2sparrows

This is certainly a movie I would not have seen, based on the violence in trailer, if it had not won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2008.  I do try to see all the Best Picture movies, so, despite my initial thoughts from the trailer, I watched it.  Now, The Departed, which is also very violent and which won in 2007, was, at least to me, a much better movie.  This one had a ton of gratuitous violence.  The Departed was similar, but for some reason, the violence there seemed more warranted, and I can’t quite put my finger on why.  Maybe organized crime vs. something so random as depicted in No Country for Old Men?  That’s my only guess at this point.  Also, the storyline didn’t catch me as much as The Departed…

(Now, I do agree that Javier Bardem was probably deserving of Best Actor in a Supporting Role (though I have not seen all of the nominee’s).)

The movie did have some good lines, or some thought provoking views/philosophies here and there, but overall, I was not that impressed with it.

I do have a few quotes…

• paraphrase:  “after kids stop saying sir and m’am, the rest falls quickly”  [on the violence and sensless behavior of the day -- and this was in the 70's! ]
• maybe not quite exact:  “even in the conflict between man and steer, the issue is not certain…”
• “Whatcha got ain’t nothin new. This country’s hard on people, you can’t stop what’s coming, it ain’t all waiting on you. That’s vanity.”
• at the end of the movie, on dreams Josh Brolin had:

Alright then.  Two of ‘em. Both had my father in ‘em . It’s peculiar. I’m older now then he ever was by twenty years. So in a sense he’s the younger man. Anyway, first one I don’t remember to well but it was about meeting him in town somewhere, he’s gonna give me some money. I think I lost it. The second one, it was like we was both back in older times and I was on horseback goin’ through the mountains of a night. Goin’ through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and there was snow on the ground and he rode past me and kept on goin’. Never said nothin’ goin’ by. He just rode on past… and he had his blanket wrapped around him and his head down and when he rode past I seen he was carryin’ fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. ‘Bout the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin’ on ahead and he was fixin’ to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold, and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. And then I woke up.

• “I’m looking for what’s coming…”   Response was “no one ever sees that!”

Riley has been wanting me to see this for a while, ever since she first saw it.  A  friend highly recommended it for the kids…  It was pretty good, though maybe the love story was a bit mature for a 5 year old.  I guess if I let her watch Star Wars then I can’t say much about this!   I don’t want to be a hypocrite between “man movies” and “chick flicks”  .

This did have me thinking of Wild at Heart, which uses movies throughout the text.  And it is funny how different men and women are with respect to movies.  The “true love” theme of this one surely is a hit with women and girls alike!

Also, I didn’t care much for the dragon at the end…  Seemed a bit contrived.

Following along on my Twain kick, I just finished A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.  I had actually bought this and read the 1st 20-30% of it before I got and read both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.  I then had some other things to read, and finally came back to this one.

It started out with great satire and was pretty funny and good over all, but it ended very dark, and kind of mysteriously.  The introduction of this edition explains why this is likely the case — that Twain had lots of success with Sawyer and Finn, but lost most of his what little fortune he got from those successes, and that this book started in a good time in his life, and finished in a much more cynical state of mind.  I’m sure there are much deeper explanations out there on the Interwebs than that, so go find them if you are interested.    Or I’m sure any edition you pickup will have more info as well.

A few quotes, as always:

• when red headed people are above a certain social grade, their hair is auburn

• many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising

• but the minute [the thing] came into my personal experience, a thing which had been merely improper before suddenly became hellish [the thing in this case is slavery, but the point stands for many other things as well]

• it is the spirit that stoopeth the shoulders, and not the weight…  for armor is heavy, yet it is a proud burden, and a man standeth straight in it….  [i.e. it depends on what you are "carrying" in how you handle it... something good, you carry well... something bad, you don't carry well]

Well, I wouldn’t “highly” recommend this unless you are on a Twain kick like I am.  And unless I run across a book of his short stories soon, I will be off my kick. 

Several years ago I made two push up challenges for myself…. 600 in one hour and 100 straight. I accomplished the first goal, but got bored with the second and never finished it. I think the final tally was 78, but definitely under 80.

In the past five or six weeks, the topic has come up in a number of places — a conversation here or there, a couple of blog posts, etc. So I think it must be time to pick it up again.

First, here is the latest web page that I happened to come across, and it actually has a schedule to follow over six weeks.

Second, I created a google spreadsheet that will help me follow the schedule above, which you can view here. If you want me to share with you an empty spreadsheet, let me know, and I’ll send it over. Then you can track your own progress.

If you need some accountability, update the comments here with you initial test and a link to your schedule! My initial test was 50, though I have done as many as 60 straight in the past couple of months, but I was tired when I attempted.

Good luck!

Rudyard Kipling is the author of “If,” one of my favorite poems. It just happens to be the first thing I ever posted to my reading notebook, long before blogs existed. I also recently posted his The Law for the Wolves poem, which is fitting since I’m an NC State Grad (wolfpack). But beyond that, I have to admit I have not read much of his work. (I have of course watched Disney’s version of the Jungle Book with the kids, but I’m sure that takes liberties with Kipling’s.) So now, after watching this, I have added some of Kipling’s other work to my Amazon wish list.

This movie is based on the poem of the same name:

“Have you news of my boy Jack?”

Not this tide.
“When d’you think that he’ll come back?”
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.
“Has any one else had word of him?”
Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

“Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?”
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind—
Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.

Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!

I have to admit, it took some time to get used to seeing Kim Cattrall in this role… And it will probably be that way for any other role she plays for some time, for that matter! And I’ve only see one Harry Potter movie, but Daniel Radcliffe will be Harry to me for some time!

I’m not exactly sure why, but my recent movie list is dominated by World War 1 era movies for some reason — Legends of the Fall, A River Runs Through It, Atonement… (I think I’m missing one there…)

Finally, this movie goes along with the Wild at Heart book (which I have now finished, but have not posted about yet), in terms of how that book portrays being a man, even though I heard about this movie from an entirely different and unrelated source.

Our neighbors gave this to me, probably at least 2 months ago, and I finally got around to watching it. It was not at all what I expected, but I was just going from the title…

It was quite entertaining. De Nero was … uh, unexpected! (To say the least!) Pfeiffer was amazing, as always, though I don’t know if I will ever see her quite the same way.

Well worth a watch.

I used to watch people having adventures — I envied them.

Fantastic… Very Moving. A must see!!!

(I don’t know if I have cried this much for a movie ever. Maybe it just caught me at the right time or the right situation…)

Johnny Depp plays some crazy roles, though this one is much more “subdued.” And Freddie Highmore seems to be showing up in everything these days…

Only a couple quotes:

You find a glimmer of happiness in this world and someone always wants to destroy it.

Time is chasing all of us….

We had quite a storm here tonight, but luckily no major damage other than some plants getting crushed in the garden. We have heard that there are several down trees in town, but have not seen them yet.

Here are some pictures show all the hail… The storm came at the front of the house, so the courtyard caught a lot. And then the shot with the quarters shows how large some of the hail was. Most were pea size, but some were quarter size!

And I did take some video too, though after the storm had mostly passed. No way would I have gone out in that kind of wind, lightening, and hail for just a video!

Hail Storm Video

We saw clips of this in our Wild At Heart study, which made me want to see it again. It had been years, and I had forgotten most of it. Watched in a plane ride to London… It is a good movie, but not great, in my opinion. Many great quotes though (some of these are paraphrases as it is hard to catch a quote in a movie!):

This one made me laugh:

Nobody who did not know how to catch a fish, would disgrace a fish by catching it

I’m still thinking about this one:

all good things (trout and eternal salvation) come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy

On physical exercise:

the body fuels the mind

There were several snippets of poems that I tried to grab… I leave it to the reader to find the rest of these and their authors:

Backward, turn backward
O Time in thy flight
Make me a child again,
Just for tonight!

And:

My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends It gives a lovely light!

And:

Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

From a sermon the father preached:

why is it that people who need the most help won’t take it

…

we can seldom help those who are close to us
more often than not the part we have to give is not wanted
those we live with and should know elude us
but we can still love them
we can love completely, without complete understanding

And finally:

eventually all things merge intto one, and a river runs through it

This is a post where it would be much nicer to have pictures from the event, rather than the one above that I snagged off a random web page. But I don’t always have that mind-set during an “event” to grab a camera and take pictures. Guess I’m not very photo-journalistic in that sense!

Anyway, we have a 3-board wooden fence around part of our property, and I had put some black netting on part of it at one point to keep deer from coming in. Later we put in woven wire fence instead, and I had forgotten to pull out the netting. Kelly got home and told me there was a snake stuck in the netting, so I grabbed a pair of scissors and a shovel and walked down with Riley.

It was pretty tangled in the netting, and couldn’t really move the upper half of its body. I confirmed it was either a black racer or a rat snake… Or, I should say, I made sure it wasn’t a “pit viper” kind of snake. In this area, the most common is the copper head, though we are just outside of the range of cotton mouths. In NC, there are 6 poisonous snakes, and 5 of them are pit vipers. The other is the coral (“red on yellow, dangerous fellow”). Pit vipers have a diamond shaped head, which is the biggest give away. And then they have fangs that they use to inject venom.

And again, in this area, the copper head is the main one to worry about, and they have a distinct pattern on their bodies. Numerous bold bands red-brown in color or a bit darker on the Northern Copperheads, are spread intermittently along the snake. They are shaped like an hour-glass and wrap around their wide body while creating a pattern with light and dark contrast:

So the snake in front of me was pretty plain — almost black, or very dark brown. Definitely not a copperhead!

Once I was sure it wasn’t poisonous, I went up to where it was stuck and started cutting the net away about 6 inches away from the snake, removed some leaves from a small tree, etc. until I could get it away from the fence. I then used the shovel to move it drive way, and then tried to use the shovel to pin its head down as best I could, and start cutting the net next to its body. It was really stuck — it had looped itself through many of the holes in the netting, and its body had expanded to where the netting was digging into its body. I cut as much as I could, but the snake was really struggling, and getting antsy, so it was hard to hold him down with the shovel.

By this time Kelly and Reece had come down to watch the show! I asked Kelly to go back to grab a flat blade shovel, since the round blade shovel on the gravel driveway was making it really difficult to hold.

I got to the point where I decided I’d have to grab it and cut the rest of the net away. I pinned its body an inch or two below its head with the shovel, and grabbed it with my right hand. I wanted it in my left so I could use the scissors with my right, but it felt more natural for me to grab with my right. As soon as I grabbed it — less than 1/2 inch from its head, it turned and grabbed a hold of my right index finger. It didn’t hurt much, though I could tell it was digging in. Maybe the adrenaline was masking the pain! I wanted it in my left hand anyway, so I went ahead switched it, but now my grip was even lower, and of course it turned and bit me again, this time getting many more of its teeth into my left index finger. Again, it didn’t hurt much, but there wasn’t anything I could do but drop it down.

I had blood on both hands now, and Kelly was coming back and was surprised to hear (and see) what had happened!

Anyway, I then proceeded to use the shovel again to pin it down and get as much of the netting as I could. I am not sure I got 100% of it, though it looked like it, but this time when I let it up and it started slithering into the woods, I let it go. I tried to pin the netting to the ground as it left, and think I got most of it. There was only a tiny bit left and it looked to me like it was being drug under its body, and not attached, so hopefully it was mostly snipped or the snake was able to get the rest off. I’ll take a look there tomorrow to make sure it isn’t still around.

According to this page on rat snakes, they are scaly and let out a foul smelling musk when threatened. This one was pretty scaly — though maybe that was due to being torn up by the netting — but did not stink. So I am not sure if it was a rat snake or a racer. The two are often confused. The racer page does say racers bite repeatedly when picked up, and does not say that rat snakes bite. So I lean towards a racer — no smell and it did bite (though it did seem scaly).