Subject to Change

I wanted to blog about The Mist after I saw it, but couldn’t think of a way to do it without ruining the end of the movie.  I started writing a blog once and quit when it was accidentally erased from my drafts. Given Stephen King’s recent comments about the military I don’t really feel like I owe him anything, so I’ll go ahead and say what I thought of his crummy movie.

A strange mist, haunted by murderous creatures has a town held hostage. A group of people trapped in a grocery store struggle to escape and discover the nature of their plight. It suppose it was a classic King movie in most ways. There were plenty of rubber monsters and overly dramatic acting. Many of the characters are rather annoying, either frustratingly stupid or totally unbelievable. It’s hard to empathize with any of them, except maybe the young boy and his father. 

Many of the people hiding out in the grocery store are slain before some of them band together to escape. They’re led by the man who is determined to get home in order to save his wife. His son is with him, and they escape together with a woman, an elderly couple, and a gun. The five of them drive to the man’s house, where they discover that his wife is dead. Lucky for him there’s a new woman in the car, right? Well, not really. This is Stephen King’s movie, after all.

The escapees attempt to drive beyond the mist only to run out of gas. This is where the movie made me mad. The gun is loaded with four bullets, but there are five people. While his son is sleeping the man volunteers to go last, then he prepares the gun. As he brings the gun up, his son’s eyes open wide in disbelief and the camera exists the car to show the four shots fired from outside. I suppose it could have been worse, but the wide-eyed stare of the child was quite enough. It made Kelly and I both shout out loud at the TV.

As I said in a previous post about Stephen King, there are times when I feel like I know what inspires his writing. I think this scene is exactly what he had in mind for this movie. It’s probably supposed to be a message about gun control, and it doesn’t end there. After killing off everyone else in the car the man tries to commit suicide by rubber monster, only to have the mist clear around him and the military come rushing in. You see? He killed everyone with that evil gun for nothing.

I really feel like The Mist was a total waste of my time. It wasn’t all that suspenseful and the ending wasn’t too surprising.  I prefer it when Stephen King sticks to just being weird, over trying to be scary.

Clinton, Obama
Barack - Hillary - Barack
McCain. John, McCain.

In case you were wondering what inspired me to start blogging in haiku, it’s a semi-amusing story. It’s probably one of those “you had to be there” stories, but here it is anyway.

During the rough draft review process on my latest project, a word slipped into the process descriptions that was perhaps a bit too sugary to describe waste water treatment. It caught me by surprise when I read the sentence it was in. I must have snorted out loud or something. After explaining myself, I suggested that we write all of the process narratives in haiku. Every engineering geek in the room thought that would be a fun idea.

Later on, I realized that haiku might be a fun and pithy way to comment on my blog. I suppose the sarcasm makes my haiku part limeric, which is why it amuses me. I hope it amuses you, too.  

I still remember where I was the time I burped and sneezed at the same time.

That was eight years ago. Beer was involved.

Missed church on Sunday
to see Anderson Gardens
Rockford, Illinois

Two hours of driving
with the baby in the back
We’re lucky he sleeps!

Japanese Garden
prettier than imagined
Spring is here at last!

Cole likes feeding koi
and playing in the water
and eating pebbles

I find a nice place
To lay on rocks in the sun
One minute of peace

A screaming baby
forces a quick change of plan
It’s time to eat, Now!

A new restaurant
just opened at the gardens
what an awesome view!

Restaurant closing
They seated us anyway
Sunday brunch buffet

Last guests in the place
Chef says everyone eat up
No problem there, Chef.

It’s hard to haiku
About how good the food was
There aren’t enough words

Back to the garden
To make sure we miss nothing
Cole finds more water

Soaking wet baby
Docent and guests are laughing
Mommy, not so much

The day is still young
What else to do in Rockford?
A walk in the park

We make a pit stop
in Beloit, to see the B’s
not to see the bees.

Baby, pots, and pans
He won’t behave anymore
Time to thank the B’s.

I found some random cat videos. Very funny!

First, an engineer’s guide to cats.

Then, the mean cat song.

A co-worker tipped me off to this show. I haven’t had a chance to see it yet, but there’s always YouTube!

A full recovery of the stratospheric ozone hole could modify climate change in the Southern Hemisphere and even amplify Antarctic warming, according to scientists from the University of Colorado at Boulder, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA.

So, mankind does have the power to slow global warming, with CFCs!!!

I heard yesterday that you’re considering putting in a street car route to boost mass transit ridership. I’ve got to tell you that it won’t work. Trust me!!!

I’m from Milwaukee, where our street car is about a decade old now. To be honest, I don’t even know if we’ve got one anymore. It ran from near the UWM campus to the liquor and gay people parts of town. Is this sounding familiar, Columbus?

If memory serves, trolley fare was originally fifty cents. So, it never made any money. One could assume from the artificially low fare that it was never meant to. One must assume then, that the idea behind the trolley was to boost interest in mass transit or perhaps to encourage tourism. Since the trolley typically runs empty and you’ve obviously never heard of it before, I’d say it failed to do either. It’s not even a topic of interest locally, except when our county executive suggests that we’re losing revenue on the service. That’s the only time anyone notices the blasted thing. We spent all that money on specially decorated busses and signage, and got nothing out of it. On the bright side, we didn’t waste taxpayer money installing a rail system for our street car experiment.

Let me ask you something: what sense does it make to operate a trolley car in a modern city? Wouldn’t driving the thing past the giant, electric marquee on High Street spoil the retro image? Look, I’ve been to the German Village. Parts of this town understand that ambience is an all or nothing affair. You can’t just slap a street car in the middle of downtown and expect it to be a success. What’s going to motivate people to ride it? 

I’m strongly advising you against this poor investment. As usual, my consulting fee is half the dollar amount I’ve saved. I’m eagerly awaiting my check.

Hugs and kisses,

Aaron

There are some fitness types out there who might be able to explain this:

Halfway through carrying sod rolls to my lawn on Saturday I noticed that my left arm was overworked. The muscles had that hungry/tired feeling and they hurt, bad. When I got started again on Sunday I noticed that I couldn’t lift that arm without feeling a very sharp pain. I chalked it up to strain or even deep bruising.

Here’s the weird part. Later on the pain was gone, just like that. I had expected that arm to throb for days, because that’s what usually happens. Yet, without pain killers my whole body suddenly felt great. That was it. The pain never came back.

Was that a second wind kicking in? It was so sudden and effective that I said something out loud.