Greenie, Birdo, Foodie, and Karaoke nut

Heh heh

Watching Ghostbusters and eating marshmallows.

Could it be any more appropriate?

In an attempt to bash through my current case of writers block I've starterd to write stuff in movie script style. I mean, that's how I see things in my head anyway.

Look out for the community squiggle_muse coming soon (like, after I get home). The comm. doesn't exist yet so if you click the link you'll get nothing. I'll also explain the name when I make the community.

In other news, something has died somewhere in the shop. And when it gets hot it reeks. I just fumigated with Glen 20.

Ah yes, the DVDs. The first of course was The Lost Boys. That hillarious 80's vampire brat pack movie. The other was Excess Baggage. I remember hearing about this movie when it came out as well as A Life Less Ordinary (which I haven't seen yet) which was released around the same time and had a similar theme. I had never seen Benicio Del Toro in a movie before (well, I did see some of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and just remember thinking "What the FUCK is this?!" Anyway, he's a pretty good actor. I like his character best in Excess Baggage.

And a last question, for the fangirls (and boys) - How did the word "slash" originate? Just started wondering after reading PotO in 15 minutes again. Man that thing still cracks me up even after reading it 20 or so times.

And despite the relocation of Kenneth, the other king brown was seen this morning. Now, no-ones really sure which of the snakes was Kenneth in the first place so this could still be him. Kenneth is pretty much just a generic name for "Resident king brown snake".

I bought two more DVDs today - hey they were on special.

Now one you'll never guess. I haven't even seen this movie before but I remember hearing about it when it came out and it looks interesting.

The other I'll give you a few clues towards.

I learned today that the guy who directed the movie I just bought (and watched) also directed Phantom of the Opera (the 2004 version).
I hadn't seen this movie in ages, hence why I grabbed it.
I forgot what a crack up this movie was. It's quite ridiculous in some scenes but it just adds to its delightful kitcsh.

Guess away!

P.S. I really, really need a home by the ocean. The water was divine today (as usual).

I finally saw it!!

Sure, I could go on and on about the myths and untruths in it (I mean, reef fish going into the Abyssal zone and not being crushed by the pressure, then being CHASED by an angler fish. Fish that deep do not move fast, their whole strategy is ambush) but yeah, I do realise it's a story, and a cute one at that. Unfotunately too many people are too dumb to realise that.

My only real gripe was the fact that the pelicans were American Brown Pelicans and the seagulls were American too, yellow beaks and feet instead of the red or black of our abundant Silver Gulls. Sheesh, they did everything else right they could have put in the correct bird species.

Last night it was on T.V. Me being all fascinated by volcanoes and such watched it. I did a geology unit in first year because I am keenly interested in seismology and vulcanology, I was disappointed when most of that unit involved looking at rocks. But I learned stuff, and I also learned stuff from general reading and watching stuff on the subject.

Dante's Peak was an okay movie. I've found various sites critiquing it (the two best are here and here. Of course in reality our heroes would have been fried early in the piece and we would have been left with 2 hours worth of awesome (if a little inaccurate) volcano footage. I guess that's why I'd rather watch a documentary on volcanoes than watch a movie. I just found the first two thirds of the movie unnerving as the slumbering mountain slowly awoke (as if by the humans that had settled upon it) then expressed it's anger at being awoken.

It amazes me how people are so ignorant to nature. Of course the love for a family motivated the heroes to go back for the kids and the kids to go back for grandma and then the heroes risking life and limb for the small chance that kids and grandma may still be okay on grumbling mountain. I don't know what I'd do in that situation. I'd like to think that I could rationally weigh out the chances of finding my loved ones alive in the more dangerous area and if I figured it was too much a risk to just get the hell out of there. Then there was grandma's comment - as ash falls and quakes are happening - "This mountain would never hurt us." Love, 1. It already HAS hurt you 2. The mountain doesn't give a rat's ass about you.

"Civilisation exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice." Will Durant (Just a nice quote from one of my books on volcanoes.)

As is easiest with things I'll just list what I wanted to say instead of trying to remember the chronological order of the movie. So here they are in no particular order.

1. "If it blows this place will be gone in a minute" - that quote or similar from the hero (Pierce Brosnan), talking about the mayor's lovely log cabin on the mountainside. However, when the volcano blows during the town meeting they manage to drive back to her place and it's still perfectly intact! Despite of the sever quake damage happening elsewhere. Even grandma's house further up the mountain is intact albeit covered in ash. Maybe he meant the REAL full on eruption, not just the initial smoking.

2. Earthquakes strong enough to destroy the entire town don't happen with volcanoes. They are weaker magmatic quakes, not the slip-fault style you get in California that reduces everything to rubble. And why was everyone having no problem driving when the earth was shaking so violently?

3. Magma does not suddenly pour from the bottom of hot springs. And if it DID the water would have flashed to steam I imagine. Magma and water geothermal activity don't occur at the same time.

4. When the boat started dissolving, I was thinking - if a hole forms in the bottom won't the whole thing just sink right away? Especially considering there are 5 people in it. And why hasn't the engine gone cactus?... ah, there it goes. I've also read up that the lake could not have become so acidic so quickly. It would have been a very weak acid.

5. Toyota really needs to mass manufacture these lava proof trucks. Lava is VERY VERY hot, anything near to it will ignite due to just the heat, the petrol tank should have gone ka-boom immediately. It's viscous stuff, you ain't gonna get a grip on it especially driving on just your rims. You'll probably be stuck in it for eternity and incinerated.

6. The carbon dioxide in the air was good. Volcanoes do that, and CO2 being heavier than oxygen sits near the earth and suffoactes things. I'm sure the sulphur dioxide also made breathing troublesome for the animals and trees. I assumed the dead fish in the lake were killed due to CO2, not the acid.

7. Why oh WHY are we shown fast flowing basalt flows and lava fountains?? We are not in Hawaii or Iceland! We are in NW U.S.A. where the volcanoes form from a subduction fault producing andesitic volcanoes. This means that the lava is sticky and DOES NOT FLOW like that! It explodes rather than dribbles, it throws out bombs, it creates nuee ardentes (pyroclastic flows) and ash clouds. (And if some lava does flow from an andesitic volcano it doesn't happen at the same time as it's spitting out ash and pyroclastic clouds and bombs). Not Hawaiian style lava flows. Hawaii is situated over a hot spot which has formed a long, low shield volcano. The composition of the lava is completely different, which allows it to predicatibly flow at a pretty constant rate. Hawaii's volcanoes are extremely predictable and the least dangerous in the world due to their composition. About the only andesitic volcano that borders on predictability is Italy's Mt Etna, because that thing is almost constantly going off. Iceland is situated on the rift forming in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean where the two plates are pulling apart. Iceland gets lava fountains all the time. Cascade ranges mountains do not.

8. I'm sorry, but you're not gonna outrun a nuee ardente in an already munted car. Especially when it's that close already. It will overtake you, you will be parboiled, end of story. Only 1 person survived the nuee ardentes of Mt Pelee and Soufreirie. He was a prisoner in a dungeon underground.

9. For spending 2 days in a coffin sized space with a compound fracture of the arm Pierce looked DAMN good! He would either be in massive shock and have to be taken to hospital immediately, no way in hell he could have just walked out of there. Or more likely he would have died of shock and blood loss. I really think there should have been some of the movie showing HOW they survived in the mine for 2 days.

10. There is a lot of discussion on when and how to alert the town to the possible danger. Like always, you want to keep everyone safe but at the same time you don't want to panic them. Most of the township is ignorant of the fact that that big mountain IS a volcano. Vulcanologists generally don't use the word "extinct" anymore because they have been proven wrong too many times - as if a Cascade volcano would be "extinct" anyway. They just use "dormant" and "active" these days. Mt St. Helens hadn't gone off for hundreds (perhaps thousands, I'm not sure on this) of years then suddenly over a few months it became very active then ka-boom. Mt. Ranier nearby is sleeping, but all the experts say it could go off at anytime because it's long overdue. Bye bye Seattle when that happens. The vulconologists in the movie keep discussing warnings they've issued previously only to have a no show from the volcano. They fail to mention... let's say, Monserrat. The mountain there began to smoke suddenly and warnings were issued. The island was evacuated. People waited, nothing happened. So they went back. Then another warning was issued a while later. Same scenario, they left, they waited, nothing happened. I'm not sure how many times this happened but it destroyed the economy of the island. The people got fed up and went back and figured the experts were just crying wolf. Not long after the volcano exploded and killed many. Or there was the terrible handling of Nevado Del Ruiz. They figured it wasn't that huge a concern, why bother to evacuate? That night a lahar buried the whole town of Almero, there were few survivors.

11. The ice melts and lahars looked AWESOME! Magma just below the surface. Heated earth. Ice melts. Rivers flood from ice melt and pick up ash, creating a lovely muddy slurry which knocks down trees and carries them, as well as other debris. Of course the more debris being carried the more debris is knocked down and added. Not to mention that this water/mud is often quite hot. Houses and bridges are destroyed, towns are buried, rivers are dammed, valleys are filled. Christmas Eve eruption of New Zealand's Mt. Ruapehu melted the ice plug of the crater lake and caused it to rush down the mountain, creating a lahar that destroyed a railway bridge... just as the train was crossing it. Pinataubo and other Indonesian volcanoes are also notorious for their lahars which often bury towns. And these things are fast, you won't outrun them.

12. The footage of the initial smoke plume was utterly unnerving. Can you imagine being there and seeing that? My God.

13. I thought those bombs looked a tad weird, too small and weirdly burning edges. Bombs are semi-molten rock, not burning material and they can be the size of cars. I have also read that the ash nearer to the crater was too thin and snowlike. It should have been much denser and dirtier. Apparently it was created using newspaper.

It seems like the makers just threw in every volcanic phenomena available to make the movie more exciting and convince the stupid that "Yes, this is a volcano, see that lava!?" even though the most destructive volcanoes show very little lava at all.

Mother Nature can conjure up the most awesome forces. I love volcanoes. I often dream about them and I MUST visit one. However I think I'll chose a safe volcano, rather than living in Seattle and just waiting with baited breath for Ranier to wake up.