Weekly Rant 2008-07-12.doc

Saturday, July 12^th

Lately this is becoming more like the weekly whine. Learned yesterday what I had already suspected, that my RV will be late arriving. I'll hold off writing about it until my system has had more of an opportunity to digest these details; there being too much vitriol in my present thoughts.

The weather is out as a topic of discussion. Suffice it to say that things are unsettled and camping is likely to be a washout. Given the weather we’ve had to this point I somehow doubt we’ll notice the arrival of the dog days of summer. The news is best avoided being filled with man’s inhumanity to man, murder, mayhem on the roads and waterways, financial chaos, and rising fuel costs. Theologically I’m not certain whether there is a lack of faith on man’s part or God has ceased believing in mankind. Outside my windows the world is lost in grey fog and the diesel engine of some heavy truck disturbs my peace though the trees block any view without doing much to muffle the noise. On the plus side I just noticed that finally the last of the colony of fruit flies I’ve been battling finally died out—it’s easier to avoid them than eradicate them once they move in. My neighbour seems to have gone off somewhere with her dogs and peace reigns supreme on that side of my dwelling; if the new neighbours have arrived on the other side I have not seen or heard them.

Tried several alternatives to begin this entry and ended up back working in Word despite its drawbacks—the devil you know, so to speak. The monthly update for Windows this Tuesday was 68 MB nearly half the size of Service Pack 1 for Vista—nothing broken there? Whether the two are connected I couldn’t say but last night I encountered glitches everywhere I turned including new configurations for the latest iTunes update for which there were no warnings. I detest it when I have to spend more time working on computer systems than actually using them—I decided that hate was too strong a word using more energy than I’m presently willing to commit.

One of the joys of the internet experience is the ability to research almost anything you want to know about movies on the Internet Movie Data Base

http://www.imdb.com/

One of my guilty pleasures is the 1991 teen movie Toy Soldiers. One of its lesser stars Shawn Phelan has always appealed to me and when I decided to see what he’d done in later years I was saddened to read that just four years after he made this movie he was injured in a car accident and died without regaining consciousness 4 years later. Truly a sad end to a promising career.

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Sunday, July 13^th

Returning to watch movies you’ve seen before is always instructive; but then it is with that joy in mind that one purchases the DVD’s in the first place. Rewatched the mini-series Frank Herbert’s Dune and its sequel Children of Dune in the past few days—5 disks worth. It’s been five years since the second series so it would seem that the franchise has come to an end. After watching Dune twice when I received it in the mail; the second time almost immediately I found Children of Dune to be a disappointment. Upon due consideration and the passage of time “Children” appears to be a more intellectual pursuit with less action and more introspection.

Tonight I’ve dug out the VHS version of Robert Redford’s The Milagro Beanfield War. Redford’s second directorial outing; it unfolds at a leisurely pace and despite some serious undertones manages to inject humour, never taking itself too seriously. Coming from a small village myself I can understand living in a community in which everyone knows everyone else’s business, everyone is related, and news travels faster than the speed of light. Redford is an actor’s director and in this movie along with Ordinary People and A River Runs Through It, the actors respond to their audience of one in very personal ways.