Adventures of the Monkey Mind

We are at the Bristol Faire, as we have been these last few weeks, enjoying a break from the schedule.  Bristol is at the extreme southeast corner of Wisconsin, just north of Chicago and just south of Milwaukee (a surprisingly fun & happening town, I'll post about it some time). Last week an unexpected heat wave had us sweating out 90+ temperatures without AC, and when it relented a few days ago in favor of clear blue skies and cool breezeswe were giddy with relief.  Gregg and I gathered Strider, and in the epic gorgeosity of the afternoon, went for a walk in a field adjacent to the Faire.

I had discovered several fields in search of quiet, off-site places to walk our dog, places where we could run around together and bark & laugh without worrying about neighbors or property or imminent disturbance of such.  I couldn't have asked for a better place if I'd invented it.  The field is large, green and recently cut, buzzing with patches of clover and yellow flowers.  It technically leads all the way up to Stateline road, but a broad swath of marshgrass and cattails cuts across the field halfway up, a wet area Strider avoids.  Strolling back the other way,  smelling fresh cut grass and the herby thicket surrounding the field, a broad cutthrough crosses a shady rain ditch and opens into another field: smaller, but with a rolling slope that's a pleasure to climb.

If you know where you're going you can cross over the second field, past another spinney of marshgrass, towards another, longer cutthrough, the width of a tractor, carpeted with long, crushed grass, that bends around and leads to a third, and larger, field. Here we explored the edges, Strider romping merrily, investigating everything he coud reach.  We discovered a broad footpath leading away into the trees at one corner, but chose to explore this beautiful field, sparkling with sunlight.  Tall trees rimmed the edges, and it was mostly mown, but again with large swaths left to grow, cattails and long grass bespeaking the marshy ground beneath.  It was a truly beautiful walk, and one that made me understand where Bristol's legendary evening mosquito population comes from.

As we walked the edges of these areas I started to see piles of mud, glooped up in a way that was strangely familiar.  You know how, after a rain, you'll pass a patch of sparsely grown ground and see these tiny piles of dirt all around like dirt sculputres of a pile of string?   Worms, having run to the surface to escape the water, dig back into the ground after it stops, pushing out these little globs in their wake.  The piles I was looking at were like that, but  many times larger, double-handful sized.  I saw a hole next to one of them over an inch wide.

What could possilbly be burrowing here, making these holes? Are there giant worms around here the size of snakes?  Mudskippers? No, they only live in the tropics.  Some kind of catfish? Fast-working roots of some kind? As ususal I'm wishing my Lovecraftian friends are around to apprecite the weird images of my hyperactive imagination.  

Gregg suddenly notices Strider stop to investigate something in the grass-  and leap up about a foot before suddenly finding something much more interesting in another direction. We step closer. The grass in the area seems to move like the cilia of a paramecium.  We peer into the grass, and under the waving blades,  identify a pair of small, lobster-like claws, waving angrily.

A freshwater crab?

No.

It's a crayfish.

A  crayfish?

A mudbug????  As in, 'squeeze the tail, suck the head..?' Last time I saw these little critters they were the guests of honor at a genune Louisiana crawfish boil.  It was, as I recall, a memorable acquaintance. 

Gregg and I left the angry little critter, and whatever tiny part of Strider's nose he still waved, and carried on our beautiful walk. The sun illuminated the tall grasses to our right, the breeze keeping off the mosquitos.  We were actually on a kind of plateau, walking the edge of a large swath of cattails raised  above the surrounding green.

"Remind me not to walk around here barefooted." I said.

Did anyone else know there were mudbugs living right here?  How do they *do* it?  This place has to be a solid block of ice in the winter!  Still, with all this clear fresh water I shouldn't be surprised.  The land of ten thousand lakes is a perfect place for these little guys, and speaks well of how unpolluted they keep the water.  

There are many frogs here too. But they're not as surprising.

--
Amazing, I know, but Pixar is 10 for 10 in terms of beloved movies now. Even the hard-to-please Rotton Tomatoes has given the new release UP a rating of 98%. They have a page that rates the movies according to their reviews on rottontomatoes.com, and even the lowest ranked 75% Fresh. But is this really their list of how wel the movies were reviewed?

1) Toy Story 2
2) Toy Story
3) Finding Nemo
4) The Incredibles
5) Wall-E
6) Ratatouille
7) Monsters, Inc.
8) A Bug's Life
9) Cars

I would make a very different list, and I'd like to invite my friends to do the same. Include UP if you've seen it:

1) UP
2) The Incredibles
3) Finding Nemo
4) Toy Story 2
5) Toy Story
6) Cars
7) A Bug's Life
8) Monsters Inc.
9) Ratatouille
10) Wall-E

Yes, I really thought Toy Story 2 was, if anything, even better than the awesome Toy Story itself. I loved all the movies, and would watch any of them again, but yes, maybe I did find Rattatouille's frantic attempts to hide the secret of cooking rats a little too formulaic, and thought Wall-E's heavy-handed portrayal of the future needed to be either more satirical or less (though of course I loved the love story). And yeah, as someone who learned to love my car more than my home, I loved Cars even a leetle bit more than a Bug's Life; it dealt with themes that are important to me, the disppearing of roadside America, and the disturbing prevalence of the superhighway mentality. I'm no fan of NASCAR, but it was so great to sit in the audience and hear people gasp at the entrance of Paul Newman's character, and whisper excitedly, recognizing the Hudson model of the car, and appreciating the extra pleasures afforded by Pixar to vintage car fanatics.

In the end, though, it's really hard to rank them. The Toy Story movies are equal in my mind, and Nemo and The Incredibles are such different stories, how can you say one is better, it's like apples and oranges? (By the way, I maintain that although as RT says, The Incredibles is a wonderfully original story, it couldn't have been done unless The Watchmen had come first.)

What do you think?

Something for everyone: The Personality Defect Test.  Enjoy.:)

http://helloquizzy.okcupid.com/tests/the-personality-defect-test

I would like to take a moment to share something nerdy that made me laugh.

For my World of Warcraft Friends: Scourge Chat

(also can be appreciated by MMORPG people in general; all you need to know is that Anubarak is a big spider.)

Thanks to all for thinking of us! We are cleared to arrive early at the faire campground. Should be there tonight. Woot!

Arlene and Byron have delivered of a little guy!  Welcome to the planet!

Possibly even more wonderful than the Pogues concert....

Why I keep heaing about The Flaming Idiots.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXdEqd_mn5k

If you think about it, it's a pretty good question. We've all had that experience when a friend starts really going on about something horrible going on in their life, and you listen synmpathetically -- and realize it's not really all that terrible. You can think of a dozen other horrible things that happened to friends, hell, some of them happened to *this* guy, and he never made that big a fuss about it. It makes you ask.

What exactly *is* trouble, anyway?

An answer comes to mind, that scene in The Matrix where Morpheus has been trying to teach Neo about why the Matrix works. He finally shows him: leans into the camera, and says "Free. Your. Mind". And he leaps from the roof, his trajectory carrying him to the roof across the street.

The image stays with me because I can see he wants this to get through. If nothing else gets through, he wants *this* to. He's been trying to teach, to show - to get this one concept through, because once that one comes through, eveything else will follow. Maybe becuase I sympathized with that the solution fascinates me. What would happen if we could Change Our Minds?
What would I do?

It's a little like asking what would you do if you won the lottery?

What would *I* do?

I'd stop being unhappy. I'd stop thinking of the things my body really loves & thrives on as things I hate. stuff like that.

Mr. Pirsig's exploration is turning out to have some familiar benchmarks. We started from different directions, but we ended up at the same place.
( The Aesthetic )

( The Line )

( The Fundamental )

All right, I have stuff to unpack, friends to help, and blood to give-- not to mention a game to catch-- but before I do I have to say a word or two about all this revamping of cheesy old science fiction shows.

Yes, I was a kid in the 70s.  Yes, I watched Battlestar Galactica.  It was the only thing on.  I watched The Greatest American Hero, with a big crush on  ____ ___(Sorry, there are some things I still can not admit.).  And yes, yes, yes, I watched Doctor Who, in all its poorly effected, poorly thought out, bad science, holes-in-the-plot-you-could-spit-a-whale-through atrociousness.  It was my favorite show, I waited eagerly for it every week. I liked the Bee Gees too, but dammit I was a kid!  I didn't know, by all the gods I didn't know!   I grew up.  I realized most dance music was gutless computer-made jizzum  with as much soul as The Gap. (thank you Mojo Nixon, and apologies to any remaining disco lovers).  The point is, it was the 70s, and they were over, okay?  I forgot about it all, reworked myself and started over.  Punk music.   Deep acoustic.  These days even jazz doesn't seem out of my reach.  The other day I get home and find DVDs of Doctor Who on the stereo.  Just for a laugh I pop in one of the late Tom Baker disks.  I turn it off after ten minutes.  Awful stuff, really.  And look there's a boxed set of what?  Doctor Who 2005?  Well, good for them, it's a shame to lose such a crappy old tradition-- who are they kidding?  Of course I pop it in.

By all the great greasy gonads of the gods--

It's good.  Goddammit, it's good!   Keeps the premise and soul of the original show, but with these abominable additions.  Production values.  Plot twists. Emotional content.   Fully realized secondary characters.  And it's *funny*. It's *smart*.  No companion was ever that self-reliant, and certainly never turned to The Doctor and said "You're so gay." Someone has obviously been watching Buffy.  What the hell were they at, what happened? 

Look, dammit, we were kids.  We watched awful shows because we were children.  Even though everyone told us how stupid and awful and bad they were, and we knew we were freaks for even liking them, and watched them alone.  And then we grew up and moved around and learned better and never brought it up again, and put it all away and tried not to think about it until the Great Hellish Funk/Disco Revival. And as if the pseudo-kitsch resurrection of Gilligan's Island isn't enough,  now what?  They're taking these cheesy old shows that no one admitted to even watching, much less remembering years ago, and --and --and it's hip now, isn't it? It's fashionable.  Ooooh, have you seen the new episode of Battlestar Galactica?  It's nominated for a bunch of Emmys, you know. Have you seen the new Doctor Who?  It's as slick as the fricking X-Files!!!  What, was everyone and their cousin watching Dr. Who locked in their rooms Saturday mornings? 

OK, so half of it  is that I feel like an old Grateful Dead fan after the release of In The Dark, when they suddenly moved  to having  four #1 hits off the same disc.  Suddenly everyone's screaming about The Dead on the radio stations like they weren't avoiding them like  poison all along.  But the other half feels like I'm having a weak sort of traumatic flashback.  It's kind of funny, like I'm confronting my wounded Inner Geek, and telling her it's okay to have liked these awful things.  Maybe I could take a look at them with that kind of eye and find out what it was about these stories that I needed so much, what it was they did  for me. 

But if they try to resurrect The Greatest American Hero as a high-end dramatic series I am going to scream like it's Judgment Day.

Now if you'll excuse me I'm off to pretend I'm a Nazi Spy in Lovecraftian England.