You’re searching for good times

Well, who knew? One of the movie channels last night had a modern time travel-based movie that actually held my interest. The last twenty years of Trek time-travel trivialities I'd thought had burned any residual interest in the subject out of me. But this movie -- Thrill Seekers -- took Kuttner and Moore's Vintage Season notion of time-travelling tourists and combined with the sick but I fear plausible notion of future tourists travelling back to experience Great Disasters of the Past. Our Heros are modern-day folks who find the electronic tour book, and try to prevent or at least ameliorate the disasters, while being chased by FBI agents (who conclude, reasonably, that this pair is causing the disasters, though they never remember the FBI hasn't got jurisdiction in Ontario) and future timecops (who just want their history un-screwed-up). It holds a nice solid tension right up to the end, where for some reason the movie has to destroy a sports arena a couple times.

I notice I've been leaving two-dollar bills loose in my pocket a lot lately. Normally I have a compulsion to put bills in my wallet, unfolded, all facing the same way; the past week it's just been easier to leave a little out. I don't know what it means when a compulsive behavior breaks, but I'm upset at the risk of losing small bills.

Trivia: The silk corporation of Lyon was obligated to raise 80 soldiers in 1742 and another 50 the next year. Source: A History of Modern France, Alfred Cobban.

Currently Reading: Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys. The writing's interesting, but it seems like the (180-page) book spends about ten pages on its jacket-cover mystery, exploring an unknown alien device on the Moon -- which inevitably kills those venturing inside -- with a transporter-like gadget duplicating our protagonist; and the other 170 pages are people remembering every event that ever happened to them. It's a fun read but I feel like I'm missing the point.