Books Lying Open
¤ A Storm of Swords, George R. R. Martin
¤ The Complete Tales and Poems, Edgar Allen Poe
¤ Wolves of the Calla, Steven King

Soul-Devouring Worry
¤ Too much soup.

Life's Too Short For:
¤ Bothering with umbrellas.

Curse of the Day:
¤ May the gutters on the side of your condo appear to be entirely without function, at least judging by the sheets of water splashing onto your back patio.

Phrase of the Moment:
¤ Phrase: "The"
¤ Usage: "Let's go shop for The groceries."
¤ Synonyms: N/A
¤ Deviations: None.
¤ Origin: Unknown.
¤ Notes: This one is all in the usage. While there's nothing unusual about saying "the noun," what makes it funny is that we use it constantly, inappropriately, and with great emphasis.  "I hate that new commercial for The McDonald's." for instance.  It's a sort of mock emphasis and formality and official-ness that spices up uneventful things.

Sadly, it's also a very verbal thing that doesn't translate very well into text, as this description proves. -- October 13, 2003

The problem is that San Diego winter weather lasts for about 8 days, which are scattered randomly through January and February, and separated by cloudless days with highs in the 80's.

I realize that my definition of "problem" would be the definition of "paradise" for most of the world, when talking about winter weather.  But my opinion on winter weather was one of the major reasons I was so eager to move up to Northern California, when the opportunity knocked.

We just got back from the store and actually needed an umbrella to dash from the car to the store, and back again with our bags of groceries.  I hadn't used my umbrella in something like 3 years, and was frankly surprised to find that it still worked.  Mostly, anyway.  And our sacks of soup-fixin's are the happier for it.

Here's an email from a reader that came in yesterday, about the Matrix.  The following is pretty spoiler-rich, in terms of the ultimate ending of the movie, so you should skip if you've still not seen Matrix 3 and are planning on doing so.

I think the Wachowski brothers have tremendous balls for giving the Matrix trilogy a sad ending. The machines are still in control and always will be until the sun explodes, destroying Earth. I think most people's disappointment in the movie stems from  that sad ending.

My one complaint is not knowing what happened to the  Merovingian and Persephone. It would have been cool to see  Smith copy himself into them. A conversation between Smith and  the Merovingian would have been great:

"At last...the Merrrrrrovingian...we meet...surprised to see me?"

"Sacre bleu, un qui a le sexe avec des mères!"

"Crown blue, one which has the sex with mothers."

At least according to the Alta Vista bable fish bot.  I think we all know that "sacre blue" is more often translated as "my god," and I think you can probably guess what the rest of it would be, in conversational language.

As for the email's point, I don't disagree, but I it's not why I didn't like the ending.  True, the W bros did the unusual by not just having it all be happily ever after, and I often bitch about how lacking in suspense most Hollywood movies are, since you just know the good guys will win in the end.

My objection is that the ending is illogical; there's no reason for the machines to stop their attack just because Neo became the virtual anti-virus to destroy Agent Smith.  It's not like their entire attack was some sort of clever ruse to draw Neo to them so he could sacrifice his matrix-self to destroy Smith; they really wanted to kill off the few remaining living humans, and have every human on earth living purely to provide them with power.

We're ignoring the whole, "why not build nuclear power plants, towers with solar cells, harness geothermal power, build a lot of dams, burn coal and oil, etc" series of arguments for other, far more efficient and less prone to rebellion techniques that they could use to provide for their energy needs, but you just have to go along with that or the whole movie becomes pointless.

And besides the machines not attacking further when they were clearly going to win, the entire 2nd and 3rd movies did nothing to advance the plot.  We're right back where we were before M1 began, with the humans in Zion, the machines on the surface, the matrix running smoothly, and millions of humans enslaved by the machines for their power needs.  Except that the humans' ability to resist is largely destroyed with Zion in ruins, The One is gone and in enemy hands (but apparently not dead), and thousands of the humans in Zion are dead.

So yeah, it's an unhappy ending, but I'm very dissatisfied with the evolution of the plot during M2 and M3.  They did a nice job with the action, for the most part, and they introduced interesting new characters, but what happened to the whole drive to end the matrix and free humanity that Neo and the other humans felt at the end of the first film?  There has been zero progress towards that goal, and in fact it's been negative progress.

I don't demand a happy ending, but I'd like there to be some sort of ending, rather than paying to see two movies that basically just tread water in terms of plot development.  It's like they've just set things up for their whole ongoing cash cow universe of books and comix and games and such, with the matrix going on forever and no hope of change or salvation from Zion or The One.

The odd thing is all the talk about how the W bros had the plot all worked out in advance, and thought it was this perfect three-movie trilogy, etc.  When the plot advancement in M2 and M3 together was negligible.  So were they just bullshitting all along, and they had no idea what would happen in M2 and M3?  I mean the actual plot events in both films are very minor; the majority of the screen time is taken up by huge battle scenes and long fights and car chases and such, all of which require about one paragraph to describe in an outline of the film.  There were a lot of battle scenes in M1, but it seemed like they really moved the plot and story along, while in M2 and M3 they were just things to fill up the 2 hour running time in between the brief bits of plot advancing dialogue or confrontation.

I've got no desire to see M3 again in theaters, but I suppose in 6 months I'll be curious enough to see it again on DVD and might get a different impression of it then.  I didn't dislike it, but looking back it's feeling a lot like Underworld, with better action.  Both movies had a great look and cool character types and a great back story, but neither of them even scratched the surface in terms of their own plot potential, leaving viewers to think back on what they liked, while wishing the movies had done more with their potentially great material, rather than just settling for flashy visuals.

And if you'd bet me a week that I'd be comparing M3 to a piece of crap like Underworld, I would be writing you a check today. 

We hiked there a week or so ago, on a chilly gray Sunday, and went out intending a short stroll and some pretty scenery.  We got very steep hills and cold wind, so didn't walk for that long, but we made up for the duration by taking an excessive amount of photos.  You're about to see half a dozen of the 50 or so we took, though as is always the case with a digicam, at least half of them weren't good enough to even consider saving.

The photo captions are below each shot.

The hills we hiked in and in this area in general are covered in live oaks.  I don't know why they call them "live oaks," I mean duh; it's got green leaves, it's alive.  I suppose there's some scientific difference between a regular oak and a "live oak" but I'm far from the horticulturalist to discuss said reason.  Anyway, they're pretty cool trees; they grow large and are sturdy and green and can live in the near-drought conditions that prevail in this region all summer.  Which is why they can be found on every hill in every direction.

Here's a photo of one that was up the hill from the trail.  Sky conditions were very overcast all day, and it sprinkled a few times, so the light was gray and diffuse.  I turned down the light a bit in this photo, for the nice silhouette effect.

 

Yes, there were cows.  I like the grass coloration; gray at the ground where it's mostly dead and dry, and yellow up higher where the tufts remain un-cow-eaten. The little cow trails across the sides of the hills please me also, giving a sort of order and definition to the landscape.  Like elevation lines on a map.

The cow trails look solid from a distance, but when you're actually walking across them, as Malaya and me did at the end of the hike when we wanted a short cut, they're not so good.  Basically they're just where the grass is flattened, rather than being actual grooves worn in the earth.  They're also treacherous to walk over, with tons of deep, hoof-sized holes and churned up earth.

Oddly enough, they have a lot fewer cow patties on the than the gravel fire roads and human trails we spent most of our time walking on.

 

It was pretty nippy, cool enough that I was comfortable with jeans, a sweatshirt, and a ski jacket on, as well as my Mt. Diablo souvenir hat.  Though I took the sweatshirt off and tied it around my waist (pictured here) once I got warmed up walking.  I'm looking over a pretty deep canyon here, and the other face is at least 70 or 80 meters away, making the tall live oaks look like shrubs.

And no, I'm not pissing off the edge of the hill here.

 

Though we didn't hike long enough to reach it, all paths led to Lafayette Ridge.

 

And to cap off a nice short hike, there was a rainbow on our walk back. It was way off to the north, where the Bay moves well inland, over the flat lands. Around Suisun Bay or West Pittsburgh, judging from the map I have linked to there.  The sky was totally overcast, obviously, but there were low clouds/haze as well, making it very hard to get a good clear photo of this atmospheric effect, especially since it was at least 20 miles away.

We also saw a guy on the trails riding a mountain bike, and while the terrain looked a lot less interesting than my old Mission Trails riding area in San Diego, it looked like it might be a fun place to cruise around sometime.  I haven't been riding my bike much, since the paved road riding areas around our condo aren't real exciting to me.  I miss steep, narrow dirt trails.

We took a bunch more shots and I have a dozen more good enough to post, but you'll have to wait for the eventual photo page about this hike for that.  I'm sure the wait will be very hard, considering how incredibly fascinating these 5 were.

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