Dear Diary:

Today my heart leapt when Agent Scully suggested Spontaneous Human Combustion.

Yay Best Buy! Thanks to their amazing X-Files season set sale ($49.99 per season), I now have all nine seasons of the X-Files on DVD! Sequential viewing of every episode begins tonight chez Todd. Feel free to drop on by and join in the fun. And if you wanted to bring popcorn or something, I wouldn't mind.

Cake and ice cream!

Tomorrow is Gary's daughter's third birthday. Party! Whee! However, since I got her one of the Princess Barbies that she wanted, I suspect that at some time in the next 24 hours Unca Todd will be reduced to playing with dolls. *shudder*

In other news:

• The Cubs won again tonight. Could they maybe finally be getting it together?
• The boss will be back in town tomorrow. Boo hiss.
• I think I'm addicted to Triscuits.
• I canna wait until the new Black Eyed Peas album comes out next month. Coldplay and The White Stripes too, for that matter. All on the same day! Nice.
• Green Day will be in OKC in August! Three days after Ben Folds and Rufus Wainwright will be in Tulsa! I'm thinking that's gonna be a fun week. ^_^

Fun with the Bible

"And the Lord spake to Moses face to face, as a man speaketh to his friend." -Exodus 33:11
"No man hath seen God at any time." -John 1:18

"Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh: is there anything too hard for me?" -Jeremiah 32:27
"And the Lord was with Judah; and he drove out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron." -Judges 1:19

"I will not pity, nor spare, nor have mercy, but destroy. Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not, but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling." -Jeremiah 13:14
"The Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy." -James 5:11

"Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth." -Genesis 11:7-9
"These six things doth the Lord hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: a proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, an heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, a false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren." -Proverbs 6:16-19

"Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding." -Proverbs 3:13
"For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow." -Ecclesiastes 1:18

"And again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah." 2 Samuel 24:1
"And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel." -1 Chronicles 21:1

"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast." -Ephesians 2:8-9
"Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only." -James 2:24

"And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven." -2 Kings 2:11
"No man hath ascended up to heaven but he that came down from heaven, ...the Son of Man." -John 3:13

"The word which God sent unto the children of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ." -Acts 10:36
"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household." -Matthew 10:34

just some stuff

The season finale of Smallville was tonight, and I was excited about that all week (and it lived up to my hopes, oh yes it did). I won't throw any spoilers out there for it, in case anyone reading this who watches the show hasn't gotten around to seeing it yet, but I thought it was freakin' awesome and I'm so totally mad that now I have to wait months and months to find out what the funk is going on.

Revenge of the Sith! This weekend! Yay!

I got a larger check from the bank than I had expected, somehow, and so I'm thinking about maybe throwing part of that free money at some Samurai Champloo DVDs. If you're not watching it on adult swim, well, you should be. You should be watching just about everything on adult swim, for that matter. I think I've told you that before. What are you waiting for? Although I'll forgive you if you just kinda skip over Tom Goes to the Mayor, which annoys me and annoys me and annoys me until I want to break things with hammers.

Or I could get a couple more Godzilla DVDs instead, keep filling out the few holes in my collection and replacing my VHS copies. Hmm. Maybe holding off for a while on Samurai Champloo is a better idea, as I already have some upcoming box set purchases planned (like season 1 of Lost and season 4 of Smallville and season 2 of Carnivale and more Simpsons and a couple more X-Files seasons and and and...). It doesn't pay to get too far behind, and I'm ridiculously behind on my DVD viewing as it is.

Speaking of my DVDs, if you're interested in perusing the current state of my collection, feel free to drop in over at DVD Aficionado and check it out any time. I still have some organization to do, but at least all the titles are finally there. Yeesh. Anyway, it'll pretty much be constantly updated, since now that I have it done the last thing I want to do is screw it all up by adding a bunch of new DVDs to my shelves without cataloguing them first.

Good Lord, I am such an entertainment junkie. And I haven't even mentioned the Ben Folds/Rufus Wainwright/Ben Lee concert tickets I bought the other day, or a couple of my cool recent book purchases, or my comics, or... gah. Just so you don't think that all I do is hang out in my house and play escapist, I'm also 1) going golfing this weekend, and 2) in the midst of co-planning a Memorial Day Weekend Float/Camping Trip Dealiebop. See? I'm not a total couch potato!

Did you know?

(or: Things They Don't Teach You In School, part 1)

Here's a trivia question: How many presidents did America have before George Washington?

If you think I'm crazy for even asking the question, then the joke's on you. This country had a functioning government by the mid-1770's, and Washington didn't enter office until 1789. True, it wasn't the "United States" as it now exists until the Constitution was completed in 1787 and went into effect two years later after an extended period of state-by-state ratification. But before that there were the Articles of Confederation, and before those came the Continental Congress, and every step of the way there was someone grasping the reins of power and operating with the title of "President So-and-so." Fourteen different someones, as a matter of fact.

Continental Congress Presidents:
1) Peyton Randolph
2) Henry Middleton
* (Peyton Randolph)
3) John Hancock
4) Henry Laurens
5) John Jay
6) Samuel Huntington
7) Thomas McKean

Presidents Under the Articles of Confederation:
8) John Hanson
9) Elias Boudinot
10) Thomas Mifflin
11) Richard Henry Lee
* (John Hancock)
12) Nathaniel Gorham
13) Arthur St. Clair
14) Cyrus Griffin

(Randolph served as president for two brief periods due to health reasons, and Hancock was elected on two separate occasions - once of the Continental Congress and then again under the Articles of Confederation. So the grand total of pre-Washington presidents could be anywhere from 14-16 depending on your judgment of those two situations. I'll let you make those calls for yourself, but in my opinion we're talking about sixteen presidents here - Grover Cleveland is counted twice on the "official" list so I count these two guys twice as well.)

And if you're wanting to dispute the legitimacy of calling these men "presidents" because - as I mentioned before - they came before the Constitution was ratified and thus before the presidency became exactly what it is today, then I'll ask you three questions:

• In what year did American celebrate its bicentennial?
• In what year did Washington enter office?
• Is there two hundred years between these dates?

True, there were three (you may say two, depending on the earlier caveats) presidents of the Continental Congress who served their full terms before the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776 (and while you probably know that John Hancock signed that first - and largest - you may not know that the reason he signed first was that he was the president), but I'm thinking that if you include some of the presidents of the Continental Congress then you have to include them all. So I stand by my figure of sixteen.

There. Now go bet somebody a beer that Washington wasn't the first president. ^_^

Weekly World News

So, there are people out there who actually believe this rag? No, seriously. Have you read one lately? Bernardo Jalapeno, the Spanish bunny-fighting matador? An Egyptian pyramid that blasted 1,000 feet into the air and landed in one piece after some dumb Americans sparked a lighter and ignited gasses from decomposing mummies? Bigfoot is going to join the cast of The Sopranos? Bill Gates is going to buy Mars from the U.N. and use his new Windows "Microsoft Wormhole" to get there? An alien bible was found, and when it was translated it showed that they worship Oprah? The Catholic Church exorcised a zit? A 49-year old widow in Georgia carries her dead husband's ashes around with her... inside a vibrator... and I mean "with" her in the biblical sense...

And people believe this stuff? Whoa. If you stop and really think about it for a second, that's an absolutely terrifying concept.

Rar.

Thanks to the bank using the heck out of me the last few weeks, I went on a mini shopping spree last night and today. All new bedding, some curtains for my bedroom window so the sun stops waking me up at freakin' dawn, four pairs of shorts, a whole slew of old kung fu movies on DVD, groceries (including some nice fat steaks for tonight), and my new ultimate stress reliever - Godzilla: Save the Earth for the PS2. You would not believe how amazingly therapeutic it is to manhandle Jet Jaguar's goofy giant robot ass all over downtown Tokyo, tossing him into skyscrapers with a powerful sweep of your tail and then bringing them down on top of him with a fiery blast of atomic breath. Ah, life's simple pleasures...

Movie Review: The Hitchhiker's Guide

Oh, hey. Spoiler alert.

I was a little bit worried about this movie. I knew that Douglas Adams had originally penned the screenplay, but I also knew that after his untimely death in 2001 it had been handed off to someone else and had since gone through a certain number of rewrites. How much of Adams' original screenplay came through in the end, I thought, was going to be a crucial factor in the movie's success - but there was a problem with that idea as well, because The Guide has been different (and often self-contradictory) in all of its various incarnations. So how does one tell which new "changes" came from the mind of Adams and which ones came from somewhere else? Hmm. So yeah, even though I was completely stoked about it, there was still a bit of trepidation there.

In the end, my feelings on the film are a bit vague and undefined, because there were a lot of highs and a lot of lows. More highs than lows, I thought, and I left the theater having laughed a lot, but I do have some issues. Maybe I'll do a sort of pro-con thing here to get some of my feelings sorted out.

PRO: Zaphod. Marvin. Slartibartfast. John Malkovich as Humma Kavula. A large majority of the cast, for that matter.
CON: Mos Def just wasn't Ford enough for me - it was a very nice effort, however, so I wonder if maybe that wasn't just a directing issue rather than an acting issue. He spent too much time being more scenery than character. Trillian didn't really do it for me, and Arthur... well, let's mention Arthur a bit later.

CON: They left out something that, to me, is absolutely essential to the whole experience, and that's the wondrously full explanation of the magically useful object that is the towel.
PRO: Ford actually uses his towel. Constantly. For all sorts of things. I would have liked the Guide entry, but they did a great job showing instead of telling.

PRO: I really liked the new directions the story went in, and there was (in my opinion) a pretty perfect mix of the new and the old. There were plenty of times where I was reciting along with the movie in my head, but there were also plenty of times where didn't know what was coming.
CON: One last rewrite, although possibly erasing a bit more of Adams' stamp on the project, might have also allowed them to fix an overly large number of plot holes and loose threads. The Humma Kavula/Zaphod storyline was a mess, and in the end it was left completely unresolved. I know why the mice needed Arthur's brain even though they had Trillian right there, but people who aren't familiar with the source materials probably had no idea. And if I get started on these I'm not going to stop, so let's move on.

PRO: A lot of reviewers panned the film for "lacking focus" or for having an "incoherent plot" some other phrase that essentially means the same thing. Which just tells me that a lot of reviewers have no idea what the hell they're talking about when it comes to The Guide, because I defy anyone who's familiar with any of the Guide's incarnations to call them "focused" or "plot-driven." They're all wonderfully zany and random, and the movie is no exception.
CON: This one's hard to put into words, but... I guess I can come closest to it by saying that, in the end, it just didn't have enough heart. Or soul. Or something. I think that the Lord of the Rings movies succeeded so well (in my personal opinion as well as commercially) because you could plainly see that everyone from Peter Jackson on down had poured everything they had into their creation. I didn't get that feeling from The Guide. That's not to say that I don't think they really tried, because you can tell (at least from an acting point of view) that they did, but there was just something lacking in the end.

PRO: Arthur Dent was perfect.
CON: Until the end, where they screwed it all up. The entire point of Arthur Dent is that he's a fish out of water! He's supposed be confused. He's supposed to keep screwing things up. He's supposed to be a befuddled Englishman who couldn't get it right to save his life. The sudden metamorphosis into "Arthur Dent, Hero" was really hard to swallow - epecially when combined with the overly happy ending.

And so on and so forth... I'm going to give it three and a half popcorn boxes out of five, because I did enjoy myself and I'm a bit of a geek about these things ("geek," not "fanboy," which means I'm willing to overlook some of my issues to a certain degree rather than spending the next four months bitching on message boards), but I really should probably only give it three. If they make The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, I don't doubt that I'll be waiting in line - but without Douglas Adams around to be involved in the process, I'm thinking maybe they'd be better off just leaving it alone from here on out.

Who's your deity?

I'm probably way late to the party on this, but I just discovered Sinfest. I take care of all the graphic novel-related activity at the bookstore, and the first two collections came in last week. I'd never seen Sinfest or even heard of it before, so I picked one up and started leafing through it and within a minute I was hooked. And I must share the love! Start at the very beginning, read a couple of weeks' worth, and tell me this strip isn't freakin' awesome. I dare you. Well, unless you get offended easily, and then you should probably just drive right on by. Your loss. ^_^