As happy as a three-legged dog

I love my neighborhood, it's funky down-at-the-heels-but-struggling-to-hipness; it's a great mixture of classes and races and ethnicities. It's a real neighborhood, not a housing development grouped around shopping centers. And I will miss it.

So, less than three weeks until I move. Three weeks from yesterday. I've started grieving for my lost home, my lost neighborhood. I suppose I've been grieving all along, but I'm acknowledging it now, letting it in. I'm moving someplace I don't want to move, but there's no help for it. Since I haven't got any choice, I've tried to embrace the move and make it my own—and that's worked well for the most part. But I'm exhausted now, and that always brings my negative emotions closer to the surface.

Interesting sight of the day: On the drive home, I was brooding about all this—brooding is a talent of mine and I was exercising it with great vigor last night. I decided to do something really suicidal, so I turned off Venice Blvd. into a quiet residential section of Venice so I could cut through the back way to Lincoln Blvd. to visit an execrable fast food drive-through joint. Nothing like fast food to really crash my emotions and body.

But deep in the lushest part of this residential neighborhood, where ancient trees grow tall and shady, where the streets are broad and from the early Twentieth Century, as are the houses, I saw a group of kids playing. They ran across the street down the block from me, laughing, and followed by a three-legged golden retriever. He was smiling and laughing right along with them—you know that look dogs get on their faces when they're with people they love and all's right with the world? And he was vigorous and running on his three legs and his coat gleamed with good health and good care and he was completely in the moment and happy.

And I thought, Puppy's got it right.

I have a safe and dry place to sleep; I am in reasonably good health, well-fed and well-groomed; I have a place to go and things to do; I have people who love me and want to play with me. What's to be unhappy? So I only have three legs. It hasn't stopped me from running.

Watched a whole lotta SF

Gotten from madrobins

This is the Science Fiction Film Canon, 50 most influential (not necessarily best or worst) films as listed by John Scalzi in his Rough Guide to Science Fiction Films. Bold those you've seen; italicize those you want to see and strike those you have no desire to see. Put an asterisk after the ones you own.

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension! ("Character is who you are in the dark.")
Akira
Alien
Aliens
Alphaville
Back to the Future
Blade Runner*
Brazil (and I'd like to own this one)
Bride of Frankenstein
Brother From Another Planet
A Clockwork Orange
Close Encounters of the Third Kind*
Contact
Escape From New York
ET: The Extraterrestrial
Flash Gordon: Space Soldiers (serial)
The Fly (1985 version)
Forbidden Planet
Ghost in the Shell
Gojira/Godzilla
The Incredibles
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956 version)
Jurassic Park
Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior
The Matrix
Metropolis*
On the Beach
Planet of the Apes (1968 version)
Robocop
Sleeper
Solaris (1972 version) (I tried to go see this a number of times at the art house, but never made it)
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope*
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
The Stepford Wives
Superman
Terminator 2: Judgement Day
The Thing From Another World
Things To Come
Tron
12 Monkeys
28 Days Later
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
2001: A Space Odyssey*
La Voyage Dans la Lune (aka The Trip to the Moon)
War of the Worlds (1953 version)