Having re-established my routine of getting up before six, swimming and sauna, breakfasting after any shopping required, playing a million points of Luxor Mahjong and five games of chess, finishing the writing of the previous day, watching recorded programmes or some film, luncheon, relaxing and perhaps a siesta, commencing writing again, researching or specific reading project or some project work, preparing for the evening meal, working, watching some TV, sport, film or drama series, a film or some sport continuing until between 9 pm and midnight and then bed, getting up going back to bed, once twice or thrice and then repeating etc i decide that i want to change in order write something more substantial and on going and or undertake more exercise to lose weight, and thus the wrestling of competing interests continues.
The news from Japan is grim and the optimism of the authorities that they had the damage to the nuclear power plant under control has been replaced by the reality of radiation leaks and an explosion which they say has not damaged the main reactor except that the evacuation of people has been extended for 20 kilometres. The number of victims is now over 1300 with 10000 missing and 50000 troops have been deployed. The Prime Minister has promised they will rebuild the country and has accepted the offers of help from countries all over the world.
How not to deal with disaster was vividly covered in the fourth episode of Treme. It begins with Antoine, the trombonist having confirmed that his domestic insurance policy which he is paid for over three decades did not embrace flooding and required an additional premium. He asks the assistant how do you sleep at night with the reply. I drink. He is still without his trombone and accepts the suggestion of La Donna that he goes to Baton Rouge for Christmas, where her husband Larry performs the necessary dental work and Antoine has a rare visit with his sons. Creighton, John Goodman films his own You Tube video, responding to those who have questioned whether New Orleans is worth rebuilding. He is grateful to Houston and other places they have helped out and moans that in New York where they lost a couple of buildings the government poured money in where as their coast was devastated and they are left to try and pick up the pieces. He signs off with, "Fuck you, you fucking fucks." He is later recognized around town by many admirers of his rant. Davis's car is crippled by a pothole left by a utility company. A Neighbour offers to arrange a relative to transport to Goodman‘s home to give a piano lesson to the daughter who is back from the residential school. The man offers to mind his car but on return he finds it vandalised and his equipment stolen. Later at a bar he proposed to stand for public office and to have a campaign of raising money for city improvements through legalizing and taxing marijuana ("Pot for potholes)
The young Darius is fired from the job Albert found for him with his neighbour Robinette's hauling company; later, Darius visits the bar to find Albert's tribe's Mardi Gras practice and joins in playing a beer bottle. When his aunt discovers him there late that evening, she invites Albert to dinner. His son‘s, Delmond, manager convinces him to play a tour ending with a home coming in New Orleans. He reluctantly agrees
Sony, the street entertainer is persuaded by friends to go on a American road trip a la On the Road Jack Kerouac, but his first gig does not go well as he is only allowed to sit in with band in one number. He decides to return to New Orleans where he finds that the girl friend has got a gig playing with.New Orleans Jazz Vipers. He brings back the bouncer at the roadhouse who has never seen New Orleans.
Toni (Goodman’s wife) finally gets official DNA test results that prove the prisoner using the name Daymo Brooks is not Daymo, but an accused murderer named Keevon White. Off-the-record, Keevon admits to switching bracelets with Daymo after the storm, claiming that Daymo agreed to swap in exchange for Keevon's protection in jail, but says he doesn’t know where Daymo went after that. There is also lots of great music ending with teh funeral of the Mardi Gras Tribe member who was found dead under his boat.
The attempt by the UK and France to persuade other NATO countries to join in the demand for a no fly zone resulted with failure although there is a meeting fo the Arab countries to consider the same issue. Later I learn they have requested the UN to authorise a no fly zone. This is an amazing and unexpected development and indicates the seriousness of recent developments.
I enjoyed a bacon roll for breakfast and a baguette filled with prawns and pasta salad for lunch. I defrosted the bacon overnight together with breast of chicken which I will cook and make into a curry for this evening. There was no papers this morning with the pile stuck where it had been delivered and yesterdays available at the reception desk. I decided not to intervene, for once. It was pouring with rain but this eased by the time I returned home.
The computer was playing up so I watched a film called Dear John based on the book by Nicolas Sparks. The books sounds better than the film which was tailored to weekend teens and twenties weekend audience which the film trailer was designed to appeal. A special forces soldier spends his holiday on the beach. He lives with his father a recluse who finds meetings with strangers difficult. The film does explain if his mother left because of her husbands social difficulties. The boy grew up hoping his mother would return with his father unable to admit she would not be doing so. The boy has one magic memory of childhood he discovered a badly Minted coin which his father discovered was valuable, offered first $20 a second dealer explained it was worth $4000 and would rise over generations.
They commence together a an interest in coin collecting and visit the Mint. However as the boy reaches adolescence he resents that his father has become obsessed with the hobby which has taken over his life. The two have lost their only means of sharing and communicating with each other. He sees a girl on the pier with others. When she loses her purse into the water he dives in much to the chagrin of her male companion who has gone back to the entrance of the pier and into the water from the beach.
The two young people spend the rest of the available time, two weeks, together, during which they encounter a neighbour about a decade older than the girl who has an autistic son. The girl is sceptical about the relationship continuing as he has another year to serve in the forces and she is going college from High School. The two correspond and look forward to his returning home. However just beforehand 9/11 occurs and the unit collectively decide to re-enlist. He visit the family home during a 24 hours period of leave after which he has t make up his mind to re=enlist or keep his promise to the girl. At a party at her home to meet her family, he is shown admiration and respect for his role and the expectation that he will be at the forefront of action responding to what has happened to the country. The girl is torn between her feelings and wishes and recognition of however events have changed the position oft he young man. He serves in action in Afghanistan and then Iraq unable to communicate where and what he is involved with until he is advised by letter that she has found someone lese. It is the father of the autistic child. According to Wikipedia there is a fundamental difference between the nook ending and the film. In both he returns home following his father having a stroke and before the father dies the two are reconciled their previous differences. He takes the opportunity of the leave to visit his former love, but at a distance. He watches leave her home and stand looking at the moon and then hiding the moon with her thumb.
An act which he showed her after she commented that the full moon appeared to be of a different size at different times.. This act signals to him that she still thinks of him and their brief relationship. He returns to his unit. Thus the book is about the beauty and wonder of first young love and that the relationship remains fresh and a sense of regret at not having flourished but rather than remain locked in the past it is necessary to move on.
In the film he makes direct contact and only then finds she has married the neighbour who had become ill with cancer and wanted someone to care for his son. The young man sells his and his father coin collection with the exception of the special coin. He does to provide the girl and her husband with the funds to be cared for at home until his death. The two then meet up to live happy ever after. Hmmm
I also watched again Superman III in HD. This was the last film made by Christopher Reeve before his horse riding accident. Robert Vaughan is unconvincing as the ambitious bad guy who lives in a roof top penthouse complete with a mini Ski run and real all round the year snow. His girl friend is the voluptuous Pamela Stephenson before she switched careers and trained to become a clinical psychologist. It is difficult to digest that the film was made three decades ago and released in 1983. All I remembered is that this was the film where the baddies discovered that Superman’s weakness is kryptonite.
Richard Pyror plays a comical computer genius who breaks into a major computer system to re-orientate space based laser beams to create adverse weather condition in Columbia to destroy the coffee crop so American will be forced to buy coffee manufactured by Vaughan, Before this Pryor arranges for hole in the wall machines to spew out bank notes and for individuals to be mailed bank statements revealing that their accounts have increased by hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Vaughan sets out to destroy Superman because he intervenes stops the weather and dries out the coffee beans. Vaughan then commissions Pryor to duplicate Kryptonite and kill Superman and in return he promises build a giant computer with its own defence system. Clark has returned to Smallville and attends the birthday party of a young divorce, Pyror brings the Kryptonite as a present. He has worked out the ingredients except for a small percentage of unknown material which he replaces. The effects is that Superman is not killed and his personality is changed so that he ceases to be a good gut helping others and looks to his own interests. Eventually he recovers after doing battle with himself in the form of Clark Kent being the good guy and Superman the bad, Clark kills the bad personality and returns invigorated and after Vaughan and his group who have left their whereabouts for him to find.
While he manages to evades rockets launched in groups and larger flying bomb type rocket he is eventually caught up in a beam as the computer is able to work weaknesses and manufacture the required energy in the form of a laser beam, However Pryor has second thought and disabled the computer. The computer 2001 style refuses to close and uses energy from the national grid to begin a life of its own. Superman works out how disable using acid and kill the computer. However he is nearly caught into the machine which has already turn Vaughan’s sister into a Cyborg. Vaughan has been using the new computer to bring all the oil tankers afloat to a spot in the North Atlantic and then closed all the oil producing fields, pipelines and filling stations so he can take control and fix the price. Superman has holed the only Tanker which ignored the directive resulting in the oil spilling. After his recovery he puts the oil back and repairs the ship. He also makes the Tower of Pisa lean again after making it straight in a moment of wickedness. Lois Lane is absent for this film on an assignment and returns to find that Superman’s childhood sweetheart from Smallville has been given a job on the Daily Planet.
I will quickly forget this film which was the least successful of the three. It cost just under $40 million and made just under $60 million
The news from Japan is grim and the optimism of the authorities that they had the damage to the nuclear power plant under control has been replaced by the reality of radiation leaks and an explosion which they say has not damaged the main reactor except that the evacuation of people has been extended for 20 kilometres. The number of victims is now over 1300 with 10000 missing and 50000 troops have been deployed. The Prime Minister has promised they will rebuild the country and has accepted the offers of help from countries all over the world.
How not to deal with disaster was vividly covered in the fourth episode of Treme. It begins with Antoine, the trombonist having confirmed that his domestic insurance policy which he is paid for over three decades did not embrace flooding and required an additional premium. He asks the assistant how do you sleep at night with the reply. I drink. He is still without his trombone and accepts the suggestion of La Donna that he goes to Baton Rouge for Christmas, where her husband Larry performs the necessary dental work and Antoine has a rare visit with his sons. Creighton, John Goodman films his own You Tube video, responding to those who have questioned whether New Orleans is worth rebuilding. He is grateful to Houston and other places they have helped out and moans that in New York where they lost a couple of buildings the government poured money in where as their coast was devastated and they are left to try and pick up the pieces. He signs off with, "Fuck you, you fucking fucks." He is later recognized around town by many admirers of his rant. Davis's car is crippled by a pothole left by a utility company. A Neighbour offers to arrange a relative to transport to Goodman‘s home to give a piano lesson to the daughter who is back from the residential school. The man offers to mind his car but on return he finds it vandalised and his equipment stolen. Later at a bar he proposed to stand for public office and to have a campaign of raising money for city improvements through legalizing and taxing marijuana ("Pot for potholes)
The young Darius is fired from the job Albert found for him with his neighbour Robinette's hauling company; later, Darius visits the bar to find Albert's tribe's Mardi Gras practice and joins in playing a beer bottle. When his aunt discovers him there late that evening, she invites Albert to dinner. His son‘s, Delmond, manager convinces him to play a tour ending with a home coming in New Orleans. He reluctantly agrees
Sony, the street entertainer is persuaded by friends to go on a American road trip a la On the Road Jack Kerouac, but his first gig does not go well as he is only allowed to sit in with band in one number. He decides to return to New Orleans where he finds that the girl friend has got a gig playing with.New Orleans Jazz Vipers. He brings back the bouncer at the roadhouse who has never seen New Orleans.
Toni (Goodman’s wife) finally gets official DNA test results that prove the prisoner using the name Daymo Brooks is not Daymo, but an accused murderer named Keevon White. Off-the-record, Keevon admits to switching bracelets with Daymo after the storm, claiming that Daymo agreed to swap in exchange for Keevon's protection in jail, but says he doesn’t know where Daymo went after that. There is also lots of great music ending with teh funeral of the Mardi Gras Tribe member who was found dead under his boat.
The attempt by the UK and France to persuade other NATO countries to join in the demand for a no fly zone resulted with failure although there is a meeting fo the Arab countries to consider the same issue. Later I learn they have requested the UN to authorise a no fly zone. This is an amazing and unexpected development and indicates the seriousness of recent developments.
I enjoyed a bacon roll for breakfast and a baguette filled with prawns and pasta salad for lunch. I defrosted the bacon overnight together with breast of chicken which I will cook and make into a curry for this evening. There was no papers this morning with the pile stuck where it had been delivered and yesterdays available at the reception desk. I decided not to intervene, for once. It was pouring with rain but this eased by the time I returned home.
The computer was playing up so I watched a film called Dear John based on the book by Nicolas Sparks. The books sounds better than the film which was tailored to weekend teens and twenties weekend audience which the film trailer was designed to appeal. A special forces soldier spends his holiday on the beach. He lives with his father a recluse who finds meetings with strangers difficult. The film does explain if his mother left because of her husbands social difficulties. The boy grew up hoping his mother would return with his father unable to admit she would not be doing so. The boy has one magic memory of childhood he discovered a badly Minted coin which his father discovered was valuable, offered first $20 a second dealer explained it was worth $4000 and would rise over generations.
They commence together a an interest in coin collecting and visit the Mint. However as the boy reaches adolescence he resents that his father has become obsessed with the hobby which has taken over his life. The two have lost their only means of sharing and communicating with each other. He sees a girl on the pier with others. When she loses her purse into the water he dives in much to the chagrin of her male companion who has gone back to the entrance of the pier and into the water from the beach.
The two young people spend the rest of the available time, two weeks, together, during which they encounter a neighbour about a decade older than the girl who has an autistic son. The girl is sceptical about the relationship continuing as he has another year to serve in the forces and she is going college from High School. The two correspond and look forward to his returning home. However just beforehand 9/11 occurs and the unit collectively decide to re-enlist. He visit the family home during a 24 hours period of leave after which he has t make up his mind to re=enlist or keep his promise to the girl. At a party at her home to meet her family, he is shown admiration and respect for his role and the expectation that he will be at the forefront of action responding to what has happened to the country. The girl is torn between her feelings and wishes and recognition of however events have changed the position oft he young man. He serves in action in Afghanistan and then Iraq unable to communicate where and what he is involved with until he is advised by letter that she has found someone lese. It is the father of the autistic child. According to Wikipedia there is a fundamental difference between the nook ending and the film. In both he returns home following his father having a stroke and before the father dies the two are reconciled their previous differences. He takes the opportunity of the leave to visit his former love, but at a distance. He watches leave her home and stand looking at the moon and then hiding the moon with her thumb.
An act which he showed her after she commented that the full moon appeared to be of a different size at different times.. This act signals to him that she still thinks of him and their brief relationship. He returns to his unit. Thus the book is about the beauty and wonder of first young love and that the relationship remains fresh and a sense of regret at not having flourished but rather than remain locked in the past it is necessary to move on.
In the film he makes direct contact and only then finds she has married the neighbour who had become ill with cancer and wanted someone to care for his son. The young man sells his and his father coin collection with the exception of the special coin. He does to provide the girl and her husband with the funds to be cared for at home until his death. The two then meet up to live happy ever after. Hmmm
I also watched again Superman III in HD. This was the last film made by Christopher Reeve before his horse riding accident. Robert Vaughan is unconvincing as the ambitious bad guy who lives in a roof top penthouse complete with a mini Ski run and real all round the year snow. His girl friend is the voluptuous Pamela Stephenson before she switched careers and trained to become a clinical psychologist. It is difficult to digest that the film was made three decades ago and released in 1983. All I remembered is that this was the film where the baddies discovered that Superman’s weakness is kryptonite.
Richard Pyror plays a comical computer genius who breaks into a major computer system to re-orientate space based laser beams to create adverse weather condition in Columbia to destroy the coffee crop so American will be forced to buy coffee manufactured by Vaughan, Before this Pryor arranges for hole in the wall machines to spew out bank notes and for individuals to be mailed bank statements revealing that their accounts have increased by hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Vaughan sets out to destroy Superman because he intervenes stops the weather and dries out the coffee beans. Vaughan then commissions Pryor to duplicate Kryptonite and kill Superman and in return he promises build a giant computer with its own defence system. Clark has returned to Smallville and attends the birthday party of a young divorce, Pyror brings the Kryptonite as a present. He has worked out the ingredients except for a small percentage of unknown material which he replaces. The effects is that Superman is not killed and his personality is changed so that he ceases to be a good gut helping others and looks to his own interests. Eventually he recovers after doing battle with himself in the form of Clark Kent being the good guy and Superman the bad, Clark kills the bad personality and returns invigorated and after Vaughan and his group who have left their whereabouts for him to find.
While he manages to evades rockets launched in groups and larger flying bomb type rocket he is eventually caught up in a beam as the computer is able to work weaknesses and manufacture the required energy in the form of a laser beam, However Pryor has second thought and disabled the computer. The computer 2001 style refuses to close and uses energy from the national grid to begin a life of its own. Superman works out how disable using acid and kill the computer. However he is nearly caught into the machine which has already turn Vaughan’s sister into a Cyborg. Vaughan has been using the new computer to bring all the oil tankers afloat to a spot in the North Atlantic and then closed all the oil producing fields, pipelines and filling stations so he can take control and fix the price. Superman has holed the only Tanker which ignored the directive resulting in the oil spilling. After his recovery he puts the oil back and repairs the ship. He also makes the Tower of Pisa lean again after making it straight in a moment of wickedness. Lois Lane is absent for this film on an assignment and returns to find that Superman’s childhood sweetheart from Smallville has been given a job on the Daily Planet.
I will quickly forget this film which was the least successful of the three. It cost just under $40 million and made just under $60 million
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