Memorial Day Thoughts

My first thought about today’s holiday honoring fallen American soldiers was not about their sacrifice, I’m sorry to say. Instead it was muted surprise that the date had advanced so far into 2014. Time flies when you aren’t having fun. Thoughts did turn toward the real meaning of the day, but more on that later in the post.

Yesterday was a rough day starting out with another minor emergency with my cancer stricken father. After the overnight feeding through his nasal tube, it stopped up completely for a good hour after finishing. I’m supposed to flush it with a 60ml syringe and it back blasted after 10-15ml of water. Second attempt blew open the secondary port on the tube. Talking to the nurse on duty, I was told to bring him in to the ER again within four hours of the failed flush.

There went plans to teach Sunday school at church and we ended up at Gundersen again. He had about 8 inches of tube coiled in his stomach, yet the end was in the right place in the small intestine. The nurse called from home had no problem flushing him and pulled the extra length out leaving the tube dangling quite a bit. That’s actually turning out to be handy in regards to flushes and feedings.

She also gave me smaller 20ml syringes that generate more pressure plus adaptors to get a more snug fit into the port. With that, we headed home and I collapsed in bed from total exhaustion.

When the same thing happened again this morning, I was not pleased. Multiple failed attempts to flush complete with water blasting out the secondary port had me stewing. This time I didn’t call in or take Dad to the ER, choosing to wait and see if things would change after an hour.

Turns out it took a little more than an hour, but I was finally able to flush the tube. Something odd is going on with it and it may be related to Dad sleeping on his back rather than at least 45 degrees upright like he should. As it is, my plans of going back to bed and getting some rest didn’t pan out this A.M. which means I get to inflict this post upon the virtual world.

Back to the title topic!

In the spirit of Memorial Day, I’m going to list the war films that I own that accurately depict the sacrifices of our service men. I recommend them to anyone who wants to understand the sacrifices made to protect our country and aid others.

In no particular order:

• Patton
• Tora, Tora, Tora
• Blackhawk Down
• Hamburger Hill
• The McConnell Story
• The Bridges at Toko-Ri

Three television series also make the cut:

• Victory at Sea
• Band of Brothers
• Dogfights.

I do own other war movies, but these are the realistic or factual ones. Sorry, I don’t think watching the superb Kelly’s Heroes qualifies as observing Memorial Day. It should be a day of sober remembrance, not just an excuse to cook outside with family and friends.

PARENTAL NOTE: Blackhawk Down, Hamburger Hill, and Band of Brothers are all R rated for good reasons and contain nudity, prolific profanity, and realistic gore. They are unflinching in showing the horror of combat and immoral behavior of soldiers.

Gamera the Giant Monster (1965) Review

Only one giant monster series managed to compete with Godzilla -- and it took a flying turtle to do the job. Done on the cheap amid a great deal of internal doubt about the project, Gamera spawned a franchise that lasted for years to the delight of many children. The American edits are the ones most have seen, but the original Japanese version turns out to be a slightly more serious film with Cold War themes. It also portrays the life of one very disturbed little boy. UPDATED with HD screen captures and Blu-ray details.

When Toho’s Godzilla series suffered a false start in the ‘50s, many a movie studio tried to horn in on the big monster action including Toho themselves with Rodan and Mothra. But it was not until the head of Daiei Studios saw a turtle shaped cloud while flying across the Pacific Ocean that the only true rival emerged. With none of the accomplished directors at the studio wanting to make the movie, it fell on struggling young Noriaki Yuasa to make the mad idea work. Equipped with a quiet agenda of his own, he led a production crew into uncharted waters for Daiei had never made a movie like this. Did he succeed? Oh, yeah he did -- and then some.

Thanks to Shout Factory, we finally can see what the Japanese audiences originally saw in a completely restored and remastered version. Please join me for a slightly less snarky review than that of the NTA version, Gammera the Invincible. If you want to see what professional mockery can do with the Sandy Frank version, check out my Gamera: MST3K review.

Gamera the Giant Monster starts with Soviet bombers flying over the Artic ice and a Japanese scientific expedition arriving at an Eskimo village. I may have missed it, but the reason to be there never seems to be fully explained. It is more important that our three main characters just happen to be there to witness events. They are Dr. Hidaka (Eiji Funakoshi), his assistant Kyoke Yamamoto (Harumi Kiritachi), and news photographer Aoyogi (Junichiro Yamashiko).

Buzzed by the Soviet bombers which look suspiciously like British V-bombers (specifically the Victor), Hidaka makes a comment about the Cold War going on. The fears and tensions of the not so hot clash between East and West forms the backdrop for the film, unlike Gojira where it was the simple reaction to the atomic bomb drops that ended World War II. Eleven years had gone by with new concerns replacing the old which is perfectly understandable given Japan’s geographic location. They were smack dab between the two superpowers of the Soviet Union and the United States of America.

Delays in Reviews

At least I got the Godzilla flicks promised earlier posted, though the bonus one was a bridge too far to complete. That’s my sole consolation because there is nothing in the pipeline due to how things have gone with my father’s health the last few weeks. His having taken up residence in the living room, I can’t evaluate any movies with 5.1 sound until he starts feeling better and can stay awake for two hours of film.

Note: A sure way to put him to sleep is to put on a movie. Only exception is if it is loud, which is a characteristic of most surround movies these days.

At the moment, I’m thinking of going to the older classics in my film library for material to review. Monaural sound is something I can do on the PC with headphones, ditto for stereo. There are a few older reviews that need rewriting and better screen captures, so maybe that will be a way to get some writing done.

It’s Always Something

“All in all, it was a good day.” – My father.

Yesterday turned into a minor crisis event when Dad’s feeding tube malfunctioned. First clue something wasn’t right was the slower than normal rate of liquid food being pumped into him with it taking an hour longer than usual. It was his vomiting up the horrible stuff that caused alarm, because it meant the tube might be in the stomach, not the small intestine. Flushing it resulted in water back blasting the syringe out of the adaptor on the tube which would indicate a blockage or crimp somewhere.

Phone calls to the oncology and nutritionist departments followed with the latter responding. Checking the tube for crimps discovered none and the recommendation was given to bring Dad into urgent care, which we discovered is a department of the emergency room. Before leaving, it checked the tube one last time since Dad was choking and gagging on it.

It wasn’t long before he was uncontrollably heaving and unable to catch a breath. One thing about emergencies that fascinates me is the time dilation effect experienced. Thoughts race at faster than normal speeds, at least for me, which leads to an increase in calculations – not to mention movements. Slipping on the last pair of vinyl gloves in the box we have, I carefully and very quickly pulled the tube out so Dad could travel while still breathing.

With that done and him no longer in distress, we headed for La Crosse and the ER. After a long wait, he was wheeled to the clinic building and the fluoroscopy unit to have a new NJ tube put in. After briefing the RNs involved, I went to the waiting area expecting it to be awhile due to difficulties involved the first time compounded by the possibility that the night’s feeding had ended up in the stomach.

Sure enough, it took a great deal of time and effort including pumping his stomach which was filled and unable to drain. But the new tube is in. We’ll be monitoring it closely since we suspect that if this happens again a surgically implanted one will be necessary. Last night’s feeding went well according to Dad and was the most restful one in days. We’ll be modifying his feeding routine to shorten it from being 12 hours straight at night. The new schedule will be 11PM to 7AM nominally, then noon to 4PM.

If you are wondering why my father said what he did at the beginning of the post, it has to do with the fact of how well he physically handled the day. While it was “a challenge,” he got outside under his own power and even burned trash. He was up and down going to his PC transplanted to the dining room as well. Energy and activity levels were up despite the major malfunction.

Silver linings, to be sure.

Second to Last

Normally the three words “second to last” has a negative connotation ameliorated to a mild mercy by simply not being “last.” Yet there are exceptions to that wretched feeling and that’s when the words are used to describe being near the end of a series of trials. That’s where Dad is after his second to last chemotherapy infusion yesterday.

Make no mistake about it, he’s still miserable and terribly, terribly weak. Side effects from antibiotics have made things even more challenging than before to the point of his discontinuing them two days before the end of the course. I’m not happy with that, but as he slowly gets stronger he gets harder to deal with. It’s ironic that when he’s at his lowest he’s the easiest to deal with when caring for him at home.

Some progress has been made in that he’s gained a couple of pounds despite the side effects, his white and red blood cell counts have improved into acceptable ranges, and he’s more ambulatory now. My father has walked to his appointments at the clinic rather than having to be wheeled everywhere like earlier in the month. After such a steep decline, any regaining of lost ground is most welcome.

Godzilla 2000 (1999) Review

Radioactive Rage Month continues with the movie that started the Millennium series of Godzilla films. After the disappointing American attempt at Japan’s iconic monster, Toho Studios decided to bring the big galoot back years ahead of schedule. The hastily put together result was a messy mash up of ideas from previous decades, special effects experimentation, and the occasional spectacular scene.

Toho originally planned to make a new Godzilla movie for the 50th anniversary of the character in 2004, leaving the franchise temporarily in Hollywood’s hands. Though profitable, 1998’s Godzilla was a large disappointment. Consequently,ideas for a trilogy were scrapped. A mere year after that turkey posing as a kaiju skittered onto the silver screen, the real Godzilla returned to fight another monster on Japanese soil.

This review covers the American edited and dubbed release, one of the very rare ones to hit theaters in the States. It only made $10 million in North America, so it was here and gone again in the blink of an eye. There were some good reasons for this…

Going Backwards

Update: 

Dad is home and we await results of a chest x-ray and the ultrasound. The EKG wasn't a perfect reading, but didn't reveal anything significant from what I can decode.

We're back to feeding at a lower rate per hour to see how that goes.

Then there was a big discovery once at home that I made. Tessalon Perle is the medication prescribed to quell the hiccups. On the prescription, it says to take 1/2 or 1 pills up to 3 a day as needed. Guess what pill should never, ever be cut or ground up?

The known side effects at WebMD and Wikipedia read like a check list of many of Dad's symptoms that currently prevent him from drinking or swallowing anything. So that one will be out of the rotation to see if certain condition improve -- especially since it has failed to suppress the hiccups the last few days.

As a side note, my father's voice is getting a little better and had been up until yesterday. After the transfusion, it seems to be slightly stronger. He's been anemic due to the chemo, so no wonder he's been weak.

Update 2:

X-ray results show the feeding tube is where it is supposed to be. Unfortunately, it also revealed a mild case of pneumonia. Going to have to pick up antibiotics tomorrow.

Original post:

Dad is in terrible shape and the scheduled chemotherapy has been canceled. That doesn't mean we are free from Gundersen Clinic today.  At the moment, my father is receiving a blood transfusion due to a low red blood cell count and a host of debilitating symptoms.

Prior to that an EKG and ultrasound tests of his heart were done to assess whether there is a problem there. Results are pending, so the waiting game has returned.

The deterioration has become alarming. Almost as alarming as Dad's appearance. Doctors, nurse, and staff who've seen him before get such a look on their faces -- I'd describe it as a mix of shock and dismay.

Between his appearance and the hiccup induced weird sounds he makes, he had the other cancer patients looking very uncomfortable in the waiting area. My father was probably a reminder of how bad things could get.

He's as weak as a newborn kitten and has to have help dressing himself. This is a radical downturn after a promising Tuesday where he overexerted himself. Not that he really did much, but going up and down the stairs was a bit too much. Yesterday I moved his PC downstairs to reduce temptation.

Though last night's feeding through the tube failed at the halfway point, we will continue the regimen. No choice in the matter since he's become unable to orally ingest anything without choking. Everything is like pulling teeth, it seems.

Somehow I've managed to keep from falling apart health wise. The last two weeks have been brutal and flirtations with lower respiratory problems have shut me down at times. Since Dad has become such a handful, the realization that there can be no more time or efforts devoted to my health or interests has become something that cannot be ignored.

Last night illustrated that when I played a video game and couldn't figure out why my father was trying to slam shut the bathroom door repeatedly. Because his behavior has been erratic, my assumption was that he was having trouble with the humidity swollen door.

Then he showed up at the doorway to my room trying to shout with his fried vocal chords. He'd somehow managed to unplug the pump from the feeding tube and had been trying to signal me for help. Apparently part of it involved thumping SOS in Morse code.

So no more gaming, watching movies, or listening to music will be possible until he gets much stronger. If he does, the latest setbacks make me think that end game preparations need to begin in earnest. No matter what the outcome, contingency plans need to be made.

More later as the situation develops.

Just What I Wanted: More Spam

While the blog hasn’t been hammered with referral spam recently, there have been a few drive byes. Also in the mix was an attempt at comment spam that shows how the Web 2.0 emphasis on social media makes it easy to establish a false identity on the Internet, thereby lending an appearance of credibility to a post.

Remember not to click on suspicious links, folks. Leave that to crazy people like me who use layers of security and virtualized computers to poke cyber hornet nests.

First up is from Russia, without love:

Trust Combat’s spam came in as http: // www . trustcombat . com / faq . htm and appears to be an SEO (search engine optimization) outfit wanting money to help boost your web page ranking. They want to help you so badly that they accept Bitcoin, Litecoin, Nextcoin, Primecoin, and Paypal for payment. Links to proxy services are also found on the site.

UPDATED: Taking advantage of Blogger’s ease of setting up blogs to fake a legitimate presence is nothing new. What’s new is trustcombat . blogspot. com showing up in my referral data, complete with a Google Plus account. Tips and tricks for link building and creating a fake social media presence along with every single link going back to trustcombat . com fill the page.

I’d steer away from them, nothing good would come of doing business with what looks to be a fly by night operation. While neat and tidy, this is a barebones site that probably was set up in an hour or so of work. Avoid clicking on this link if it shows up on your Blogger stats.

Pumped Up

Normally being pumped up is considered a good thing. However, when you have to have your food pumped into you it isn’t an ecstatic mood that is felt. After many delays, clerical errors, and suffering, my father is finally hooked up to a feeding tube and pump here at home. Osmolite 1.5 Cal is the liquid food of choice. Good thing it is bypassing the tastebuds and even better thing that I had already eaten before opening the cans.

First feeding is 16 hours overnight, not counting any breaks. Since he’s far too weak to set up, maintain, or flush the tube, I’m going to have to keep an even more constant eye on him. If things go well for the first two hours, I’ll sneak out to buy some cat food at Kwik Trip.

Now that the regime is laid out, I’m wondering how anything is going to get done outside of the house. Up to 18 hours of feeding a day is on the schedule for the first week! Much of this is due to slowly ramping up the milliliters per hour rate to something faster. If not done, the body may not handle the fluids well.

I’m going to have to check with friends to find a urinal, there’s no way he’s wheeling the pump all the way to the bathroom or disconnecting from it himself. This house is not designed with invalids in mind, having been built in the 1800s. The last two days have been exhausting in every way possible, but I hope that he can gain some strength now.

Right now he looks like an animate cadaver. This all took way too long from the last ER visit thanks to the ridiculous hoops that have to be jumped through to meet rules and regulations. Dad is so weak now that I wonder if he’ll ever recover.

However, I have seen seeing starving animals make a turnaround into bright eyed critters. I can only hope and pray that this will be the case here.

A Multicourse Meal of Spam

Though Google and Microsoft have made targeting spammers world wide a priority the last couple of years, the spam still keeps coming. That’s true for referral spam targeting blogs especially Blogger and Wordpress hosted ones. Clearing out my back log of more than questionable referrals highlights the wide variety of spam out there.

Remember folks to never click on strange or suspicious links in your referrals – or anywhere else for that matter. Leave it to people crazy or secured enough to investigate the trash that gets past the junk filters.

As an appetizer, I present a tastefully designed site, http : // hand-made-soaps . com / homemade-lotion-recipes /, that offers recipes and tip on making your own soaps. This is not something normally associated with spammers, since they tend to be a dirty lot who don’t get out of their small apartments very often. Looks bland enough, but it hides a potent kick.

Iconic Spam

Remember when making icons for apps was all the rage? You don’t?! Well, a flood of referral spam to my Blogger site has filled me with nostalgia for the Windows 3.1 era of the early 1990s. All of the following spam traces back to Aha-soft in Canada as the screen captures will show.

Remember never to click on strange referral links showing up on Blogger stats. Leave that to crazy people like me armored up with security, virtual PCs, and anonymous web browsing capabilities.

The spam deluge began with http: // www . badaicons . com/ which leads to a page selling icons for Samsung smartphone apps. Clearly this is aimed at developers creating apps rather than end users.

Digging deeper into the links, it turns out the pages are part of a larger site, www . aha-soft . com, with redirects galore from their many domain names. They appear to be a real company out of Vancouver, Canada selling royalty free icon libraries plus software to view and create them.

Tube

Having finished yet another consult with a different specialist, a plan is in place to insert a feeding tube into my father. An attempt will be made to run one down through his nose and if that fails a surgically implanted one will be required. Anything more drastic will have to wait until chemo is long over with.

In the meantime, we are sitting at a small waiting area across from the department's check out desk. A mistake in the computerized order form means it has to be resubmitted just to get another consulting appointment schedule.

Remember when computers were supposed to make everything happen faster?

That question probably dates me, doesn't it?

I'd throw a third question in here, but progress is being made on the scheduling. That ruins my riffing for now. Thursday morning the tube down the nose will be tried, so only two days from now.

Printout time.

Waiting

It is a dreary Sabbath day with gray skies and the promise of rain returning as I type this post. Dad hit rock bottom in a sudden turn on Friday that led to another visit to the emergency room on Saturday for a bag of saline to deal with dehydration. With the full liquid diet becoming unbearable to him due to no appetite or will power, a feeding tube will need to be surgically inserted some time this week. Monday is the day we’ll know when.

Malnutrition is causing problems, ranging from swollen feet to an inability to keep warm. We were fortunate that the oncology specialist handling my father’s case happened to be on call this weekend and the doctor on duty ran into him. Since the endoscopy results show the cancer completely gone, the remaining two chemotherapy sessions may be halved in dosage or even dispensed with. Prednisone will be removed from the RCHOP no matter what is decided.

Fiddling About the Edges

When one has a chronic illness, especially something that saps all energy like CFS, they need to find small things to do to keep from going stir crazy. For me, that's usually playing video games. What to do when even that is hard?

Well, I'm tweaking old review posts in an effort to clean up the formatting and tell search engines not to follow internal links. A small experiment at having an automated list making widget back on the blog produced the results I expected, that being a drop in search engine presence. Google may claim that the nofollow attribute is only needed in some cases, but it looks to me that they punish internal linking far more than they say.

I'd toyed with changing the links for some time so this was simply a tedious endeavor requiring time and no creativity. Something that requires no brain cells firing? Perfect for how I feel at the moment!

Well, that and dish washing which is weeks worth now. But that takes more energy. Like Pa Kettle, I'll get around to it one of these days.

Notes for the next review are nearly complete, so I'm on schedule there despite all the interruptions, crises, and exhaustion. Still need to do more work on the Sunday school lesson coming up in several days.

Life goes on.

Time Isn't Flying

Once again a long day at Gundersen has begun, with an endoscopy about to be performed on my father. Like all things medical, preparation and paperwork take up hours before the main event. These days, I've come to believe this is more draining than the more dramatic events.

After the procedure is over, we'll have a much clearer picture of what needs to be done to get his stomach functioning correctly again. An update to this post will cover the results of the exploration.

UPDATE: While final results and analysis have yet to be given, the pictures indicate that the opening of the stomach into the small intestine is tiny. Once again it was impossible to pass through it for a deeper look, this time due to the opening being far too rigid to pass anything by. This would fit with the scar tissue theory.

Biopsy samples were taken for CMV culturing. Initial suggestion is a feeding tube inserted into the small intestine, but Dad wants to continue trying the full liquid diet. Hopefully more will be decided once all the data is in.

The last few days have been particularly hard due to the ongoing nutritional issues and growing difficulties with Dad's behavior. Irrational outbursts and fuzzy reasoning has made him a handful to deal with. I'm being run into the ground in the process.

Side effect of medication mixed with poor sleep and no real food is not a good combination. I suspect many a family member or caretaker have gone through this hidden cost of cancer. Severe illness affects far more people than just the one struck ill.

In the end, all you can do is endure and try to help. The hardest part is learning when the loved one is not fully in control of their faculties. They certainly aren't able to tell themselves, so conflict is guaranteed.

So much forgiveness is required. Patience will get exhausted eventually, so forget about relying on that exclusively to get through things.

Godzilla (1998) Review

Radioactive Rage Month continues with the most controversial incarnation of Godzilla. When popcorn movie makers Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin got their hands on the first American attempt at the world’s most famous giant lizard, a disaster of epic proportions unfolded much to the horror of onlookers. By that, I mean the audience, not the characters in the story.

DISCLAIMER: Due to repeated viewings of the subject matter, the author of this review may have suffered permanent brain damage and cannot be held accountable for any ranting, denials of reality, or other acts of insanity that follow.

The horror… the horror…

With the winding up of the Heisei era series of Godzilla films, Toho Studios licensed out the big green ‘G’ to star in a big budget Hollywood version. Multiple directors bailed on the project due to the constraint of keeping the budget to $100,000,000. Eventually Roland Emmerich (Universal Soldier, Independence Day, Stargate) agreed to make the movie for that amount as long as he was allowed to do whatever he wanted. Tristar agreed to the terms and production began.

This is what is commonly referred to as “a mistake.”

Heavily hyped to the public, high expectations were generated after the smash hit Jurassic Park proved that large lizards could be made to look both realistic and terrifying thanks to advances in computer generated (CG) effects. I remember it well, for speculation on message boards was rampant thanks to the rise of the Internet. Secrecy was maintained well during production and what little info leaked slowly began to worry long time Godzilla buffs.

We weren’t alarmed enough, it turned out. Time to gird my loins, abandon my sanity, and write this review.

The horror… the horror…

April Snow

Looking out the window this morning brought an unwelcome sight – almost two inches of snow. Tufts of greening grass poke out of the unwanted frozen H2O lit by the glare from a gray sky. This is not the spring renewal I ordered. Unfortunately, there is a no refund policy when it comes to weather.

So far the Easter season hasn’t gotten off to a positive start, what with Russian militia types shooting people in eastern Ukraine and a white supremacist (neo-Nazi) murdering people at two Jewish community centers in Kansas City yesterday. Both are fulfillments of aggression I’ve watched build up on the Net for some time.

The latter bothers me the most, probably due to the proximity of Passover. Lately I’ve seen an escalation of Jew bashing amongst the thirty and under set online that has grown out of control. A lot of it came out of the OWS rhetoric that went mainstream blaming all the financial woes on Jewish bankers. Sound familiar? It should if you know the history of the 1920s and ‘30s.

The biggest red flag has been seeing caricatures of Jews being posted on message boards that looks straight out of Nazi and Muslim propaganda. These aren’t boards devoted to politics or religion, but entertainment. It tells me that hatred and dehumanizing of Jews has begun in earnest again.

Dad is miserable and becoming a cantankerous handful to deal with due to it. He’s even skipping medications when he feels he can’t drink enough food to allow them to be ingested. To say this isn’t good is an understatement, but there is nothing that can be done about it since reason is not accepted by him.

My health hasn’t been great the past week, even by my lowly standards. Returning cold temperatures the last few days has been a trial for us both. Damaging the ability to sleep does is not conducive to healing rest.

I’ve also taken brain damage from watching the first all American attempt at Godzilla from 1998. While taking notes I could feel my IQ lowering by the minute and if I’m lucky it only dropped to double digits. Because I have to take screen captures and listen to the commentary track, the odds of becoming a drooling idiot by the end of the day are rather high.

On with the dreary day…

Easter 2014

Easter arrived here with storms and gloom preparing the way for Palm Sunday. The weather wrought pain throughout my body making a restful night impossible. So no church today. Is it any wonder that I feel some sympathy, perhaps even empathy for Jesus Christ today?

The hurt doesn’t even begin to match what He went through, yet it does focus my thoughts on the events that happened nearly two thousand years ago in a less clinical way than usual. There has been a running thread of sympathy for Satan in popular culture ranging from Milton’s Paradise Lost to the Rolling Stones Sympathy for the Devil. Where is the sympathy for Jesus, I wonder?

For all its inaccuracy, gore and blood fetishism, The Passion of the Christ did attempt just that ten years ago and became a phenomenon as a result. But that was a unique occurrence that came out of an independent movement outside of the media mainstream and is not likely to be repeated. The chosen few who rule the culture have no interest in morals, commandments, and redemption. Religion is something to me mocked and suppressed at all turns now.

Getting back to Easter, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has an interesting page up on the meaning of Easter. I like how it is presented and think it well represents the fundamental rule of missionary work, which is to keep things uncomplicated, accurate, and loving. You won’t find fire and brimstone there for Christ’s mission was one of salvation, not damnation.

The live chat questions from that page are something I’d like to answer in this post, since they are rather good queries.

Gojira (1984) Review

aka The Return of Godzilla aka Godzilla 1985

Radioactive Rampage Month continues with Godzilla’s come back film from the 1980s. Ditching the continuity of all the previous films except the original 1954 classic, this movie featured much ballyhooed new technology and a more serious take marked a new beginning for the franchise. Introducing a bigger, badder, and more feral incarnation of giant lizard, it was a marked departure from the kids films of the 1970s.

When 1975’s Terror of MechaGodzilla performed badly at the box office, it marked the end of two decades of Godzilla flicks. Toho Studios shelved the franchise and years went by until a resurgence in domestic interest in the radioactive kaiju prompted them to develop a new film. Oh there had been proposals and treatments created in the interim, but being in the business of making money the execs wanted to make sure there would be an audience.

Taking advantage of the fading memories of the last film meant they could now move in a new direction with a starting point from the first film. What they came up with was a direct sequel to the 1954 movie and far more serious than the aliens invading using large monsters storyline rut of the ‘70s. However, elements of the prior silliness are still present in this overly verbose story filled with Cold War paranoia.

This review is of the original Japanese version. I’ve never seen the American cut with Raymond Burr and am forced to wonder whether or not his pipe co-starred with him again like in Godzilla, King of the Monsters.

Roundabout

Besides being the title to a great Yes tune, the word “roundabout” describes those dreadful circular traffic intersections urban planners are in love with. For those lucky individuals who have not had to deal with one, the idea is that a series of exits are provided on a one way circle that you go round and round about. Supposedly this is more efficient and safe than regular on and off ramps, but get trapped in one heavy traffic on one…

Well, that’s what it feels like dealing with my father’s condition. Still losing weight on the full liquid diet (no solids at all), he is now scheduled for another endoscopy to see why nothing is improving in his stomach. That will be two weeks from now, so the agenda is to somehow increase his caloric intake and weight. So far that has not worked out.

Possibilities for dealing with his stomach range from using a stint or a balloon to widen the opening to the duodenum to a permanent feeding tube inserted into the small intestine. Possibilities, since they need to see what’s going on down there via a camera. Not fun to contemplate, though.

The cycle of appointments, blood drawings, and bills continues to around and around with an exit nowhere in sight. Next week is another chemotherapy infusion session and I can only pray it doesn’t hit him as hard as the last two.

Dad shaved most of the scraggly remains of his beard off, so his chin is now visible for the first time in over three decades. That is going to take some time to get used to, I must say. Adding to the changed appearance is his being down to 123 lbs. He’s becoming terribly skeletal.

Last night we went to the local movie theater in Spring Grove to watch Captain America: The Winter Soldier. It turned out to easily be the best of the Marvel super hero movies and quite a thriller. Good character development, acting, political commentary, and action put it close to a Chris Nolan Batman film in quality. Well worth checking out for those who haven’t seen it yet.

It was also a decent distraction for Dad, stopping his hiccups for awhile on a very bad day for them. That and all the running around today for appointments, groceries, and wood pellets has worn us both out. Now to get through the rest of the week.

King Kong vs. Godzilla (1963) Review

Radioactive Rage month begins with the one and only clash between cinemas two biggest stars. When bad driving releases Godzilla from an icy tomb, the only weapon that can stop him is the mighty King Kong! But can Japan survive the clash of two titanic monsters? More importantly, who will win the fight in this wildly uneven movie?

The 1960s had arrived and both King Kong and Godzilla were unemployed after a mere two feature films each. Neither had appeared in a widescreen or color movie thanks to disappointing and rushed sequels to smash hit debuts. In what is an eternity for a film franchise, the last appearance for each had been 1933 and 1955, respectively.

So when an American producer shopped an idea around for a new King Kong movie where he fights another giant, he was met by the sound of crickets chirping. However, Toho Studios decided to take on the project and work in Godzilla as the substitute villain for the piece. Returning to helm the film was Gojira director Ishiro Honda who had not been involved in the lackluster Godzilla Raids Again.

The end result was a monster romp of the likes that hadn’t been seen since the days of Universal’s teaming up of the Wolfman, Frankenstein’s Monster, and Dracula. Aimed squarely at being an action comedy rather than a horror film, it was nothing like its predecessors. However, a few moments of the old chills appear making it a transitory Godzilla film from serious horror science fiction to kids films.

Unfortunately, the original Japanese version is not available so this will be a review of the heavily edited American version just released on Blu-ray for the first time.

Radioactive Rage Month

To celebrate the upcoming new American Godzilla coming out in May, I’ll be writing as many Godzilla movie reviews as I can up to the release. Rather than tackling the entire series in order, I’ll be starting out with comeback movies by the big G. Over the past sixty years, the radioactive lizard has had more comebacks than Rocky Balboa as times have changed.

If I pull off all four reviews planned, I’ll see what else I can fit in. The four will be:

1. King Kong vs. Godzilla
2. The Return of Godzilla (aka Gojira aka Godzilla 1985)
3. Godzilla (1998 American)
4. Godzilla 2000

If you are a North American fan of the Godzilla, you should be aware that a slew of releases on Blu-ray are out or will be in May:

• King Kong vs. Godzilla
• Gozilla vs. Hedorah (aka vs. the Smog Monster)
• Godzilla vs. Gigan (aka Godzilla on Monster Island)
• Ebirah – Horror of the Deep (aka Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster)
• Godzilla vs. Destroyah/Godzilla vs. Megaguirus (Double Feature)
• Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah/Godzilla vs. Mothra (Double Feature)
• Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II/Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla (Double Feature)
• Godzilla: Final Wars/Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. (Double Feature)

Many of the Heisei era have never been released in widescreen or the original Japanese language versions over here, so it is a pretty big deal. Others have commanded premium prices due to the DVDs being out of production for a decade. Prices are around $13-15 each on Amazon and other e-tailers so it is quite the bargain.

Also coming out on Blu-ray to ride on G’s tail are King Kong Escapes and the original Gamera films, the latter in two volumes of four movies in their original Japanese cuts.

It’s a good time to be a kaiju fan!

Love and Honor (2006) Review

Veteran director Yoji Yamada’s final entry into his loose trilogy of films about the decline of the samurai way of life may have the least action, but is the best of the lot. A simple story of a young samurai tragically blinded and how it effects his marriage makes for a deeply emotional movie told with great sensitivity and beauty. Faced with adversity, he has to to choose between love and honor.

The mid to late 1800s in Japan was marked by the waning of the old feudal systems along with the associated samurai culture. Being a period of great turmoil affecting every level of society, the Bakumatsu transition to the Meiji Restoration is a fascinating time period in Japanese history and great fodder for movies. Domestic conflicts caused trouble within and interventions by foreign powers starting with Americans, then the English, French, and Dutch made it a time of violence and intrigue.

When Yamada decided to set his films Twilight Samurai, The Hidden Blade, and Love and Honor during this upheaval, he made the unusual choice of going small in scale rather than large. Adapted from novels by Shuhei Fujisawa, the stories featured intimate portraits of dissatisfied samurais breaking with tradition, or at least bending it nearly to that point, for the women they loved. It was a brilliant move that produced three incredible movies that rank with the best to ever come out of Japan.

Another Shooting at Fort Hood

History has a tendency to repeat itself, but this is only five years after Hassan went on his rampage. The new shooter has been identified as Ivan Lopez, age 34, a soldier. Take that with a grain of salt, it seems awfully early for identification even if the shooter is dead. Four dead and fourteen wounded as of the latest report.

It is stunning that security hasn’t been improved or that it simply doesn’t work. I imagine the victims were unarmed (soldiers aren’t allowed to carry arms on base, ironically) so they made for easy targets. Mass shooters don’t like to go up against anyone who can put up a fight and ultimately are cowards.

Doesn’t sound like terrorism like Hassan, but something personal.

My prayers and heart go out to the families and victims involved.

Raggedy Man

It has nearly been a week since my father’s third chemotherapy session and I wish I could report he is energetic. having been hospitalized for a week burned up what reserves he still had leaving him completely worn down. Hiccups returned after the session and he’s been fairly miserable since. Sleeping is erratic, and when combined with his refusal to deal with being ill, has caused him to really feel terrible the last few days.

Since his hair is slowly falling out, Dad has gotten very raggedy looking. Being unrested and grouchy (mainly to do with the full liquid diet) has made him look even worse. There’s no fooling people on how you are doing when the veins on your head look like the stand out several inches.

He’s going to have to accept his inability to do things or drive himself straight into the grave out of pure stubbornness. It has made me ponder the fact that stubbornness is just another name for stupidity. Rest is what he needs even if he doesn’t want to.

Meanwhile, I hit the wall last Thursday during the chemo and haven’t had energy to spare. I’m staggering through everything I have to do. That’s when I’m able to stagger at all – most of yesterday I spent in bed.

It isn’t uncommon for the mid to late cycles in cancer treatment to be the toughest periods for the patient, so this wasn’t unexpected. Expecting is far different from dealing with it once it arrives, though. Fortunately, this is a quiet week with few demands which means it is perfect for healing rest.

At least nothing exciting is going on.

Something Approaching Normalcy

With my father home from the hospital as of yesterday, my hope is that events will approximate what we normally go through, albeit with many concessions to his health problems. Due to the financial drain of the past week, we won’t be doing much unrelated to medical treatments. Scrounging up money for more wood pellets is something I’m attempting, but it will be ten days before more money comes my way.

Financial problems are far from uncommon when cancer strikes and I’ve always been very aware of the fund raisers done for people in the neighboring small towns. Often it is for people struck during the prime of their lives with families to provide for. So it could be far worse. I just hope that more people are aware of this being par for the course than not when they deal with cancer victims.

Sadly, awareness is not a trait associated with modern Westerners, though I often find myself suspecting it is simply human nature to be oblivious to what’s happening to others. Well, aside from salacious items that make fodder for gossip.

Since activity will be down, that means a chance to get this blog back to normal. One movie review needs to be finished, another has complete notes taken, and a third is partially noted. A small amount of referral spam has been recorded with an intent to investigate as well. Updates on my father’s battle with cancer will continue, hopefully with less drama.

The outer world is definitely seeing an increase in international drama with the return of the Cold War, airplane crashes, jet fighter shoot downs, and continuing economic woes. Therefore, I may end up posting on what’s going on if something really big happens…

…but I’d rather ignore the world for a week. Less stress equals better health, so a plan to bombard Dad with mass distraction is in the works. Time for nostalgia like the Emma Peel years of The Avengers plus family favorite movies of the past.

Hurry Up… and Wait

Probably the most aggravating thing about serious illness is the uncertainty involved. One finds themselves waiting for test results, the doctor to explain things, the medication to arrive, and a many other aspects of medical care. Making it worse is the tantalizing prospect of a solution, progress, or even hope of going home from the hospital.

The latter is the current situation. Step by step Dad has been slowly moved up to a liquids only diet with talk of being release this afternoon. However, low hemoglobin counts are making this iffier. Once again we have hurried up only to wait.

Yesterday was a day of cleaning here at the Boonedocks. The kitchen was focused on to sterilize anything that could contaminate food. Thanks to the help of the Koch family, this became possible without completely destroying my health in the process. That refrigerator alone was a thing of nightmares that I dare not recount in detail for fear of upsetting those of a sensitive temperament.

I still need to clean the microwave, I just realized. Ah well.

Last night was when I started to hit the wall and so careful attention to efforts exerted is in order. Getting an infection going would not be good for being around my father during this stage of the game. Between traveling to Gunderson, sporadic cleaning, and running errands there isn’t much left of me.

With luck, Dad will be brought home later today by my sister, which will save a lot of my meager funds for gasoline that have to somehow stretch to April 3rd when my next Social Security deposit arrives. Also of concern is keeping the house heated. Wood pellets aren’t cheap or plentiful while the LP tank is getting low. Meanwhile winter weather has returned and will be around through most of the coming week.

So please keep those prayers and wishes coming, we need them. Thank you to all who have been doing that and especially those who’ve helped out in person. It is all greatly appreciated.

Spinning Wheels

The results of the PET scan revealed my father’s lymphoma no longer can be found, which means the tumor is gone and cannot be blocking his stomach. So that’s great news. However, they doctors still don’t know why his digestive system isn’t moving things along.

Once again, it is a waiting game. I headed home to prepare the house in case he’s coming back today or tomorrow, but haven’t managed to get much done. Energy levels start out low for me and they are even lower now making everything difficult to do.

Heading home last night was a bad experience despite getting good news on the cancer part of my father’s woes. Out on Houston County 4, I noticed large amounts of deer in the fields due to the snow cover melting away. At night, I rarely exceed 45 mph because the large vermin are very active thanks to a huge population. It still didn’t keep me from hitting one.

Draining Times

As I start typing this post, my father is being bombarded by energy particles in a metal shell. The PET scan is to determine whether the tumor in his stomach has changed size one way or another. The hopes were that it would be mostly gone after the second round of chemotherapy.

Since nothing has been exiting his stomach in a downward direction, there are a lot of concerns at the moment. Doctors have been puzzling over the case and many a theory broached, yet this is the test that will shed the most light on just what is happening. Surgery may be required if the RCHOP regimen has failed.

Meanwhile, Dad is not looking good today. He's as gray as his hair due to a lack of sleep and dramatic loss of weight. Fortunately, my sister is here to assist in looking after him. My immune system has shown signs of wanting to go on strike, so I spent yesterday at home resting.

It has been especially difficult for my father the last 48 hours thanks to having a tube down his nose going to his stomach. Since nothing is making its way through his GI system, constant pumping of his stomach is required. This has been a miserable experience resulting in his not sleeping.

Hopefully they will give him something to knock him out tonight.

Back to the home front, the house needs cleaning and sterilizing -- no exaggeration. This morning the long process began and I hope to get more done so Dad can come home to a less infection causing environment. Cat litter boxes have been cleaned, initial stabs at saving vomit stained clothing and rugs tried, and most organic refuse disposed of. Next is cleaning out the refrigerator including a too old duck. The latter will have to be buried somewhere where the soil is sufficiently thawed.

All of this is presuming father will be coming home. The possibility he won't make it increases the longer things stretch on. That might upset some reading this, but being a true adult means facing reality head on preferably without flinching.

All will be dealt with as it comes, no matter how messy.

Dad has a large number of people praying for him and a top notch hospital taking care of him. That's something to be grateful for.

Emergency Room Blues

As I sit in the ER for the second time in two days, things are miserable for my father. Last night he ended up with 1.5 liters of fluids, an x-ray, and a new drug for the hiccups. It worked, but the vomiting continued and then things escalated by ten this morning.

While talking with my sister on the telephone, his speech began slurring and his words didn't make sense.

Another long drive to Gunderson with Dad reporting weird mental imagery and thoughts. Questioning revealed he'd taken the generic thorazine earlier on top of the baclofen he'd been given less than twelve hours before.

So while a stroke has to be ruled out, I can't help wondering if the menagery of drugs in his system are interacting in a negative way.

Right now, Dad is back from a CT scan and the investigation continues. EKG time. More to come later.

Later:
Tests show no signs of a stroke with the thorazin being the likely culprit for the disorientation, confusion, shortness of breath, and pounding heart episodes.

However, my father is still spitting up black material in his mucous. Yes, this is the messy side of reporting medical travails. Illness is an organic thing -- sometimes too organic. That mystery needs solving so that he can take in nourishment of some kind.

He'll be held overnight for observation.

I'd be ungrateful if I didn't mention the aid rendered by hospital workers of all stripes and by a friend who came over to give him a blessing. The help has been well appreciated.

Much later:
There are still no rooms available at the hospital and we are still in an ER exam room. Dad is doing better, but he's had no food or drink so we'll see what happens when that is allowed. At least he's catching up on missed sleep.

I wish I could say the same.

Time to recharge the Nook HD.

The Hard Part Has Arrived

Up until Thursday things had been going fairly well, if plagued by exhaustion after a wretched Tuesday where my father bit off more than he could chew on a service call. Moving to the full dosage for the second cycle of chemo meant it was time to start seeing side effects. Out of control acid reflux and hiccups arrived by the end of the week, making it nearly impossible for him to sleep. Yesterday it got worse, a lot worse.

One of the most common side effects of chemotherapy is nausea and vomiting. The latter hit my dad in escalating waves throughout the day with nothing staying down. Not familiar with being ill or with side effects, he’s flailed around blaming other things. Making things worse is that he never associated anti-nausea medication prescribed with the vomiting.

As in since he wasn’t feeling nauseous, he didn’t take the medicine.

Sigh. Between dealing with cluelessness and misery while unable to do anything about it, I’ve been extremely frustrated. At least the hiccups are now under control thanks to an emergency run to pick up a prescription of thorazine yesterday. Apparently it is used for that too, little did I know.

So I’m home, skipping church in order to keep an eye on him. He’s finally found some slumber which makes me hopeful he’ll get over this. Now to wait to see what happens.

One thing that worries me about my father is that he’s not gotten it into his head that he has to fight to win this battle. Instead, he’s been passive. That’s the wrong attitude for surviving any threat. Since I’ve had to fight to function to any degree my entire adult life, I lack empathy when it comes to dealing with non-warrior attitudes. This is something I need to work on.

Endurance Run

Time to report about how my father is doing and just a few minutes before this post was started I had to perform the Heimlich maneuver on him when a cyclovir pill tried to kill him. No, this isn’t an attempt to be humorous.

Fortunately for him, I was in the bathroom next to the kitchen when I heard him choking and found him doubled over. Concerned that his stomach might have perforated, I quickly ascertained that it was simple choking and asked him if he needed me to Heimlich him. A nod was all I needed and I very carefully made an escalating trio of attempts very conscious of the dangers of rupturing the cancer stricken stomach. The third time the pill popped out and he was able to breathe again.

After that, I made sure he was okay and that there was no pain in the abdomen. I’ll be checking periodically, but the force used was carefully measured so I don’t expect complications. Heck of a way to end the day, yet it is consistent with how difficult the entire week has been.

Bitter Cold, Low Blood, and the Beating of Drums

I’ve fallen behind in posting, so I’m throwing together a variety of subjects into this one to save time. Surviving winter has become a priority thanks to another bitter cold snap dubbed a “polar vortex” by the know nothing media. –35 below wind chills along with wood pellet supplies being depleted locally led us to purchasing corn to burn in the pellet stove. Figuring out the rate to feed the kernels to the fire pot has been difficult, but at least we have supplemental heat to offset the incredibly expensive LP gas during this latest cold snap.

Speaking of temperatures, Dad is doing well with the chemotherapy, but his white blood cell count is down so he’s having to monitor his temperature in case of fever. If he runs a high temperature he is to head straight for the emergency room. Other than that, he’s still running me ragged.

Going with the Flow

It has been one week since the initial round of chemotherapy for Dad and he’s survived it with no ill effects other than with my annoyance at how perky he’s been due to the Prednisone. For the moment he has more energy than I do despite the end of that particular course. We’ll see if that pattern holds up deeper into the treatment schedule.

While the battle with cancer continues, it is the siege by forces of winter that has occupied a great deal of our time, energy, and attention the last several days. Local wood pellet shortages combined with an aerial attack of snow resulted in our being forced to fortify our position. Hunkering down has nothing to do with problems getting the car up the driveway despite what the propaganda arm of the forces of tyrannical Jack Frost claim.

Timing

It is said that timing is everything and while I believe that saying has a great deal of truth to it, I’ve always felt that seizing opportunities is far more important. So its been with a little chagrin that I’ve looked back on the last few weeks. Of late, timing really has been everything.

Little did I know that starting a new daily approach to weight training back in December would be critical for me having enough capacity to help my father deal with cancer in February. While my energy levels are only slightly up, the gain in muscle strength makes simple things such as moving around dramatically easier. In essence, I’m able to do more with less.

This is a traditionally slow time of the year for appliance repair, so there is less demand for my father’s services. Yes, this hurts the bottom line when dealing with all the expenses mounting up. However, it means he’s able to take things slowly without feeling guilty about it.

On a less dramatic note, yesterday had a few pleasant surprises for us. Little things working out and even an unexpected bonus of sublime silliness via the Squid Girl OVA’s bundled with graphic novels in Japan suddenly showing up on Crunchyroll. There is nothing like the healing power of laughter in my opinion, thoracic wounds aside. Watching the two episodes made us wish a third season would be made or at least the second being released on DVD or Blu-ray in North America.

Even with timing working out the way it has, I’m not letting go of my faith in making the most of opportunities. Chemotherapy infusion is a long process taking hours, so my sister Ann Marie and I had time to kill. For her, it meant cramming an online course into her head in preparation of taking the Bar exam. In my case, it was a chance to experiment with video conversion the day before so that I could take notes on a movie.

So as the various chemicals dripped into Dad’s veins, I watched a movie on my Nook HD while wearing headphones. Balancing the tablet on one knee and the notebook on the other, I scribbled away with the occasional interruption. Handbrake’s ability to burn subtitles into the video frames themselves made this possible, so you can safely assume the next review is of a foreign film.Of course that only took up two hours or so. Dad read a book on the Cook County hospital and I made headway into To Kingdom Come, an account of the disastrous 1943 bombing raid on Stuttgart. Both books are guaranteed to make you angry at authority, so maybe they aren’t the best reading during a stressful time.

Still, it was not a brain dead room.

Later that night I hooked the Nook HD up to the motel room TV and streamed episodes of Arrow from Flixster to introduce Ann to the series. Worked great until we were bandwidth throttled into oblivion.

Speaking of timing, I need to finish three weeks of unwashed dishes, get a workout in, and start screen capturing. No doubt, something else will come up to interrupt it all…

One Down

The first chemotherapy infusion session was yesterday and five more remain over the next several months. I’ll be watching my father closely for problems and generally to keep him from misbehaving. Since sickness and medicine are new to him, it is more than a simple adjustment. Dad genuinely doesn’t have a clue when it comes to this sort of thing.

Starting out slowly is the adapted treatment method beginning with prednisone first and a reduced dosage of the rest of the RCHOP therapy I wrote about before. Best news was that Dad did so well tolerating the Rituximab that they were able to speed up the delivery allowing us an early escape. In a week or two we’ll be back to get blood work done to measure blood cell counts.

As usual, the staff at Gundersen were impressive. Informative, helpful, and attentive, they kept things going smoothly.

My sister is winging her way back home after an extended visit to accompany him through the opening stages of the treatment. She’s got enough on her plate without having to worry over this, but that cannot be avoided. It’ll be interesting to hear how her eighteen month old daughter handled the absence, what with their longest separation previously being around a day.

Desperately searching for transitions and finding none indicates how tired I am at the moment. Sleeping in a motel room for two nights straight while running around the labyrinthine clinic complex is draining. Then there was eating out, which my digestive system did not like terribly much. I’d say only Hu Hot and Texas Steak House agreed with me, though that says more about my body than all the places we ate.

The latter was a first and I have to recommend their shrimp and rice dish highly. Service was very good too.

Spacing out a bit writing this, so I’ll wrap up. It’s nice to be home and familiar comforts should aid in the healing process for Dad.

Battle Plans

After a very long day at Gundersen Clinic, we finally know just what my dad is facing and how to combat it. A combined PET and CT scan provided a three dimensional map of the tumor involved by the end of the day which in turn helped the hematologist and oncologist involved to come up with a course of treatment. UPDATED with details.

First up, the form of cancer is diffuse large B cell lymphoma that is in stage 2 (out of 4 possible) which means it is still localized. To be more precise, the growth is in the bottom of the stomach, is six centimeters (or 2.5 inches) in diameter and some small lymph nodes nearby it also appear cancerous. It’s a nasty looking thing to view in photos from the recent endoscopy, yet more impressive when the sheer size of the thing is revealed in relation to the rest of my father’s body.

The good news is that this kind of cancer is treatable with an 85% cure rate. Not remission rate, cure rate. It won’t be easy due to dangers of the stomach perforating, but the odds are impressive to me.

The bad news is that chemotherapy will have to go six cycles for a total of eighteen weeks. This will be a long, hard slog. RCHOP is the planned combination of medicines and I’m far too tired to look up all of the ones involved for this post. Side effects are too numerous to list and none of them sound fun. Therapy sessions will run for hours and will be intravenous for the most part. 

Okay, details of the drugs are as follows:

Rituximab, Clyclophosamide, hydroxydaunorubicin,  Oncovin and Prednisone, although the Prednisone will be taken orally.

Hydroxydaunorubicin is the chemical used to make tail lights red on your car.

Cyclophosamide is better known as mustard gas in WWI.

Rituximab is human antibodies targeting system B cells and is cloned in mice.

Oncovin is an alkaloid that blocks cell division.

Prednisone is a commonly used steroid with a variety of applications.

Of course my dad will lose his remaining hair. He’s amused by that, but I’m going to have to find a supply of stocking caps for that bald head.

There’s a lot more we’ll have to be dealing with, however things could be far worse.

Chemotherapy has to begin as soon as possible which made it interesting when we had a whopping five minutes before closing time to arrange a screening test on Monday and the first session the next day. As the receptionist said, it was a miracle when it all came together.

All of this will require huge changes to routines and both of us will have to be very careful of our energy levels. I’ve got to figure out what I have to give up to compensate for the demands of taking care of Dad. As of this moment, I’m too tired to even begin figuring it out.

Winter Woes

This has been an unusually cold winter with days of snow falling nearly as excessive. Thankfully the latter have not resulted in very deep snow, but the wear and tear of the season is getting to be a bit much. At the time of writing it is –16F outside and 65F inside the house.

Thanks to not checking the LP gas levels, we are out and the water pipes are all frozen. It’s simply too soon to have run out of gas under normal circumstances and this demonstrates how ridiculously cold it has been. Now we wait for a snowplow to first come in and then we can get more LP.

The good news is it is supposed to get up to 20F today.  Eventually we will have water again.

A combination of cold and moisture has made the season unbearable at night for my father and me. Since it is the perfect weather to make joints ache, we’ve had a difficult time getting restful sleep.

This is a small concern given what else is going on.

After losing far too much weight in the past few months since his auto rollover, my father finally went in for tests last Wednesday. They found a large ulcerous tumor and we just got the results of the biopsies this morning. It’s cancer of a lymphoma type and chemotherapy is going to be required rather than surgery.

All we can do is deal with the situation as it unfolds.

Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983) Review

A dark and brooding look at the sinful desires that corrupt people is not what you would expect out of Disney as a theater goer in the early Eighties. Yet that is exactly what this movie is. When a strange carnival named Dark's Pandemonium arrives at a small town, harrowing encounters with Dark and his minions follow. Soon the lives of the townsfolk are on the line, if not their very souls.  Filled with horror, regrets, and menace the movie is ultimately about fathers and sons. UPDATED January 2014 with better screen captures and completely rewritten text.

The late Seventies had not been kind to the Walt Disney company at the box office. In an attempt to regain lost audiences the studio had been moving more toward the serious side in their films; starting in 1979 with The Black Hole and the dollowing year with The Watcher in the Woods. 1982 was supposed to be the year of big change with the experimental TRON and this gothic movie hitting theaters to revitalize the company’s box office success.

Alas, that plan fell apart due to a disastrous test screening that led to reshoots a year later designed to make the movie more acceptable to a family audience. However, those changes did not change the movie enough and the end result was still a dark and terrifying movie that was guaranteed to give small kids nightmares.

BBS Memories

After reading an article at Ars Technica reminiscing about calling dial up bulletin boards with a 2400 baud modem, I’ve been trying to remember details of those days. Twenty years of the Web have erased most of those memories to my disappointment. Even remembering names of the BBSs I frequented escapes me.

What I do remember is mainly concentrating my attentions on an OS/2 board near the end of my long distance calling days. At that point, America Online had become my main destination and so the primitive ANSI based boards were on the way out, not only for me but for most users. I wish I could remember the board’s name that has slipped so easily from my personal memory banks.

TRON: Legacy (2010) Review

A surprisingly beautiful and layered movie that vastly improves upon the original film in every possible way. While the action is spectacular, the real story is both a social commentary and variation on the prodigal son. Filled with extraordinary imagery, kinetic action, and good acting, it may not have been the smash success Disney envisioned it succeeded in being thought provoking and very, very entertaining. UPDATED December 2011 for Blu-ray review and HD screen captures, January 2013 for technical details.

I’m old enough to have seen the original TRON in a movie theater and always had a soft spot in my heart for it.  Disney’s experiment wasn’t a great movie, but was a passable B movie with an A level budget.   Still, it was great fun and interesting to look at with an equally interesting soundtrack.  28 years later, the sequel arrived in 3D during a disappointing winter box office.  So did it live up to the hype?

TRON: Legacy starts with a lasers forming the outline of the Walt Disney Pictures Enchanted Castle which is a nice touch. This was in 3D at the theater; the screen captures in the review come from the Blu-ray so I may be a bit fuzzy about where 2D and 3D transitioned. Lines of blue light follow, tracing circuit patterns that become city streets while Jeff Bridges voice is heard talking about “The Grid.” It is a very pretty sequence indicative of things to come.

The year is 1989 and widower Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) is telling his seven year old son, Sam, about getting into The Grid in the first movie. TRON and CLU are mentioned as helping him build The Grid and a promise is made to take Sam there one day. But something big has happened, a “miracle” and for the moment the boy has to stay put. Another promise is made and Flynn leaves to work on his project.

Life Is Like a Boat

Full of waves that bob us up and down, the water we sail on through life is rarely calm for any lengthy amount of time. The past eight days have not been still, but have not been tempest tossed either. Illness has been part of the downs of my life during this period. Most of them in fact.

Mostly bedridden to start out the week, it felt like I lost a month of things needing doing rather than days. On the other hand, a few good things happened that ranged from the mundane scoring of cheap DVDs at Alco to meeting with a congressional candidate that my father has been pitching tax reforms to.

On the negative side, somebody knocked our new mailbox off its post in the middle of the night. Tire tracks showed it wasn’t either of the snow plows, but a smaller vehicle that hit the post. The hill it fell down is very steep and treacherous, so I had to wait until I was feeling better to retrieve it from the snow. Thankfully, total body weight routines help with balance far more than I realized.

So things weren’t oppressively dull.

I did lose five days straight on weight training, but bobbed back to higher levels of pounds pressed. Things went swimmingly until yesterday, when pain induced sleep deprivation combined with upper respiratory issues made for a difficult day at church. Teaching adult Sunday school to a room filled with professionals from all walks of life and two thirds of the stake presidency while brain dead is not recommended.

My beloved Hoist V2 home gym did not get used as it was beyond my physical stamina after church. Today started out equally poorly, but somewhere after Noon rolled around, I became functional again. Before and after sessions of Pinball FX 2 verified I wasn’t imagining this and so I got to workout again.

One must adjust to the ups and downs of life or risk the chance of developing lifesickness, the equivalent of being seasick but more disorienting and disheartening. With less throwing up, I hope. Knowing that waves always go up and down is a big part of developing the emotional sea legs needed to cope with life. Not that I’m always on an even keel.

If my friends could have seen me ranting at the cats, the computer, and the world in general while being very ill Monday, they would have been shocked. An unusual combination of sickness, exhaustion from CFS, and high pain had me worse than the normally surly attitude I exhibit when ill. Of course, this passed and life went on.

Feeling better allows me to appreciate things properly, such as the beautiful song the post title was taken from. Here’s a live performance of Life Is Like a Boat by Rie Fu:

Simply lovely tune.

This song was the end theme for the first season of the anime Bleach and I’ll always fondly associate it with the character Rukia. I think you’ll find it stands on its own perfectly well.

TRON (1982) Review

A tale about a human crossing over into a virtual world hidden inside video games, this movie predicted much about a rising technology using an amazing combination of live action, animation, and pioneering computer generated special effects. Featuring a simple story that’s owes much to Spartacus, the sheer spectacle of the unusual imagery made this a cult classic.

Turn on a TV set or go to a theater and you’ll immediately be bombarded by brilliant and unreal visions of people or things doing physically impossible actions in defiance of the laws of physics or existence. In a world filled with computer generated (CG) graphics it all seems humdrum today.

Rendered by artists using computers instead of airbrushes and paint, CG is used in everything from commercials to sports broadcasts (virtual 1st down lines, anyone?) with no way to escape it. Let me take you back to a far gone period where this wasn’t the case and computers themselves were still mysterious rather than ubiquitous.

The early 1980s to be precise.

Desperate to regain a declining youth audience in the late ‘70s, Walt Disney’s movie division was willing to try new things. While conventional animation was considered dead or at least comatose, a slew of live action movies breaking the child friendly G rating were commissioned. Among them were The Watcher in the Woods, The Black Hole, and the radically experimental TRON.

Technical Difficulties

Since last Saturday, I've been having problems with the DSL service provided by my ISP with frequent outages. Tech support is supposed to be investigating it, but nothing concrete has been found so far. So I'm way behind on posting and other Internet related doings.

Adding to the grief, I was so ill yesterday I accidentally clicked on the close button for the movie review that's been so troublesome. Exhausted, I thought I was clicking on the cancel button but it turned out to be the close out without saving button. More than half the review was lost, so another setback.

For the hat trick, the window in the basement blew out again. That's been the only easy thing to fix!

UPDATED 1/16

Somebody ran into our new mailbox and knocked it down the hill into the trees. I'm thinking of climbing up or down to get it, in the mean time we have to pick up the mail in town -- 12 miles away. 

At least the first pass on the movie review is finished and I may get the thing up tonight.

Evens and Beginnings

Titled thus due to boredom with using "odds and ends" for posts

Things have slowed a bit on the blog due to my working on a movie review that has a great deal of extras. While I've grown to love seeing all the details of how a production came to be made, it takes a great deal of time to wade through all the content. Looking up a previous review of a connected movie has added more to do, since I realized the old one needs a rewrite to include bonus content too.

Earlier this week I had the chance to eat at a restaurant I'd been wanting to try out for years. Hu Hot is billed as a Mongolian grill, so I was salivating at the opportunity to sample their hot sauces. In the end, I focused exclusively on their second hottest, due to a strong craving for garlic. The food was good though it was something of a learning experience.

Baby, It’s Cold Outside

UPDATED: We have water again as of late last night. It turns out the wind blew out one of the small windows in the basement! Old farmhouses sometimes had windows to let in light that are about a quarter of the size of normal windows. Just one blown back into the basement was enough to turn it into a deep freeze.

Original post:

All sorts of warnings have been given about how bad today would get and I was too ill the second half of yesterday to remember to fill containers with water. That mistake came home to bite me on the behind, of course. While I was at church, the water froze and none of the tricks that normally get it going again in subzero weather worked for my father.

While the raw temperature at the house was only –4 F (-20 C), wind chill was closer to –18 F (-28 C). The blowing wind is the culprit behind the frozen pipes and it will be days before things get better. Overnight forecasts indicate around the wind chill temperature for the high tomorrow!  Add in wind and we’ll see –50 F (-46 C). Blowing snow will be the insult added to injury.

As a result of the preparation fiasco of this autumn, the 50 gallon water drum was never filled and thanks to yesterday, no other containers were. There are few things more annoying than breaking the Sabbath to me, but it turned into an emergency when no empty gallon jugs were to be found. At some time they were thrown away to my ire. So a trip to the local grocery netted four gallons of water for drinking purposes to last the next couple of days.

As far as the toilet goes, I’m melting snow in buckets for that purpose. At least I don’t have to use an outhouse! I don’t even want to imagine what that would be like.