(no subject)

What's with Firefox? That browser used to load so swiftly - much faster than IE. Not anymore. Much to my shock, IE loads faster. And as much as I hate to give any credit to Microsoft, they were smart enough to add my favorite thing, the tabs, to IE. I may give up Firefox, after all these years.

Thursday night, we got a very unpleasant surprise. One of our stray cats, Splot, was lying on the ground near the driveway, dead. She was still warm, even. She was lying on her side as if she'd just stretched out. She hadn't been ill, her weight was good, and her coat was still silky. There was no sign of trauma on her. We considered snakebite, but because she was never too smart and had recently gotten into the habit of crossing the street a lot, our belief is that she was bumped by a car and only made it to the driveway before dying. I was never really attached to her, so I don't need sympathy, but my roomie was, and it's always a tragedy when an animal dies.

Recently, I discovered a movie indirectly through my flist - from gregx, to be exact - called Good Night, and Good Luck. Every once in a while, I run across a movie which is so thought-provoking that I think everyone should see it, and this is one of them. On the surface, it's a look at Edward R. Murrow tackling Sen. Joe McCarthy. (And anyone on my flist who doesn't know those names, shame on you and/or your education!) But what it's really about are deeper and more pervasive issues: that if we allow our freedoms and rights to be overrun by fear, then we stand to lose them; that television truly is an opiate, allowing entertainment to invade our homes in a pervasive manner and dull our intellects; that journalism has a social responsibility to the truth - not just facts, but The Truth - which it has largely abandoned due to the pressures of capitalism. George Clooney is not just a pretty face! (He cowrote and directed it.) The companion piece on the DVD is fascinating, although not as fascinating as the movie itself. On a strictly entertainment level, besides Clooney himself (who tries, without complete success, to hide his pretty-face), it casts one of my favorite actors, David Strathairn, as Murrow, and he brings the right gravity and intellect to the role. Everyone in the film is good, but a standout is an actor I actually don't like, Ray Wise. The only fault with the film that I can find is that it is too short - I could have spent at least another hour with those people. Although I enjoy being opiated with entertainment, just as much as everyone else, I do like an occasional splash of cold water on the face, which I manage about once a month. Good Night, and Good Luck was that splash. As an indictment of journalism and capitalism, it's a lovely illustration of Kat's Rules of Life #3 - "There is no idea so good that humans can't f*ck it up." It avoids the obvious and isn't an indictment of our government, by the way, showing the good and the bad of Congress and the military, and thereby leaving the social conscience squarely in the laps of us, the citizens.

I am working on my Nano and will soon - to be merciful to my flist - stop talking about it here and switch to my nanokat LJ for it. I am considering posting it as I compose it, but I'm not sure anyone would read it if I did. And it would be raw first draft, too. *wince*

I am still playing games, Kingdom Hearts at the moment, when I should be writing. But the bad weather is leaving me so fatigued that I find thinking difficult and creativity nearly impossible.

And that is my life for the moment, in no particular order, excepting bitching about my job (which, actually, requires very little bitching these days!) and money. You can go back to your life now! :)