Wednesday
Today was my brother and stepmother’s birthday. Two for the price of one! What a bargain!

The workday flew by pretty quickly. After work, I made a trip to Shack d’Radio and the local Borders. And then, home again home again (but no jiggety-jig).

Quote of the Day: At lunch, we were debating some of the vagaries of Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. Things that we covered included:

  • If you are mounting an invasion of a giant battle station, let alone in the middle of said invasion, do you really have spare personnel to watch each pilot and point out things like “Luke, you turned off your targeting computer…. Is something wrong?” Why wasn’t this guy telling him something useful: “There’s a TIE Fighter on your tail” or something like that. On the same note, why didn’t Luke mess with that guy and say something like:
    • “It’s the damned droid! He’s turning shit off and on and I can’t make him stop!” or….
    • ” *BEEP* Sorry, I can’t answer the com-link right now. I am trying to fly a spaceship down a trench that is barely large enough to navigate. Please leave a message at the tone.” or…
    • “‘Is something wrong?!?’ I’m attacking a planet-sized space station with a one-man spaceship AND being shot at AND trying not fly into anything! What makes you think that there’s something wrong?!”
  • If using The Force was rated on a 1-to-10 scale, Darth Vader was about a 20 (thanks to Episode I – The Phantom Menace‘s ‘immaculate conception’ idea), which would make Luke and Leia 10s, WHY didn’t they get some kind of feeling about either each other OR Vader when they were around him? I’ll actually give Luke a ‘bye’ on this one and chalk it up to raging hormones. Why? Think about it: Teenage farmboy meets (nominally) hot space woman. Do the math.
  • And now, for the first time ever: The Visual Quote of the Day!
    We started talking about why the Sith Lords never used their powers in more… ‘creative’ ways:

    • The Force Wedgie.
    • Smashing ships into the walls of the Death Star using the Force.
    • …you get the idea.
    • Dee: Why didn’t Darth Vader simply use The Force to ‘poke’ the Luke in the eyes, like this, and cause him to crash?
      Harmon: Because Luke would have just done this and been okay.

Links of the Day:

  • The first link comes to us from John, Rana’s significant other. Yes, she’s in the Ukraine. No, he’s not. I’m not here to discuss the logistics of long-distance relationships, I’m just here to relay a link. And speaking of that link, here it is; the page’s title is “Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About.” John left it for me in an IM while I was at work; it is a long page, but it’s damned funny. I poked around the rest of the site… it’s just as funny. Enjoy.

    And on a serious note,

  • Joe (the one who was here last week) has gone back to New York for the first time since he moved to Florida last spring. He sent me this URL; it is a series of pictures that he took from the World Trade Center site. Joe is a native (and until last year, a life-long) New Yorker; he told me that it was difficult to be there and see the emptiness of the area. I can only imagine.

I am going to Tucson tomorrow night, and probably will not post again until Sunday night or Monday morning… but who knows? Road trips. Gotta love ’em! And that’s all the news from Lake Saline… where all the women love to argue, the men are unimaginative Lords of the Sith, and the children have their own ideas about what “Use the Force” means. Goodnight, everybody!

Peace.