Archive for the 'Deep Thoughts' Category

I am almost sure that telling a historical story through a movie is fraught with as many perils for the story-teller as doing so through the medium of historical fiction – it’s just that the movie-maker’s pratfalls are so much more … public, I guess is the word that I’m fishing for. There are big-name, serious historical fiction writers who abuse history almost beyond recognition in their attempt to weave a tale of the past – Philippa Gregory, anyone? – but to my mind, the really, really egregious mainstream offenses are committed in the service of movie-making.

Read the rest of this entry »

Like them, appreciate them, adore them for their ability to wade in there and … fix stuff. I like them for all those qualities and more, although sometimes they exasperate me, and I have been exposed to slightly more than my statistical fair share of total male fahrk-quads. Twenty years in the military will do that to you. At best, it’s an 85% plus male-dominated profession, and one is guaranteed to observe them in their masculine glory and also at their absolute piggish worst. But on the whole, I like men when they shoulder responsibility, when they are stand-up great co-workers, when they are good in bed and fantastic with amusing children, when they come to your physical and emotional rescue – which they will do – and when they give those perfectly thoughtful and slightly skewed gifts. From one long-time Significant Other, I got a birthday-Christmas present of two pallets of bricks. Yes, but it was what I really-oh-truly-oh-really wanted and I had said so. Dad once gave me a metal tool-box as a Christmas present, for pretty much the same reason.

Read the rest of this entry »

After following all the directions given for making cheeses last fall, to include covering the various wheels with wax – we stashed the results on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator to age. Read the rest of this entry »

Be vewy, vewy quiet … you never know when a cow will be watching…

After inadvertently stopping up the kitchen sink, and then going to a lot of effort, ultimately successful, to unstop it, I feel satisfaction and accomplishment as though I had done a good day’s work. I will sleep well. But it’s all an illusion since I have merely undone an annoying situation that I created myself by my own boneheadedness. Nothing was really accomplished. However, if I did something boneheaded out in the desert or wherever and almost got killed but escaped by the skin of my teeth it might be called a great adventure. Does this mean that context is everything, that adventure is overrated or that I am overthinking this?