Christy Marx

At long, long last -- I'd gotten private email from Wendy a while back, but here's the official announcement:

WARNER BROS. PICKS UP SOME ELVES.
Cult comic ELFQUEST by Wendy and Richard Pini will get a big screen treatment from Warner Bros. and Rawson Thurber, per THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER.

Thurber will write, direct and produce the feature, whose format might be animated or live action. The original comic, which the Pinis initially self-published starting in 1978, followed a tribe of elves known as the Wolfriders in their attempt to survive and meet up with other dispersed elves on an Earth-like planet with two moons, all the while looking out for tribes of humans and trolls.

The series has been published by both Marvel and DC Comics and attracted a more mature audience as it progressed, complete with battle and sex scenes that were intense for the time.

Hollywood has made several attempts to adapt the series, including
animated series and features over the years.

Courtenay Valenti is overseeing for Warner Bros.

We had Too Much Excitement for the start of the day. I was in my office and missed it, but the electric burner on the stove caught fire. Randy managed to snuff it out with a large pan lid. It was a mess and we were totally baffled about what could have caused it. Our best guess, judging from the smell, is that some little piece of plastic fell into the metal liner, heated up, melted, then caught fire. It's a mystery.

I won't be buying a car any time soon, I think. I'll need to put money aside to move. I had written to our landlord explaining about the four cats I had to leave in southern Calif. in the care of my friend at Cause4Cats. I wanted to bring them up here and have them in my home office aka the garage. He turned me down. He was very nice and polite about it, but that doesn't help.

That leaves me two options: leave my cats there or find another place to live.

I've already been separated from my other cats for a year (that's Zoe in the icon) and I don't want to leave them there a day longer than I have to. So as of now, we're looking for a cat-friendly house to rent. I deeply regret having to leave this convenient location and great neighborhood, and I despair of finding the right situation anywhere nearby.

For my Bay area friends, please spread the word and let me know if you hear of anything that would help.

Meanwhile, we'll be digging through craigslist.com.

Dammit.

It was a half-hour drive to the Mini dealer and we arrived to find the Auto Machinists Union picketing there. As union members ourselves, and remembering how the Teamsters and other unions supported the WGA strike, we assured them we wouldn't be buying a car today and not from this dealership unless the strike was resolved.

I test-drove the Mini Clubman 6-speed. It's a great, zippy little car, handles nicely, shifted smoothly and positively, and I generally liked the feel and performance a lot. The interior is awfully quirky and would take some getting used to, especially the bloody giant speedo that isn't in front of the driver. It's in the center of the dash between the two seats. Not exactly convenient for watching one's speed.

And after ten years driving the Legacy, it feels weird to be in something this small. The reason I'm thinking about the Clubman is the extra space it has, such as it is, though I don't like the silhouette of it as much as the regular Mini.

I have more research to do and big decisions to make, but this remains at the top of my list of cars to buy.

As expected, HELLBOY II was a phenomenal piece of visionary art as far as the visual end of the film was concerned. It's worth seeing just to feast your eyes on the amazing creatures, costumes, effects and other design.

Sadly, del Toro needs a writer. He tried very hard to give the characters some emotional resonance and to make the story *about* something, but he didn't have the skill as a writer to pull it off. The story fell flat when it shouldn't have at all.

I definitely recommend the movie in spite of that. If nothing else, Ron Perlman as Hellboy is worth the price of admission. He's so damned brilliant at bringing characters to life through a ton of make-up and prosthetics. Luke Goss was dazzling, even if all the fighting moves weren't entirely his (I saw Chinese stuntmen listed). And I love Abe. Lots of very cool characters to enjoy.

Highlight of the day -- I got one of the best haircuts ever. It was time for my summer cut, which simply means trimming about three inches of dry split ends. Randy found a salon near his gym that he's happy with, so when he needed to get a haircut today, we went together. After a year of bad luck, I finally found someone who listens, who gives me the cut I want and who really knows what she's doing (and is a terrifically nice person as a bonus). My hair came out like silk. I bought the nice expensive shampoo and conditioner she used. It was a damned expensive haircut, but it's the norm for around here and she was worth it.

Fucking hell, it's hot. Thank the ghods I bought those fans a while back or we wouldn't be getting any sleep at all. It's not much fun in my home office, which doesn't have the insulation that the house does.

My tendinitis came roaring back during the day, out of nowhere seemingly. It was the first day I tried wearing sandals instead of the New Balance shoes. Maybe that triggered it. It was pretty bad at work, but eased up enough tonight to take my easy walk. Didn't make for a happy day, though.

From Grist:

Giving "Vast Wasteland" a Whole New Meaning
Chemical in flat-screen TVs is worsening climate change

If you didn't feel guilty about your TV habits already, here's a new reason: a chemical used in making flat-screen televisions has been found to be a potent greenhouse gas, 17,000 times stronger than carbon dioxide. In a study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, atmospheric chemist Michael Prather called nitrogen trifluoride, or NF3, "the missing greenhouse gas," and warned that the climate could suffer as the chemical is produced in ever greater amounts to meet soaring demand for LCD displays. If all of the NF3 produced in 2008 were released into the atmosphere, it would have as much warming effect as 67 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, the study found -- about the same as the annual CO2 emissions of Austria. NF3 isn't covered by the Kyoto Protocol because it was only being produced in tiny amounts in 1997 when the treaty was negotiated. Ironically, NF3 was developed as an alternative to perfluorocarbons, greenhouse gases that are governed by Kyoto.

The Wildlife Report! We've counted as many as five rats frolicking in the back yard around dusk or at night. And they've had babies! I came into my office (which is a converted garage) and found that one of my dear moggies had left me a dead baby rat. That same day at dusk, we saw four baby rats scavenging for bird seed in the back yard. I'm having flashbacks to living in the mountains again. I can honestly say that the one thing I never expected upon moving to Suburbia in the Bay Area was to find another Dead Rodent Gift in the office.

The crows have given up on the peanuts. Once in a rare while a crow is bold enough and quick enough to get one of the peanuts off the top of the fence, but the bluejays are too fast and efficient. They clean up the peanuts in minutes. I saw a bluejay hide a peanut in the branches of the juniper tree. I'm sure the gardeners must wonder when they come to work on the flowerbeds and find peanuts studded everywhere.

The birds are finally figuring out the new birdfeeder. I watched a brilliantly-colored red finch gorging himself on seed today. Randy was right on the verge of buying a new birdfeeder, convinced that this one was bird-proof. It does at least seem to be keeping out the squirrel.

The Tendon Report! Better, but not exactly back to normal. I'm doing the stretching exercises and I've eased back into the shorter, easier walk. I still have moments of stiffness, but not much pain at least.

We hied ourselves off bright and early to see HANCOCK.

I'm giving this one a five-star rave review. It's fucking awesome. It went far beyond what I was expecting, but I can't say much without committing terrible spoilers. Will Smith was excellent, but Charlize Theron was incredible. She pulled off some brilliant, subtle acting.

The action and effects were top-notch, the directing was superb, but what really made this a superior movie was the script by Vincent Ngo &
Vince Gilligan (the latter having been a producer and writer on X-Files). Damned good story, perfect dramatic structure and most of all, countless small, but significant touches of foreshadowing with every single one of them paying off in the most amazing ways. What a fine, fine piece of storytelling. Yes, it had a couple of flawed logic points that I also can't talk about without spoilerage, but they were minor enough that I didn't care.

I'm hungry for a sequel. Bring it on!

Time to donate to the Nature Conservancy.

Pulled Out a Plum
Montana forest conservation deal biggest in U.S. history

Some 500 square miles of privately owned forest in the northern Rocky Mountains will be protected under a deal announced Monday by The Nature Conservancy and Trust for Public Land. The groups will pay Plum Creek Timber $510 million for the checkerboard tracts of land in northwest Montana. The deal is "the largest land purchase, for conservation purposes, in American history," says Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.). The purchase will create a more continuous habitat for wildlife, including grizzly bears, lynx, moose, wolverines, and bull trout, and keep developers at bay; Plum Creek will be allowed to continue sustainable timber harvest in some areas. Baucus was instrumental in the deal, having successfully added a tax-credit bond mechanism to the recently passed farm bill that allows nonprofits to apply for federal grants for conservation land purchases. Half of the $510 million will be available through the Baucus provision, and the rest will be raised through donations.

From the fevered brain of Joss Whedon:

We toodled out this morning and saw WALL-E. As is everything from Pixar, it was brilliant work. The graphics are stunning and the main characters, Wall-E and Eve, are wonderful.

That said, I felt it was quite weak in the story. It has good messages built into it about our current culture, the environment, and consumerism, but the story that delivers it is a blunt instrument. Understand that this is a parable and dark fairy tale (it might qualify as a fable) where everything is taken to the extreme and don't expect sf or genuine logic. Which is fine. Parables certainly have their place. I was unhappy when the focus of the story shifted almost completely away from Wall-E and Eve and onto the humans. They used an old, but effective device at the end to bring it back to them, but by that time the focus had nonetheless shifted. For me, it weakened the latter third of the story.

Don't get me wrong, this is nitpicking at an otherwise delightful movie. Go see! Take your children! It's brainwashing that's good for them.

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Wow, okay, where to start. I don't want to bury my answers in the replies, so I'll try to answer everyone here.

Weight as a number: I didn't say I was fat. I don't believe at any time I've said that. I don't consider myself to be fat and I can guarantee that working in Hollywood didn't influence me on that.

I consider myself to be uncomfortably overweight for my frame size. It affects my back, my hips, my knees and my feet because I'm carrying too much weight for my bones. I don't give a flying fuck about numbers on a scale, per se. If that was solid muscle, I could care less. But this amount of weight on my frame causes me all sorts of joint pain and other problems and that's why I need to lose it. It doesn't feel good.

Eating portions: Trust me, I am not starving myself. When I say I cut portions in half, what that means is that I was eating like a typical American. I was eating literally twice as much food as I actually needed to eat -- because it was there, because it was a habit and because I have a bad case of eyes-bigger-than-stomach syndrome. I don't believe in wacky "diets" or watercress sandwiches. That's not my style. {g}

Nor will I have anything to do with diet sodas or crap poisoned with aspartame. I've cut way back on my consumption of Pepsi (which I love) because the phosphorous is damaging to bone density and I'm perimenopausal. I can't afford that. But I allow myself to have Pepsi every once in a while, because I like it.

Randy and I already eat a careful and balanced diet, but I do have what I think is a genetic disposition to crave fatty foods. I love my pizza, I love my cashew butter and I love chocolate, etc. I have no intention of giving them up. But I don't need to eat an entire mini-pizza at one meal, which is what I used to do. Now I eat half of one along with salad and it's more than enough for me. Instead, I limit how often I let myself have pizza. Maybe once a month or so. I allow myself one small piece of chocolate a day. What works for me is -- don't deprive, but have discipline.

I was raised to think of dessert as the final course of the meal. In my family, it wasn't "Will you have dessert?" It was "What will you have for dessert?" as though a meal couldn't be over without it. I was plied with sweets as a kid. Several years back, I cut desserts from my life. I allow myself to splurge now and then, but I've found it's not that much of a sacrifice. I just don't need it.

The trick at work is not to get sucked into the endless array of candy and junk food that the kitchen has in large quantities. I'm maintaining discipline on that after a couple of lapses. Fortunately, as much as I love chocolate, I don't really love candy, so I'm able to resist most of shit sitting around there.

Exercise: I would love to get back to a martial art and I think Tai Chi would be the one I'd choose. However, I have very little free time and most classes don't tend to be on my schedule. Going once a week on a weekend is pretty much a useless idea. One of these days, I absolutely want to get back to it. In the meantime, what works for me and about all I can squeeze in is the walk. Randy and I have talked about getting a Bowflex or one of those machines for the house. That would be extremely handy for both of us, but we'll see. It would also be a bitch to move and would take up half the living room.

The fact is, that when we lived in Frazier Park, I wasn't that much more active, but when I cut back the portions and started walking the one mile a day, I was steadily losing weight. I feel confident that getting back to the regular walk should do the trick.

Thyroid: Yes, I had the thyroid checked about a year ago. I don't have the symptoms, other than weight gain, and nothing showed up. I rather doubt that's the problem.

I come from genetic stock where the women get decidedly hefty as they age. Hell, my grandmother looked like Jabba the Hut at the end there. She didn't walk a single step for about the last thirty years of her life. She sat on a rolling chair and scooted around and wouldn't leave the house. She died at 91 only because she finally had to go into a nursing home where she turned her face to the wall and willed herself to die. Stubbornness is another genetic trait of the Marxes.

So think how much better I can do if I exercise and keep the weight down! Henh. It would have been much more beneficial if I had caught this when I was in my forties, but I didn't, so there ya go. It's harder to get the weight off than to keep it off in the first place.


The ergonomics people did a thorough evaluation at work today. It was a team, a man and woman, and he was *built*. Clearly someone who worked out a lot. They measured, questioned and observed. They couldn't see anything in my desk set-up that would cause the tendon problem. He gave me some good advice on keeping the tendons stretched and what to watch out for. However, they saw problems with my arms and neck, so I will be getting a keyboard tray, new mouse and new chair with everything adjusted so I can sit properly and relieve the tension in my shoulders.

And you know what, that's enough about me for one day. ;)

As I feared, no walking for a week. The doctor wants me to give the tendons a total rest for 5 to 7 days. She has me wearing heel lifts and taking metric buttloads of Ibuprofen to deal with the inflammation. After the week is up, I start doing the stretching exercises she showed me and slowly work back up to the long walk.

The really bad news, as I feared, is that I've gained ten pounds since I started this job 11 months ago. I gained back the five lbs. I'd lost before and gained another five. I weigh more now than I've ever weighed in my life. I'm profoundly unhappy about this. Even though I cut my food portions literally in half, I think that's still not enough. I need to look closely at what else I can do on the eating side as well as getting back to the long walk as soon as I can.

Tomorrow, I consult with the ergonomic experts that my company provides upon request to see if there's anything about my desk set-up that could affecting the tendonitis one way or another.

Woot! Tonight was a personal best. I did the walk in 27 minutes. I don't know where the energy came from because I wasn't feeling energetic when I began, but I set a strong pace and then maintained it the best I could.

I'm seeing my doctor tomorrow morning about the tendonitis, but her advance email advice said...rest. She'll probably tell me to stop the walks. Which is a big, big problem because it's either keep up the walks or watch the weight climb. Quite a conundrum.

We've lost another valuable wit and scathing voice. Shit.

I hope Lenny Bruce is waiting for him on the other side so they can have a good laugh together.

I forgot to show off my latest "toy". Randy doesn't understand my love for fancy pens. {g} I can't explain it either. I just know that my Levenger catalogs end up covered with drool on the pages with the pretty pens on them.

There was one in particular that I've been coveting for the longest time called the Sea Glass rollerball. It's translucent with embedded chips of color. They had a sale on it, so I finally broke down and ordered it. Here it is:



My Pretty, My Precious, yes!

The yard was full of wildlife this morning. When Randy went to put out the peanuts for the bluejays and crows, he flushed a baby Cottontail out of the bushes. I saw it darting around in the flowers a few minutes later. Randy found a way to make sure the crows get some of the peanuts by placing them along the top of the fence while leaving the rest on the ground for the jays. Of course, the jays figured that out pretty quick, but at least the crows get a few.

We had the usual assortment of birds plus a hummingbird. Randy thinks the new birdfeeder is also bird-proof since none of the birds have figured out how to use it yet.

And we had the usual pack of rats out there tonight. It occurred to Randy that cat urine might deter them, so earlier in the day I took some clumps from the catbox and spread it in the spots where we kept seeing the rats. They weren't coming from that direction when we saw them tonight, so who knows, maybe it worked.

This evening on my walk, I saw a healthy, plump Cottontail in someone's suburban yard. That's the second time I've seen one on the walk, not counting the one in our own back yard.

I just hope we don't inadvertently attract the skunks. We sure know they're around. One "goes off" every so often.

We looked in the direction of the fire this morning and there was no trace of it. You'd think it never happened. Randy went over and checked it out later in the day and he said it looks like it was a garage fire. There was probably stuff stored in the garage that caused the explosions. An old pick-up truck was also burned, but Randy said there wasn't much damage to the surroundings, which seems amazing considering how it looked to us.

I did my duty as a good American citizen today and committed Consumerage. I spent money. Here's the shopping list:
*two large fans - one for downstairs, one for the bedroom
*a copy of The Little Prince for my boss because he'd never even heard of it and that cannot be allowed to pass
*the latest Midnight Louie paperback
*a tank top (on sale)
*comics (Echo - Terry Moore's new series, Angel)
*cat food
*a squirrel-(and hopefully rat-) proof bird feeder and bird seed
*a Brita water pitcher and filters
*gas and a car wash
*groceries

I failed to score New Balance sandals. The giant store didn't have them and I didn't like their selection, so I may order a pair on-line.

You would not believe how many rats we see in the back yard at night. They come out and have wild parties. We can hear them squeaking and see them frolicking through the flowers and up and down the peach tree. Randy took the laser pointer and sent the red dot after them to see what they'd do. They squeaked and fled...the first time. The second time, they didn't react much. Cunning little bastards. I can't get anyone from the pest control company to call me back. I'm reaching the boiling point with them and may need to have the landlord get on their case.