A writer who’s name I’ve forgotten once recommended that you should begin your story as late as possible. The sooner you get to your meaningful action the better.

I think I would have preferred it if Peter Jackson’s King Kong had hit the theatres with a leaner 2 1/2 version and then followed up with the expected four hour extended version on DVD. Once the gang gets to the island the story is pretty lively. Before that … There are characters that I’d have been happy to have learned more about – later. At the theatre spending time with those characters just slows the story down. Ultimately the important human characters are Denham, Darrow and Discoll. Everyone else is just Kong/dinosaur fodder. I loved the movie. I can tell because different scenes keep replaying in my memory. I keep seeing Kong’s scarred face. I’ll be happy to watch that four hour extended version. I think I’d have preferred to wait for the extra material.

Wednesday Nizzibet spent the day with a friend preparing pans of baklava and spanakopita that she and I delivered to friends that night. Usually to friends that we knew were going to be busy (or had kids, or had been sick) and unlikely to have time for cooking.

Last night we got together with Evil Genius (Race Car Version) at his sister L’s in Newcastle. Their father died last week and the memorial was yesterday. So dinner was leftovers of the food from the memorial. Much wine was consumed and there was much signing of Irish folk tunes. Delightful. We’re going back again tonight. There’s still food to be eaten and once Evil Genius and his wife and his kids and his other sister and her husband go home there’s only L and one daughter to eat it. We have to help out.

Christmas Eve we’ll be spending a couple of hours with the friend that partnered with Nizz on the cooking Wednesday. She’s married with four insane children. They’re the best kind of insane kids because they have no fear of strangers. I can pick ’em up and toss ’em around.

Later in the evening we’ll go to JayDogg and TwoM’s for dinner and an exchange of gifts.

And Christmas?

Christmas we’ll go to church for service. It’s only an hour in honor of the holiday. Thank heavens.

Then it’s home. We’ll open whatever presents we’ve given each other (and she’ll probably out do me, she usually does). We’ll toss a fake log on our fire and watch movies on the TV. And nap.

Monday I don’t have to go to work. So more naps. Maybe some house cleaning. We’ll see.

I’ve been addicted to caffeine for a couple of decades now. Every so often I purposely stop drinking caffeinated beverages to give my body a chance to detox. That might last a week. Maybe a couple of months. Sooner or later I get started again.

Usually the process is kind of painful. Aside for the lovely withdrawal headaches I also go through mood swings and experience random unpleasant body aches. I’m sure withdrawing from other, more powerful drugs is much more uncomfortable but that’s outside my experience.

This last week my body seems to have decided it wasn’t going to wait for me to decide on a time for detoxing. I just suddenly stopped enjoying my morning caffeine. I wasn’t that I felt jittery or anxious – that happens occasionally and I’m fine with that. No, my body felt sick. Like I had a flu but without the coughing and sneezing and sore throat. The first couple of days I figured that I did just have a cold. I took aspirin and cold medicine and didn’t think about it.

After those first two days I noticed that I felt worse after drinking caffeine. And I still didn’t have any other flu symptoms. So I’ve drastically reduced my caffeine intake. I got the expected withdrawal headaches but no mood swings and the aches and pains got less the less the caffeine I’d had.

I haven’t completely quit. But now, instead of a couple of cups of coffee in the first half hour of being awake I’ll have a couple of swallows after being awake for three hours. Odd.

Nice to know that my body is still smarter than I am.

I’ve created a Frappr map. Be so kind as to locate yourself. Muchos gracias.

Space Godzilla

When Toho revived the Godzilla series in the 80’s they mostly played it safe with the Big G’s adversaries. They were generally either revamps of 1960’s monsters or they were creatures that had somehow evolved out of Godzilla himself. Space Godzilla is such a creature. He is somehow born of Godzilla cells that either Biollante or Mothra left in space that got sucked into a black hole and mutated and … I don’t know, became big and crystaline and kinda boring. I have a hard time remembering what happened in the movie. That’s not a good sign.

King Seesar

King Seesar is an ancient guardian monster who awakes to assist Godzilla in his first battle against Mecha-Godzilla in the 70’s movie, Godzilla vs. Mecha-Godzilla.

Dammero

The 1990’s Gamera trilogy is my favorite series of giant monster movies. Gamera the fire breathing, flying turtle is reinvented from a “Friend to All Children” to an often ruthless “Guardian of the Earth”. This new Gamera is a bioweapon created by ancient civilization to fight other, less friendly monsters also created by said civilization. In the third movie we discover that our Gamera is the last of many Gameras when a Gamera graveyard is found in the sea of Japan. Dammero is my take on a Gamera that decided to change its destiny.

Quake

Fan art of fan art. I liked Tygiras’s big green monkey so much I did a version of him myself.

LuvSet mentioned it yesterday and since he doesn’t have comments enabled my response shows up here. Brokeback Mountain. Romantic tragedy. Star crossed lovers who can’t stay away from each other but can never be together. Oh the torment. Oh the sadness. Oh, bleah.

I expect that the movie will be well made and beautifully photographed. I’ve seen most of Ang Lee’s other films. And liked them. Even the Hulk Poodles. Even though they’re all at least a little tragic. I may even get around to seeing it eventually on DVD. Cause Heath Ledger is kinda cute. And the movie will be well made and beautifully photographed. But personally? Big Gay Romantic Tragedy? Sigh. Give me Big Gay Monster movie. Big Gay Action comedy. Big Gay scifi flick. That might get me into the theatre on opening weekend.

It’s snowing here in Seattle. Nothing is really sticking where my offices are located but I hear it’s doing so up by my apartment. If it’s still coming down tomorrow I may not be coming in to work. We’ll see.

Nizzibet is napping. Not from turkey overindulgence. We haven’t gone anywhere yet. We’ll be going to BigSister’s at about seven. I think she has to work today. She’s doing the cooking which may mean that there won’t actually be any turkey on this turkey day. It will be delicious so I’m not terribly worried.

This weekend is going to be spent getting the last of the books out of their boxes. This won’t result in getting them all up on shelves. We don’t have enough shelves for all the books. Once all the books are available to look at the process begins for getting rid of some of them. I’ll be applying three standards as I chose –

1. Do I love this book?
2. Is it useful?
3. If this book vanished from the world would I care?

The first standard is easy. That covers a lot of the fiction I’ve got. Not that I love all the books that this standard will cover but it eliminates the majority of the books that I had to push myself to finish.

The second standard is a little trickier. The internet provides us with so much information that many of these books are redundant. But the internet requires that I have my computer on. If I need an image for reference I need to either print it out or have a screen in front of me. For information a book is far more portable and accessible than the most sophisticated laptop. And a book will provide me with the unexpected in a way that the internet can’t. I have to search the internet for the information I’m seeking. As a compulsive reader I’ll read whatever is in front of me. So having books on Russian history makes me more likely to read about it simply because it’t there.

The third standard covers those books that I might not love and that might not be all that useful to me but that I’d be sad if they were to disappear. My two volume study of the grasses of North America. Ethnographic studies of Chinese farmers. Some of the bad (but not boring) novels I’ve got. Books that seem to me to serve a purpose whether by providing odd specilized information or by being an story that someone had to tell (that didn’t bore the hell out of me – sorry, a well-told boring story takes second place to a lively tale told by an idiot).

Let the sorting begin!