A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about our trip to Point Reyes National Seashore and the lighthouse. This time, I thought I would share a few photos of the wildlife we saw.
Point Reyes has a vast amount of wildlife. It’s a wonderful site for bird watching, whale watching and more.
Continue reading “Point Reyes: The Wildlife”
“The girl with the dragon tattoo” – (158 minutes, USA, 2011 – rated R)
I wanted to like this. Great cast, great director, great story… But like Steven Spielberg, David Fincher hits it about as much as he misses, and the opening sequence of “the girl with the dragon tattoo” is the best part of the movie.
Steven Zaillian is credited as screenwriter for this adaptation and described on imdb as a veteran scrip doctor. Here, it appears the doctor killed the patient. You very seldom get a strong female character matched to a strong female lead as was the case with Salander and Noomi Rapace. To say this version adds nothing to the original Swedish film is true but incomplete: the character treatment of Lisbeth Salander amounts to character assassination, although at 158 minutes it’s more like a prolonged torture session.
SPOILER ALERT BELOW.
When Lisbeth rescues Blomqvist from the killer and chases after him, she actually asks Blomqvist for his permission to kill the bad guy. In Fincher’s “girl with the dragon tattoo”, Lisbeth subordinates herself to Blomqvist, which is not just contrary to the source material (book and film), but bizarre…
The book’s original title, Män som hatar kvinnor, means “men who hate women”, and makes me wonder at the guys involved here. Too bad, so sad, avoid this stinker. This gets no beans.
UPDATE BY Rudha-an
Here is the opening title sequence that Lastech mentioned. It’s the best part of the movie.
“And they call it kitty love…”
That’s where the cuteness ends: Jenny starts by kissing on Tito, they exchange a few licks, and settle down for a minute, maybe a few seconds.
Then the wrestling begins. The headlocks and body slamming, what every Trekker recognizes as the Klingon mating ritual, somewhat different from the Vulcan mating ritual which also involves ass kicking, but of a Starship Captain.
As I type this, for instance, Jenny is still greeting me home, dancing figure eights under the chair, pawing at my leg and grabbing my arm to rub against. With purring and claws. I’m already bleeding in three spots. I got bit. Not too hard but firmly.
Must be the Tortie (Tortoiseshell) in her, the little brute. As a wrestler, she has a very solid stance: wide with hind legs bent. We saw her more than once using this position to wrap Tito in an embrace before slamming him down. Then again, he gives as good as he gets, and even has her retreating often, though never for long. Never for long.
I’m bleeding from a fourth scratch now.
Jenny will also walk on my pillow stopping just long enough to nom on my skull. If I pet her, which I always do, she farts. If my wife leans over to nose bonk her, Jenny’ll cough in her face, like Carol Beer on “Little Britain”:
Her newest trick: not a cough, but a vurp (a burp which sounds vomitous). All I can say is thank Ceiling Cat she doesn’t eat mice. Things are gross enough. Annnnd, I’ve got an eighth scratch… Well, a puncture, more like… Still, I feel like one of Jack the Ripper’s playthings.
Nothing like a good meal followed by a… a good proper “recycling” session, if you know what I mean… In between both, though, flossing takes longer, what with receding gum lines etc…
Your mouth becomes a Walmart with monstrosities lingering in the aisles.
I had a particularly irritating bacon bit wedged between two teeth earlier today. One of those clingy, rubbery bits of bacon fat which seemed oddly attached to a molar, and considering how long they’d known each other I thought the relationship had a whiff of co-dependence…
Ultimately though, all good things must end, and food stuffs must separate from enamel.
Where do I begin
To tell the story of how great a love can be
With her first chew
She gave new filling to this cavity of mine
She fills my teeth with very special things
With angels’ songs , with wild imaginings
She fills my mouth with so much flavor
Andy Williams – “Love Story”
No. No, actually it really is more like this:
Jesse, the Jack Russell terrier has returned with more useful dog tricks. He’s amazing. Please visit his YouTube page for more of his videos.
Three years ago today, Lastech and I smoked our last cigarette. We never looked back. It wasn’t our first try. It wasn’t even a second or third. In fact, We had given up counting. It WAS our final quit. The time was right and we were tired of being slaves to the almighty tobacco.
Since then, our outdoor adventures have expanded to include stairs and steep climbs. Yesterday, I wrote about visiting the Point Reyes Lighthouse and the fact that the descent and return included 308 stair steps (one way). I wouldn’t have made it before the quit.
One of the first things we did once we had some lung function back was to go to Cataract Canyon. I wrote about it back in 2010 and it was called Hiking Cataract Trail in the Marin Municipal Water District.
Nowadays, the ashtray in our car is empty most of the time. When it’s not, it looks like the photo below.
I have a confession to make. I’m a cartophile. I’m not a collector. I’ve no desire to hang them on my wall. I have a collection, but they’re my trusty AAA roadmaps. I have a pile of them. We use them to figure out where we want to explore next. It’s great fun finding places we haven’t seen. This time, I pointed at Point Reyes National Seashore. For some reason, in spite of the fact that it was only 40 miles away, we had not yet paid it a visit.
The area where the picture was taken regularly sees winds of 40 mph, and a weather station once recorded a gust of 133 mph..!
According to the National Park Service:
Point Reyes is the windiest place on the Pacific Coast and the second foggiest place on the North American continent. Weeks of fog, especially during the summer months, frequently reduce visibility to hundreds of feet. The Point Reyes Headlands, which jut 10 miles out to sea, pose a threat to each ship entering or leaving San Francisco Bay. The historic Point Reyes Lighthouse warned mariners of danger for more than a hundred years.
Point Reyes National Seashore is also where Sir Francis Drake is most likely to have landed. Drake’s Bay is named after him.
Follow along for our visit to the lighthouse.
Continue reading “Point Reyes National Seashore: The Lighthouse”
Here’s nice bit of stress reliever for Monday. YouTube always has something fun. This one has been around for a while, but it always makes me laugh. The BBC is always a winner in this category.
They say that when you’re young, you know what you hate and that as you get older, you know what you love and shift your focus.
I think that’s true but I hate disease more and more, disease of any variety, which diminishes those you love until it kills them. I can’t get used to it, and I’m not certain Kitsy’s passing has sunk in even now.
Maybe it’s because he was so much larger than life, that I have trouble thinking of him as truly gone.
Everything about Kitsy was superlative and he was a hell of a model, even though he never managed to hold a pose quite long enough. One thing he liked was getting petted roughly before I blew raspberries on his gut. He’d get up, fold his big flappers of ears back and leap off.
What we had for the past couple months or so was a wasted version of him.
Lately, he had appeared to make some improvement. The weight, however was located in his gut and his spine and ribs continued to show. His muscle mass continued to diminish and he had more trouble jumping in the last few days.
What confirmed what we were afraid to know and discuss, was what the other cats did. They nestled with Kitsy to keep him warm at night, Jenny checked on him constantly, and Tito would lure me to the bathroom were I’d sit on the edge of the tub and pet him on my lap.
New behavior which I took as offers of comfort from the big cat.
As to Jenny, she accompanied Kitsy wherever he went, literally shadowing him. By then she also looked much bigger than he.
So we had him for two years, and that seems like a very short time…
The vet told us that the disease affected mostly young cats, and what a rotten thing that is.
I will miss his excesses and countless transgressions. I used to joke he was like a shark, an eating machine constantly looking for food to steal, and last night it struck me to see bacon strips on a plate in the kitchen left unmolested. Yet I can’t help thinking that even though he’s clearly not here he is not in fact gone.
I will miss our arguments, me calling him names and him probably demanding noms. He was a great outlet for my frustrations the fearless little bastard who never had a bad mood and would make Tito and I exchange disbelieving looks.
I can’t wait to dream about him.
“Oh let the sun beat down upon my face, stars to fill my dream
I am a traveler of both time and space, to be where I have been
To sit with elders of the gentle race, this world has seldom seen
They talk of days for which they sit and wait and all will be revealed.“
Led Zeppelin “Kashmir”
We lost our wonderful Kitsune/Kitsy/Mazuzu Whang? to FIP today. This isn’t a proper post for him. I’ll do that when I’m in a bit better shape. I’m just too damned sad right now. Rest in peace baby boy. Mom and dad will love you forever.
