Some more photos and write-up from our trip. Figured I'd better do something immediately to avoid doing absolutely nothing.

First, one set from the Disney cruise.

This is what it looks like to view the front landing gear of a 747 from about 30 feet directly beneath it.




This is from the boat's stop at St. Martin. There isn't much room for an airport and the landing strip for it starts literally 100 off a public beach. Most of the planes that come in are smaller but they get a couple 747's a day from Europe and we were well timed in our 15 minute stop on a cabbed round-the-island tour.

Here's a shot of that same plane a little bit farther out.



Now from Costa Rica.

A very large beetle used as a prop by a guy selling young coconuts outside a Del Monte banana processing plant on the way to our boat for getting to Tortugeuro (boat or plane is the only way to get there).



Our main reason for going to Tortuguero was to see the sea turtles (a surprise bonus was had on the cruise when a sea turtle surfaces for air just a couple feet from me while snorkeling during our St. Thomas stop). They're significant to Lani and me for several reasons so we were really looking forward to seeing them. Unfortunately, the nesting season is pretty much over by the end of October so instead we had to settle for trying to catch a nest hatching (much lower certainty of successful timing). So it was a huge bonus to go out on that quest and come across a turtle laying her eggs a couple weeks late.



We escorted her back to the sea and then it was on to find the baby turtles.

Fortunately we were successful here as well. Here, the 150 or so eggs have all hatched but the turtles are still lethargic in the nest. They'll slowly get more active and finish breaking down the walls (the hole here is there doing, not ours) and make their break for the sea (much assisted by our presence keeping birds and other hunters away).





After about 45 minutes of observation they were on their way.



I escorted this one all the way to his successful entry into the ocean. I'll assume he is one of the very few that survived more than a little while in the ocean without falling prey to some aquatic predator.



Enough of turtles (though I could have happily spent all day walking them to from nest to ocean).

Also in the Torteguero area we saw (among many things I didn't get even mediocre photos of)

1. Enough red poison tree frogs to arm an ancient Indiana Jones treasure booby trap.



2. Leafcutter ants



3. A troop of howler monkeys (not the best photo I took of them but used because of baby presence).



4. Tree-climbing iguanas (these last two photos show how much trouble I had with lens fogging due to rain and humidity).




5. A surprisingly human looking three-toed sloth



6. And, of course, lots of jungle



We then hopped over to the Pacific coast on this, our new personal best for smallest airplane used. Soon we'll have to fly our own to get any smaller. When you're flying through clouds in one of these, you do find yourself wondering just how well the pilot knows where Costa Rica's 100+ volcanic peaks are.



On that coast we saw

1. A tiger-face crab while out in the mangrove swamp. Saw hundreds of land crabs out there but this species really stuck out.



2. A juvenile boa constrictor resting in a tree. I was really hoping for some good snake sightings but this turned out to be the only one we saw all week. Closest thing to a disappointment on the trip.



3. Lots of "regular beach, not land" crabs at the beach.



4. Essentially our own private beach since we seemed to be the only guests in our section of the hotel (Hotel Arenas del Mar) where we were staying. Unfortunately, neither Lani nor I are the type get much use out of our own private beach.



5. Impressively large crocodiles. They are protected in Costa Rica and their population has rebounded on this river to around 200 per mile.



Of course, you saw one of the friendly troop of adolescent capuchins above, here are others:

A. Bob



B. George



C. Steve



D. Achmed



So those are some of the highlights from our time in Costa Rica.

We're back from our Caribbean cruise with friends and just-us trip to Costa Rica.

The monkey on the right is me:



The monkey on the left is a wild (though unfortunately not wild enough because of less than reputable tour companies feeding them) capuchin in the mangrove swamp outside Quepos, Costa Rica.

A very fun trip that I'll probably never get around to writing down.

Walking by a Barnes & Noble last night I saw a sign inside that said:

Award Winning Fiction Book Group
Third Thursday of the Month

I actually, and seriously, spent most of the 5 minute walk home from there wondering what kind of organization gives awards to book clubs and what the criteria would be.

It was quite the bolt of recognizing my own stupidity when I finally realized it was (Award Winning Fiction) Book Group not Award Winning (Fiction Book Group). Yes, some hyphens would be appropriate, but still...stupid much?

I understand that the health reform bills are long and complex legislation, but it annoys me when people make a big deal about the page count. "OMG! The senate health bill is more than 1,500 pages long!!!!! That's longer than Moby Dick!"

Have you seen how legislation is formatted? Here's the entire unformatted text of a random page:

and evaluation of models or expansion of such models under this section. “(e) Application to CHIP. – The Center may carry out activities under this section with respect to title XXI in the same manner as provided under this section with respect to the funding program under the applicable titles. “(f) Funding. – “(1) In General – There are appropriated from amounts in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated – “(A) $10,000,000,000 for the activities initiated under this section for the period of fiscal years 2011 through 2019; and “(B) the amount described bin subparagraph (A) for the activities initiated under this section for each subsequent 10-year fiscal period (beginning with the 10-year fiscal period beginning with fiscal year 2020). Amounts appropriated under the preceding sentence shall remain available until expended. “(2) Use of Certain Funds. – Out of amounts appropriated under paragraph (1), not less than $25,000,000 shall be made available each such fiscal year to design, implement, and evaluate models under subsection (b).

In 10-point Arial with 1" margins that is 11 lines of text. About 1/5th of a normal page.

Wow, I've almost gone a month without posting anything.

Spent the weekend giving the apartment a deep clean in preparation for our vacation starting on Friday. Week-long cruise with friends, then just Lani and I will be in Costa Rica for a week. Anyway, Lani's mom will be watching the cat while we're gone so that means I require a level of clean much higher than I care about for just us. Once again it emphasized just how much hair can come of just one cat. Also, that it is impossible to get it all up off of hardwood floors. Sweep, vacuum, scrub, repeat. Then walk out of room for five minutes, return, and find more.

====

On a message board I'm a member of I, in the past, have not been shy in spreading the Gospel of Homeopathy is Bullshit. It's been quite a while, though, since it was discussed. Today someone posted a new thread, specifically calling me out and essentially saying "In your face Alex! Proof that I was right about homeopathy and it curing my hayfever!"

While I was sure it would prove bunkful, I expected her link to point to some "startling" new study showing efficacy. Instead it was just to this HuffPo article by homeopathy guru Dana Ullman.

Nothing new at all. How boring. But I'm sure I don't have enough self control to just post the initial replies and then walk away. But since she specifically called me out, I'm not feeling a need to rein in the sarcasm. Regardless of how that weakens my argument.

====

Zombieland was very fun. One action at the end didn't really fit in and was a bit of stupidity I wish had been exised but still a lot of laughs.

Whip It was enjoyable. Good performance from Ellen Page. Competent direction from Drew Barrymore. It really would have helped if the story structure had not been an exact replica of what we've seen in boy-centered sports movies for 40 years. "What it is, see, is Billy Elliot but you see it is a girl who wants to do something unfeminine!" Still good, but also rote.

Giant is a 1956 "epic" starring Rock Hudson and Michael Jackson's girlfriend (her name is escaping me at the moment...let me go look it up...Elizabeth Taylor). Epic in quotes because I don't know that I've ever seen a movie spanning 30 years and lasting more than 3 hours that still felt like a minimal stage adaptation. Rock Hudson showed his on screen charisma in this early role. Elizabeth Taylor was tolerable but not given enough bite. Really, I don't think I've ever much enjoyed a performance from her unless she's being mean (see also, Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf?).

Wow. Those are the only movies I've watched so far in October. It's amazing how falling asleep at 9:30 most nights and waking up at 4:30 (for no good reason, my alarm is set for 6) cuts into the movie watching.

===

Hope vacation is fun. Still not feeling it much. Not dreading it or anything but I just don't feel like I'm hitting the road in four days and am having difficulty motivating myself to do those things that need to be done. I did go dig out our passports.

===

59-0? Really. First of all, running up the score is classless, but frankly if you're an NFL team and someone can score 59 points on you, you deserve it anyway.

And now for something unexpected, some comments on the Sookie Stackhouse romance vampire mystery books.

The first one was ok. If Twilight is for 13-year-old girls, Sookie Stackhouse is for 15-year-old girls. It may have been noticed that I am neither. Yet I've now read three different series involving romantic vampires, lust, werewolves, lust, telepathy, and some lust. I keep reading them mostly out of curiosity to see how the exact same idea is approached by different people. At this point in time Patricia Briggs is coming out ahead since she seems satisfied to just churn out mediocre pulp without getting too self important.

Anyway, back to Sookie. I assume that between writing the first and second book author Charlaine Harris suffered a debilitating brain injury since her writing goes from typical pulp genre bad to Dan Brown how'd-she-pass-sixth-grade bad.

I decided to give the third novel a chance in case she regained her faculties following her stroke. Not really, it is a bit better but still written with all the technique of a bored teenager telling you what she did did over summer vacation. But with more lust.

The real problem I have with Harris's writing that I don't have with Briggs or even Stephanie Meyers (even though the fourth Twilight book is actually way worse than the second Sookie book) is this: She apparently can't be bothered to maintain any kind of consistent characterization. Whether Sookie is a bit dim or self-educated extremely bright changes from chapter to chapter. Bill Compton is all kinds of sensitive then not simply as a device for driving the story along. Just little things.

Here's a quote from the first book in the series:

..and I did poorly in school because it was so hard for me to concentrate when so few others were. But when there was testing, I would test very high because the other kids were concentrating om their own papers...

Same character two books later:

But my disability had made it hard enough to get out of high school. A telepathic teenager has an extremely hard time of it, let me tell you. And I had so little control then...trying to concentrate on listening in class, taking tests in a roomful of buzzing brains...the only thing I'd ever excelled at was homework.

So ok, that is two books apart. Only someone who cared about what she was writing would be bothered by that. But she does it within the same book.

Early in book three there are two completely unnecessary instances of showing how uneducated Sookie is:

..And it wasn't Bill's libido. (Libido has just been on my Word-a-Day calendar.)

and

"No, he's not. He's in Seattle," I said. Willfully obtuse. I had learned that word from my Word-a-Day calendar only that morning, and here I was getting to use it.

(I'll ignore that she didn't actually use the word in that second one.) Then later in the book, after showing us that she didn't know such basic words as libido and obtuse until seen on a calendar in her late 20s, she -- of course -- ends up playing Scrabble. What a travesty that will be for her. But no:

"Alcide had graduated from Louisiana Tech. I'd never been to college, but I read a lot so we were about even on the extent of our vocabulary...I scored big with "quirt" and he stuck his tongue out at me.

Or getting serious details on werewolf mythology for the first time Sookie informs the reader that

Weres ran a little hotter than regular people, but mostly they were careful to wear coats in cold weather, since Were society was still secret from the human race...

So, it is a fact about them that she knows but then a quarter of the book later:

Then I remembered how warm his skin was, and I figured he was one of those people who runs kind of hot. Or maybe all Weres were like that?

So she forgot what she already knew and told us.

Anyway, I know this is very picky but books seem to be full of this sloppiness. It isn't just a surprise what will happen next but what the characters will be like next. Only one of those is a good thing.

Inertia is amazing. It has been months since I paid any attention to any of the communities I have on my friends list. The first thing I do when hitting LJ is filter down to Friends Only.

And yet it was too much trouble to just go in and remove the communities. Finally just did that. So much cleaner. Now the only noise will be the 1 post every thing days now that most of you have abandoned LJ for other pastures.

A post in two tones.

First the more significant tone.

On the issue of the Associated Press running a photo of a mortally wounded soldier. Ideally the soldier would not be identifiable from the photograph (and what I've seen, he wasn't) but I don't think it is something that should be shied away from.

And if it is, what is the statute of limitations? I've seen plenty of footage (video and photographic) of wounded and dead soldiers in Vietnam, Korea, and World War II. No matter who the dead person is, for whatever reason the person might be dead, someone with a personal connection will or might be bothered by publication.

==

The less serious tone. On a conference call I'm only half paying attention to. Here's what I've read recently:

1-7) The first seven books of the Shannara novels by Terry Brooks. Haven't read them since I was a kid and wondered if they'd hold up. They actually have a treasured spot in memory for me since they were my first exposure to epic fantasy. Thus when I later read Tolkein it was him who seemed derivative.

Frankly, the books don't hold up well. But I find that is generally true for me with fantasy in general (Tolkein also doesn't hold up in my opinion).

8) The Match King: Ivan Kreuger, The Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals by Frank Partnoy. Ivan Kreuger was the Bernie Madoff of the Depression. There is some very interesting financial history in this book (several instruments that are standard today were invented by him in pursuit of what was essentially a pyramid scheme). But the book simply doesn't do enough to establish Kreuger as a social force, simply saying he did.

9) Bone Crossed by Patricia Briggs. The latest Mercy Thompson novel; they continue to be pure pulp, though in a form that appeals to me. I do realize that through my purchase of this book I am contributing to the fact that approximately 92% of the movies released in the next year will be vampire or werewolf movies.

10) A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle. Never actually read any Sherlock Holmes. I don't know how indicative this first story is of what came later but I'd say this just proves that Victorian readers were an easy lay. It is unfathomable to me that a century later this is still read as any kind of mystery fiction.

11) 2 B R O 2 B by Kurt Vonnegut. A short story. I honestly can't remember without looking it up what it was about.

12) The Allowable Rhyme by H.C. Lovecraft. An essay decrying the new (at the time insistance) for perfect rhyme in poetry. He makes a good case.

13) The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Loved it for its quotability (though quoting Oscar Wilde is so passe, time to go back to Alexander Pope). Not at all what I expected from my limited knowledge of the story (most of which comes from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen).

14) Mother on Fire: A True Motherf%#$@ Story About Parenting! by Sandra Tsing Loh. I have no idea why I ended up with this book, but I have heard Loh read from it on NPR and was amused. The entire book is essentially about her travails getting her daughter into a "good" school. Apparently she is in the David Sedaris school of NPR people: funny as hell out loud, boring as hell on the page. Though Sedaris has more style, Loh's book seemed to just be ranting like you'd find in a mediocre BBQ Pit thread.

15-16) A Princess of Mars and The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. The first two John Carter of Mars pulp novels. Again, can't imagine actually reading these for simple pleasure but they are interesting historical documents in the birth of science fiction/fantasy.

17) The Art of Making Money: The Story of a Master Counterfeiter by Jason Kersten. "Art" in the title has a double meaning. Obviously there is art as craft. But it is also about Art Williams, who shortly after the new design of the $100 bill was released in the late nineties figured out how to make counterfeits good enough to pass all initial inspections. The story of the counterfeiting is interesting, unfortunately Art Williams is essentially the same as that of any other habitual criminal. There's sympathy for what he went through but the book lacks any dramatic tension. This is mostly because Williams is the only source for the story. The Secret Service did not make itself available so there is no information on how he was tracked down or how they were reacting to his counterfeits entering circulation.

18) The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. I'd never read the book and am surprised at how different it is from the movie (I knew there were significant differences but it's pretty total). I understand why the movie had to be changed and I'd say I still prefer the movie to the book. But with modern technology I think it is now possible for Dorothy to be told off by the porcelain milkmaid.

I find the failed Darwin Award attempts to be more interesting than the successful ones. Anybody can die in an act of stupidity but I love acts of stupidity where the person, against all odds survives.

I'm currently reading a book about the Secret Service (the author was on The Daily Show a few weeks ago; hopefully the writing or story telling improves because it is pretty awful so far). This was just recounted:

In August 1995, CAT [Counterassault team] deployed again when President Clinton was playing golf at the Jackson Hole Golf & Tennis Club in Wyoming. Secret Service agents spotted a worker aiming a rifle at Clinton from the rooftop of a home under construction on the edge of the golf course. It turned out that the man was using the rifle's telescopic site to watch the presidential party up close. Agents held him for questioning and then released him.

I can only assume this guy was thinking "this is certain to get me a Darwin Award!" Could he possibly have thought it a good idea to observe the president's golf outing using a rifle? I'm also amazed that in this situation the Secret Service didn't just shoot him and sort it out later.

I read this story in the local paper this morning.

I can understand the family preferring that the murderer of their daughter not be in the same cemetery as her. But since it isn't like he's in the next plot (510 feet is reasonably far in cemetery terms) I must say must gut reaction is that being outraged, doing press, and demanding he be moved strikes me as too much.

But I'm a heartless bastard about dead bodies (in that I the way most people fetishize them is completely foreign to me). What say others?