CE Wills

    Hey, everyone. We went to the theater today and saw the movie with Liam Neeson called Unknown. Mr. Neeson stars as Dr. Martin Harris, a biotech geek who arrives in Berlin to speak at a seminar. His wife, Elizabeth, is played by January Jones. When Neeson's character is involved in a wreck he finds himself disowned by his lovely wife who has a new Martin Harris accompanying her. Wow, is four days of wifely loyalty too much to expect?      The cab driver who saves him is his only friend. This cabbie is called Gina, an illegal immigrant from Bosnia. She is played by Diane Kruger. When everyone who chats with Neeson winds up dead, it appears there is some nefarious undercurrent to Dr. Harris's wife and his former life. An elderly private eye who was a Stasi secret policemen in old East Berlin is intrigued by the whole mystery and is too cunning for the opposition. This guy is ably portrayed by Bruno Ganz.     This film is 4 stars out o...

    Hey, everyone. I was surfing the web today and came across one of those 'truth is stranger than fiction' stories. I saw it on the Pulse app for I-Pad. Here's the recipe.     The story was told on a site called The Dinner Party Download . It seems that there is a whale with a problem that is heartrending. This whale has a song with a higher pitched sound than any other whale. It also is not of any known species and is probably a mixed breed. Since 1992 the US Navy has tracked him with their SOSUS buoys which are sprinkled about the ocean and used to listen for enemy subs. Since he has such a unique voice he has become an object of curiosity which is easily differentiated from others.      This whale sings at 52 hertz, near the lowest note on a tuba. He has a really high voice for a whale. When he calls for a mate, companionship, conversation, no other whale can hear him. No one ever answers.     To make matters worse...

 Severe storms were moving through the mountains tonight. After having the flu for the past 8 days, I felt slightly better. Then I had to be out in this mess due to work problems. Rain in sheets and winds in excess of 50 miles an hour were my lot as I climbed in and out of the company truck, unlocking gates and going into a remote area, dealing with troublesome pumps and the like. Bit of a drag for the elderly, I assure you. Must I pay for my misspent youth in this fashion?      Truth to tell, wouldn't life be boring if you sat in a cube all the time? I did that for a few years and made great money at it, more than I make now. At any rate, I made it home, safe and sound, by the grace of God, and I'm now sipping some red wine. I dried off and I'm feeling pretty good.     As I drove home on the road from the pit, I saw a wolf start to dart across the road in front of me in the downpour. He ducked back under cover at the last minute. He had a head ...

    Hey, everyone. I hope you are having a great week. My topic for today is women.     As I have gotten older, my line of thought about women has changed considerably. When I was young they were certainly fascinating and a little scary. Then when I got married I was focused on the one lady and supporting my family, with all the struggles attendant on that occupation.      Now, in my latter days, I meditate some on women and their role in this world. I hope that you can hear what I'm saying without thinking I mean something else. I see women now as something pretty awesome in a sort of spiritual sense. They are a haven of warmth and comfort in a cruel world. Sometimes, when a man has been dealing with the hardness of the world, a woman's softness, a kind word, a gentle touch, they can make all the difference.      I see women and I wonder about their courage and perseverance. I see a woman who hangs in there with a...

    Hey, everyone. I feel a little better today so I took a walk in the woods. I saw some huge deer tracks at the creek in the soft mud. There wasn't a whole lot of water in the creek. Sometimes I wonder if someone is damming it upstream. I believe that is illegal.     It was music to my ears when a huge flock of Canadian geese flew over with their mellow song. I'm glad to say they were heading north. Hopefully it is the harbinger of spring.     I spooked a big hawk who was sitting in the top of a dead oak. He went flapping away, irritated with me, I'm sure, for interrupting his observance of some rabbit or squirrel that he planned on inviting to dinner.     The flu bug insured that I'd be tired when I returned home, but at least I got out and got some exercise.     I was thinking about the NFL today. It is certainly human nature to mess up a good thing. Do you remember a few years ago when something similar ...

     Hey, everyone. This was sunset, a few days ago. It was taken from my back deck. As you can see, not a whole lot of neighbors back there. None, actually. Sunsets are usually pale and washed out up here, for some reason. This was a nice one, though.      When you sit outside at night, it's good to sit with your back to a wall or a tree. Mountain lions like to attack from the rear and bite the neck of their victims. The truth is, we don't see them all that often but you can tell they've been about by tracks and things. I guess that the total sightings I've had is about four. They certainly have my respect. I don't let them keep me out of the woods but I take precautions.      I've had a bit of the flu for the last couple of days. Quite the drag, it is. Taken numerous naps to combat the stuff. It has hindered me from typing on the latest manuscript because I've felt crummy.     I'm really grateful for the cha...

     I heard an odd story, years ago. A young guy goes to see a girl at her home in the country. They're both young, early teens, so it's a chaperon thing, sitting on the porch swing at mom's house. Mom and daughter go in to fix some refreshments while the teenage boy sits on the porch. He notices an old man at the deserted house just down the road. The old dude has on bib overalls with one side unfastened. He is wearing a straw hat. The old guy disappears around the back of the house.     When the mom and her daughter come back out, the boy mentions seeing someone at the house next door. The mom shakes her head.     "You must be mistaken, honey. That's my folks' place. No one lives there anymore."     The young man replies, "The old man had on a straw hat and wore bib overalls with one snap undone and dropped down."      Both of the females' faces turned completely white. The mom said that the boy ...

    Hey, everyone. I was very excited to see that my friends at Tatem Games had brought out a new edition of their Carnivore game. As you may remember, their Carnivore: Dinosaur Hunter is my favorite game. So, when I saw that they had brought out a new one it was a no-brainer to buy it.     The new game is $2.99, like the previous one. It has five different hunting areas and 9 different prehistoric beasts you can hunt. These include the wooly rhinoceros, a huge, moose-type creature, a monstrous wolf, a mammoth, a cave bear that weighs 3 tons and a saber-tooth tiger they call a smilodon. (sounds like a game show host)     Like its predecessor, the game is great fun. I was hunting one of the big wolves that weighs almost half a ton. As he charged me one of my bullets must have struck his spine because he yelped and leaped straight up in the air and fell dead. It so startled me that I jumped about a foot in my seat. Very comical.   ...

    Hey, everyone and a happy Valentine's Day to you. I bought Real Racing 2 for I-Phone last weekend and I've played it quite a bit this past week. I put the I-Phone version on my I-Pad because there is no I-Pad version available as of this writing. As a result, the graphics are not as crisp as they could have been in HD or whatever. They are still quite good. I bought the game for half price, a healthy $4.99.      As I mentioned in a previous comment, the big difference with this game over all the other racing games on the app store is an impressive 16 car field in various races. It will get you wired up and hunkered down on the wheel, like a granny that's had too much caffeine. It's a ton of fun, no lie.     At the beginning they have it fixed where you have to race with somewhat uninspiring cars. I made the mistake of pressing forward to buy hotter cars. The smart thing to do is select the easy option, (thank goodness a developer h...

    Hey, everyone. One of the great pleasures of doing a blog is that you can share with others the things you find that are enjoyable. Tonight I watched a really good movie, that rarest of beasts, which is nearing extinction. The name of it is The Assignment.     Here's the recipe. A U.S. Naval officer bears a striking resemblance to a terrorist called The Jackal. The plan is to train the guy to impersonate the real Jackal to such an extent that the KGB believe phony evidence that suggests that the Jackal has turned against them and accepted a huge amount of money from the CIA. Hopefully, the KGB will kill The Jackal and the world will be a safer place to live.     Aidan Quinn is excellent as the Naval officer turned spy. Donald Sutherland does a stellar portrayal of the officer's CIA mentor and Ben Kingsley is the Mossad operative. Terrific story, acting, the whole enchilada. I rate it 4 stars out of 5, no, 4.5 stars out of 5. See it if you ca...

    Hey, everybody. Thanks for reading the blog. I've decided to share a bit of my life philosophy with you guys. It's a little something that I picked up during my youth. The occasion was on this wise: I was hiking in the Himalayas and entered a cave. There was a wise man there. The dude had to be 400 years old. I gave him a breath mint and asked him if he could turn me on to something that would change my life. The aged eyes twinkled and he said. "Ain't no thing, my man. You need to know about naps."      "Naps," I said.     "Yeah, there's nothing that life can throw at you which can not be made better by a nap."     "Okay."     "Guess how old I am," he said with a self-satisfied look.     "About 400?"     "27", he said smugly.     I'm getting off the subject a bit. Today I gave my wife some INT because she had a bit of a flu bug. My plan of therapy incl...

     Hey, everybody. We went to see a movie today titled The Eagle . It stars Channing Tatum as Marcus Aquila and Jamie Bell as Esca, the slave. It is a hefty 114 minutes long and is rated PG 13. In my opinion, 20 minutes or so could have been cut out of the front end of it with no huge damage to the show, but the length did not detract from the picture significantly, either. Here's the recipe.     It's ancient Rome with the attendant swords, armor, legionaires and centurions. These folks conquered the world and they did not do it by being nice guys. They did not do it without making enemies either. However, when the Roman 9th Legion chose to go into the northern section of Britain they ran into a problem. They disappeared without a trace, all 5000 were presumed dead and their leader's name was synonymous with failure and disgrace. A wall, Hadrian's Wall, was built to separate the Roman occupied southern half of Britain from the barbaric northern half...

    Hey, everyone. Seems like forever since I posted. I've been busy fighting the battle of winter weather. Huge fun.     One of the great romances of modern times is the relationship of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. They met on the set of a movie titled To Have And Have Not. Bogey had been prone to marrying women with whom he fought and his marriage at that time was on the rocks, just like his scotch.     The attraction between Bogart and Bacall was immediate and powerful, with sparks flying on stage and off. Not too long after their meeting they were married and remained happily married until Bogie's death many years later.      To Have And Have Not had a scene in it which was considered pretty hot by the standards of that time. (We are talking the Lassie generation) Lauren Bacall was about to leave Bogart's room and she said. "Just whistle if you need me. You know how to whistle, don't you? Just put your lips togethe...

    Hey, everyone. For several years I had season tickets to the Atlanta Falcons football games. They were end zone seats at the old Fulton County Stadium but I enjoyed having them. We were only about seven rows off the grass and from where I sat I had a great view of touchdown passes that Steve Bartkowski threw to guys like Alfred Jackson and Alfred Jenkins. To this day I have a picture in my mind of William Andrews, the great fullback, breaking through the line with his knees pumping as high as his head and racing for the end zone, seemingly right into my face. It was a good time to be me.     I remember one Sunday when the Miami Dolphins came to town. They were the dynasty at the time, having won Super Bowls with Larry Csonka, Jim Kiick and their quarterback, Bob Griese.     It so happened that I was by myself that day and being in no hurry, I thought that I'd let the traffic fade away into the bowels of Interstate 75 and Interstate 20. ...

    I have goofed off more today than I have in months. It was sunny and mild outside so I walked to the creek and checked for tracks. Not much shakin' on that front. In the afternoon I found a sunny spot to sit and listened to my I-Pod. Then I read a very interesting article.      At Christmas I received several rock videos from Amazon. With the Rolling Stones concert I received a free, one year subscription to Rolling Stone Magazine. This month's issue had an article on Elton John, written by Austin Scaggs. Mr. Scaggs did a nice job on the article.     The most interesting part of this piece was the discussion of John Lennon. What's up with this stuff? Seems like everything I pick up has something about the former Beatle. Elton talked about how gracious Lennon was to him. They did a show together in Madison Square Garden while John and Yoko were estranged. Elton said that John Lennon got a long, standing ovation that rocked the floor...

    Hey, everyone. I downloaded a new game from the app  store and thought I'd tell you about it. It's called Cover Orange and it has a free version that gives you a chance to try before you buy, as well as a paid version that is quite reasonable. I-Pad (HD) version is $1.99 and the I-Phone version is a juicy $.99. I got the free version, tried it, then bought the $.99 version.     Let me say, first of all, that this is a game for the puzzle people, not the shooter people. If you liked Angry Birds, you'll probably like this. That would include about 61 million people, I suppose. It has adorably cute oranges that need to be covered to prevent their being sprinkled with acid rain. To cover them you have to solve physics problems such as dropping a barrel over them or making them roll underneath cover. If you save them they applaud and say thanks. When they see the cloud approaching they pray and a little halo appears over their head. If the evil acid ra...

    Hey everyone. I know that you remember me saying that I wouldn't watch any more movies on Apple TV due to the ridiculous download time and the high price. ($4.99) I made an exception tonight because I really wanted to see a movie about John Lennon's teenage years. The name, as you might expect from our title, is Nowhere Boy . I gather that the title comes from what his principal told him, which was that John was going nowhere in life. John replied, "If that's where the talented people go, that's where I should be." I don't know if this confrontation led to the writing of the song Nowhere Man or not.     It seems that John was a troubled youth of fifteen or so, being raised by his Aunt Mimi, a good person who was wrapped a bit tight. He wanted to know what happened to his Mother and Father. John is a very troubled guy and has a lot of rebellion and hostility. As I remember the rocker's brooding expression and hard eyes, I feel that I understand hi...

    The other night I happened to come home very late. It was the middle of the night and I was driving up a steep mountain road. Near the top I saw something white in my headlights. It was standing in the other lane, standing very still. It was a large white chicken. It was probably a rooster because I thought I could see his comb as I whizzed by at my customary pace. He never moved a muscle. This is weird, don't you think?      After a couple of days to consider this phenomenon, I have come up with some plausible answers for his bizarre behavior. 1. He was conflicted whether or not he should cross the road. 2. He was feeling cocky and decided to play chicken with the traffic. 3.He was being hen-pecked at home and had decided to end it all. 4. Someone had egged him on to do it. 5. He had just watched the movie Fantastic Four and decided to try to stop a truck the way that Ben Grimm did on the bridge. 6. He had driven himself crazy wondering if ...

    Hey, everyone. I just finished reading this book for the upteenth time. I read it for the first time as a twelve year old. It was written by the great Edgar Rice Burroughs, the creator of Tarzan, the Mars series and the inner earth called Pellucidar.     Many times I think about Burrough's books and their role in my early life. Growing up as I did, Mr. Burroughs helped shape many of my ideas and opinions. Living in the deep south, where crudeness and poverty were the norm, at least in my neighborhood, it was nice to see a glimpse of a nobler place and time. Unrealistic, yes. A pleasant dream, yes. Corny, yes. In a time and place where goodness was considered weakness, manners were held in contempt and kindness was scorned, this book was a welcome diversion for me. But I digress.      The Outlaw Of Torn is a story that reads like a fairy tale but with the robust, full-bodied swagger of an adventure tale. It's the story of knights i...

    Hey, everyone. Mythology is full of tales in which some sort of supernatural creature takes a different form to test the hearts and minds of humans. From Beauty And The Beast to frog kissing and a thousand variations. There are tales of kings who dressed like beggars and asked for food. Even the Bible teaches us that we can entertain angels, unaware of who they are.      I often find it of interest how we tend to glorify that part of the person which is the outer shell. I am probably as bad as the next guy. Even our 'old sayings' teach us that this is foolish. Who hasn't heard the old saying, "Beauty is only skin deep".    As I age, I tend to think about women differently. I can see that they are a source of comfort and gentle strength in a troubled world.