The Calling Plan of Doom Just Wants To Play

I don't write about the movies we've seen to be all, "Ha! Rented it on the first day," or anything, it's just that this is all sort of a writing prompt. There are few other times I'm experiencing the same thing as other people in the same room, so I try to remember it by writing it down. I think this week I'll totally go off on the movies, though, because these are two that have been out for a while.

I can't brag about seeing One Missed Call for instance, because I don't know what the hell it was about it lost something in translation. The movie was very short, so they could have worked some more plot in there and still made it under 1:45, but apparently the makers were content with the idea that the calling plan of doom gives out free candies. Also, peepholes are still a bad idea.

I feel bad about watching Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer without my aunt there to love every eyelash in Ioan Gruffudd's head, but she was at home with her own copy this week and we were down to that or Charlie Wilson's War (which was good, though, we saw that the next night). On Saturday we like to see the world get saved in a fun way that has little to no repercussions in the future, so we watched the Fantastic Four. If you liked the first one, you will probably like this one as well. Although I have fond memories of those cartoons, I like the movie versions better than the Hanna-Barbera version, because the cartoon people had scary eyes...I remember my childhood like it was a weird drug trip. It wasn't, either, man, aside from the occasional chewable aspirin and candy cigarette. But there's a surfer, and he's silver, and he surfs through planets but he can heal people and he hangs ten like nobody's business and Ioan Gruffudd dances and cries and I have to find out if my aunt's seen it yet because I swear I could hear her saying, "AWW!" in varying pitches as the movie went along.

Apparently my hair is really cute this week. I've heard that my hair looks nice. I'll be talking about the Asian long-horn beetle, and before I can say infestation I'm cut off with a compliment to my hair. Honestly, all I've been doing is wetting my head a lot so I don't die, but I guess that look is in this year.

Other movies we saw were an '80s movie set in the '40s, with Crystal Bernard (of Wings!) and Annabeth Gish (from X-Files!) as...women...I think they were detectives, unless only one was, I came in on it. It was okay until the dog got it. This is how I rate my movies, people.

We didn't stick with Sometimes They Come Back...For More after one character, played by Faith Ford, argues that the pissed off man heading for the door can't go out after someone because it's 60 below. "If he can survive it, so can I!" Mr. I-wear-green-camo-in-snow snarls, and proceeds to stomp out into the snow. I mean, I know I shovel in a T-shirt, but 60 below?

The rest of the week my free time went to catching up on the gardening I couldn't do in the heatwave that tripled in size overnight during the insane rainstorm we got. I would like a little rain every few days, please. Not three weeks of no rain and then 24 hours straight of water that will end up mostly inside my house.

Then I saw a baby pigeon. Baby birds are so cute in a freaky my-mother-could-peck-your-eyes-out way. It was standing on top of Domo-Kun. Luckily it flew back up to the trees and not into the sunscreen or the house. Because that would have warranted a post of its own.

The Calling Plan of Doom Just Wants To Play

Suddenly, The Weather Got Hot

Nan can find some interesting movies. Last week's was Blind Beast with Mako, back when he had two names, as a blind guy who kidnaps a girl so he can feel real girl parts instead of the hundreds he's sculpted over the years. Then things get artistically wild.

We all sort of wanted to see Mr. Bean's Holiday, as we love that guy. Or maybe we just forgot the things he puts everyone through. If you like Mr. Bean, you will probably like this. I don't really want to give away the plot, because, well, you'd have to see it. But for the rest of the week, every time I picked up my video camera, I felt way artsy. Sure.

During the sudden insane 105° day, I got it into my head to back up my near-19,000 photos to my Flickr account. It was upsetting to know the "Taken on" date will be the date they're uploaded, but I'm backing up my pictures. So really, should I be quibbling about exactly when they were taken, as long as I'll have a backup someplace remote in case say, my house explodes? I think not. I did a month a day for a few days. I'm no where near finished.

But I did post the pictures of our beautiful little friends who moved in, and have since flown away. I loved this bunch. Clear skies, kids.

I tried to use the auto-poster for the rest of what I admit to doing in a week so it wasn't a bombardment all at once, and I guess that makes this a shorter review. Because melting from the hot weather and uploading photos to Flickr really did seem to be all I did.

Suddenly, The Weather Got Hot

Surprise Backyard Blast!

You know I have been reading too many LOLcats when I start titling my posts with certain ones in mind. Last night, I'd just settled down to add to my word total on the book I can't re-read this week because it makes me cringe, and the wind kicked up outdoors. It kicked up so bad that it started knocking things over. Like trashcans and garden furniture, and whatever hit the transformer to the power line that provides electricity to the "new half" of our house.

Nan and I were sitting in the living room (part of the "old half") and so we only experienced a brief blip in the lights, and the TV went off, and the Internet went away. I rebooted the computer in front of me, because that seemed like the most sensible way to get the router working again. After about twenty minutes, I thought maybe I should go see if the router was having trouble synching. Turns out it wasn't on. The entire rest of the house was entirely in darkness. It was sort of like Silent Hill, without the creepy demonic things moving around in the dark. That I could see.

Luckily, there is enough old wiring in the house that each room had at least one working light, and my laziness paid off because those orange power cords I never put back in the shed came in handy for the fridge. Going by ConEd's recorded message, we seemed to be in for a few days of total unbearable darkness, day and night, with vampires and cannibals that would undoubtedly come out if I didn't plug the fridge into an outlet that had power. So I did. I can't stretch like Reed Richards, though. That would have helped.

After the rain quieted down, I ventured out into the yard to take pictures of the damage. I was not the only looney out there:



Okay, so...we didn't have damage so much as much-needed pruning of dead branches that I couldn't reach without a jetpack. That greyish thing there is a shingle, but as of yet I can't determine whose roof it came from. (Note to self: make the roofers put little happy faces on our shingles next time around. Sure.)



This was close. The forsythia's doing fine now, but that branch weighed about five pounds, man. Took me, two cats and a dog to move it.



All of our electricity was back on within a few hours, and the strong winds blew the clouds so far away that the cats thought it'd be a great idea to go out and wallow in the cold mud. I talked them out of it by putting their harnesses on and opening the door. They're not fond of wind that can blow the resin chairs around, so that ended well. I've found that just showing them what it's like out there works better than trying to explain it. They're very wary of humans selling them tales of foolishness like cold and rain and two feet of snow, and who can blame them? Even I've made the mistake of listening to weathermen over the years and ending up with a yard full of wayward chairs that looks like a WWF convention just came through. There were a lot of people who had serious damage done by the surprise storm...but that's not funny.

Surprise Backyard Blast!

Pining for the little birds.

Halfway through my puppy's walkies, I heard the squawking of many crows. I haven't heard that in a while, lack of trees and loads of West Nile Virus have made my neighborhood vulture-less for quite some time. I happened to look up to see if they were heading right for me, and they weren't...they were busy having a fight with a red-tailed hawk.

I think I have noted every time I've seen a hawk on the Internet, so it never gets old. The fact that this hawk was involved in a noisy smackdown in my pine tree just made it that much more interesting to me.

I did not get a good picture of the hawk, as it flew away while this one of its butt was saving. Behind those pinecones, I assure you there is a bird that was so big, I could see it a block away.

I...can't say I'm sorry it left, but it was nice to see.

Pining for the little birds.

Don't piss off Mama Bird.

Did I ever tell the story of how I became a liberal? Once upon a time, before West Nile Virus and termites took most of the birds and trees from our area, there was a red-tailed hawk in my tree. It was pretty stunning. They're big.

I mentioned it online, and someone made a crack that I should cook it. I responded in turn with my own crack about my neighbor who used to shoot at the ravens in our tree.

Apparently, calling the neighbor a looney did not go over well with a troll who knew how to keep his posts from being archived. I wasn't making the neighbor up, I couldn't, it's too bizarre (I think he eventually shot at something bigger than a bird, because they moved not long after). As the discussion went on, the troll called me a liberal, and I think he expected me to die of shame. I did not. And that is how I became a liberal.

Leaping ahead a few years, when the only birds left in the area are blue jays, I found myself swinging at one with a branch from my forsythia today. I believe I may have called the bird a few names the ornithologists union has not approved.

These birds are annoying my cats, you see. Never mind that the cats stare at them and do the feline equivalent of wolf whistles, these birds are capable of eye-pecking, and are threatening my cats, and so I flipped out ninja-stlye with a branch. I'd cut the branch, along with a lot of vines, in an attempt to remove the welcome mat for the blue jays.

I also very nearly severed my left thumb, but I'm used to doing shit like that. Luckily, I'd just cleaned my clippers the other day, and they're not nicked, so it was a clean slice. I can still work my mouse, as long as I keep the thumb tightly bandaged, so all is right with the world.

Still enjoying the Depeche Mode music, although if they play Devotional at 10 o'clock again, I will jump on a blue jay, take it up to space, and beat the satellite senseless with the largest branch I can find.

Don't piss off Mama Bird.