Movie Reviews and Ladybugs

If, like me, you multitask (a.k.a. knit) while staring vacantly at a cathode ray tube, and you have no actual TV because you refuse on moral as well as financial grounds to pay to have shlock shipped into your home and yet rabbit ear antennas only provide a blurry version of, god forbid, WLOS so you are limited to what blockbuster online and Orbit can provide on DVD, then you may have found, as I have, that some movies are better than others for multitasking purposes. To wit, you need something where it won't matter much if you ignore it now and then. To this end, and only to this end, let me heartily recommend the Blade movies. Quite frankly, they suck, but that's okay, because if you need to keep looking down at your knitting and counting stitches and getting up to get a drink and stuff, than you're safe with the Blade movies, because every time you look at the screen there will be oceans of gore and the plot is, well, incidental. If there is a plot. Maybe there is a plot and it involves a complicated double cross, or a beautiful woman hematologist, but don't worry about it, since the filmmakers obviously did not. Basically: oceans of gore. And occasional balletic leaps of death. Also vampires exploding into CGI skeletons with bonus glitter. Soap operas like Six Feet Under are also good for this, because with them you can occasionally glance at the screen and say, "Oooooooh, Brenda, you are so bad!" and that pretty much covers it.

Meanwhile, the ladybugs who live in my bathroom are experiencing something of a population explosion. I think they think it's spring, but I feel like I'm constantly rescuing them from certain death in the toilet and bathtub and, since they've branched out into my room, my water glass. I like ladybugs. When I lived in a collapsing farmhouse in rural Maryland we had literally thousands of them in the kitchen. My son's kindergarten teacher called to complain because they went to school with him: in his hair, in his lunchbox and so on. I thought this was rather charming, she, less so.

Therefore I've decided that what I need to do is create a perfect ladybug habitat. I have every intention of researching this any minute, or, well, after I get home from lunch with my friend C that I see I am going to be a bit late to - ah well - but in the meantime let me describe my vision. I have a trifle bowl. A trifle bowl is a footed glass bowl with straight sides - it sort of looks like a big ass wine glass. I want to plant grass in it. Not that kind of grass, you unregenerate hippie, the kind of grass that people walk on, and lay on in the spring until the ants get to them. I will put dirt in my trifle bowl, and grass seed, and when the grass looks good I will transport my rescued ladybugs to their new and happy home. The only thing is I don't have a clue what ladybugs eat, besides aphids, and the gardener in me rebels at the thought of buying aphids from Carolina Biological Supply (the bastion of mail order creepy critters, famed in my high school days; I'm glad to see they're still around) assuming they even have them, but they probably do. I'm wondering if ladybugs would abandon aphids and eat bacon or something instead. More research is needed. Shit! I have 10 minutes to get dressed & get on over to C's shop! Gah!