A Star Trek Weekend

Southern Man is delighted to report that while watching the latest Star Trek film teenage daughter was filled with questions about the Original Series, which due to some defect in her education she has never seen. And Friday evening Southern Man came home to find her watching her newly-purchased DVDs of Season One (how nice to be a teen with a job and few bills!) and we have been immersed in the adventures of Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock all weekend. Southern Man was quite the little Trekker in his younger days (well, he never really quit and today knows more about Star Trek than is healthy for a grown man) and it has been a real pleasure to watch these cheesy but much loved old shows. And now she's put in the first of the movies...

Movie Review - Toy Story 3

Well, no review is really necessary; with Toy Story 3 Pixar is now a solid eleven for eleven. If you have children you will see it and you will enjoy it just as much as the first two installments.

Southern Man did poke around a bit on Rotten Tomatoes to see how these films ranked, relatively speaking. Surprisingly, the tail end of the pack is held by Cars, which one of his favorites. While the name of this blog might conjure up images of magnolia trees and mint juleps it might be more properly called "South-Western Man" as the author spent some formative years in the mountains of Arizona and is more at home on the Great Western Plains than in the Confederate South. Cars' loving treatment of Route 66 and the desolate beauty of the West will always keep it in regular rotation.

Rainy Day Adventures

And it wasn't even raining when Southern Man pulled out early this morning in the 'lil Hyundai but the heavenly floodgates opened as he was on his way. Little did he know that the forcast called for six to ten inches over the next few hours. About a mile from work he got surprised by high water and flooded out.

Bummer.

About ten minutes later a nice fellow in a big truck came along and pushed us to higher ground but the car wouldn't start so Southern Man called his favorite wrecker company (to add to the adventure the phone, which had been on the charger all night, died shortly thereafter) and eventually got a tow to the dealership where the Hyundai now sits in line with the rest of the morning flood victims. The rest of the day will be spent in the dry comfort of Casa Southern Man playing computer games and watching movies (teenage daughter has Return Of The Jedi in right now) and fretting about whether or not the Hyundai will need a new motor as per the dire predictions of the service manager.

[Added later] We got nearly ten inches over a six-hour period; a downpour expected only once per five hundred years. That much rain over a full twenty-four hours only happens once per century!

Warning Labels

In a recent post Southern Man opined that content labeling was a Good Thing. However, some folks may have carried a good thing a bit too far. Consider the following:

This book is a product of its time and does not reflect the same values as it would if it were written today. Parents might wish to discuss with their children how views on race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and interpersonal relations have changed since this book was written before allowing them to read this classic work.

So what wicked tome might demand such a warning? Uncle Tom's Cabin? Tom Sawyer? To Kill A Mockingbird? Pepys' Diaries?

Nope on all counts. According to Fox News this is the warning affixed by A&D Publishing of Radford, VA on their recent reprints of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and other historical documents.

In Larry Niven's Known Space series of science-fiction short stories and novels members of the general public are so sheltered by the State that individuals are not permitted to read or study history unless they pass a series of psychological examinations and are deemed qualified to handle such material, as the idea of weapons and violence and war was too much for most of these snowflakes to accept. Is this the direction we're going?

Episode VII: A Harsh Lesson

As teen-age daughter flits back and forth between her mother's home and Casa Southern Man moving her clothes and books and such she surveyed the movie collection and decided to replace the venerable old Star Wars VHS tapes with shiny new DVDs. Then Southern Man got a call.

"Dad?"

"Yeah, what's up, honey?"

"The Star Wars movies - they've changed. They're different. They're not right. Why?"

"Oh, those are the 'special editions.' You saw them a long, long time ago when they first came out but I never bought them. In fact, I haven't allowed them in my home at all."

"Well, I don't like them. There should be a warning label or something."

So it's time to replace the broken belt in the LaserDisc player and spin up the real deal so her memory of the real thing is appropriately reinforced. Yes, Southern Man has LaserDiscs. Don't even get him started on the boxes and boxes and boxes of movies on Beta. You know Murphy's Law? Southern Man's Law: if there is a choice of two formats, Southern Man will invest in the wrong one. He even has a couple of old Video Discs lying around somewhere, dating from the days when he worked for Radio Shack. Some day he will throw up his hands and just replace everything with Blu-Ray. Someday. Including that handful of HD-DVD discs...

[added later] So this evening Southern Man accompanied her back to the video store and she buys the newer limited-edition DVDs that have the original theatrical releases. On the way out the door she called the friend with whom she left the SEs and gave them to him as a belated birthday gift. It's a Star Wars party tonight! "We are such geeks," she sighs. And Casa Southern Man remains unsullied by those unspeakable abominations. The SEs, that is. Episodes I, II, and III are also unspeakable abominations, but of a different sort.

And speaking of the prequels, Berkeley Breathed called this one 'way back in the 80s...

Comic Swiped from the Bloom County Tribute at...Angelfire? Angelfire is still around? Who knew?