Category Archives: Fantasy

2023, books, Fantasy, Food, Mysteries

Cheese Poll

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Photo credit: The Cricket Gallery

I do most of my “library-ing” at the Washburn Library.  It’s just 2 blocks away and it would be a lie if I said it was on the list of considerations when I bought this house.  I’m probably there twice a week.

Last week I needed a copy of something right away (for my other book club) and the closest copy was at the Southdale location.  At Southdale, all the library action begins on the second floor and as I came up the steps and rounded the corner, I encountered this table:

Apparently May is National Cheese month.  Who knew?  Anyway, it looks like they do a tally like this every month.  You choose a little paper slip and put it in the cylinder of your choice.  Not sure why they do this, but seemed like a bit of harmless fun.

I voted for Paneer because I love the underdog.

Did you have a favorite childhood cartoon? Or we can discuss cheese!

Fantasy, Food, Movies, Mysteries

Six Hours Down the Tube

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Don’t say I’ve never done anything for you.  Yesterday, after listening to the Attack of the Killer Tomatoes song (thank you, Wes), I went out in search of the movie and found four of them. I watched them all so that you never have to. The first one (Attack) got terrible reviews but the cast and crew had their tongues stuck in their cheeks so firmly that it was hard not to warm up to the film.  I’m not even sure I can recount the plot (there just barely is one) but suffice it to say that tomatoes start killing people and are eventually overcome by a song named “Puberty Love”.  The movie is filled from beginning to end with sight gags, bad puns and atrocious over-acting.  I can understand why it has attained the status of “cult classic”. 

The second film in the series is Return of the Killer Tomatoes.  Two notable cast members stand out – John Astin as the mad scientist who supposedly was behind the killer tomato attacks in the first movie (although Astin was not in Attack).  The other is a very young George Clooney who plays a pizza jock who is also a bit of a horn dog.  Return, although made by the same crowd as Attack, takes itself more seriously which makes the movie not even remotely fun.

Killer Tomatoes Strike Back.  John Astin is also back, this time trying to gain control of the world using brainwashing and thought control.  Rick Rockwell plays the main character and the only redeeming thing about him is the wild assortment of Zumba pants he wears throughout.  Oh – and the tomatoes get faces in this one.  I will admit there is one very funny scene in which the bad tomatoes and Astin attempt to make a BLT with the female lead instead of slices of tomato.

Killer Tomatoes Eat France is thankfully the last of the series.  This time John Astin escapes from prison and tries to take over the world by re-creating the French Revolution and proclaiming his minion Igor as King.  Why this would result in world domination is never made clear.  The most noteworthy thing about this one is that the tomatoes have gotten seriously ugly with bad teeth, the occasional eye patch and tongues (ick) and finally after all this time, they finally have the power of speech. There is one monster fire-breathing tomato but he/she doesn’t get much film time.  Too bad.

I’m not recommending that anybody else waste their time watching any of these except maybe the original Attack of the Killer Tomatoes – if it’s cold out and you have an hour or so with nothing else planned.  The others?  Don’t even bother.  They took a fun quirky idea and ran it straight into the ground.

Tell me about your favorite tomato dish!

animals, Fantasy, gardening, Movies, Mysteries, Nature, TV

Bad to Good?

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The first real day of gardening for me includes attacking my creeping charlie.  While I was working, I remembered the Godzilla comparison I wrote about a couple of years ago.  But since getting rid of creeping Charlie is a good thing in my world, how could I be Godzilla, a horrible, scary, destructive monster.

I was thinking through all the Godzilla movies (yes, I’ve seen them all, even the Matthew Broderick) and it occurred to me that in the Japanese films, Godzilla went through a “nice-ification” over the years.  In a few of the movies, Godzilla actually comes to the rescue by fighting off worse monsters (Mothra, Ghidorah, Gigan, Megalon, etc.)   When Godzilla became a father in Son of Godzilla, he really mellowed.

This is a more common occurrence than you realize.  I can think of a lot of characters who morph from the bad guys to good guys.  M.A.S.H. is the best example; although Frank Burns never redeemed himself, Colonel Blake started off as a lame head of the unit before he sobered up and became beloved of this staff, then Charles started off as a pain-in-the-patoot and gradually became just one of the guys.  Diagnosis Murder had a string of hospital administrators who started out as impediments and eventually became supporters of Dr. Sloan.  Hamilton Berger, the DA on the first Perry Mason series eventually toned down his attitude and even asked Perry to represent a friend of his at one point.  Lots of long-standing series went through this.

I’m glad I can still be Godzilla in my creeping Charlie battles without feeling guilty for destroying Tokyo!

Any bad guys that you actually like? Or morphed into someone you could like?

2023, books, Business, Fantasy, home

Reading for Relaxation

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I’m having a very busy week with both my programs running (one today, one tomorrow); several trips to the office have been required, including most of today at the warehouse and all of tomorrow at the warehouse.  This is stressing me out. 

To keep myself somewhat balanced I’m trying to keep up with my reading; reading is my #1 de-stressor.  Currently I’m reading Boys in the Boat (actually listening on CD and hoping I actually finish by Blevins), a biography of Shirley Jackson, The Dark Queens about Brunhilde and Fredegund in the 6th century, finally got started on John Dyer’s Illusion of Gravity (John is an occasional baboon) and then Wolverine’s Daughter by Doranna Durgin that I picked up for $2.50 in a bookstore in Nashville last October.  A nice mix of genres so that at any given minute I can pick up something that seems the best of soothe me.

As you can see from the photo, Nimue likes to help me read, especially if I’m sitting on my bed when I read!

What are you reading this week?

2023, Fantasy, Food, Gatherings, work

Cheering Throngs

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My warehouse projects are this Friday and Saturday.  Part of the warehouse “experience” is having cheering throngs when the winners arrive at the warehouse.  For one of the very first warehouse programs (about 15 years ago), somebody had the idea to invite the Vikings cheerleaders to welcome the winners; as cheesy at it sounds, the participants ate it up.  Unfortunately it didn’t often work out (time-wise or budget-wise) to keep bringing “professionals” in to cheer.  That’s when we started recruiting regular employees to take a break from their desks to come root the winners on as they get off the bus.  Didn’t take long before we added noisemakers and clappers for the ultimate event.

For my very first warehouse run, my winners were veterinarian pharmaceutical sales folks and I found out early on that there were four subsets of them… and they didn’t like each other.  I never did figure out exactly how they were competitors but the bottom line was the client didn’t want the four groups in the warehouse at the same time.  Instead of one run with about 45 winners, we had to have four runs in one day, with 8-12 winners each.  That wasn’t a problem for anybody except for me.  It was the first week of December and I was really worried that I wouldn’t get people out to cheer four times in one day, especially a cold day. 

That’s when I thought up the hot chocolate.  I ordered four big containers of hot chocolate along with cups, set up a table outside the warehouse (where folks congregate to cheer) and then four times that day poured out cup after cup of hot cocoa.  It was a big hit and several folks came out repeatedly that day, one even mentioning to me that he came for the hot drink.  We’ve been supplying hot chocolate at cold weather warehouse runs ever since and have added lemonade for hot weather runs.  I’ve always felt proud that this was my idea.

Fast forward to this week.  Since pandemic, Mondays and Fridays are work-at-home days; normally the buildings are all but empty.  There haven’t been many Friday warehouse programs since the travel industry got back on its feet but there have been just enough folks who are either already on campus or willing to drive in to cheer.  But Saturdays are a whole `nother matter   Not only is Saturday in itself a problem — the group is big enough that we have to do a morning run and an afternoon run. We even advised the client that we couldn’t guarantee the cheering.  With management’s blessing, we have an incentive set up to get folks to come in to cheer.  In addition, I’ve ordered doughnuts for the Friday and Saturday morning cheerers and cookies for the Saturday afternoon cheerers.  Hopefully between the company incentive and the goodies, we’ll get enough to make it exciting for the winners.  Fingers crossed.

What would it take to get you to come out and cheer on a weekend?

2023, animals, Fantasy, Health, Mysteries, News

The Newest Tsar

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The word on the streets of New York is that there is a new “rat mitigator”; the headlines are screaming “A NEW RAT CZAR”.  Her actual title is City Director of Rat Mitigation but it hasn’t taken long for the czar moniker to have grabbed ahold of everyone’s attention.

I know that czar gets added to a lot of titles – Bird Flu Czar, Climate Czar, Energy Czar.  My favorite is Elliott Abrams title of Democracy Czar during the GW Bush administration.  Czar and democracy seem like odd bed-fellows to me.

I feel a little sorry for the new Rat Czar; it can’t be an easy job and it’s hard to imagine that in a contest between rats and humans, that the rats don’t hold most of the cards.  But you never know!

What do YOU think we need a tsar of these days?

2023, Family, Fantasy, Games, News, Uncategorized

Games!

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I saw in the news that the creator of the game, Settlers of Catan, Klaus Teuber, died a few days ago.  If you don’t know of it, Settlers of Catan is a multi-player game; you settle and expand on the land using hexagonal tiles.  I’ve always assumed it was similar in play to Risk, but I could be wrong.  It was wildly popular right off the bat in the late 90s and while still played in boardgame fashion, it has also spun off into cyberspace so you can easily find Catan communities of players.

I have a friend, Laurie, who has played Dungeons and Dragons every Tuesday for decades.  This is a serious commitment for her; I’ve known her to turn down other invitations if they fall on Tuesday.  I’ve known her for 40 years and she’s never once invited me to join; non D&D folks just aren’t allowed.  That’ fair – all I know about D&D is what I’ve seen on Big Bang Theory!

But seeing the news about Klaus Teuber made me think of our blog about jigsaw puzzles the other day which led me to thinking about the games I’ve played in my life.  We didn’t have a lot of boardgames when I was a kid.  The obligatory Candyland, which I never cared for much.  My Nana had Chutes & Ladders at her house, which I adored.  I begged for the game Operation and never received it. It was just as well; a friend got one for Christmas and it was BORING.  Same with the Mousetrap game.

I played a lot of backgammon in college but hardly ever since.  I like trivia games, although I’m not very good at the ones that have a lot of current/trendy questions. We played one at Thanksgiving that had a lot of current sports questions and even a category about stock exchange abbreviations – I stunk.  When YA was little, we did Yahtzee and cribbage on vacation, but almost never at home.  I do play mahjong online but just with myself which isn’t anything like real mahjong.  I guess my favorite boardgame is still Aggravation, which I play exclusively with my mom.  We each play three colors and we’re a little cut-throat.  YA won’t play with me although when we were in St. Louis last summer she did play once, she and Nonny and I each fielding two colors.  She complained later that Nonny and I are mean.

Any favorite boardgames as a kid?  These days? 

2023, animals, Fantasy, Movies, Mysteries

VelociPastor

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Normally I don’t click on things like “Worst Sitcoms of all Times” or “Hollywood Actors with Surprising Kung Fu Skills”.  But for some reason, while waiting for a client call yesterday, I clicked on “Bad Movies We Love Anyway”.  I hardly had the site open two minutes but it was enough time to see “VelociPastor”.  No that is not a typo.

When I logged off work for the day, I couldn’t resist… found it on Peacock and within a few minutes had it going.  It was dreadful.  The basic story is that a pastor goes hiking and manages to hike into China (no discussion of WHY he was doing this), runs into a Chinese woman stabbed through the heart who gives him what she says is a “dragon tooth”.  He cuts himself badly and apparently is infected with dinosaur DNA.  Like Bruce Banner/Hulk, when he gets enraged he turns into a velociraptor.  Initially he doesn’t remember these episodes but eventually learns to control it somewhat and becomes a crime fighter – a scaled crusader!

Very bad acting, some of the characters were dubbed, horrible dialog, every stereotype on the planet, unbelievable scenarios (the scumbag who murdered his parents comes to confession and the pastor kills him in the confessional).   Of course, all the mayhem never leaves a drop of blood on him once he transforms back to human.  Oh and he falls in love with the hooker who witnessed his first transformation and eventually dies in his arms.  Half way through the movie, we also get ninjas bent on global domination and I’ll never forget the scene where the pastor and the hooker beat up all the ninjas in their underwear. When they eventually do show the whole transformation, it’s in a rubber dinosaur suit that doesn’t look anything like a velociraptor.

It was so awful it was kinda funny.  Wouldn’t you have to TRY to make a movie this bad?  Was this a “The Producers” situation, where they wanted to make a bad film so they wouldn’t have to pay investors back.  Hard to imagine any other way this movie could have been made.   Yet another bad movie that curiosity has driver me to that I will most likely never watch again. 

What’s the absolute worst movie you’ve ever seen?  And why?

2023, books, Fantasy, Mysteries, Stories

Over and Over Again

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As you all know, I listen to books on CD in the car (and occasionally I drag them into the house as well), audiobooks on my laptop and old-fashioned regular books!   I “curate” my library account so that I don’t have too many things from the library at once and am always happy to find a book that comes in multiple formats.  The format I am still unwilling to embrace is kindle.

A couple of weeks ago the book She Who Became the Sun sparked my interest, so I looked it up and it came in audiobook format.  Since I was getting close to done with my current audiobook and only had one other “up to bat”, I asked for it.  Loaded it and then yesterday morning, hit “Play”. 

I knew in the first minute that I had read this book before.  I was sure of it.  The title resonated but I had assumed it was because She Who Became the Sun is exactly the kind of title that intrigues me.  I looked it up on my spreadsheet and I did indeed read it in 2017!  I can tell you only the vaguest of plot outlines now that I realize I’ve read it, but it’s VERY vague.  I thought about reading it again but decided if I can hardly remember that I’ve read it, much less remember the plot, I’ll move on.  Not quite as bad as having started Devil in the White City THREE times but at least in that scenario I never read the whole book (I always bale when the maggot scene happens in the first chapter). 

Do you ever go to the fridge repeatedly, hoping to find something new there?

2023, animals, Fantasy, home, Nature

Henrietta

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My friend in Tucson (actually Green Valley) lives at the end of her cul de sac, right along a canyon.  We had walked down a path into the canyon a bit and she pointed out javelina tracks.  While I know what a javelina is, I’ve never actually seen one.  And I certainly didn’t expect to be walking along a javelina pathway. 

Then later that evening as we were sitting in her living room, I looked out the window to see a fairly large javelina walking right past the house, only about 20 feet from my chair.  Fascinating.  During my trip we actually spied javelinas several times – at the Desert Museum, more near the house and even a troop crossing the street near a park.  They look like pigs but Arizonians are quick to tell you that they are peccaries and NOT pigs. I loved seeing them and spent some time looking up javelina facts during the trip.

On our last day, in the zoo gift shop, I found a small plush javelina toy that I thought was cute.  My friend insisted that I actually needed a bigger plush toy.  When I told her the small one was what I could justify (since clearly I don’t need to be dragging stuffed toys home at my age), she doubled down and said she wanted to purchase it for me.  We argued a bit and I eventually gave up. 

On the way home I made my first mistake – I gave the toy a name – Henrietta.  The mistake meant that when I was packing, I felt funny about stuffing her into my squishable carry-on bag.  How would she breathe?  I really didn’t even pause before I set her into my purse.  When my friend laughed and asked what folks would think, I told her that lots of people needed emotional support animals when they flew.  Henrietta would be my emotional support javelina.  (I am NOT suggesting that people who have emotional support animals don’t need them!)

Anyway, here is Henrietta going through Security, getting settled on the plane and then at home on my bed. 

I will admit this to you all; I’ve had Henrietta for cuddling every night since I got back from Tuscson.  I’ve thought about bringing some of my other stuffed toys down from the attic so they can take turns but I’m afraid Henrietta’s feelings will be hurt!

Any strange stuffed toys in your past (or present)?