We are watching the world melt. We are watching Antarctica melt. In 2002, it was the Larsen B Ice Shelf. On this day, two years ago, I wrote about Iceberg D-16 breaking free of the Fimbul Ice Shelf. This morning, I read about the imminent collapse of the Wilkins Ice Shelf. The world is melting.

And I didn't write anything yesterday.

There have, however, been some truly marvelous suggestions come in from Sirenia Digest readers, in response to my call for suggestions. Sadly, many of them are a bit more like short-story suggestions than vignette suggestions. But still, thank you. One or two have real possibility. If you can make me flinch, I stand impressed.

So, what do you get when John Carpenter's Escape From New York (1981) meets the three Mad Max films (1979-1985)? You get Neil Marshall's Doomsday. As for Mr. Marshall, I really didn't care for Dog Soldiers (2002), but I liked The Descent (2005). Yesterday, Spooky and I made a matinée of his new film, Doomsday, which I liked very, very, very much. I went largely on the recommendations of Byron and robyn_ma, and I am glad that I did. Doomsday is a genuinely delightful post-apocalyptic romp from start to finish. I laughed. I clapped. I cringed. Marvelous. So many recent films, from Underworld (2003) to Ultraviolet (2006), have tried and miserably failed to do what this film does to perfection. Craig Conway pretty much steals the whole show as the wickedly vengeful Sol, turning in one of the most thoroughly charismatic villains since Clancy Brown's Kurgan in Highlander (1986). Oh, and his female sidekick, Viper (played by stuntwoman Lee-Anne Liebenberg), my gods, what a fine bit of eye candy. Rhona Mitra makes a nice XX-chromo version of Carpenter's Snake Plissken (in fact, she might even give Kurt Russell a run for his money), though she's called Eden Sinclair in the film. Those are the three performances that help make the film such a delight. But we also get serviceable work from Alexander Siddig, Bob Hoskins, and Malcolm McDowell (on autopilot, but, hey, it works). There was just really nothing about the film that wasn't fun. Loved the soundtrack. I think it was robyn_ma who said that Doomsday does what Planet Terror only tried to do, and, if so, she's right. This is a Grade-A B-movie, a grand, gory, beautiful homage to both Escape from New York and The Road Warrior. It's a blast, and you really ought to try to catch it in the theatre.

Oh, and I read two papers in the new JVP — "Ontogeny of cranial epi-ossifications in Triceratops" and "The skeletal anatomy of the Triassic protorosaur Dinocephalosaurus orientalis Li, from the Middle Triassic of Guizhou Province, southern China."

Every time I think maybe I'm getting the Second Life monkey off my back, I get sucked in deeper. Thank you, Lorne, for the following IM, which was so amusing I have to post it here (a parody of my own complaints following our rp on Wednesday night):

"Quit fondling me, mistress. I have a headache, 'cause I didn't bend space and time the way you're s'pose to, and nearly got sucked into oblivion by the third singularity that formed..."

And apologies to whoever I stole the icon from. It was just too fine for too me to pass up, and, you know, I do talk to wolves. Now. This is where this entry ends, I think.