Apologies for being textually absent the last several days . . . I just haven't had much interesting stuff to discuss and I figure if I can't get excited about something for long enough to do my crappy written overview, then I'm saving you the opportunity of wasting your time reading pointless stuff . . .
. . . like that sentence right there.
But, I'll do a bit more than just apologize. I'll give some quick hits of stuff I have liked, but haven't written on.
1. The Dark Knight was excellent. LOOOONG, but excellent. I could spend time apologizing for liking comic book movies, but I'm not going to. You already know that's who I am, so I am going to let it go. TDK really was The Joker's movie, and it was very well written. Best bit? The auditory whine used during Joker scenes that slowly crescendos throughout. Builds up the tension in a very simple, very effective way. Smart film-making.
2. Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog was very funny also. (www.drhorrible.com) NPH was good, and a good singer too! Nathan Fillion was self-centred, lunk-headed, and sang pretty well. I felt sad at the end, so it was effective.
3. I'm trying to finish "Word Freak," a book about competitive Scrabble by Stefan Fatsis--he of the occasional NPR segments about sports. I've always liked Scrabble and thought I should play it more, but it is a very frustrating kind of game. I do know I would NEVER be able to play this robotic type of game that is necessary to win in tournaments. It's pure anagraming and letter construction. Definitional sense has no utility in it and I don't like that much--not that I'm a walking dictionary at all.
4. Work is cruising along at a steady pace. I've got another longish weekend trip with the family approaching, so I've got to work ahead just a bit to stockpile a few items in my short absence.
5. We are also moving along with our landscaping plans for the backyard. Had to plans submitted and we chose the cheaper one. We put down a deposit and hopefully work will begin in early August. I hope it doesn't get so hot that everything planted dies. (I guess that will be up to me? gulp) I'm ready for anything, though. Our yard is frustrating and shame-inducing. The back is still a mess from the patio. The side (where workers drove to put in/pull out stuff) has been shocked into something . . . roots damaged, plants dying. Also, the city has begun cutting down old/dying trees as part of the sidewalk repairs. It's funny that when trees are removed, the spatial void reshaped the way you see everything that was there previously. It makes me reevaluate the remaining trees and the way their limbs are. Bottom line, I've got lots of pruning to do--hot, sweaty work that I don't much enjoy. But clearing things and trying to bring some sort of order to nature is diverting and the end result is satisfying--if ultimately futile, I know.
6. Speaking of tree pruning. Another random though I had when doing some previous pruning a few weeks ago is that tree limbs look really alien when divorced from the plant. Suspended in space, the myriad branchings create a pattern that is satisfying without invoking much distracting thought. But once on the ground, those spokes seem to jut out every which way, threateningly (especially if it is a dead limb without leaves to soften the hard pointedness of twigs). It's no wonder that back in the old Star Trek: Next Generation episode that featured the Crystalline Entity, it looks like a multi-branched thing. Alien.
Anyway . . . that's it for now. Enjoy your day; whatever day this happens to be for you.
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