My finger feels better, so it was good to ease up yesterday. However, my spirits are glum. They reflect the dreary weather...I have already spent almost an hour writing here, and I deleted it all...strange how I almost take a delight in deleting an entire post...I feel more willful than perfectionist, though...it was probably a perfectly good post...or maybe it wasn't...

I think I'll just watch some weird grade-Z movie tonight, and blank everything out.

In the course of doing some work yesterday, I hurt one of my fingers and it's a little uncomfortable typing today. I ignored it last night when I was blogging, but today it bothers me more every time I hit one of the keys, so I better keep this post short and not aggravate matters.

Hunting and pecking is not my style; I'm a very fast touch typist. When I made a living as a temporary office worker in the late 70s and early 80s, I thought of myself as a "samurai typist," dispatching work with dashing speed like a warrior on a Selectric (the brand of typewriter I most often worked on). Not unlike for a pianist, my hands are my tools. I really want to write here more today, but damn it...ouch!--it aches.

I'll just let today's thoughts marinate until tomorrow...

Maybe someday in the future we'll be able to just project our thoughts onto a screen when we blog?

I've seen films old and new on DVD over the last few days. The 2006 film The Prestige, a story of rival magicians in Victorian England, was worth a rent from Blockbuster, although the obsessiveness and cold-heartedness of its main characters ultimately keeps the viewer at an emotional distance from the proceedings.

Although the film had its fascinations--especially David Bowie as inventor Nicola Tesla, who rivaled Thomas Edison as a visionary of electricity--its screenplay has that currently popular structure of puzzles within puzzles within puzzles, which makes it intellectually engaging but chilly in its final effect. Hugh Jackman shows real "leading man" flair as the more suave of the two young magicians, but Christian Bale is opaque and one-dimensional as his intolerably arrogant competitor. Yet the film's recreation of a bustling London and the full-scale magic shows of the late 19th century is a spectacle worth savoring.

An older film which I enjoyed was 1952's Loan Shark, available from VCI Entertainment in their "Forgotten Noir" series. George Raft plays an ex-con who goes undercover in a loan shark operation to find out who killed his brother-in-law. Yes, the story was formulaic, but Raft was a great and always convincing tough guy; and Paul Stewart and John Hoyt as the loan sharks give two shining examples of the Golden Age of Hollywood character acting. There are also a couple of sexy "dames" in bit roles, Margia Dean as a waitress and an unbilled leggy blonde as a gangster's moll, just for window dressing and added entertainment value. They added nothing to the plot, but they sure were nice to look at.

Finally, I watched 1949's Arson Inc., on the same double-feature disc as Loan Shark. It had a similar story of a man undercover in a corrupt organization, in this case an arson and insurance-scam ring. Robert Lowery, who played the lead in one of the early Batman serials, here portrays a fireman hero adequately, but the real stars, once again, are the character actors--in this case, Edward Brophy as a jolly avuncular arsonist, and Douglas Fowley as the slimy head of the ring. They really stole the show.

I'm so stressed out about most things in general and everything in specific (like MONEY!!) that I don't want to write tonight. All I want to do is look at actress Salma Hayek's cleavage. Join me at the link below, and then we can all schedule our angioplasties together!!

SalmaHayekAtHotCelebsHome

So I went to my accountant today to see what my tax bite would be as a self-employed freelance worker. Every year I have to pay so much that I have to borrow to pay it, then spend the rest of the year paying off my credit line. This is the price I pay for being able to make my own hours and come and go as I please. I'm not a 9-5 guy, haven't been for years. I could do 9-5 if I had to, I suppose, but I prefer the freedom of being a freelancer. But times are tight these days for me and a lot of other people.

One nice thing about my trip to the accountant is that I walk across town to Midtown East where his office is. The day was gorgeous and it was a nice long ramble both to and fro. I used to get over to that area a lot, but now I hardly ever do. There are plenty of spectacular office buildings to gaze up at in the area between the United Nations and Grand Central Terminal.

Later in the day I got some work done, which was a mixed bag. Some stuff went well, other stuff didn't. At least I had my laundry done today, so I have some clean shirts and underwear tomorrow.

Stopped by the stripclub for awhile to unwind, and I was actually willing to have a dance or two with a girl I like there. Now if you've been following my blog in the last couple of months, you know that I almost never spring for lapdances anymore because my money is tight. Today I felt I needed the distraction, but the girl went back into the dressing room once she got off stage. Then my thriftiness kicked in and I didn't tell the waitress to ask the girl to come out, figuring that I'd just save money which is better than blowing twenty or forty bucks on a couple of dances that are over in less than ten minutes.

Finally I just picked up some cheap Chinese food and came home. I couldn't get into the Chesty Morgan cult movies that I bought on Sunday--she's the chick with the 73 inch tits--so I put in a DVD of an old George Raft picture called Loan Shark. It seems pretty good; I watched a bit of it as I tried to eat my chow mein, but the food tasted heavy and bland tonight. I dumped it in the garbage and sat down to blog. Guess I'll get back to Loan Shark when I sign off here.

Well, as Scarlett O'Hara would say, tomorrow is another day.