11.7.98

    What do you think of my new fall colors? Pretty ghastly, no? I just wanted something brighter. Actually, I want to change the whole thing but I'm procrastinating because it requires writing a javascript that I'm not currently in the mood to do.

    I hate the little font, too. It just doesn't work.

    T. and I spent nearly the whole day in bed. I still feel pretty icky and T. is coming down with what I had. I'm sure it didn't help that we were up until midnight last night doing laundry. We were going to go to Santa Anita racetrack with his work people but he was too sick. That's a bummer since we both really wanted to go. His office was having it catered and everything.

    We just got back from dinner. Neither one of us felt like cooking so we went to Aunt Kizzy's Back Porch for some good ol southern cooking. It was pretty good though a little pricy. T. had jambalaya and I had the fried chicken. Mine would have been better if they had picked better pieces but with the side dishes it was a heck of a lotta food.

    Then we rented a few movies, The Big Sleep and A Perfect Murder. Both were entirely too long and neither ending was very satisfying. The Big Sleep is the movie version of Raymond Chandler's mystery by the same name. It was actually very true to the story except for some of the racier bits which they didn't include in the movie and the ending was somewhat different. Humphrey Bogart is always a treat to watch, though.

    A week ago I finished reading The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang. It's an incredibly powerful historical novel about the Japanese invasion into China at the start of WWII. I'm really not up on my war history so the story of Nanking is very new to me. In fact, it is new to most people due to the Japanese government doing such a bang-up job of downplaying the incident.

    During the incident hundreds of thousands of Chinese military and civilians lost their lives to the Japanese in the most barbaric ways. Women and children were murdered and raped. Men suspected of being part of the military were executed in mass graves. The incident rivals the German holocaust in that so many people were destroyed in so little time.

    Iris Chang tells the story from the viewpoint of the Chinese, the Japanese and the foreigners who were in Nanking during the Rape. Her seemingly meticulous research brings the horror alive. It took me a long time to read it because I had to keep putting it down and coming back to it later. What she describes in the book was simply too horrifying to take in all at once. If you're at all interested in military propaganda and history I highly recommend it.

    Read someone else's take on The Rape of Nanking.

    Now, I'm reading Permanent Midnight which is much more interesting and engaging than the movie.