onday, and after writing for like 8 hours yesterday and all-but-finishing another chapter in my painfully long fantasy novel, I'm in a pretty good mood. I'd be happier if we had some fruit, but we've needed to go shopping since Thursday, and at this point we're down to eating the last frozen stuff in the freezer and having yet more rice. I might just go eat one of the red bell peppers in the fridge, since we had some very oily fish for dinner, along with deep fried egg rolls, and I've got a swampy taste in my lower esophagus.

There will be more writing tonight, as I finish up a few last notes at the end and then start reviewing the 80,000 word chapter, but as with the last chapter (and in contrast to the previous, even longer one) I stayed more or less on topic this time, and shouldn't have to make too many big changes with the rewriting.  The next chapter is where everything really starts to hit the fan, the conflict increases a great deal in intensity and scale, the world situation is explained in detail, and the third main character is introduced, so I should have some challenging fun writing it from here on out.  No idea when/if I'll post any more excerpts though. Maybe not at all, since anything at this point can be considered a spoiler since so much has changed since the chapter one I posted long ago. But if I delete some section or subplot completely, I might throw in a chunk of it one day.

Random real life and movie stuff follows, and then there's a movie review down below.

¤ Thursday night after Kali class we grabbed some fast food at Jack in the Box. Hey, we were tired and planning to shop on Friday, so there wasn't much to eat in the house. Our spicy chicken sandwiches tasted pretty good too, though I got screwed a bit on the quantity of curly fries I ordered. The problem came hours later, when I realized that every time I burped or breathed deeply, I could still taste the greasy chicken. I hadn't had fast food in literally months before that meal, and I'd forgotten that lingering sensation, but once it occurred I couldn't help but notice it. What causes that?

Seriously; what's in fast food that makes the taste linger in your gut for hours and hours? As I type this I had a late night snack an hour ago; one orange, one golden delicious apple, and some roasted cashews, and I can't taste a trace of it in my mouth or in my burps now, and all I've had since then is some water. Raw fruit isn't going to linger for long, but I hadn't noticed anything lasting the way the taste of that Jack's chicken did. Is it the grease they put on the food? Like it bonds to your esophagus and gut an holds flavor molecules on it? Or is it something to do with the preservatives or what? It's a little disturbing, especially when you don't have fast food for long enough to forget the sensation.

¤ In Friday's Curse of the Day I mentioned ridiculously stupid cat behavior, and said I'd elaborate on Monday. So here goes.

Taking out the trash on Friday night, I nearly tripped over a cat on the stairs down to the dumpster. It didn't run in front of me; it just laid there on the top step, meowing when I got close. I had my hands full then, but on the way back I stopped to pet the kitty. She was super friendly, rubbing my hands and knees, purring up a storm, etc, and since she was very fat and soft and I thought it would be a fun surprise for Malaya and the cats, I picked her up and carried her the twenty yards to our condo and took her inside.

Malaya was surprised indeed, not even noting that I actually had a cat in my hands for a minute, until I set her down on the carpet. At that point Dusty and Jinx finally took notice of her, and while Jinx just sort of remained frozen in place in my office chair, Dusty got up from the couch and slunk over, growling low in his throat. The new kitty just sat still at first, with my arm at her side to keep her from fleeing, but when Dusty got close enough to hiss and swat at her, I pushed him back and picked her up.

Malaya wanted to pet the kitty, so I carried her outside and Malaya even brought out some kitty treats. Dusty wanted to come too, following along basically between my legs while I carried the cat back outside, and waiting by the door like a watchdog while we were outside with the other cat. I went back in first, and knelt down so Dusty and Jinx could sniff my hands, which they did furiously, and at great length.

We figured that would be that, but even though the other cat was gone, Dusty couldn't let it go... and started chasing Jinx around while growling and hissing in anger. They run and play all the time, and hiss sometimes during it, but it's clearly in play. They aren't slinking, their body language is bouncy and energetic, etc. This time they were pissed, Dusty especially, and he was walking around with his belly dragging, emitting ultra-sonic growls that shook the walls like a jackhammer a quarter block away.

Jinx was freaked out by the other cat and scared of Dusty, so she ran and hid under the bed, growling fiercely enough to keep Dusty back. And this went on for the three hours that Malaya remained awake, and continued for a few hours after that, once she was asleep in the bedroom and the door was closed, banishing the cats to the living room.

I took a few pictures later, and though you can't tell much from these, Jinx was on the chair and Dusty was beneath the table, growling, slinking, and generally making a goddamned nuisance of himself. All over a very brief interaction with some strange female cat, hours and hours before. Jinxie would get up and walk around, and Dusty would shadow her, while growling low in his belly. Not attacking, not running, just following and making stupid noises. 

It's tempting to say that he thought Jinx was the other cat. She was about the same color, though the other one was much shorter and fatter and not so furry, but aren't cats color blind anyway? And don't they go by smell? Dusty's lived every day with Jinx for over a year and a half; could he possibly get her confused with another cat at this point? Or was he just in "kill enemy feline" mode and being very indiscriminate in his aggression? It was like a flashback to his chicken-shit behavior during the first few days after Jinx's arrival, except this time he was doing his mindless growling while moving around, rather than just going to earth under the bed and staying there for days at a time.

They shook it off by late night, fortunately, and were back to normal the next day. Or as close to normal as they ever get.

Malaya was perplexed again, since as she always points out, Dusty used to get along great with other cats in her apartment complex when he was younger, in the early 2000s. We wonder if all of those cats were male and he just doesn't like females, but given that when Jinx arrived she was was 1) a kitten, and 2) neutered, why would her gender matter?  And since Dusty's balls are just a faint memory as well, why should he care what sex another cat is?  At any rate, if/when we get another cat in a few years, we'll definitely get a boy, assuming Dusty's still alive at that point to influence our decision.  Malaya wants a dog too, and though the ideal breed changes monthly, I think she'll stick to that desire. We've got to wait until we're in a house with more room and a yard for that though, and I'm sure the cats will be just overjoyed by that addition to our happy household.

¤ We've also two final(?) additions to the "dirty cities" discussion. First Aahz:

And one more, courtesy of David:

As seems obvious, in retrospect, there can't really be any large human habitations without lots of water for the people to drink, and since fresh water most often comes in river form, and is additionally very useful for shipping heavy items over, of course there are oceans or rivers or other such things near most major human cities; and near all cities that formed before the industrial revolution made travel hubs possible away from open or flowing water.

None of this really has anything to do with whether or not the cities in question feel "dirty" or not, and anyway, that's almost entirely in the eye of the beholder. I can't stand even small, clean cities; I feel oppressed by the surrounding concrete and people and vehicles. Other people love living in buzzing urban hubs, and pay millions of dollars for apartments in tall buildings I wouldn't live in for any amount of money, so obviously they don't feel dirty and stressed out in them at all, flowing water nearby or not.

What I need to experiment with is travel in Europe. I like the idea of those cities, even though they're older and dirtier and have even less greenery. I think it might be the textures; American cities are hard and cold and sleek; made of gray cement and slick glass, while those old world cities are very textured with cobblestones, lots of interesting styles of architecture, and not filled by 50+ story skyscrapers that tower oppressively overhead. Someday I'll spend some time in NYC, and in cities in Europe, and then we'll see what I think about the subject... assuming I'm not too traumatized by the ordeal to blog rationally. 

To the movie talk.

Here are the weekend estimates, stolen from the front page of BoxOfficeMojo.

1.	Kingdom of Heaven	$20,000,000
2.	House of Wax	$12,205,000
3.	Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy	$9,129,000
4.	Crash	$9,100,000
5.	The Interpreter	$7,500,000
>VIEW FULL WEEKEND CHART

Hollywood is trying to spin this into something larger, as this year's disappointing box office continues.

Hollywood's box office slump continued with revenues down for the 11th straight weekend compared with the same weekend last year, said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations.

The top 12 movies grossed $76.9 million, down 24 percent from last year at this time when "Van Helsing" and "Mean Girls" were the top movies.

"It was quite an underwhelming week," Dergarabedian said. "This is theoretically the first weekend of the summer and it doesn't feel like one."

Though "Kingdom of Heaven" pulled in $20 million, it paled in comparison to other recent blockbusters that opened during the first weekend of May, Dergarabedian said. "Van Helsing" opened last year with a three-day haul of $51.7 million, while "X2: X-Men United" opened in 2003 with $85.6 million. In 2002, "Spider-Man" debuted the same weekend and collected a whopping $114.8 million.

Of course like 8 of those weekends are solely due to The Passion being the biggest spring time hit in the history of US cinema, plus Mean Girls being a surprise break out hit as well. I'd like to make the joke that this year's summer films didn't make any money because they sucked, but um, when they're comparing to the ridiculous Van Helsing making $52m opening weekend... At any rate, people are obviously more interested in seeing wild monster movies than sitting through yet another 2.5 hour film about old guys on horses. Especially when the trailers give no hint of a plot or romance, and the biggest "star" is pretty boy Orlando Bloom.

Malaya and I did get out to the theaters on Saturday, but not for anything new. No, we saw Kung Fu Hustle, and briefly considered hopping in to check out Kingdom of Heaven, which was showing in the next theater over 15 minutes after our film ended. We were hungry though, and had dinner plans, and didn't feel like postponing them 3 hours for a film we didn't want to see anyway.

This weekend brings lots of new films, chief among them Unleashed, at least in terms of our interest. It's not getting very good reviews (3 good, 3 bad), mostly because critics say the plot is painfully melodramatic, but we're going anyway since the martial arts look very good. Also opening is Mindhunters, which looks like about four other recent movies. It's actually been on the shelf since 2002, due to Miramax screwing up its release schedule. Shockingly, it's getting good reviews, and while there are only nine of them so far, seven are full of praise. There are also two very low-brow comedies opening, Monster in Law and Kicking and Screaming, neither of which elicited a single chuckle from us during trailer viewing, placing them well off the radar.

Next weekend the summer really gets going though, with Star Wars 3. I wouldn't care enough to see it personally, unless maybe at a matinee if it got good reviews, but Malaya wants to see it and so do some of our friends, so like eight of us are planning to go on Saturday the 21st. Better yet, other people are dealing with ticket purchasing, so I just need to show up with Malaya and pass the popcorn.  It's getting great reviews thus far, 14/16 positive on RT, which is good news. I'm not reading them though, in an effort to preserve some feeble plot twists for myself, so I couldn't tell you what they say is good or bad about it.

I figure most critics really want to like this one, so they're being generous, but most of them were at least honest enough to give Episode 1 and 2 relatively poor reviews, so maybe this one really is good. Or at least better, in comparison, to the last to limp prequel efforts. On the other hand, almost all of the reviews out now are from geeky scifi type sites, so their objectivity can be called into question.