I had the TV on the other evening and saw out of the corner of my eye what appeared to be Norwegian fishermen fighting with aliens. It turned out to be Norwegian fishermen landing enormous crabs of some kind, legs at least two feet long. I don't think I would care to eat something that looked that much like an alien.

Next: a movie about religious monkeyshines. During a numinous thunderstorm, a priest is giving last rites to a child in the hospital. The child is brain dead, but suddenly she starts whispering something. "It's Latin", says the priest, and begins to translate. No time to get the doctor in there, because first things first, you know.Then he says "It's scripture!" Who would have thought? I was thinking Statius, maybe? You know. Therupon a nun hurries onto the scene from Mexico, breathless, she has a tape of a miracle. No way this is going to turn out well, because we know from watching movies that Catholicism enjoys special access to pure evil.

The power of cinema is considerable. Borges is thought to have written his first story after seeing a gangster film, probably Underworld (1927), directed by Josef von Sternberg and written by Ben Hecht.