1.5.05

Loooong Weekend

I wanted to get some Magic Online Tournaments in over the weekend. That fell through.

There, now that the bad news is out of the way, on to the rest of this sporatic entry.

I saw the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Friday night. It was, basically, a very good comedy. One of the best I've seen in a while. My only real complaint is that near the beginning a lot of jokes from the book were set up, but not followed through. The bit about where the notice for Arthur's house demolition was has been shortened a bit from something like "It was in the cellar of the town hall, in the back of the bottom drawer of a locked filing cabinet that was inside of the lavatory behind a door marked 'Beware of Leopard'" became, in the movie, "It was in the cellar." Beh. It really takes a lot out of the parallel with the Vogon fleet commander's comment about the notice being on Alpha Centauri. Also missing were the bit where the construction forman explains to Arthur why bypasses must be built, and the bit where Ford convinces the foreman that he should lie in the ground instead of Arthur so they can get a drink. Aside from that though, the movie was laugh out loud funny. I really do think it's one of the better comedies I've seen in a while, and that's saying something. It's plot is almost nothing like that of the book. Scratch that. The movie dips into the books plot where convinent, and uses it as a framework for another, even bigger tale. It's really quite something.

By the way, the movie does neglect to tell the audience the full significance of a towel, though it does reference their importance on more than one occasion. I have, for your reading pleasure, found the books definition:
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels.

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an intersteller hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you -- daft as a brush, but very very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: nonhitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, washcloth, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet-weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the might accidentally have "lost." What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through and still know where his towle is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Hence, a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in "Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is." (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)
So now you know. And knowing is half the battle!

G.I. JOE!!!!

Sorry, I stayed up all night watching old Transformers cartoons. They had some of those things for that too, you know. It's scary. O_O

Lessee... I got myself a Star Wars wallpaper, in honor of the upcoming movie and all. I just had to show it off cuz its such a great wally:
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So I see you all asking, why that wall? And if not, well screw you, you're hearing it anyway. I really think this campaign with Vader's shadow from the small boy was a really effective message about the darkness behind the light, as well as the light beneath the darkness, which is something of the whole meaning of Star Wars. Plus, I was looking through pictures, and Jake Lloyd is cute! How can you resist this face?
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Oh, and on a totally unrelated note, this exists. Feel free to take that as you will.

That's all for now. I'm beat.

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