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As a thinker and planner the ant is the equal of any savage race of men; as a self-educated specialist in several arts she is the superior of any savage race of men; and in one or two high mental qualities she is above the reach of any man, savage or civilized! |
Friday, November 28, 1997
At Jane and Luke's house yesterday, we arranged a little outing to see Starship Troopers this afternoon. I'm always pleased to be asked to "go with." I drove up to the OakTree Cinema in the late afternoon dusk. (We are getting to the darkest part of the year, and it's quite noticeable as far north as we are in Seattle.)
This theater is in a shopping center with a grocery store, Larry's by name, that is the nearest we have to a Gourmet Giant. Lots of imported food, bulk food, special marinated meat, and so on. I always like to stop in and buy a snack to have in the movie, if there's time. This time I didn't have to, because I had one of those Tobler Chocolate Oranges left over from Thanksgiving. It comes in pieces, so it's good for sharing.
Luke, Jane, Jerry Kaufman and Suzle Tompkins all arrived about the same time as I did, so we didn't have to wait in front of the theater or save seats inside, which was less worrying for me than the last time we saw a movie as a group.
The movie itself was pretty silly, but worth seeing. If you think you want to see it at all, see it in a theater, since the special effects are always better that way. There is something about the interaction of the lines on a TV screen and the matte images in a movie that don't interact well. Someone in a movie discussion at work called the movie Baywatch in Space, which is not too far off the mark, but there are lots of cool space battles. Bugs, Mr. Rico! Bugs! Bugs! Zillions of them! So much so that I'm putting off seeing Alien Resurrection for a few days so as to avoid a bug overdose.
After the movie we drove a few blocks (we should have walked!) to a Hakka Chinese restaurant that Jerry and Suzle had been to before. We joked that we should be ordering lobster or crab (because of the jointed legs). The Hakka Chinese are a minority group in China, from the north, I think. We traded stories about the worst hotel rooms we ever stayed in, and discussed some blue-sky ideas about a plan to start up a co-housing group. Jane thinks this would be a good thing as we all grow older: a group setting that would make it easier to share resources and support.
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