Is It "Cactuses"? or "Cacti"?

Sinta and I had a wonderful weekend in Arizona, but we wish we had more time to stay and discover what the place had to offer. It's a completely different scene there if you compare it to the Bay Area. i mean, we saw miles and miles of dry desert land. The 13% humidity totally sucked out the moisture from my skin, but it also kept my hair frizz-free. The drive back to Phoenix from Tucson was interesting, to say the least. We took a different highway up. At first I was thinking, "Hey, this is actually kinda pretty...a change of scenery. Look at the pretty cactus blossoms...I've never seen a saguaro cactus before," and so on and so forth. And then, maybe about 30-40 miles into the drive, my way of thinking shifted, and I began thinking, "Hmm, another palo verde tree...more cactus?...a couple of homes?! Who in their right mind would live in the middle of nowhere? I'd cry for days if I was stuck here." More than anything else, though, I saw saguaro after saguaro after saguaro. The saguaro is the cactus you see in cartoons with the tall trunk and two arms pointing upward. After seeing a gazillion of them, I started to think about what would the next cactus look like: Will it have three arms instead of two? Will I be able to find the perfect one with the straight trunk and uniformed arms? And then I started to find the oddest looking one--the one with the most arms, the one with bulbs growing out of its head, the one growing crooked. The variations were endless.

Imagination Gone Wild

My imagination started to run loose as I looked out into the vast dry plain. What if I was stuck here? How long would it take me to walk to the mountain that looked 50 miles away under the desert sun? If I didn't have water with me, would I survive the walk? Or will I have to cut open a cactus to get water? And then I thought about the movie "Hildago". If Viggo Mortensen's character and his horse survived the Arabian Desert with a canteen of water, then so can I. I could just go on and on. Speaking of wild imaginations, during our flight to Phoenix, I heard the window behind me rattle. I began to think what if the window becomes loose, cracks, breaks, and creates a vaccuum in the cabin? My hair would be sucked out the window, and the force would be so strong that it would rip off the fuselage and suck out anybody not strapped in their seats. It reminded me of what happened to a Hawaiian Air flight back in the early '90s when the fuselage ripped and attendants were sucked right out. To think what the passangers on that flight were going through...I don't want to think about it. That's where my morbid thinking stops.

What the Hell Are We Watching?!

Last night, Sinta and I were perusing through my brother's eccentric library of DVDs. I happened to pick one up, and he says, "That's an awesome movie. Fifteen minutes into it, you'll say, 'What the f*?! am I watching?" And so, we watch "Happiness of the Katakuris" by the critically acclaimed director Takashi Miike. This Japanese black comedy is about a dysfunctional family who opens an inn in the middle of nowhere. Unfortunately, the guests that do come to stay at the inn end up dead in the morning. The family buries the bodies in the woods while trying to make their inn successful. What makes this movie quirky is the mix of various film genres and elements. What makes it even quirkier is that the characters suddenly burst out into song. These scenes are shot like musicals complete with choreography. Five minutes into the movie, Sinta was already saying, "What the hell are we watching?" If we're watching a movie at home, I have this really bad habit of falling asleep in the middle of it, and usually Sinta will let me sleep. Not for this movie. Apparently, I fell asleep for about thirty minutes, and Sinta woke me up because, according to him, he couldn't take watching the movie by himself anymore. He backtracked the movie to where I fell asleep. I sat up to watch, and in the next seen where I left off, music began to play, and I commented that it sounded like an intro to a karaoke track. Sure enough, the mother and father burst into a karaoke scene--the same thing you'd see on TV if you were singing karaoke: the colorful spotlights, the couple singing in the dark, complete with Japanese character subtitles that change color as you sing. Did I mention that some scenes are filmed in claymation? As odd as this movie is, I think I could watch it one more time. I'm curious if Miike's other films are like this.