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?