Yay, I'm not dead! And after being in several very dangerous situations! And with the email of a cute Czech girl who offered the use of her apartment in Prague! Anyway, in lieu of typing about Alaska, I'd be willing to proffer stories for coffee.....

And now, happy fun review time, in a completely random order!

The Bourne Supremacy - I was pretty disappointed in this one, actually. There were the superficial things like the camera which seemed to be manned by a drunkard, and the one fight scene which might have been wonderful if the zoom button didn't exist. But the main thing (emphasizing 'to me') was that for all that I thought the movie would be about Jason Bourne, it seemed to be more about the slew of secondary characters that the movie didn't have room to develop. That is, Damon's character was a primary agent in the story in that he was a reason things happened, the backstory of his character was a key function of the plot, he affected changes in the plot-world, &c, but in that he seemed more like a plot device than a character to me. Ah well.

Frank Herbert, by William Touponce. If one goes by our current theory that everyone who reads Dune is pretty much on one end or the other of the "meh/ugh" --- "whoa/awesome" spectrum, then this book is scrap paper for the former and crystal meth for the latter. Basically, it's a short biography of Dune's author, then a critical reading of each of the Dune novels, then a synopsis of each of his other works. Of course, "critical reading" doesn't sound very exciting, but having a working out of the massively complex series is deliciously revealing, for lack of a better word.

Hearts of Chaos, by Victor Milan - In complete contrast to Frank Herbert, utterly cheeseball. True beer&pretzel skiffy, with characters that aren't quite as humorous as Janet Evanovich characters, but perhaps with a bit more depth. And, oddly, with a random very much depth in some ways, as the plot is based around playing a few different kinds of the moving-between-languages-as-power trope against and with each other. The author is pretty adept at describing martial arts, as well.

Into the Thinking Kingdoms by Alan Dean Foster is somewhere in between a fable and a fantasy novel, with an almost too luxurious playing-with-words style. It really needs the first book of its trilogy to have the value it does as a story, however. Basically a grown-up children's book without pictures.

Tank Girl! I think "irreverant" is the word for this old-school comic book movie. The main characters are utterly adorable (one is somewhere in between retarded and insane, the other is shy and cute), but the kangaroo things are pretty grody. Good for a lazy weekend laugh.

Silk by Caitlin Kiernan is kind of in between Donnie Darko ambiguity-pregnant-with-meaning and a more purely horror story. I think it's definitely on par with that example, in any case. While I really didn't get a lot of the various music references, the set of Jung-based characters is great, and the Lovecraft-ish atmosphere that is developed by the end plays off with energy against the angsty attitude and tone. A pretty intense book, though one might be wary of it if they don't like spiders.

Robot Jox - Oh man. This was just bad. But: Wyatt and I used to watch it a lot when we were younger. And on that basis, it's funny. Probably would be fun to Mystery Science Theater, but when we watched it we all fell asleep from late-nightness.

Nature's Antiseptics, by C.J. Puotinen is a great, practical little book. It concentrates mainly on using tea tree oil and grapefruit seed extract, but gives other recipes and instructions for augmenting or replacing those ingredients. And just so I don't sound like a total hippy oddball, so far we've used tea tree oil successfully for cuts, a gouge out of the side of my toe, sunburns, shaven pubes (not mine, I swear) (really.) (...which is not to imply that I shave mine), pimples, mosquito bites, gum infection, and second degree burns - works pretty damn well.