Don't Panic

I saw The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy today. It was definitely good, and I enjoyed it, though I don't think it was quite as good as I had expected/hoped. Visually, it was great. The Vogons, for instance, were wonderfully Vogonic, and the inside of Magrathea was fantastic. And even the parts that didn't look quite right to me at first ended up working out quite well, e.g. Marvin, Ford, and Zaphod's extra appendages. The main issue I had was that none of the voices were right (though Alan Rickman as Marvin's voice was pretty close) and none of the lines were really delivered in quite the way they deserve to be. Admittedly though, I've always had very specific, detailed opinions on how the whole book should sound, so I'm pretty picky in that department.

Lots of stuff was cropped, of course, but I think all the important points from the book were covered. And there were some added scenes which were kind of interesting, too. The cool thing about it all is that Douglas Adams actually wrote a lot, or most, of the screenplay before he died (I think it was an ongoing project ever since the book first came out in 1979). So all the major changes like that were actually his idea. That means I'm a lot more forgiving than I usually am of movies made from books, since we're basically getting more stuff straight from the author.

10.4, 10.4, Burning Bright

I installed Tiger, the new version of Mac OS X, last night. I had just enough time to glance over it and drool a bit before I went to Friday Night Waltz (an extra one for National Dance Week) but I've gotten to play with it a bit more today. I'm definitely liking it so far. I'm completely sold on Spotlight as a Launchbar replacement. And having Spotlight in Mail.app along with the new Smart Mailboxes seems like you could get it to behave a little more Gmaily, which would be cool. (Still, it's not quite the same as having labels, though. Too bad.)

For sheer, widgety fun though, the Dashboard is the most addictive new toy. It's full of customizable (not to mention very pretty) little mini-applications that popup and disappear at just the touch of a key. Some of the defaults are very useful (like weather forecast, dictionary lookup, stock prices, phone book, etc.) but there are also lots of extras you can download. Some of the ones I like are a wikipedia.org lookup, and a mini-wiki, which is like sticky notes on steroids. There's also, of course, DashBlog for posting to your Blogger blog. No fancy stuff at all, but very quick and easy for short posts, if you do a lot of that kind of thing. I was a little bit bummed about the default iTunes widget, since you can't control it from the keyboard, so I'm not quite ready to give up X-Tunes for that yet. But all in all, I could probably spend ages playing with the Dashboard and all the possible widgets. It's just fun that way.

Some things I haven't gotten around to yet but that look like fun: Creating new Dashboard widgets. Writing Automator scripts (maybe there's a good way to get all of my old archived email from Mail.app to Gmail). Safari RSS (not that I need another feed reader, but it's cool to see a browser-intergrated approach to it). And probably lots of other things that I'll continue to discover as I play with it more.

In Excelsis Deo

Lacey has decided that she doesn't need a car anymore, and so Gloria went up for sale. And as much as I love my Fred, Gloria would be a welcome upgrade for a very good price. So what it all works out to is that I'll have a new car in a couple weeks, when Lacey drives her down for Big Dance. Yay! Which also means that I'll be looking for someone interested in getting a trusty old Honda from me. I'll probably put up a more detailed ad here at some point.

It'll be fun having a car that comes with her own theme song, too. Glo- o-o-o-o-ooooh- o-o-o-o-ooooh-... etc. etc.

Arrogant Worms

My latest fun band discovery that I have to share with everybody is The Arrogant Worms. They're a Canadian band with some really hilarious songs, like "I'm the Only Gay Eskimo," which was my introduction to them (though I found out later that I had danced to "Carrot Juice is Murder" at the April Fool's Waltz a few weeks ago). A lot of the songs would probably be even funnier if I got more of the Canada jokes. The one that's made me laugh the hardest so far, though, is probably "Gaelic Song," which is a parody of various things Celtic including a pseudo-Gaelic chorus and a hideous pennywhistle solo. It's great.

A Prayer for Owen Meany

A couple weeks ago, Antonia gave me a copy of A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving, on the highest possible recommendation. I just finished reading it tonight, and saying that it was truly incredible doesn't begin to capture the experience of this book. I was hooked right from the opening:

I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God....

How could I put down something like that?

The way the story unfolds is fascinating. At each point in the linear chronology of the story the main line was interwoven with scenes from points in the future and past and yet there were still such amazing things to discover all the way up to the end. It is so rich and detailed -- one of those books you can just live inside of as you read, and probably the most complete-feeling book I can think of. As Antonia put it, you could read this book once a month for the rest of your life and get something different out of it each time.

I wish I could give more specifics and fewer gushing generalities, but I do hate spoilers and there are way too many people I want to recommend this book to right now, so I'll keep quiet. Go read the book, though.