Friday we strolled over to a small park a couple of blocks away. It's one of those little neighborhood parks - the kind that nobody from outside of the neighborhood would take the time to visit. Too small. On the plus side, it is nicely shaded by some large pine trees.
After being there for a bit, The Dickens decided that it was her park, and got bent out of shape when other small children dared to use her swings and slide on her slide. We left shortly after that to go buy junk at Safeway. On the way there I found an immense Wood Beetle. It was longer and thicker than my finger, and quite irritated at being discovered. After an internal debate, I decided to bring it home so I could take it to the museum next week to show kids. Since I didn't have anything to carry it in, I put it in my pocket, which is loose enough to accomodate living things. I had a good chuckle while imagining the beetle crawling out of my pocket while we were in Safeway, but it stayed put. I actually had to coax it out of my pocket when we got home. I must say that I prefer beetles in my pockets to ants in my pants. Less itchy.

Saturday night we watched Theo Angelopoulos' Landscape in the Mist. Highly recommended. The story concerns two Greek children, a small boy and his older sister, who are led to believe by their mother that their father, who they have never met, lives in Germany. They then run away from home to search for him. I guess you could say this is a more realistic spin on one of those Disney-esque "incredible journey" films. This film pulls no punches, but is beautiful thoughout, with stunning Greek landscapes as backdrop to a story destined to end in tragedy.
I couldn't convince Jen to stay up with me to watch the new dvd edition of Day of the Dead though. It's still one of my favorite horror films. I think it's because of my apocalypse fixation. This can definitely be considered an apocalypse film, with deserted cities overrun by the living dead and the remnants of humanity forced to live underground where they end up at each other's throats.
Amongst the tidbits of information in the extras is the fact that one of the cast members of Mr. Roger's Neighborhood played a zombie in the film. I bet he doesn't get typecast. That about covers the spectrum right there. At one end you have a tv show set up for the purpose of helping and empowering kids. At the other end you have a film about, well, cannibalistic corpses, which would damage any small kids unlucky enough to watch it. I'll have to make sure it's on a high shelf. Not that the kids would ever watch it anyway. Lexy doesn't like zombies. I had to hide one of my books from him because it has a drawing of a zombie on the spine.

Night.

Cds I listened to while feeling broke: Windy & Carl "Depths", Wiseblood "PTTM", Witthuser & Westrupp "Bauer Plath", Shannon Wright "Perishable Goods" and "Dyed in the Wool", V/A "Tutti a Casa" - Ain Soph Tribute, and XVII'VIE "La Prana"