and almost undeniable urge to go home and scrape the remaining scraps of wallpaper off my living room walls. I've been meaning to do this for months, but I don't want to move all the furniture and make that big a mess...and I'm totally just putting it off because I'm a lazy ass.

Unfortunately, I knew that by the time I got home, I wouldn't still be in the mood. *sighs* Sure enough, while still antsy as all hell, I just look at the walls and shake my head. Forget that.

So, I was all antsy to do something else. And I didn't. So now I'm twitchy.

Ack. Insanity is catching. Keep away! Don't feed the animals!

Funny Sidebar:

A comment from the esteemed Ruby Red reminded me that I wanted to change the item in my sidebar from "Song of the Week" to "Song of the Moment". You see, I probably won't be as prompt in that particular update while football season is out, as I usually updated the weekly song when I put up the new Chiefs score, ne?

*sheepish*

Also, sometimes I want to leave a song up for more than a week. Like this one. *grins* There's just something priceless about it!

Yeah, I'll leave it up for a bit.

Dear Charlie:

Okay, so I've been thinking about my trilogy over the weekend. I know I haven't talked much about it recently, but that's because I've been stewing. Percolating. Churning.

My characters, you see. My characters have been on my mind. They're demanding to be let out, but they obstinately refuse to speak when I pull up the Great Rewrite of 2005 document. And I even know why.

It's not the daunting idea of rewriting a good 1,000 pages of text, though that does give me pause. It's not murdering my darlings or seeing just how badly I did the first time through. Those things, I'm too thick-skinned to bother with.

See, it's like this:

I started character sheets on my poor trilogy peeps back when my laptop was down. *weeps* Yeah, it still brings a tear to my eye, thinking back to those horrible, computerless days....

But anyway, I got through pages and pages of interesting, important information on my characters...but not on ALL of them. I got Bryn and Jita and Taro. I got Dig and Kité and started Tibo. I made plans in my head for Na'gesa and Sova and Kosa -- even for Dota and Roka, though not to the same extent. I even toyed with the idea of a truncated sheet for Basu -- a later character that I just really like who does play a pretty major part in the scheme of things.

But I didn't FINISH them all. As you probably noticed in the above paragraph, I started Tibo. Everyone after that is still in my head and in the first draft. And that's the rub.

It's like my psyche -- fickle thing that it is -- doesn't want to stick my big toe into the rewrite until I have all my pawns in place. What's the point of bringing out the big guns if the pistols are shooting blanks, ne?

Egad. Mixed metaphor alert. Read on, folks. Nothin' to see here.

So, tonight I think I'll handwrite some more character sheets. I'll still be on-line -- no sense having my laptop back...*cuddles laptop*...if I don't use the damn thing, ne? -- but I'll be studiously doing my homework so I can spend tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow on the playground.

Good God! What is wrong with me and metaphors today??

Dear Charlie:

If my mother were dead, she'd be rolling over in her grave right now. As it is, my beloved sister may kill me for this stunt....

Last night, at just a few ticks before midnight, I was driving home from my sister's house on a nice Missouri back-road. Suddenly, I see a guy running toward my car on the shoulder, frantically waving his arms with his eyes too wide in the glare of my headlights.

Now, when I say shoulder, I really mean the foot-wide swath of gravel separating the asphalt from the grass. This guy is running up to my swiftly moving car with less than a foot of space to occupy without ending up in the ditch. Something is obviously wrong.

So, despite all the warnings and such, I pull over. I mean, it's midnight on a Sunday night on a nowhere highway in Missouri. Who's gonna set that up? What are the odds of a woman driving alone right then? *shrugs*

I pull over and roll down the window -- car still on and in gear, just in case. I'm sympathetic, not stupid. Leaning slightly out the window, I holler, "Need some help?"

I am instantly assured that I did the right thing. "Oh, no! I didn't mean to flag down a woman! You shouldn't have pulled over! I hope I didn't scare you!"

All said while the guy stays well back by my taillights, fully in view of my rear- and side-view mirrors. He's going out of his way to not scare me. *snorts* As if I scare so easily.

"No worries. What's the problem?"

"I swerved to miss a deer and ended up in the brush. I'm so freaked out right now. Thank you so much for pulling over, but you shouldn't have! You can just drive on if you want. I'm sure someone...you know...will be by...soon...."

We both know better. See the above reasons for pulling over in the first place. I pull forward a few feet into a driveway, park my car, hazards on, and get out to help.

Ironically enough, someone DOES pull over soon -- before we even get back to the poor kid's car. Two guys get out of a Jeep, and...get this...the kid moves to stand in front of me. *laughs* Good kid, but again, I can take care of myself, or I wouldn't have pulled over.

So, the new guys ask what's happened, and the kid tells them the same story, adding that he'd missed that telephone pole by less than a few feet, as we can see from his tracks. They ask if I was involved, and I said I'd come along after the fact and had pulled over to help. One of the guys says that was nice, but he could take care of things from here.

And shows a badge. *laughs* A county deputy. How lucky can you get? A cop at the scene! And a paralegal for a plaintiff's attorney, though he doesn't know that yet. Heh. Lucky bastard.

Anyway, I stick around as they step forward to look at the car. The poor kid hit a big rock and tons of brush -- enough to bog down his car so he couldn't get it out -- lost his oil pan at the very least, and I think he may have cracked his radiator, as he was leaking antifreeze pretty freely. But after I comment that we could probably push it out if he can get it into neutral, the cop turns around and tells me again that I can leave if I don't feel comfortable in the dark with three strange men alongside a relatively deserted country road.

Now, I'm actually hesitant to leave this nice kid alone with strangers (not that I'm not a stranger, but I'm at least a harmless one), even though one is probably actually a cop. But I don't say that. So...

"Actually, at this point, I'm kinda curious."

"Why?"

A grin. "I'm a paralegal. I'm good with details. I might come in handy later."

The kid laughs -- he's been a little panicked and freaked out up until now, so it's good that he's calmed down enough to think anything is funny -- and the cop just looks at me funny.

I turn to the kid, keeping an eye on the cop, and grin. "You got lucky. Two people pass by, and one's a cop while the other works for a lawyer."

Heh.I mean, you have one person who frequently works on accident reconstruction exhibits for trial, and another who can testify that you weren't drunk. *laughs* And cops, if you're in the right, make EXCELLENT character witnesses.

What a riot. How lucky can you get?

So, I stick around until the cop lets the kid use his cell phone to call his parents, then head off home. The whole thing took maybe a half hour.

But my mother would kill me if she knew. Heh. Thank God she doesn't usually read this journal, ne? And Sis?

*sheepish*

I don't ALWAYS stop for stuff like that, ne?

Special Edition:

As I'm on my way out the door to my beloved sister's house, I'll keep this short.

GO PHILLY!!!

No offense to the Pats, ne? But they're an embarrassment of riches. I'm tired of watching them win. It's...kinda annoying at this point.

Give someone else a chance, ne?

So...go Philly! Go McNabb! You da man!

And now, I'm off to my beloved sister's crib to SuperBowl party. Dunno what we're up to, but I'm bringing the beer, so....

*big grin*

Everyone have a hella-good day! Party smart, but party hard!

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blogging.

Dear Charlie:

I am SO entertained right now!

Dave occasionally points out fan-made music videos of DragonBall Z clips. *grins* He came across one to...get this...Kung Fu Fighting.

HA! I know!

It's PRICELESS! I mean, it's...martial arts...synced up to...Kung Fu Fighting. *dies laughing* The concept alone is priceless, but the follow-through is better still. The clip quality isn't great -- probably from VCD, not terribly clear -- but every major beat, every kung fu grunt is synced to a hit or an explosion or an appearance.

Absolutely hilarious!

Another one from a while back is to Eminem's Kill You. *big grin* It's pretty damn priceless, too. Not only is the song a riot, but the clips the creator chose are GREAT!

Heh, yes, I get a big kick out of Eminem. So sue me. *smirk*

And then there are several excellent ones to various Linkin Park songs. Man, that music just lends itself to DBZ, ne? Angst and anger, fury and frustration, revenge and repentance....

Good stuff.

I am SO entertained. Wait...lemme rephrase. I am SO easy to entertain! Heh.