BRIGHT IDEAS

Dear Hollywood Or any other film/screen making entity:

I believe that if there were any BOOK READERS living amongst the moneyed and powerful media masters that they could mine a nearly endless treasure trove of film ideas.

I therefore humbly submit the following:



Dies The Fire by S.M. Stirling

 Big old EMP in1998 reduces civilization to living standards of 11th century England. There are survivors. Norman the Conqueror (Of Portland) meets Mike Havel, a superb ex-marine and his Bearkillers gang, Juniper McKenzies clan of warrior Wiccan farmers and a bunch of pissed off ranchers from Bend.



Dragons of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey


Disillusioned Star Trek generation leaves earth to colonize Pern a goldilocks planet in the Rukbat system. Everything is swell until they are visited by thread, which is a deadly rain of flesh eating organisms. The scientists quickly adapt some small local flying lizards and breed them to a much larger riding size. These dragons imprint on their riders at hatching and can chew a coal compound to produce phosphine gas that incinerates the thread. This series would be a good project for any studio that specializes in computer generation type films for the dragons doncha know.


Warprize by Elizabeth Maughn

Attila the Hun conquers all but the real Attila was never this interesting. His latest conquest is the land of X-something or other. The author really liked to name people with Xena names. Anyway the local X person is a very high ranking local girl who is also a healer. Her half brother, King X disapproves of her hobby and of her in general. The kingdom is defeated. Attila demands tribute and part of that tribute is the girl. Wait it gets better. The rest of the three books deal with the interaction and cultural misunderstandings between the girl and the entire horseback riding nation.


Oh yeah for the horror filmmakers? There are any of the Jane Austen-like stories that have been adapted to feature zombies, ghouls, vampires and intelligent sea monsters, etc.

Look up, look way way up!

We haz downspouts

IIt was a beautiful day in the neighborhood....

For the nice painter lady to come and paint the new siding. She offered to knock off 200 dollars if we just had her paint the trim white not blue like we had planned. I hated that dumb blue color anyway. Uh..yeah, paint everything white! They will come back tomorrow and put up the down spouts. Then let the monsoon advance.

Also there is a paucity of parked cars at the triplex next door, can all of the subsidized evicted people had possibly left the building!?!

Then husband and I went out for dinner at the Chinese place, I had General Tsaos Chicken and husband had Marfar chicken.  Yummy, lots of left overs to take to work. 

UPDATE ON NEIGHBORHOOD BREAK IN

Heard it through the grapevine this morning, that they found out who had broken into their car. It was a kid but the kids' girlfriend dropped her cell phone. It took a little longer than usual because the local cops were able to bust a meth ring with information provided on the cell phone. Very cool. A few other car break in's have been solved with this one fell swoop.

Also on the nearly department next door neighbors: About 3 o'clock this morning I woke up to Bam Bam bam bam bam bam "You #$(% @)$$!" shouted repeatedly several times, more BAM bam bam bam. I got up and Tim was awake and the cops were outside. Eventually they handcuffed the young man and took him away. A co-worker tells me that this little family had been served eviction papers by the Sheriff, so at least ONE of them has moved out last night. I hope the rental agency picks better tenants next time, the building is now completely empty.

Shepherds Pie

I decided to make a Shepherds pie, I used fresh ground turkey, frozen corn niblets and left over boiled new potatoes.


I chopped an onion and fried it off and then added the turkey, added a few spices, some pepper flakes,salt, pepper, some fresh grated nutmeg.


Added a can of cream of mushroom soup.


Mashed the potatoes and added milk to soften a bit as well as half a stick of melted butter.


Layered the casserole with turkey mixture, layer of corn niblets, layer of mashed potatoes, layer of Parmesan. Bake in 350 oven 30 minutes, crank up to 45 for 15 minutes to get a bit of brown crust. Not bad.

And NO, I did not run out of black olives.

OMG you GOTTA go watch this show....

Say Howyadoin' to Nadia G. star of "Bitchin' Kitchen" Fer real.

She is Jerseylicious, pierced, tatooed (I think) talking the talk in a wacked out kitchen. My favorite implement? That red spatula shaped like a guitar.

She speaks perfect Brooklynese with an occasional dip into French and English.
The show has a theme, last night was "Bag 'em and tag 'em" Sure fire dishes for breakfast, lunch and dinner to get your guy...for awhile.

Breakfast was Pan Purdue with Caramel sauce seasoned with Fleur De Sal;
Lunch was crab pasta in cherry tomato cream sauce.
Dinner was shepherds pie.

Click on picture to make big, enjoy the details, the padded cupboards etc.
Trust me the floor has a zebra stripe. I love the demi-lune cooking surface.

She also shared her great grandmothers secret on how to tell if Mr. Perfect for right now is Mr. Forever. Sniff his arm pits, if the pheromones are compatible and do not disgust, grab him.

I so want to go right out and get some bling!

Excitement in the 'hood.

My neighbor across the street, who also works at the same place I do, hailed me at work.

Neighbor: "You guys lock your car up at night?"

Me: "Yeah, it is locked 24/7, why"?

Neighbor: "I decided to take Patty's car to work, I went to get into it and it had been trashed and some CD's taken. So I went back in to tell Patty to call the cops and I took my truck to go to work."

Me: "So what happened next?"

Neighbor: "The cops came, checked things out and asked if the cell phone they found was ours."

Me: "Was it?"

Neighbor with big evil grin, "Nope."