Watched Treasure Planet this afternoon for the first time. (Yes, I know, I'm running a teensy bit behind on my movie watching!) All's I can say is, wild. They make Muppet Treasure Island seem normal. (Still one of my favorites!) What you have is 18th century clothing in what, the 28th century? Robots and all sorts of space creatures, a lady captain who'd make a fantastic Salamandastron Hare if Disney ever does the Redwall series (ooh, I hope not Disney! some other company, please!) and a funky little Flubber wannabe shape-shifter. No Squire Trelawney, no treasure brought home, and Jim Hawkins jumps abruptly from punk kid to naval graduate.

Now, Treasure Island has been one of my favorite stories for a long long time. I remember first reading it after my aunt gave me a Commodore 64 game based on it. The game sure was a lot easier to play after I knew the storyline! R.L. Stevenson is right up there on the shelves with my Tolkien and Twain books. (hmm, that sounds alphabetized, it just happens to be the authors I like enough to buy in hardback!) Great stuff, even after all this time.

I tend to be rather critical of the movies, but I do have a few favorites. Charlton Heston and Christian Bale starred in one several years ago that I consider to be truest to the book. Fantastic acting, great setting, you can almost feel the steamy humidity of the island. I think it was a TNT Original? I'll have to look it up. And corny as it may sound, my other favorite is Muppet Treasure Island. The costumes are beautiful, and Tim Curry's delivery of Long John Silver is out of this world. He's not good, he's not bad, he's just looking out for himself and woe to those who interfere or fall into his schemes.

I don't know where to put Treasure Planet. it was . . . different. In a bizarre kind of way. A Stevenson meets Star Trek thing. The graphics were quite nice, kind of sparkly and deep. I'm sure the effect was much better on a large screen. I did laugh during it (first time this week?) so that had its positive points, but . . . hmm. I guess there was just too many levels in it, aimed at different audiences.

It was just . . . wierd!

Who's bright idea was it to put the eject button UNDER the CD tray? Sure, it's not a problem when the tray is closed, but when it's open it's difficult to get to.

THE SILENT TREATMENT

A man and his wife were having some problems at home and were giving each other the silent treatment. The next week the man realized that he would need his wife to wake him at 5:00 AM for an early morning business flight to Chicago. Not wanting to be the first to break the silence (AND LOSE), he wrote on a piece of paper, "Please wake me at 5:00 AM.

The next morning the man woke up, only to discover it was 9:00 AM and that he had missed his flight. Furious, he was about to go and see why his wife hadn't woken him when he noticed a piece of paper by the bed. The paper said, "It is 5:00 AM. Wake up."

Men are not equipped for these kinds of contests.

I like compilations. (I don't know why!) On a trivia game on my Realm game tonight they had a theme - movies with a color in the title. It started me thinking of a lot of movies!

The Color Purple

The Green Mile

Meet Joe Black

White Oleander

A Clockwork Orange

Goldfinger

The Hunt for Red October

Where the Red Fern Grows

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves

The Black Swan (fantastic Tyrone Powell!)

Red Sonja

Blues Brothers

Mickey Blue Eyes

Men in Black

The Creature from the Black Lagoon

The Black Stallion

Pretty in Pink

Goldmember -Austin Powers

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon

White Men Can't Jump

Red Dragon

The Pink Panther

Blackhawk Down

Blue Lagoon

Green Card

Anne of Green Gables

Fried Green Tomatoes

My Blue Heaven

Blue Crush

The Man With One Red Shoe

The Boy with Green Hair

The Red Badge of Courage

The Blue and the Grey

How Green Was My Valley

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

Blue Hawaii

The Green Berets

I'll add more to the list as I think of them. That's a lot of movies!

Bull Run Castle Aldie Virginia

I've passed this place several times. I may have to go in one day!

My dad told me one very similar to this. Offensive, I'm sure, sad, definitely, but it's still amusing to me.

Three strangers at the Great Falls airport are awaiting their flights. One is a Native American on his way to Helena for a statewide pow-wow. Another, a ranch hand on his way to Billings for a stock show. The third passenger is a fundamentalist Arab student, newly arrived, and on his way to study engineering at Montana Tech.

To pass the time they strike up a conversation on recent events, and the discussion drifts to their diverse cultures.

Soon the westerners learn that the Arab is a devout radical Muslim, and believes his people are justified in their 'holy' war.

The conversation falls into an uneasy lull. The cowpoke leans back in his chair, crosses his boots on a magazine table and tips his big sweat-stained hat forward over his face.

The wind outside blows and blows and the old windsock flaps but no plane comes.

Finally, the Native American clears his throat and softly he speaks:" Once, my people were many, now we are few."

The radical Muslim raises an eyebrow and leans forward, "Once my people were few," he sneers, "and now we are many. Why do you suppose that is?"

The Cowboy shifts the toothpick to one side of his mouth and from the darkness beneath his Stetson says, "That's 'cause we ain't played Cowboys and Arabs yet."

I think I'm doing pretty ok on the piano thing. I worked my way through the book I had bought and have gotten myself to a point where I can read the music almost equally on each hand. I've now gotten a new goal - to play Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. I was watching one of my Muppet DVDs (YES! I own the 15 DVD set!) and Rowlf was playing it . . . I thought, oh, how pretty! I wonder if that book I bought has it in there? It did. 4 pages of it. Talk about your challenges. My hands don't even SPAN as far as some of the notes are. In order to play some of the notes, you have use two hands on one stave. (is that the right term?) Lots of sharps, and they keep changing to natural and back. I AM making progress, though, and can play the first page fairly well. I'm struggling through the second page now. (It feels REALLY wierd to type after playing the piano!) Some of the notes don't sound right. Brian comments it needs tuning. I'm sure it does, it's been a while. I should try to play it on the keyboard to see what it should sound like (and to see if I can reach all the notes!) However, you can't beat the sound and feel of a true piano. And I get to use the pedals!

My car horn hasn't worked in quite some time. It takes some time to make an appointment with my brother-in-law the handy dandy tool guy, so Dad and I finally got around to doing some investigative work today. It seems car horns are comprised of several parts - the button in the steering wheel, a relay thing, and the horn itself. But, which part didn't work? and what where these parts? The fuse for it was ok. When I pressed the wheel, I heard a small click - both in the wheel and below, behind the fuse box. Take the thingy behind the fuse box out, and I heard nothing. ( a cylenoid? the horn relay thing? *sigh, new technical terms to learn). Dad tested this part with a voltage meter, and it seemed to work, so we decided to test the horn. ok . . . so what's a car horn LOOK like? and where does it reside? There's lots of parts under the hood, and under MY hood, they're crammed in quite tightly. A car repair book based on my car revealed nothing. In fact, looking through this book, you wouldn't know the car even HAD a horn. An internet search didn't help. I even had a hard time finding pictures OF horns.
So I turned to my Realm friends for help. "It looks like a seashell", they told me. "Look up front, cause you don't want a car horn near the driver, but the person in front of you you're honking at".
Back I went. Found it immediately. It DOES look like a seashell! Couldn't get the wires unhooked from that position, so I managed to get a wrench down there and undo the nut. out comes the horn, we manage to undo the wires. Tested it on Dad's boat battery. nothing. Tested the wires, they tested ok. SO! I need to go buy a new horn! I want something that doesn't sound like the horn in the song Nash Rambler. Meep! Meep! Everybody laughed when they heard my old horn. Some friends even pushed the horn every time they got in the car just to mock it. I want something along the lines of fog horn . . . so I can come up quietly behind SUVs and then HOONNNNNKKK. Maybe that'll make them hang up their cell phones and drive . . . or at least notice my little Sunbird's on the road!

Yahoo! News - Henson Family to Buy Back Muppets


Wohoo! Now, everybody chant with me now, "DON'T SELL TO DISNEY! DON'T SELL TO DISNEY!"

Mollie at a hockey game

What do you know . . . Mollie CAN be photographed!

Ear Plugs for everyone, Earplugs for Musicians and Swimming!

I tell ya, you can find ANYTHING you can think of online. This is a little scary.

I seem to have not only traded rooms, but traded noises! In the back room, all I heard was the sound of traffic on Weihle, back and forth, all night. It made me dream of the ocean (when I DID fall asleep). Once in a while I might hear the neighbors in the private drive. The sun would shine very brightly in my room in the morning. Now I'm in the front room. I hear a nest of birds, every morning, around 5 am. CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! These are not quiet babies. The birds in the back yard have a much more pleasant twitter. Monday mornings it's the garbage truck. CLANK CLUNK RUMBLE RUMBLE BANG! The occupants of the nest don't like this. CHEEPCHEEPCHIPCHEEPCHEEP! at twice their normal speed. Around 7 am the traffic on our quiet street picks up. High school kids on their way to school. Why in the world are they taking OUR street? It's not a short cut. It's not even the long way around. Then there's the noise from the shower on the other side of the wall, but I expected that. Around 11 pm at night, I start noticing the sounds of airplanes passing overhead. ssshhhoooooommmmmmm. vvrrrrrrrrssshhhoooooom. A steady succession, spaced apart enough to keep me from falling asleep. I dream at night about airplanes crashing now. I'd much rather dream about the ocean, whether I'm trying to avoid drowning or not! I wonder where I can buy earplugs?

Welcome to Kermitage ahh, Muppets! :-D