Through the wind, the chill and the rain…. and the storm and the flood. I’m approaching.

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Set up Mel’s Prezzies a couple of days early in the studio… a pair of monitor speakers, sound card and a set of new ‘phones. She’ll still get stocking stuffers on the 25th. Bummer of the week is that I have to be on call all day on Thursday and Sunday. Feh. Upside, Mel will be along for the ride on Sunday, anyhow.

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Jill’s doing pretty well as a web-help… I can really appreciate that she picks up stuff fast, and is a self-starter. She sort of fubared the front page without making a backup (after she was told several times to back up everything before making changes) but it was able to be fixed quickly, and I think she learned the lesson.

ADP let me down *again* last night, failing to launch jobs in a timely manner again. I wrote everything down on paper this time, and she still failed to do her job. I got everything launched in a reasonable way, but it’s a real shame that she can’t follow simple instructions that every other tech can do.

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Ask me on this post and…

1. I will tell you what song reminds me of you.
2. I will tell you what celebrity/public/fictional person you remind me of, either personality-wise or looks-wise.
3. I will give you one word that I associate with you when I think of you.
4. I will tell you what colors I associate with you.

Then steal this for your journal and make someone else’s day as well.

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Leaving a City Crushed
Tokyo Braces for the Unthinkable: No Godzilla

TOKYO — Could Tokyo finally be safe?

Godzilla, the movie monster that terrorized the city in a series of films over 50 years, is set to stomp off into the sunset for what may be the last time. After the release this month of “Godzilla: Final Wars,” Toho Pictures has decided to mothball the great green one, uncertain when, if ever, it’ll return to the big screen.

Japan’s largest film star has disappeared before — going into hibernation for a decade in the mid-1970s, only to come back with a vengeance after a grass-roots movement by fans nudged Toho into reviving the celebrity city smasher. But after 28 films over a half-century, even Godzilla’s makers concede that one of the longest-running film franchises in history appears to be losing steam.

The monster ponders what to smash next in “Godzilla: 1985,” one of 28 movies featuring the boil-covered lizard over the last half-century. (New World Pictures)

In recent years, the aging lizard’s movies have drawn about half the audiences they used to, barely covering production costs. Even the big-budget Hollywood version of “Godzilla” in 1998 was a monstrous box office bomb.

“The choices for kids are more varied now and they are watching the cuter monsters, like the ones from ‘Pokemon,’ ” lamented Toho Pictures President Shogo Tomiyama. “If Godzilla does come back, it will be in the hands of another generation of movie directors.”

Even the possibility of an end to the “Godzilla” franchise is a landmark moment for Japan. Here, Godzilla — who roared to life in 1954 as a terrible lizard awakened from a 2 million-year slumber by U.S. nuclear testing in the South Pacific — was far more than a kitschy creature. Rather, it was a complex metaphor, the embodiment of uniquely Japanese fears in the only nation ever to experience the horror of a nuclear attack.

Godzilla’s boil-covered flesh called to mind the radiation victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The subtext of its rage — taking vengeance on mankind for devising the nuclear bomb — expressed the frustration of a nation subjected to, and later protected by, American military might.

But unlike King Kong, Godzilla was no tragic giant, no Darwinian leftover done in by humanity. Instead, in the vast majority of its films, Godzilla survived man’s best attempts to defeat it, leaving in its wake a grisly tableau of the Tokyo skyline as a reminder of the terrifying consequences of military science.

“Godzilla was and is a powerful antiwar statement,” said Toshio Takahashi, professor of modern literature at Tokyo’s Waseda University and author of three books on Godzilla symbolism. “Besides that, he is a mirror into the Japanese soul.”

In the United States, “Godzilla” films have been mostly low-tech, sci-fi fun, their bad dubbing and hysterical scenes of panicked Tokyoites fleeing down rubble-strewn city streets offering a plethora of material for humorists.

Critics, however, tend to be kinder in the twilight of a star’s career, and Godzilla’s potential demise is sparking global eulogies fit for the most revered legends of the silver screen. Academics at the University of Kansas, for instance, held a major Godzilla conference in October. Last month, Hollywood offered up to Godzilla its own gold star on the Walk of Fame.

Back home, reverence to the lizard god of Japanese cinema has reached gigantic proportions. Godzilla has landed on dozens of magazine covers. A flurry of books — including academic studies by leading “Godzillaologists” — have hit bookstore shelves. A new tribute CD — “G. LASTS . . . Tribute to Godzilla 50th” — came out recently. Exhibitions on the era of Godzilla have opened at two major Japanese museums. In Hiroshima, a peace movie festival in 2005 to mark the 60th year after the atomic bombing will prominently feature the first Godzilla movie, widely viewed as the most politically charged of the series.

“It may be hard for many Americans to grasp the significance of Godzilla in Japan,” said Peter Musolf, a Tokyo-based writer and author of “The Godzilla Question.” “America is not a country that faced nuclear attack, and from the beginning, that anti-nuclear message was kept from American audiences. The first Godzilla movie was totally recut for distribution in the States, largely eliminating the political message it contained.”

Indeed, “Godzilla” sprang to life after outrage in Japan over the Lucky Dragon 5 incident, when Japanese fishermen were hit by the fallout of U.S. nuclear tests on the Bikini atoll in the Pacific Ocean. Later, irradiated tuna turned up in Tokyo fish markets. Toho Pictures tapped the rage of the Japanese when making the first film, originally called “Gojira,” the nickname of an oversize studio staffer that combined the Japanese words for gorilla and whale.

The Japanese version of the film contained scenes such as a parliamentarian delivering an anti-nuclear speech. But 1950s Hollywood, unwilling to release a film discreetly criticizing U.S. nuclear policy, recast the movie using the young Raymond Burr as leading man, turning it into pure science fiction.

Many people read larger themes into the Godzilla films. More imaginative critics saw “Godzilla vs. King Kong” — in which Godzilla fights Hollywood’s great ape run amok in Tokyo — as an expression of the public’s anxieties over American domination of Japan. The U.S.-drafted constitution here forbids the Japanese to go to war or possess a real military; Japan remains largely reliant on the United States for its security.

The monster ponders what to smash next in “Godzilla: 1985,” one of 28 movies featuring the boil-covered lizard over the last half-century. (New World Pictures)

Later Godzilla movies were said to represent the intense Japanese respect for the power of nature. The stomp and rattle of Godzilla’s urban attacks, the tidal waves accompanying its rise from Tokyo Bay: All played into the collective nightmares of a nation plagued by earthquakes and typhoons.

Those references were often lost on foreigners, but Godzilla nevertheless developed a huge and diverse international fan base, ranging from Hollywood director Quentin Tarantino, who hired Godzilla’s set designers for his recent “Kill Bill” films, to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, who was so enamored with Godzilla that he took its actors and designers to Pyongyang in the 1980s to make his own North Korean version, “Pulgasari.”

Part of Godzilla’s appeal, and perhaps what eventually turned Godzilla into a dinosaur, was Toho’s religious adherence to low-tech special effects. Rather than move toward computer-generated graphics to bring Godzilla to life, Toho always stuck to using a guy in a monster suit. For international audiences, it gave Godzilla a sort of Ed Wood-does-Japan feel. But in Japan, it endeared the beast to a cult fan base who saw Godzilla, played by only three men through the years, as a role as demanding as James Bond or Batman.

“Suit acting became a sort of Japanese traditional art,” said Tsutomu Kitagawa, who plays Godzilla for his second time in “Final Wars.” In the film, Godzilla defeats a host of monsters and aliens before proudly stomping off into the horizon. Before rising to the role of Godzilla, Kitagawa played a number of suited characters in the Japanese-made “Power Rangers” series.

“To me, there is no question that if Godzilla does come back, it will still come back with suit acting,” he said. “The audiences related to the real expressions of emotion of the actor as Godzilla. The fans would simply not accept anything else.”

Indeed, some hard-core fans are highly disappointed that the latest film employed far more high-tech tricks than previous films. “They used too many computer graphics,” complained Shinichi Ueno, an 18-year-old student who recently saw “Final Wars” in Tokyo. “But it’s sad this is the last movie. They might do the same thing they did in the past and bring him back. I hope they do.”

So, will Godzilla rise again?

“Someday, I think so,” Kitagawa said. “I just can’t imagine a world without Godzilla.”

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1 year ago -RotK w/Dan, 51 successes, gabbed with sedef, Atom feeds

2 years ago – cravings, adoration, sinanju,

3 years ago – stray fugitive lotr thoughts, my fondness for orange/yellow foods, rejection letter, where there’s a whip, there’s a way (I sing it now when I use orc mage knight armies)

4 years ago – cards, filters added

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Plumb – Sink N’ Swim Lyrics

I lost it all
You got it back
Believed in me
When I gave up on myself again

A sudden rain
Revealed your face
I knew right then
No matter where I go I’d
Have your hand to hold

We will sink and
We will swim
‘Til the ocean turns to sand
We will laugh
We will cry
‘Til there’s no more breath inside
Cause we will sink
We will swim

I was,
A tender reed
Bent in the wind
And then the storm passed
And you helped me stand upright again

So here we are
Nothing to lose
So take my hand
We’ll jump right in
The water’s warm
Its time to live

We will sink and
We will swim
‘Til the ocean turns to sand
We will laugh
We will cry
‘Til there’s no more breath inside
Cause we will sink
We will swim

It doesn’t rain
For nothing
It will shine
For you

We will sink and
We will swim
Til’ the ocean turns to sand
We will laugh
We will cry
Til’ there’s no more breath inside
Cause we will sink
We will swim