Rainy here, but not terribly cold. Kinda nice really.

My dad wanted the cats to go after the rodents and squirrels. But cats either hunt or do not hunt. And if they hunt, you can't get them to hunt only certain critters. My folks have decided not to have anymore cats now. My dad is tired of them going after the birds.

Since I can think of half a dozen off the top of my head, it isn't fair to just pick one of them.

#11 is very funny to me. Many years ago, I was helping someone sort through a box of very old photos and letters. I think it must have belonged to a school teacher early in the 20th century. There were a number of sick notes. But there was one just like #11, and after three attempts to spell the word, the mother wrote "The RUNS" all in caps.

Oddly enough, this does make sense. Maybe I need a drink?

It's been a while since I've seen it, but this is an upcoming movie night pick I plan to avoid.

This 1958 movie has one of my all time favorite actors in it. Jimmy Stewart. That aside, I hate this movie. The acting isn't bad. The cinematography isn't bad. The directing isn't bad. On the whole, the writing wasn't bad.

I hate the message of the movie.

The female lead is a witch who meets Jimmy Stewart's character and wants him to fall in love with her. So she casts a spell. She wears slacks. She smokes. She owns an unusual art store, if I remember correctly.

In the course of the film, he falls in love with her, she feels guilty that it was a spell, she ends up confessing and he leaves. She gets him back in the end by giving up her powers, stops smoking, starts wearing dresses, and changes the content of her store to something so girly girly, pink and cutesy it makes me want to gag on the overload of pink and sugar.

To me, the message was that a woman has to do all the changing and become whatever it is the man wants in order to get the guy. That men are not expected to compromise in anyway and that a woman show know her place and keep to it. This last part is the part that really pisses me off the most, to be honest.

Look at the timing of the movie. 1958. The 60's are well know as the era of the civil rights movement and womens lib and the cultural revolution. The 70's are the second half of that revolution with the growing anti-establishment sentiment and the right to explore areas of freedom that were normally considered hush-hush and almost taboo.

But the baby steps in the Womens Lib movement were already happening. Ever since the end of WWII and women were told to go back to their kitchens and nurseries and steno pools. Women discovered they liked working for their own money, that they liked having more responsibilities, that they liked not being dependant on their husbands. So over the next decade, women were making the first steps in pushing through a deeply entrenched, male dominated society and demanding that they no longer be treated as a step above children. By they the 60's they were finally able to go from walking to running in this mission.

To me, this movie is a obvious attempt to remind women of their 'proper' roles and that that they are the ones that have to accommodate the men and not the other way around.

This is a disturbing movie. It is NOT a bad movie. But you can't really use an adjective like 'good' and feel comfortable with it.

A girl of about 11 movies into her late grandmother's old farmhouse with her father after her mom OD's on smack and her dad totally flips out. The description on the disc sleeve says that the dad then spends his days in a stupor mourning the death of his wife.
That is not what happens. The first thing he wants to do is shoot up and he dies as well.

The movie takes place over the course of about a week in which the girl lives off a jar of peanut butter and believes her father is 'asleep' and that he will come back from his 'vacation' any time now while playing and exploring with her vivid imagination and meeting the loony neighbors on the farm next door.

The woman is a taxidermist who once dated the girl's father see where this is going?) and totally off her rocker while her brother is mentally challenged and looks like he might have had a head wound or brain surgery. He also has a vivid imagination and acts a rather lot like an 11 year old. The movie starts off with a disclaimer to view the movie with the innocence of childhood and discard your adult views. (see where this is going?)

At the end, you are happy that the brother uses his dynamite to blow up the "monster shark". Because it is near both farm houses, the girl goes to find out what happened and is taken in with the passengers and therefore removed from the situation she was in. In only a week or so, you could see that if she ended up living alone in that farm house with the crazy people near by to 'help her out' she was going to end up as crazy as them.

The acting was fantastic. The movie was well done. It is the content that makes it uncomfortable. One of the few films I would call outstanding while not being able to call it good.

Very bad movie. It's about Ichi the Killer. But the person on the cover and who has the most camera time is actually Kakihuru.

Kakihuru is a masochist who really wants Ichi to kill him and thinks Ichi is a pure monster. Ichi is a sad, pathetic little man whom a shrink has given false memories and post-hypnotic suggestions in order to clean up the gang land part of the city.

All we know about Ichi is that he wants to know why 'Sailor' did something to him (whom Sailor is is a question that never gets answered and we never find out what he did to Ichi) and that he killed his parents which is why the shrink was brought in in the first place. We also don't know why that happened either.

Ichi ends up killing all the bad guys and all the people you actually kinda like in the movie. Including a little boy. The Shrink ends up hanging himself over the death of the boy and Ichi just walks away into the city.

Ichi kills with a 2 inch knife blade that pops out of the heals of his boots. The movie shows him beheading people and cutting people in half right up the center of the torso and head with a single kick and a blade that won't anywhere near deep enough to get the job done.

From what I'm told, this is an anime gone live action. Most anime to life is campy. It doesn't try to be anything other than what it is. As a result, it can be fun to watch some of the anime to live movies. This is not one of those.

Don't you hate it when you are under the weather for a week with a mild cold? It's not bad enough to stay home, but work is about all you can manage and you spend the evenings resting up for the next day.

I'm finally getting the second bookshelf from last weekend put up. Don't know if I'll get the stuff out of all the boxes and shelved. But I have 5 trips to the dumpster to make.

Makes me wish I had someone I could ask to take out the garbage. It will be so nice to have this organizational project done and out of the way.

My friends daughters are in a school district with longer Christmas and spring breaks and a shorter summer break. She loves it.

I've talked to some teachers who love the idea because the kids tend to perform better. They don't have to relearn some of the things they forget over a three month break.

Other teachers hate the idea because that is when they normally do their own continuing education to stay certified OR they are using that time to go work seasonal jobs to supplement their incomes.

Does that mean you will pluck the back hairs with the tweezers until its gone?

I like the Caribbean sound. I like many accents.

Ebonics is a whole different issue.

I've picked up this three pack of Myst, Riven, and Exile. I played the first two back in the day. Did not realize it was only 10 years. I've been in Omaha that long. I thought for sure I played both the first two before moving here. But I guess I must be wrong.

Never played Exile.

Anyone have fond memories sitting in a darkened room, listening to the lonely music and feeling as alone as your character in the game?

You have to love a food show that comes with a parental warning for content.

Well, from the first few lines, sounds to me like he met her wherever it was they were dancing. And then he says he is getting a drink and then puts his arm around her to take her with him while saying she can came with him.

It comes off as rather possessive for someone you just met that night and it probably did make her uncomfortable.

I hate it when people say you 'have' to respect the office. It's just another way to say one should always publicly agree with officials. This country was founded on the very principle of standing up for your beliefs if you think that officials are in the wrong. This country was build on dissent.

But a profane rant just lack style and decorum. It's hard to take anyone serious if that's what they end up doing. No one is really going to listen to the issues underlying the rant.

Well of course. It's often more interesting that way.

I knew a girl that was totally stunning by high school but when growing up was very homely. Not plain, but downright homely. More allergies than you could count, terrible skin condition, extremely bad teeth, and hair issues.

But after braces, growing out of the allergies and skin condition, and a cultural shift in popular hair styles and general hair care, she could have been a model if she wanted.

But she still had the 'ugly duckling' image of herself.

Some beautiful people did not grow up that way and often have trouble seeing it in themselves.

But some are just fishing for compliments and I totally understand the urge to sneer or even smack the person up side the head.

I think this is just a challenge to get girls to show up. But girls don't usually respond that way.

The Kokopele is stunning. I love the skull and the evil wicked grin. That chess set ROCKS!