So have you seen the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trailer yet? Because I haven't - it's not working for me or something...

We should be afraid: Here's what morons think the world looks like.

Over at Said the Gramophone they post free music links. This post will reveal to you a slowed-down version of the Chipmunk Song. Eek.

Hoe...

We finally have some confirmation: Fiennes is Lord Voldemort. Also, according to the article, Miranda Richardson will be playing Rita Skeeter. Brendan Gleeson will be playing Mad-Eye (Alastor) Moody. It amuses me that he played in Wild About Harry as well. And Katie Leung will be Cho Chang; it's her first movie though, and I can't find any pictures of her. I'd heard the picture I posted so long ago might have been a fake, so I've no clue what she looks like.

Huh. Some Harry Potter-related business: I've heard Ralph Fiennes has been confirmed as the actor playing Voldemort in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and presumably on, but I can only find articles about negotiations being underway. Curious.

I think he'd be a very good choice.

Also, some of you might have known already, but it's news to me that Mike Newell will be directing said movie. The only movie of his I'm familiar with is Four Weddings and a Funeral, but he's been doing this for a while, so I'd assume he's not bad at the whole thing. And he's not likely to adopt the same editing formulas that disturbed Theresa so much.

Another humdrum, workaday tidal wave...

Another bevy of links!

The ESA (European Space Agency) is looking into ways for people to hibernate while traveling in space. Among several things they're doing, they are studying the Madagascan fat-tailed dwarf lemur, it being the only known primate to hibernate.

I just thought this thing about trees soaking up dangerous chemicals was pretty cool. There are a lot of objections though, so while it's a cool idea I still don't know exactly what to think of it.

And Catystorm should be very interested in this: "A replica of the Kusakabe residence" from My Neighbor Totoro will be constructed for EXPO 2005, which will be held in Aichi, Japan.

Once again there's little to say about my day. I've written even less than yesterday (today = 0, yesterday = 300), and I don't even know if I'll be using what I wrote up yesterday. It's a bit of a fun scene explaining why my elves have changing hair colors.

And that's really it. We're still planning on going to the Dublin Irish Festival, though we're going very early on Sunday.

This watch is glorious. I also did some research and found it sells for around six hundred dollars, so I'll never own it. But it's still glorious.

Apart from that? I have nothing of import to anyone (including myself) to say. I did finish the first part of The Hero with a Thousand Faces last night - it's the part that runs down the full formula of the monomyth. I also watched the last six episodes of Sorcerer Hunters. It's an anime, and one of my favorites. The ending is surely surprising.

I do have a question, though. I visited Suprnova earlier, in search of Utena manga, and it confronted me with payment options. Bah. Oh well.

A maddening habit...

But first, I divulge divers alarums:

Many of you, especially those that attend Eastern with me, know of my love for the common squirrel. It is cute from a distance and up close, as many animals are not (viz. the cow, the deer, the turkey, et cetera). Well, I have learned their method of supreme communication: supersonic screams.

If you enjoy They Might Be Giants (and you should check out their site if you're not, they give away free mp3s), you should enjoy People are Wrong! It's an off-Broadway musical sort of thing several members of the band are working on (free mp3s of the show tunes are at the site there as well).

In my life, I had to butt against one of my key problems with people tonight. I printed off the four pages of my novel I wrote tonight and let my parents read them, as I put a problem with wording to them and they didn't understand what I was looking for until they read it. That wasn't the problem, but it lead to it. I told Dad he ought to read a bit of The Hero with a Thousand Faces. He sounded interested a month ago when I described it to him. I found a section that outlined the monomyth and provided some good examples, including the Buddha and the Christ. He obliged me and read it, and I think he did like it. But he had to go and say something. He felt fine with all the other examples, but thought "God" (being the Christian deity, of course) shouldn't be cupped up as the others were. Which frustrates me no end. And I actually just read the section of the book (much further on) that describes the problem succinctly: he claims the problem in religion is the symbols are obscured - that too many mistake the symbol for that which it is symbolizing. Thus, they believe God is the pinnacle of what they must reach toward, when God symbolizes the personal understanding they should be striving for instead. Gah. So my father is essentially, in this situation, a sneering Victorian: all the other myths of the world are fascinating and quaint, but they can't approach the glory and wisdom of Christianity.

This wounds me deep in my compassion place.

Meanwhile, I finished the Pratchett novel Wyrd Sisters, which seems to be the second Granny Weatherwax book, and the first book featuring the strange and rather informal coven.

I find it amusing that I learned, around two weeks ago, what the word "apotheosis" means (through Campbell) and it was today's Webster's Word of the Day. It was also my guest-gift to Superopie and Sageypie when they were visiting - around two weeks ago.