The Legend of Zorro vs. Serenity

Well, as you know there are only three things to do in this town. Go to Wal-mart, watch stop-lights change colors, and go to the movie theater. I don't know about you, but personally, I prefer watching movies to watching stop-lights. As does the rest of the family, so consequently we go to see a lot of movies. In case you didn't know already, the theater here only has two screens, and the movies come into town quite a long time after they've been released everywhere else in the world. So last week we trooped out to go see Serenity, and this last weekend we saw Zorro II. What a contrast, lemme tell ya!
On the one hand, Serenity was amazing! Pretty good special effects, a pretty original plot, good acting, some cool fight scenes, and this really funny guy named Jayne who has the hilariousest lines!
On the other hand we have Zorro II, the needlessly resurrected movie with Antonia Banderas (+) and Catherine Zeta-Jones (-). There seems to be a recent trend in movies to have the Americans be the amazing, wonderful, sovereign people who just want to help everyone else, and the evil European group/guild/league/club who wants to blow up, destroy, ruin, steal from, etc America. Take National Treasure, Batman, and this movie, Zorro II, for example (Not to mention an annoying number of Two Movies; Zorro II, Shrek 2, The Mask II, Ocean's 12, Italian Job II is coming out, along with a number of others. Can't they come up with something new?). Zorro II, The Legend of Zorro, is about Zorro helping the Mexican people to become Americans, which has always been their life-long dream. Riiight. That's just plain stupid. They're trying to make out like the Mexicans actually wanted to become Americans instead of us forcing them to. So in that area, it's off historically, not to mention that they go on and on about the Confederacy and the Confederates 11 years before the Civil War. The brick wall in the middle of nowhere was also very convenient for Zorro when there's a giant explosion. Zorro's son is also present in this movie, altho he doesn't know his father is actually Zorro. Who wants to be the next movie will be Son of Zorro? Okay, enough about Zorro. It was cheesy, ridiculous, had some funny parts, and the horse was cool, but as a whole, I didn't like it too much. Let's go back to the first hand. Serenity.
Serenity is about this girl named River who's a psychic, mentally unstable, seriously cool karate girl who is being sheltered by the ship Serenity's inhabitants, a group of smugglers. Mal (short for Malcolm, not Malerie. It took me a while to figure that one out), who is uncannily like Han Solo, and his colorful crew, have taken River Tam and her brother, Simon in, but they are ruthless pursued by the evil Empire-I mean Alliance. I said it was somewhat original. So Mal has to make a choice about whether or not to continue protecting them, or for the sake of practical self-preservation, to dump them. Plenty of action, and shoot-em-up scenes, and River has two very cool fight scenes where she fights like, a bazillion guys all at once. I looked the actress who play River up on IMDB, and I found out she's a ballerina, which explains all the cool moves and the incredible amount of grace and agility. Summer Glau, the girl who plays River, did an uncannily good job at playing a psycho person. The Reavers were..umm...weird and sick and gross and that's all I'm going to say about them. Moving on...I liked the twist at the end, I wasn't expecting it. I love movies with unexpected twists. And the jump scenes! Hoo boy, the JUMP SCENES! They were amazing! I wasn't expecting any of them! Anyway, as a whole, I enjoyed Serenity very much. It was entertaining, funny, and the director kept the plot moving. Of course it can't measure up to movies like Lord of the Rings or War of the Worlds, but then again, no movie ever could-to me at least. The verdict on a scale from 1 to 5 with 5 being high:

Serenity: 4
Zorro: 2

Your ever-the-movie-critic blogger,

Katy

The Funny Cat Video

Check out this hilarious video at themooseisloose.net!

Click here to watch video

My personal fav. episode is the toddler and the cat, altho the cat squeezing under the door is pretty amazing. : )

your cat-loving blogger who loves to laugh,

Katy

Niagra Falls

The day that the Falls actually went dry.

If you happen to be one of those people planning a trip to Niagara Falls for your honeymoon, vacation, or whatever, you better hope that the falls actually has water going over it.
After all, a dry falls is nothing more than a big rock cliff and we all know that there is nothing special about this.
If you have never been to Niagara Falls, then you are missing quite a sight. It is almost impossible to describe its force, fury, and unparalleled beauty.
Prior to diversion of some of its water to the great hydroelectric plants located on the Niagara River, it was estimated that approximately 93,000,000 gallons of water dropped some 190 feet over its edge every minute. Not exactly your typical home shower.
Perhaps you have heard about the time that the United States Army Corps of Engineers shut off the American Falls by placing a dam across part of the river way back in 1969. However, this did not shut the falls off totally - the water was diverted to the Horseshoe Falls and the power plants.
I'm talking about the strange series of events that took place on March 29, 1848 - the day the falls went totally dry - and there wasn't even a drought.
So what happened? Here's the scoop:
It seems that on this typical day, residents were awakened by a very strange silence - the lack of water flowing over the falls. It's kind of like living under the elevated trains in New York City - after a while you don't even notice the noise. But when it's not there you experience an unexplained strange feeling.
Hundreds of people came out of their homes to see what had happened - the falls had gone to a small trickle. It had been running at normal levels when they went to sleep.
No one was quite sure what happened. After all, you couldn't get into an airplane to see what happened up stream. There were no phones to call others. And, of course, they didn't have the luxury of television and radio.
In other words, people were clueless as to what happened.
Many assumed that this was the end of the Earth - the day that many religions had warned about. They filled the churches in the area and surely prayed for everything to turn out fine.
Others decided to earn some money. Since this was the first time that the river bed had actually been exposed, souvenir hunters decided to do some hunting. They examined the river floor and found lots of junk - mainly old guns and rusted artifacts. One enterprising man hauled logs out of the river - after all, this is easier than actually chopping the trees down (no chain saws in these times).
So what caused this to happen?
It seems that the wind had been blowing very strongly that day, causing the water level in the river to drop. At the same time, an ice block occurred at the entrance to the Niagara River at the point where it drains from Lake Erie.
The result was the dry falls that everyone woke up to.
The ice jam lasted for 30 hours and by April 1st the falls had returned to normal.
I guess it was nature's way of playing an April Fools joke on the residents of Niagara Falls.

This story from Steve Silverman's book, Lindbergh's Artificial Heart was used with his permission.

Did You Know?

Here are some pretty interesting facts that I found at a site called StrangeFacts.com to go there, click here.

• Should there be a crash, Prince Charles and Prince William never travel on the same airplane as a precaution
• Your body is creating and killing 15 million red blood cells per second
• When glass breaks, the cracks move faster than 3,000 miles per hour. To photograph the event, a camera must shoot at a millionth of a second
• A lightning bolt generates temperatures five times hotter than those found at the sun's surface
• The two-foot long bird called a Kea that lives in New Zealand likes to eat the strips of rubber around car windows
• Most lipsticks contains fish scales
• Over 2500 left handed people a year are killed from using products made for right handed people
• The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is "uncopyrightable"
• A hippo can open its mouth wide enough to fit a 4 foot tall child inside
• A quarter has 119 grooves on its edge, a dime has one less groove
• you're born with 300 bones, but when you get to be an adult, you only have 206
• In Natoma, Kansas, it's illegal to throw knives at men wearing striped suits

Missing Washington

Well folks, there's nothing much to report. I've just been doing school, three classes at the high school and the rest at home, I've been going to a different church each week, seeing a movie once in a while, eating sleeping, doing homework, helping out at my dad's office sometimes, writing, trying to keep in touch with friends, talking with Lace, emailing people, I installed messenger on my computer and had an IM conversation with Ashley, and that was fun. Just living life I guess. I'm bored. insanely so. Back in WA there wasn't anything to do in Lake Stevens either, but I had friends to talk to, and I had church to look forward to, and HomeLink to go to, and I was involved in different things that kept me busy. Here, it's hard to keep busy because everything is different. I'm not involved in any group or club or church, not even in my school really, because I'm just a part-time student. Public school has been pretty hard, because I don't know the routine, the patterns of public school, let alone high school. So I missed picture day, and I accidently missed English because I didn't know some details about block day, and I'm always missing important announcements because the school apparently doesn't send letters to inform people of important days, they announce it over the PA system...when I'm not there. A couple of my Vocab assignments for English have been turned in late because I was absent from school and there wasn an announcement that no one told me about. I took the PSAT on the 12th, and guess what? That just happens to be the day that all of my teachers give important homework that I know nothing about until it's too late. My dad wants me to take a full load this next semester, but I don't think I'm ready for that. I have enough problems keeping track of two out of my three classes, I don't need another three or four piled on top of that. Plus if he wants me to take on a full load it means that I have to take health and PE, which would suck.
On a different subject entirely...I have this picture that I took off my back deck in WA of Mt. Pilchuck and this gray cloudy sky up above and evergreen trees in the foreground. I miss that kind of a scene. The mountains aren't blue here like they should be, they're an unnatural, dead, brown color. It isn't only the flowers that wilt here. The trees wilt too. The birch trees here look like willow trees with their branches dragging on the ground, their leaves yellow. Of course down here everyone's got a sprinkler system, but the stark green grass stands out grotesquely from the rest of the surroundings. My parents just love it here, and I suppose I'm glad for them, but I miss the gray, Washington sky, I miss smelling that wonderful smell of wet earth right after a shower. I love knowing when it's going to snow because I can smell the snow in the air. I love the evergreen trees with their spikey needles. I love the pungent smell of evergreen when you walk through the woods. I don't mind sap on my hands, it's got a woody smell too. The blue mountains, the pink skies, there aren't ever pink sunsets here, only firey orange and red ones. I especially miss the mountains, far away, a safe wall barring anything evil. The snow on top, I love the taste of fresh, clean snow. You have to make sure that when you eat snow it doesn't have any gross stuff in it, so you have to carefully skim off the top layer of snow, and that first taste of freezing cold snow burns your tongue, and you smile from the ecstasy. I miss Starbucks, I miss Safeway, and Haggens, I miss my bank, I miss not having casinos and slot machines everywhere. I miss the clean air, unpolluted by people smoking their cigarettes, I miss the Viking Drive-In and HomeLink, I miss my library, small through it was, I miss being able to get on the internet and order all the books I ever wanted. I miss all the little things that defined my home. I like writing these descriptions of my home, because they help me remember. I can close my eyes and see the scene I'm trying to paint for you. A few eeks ago in church they were playing "Blessed Be Your Name", a song that we always used to sing at SPCC, and I closed my eyes, and I could see Taylor, in my mind's eye, playing his guitar, and Pete on piano, and I could hear my friends next to me singing, and then the song ended and I opened my eyes to...disappointment for lack of a better word. Winnemucca, an unfamiliar church with unfamiliar people, an unfamiliar life.
Well after this long description and pity party, you might be guessing that I'm missing Washington right now. You'd be right.

The U.S. Camel Corps

Something seems just a little out of place here...

It’s hard to imagine the old west without images of the classic cowboy riding his horse off into the sunset. Yet, if things had gone differently, those old western movies would have had John Wayne riding into town on his camel. When the Lone Ranger was blurting out, “Hi-Yo Silver, away!”, he would have been referring to his two-humped friend. And Roy Rogers would have had a dromedary named Trigger.
To see what I am talking about, we must set our timepieces back to the first part of the nineteenth century. At this time, the United States was undergoing a great expansion in size and most of the land that it obtained in the southwest was desert. It was not a place for man, horses, or mules. Lack of water meant lack of life. Yet, the United States government was determined to explore this territory.
In 1836, Major George H. Crosman felt that he had the perfect solution. He proposed that the U.S. government purchase a bunch of camels. After all, what other animal was better suited for desert conditions? He was certain that this was the answer to their problem. Yet, like all good ideas, it fell on deaf ears. That was until Jefferson Davis, who was a Mississippi senator at the time, was told about the camel scheme. He regularly suggested the importation of camels to anyone that would listen, but, again, the idea went nowhere.
The tide began to change in 1852 when Davis was appointed as Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce. Now he was in the position to recommend the purchase of the camels. It took him another three years, but eventually Davis got the idea approved. On March 3, 1855, the Congress appropriated $30,000 “to be expended under the direction of the War Department in the purchase and importation of camels and dromedaries to be employed for military purposes.” The U.S. Camel Corps was now officially in existence.
Now it was time to get some camels. There were none to be found in the United States, so Major Henry C. Wayne and Lieutenant David D. Porter were sent aboard the Navy ship Supply to the eastern Mediterranean to purchase some. Their knowledge of camels was minimal at best, so their first purchases were poor ones. Once they learned the ropes, they were able to obtain thirty-three of the animals at an average cost of $250 each. The camels were boarded on the ship for their three-month voyage across the sea.
From the moment the camels got on the ship, it was obvious that this plan was headed for failure. Knowing little about the care of camels, Wayne and Porter hired six Arabs and one Turk to make the journey to the United States. Just being born in one of these countries, however, does not make you a camel expert. Like the Americans sent to get the camels, these guys basically knew nothing. The Turkish man, who was hired as the veterinarian, had one treatment for everything that ailed these animals: he tickled their noses with a chameleon tail. Clearly, he was well studied in veterinary medicine!
The ship finally arrived in Indianola, Texas on May 14, 1856. One camel had died on the journey but two were born along the way, so the team was ahead by one. Within minutes of unloading, however, there were problems. First, just the sight of camel made the horses and mules go berserk. Second, they smelled really, really bad and no one wanted to deal with them.
After some fattening up, the camel team was placed at Camp Verde (near San Antonio, Texas) under the command of Lieutenant Edward F. Beale. We can be pretty certain that Beale, who had enlisted in the U.S. Navy at the age of fourteen, never dreamed he would be asked to lead a pack of dirty, smelly Army camels across the desert. Beale’s mission was quite clear. He was to survey a route from Fort Defiance in New Mexico to eastern California along a trail that would someday become the western portion of that road where you could get your kicks… on Route 66. Clearly, this involved the crossing of a lot of desert terrain. This sounds like a job for… Underdog! No, wait a second. He would die of thirst also. No, this sounds like a job for the super camels!
And off they went. At first, the camels struggled to keep up with the horse and mule teams. They may not have needed as much water, but boy, were the camels slow! However, as in that classic race of the tortoise and the hare, you should always bet on the slow guy. After a few days, the camels adapted to their new environment and left the others in the dust.
When Beale completed his official report and submitted it to Congress, it was clear that the camel experiment was a great success. By this time, John B. Floyd had replaced Jefferson Davis as Secretary of War and made the recommendation to Congress to import one thousand more camels. It looked as if the western spotlight on the horse was about to fade into history.
Whoa! Not so fast! Hold your horses!
Making a recommendation is one thing. Actually getting the money to do it was another. You see, the United States had a big, big problem at the time. The country was on the verge of a Civil War and the last thing Congress needed to deal with was a herd of camels.
Just in case you didn’t know, there was a Civil War. The two sides fought and fought and the United States eventually agreed to be purchased by AOL/Time Warner. (Well, maybe not.) During the war, Camp Verde, which was still home to the camels that did not journey with Beale to California, fell under Confederate control and played absolutely no part in the war. The camels were treated very poorly, mainly because they were misunderstood. If there is one thing that a camel demands, it is R-E-S-P-E-C-T. The camels basically treat you the way you treat them. Hit them with a stick and they will spit on you. Kick them and they will kick you back. It was not unusual for a camel to “accidentally” get loose and have to fare for itself in the desert. As a result, the camels got the reputation of dirty, nasty, and uncooperative animals. Few people had any use for these beasts.
When the war was over, Congress no longer had any interest in the camels. The railroad was expanding west, providing a much better means of transportation. The remaining camels were all auctioned off to the highest bidder, although interest was minimal. Many of these same camels were occasionally seen roaming the vast American desert as late as the beginning of the twentieth century. Unfortunately, the hatred against them was very high and many ranchers used the camels for target practice.
One of the Arabs originally hired for taking care of the camels, a man named Hadji Ali, whose name was Americanized as Hi Jolly, tried for many years to convince others how useful the animals could be. But even he had no success and was forced to let his camels go. Today a monument stands in Arizona in tribute to Hi Jolly and the U.S. Camel Corps.
And so ends the grand camel experiment. It’s hard to imagine how a plan that was so right could end up going so wrong.

This story is from Steve Silverman's book, Lindbergh's Artificial Heart. It is used with his permission.

A Birthday and a House

Well two birthdays down, two to go plus Christmas! This is definitely the season of business (as in very busy), and also the season of presents and spending lots of money! : ) My birthday is done, and Moo's birthday is over, but my brother, Brad's, is just coming up on the 21st. That would be this Friday, and we're having a big barbeque for him and we're inviting lots of people. The BBQ isn't just for his birthday, but also to celebrate my dad finally moving into his new office (FINALLY!!!) and to thank Shelly and Carey for being so wonderful and helping us so much. AND it's also to celebrate us being basically completely unpacked (FINALLY again!). We finished the decor in the living room, and it looks great. The theme is brick red and creamy white. So the curtains are red plaid and there are some pictures on the wall with red highlights in them, and we got some brick red silk flowers for the mantle, and we put up our red sconces on either side of the fireplace-thanks Nancy! Anyway, it really looks complete, and now it's one of my favorite rooms of the house. Besides my own room and the rec room of course. I think that once we get everything set up in the rec room, it's gonna be awesome. It's sort of a Red Robin theme. You know, everything. One whole wall, though, is going to be just movie posters. So far we've got Elf and Star Wars, and since mom insisted, Casa Blanca. Hopefully we'll add LOTR, POTC, CATCF, maybe Gladiator, and Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. The piano is against one wall with our old, pine entertainment center that isn't being used for anything at the moment. The two piano and guitar chord posters are going to be hung above the piano. on the last wall there's a teeny mini bar, the stairs, and the new entertainment center. There's not much room on that wall, but above the sink there're some posters and liscense plates. If all goes as planned, we'll be adding to our giant collage on the walls indefinitely, but for now there's still a lot of wall showing through. So anyway, posters of all kinds and sizes, music, sports, random stuff, movies, the Beatles (of course-Peter lives here!)...it's gonna be awesome when it's finished (Or at least have some more posters up.) We've also got one corner dedicated to culture. All you adults out there should be happy that we kids aren't completely lost to pop culture. There Pete's mini painted surfboard from the DR, an Indian mat woven from reeds or something of the like, the Mexican sombrero is hung up and I think there're a couple other things too. Cool. Anyhow, I gotta get going!
hugs from me, your favorite blogger,

Katy

"Grey", a conversation with myself on the topic of tolerance

Todays world is just so...gray. Everyone expects everyone else to believe what they believe, or at least be "tolerant". The thing is, there's all kinds of stuff that we really shouldn't be "tolerant" about. What would happen if we all decided to be tolerant of everone else's beliefs and predujices. And I'm not just talking about religion here. What about the serial killers who believe that they're doing the world a favor by killing their victims? What about the people who think that by abusing their kids they're helping them to "be strong"? There are people out there who believe that cheating is okay; they think that it''s okay to lie or to go behind someone's back. Are we supposed to be tolerant of everything? Isnt intolerance what our country, America, is built on? We couldn't tolerate King George's intolerance! If it weren't for intolerance, the world would be nothing. Therewould be no laws, no boundaries, no protective barriers. The world as we know it wold crumble; her cities would be rasacked and destroyed, her people would flee to the hills, live in isolation, because of their overpowering fear of each other. What about the topic of religion? What about the jihadists who believe that to kill thousands of innocent people is a good thing to do? Should we be tolerant of them? I'd bet you that most of the people who say "Be tolerant" are just as UNtolerant of Arabs as the rest of us paranoid people. And yet we are intolerant of those who are intolerant themselves. What does that justify? If they are intolerant of us...Is tolerance a good thing or a bad thing? Can it be good in small measures? Is intolerance safer or better than tolerance? Should everything be relative? Should everyone be tolerant? What is the meaning of life? Is it 42? Why can't we all live in peace? Is this dream of harmony an impossible, unreachable goal? Can't we all just get along? Why not? Why do people ask so many questions? With so little evidence, how can someone say that the Darwinian theory of evolution is verifiable fact? Why is it that even with so much evidence, the Bible is regarded as a book of mere fairytales?
Doesn't all this complexity just make you wish that there was just a thick black line between what's good and bad?

Your soul-searching blogger who wishes everything was just a little simpler,

Katy

Booklist

Here's a list of books that I've read since the beginning of the school year (Aug. 29th):

• When the Legends Die........................Hal Borland
• Year of Wonders..................................Geraldine Brooks
• Eldest..................................................Christopher Paolini.
• Pendragon: The Merchant of Death....D.J. McHale
• Seven Daughters and Seven Sons........Barbara Cohen and Bahija Lovejoy
• Jackaroo..............................................Cynthia Voigt

NOW READING: Staggerford...........................Jon Hassler

The Man in the Iron Mask...Alexander Dumas

I'll be adding to this list throughout the year.