The past week has been rather crazy. First there was that earthquake early last week (my friends and family closer to the epicenter are fine), then Hurricane Irene came through over the weekend. I know that there was plenty of damage and a lot of people got flooded or trapped by downed trees and such, but I can honestly remember sitting through worse storms as a kid. The worst thing I know of that happened in my neighborhood was the power cable that came down right in front of my house on Sunday. It was finally taken care of the other day, and it’s a good thing. I didn’t really like hearing the thing hiss at me as I walked around it on my way to the bus, and I’m glad I like rubber-soled footwear. Now I’ve heard about Hurricane Katya. I haven’t been watching the news, but I heard about it on an author fan page on Facebook. John Ringo has a character named Katya in his Ghost series, and to say the woman is Not To Be Messed With is putting it mildly. It’s making myself and fellow Ringo fans wonder about this storm.
I mentioned seeing Captain America a bit over a month ago. The next movie on my list is Rise of Planet of the Apes. I remember seeing the original Planet of the Apes movie with Charlton Heston as a wee young’un and again more recently. No offense to the cast and crew of that project, but the new one looks so awesome! I became a fan of Andy Serkis after seeing Peter Jackson’s movie version of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and I can hardly wait to see his work as Caesar the chimp. I think I heard earlier this week that PETA endorsed the movie, which I don’t quite understand since all the non-human apes are supposed to be CGI. Yes, humans are apes. I remember learning years ago that there’s only a small single-digit percentage difference between the DNA of humans and chimpanzees, and I’m sure the same would hold true for us and the other apes (gorillas, orangutans, etc.). Anyway, the point is that I want to see this movie. The next on my list after that is Anonymous, which tackles the Shakespeare Authorship Question in favor of the Earl of Oxford.
I also started reading Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol. Finally. I haven’t gotten that far in yet, but I’m enjoying it - especially that quip about a certain ”freaky cult” that gathers on the anciently-observed day of the great god Ra to worship an old-school torture device and partakes in symbolic cannibalism. It’s something for certian branches of Christians to think about on Sundays when they go up for communion.
