Books Lying Open
¤ The Year's Best Horror and Fantasy, 2001, Editors: Terri Datlow and Ellen Windling
¤ A Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin
¤ A Clash of Kings, George R. R. Martin
¤ Shelters of Stone, Jean M. Auel
¤ The Complete Tales and Poems, Edgar Allen Poe
¤ Abarat, Clive Barker
¤ Hearts in Atlantis, Steven King
¤ Everything's Eventual, Steven King

Soul-Devouring Worry
¤ Dawn's early light.

Curse of the Day:
¤ May your new kitten 1) get into absolutely everything, 2) not know what she wants, 3) remain adorable despite all of this.  

Phrase of the Moment:
¤ Phrase: "mostly".
¤ Usage: "They mostly come out at night.  Mostly."
¤ Synonyms: N/A
¤ Deviations: Most any qualifying word you can use in a sentence, and then repeat afterwards for extra emphasis.  Eg: "probably," "sometimes," and so on.
¤ Origin: Newt's famous line in Aliens.
¤ Notes: Cribbed from Cartman who cribbed it from Aliens, this word and it's deviations spice up most any conversation.  Malaya and I have developed it to a science, where one of us will speak a viable sentence, and then after a momentary pause we'll both repeat the repeatable word in almost perfect harmony.  Yes, we realize how sickeningly cutesy this is. 

The best usage yet? When I said, after we saw the results of this boxing match: "Who kicked Oscar de la Hoya's ass tonight?
*pause*
*M and F speak together*
"Mosley." -- September 18, 2003

But first, some follow up to my last blog about Underworld, and some random news items.

In Saturday's surprisingly-long Underworld review/discussion, I mentioned that they would probably make an Underworld 2, since this would would probably be profitable enough, largely because they didn't have to pay any of the unknown actors any money, and special effects are getting cheaper every year.  I had no idea just how cheap though, until looking at the weekend grosses on Box Office Mojo and seeing that Underworld cost just $22m, with an additional $20m in marketing.  Since it made over $22m this weekend and will likely clear at least $60m domestic, and again that much in overseas box office + DVD sales, it seems like a sequel is almost guaranteed.  The plot (such as it was) certainly was written to lead into at least one more movie in the series.

Speaking of Underworld (as I have been quite a bit lately) a couple of readers mailed in their thoughts on it.  First we have Reaperx90:

I saw Underworld last night as well, and may I say, you extracted much more from it than I did. I was just extatic that they managed to make a vampie movie without the jam packed night club full of pale, anorexic, gothic men and women, though they did put in the pale, anorexic women. But at least they weren't dancing erotically, discusting every non-pervert in the theater...on to some other things...

I don't know who made the choice to have the one man in the movie who can barely speak English reveal a pivotal plot point, but if I meet him, I will plunge my hand into his chest and feed him his own heart. I could not understand one word that guy was telling Victor. 

All of the bad shooting I noticed, but it has little impact on me since every action movie since the dawn of time has had characters whose aim is terrible. And then they go to a shooting range and unload 2 clips onto a small target 30 yards away, almost hitting the hole the previoius bullet hit every time. Hey, at least we can take solace in the fact that they actually had to reload at times...

And the plot makes no since. The way I see it, there was one guy with a dormant virus. He had two offspring, one bitten by the bat, the other by the wolf. They went to their respective clans. That works pretty well. But then, flash to present time, they speak of some guy whose virus wasn't awakened, and that Micheal is his decendent. Did the original father have another child or something? That is never clarified...for me at least...

OH! And that brings up another point that you acted like you missed. After Micheal was bitten, Seline said to him that most people died within an hour of being bitten. That means that the werewolves can't just spread like wildfire. Maybe their virus got too potent when they evolved into being able to transform at will...? It really goes against mythology, but it explains why they couldn't just spread like wildfire. 

All in all, it was a pretty bad movie. But I was more than satisfied to see a vampire movie that didn't involve the kind of crap I mentioned in the first paragraph. Oh, and just for the sake of mentioning it, there were both 1) a lesbian couple in the movie and 2) a pair of goths. Possibly homo-goths, as they were both males, but I couldn't tell. Heh...

His first point is one that Malaya and I discussed, as I bounced some of the things I was blogging about off of her while I was writing the review.  I listed the number of things that vampires and werewolves always do in movies, most of them things that were (sadly?) missing from Underworld, and she took it differently than how I meant it.  I was lamenting the lack of genre requisites, while she was happy that every cliche wasn't used.  So when Reaper says he's happy that they avoided the vampire nightclub scene, I'm sure Malaya would agree with him.

I forgot to mention the long explanatory speech by the dying werewolf guy who can't speak understandable English, but it's a good point.  Most of the werewolves have odd accents and voices.  Only three of them get more than a few words or growls of dialogue: The head werewolf is relatively understandable with a sort of faux-British accent, as best I recall.  Second is another huge black guy who talks with such a deep voice it's sort of absurd, and the third is this mad scientist sort of werewolf (at least I assume he's a werewolf, he never changes, even when doing so would save him from a vampire and some flimsy changes) guy who does all of the explaining in the scene Reaper mentions, and he's got a weird accent with a creaky voice at best; and that scene is done while he's supposed to be in great pain and badly injured.  The difficulty understanding him is at least partially to blame for my lack of clarity on the whole "immortal guy who had 2 sons and one became the first vampire while the other maybe became the first werewolf or maybe just passed on the genetic mutation that the werewolves are searching for in his ancestors 1000+ years later.

As for reloading, that was another silly bit.  Selene is using two automatic pistols most of the time, each of which would hold about 15 rounds in the clip.  She routinely fires bursts of half a dozen shots, and gets off at least 20 or 30 bursts before she pauses to reload. (Pausing to reload directly in the middle of hallways, in the light, while werewolves are running around, as I bitched about in the review last blog.)  I suppose if we can suspend our disbelief to the point that we'll buy vampires and werewolves, we shouldn't have any problem accepting magically-numerous bullets.  Pretend they're all Amazons in Diablo II, able to fire 20 arrows out with Multishot for ever arrow actually consumed from the quiver?

He also makes a point about the supposedly high fatality rate from a werewolf bite.  If we assume that holds true for humans bitten by vampires as well, it could do something to explain why there aren't legions and armies of each side. Well, not really, if the choice for the immoral and immortal monsters is to kill a lot of people trying to make more of themselves, or be exterminated, I think it's pretty obvious which option they'd take.  Also, how about some intelligence in things?  Each side has very advanced medical facilities and technologies; if your survival is dependent upon turning more humans into your type of creature, and it's a dangerous transformation, why not kidnap people and bite them once you've got them hooked up to medical equipment that could probably keep them alive?

Of course that's the sort of intelligence you can pretty much guarantee that you'll never see in any monster or action movie, much less one starring monsters.  And one more thing that makes me think I should write my own damn monster movies/novels.

The other reader mail about Underworld came from Agent Director.

Hi Flux, i read your last blog about the film you saw, if you are searching for a nice werewolf film with a litlle bit of violence and blood spilling/gut ripping without being matrix wanna be (but with a nice twist of a matrix twist). Perhaps you can find some inspiration there ?... any way i like it :D 

http://www.dogsoldiers.co.uk/main.html

I remember hearing about this one some time ago on AICN, and that it was pretty cheesy and obviously low budget (man in dog costume rather than CGI transformation), but solidly entertaining nevertheless.  Looking it up on Rotten Tomatoes, it's got a 75% positive, which is very high for a horror/monster movie, so I guess you can take Agent's recommendation to heart.

¤ No idea if this is true, but it would be damn interesting if it were.

The U.S. military on Sunday denied a British media report that Saddam Hussein had offered money and information on weapons of mass destruction in return for safe passage to the ex-Soviet republic of Belarus.

The Sunday Mirror newspaper said an aide of the fugitive ex-president had approached U.S. forces in Tikrit and led them to a house in the suburbs. There, they were given a letter, purportedly handwritten by Saddam, proposing talks.

It said negotiations had been going on for nine days covering weaponry and bank accounts containing tens of millions of dollars.

I can't believe this is true, mostly since I can't believe Saddam lost his palm pilot and rolodex when he fled.  He's got to have ways to contact higher level authorities (say through his old CIA buddies?) other than sending some guy to talk to random soldiers.  And if it were true, I can't believe we'd see any word of it in the press, other than on some black helicopter/tinfoil hat type site that everyone would automatically disbelieve.  It would be kept super secret, since it's the sort of thing that countries (such as the US) do, but never admit to or talk about.

¤ Talk about a story seemingly-designed to fuel the worldwide impression of US soldiers as stupid, loutish, drunken, brutes. And the fact that this story is about US soldiers being stupid drunken brutes hardly helps things.

A U.S. soldier shot dead a rare Bengal tiger at Baghdad zoo after the animal injured another soldier who was trying to feed it through the cage bars, the zoo's manager said on Saturday.

Adil Salman Mousa told Reuters a group of U.S. soldiers were having a party in the zoo on Thursday night after it had closed.

"Someone was trying to feed the tigers,'' he said. "The tiger bit his finger off and clawed his arm. So his colleague took a gun and shot the tiger.''

The night watchman said the soldiers had arrived in military vehicles but were casually dressed and were drinking beer.

Of course it's not as if only US troops who have done incredibly stupid things to the once-glorious Baghdad Zoo:

The tiger was one of two in the zoo, once the largest in the Middle East but today a decrepit collection of dirty cages and sad-looking animals.

In April, U.S. soldiers killed four lions that had escaped from the zoo. Hundreds of other animals were stolen or let loose by looters in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of the Iraqi capital.

She is just about three months old, which is younger than we were planning, but she was such a fierce little cutie, constantly batting at her toy and climbing her cage and sniffing at our fingers that we liked her from the start. When we didn't see any we liked better at the humane society, and still liked her on our return visit to the adoption center, we figured it was fate and she was meant to be ours. So we got her, plus a new brush, and kitten chow, and a kitty bed, and kitty treats, and a bouncy toy, and a small litter pan, and brought her home Saturday morning.

She was one of a dozen or so on display at the PetSmart, all of them from the nearby Martinez Animal Control Center.  Basically pound kitties that are displayed in the store; getting one there is the same as getting one at the pound, except that you get a ton of PetSmart coupons as well.  Almost everything we bought with her was on sale or free with the coupons they provide, so it was a pretty good deal.

Looking at all of the coupons, which included several free things such as the $6 bag of kitten chow, it occurred to me that a really bored and devious person could adopt a cat there, pay the $75 fee, enjoy it for a couple of weeks, and then return it for a refund within the 21 days they allow.  You return it to the pound, so the store is out of the loop, and you get to keep the coupons.  I can't imagine any sane person going to those lengths to get a few bucks in free pet supplies, but then who said cat owners were sane? 

But enough of the boring details!

The drive home was an ordeal, since she started mewing in her high-pitched and pitiful kitten voice almost as soon as we got into the hot car with the sun shining.  Malaya was holding the kitty carrier in her lap and tried to poke at or pet or soothe the little kitty (Kenya was her store name, but we weren't keeping that one) but nothing would work.  So she got kitty out and held her, but that was a struggle since kitty wasn't interested in being held.  She wasn't panicking or anything, she was just nervous in a new environment and wanted to hide somewhere, or walk, or something.  Who knows what dumb animals want when they're scared?  They want to not be scared, but they don't know enough to know how to make that happen, in situations their instincts don't cover.

At the pet store one of the volunteers from the humane society was there when we got kitty, and she gave us the whole run down on vet visits, shots, etc, but also gave us tips on how to introduce the new kitty to our current kitty.  She recommended keeping them apart for a week or two, using different rooms, letting them sniff at each other, keeping them from fighting, not making them share a little box, and so on.  All good ideas, and all things that Malaya and I figured we'd never need to worry about, since we're special and so are our pets.  Right?

Dusty has never lived with another kitty, but he's been around other cats numerous times, and had never (according to Malaya) had any problems.  He's fixed, so he doesn't have the angry territorial impulses, and he never objected to other cats coming right into Malaya's old apartment, and hasn't been concerned the couple of times other cats have been inside or right up in his grill in this condo.  Therefore we figured he'd be fine with the new kitty, once he got used to her.

So we brought her in, still in the carrier, put it down in the living room, and as Dusty sniffed his way around the room, spending time familiarizing himself with the bag of cat chow, litter box, new bed, etc, he eventually got to the kitty carrier. He's been thrust into that carrier a few times in the past himself, so he's not real fond of it, but he doesn't fear it.  He sniffed at it, obviously picking up the other kitty's smells, and then saw her through the metal bars.  His reaction was immediate.

Growl.  Hiss.  Duck down.  Race into the bedroom.

Once he'd gone into the bedroom and clearly wasn't coming out (that's basically what he did the first 2 or 3 days I was here, though he alternated hiding under the bed with hiding behind the TV stand and hiding behind the desk and hiding in the closet) anytime soon, we didn't see any point in keeping the kitty in her cage.  I opened the door and she came wobbling out on her little kitten feet, and set to slowly and cautiously sniffing and exploring her way around the living room.

Malaya had to shower and take off for an appointment, so I was left alone with the kitties, with both of us hoping Dusty would chill out and come sniff and play, since one of the main reasons we wanted to get a second kitty was to give him a playmate.  He often seems bored.

Well, it's been almost two days so far, and he's not seemed bored any since Saturday afternoon.  Scared, angry, bitter, resentful, and nervous, yes.  Never bored.

He did briefly emerge from beneath the bed a few hours after Malaya took off Saturday afternoon, when the new kitty happened to toddle down the hallway into the bathroom.  The bedroom has an entry hallway which leads directly towards the bathroom, so from his troll-like enclosure Dusty could see the little girl in the bathroom.  He sucked up the courage/curiosity to venture forth, slinking in a low-backed fashion the whole way, and met her in the bathroom, and sniffed noses.  The little girl was curious as well, eager to sniff Dusty and showing no fear at all.

However after one sniff Dusty slunk backwards, hissing angrily, and then turned to dash back under the bed.  When he hissed and reacted the little girl arched her back and tried to give off her threat display, though obviously if there was a fight it wouldn't be a fight.  Dusty is full grown and tips the scales at around 15lbs.  The little girl is 3 months and weighs less than 3 pounds.  Fortunately, while Dusty has been scared and bitchy and annoying, he's never given any signs of hostility other than hissing.  He doesn't want to fight, he just wants the mysterious source of his anxiety to be gone.

Malaya and I are pretty disappointed in Dusty's behavior.  I didn't think he'd be like this, and she really didn't, since she'd see him with so many other cats.  We can't decided if it's because she's female and the others he was around were male, or if it's because she's a kitten, or if he's just smoking crack.

All the while, she was exploring the living room and dining room and growing rapidly more coordinated and energetic and fearless.

At first she was nervous and mostly hiding, or trying to stay out of reach.  She's tiny, you can easily hold her in one hand by her plump little belly, but you have to grab her first.  She would not come into reach, and wasn't climbing anything; she'd just walk around the couch and under the footrest and such.  If you grabbed her she'd struggle a bit and be scared, but quickly calm down.  However she didn't like being held, and had no desire to sit beside you or on your lap. She wanted to explore the strange new place.

Her early favorite was having the string dragged over this black Ikea footrest. She would slash at it and leap up halfway at first, but was soon hurdling up onto the footrest to grab at the string, and often falling down one side of it as her acrobatics unbalanced her.

Apparently he did, but since Malaya had to get up early Sunday morning to head over to her parents' house for most of the day, and I slept hours later than she did, my first sign of the kitties on Sunday morning was around 11:30.  Dusty was on the bed, as usual, spooning up behind my bent knees, and he seemed quite happy with everything.  Calm as usual, anyway.  I went out into the living room and spotted the little kitty, stretched out (not that she stretches very far) atop the couch.  She woke up when I came in and was happy to be petted as she stretched, since she'd grown steadily calmer all Saturday.

To be continued tomorrow...

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