Thanks for the Headache, McG

I just came back from watching the new "Terminator: Salvation" film. And I want those two hours back.

For the first time in my life, a movie actually gave me a headache. The high-decibel explosions and music, combined with the film's unremitting grimness just made my head throb. Plus, for the giant Terminator sequence, the sound editor stole that annoying foghorn noise from the recent version of "War of the Worlds."

Of course, the idiot plot didn't help. (Skynet has both John Connor AND Kyle Reese inside its base, and all it does is send one Terminator after each man? Skynet is cranking out Terminator after Terminator, yet it only sends ONE?! And hasn't Skynet thought of flooding its corridors with poison gas?)

It looks like they've stopped giving an acknowledgment to Harlan Ellison in the credits. Just as well - Ellison shouldn't have to be associated with this mess.

Now I have to go take some Tylenol.

Sometimes Things Actually Get Better

It's too nice out to spend all day in my home office...so I took my laptop to the library. (I like to live dangerously.) I was still inside, but at least I had a nice window, and thousands of books near at hand.

Unfortunately, what the library doesn't have is food. So, when I got hungry, I decamped to a nearby Panera Bread, which offers free wi-fi. And I still have a window, although this one opens out onto a parking lot.

This Panera Bread is in an old shopping center that was upgraded a few years ago. When I was a kid, this parking lot was a barren, potholed, trash-strewn wasteland. My High School Ecology Club inherited a recycling center in this parking lot, so I spent some time here, separating recyclables. Eventually, with people dumping non-recyclable trash here, the site grew beyond what High School kids could handle, and the owner just carted everything away.

But, since the renovation, there are flowers here. There are shrubs and plantings in the medial strips. There aren't any potholes, and the trash is picked up. There's no need for a recycling center, because the local townships all have recycling programs. Sometimes things actually do get better....