Dog Days, Hello Kitty, Dinosaurs

Well I woke with all sorts of ambitions in my head – but they all left me in the subway ride. It’s the official dog days of summer. Sirius, the Dog Star is the brightest star in the night sky – it’s bit annoying that actually the most interesting night skies are in the middle of winter. Still aside from the cold, the clear winter sky is better for stargazing than the smog and haze laden last summer sky,. Boys and girls the stuff looked slate grey as I was going into the tunnel on my subway (I’m on an El while in queens) I’m not happy when I can see the air I’m breathing. Makes me nervous really.

So for now my major desire is to go home – put an MST3K movie in the TV and apply gin and tonics (plenty of ice) to my forehead before drinking them. I know it’s not much of a plan but it’s the one I got so It’s the one I’m working with.

Noted in the passing parade.

The picture above is of a Thailand police officer. In an effort to get the officers to behave better (not yell at civilians, turn their cars off when parking, don’t take doughnuts or whatever they do in Thailand) whenever an officer violates one of the regulations he will, in addition to whatever goes on his record gets to wear for one day a hello kitty pink armband. I hope the Thai police don’t have guns cause a humiliated human being with a pistol is a pretty dangerous thing.

This is not a bad movie review – watching The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (a fathom – the international fathom, there are others, by the by is 6 feet . It’s said, it was the length derived from a sailor holding a rope with his arms out stretched – must have been a big guy).

As I said this is not a bad movie review – hell compared to the junk I watch, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is damn near Citizen Kane. Still there were some things I noted, not having seen the film for a while.

The movie starts with a team of government scientists and the military dropping an atomic bomb some place north of the Artic Circle. This bomb, in the long tradition of atomic bombs in sci fi films, releases the title beast to run amok until killed in the last reel. But let’s just track back here a bit.

Whose bright idea was it to drop a bomb on the ice cap? And what earthly purpose could it have served? At best it was an, let’s set off a bomb and see what happens idea. And the scary thing about the atomic tests in the 50’s was a lot of them were just that, let’s set off a bomb and see what happens to ships, houses even people (like trucking troops in just after a bomb went off and tracking their health or more accurately, their lack of it). In this case we end up with a huge monster roaming the ocean and sinking things, wrecking Light Houses (maybe the best scene in the film) and causing no end of bother.

Second he’s not a dinosaur, he’s really a big big lizard, Ray Harryhusen did that on purpose but still hearing everybody refer to it as a dinosaur. Dinosaurs may or may not be an actual group like say the snakes or lizards (which have certain anatomical similarities that lead to their classification – I could go on for days about this but won’t cause a) I even manage bore myself when I’m dealing with this and b) I have work to do) but be that as it may the group of animals considered dinosaurs exhibit certain traits – the number of holes in their skulls, their hips, but mostly that their legs are straight under their bodies, not like the sprawled legs that Lizards and crocodiles or the beast from 20,000 Fathoms have – based on its appearance you’d really have to classify it as a Lizard (Order Squamta for you keeping score at home) - a fantastically huge lizard, but a lizard, not a dinosaur.

Finally in the end the Beast is wounded and it turns out that he/she (the gender is never determined or even worried about since it’s wrecking lower Manhattan at the time) is a walking germ factory with a disease in it that is spread by the spatter of its blood (like the Ebola virus spreads) so they shot a radioactive isotope into the wound thereby killing the creature.

And as it’s dying I’m thinking great – one, you now have a 50 ton irritated corpse to deal with and two) bacteria and viruses are a lot less vulnerable to radiation than we mammals are (and reptiles are less vulnerable as well – but the best is dead so lets just let that go) so it’s possible you have a 50 ton corpse with mutated viruses or bacteria running chock a block through it. And on top of that you've burned down the Cyclone. Way to go guys.

More tomorrow.

Peace Love More gin.