Uh-oh

I just ate an entire tin of these at my desk. The whole thing. Christ.

I've long looked askance at them in grocery lines. They seem like a good idea, but the combination of chocolate and curiously strong mint reminds me of the scene in "American Psycho" where he gets the fancy restaurant to cover a urinal cake in chocolate and serve it to his girlfriend as a special dessert. And I hate even thinking about "American Psycho." But today, I don't know, the cinnamon one looked kind of good and sounded less urinal-cake-y. And now the entire tin is gone.

So be warned: These are kind of good.

Puffy sleeves

I am fairly indifferent to this new movie "Enchanted" but I am really enjoying the images of James Marsden in puffy sleeves, cf:



If I guess the plot correctly, his character will end up getting dumped for the guy from "Can't Buy Me Love." Summer before last, of course, he played one character who was murdered by his wife and another whose wife had borne Superman's son, and now he has to wear puffy sleeves on top of everything else. The poor guy cannot win.

Arf!

OK, I just have to say this. The tagline for Will Smith's upcoming "I Am Legend" -- "The last man on earth is not alone" -- is perfect. I like that it references the Vincent Price version, and it has just the right teasing note of mystery for a horror movie. But dammit, when they use the tagline on posters where Will Smith is walking along with his dog, it DOESN'T WORK. Of COURSE he's not alone. HE'S GOT A DOG. This has been making me crazy all week. The image turns it into a whole different movie, some kind of postapocalyptic "Because of Winn-Dixie": "It's the heartwarming 'tail' of the last man on earth -- and the last man's best friend! Together they formed a 'legendary' friendship!"

Warner Brothers, do something.

Highlights from home

A few highlights from my trip home last week...

- Trick-or-treating with my niece and nephew, who are not yet quite getting into making scary faces for the camera. (Since they are costumed as, respectively, a stormtrooper and Sleeping Beauty, I suppose they do not really need to be scary.)

- Getting an urgent phone call from my mom telling me to come down to the barn and look at a really big housecat. By the time I arrived, the cat was gone. But I did get to see the open grave for one of our horses, who evidently had a bad winter last year and was expected to die any day. She's feeling much better now, but they're leaving her grave open (with a fence around it) so when it's time to put her down, they can just lead her into it and shoot her. "That way we won't have to get the backhoe," Mom explained.

- Tennessee countryside in October. Oh my, it is beautiful; golden and hazy yet crisp. Took a couple of walks, seeing hawks, a great blue heron, bluebirds, and many cows. I did not however get to see our neighbor's Watusi cows, who had been moved between two fields through some of our land. "Their manure is right here," Mom pointed it out on one walk. "Hmm, it's dried out since yesterday."