The cleanest senior citizen in town might have a tamale emergency.

In this post: Insomnia, subscriptions, Einsteins on Mars.

It’s 3:30 in the morning and I can’t sleep. Don’t nag me about this; I’ve tried, and it’s just no use whatsoever. Sam and I went to bed at 1:30, but after thrashing around for half an hour I sat up and announced that I wanted to take a nice hot shower even though nobody was listening. So here I am in the study, the cleanest senior citizen in town, waiting for my hair to dry. I’ll get through this ordeal somehow.

Hey, people ... here’s what I’m expecting from Amazon this month in my Subscribe & Save order! I’ve scaled it back quite a bit because the pantry is already packed to the rafters and we haven’t run out of anything. This is all we need for now (see below).

I’m postponing cases of Hormel canned tamales and Hormel smoked ham in mystery liquid, a box of Hi-Lo low-carb cereal, six bags of Miracle Rice, Dr. Collins All White Toothpaste and a six-pack of Scotch-Brite scrubby sponges. I probably won’t need most of these until May unless I have a tamale emergency. (Stop laughing. It’s possible.)

And now it’s time for a movie review, because yesterday Sam and I watched It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958) ... a sci-fi classic with crappy acting, cheesy special effects and a faux Martian monster that looks more like the creature from the black lagoon. So here’s a rundown on the plot. Marshall Thompson plays Colonel Edward Carruthers, the only survivor of an expedition to Mars in the far-future year of 1973, who’s being rescued by another crew and brought back to earth to face a court martial because everybody thinks he’s a lying, stinking murderer and wants him to face a firing squad. (Grisly, aren’t they?) Included in the crew are a variety of whiny astronauts, two female doctors who also double as space waitresses (pictured below serving coffee and cookies) and a stowaway monster who’s hiding in the basement of the rocket ship.

While the monster in the basement starts killing off members of the crew (he shoves them into the ventilator shaft) the survivors finally accept that maybe Colonel Carruthers wasn’t a lying, stinking murderer after all and band together to figure out how to save themselves. HOLY CRAP! THEY HAVE TO KILL THE MONSTER! When guns, grenades and poison gas fail — yes, these idiots fill their rocket with poison gas! — they decide to wear temporary oxygen masks and suck all the air out of the ship, which successfully destroys the monster but leaves the crew WITH NOTHING TO BREATHE. I guess we’re supposed to believe this was a brilliant move, however, because the final scene is a press conference on earth where the head of the space administration tells reporters that America’s rocket ship full of Einsteins is heading home to a hero’s welcome. With no oxygen?

It’s almost 5 a.m. and I think I might be ready to go back to bed now. At last. Thank you for reading this.