Saturday, June 30, 2007

Poem for Saturday


The World Is Not A Pleasant Place To Be
By Nikki Giovanni


the world is not a pleasant place
to be without
someone to hold and be held by

a river would stop
its flow if only
a stream were there
to receive it

an ocean would never laugh
if clouds weren't there
to kiss her tears

the world is not
a pleasant place to be without
someone

--------


I completely lost three hours of today to one of the worst migraines I've ever had, and I'm still a bit fuzzy (I took a double dose of Imitrex, which my doctor said it would be all right to do but I've only ever done once before -- I just hope the weather has pushed through, if that was a factor, because it wasn't nearly as hot today as yesterday and that time of the month is almost past). Didn't do a great deal, anyway; took the kids to the library and afterward stopped in the mall in search of penguin Jibbitz for younger son but they were all out, though we did find older son a Halo t-shirt he desperately wanted and since we were in Hot Topic, I had to buy myself one of the brand new awesome Snape t-shirts.

Wrote a review of "Too Short a Season", which was somewhat better than I remembered, though still not precisely good. The kids wanted to watch Click which is on On Demand for free till the end of the month, so I figured we should grab it while we could. Parts of it I really liked and parts of it I really couldn't stand, which has tended to be my reaction to every Adam Sandler movie I've ever seen. For one thing, it's painfully male-focused, about a guy whose regrets in life nearly all have to do with his father and his son (his wife's just kind of there, and all he really seems to notice about her is that she's hot, which, being Kate Beckinsdale, she can't really help; if I were her I'd have run off with Sean Astin as soon as he showed up), and for another thing, some of the humor is just so unnecessarily mean-spirited that it's hard to watch. The movie's saving grace is Christopher Walken, playing a riff off his character from The Prophecy, which is really too delightful for words.

Lost dinnertime to migraine (my parents probably think I was avoiding them but there is not a damn thing I could do about it; I could barely hold my head up, if husband had not woken me I would have slept the entire time they were gone). But I was delighted to read about how my cats have domesticated me: "Why Do Cats Hang Around Us? (Hint: They Can't Open Cans)".

: There's No Telling (The Migraine-Inflected Version)
1. What troubles you? Right at this moment, the US Supreme Court activist conservative bloc. Also, migraines.
2. Do you like thunderstorms? Love them. Not only do they feel and smell great but they usually mean a front has arrived and my migraine will clear up soon.
3. Do you sleep easily or toss and turn? Sleep easily unless I have a migraine.
4. What do you offer a friend? I'm very difficult to shock, I have a pretty good sense of humor and I don't mind listening to people rant. Except when I have a migraine.
5. Friday fill-in: Please don't ___. Please don't shout, make demands or give me stress when I have a migraine.

: Presents for Everyone!
1. What was the best gift you received?
A copy of a recommendation someone had written me for graduate school.
2. What was the worst gift you received? A dead rose.
3. What gift did you wish for, but never got? An all-expenses paid trip around the world for me and my family.
4. What was the best present you gave? I once waited in line for over four hours in the heat to get an autographed copy of Say Hey by Willie Mays for my grandfather. One per customer or I'd have gotten one for my father, too.
5. What was the worst present you gave? A quasi-friend in junior high school, the daughter of friends of my parents, once gave me a holiday present that I knew was a regifting from someone else who had given it to her the day before. The next year I gave it back to her.

: Name five remakes that you think are better than the originals. I am assuming things that are not true remakes but based on the same source material, like Pride and Prejudice or Horatio Hornblower, don't count...
1. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The TV version is so much better than the movie, it's hard to believe they're from the same source.
2. Heaven Can Wait. Here Comes Mr. Jordan was okay, though very dated when I saw it, but I really love the Warren Beatty movie.
3. A Star Is Born. I actually like all three versions, though the Judy Garland film is my favorite, but none is badly done.
4. The Thomas Crown Affair. I like both versions of this, too -- I prefer Dunaway to Russo, but Brosnan to McQueen.
5. La Femme Nikita, the television show. It's very different from the French original film but an enormous improvement on the American big-screen version.

: What Would You...
1. What candy from the books have you always wanted to try?
Lupin's Dementor-deterring chocolate.
2. What object would you turn into a horcrux, if the need arose? If the need arose -- like, if I had murdered someone and wanted to tear my soul? No, thank you.
3. What ride would you like to see made at the new HP park that will be opening next year? Flying dragons!
4. What 3 characters would you be willing to be go on a roadtrip with? This is a toughie. I'm tempted to say Sirius, Remus and James, but James and Sirius would be as awful to travel with if they were in mega-jerk mode as the Malfoys would be with a Mudblood like me. So maybe Luna, whom I imagine will be happy to stop at all the weird places I want to see; Hermione, who would probably know a lot about wherever we were going; and Harry, who having grown up as he did would be unlikely to hog sleeping space, whine about fast food or freak out about minor travel inconveniences.
5. You're given an invisibility cloak for one week, what do you do with it? Sneak around the halls of power to get enough information to get half the Bush administration indicted...oh wait, we already have enough information, but the people who should be bringing the proceedings aren't. Sigh. Fine, I'll just go watch Jason Isaacs walk around naked.



The reconstructed walls of Fort James on the site of the original Jamestown excavations. This is not Jamestown Settlement, the recreation, but the national park where excavations are taking place...


...like here. I believe these are grave shafts. The earliest parts of the colony have been uncovered.


Beneath the church currently on the site, the foundations of the original church have been found.


Within the church are tributes to Pocahontas and John Smith.


But the more popular tribute to John Smith is outside, looking over the river. (The church is the brick structure to the right.)


And all the little girls from every background wanted to have their pictures taken with Pocahontas.

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