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this morning i heard back from the digital photo recovery place (i wrote them an e-mail last night). they said that if photorescue won't fix the problem, then there isn't very much they can do. that is on the one hand reassuring, because it means even the professionals can't save the photos i took from the cambridge secret gardens, but on the other hand it's kind of scary if that's really what they use to restore the data, an "over the counter" application; i was sure they'd have more tricks up their sleeves. if that's all it takes, then i can open up my own digital photo recovery clinic and charge people $100+ to rescue their lost photos. deep down in my heart though, i'm still optimistic that one day those photos can be recovered, and it'll be something i can do myself, unless i can find a place that will do a physical recovery of the data by cracking the CF memory card open. but this morning was a case of bad news good news. the good news is that the place where i bought my lithium ion rechargeable nikon batteries is willing to replace my two dead batteries free of charge (that was a pleasant surprise, i figured they'd apologize and maybe at most offer me a discount on any future battery purchases), so i'll be sending them back sometime this week.

work was a real hardship today. not so much the work which is fine now that i have something to actually work on (a squid game); the difficulty involved my digestive system, the food i ate were staging a revolution inside my guts. it all started monday night, when i had questionable hot and sour soup leftovers, then yesterday i ate ramen for lunch then some spicy beef jerky along with a yogurt drink, and for dinner some oily kielbasa, and last night i was hurting (even briefly thought about skipping work the next day, even though it'd look awfully suspicious considering i played hooky last wednesday), and this morning i had some cereal even though i think i'm slowly becoming lactose intolerant, and i had some more kielbasa leftovers for lunch, which triggered another repeat performance of last night's revelry. it'd be disgusting to go into very much details, suffice to say that the word "discharge" comes to mind. i've suffered through worse, but this kind of thing is never fun, let's just leave it at that.

alex and i went running in the later afternoon, 4:30 (he'd been busy with work and a meeting), 78 degrees. it's a good time to run, the sun is lower in the sky so everything is bathed in a warm natural glow, and when we went through the city, it was peak rush hour, and we got to see all the pretty women in their pretty outfits leaving work (or in some cases, having no work, suntanning along the banks of the charles river). i ran anyway, despite the possibility of an upset stomach attack. nothing happened, and i was able to run without drama. alex is a good running partner, we run at the same speed, and neither one of us want to admit we're tired even if we are, so we end up pushing each other to run the whole loop without stopping (something i sometimes can't do if i go by myself, it's too easy to rationalize cheating).

as soon as i came home i took a shower before walking over to dan's place, where we'd be screening the dvd copy of master of the flying guillotine, a cult classic that dan and i were fortunate enough to see on the big screen at coolidge corner last september. elias was there as well, and we watched it on the big projection television in the dark with the air conditioning turned on, awaiting our wing works order to arrive. watching master of the flying guillotine a second time, i see the blind guillotine master as someone analogous to the terminator cyborg, programmed to kill without hesitation, on a mission to destroy the one armed man, decapitating anyone with one arm (apparently back in those days, there were a lot of them). the movie came out in 1977 and was marketed in the US as a science fiction even though it's completely a martial arts film. the trailer on the extras gave us the biggest laughs, with promises of "it will blow your mind" by the sensational sounding narrator. since we had time to spare, dan put in slave of the cannibal god, a dvd i had gotten him for his birthday back in february, and one that he wanted to wait to see with a group. starring ursula andress and stacy keach, it's the story of a woman (andress) searching for her husband in the jungles of new guinea, enlisting the help of her brother (who's in a perpetual scowl) and a mysterious professor (keach). it's hard to describe what goes on in the movie, suffice to say that yes indeed cannibals are encountered, and we discover that the good doctor is suffering from some post-traumatic guilt after he admits he'd been kidnapped by the cannibals and forced to participate in their feeding rituals (shades of ravenous). produced by italians in 1978, the film was made in a politically incorrect time, when graphic depictions of animals getting slaughtered or consumed by other animals can be shown. the gratuitously long scene of a python eating a still breathing monkey is incredibly disturbing and should probably be fast forwarded but one of the characters karate chopping a python should probably be replayed as many times as possible. ursula andress does get naked in the film (which is probably the only real good reason to get this movie: at the time she was 42, but ursula still had the body of an 18 year old), once while being spied upon by a peeping tom puka (that's the name of the cannibal tribe) while getting dressed, and once more at the end of the movie, where she is stripped naked and slowly massaged with blood by two eager female volunteers for some sort of ritual (the rug matches the drapes, folks). stacy keach stretches the limit of his rather narrow acting ability playing the professor, suffering a leg wound that hinders his mobility, still going through man meat withdrawals, and dies unceremoniously by sliding down a waterfall. fortunately midway through the movie the group encounters manolo, an italian (natch) jungle adventurer, who pretty much takes over the role vacated by keach. the movie also features a midget cannibal, an attempted rape of ursula (now the bride of the cannibal god, long story), uranium, lusty native girl, iguanas kissing each other, crocodile attack, shades of incest, misplaced pistols, and the use of a log as a rescue vehicle.

with cymara back at home, dan gave elias and i rides back to our places. i opened up a few windows to let the cooler air circulate through the warm house, it's only a matter of time before i install the air conditioner again.