I’m going back to old habits, trying to gather momentum, and so far so good, as the guy said, walking the plank…
It’s too wet to go into the garden this morning. We’ve kept the path bare earth and this has a certain drawback. We can’t afford the gravel or the concrete to do flagstones yet. So it can be a bit of a bog here and there. I had better go out and toss some fishfood, however, before our spoiled fish go walkabout trying to find some. As if they haven’t gotten fat on the worms and algae native to their pond. They’ve doubled in length and tripled in girth, I swear to you—at least Kenpachi has. He’s a horse.
Thus far the fish tank is staying in good balance, and the dreaded caulerpa weed is in retreat.
We need to go to Lowe’s and get a treatment for the front lawn, which has got a fungus, but, y’ know, writing comes first.
Jane’s working on her third cover for her own books. I have mine ready to go…except a Rusalka cover, which I think she might do after this one, or maybe not: she’s on a roll with the Groundties set covers and might just continue into the new book. You know (or not) that she’s done a prequel, which has never been published. Then…I’ve got to get Chernevog into shape: I think it was Philospher asked was I thinking of Chernebog (Russian myth) and the answer is ‘not unrelated.’
I’d dearly love to get out there and rip up that darn lawn. We don’t like lawn. We’d rather have no-care beds with evergreen trees. But that’s going to have to wait. If I get into that, it means we have to get weedcloth and mulch, etc, etc, and gravel, and all those are not in the current budget. We’re going to make one of those water features I described in the penultimate post, to provide a little oasis in our front yard, along with the roses and maybe an English-type garden in front, who knows? I like hollyhocks and daisies as well as our Japanese themed backyard.
We got OSG back home and through her front door. I hope she woke up enough to get to work today.
If you understand that this is a Hamlet-style story and liked “The Magnificent Seven” (western) and “The Seven Samurai” (eastern), all of which owe something to The Seven Against Thebes (Greek), the art and story of “Samurai Seven” are wonderful. You may want to watch it only once: the impact is quite strong.
Shichini no Samurai is indeed powerful, but it’s also moving, and it shows the class differences in feudal Japan, that a poor peasant could NOT rise above his class, thanks to Odo Nobunaga, who also was a peasant until he became shogun and changed the rules. At that point everyone was frozen into their class and could not move up.
The opening scene where the samurai shaves his head and rescues the child is a typical samurai ploy, do whatever is necessary without having to draw your sword, but if you have to draw the sword, make justice swift and final. The samurai would have been content to let the madman live, but the villagers had other ideas.
Oh well, I love the movie. Favorite anime is still Samurai X, although the final movie, “Remembrance” is quite bittersweet.
Philosopher77: I left Vampire Hunter D out because of the bursting monster guts. Hanneke28 mentioned a low tolerance for horror, and that part seemed quite horrific to me. Of course, it’s possible I’m forgetting equally icky parts in Bloodlust, but other than the bloody bathtub thing, I can’t remember it being quite as gruesome as parts of the original. I could just be forgetting them due to the gorgeous animation in the rest of the flick though. I actually bought Bloodlust sight unseen, expecting to be disappointed, and right from the opening sequence was riveted by the quality of the animation. So even though I’m pretty sure hanneke28 won’t want to watch any vampire anime, I tossed that one in there, just in case.