Another day another dollar. At least, I think so. For some reason I haven't been able to access my bank account online from work for a couple of weeks now, and I haven't been home before 11pm in the past week or so. And I'm just not in the mood to deal with banking after I brush my teeth for bed, so there's a distinct possibility I have some bills that are going into collection soon. I suppose that's one of the problems with the whole online banking thing - you need to be able to get online without incident. I assume my credit card company will cut me some slack - they're generally an understanding bunch, right?

Not much apartment news. Finally got the first utility bill, which took a fair time coming (I've been living there just about two months without one. I was kind of disappointed when I found it last night). We're doing the living room in kind of a East Asia theme. Just a couple more wall hangings, and I have to install my katana on the wall above the entertainment center and we'll be done. It's been over a week since I've played Tony Hawk, so I think that monkey's off my back.

So this week was pretty media-packed, and really ran the entire spectrum from good to bad. Those aren't strong enough terms - from ineffable to bewildering? From the sublime to the ridiculous? A New Hope to Phantom Menace? Monday night was the new Star Trek movie, Nemesis. Now, having experienced both, I can justifiably state that this wasn't quite as bad as a kick to the groin. But it was close. I will admit that I'm not much of a Trekker, but I don't think one has to be part of a cult to enjoy it's rites: For instance, I'm not a Freemason, but I like a good initiation (on the other side of the coin, I'm no swinger but I like having sex). And I had an insiders opinion, having been brought to the movie by three self-avowed fans of the stories (they didn't use the T word, but it was conspicuously absent like the crazy aunt everyone in the family knows is still in the attic), and they didn't care for it either. The thing that stuck me about this movie was how old everyone looked. And fat. I'm all for suspension of disbelief when viewing a work of art, but I just don't buy a fat android.

And while I'm on the topic, they better make a really good case for making the evil robot in Terminator III a chick. I'm not trying to say that in general, women can't be as effective villians as men. What I'm saying is that if I'm working on building a killer robot, I figure that giving it boobs isn't the direction I'm going to take with the design. If there's one thing you can say about a rack on a killer robot, it's that it's not going to be functional. Just something I've been thinking about.

Tuesday was high art. Worked as an usher for the show Far Away. I'm not going to make any jokes about how the title reflected the fact that any interpretation I could make about what I saw that night was distant from what the author intended, because I don't go in for that sort of cheap humor. Instead, I'll just talk about the hats. There were some serious hats on stage that night - big hats, hats made of feathers, tubes, string, cloth, just enormous hats. And I know they were serious hats because they were on the heads of convicts (I knew they were convicts because they were wearing standard convict stripes, which is an aesthetic I really love). It was very clear that the hats were a metaphor for something. But very unclear what exactly it was a metaphor for. At least to me. In times like these, I usually fall back on the fact that my education as an engineer has made it so that I am incapable of doing any sort of serious exegesis. But just between you and me, the play was a load of crap and the people who paid $55 a head to watch it are what my carny friends call 'marks.' Tuesday night fulfilled the "the ridiculous" portion of the adage above.

Wednesday, I don't remember what it was that I was doing, so I assume I had a great time. If any embarrassing photos show up, I'll be sure to post them so as to inform the both of us what exactly it was that I had a great time doing.

And then last night. Finally saw The Two Towers after a painfully long wait (I mean from it's release date - I saw it something like 44 hours after it's first showing. I'm a little ashamed). It was really great, and I can't wait to see it again. It was such a big movie (and not only because I was in the third row when I saw it. Did you know that Frodo not only has hairy toes, but also hairy nostrils?), and yet again Peter Jackson did a fantastic job of translating a wonderful text to a spectacular movie. I also really the fact that there was a lot of comic relief (since not only is it a story that requires some laughter in order to process the entire thing, but it's also a long time to sit with only wide-eyed wonder at the events going on around you). Most of all, though (and I'll be done being serious here in just a moment) I loved the fact that yes, that's EXACTLY how those things would look. There was no need for suspension of disbelief, because there was nothing to disbelieve - I was looking at a world where Ents and Nazgul exist, and that's how they look. Oh, and Liv Tyler dressed all in black with black hair is so hot that I almost had to excuse myself. This concludes the "From the sublime" portion of the above adage.