We watched Star Wars this weekend.

Despite the fact that it ranks as my all time favorite movie, I hadn’t watched it since I was a kid. When they re-released, I made a variety of excuses and never actually made it to the theater. And even though we had all three movies on VHS, I never managed to “find the time to watch them.” However for his birthday Michael got the movies on DVD, and after suffering through Revenge of the Sith I really wanted to watch Star Wars again.

I was prepared to find out that Star Wars didn’t live up to my childhood memories, but figured that it couldn’t possibly be worse than The Phantom Menace.

I glad to discover that I still love the movies, although I was less than pleased with some of the changes George Lucas made for the DVD releases. More Bantha? No thank you. Creepy little cgi creatures hanging around Mos Eisley? Ick. Han Solo no longer taking the preemptive strike against Greedo? Bad! It changes Han’s character! That’s who he was–Mister looking out for himself and to hell with anyone else (except of course Chewie).

The enhanced explosions were nice, but I wish he would have left it at that and not messed with anything else.

But that wasn’t what I wanted to write about.

When Star Wars came out I was 8, and it was the coolest thing in the whole entire world. I saw it repeatedly, probably with some encouragement from my science fiction loving father (alas, his encouragement didn’t take, because I don’t like to read science fiction, although I mostly don’t mind science fiction movies). My hero, however, was R2D2. I thought he was the coolest characters in the movie, followed by Chewbacca. The rest of the characters were fine, and I liked them well enough, but they weren’t as cool as R2D2.

But that wasn’t what struck me watching the movie now. What struck me was that Princess Leia kicks ass. Totally. Something I apparently internalized. At that age I hadn’t seen a lot of movies, and here came a movie that I absolutely adored, and the heroine shoots bad guys and stands up to evil and does everything the guys do.

So I wonder if this is the point where I developed the knowledge that girls can do whatever they want. After all, Princess Leia didn’t need rescued because she was a girl, she needed rescued because Darth Vader was a really bad guy; a boy in that situation would have needed just as much rescuing. Princess Leia had no problem telling guys what to do, and dealing with things herself. Sure she didn’t get in a fighter and attack the Death Star, but either did the other people in command.

I never thought about it in those terms of course–after all, R2D2 was my hero (he broke the rules to go on his mission, he was the one who got shot, who else could be the hero?)–but from that point on, Princess Leia was a model for how girls were supposed to be: strong and self-reliant.

And that’s pretty cool.

I figure that if a movie was going to influence my entire outlook on life, far better that it was Star Wars than some of the other stuff out there, like Snow White or Cinderella.

I love today’s Word of the Day. I’ve known that gruntle wasn’t the opposite of disgruntle, but it has always amused me to use it as if it was. Now I come to find out that because of “popular usage” I’ve now actually been using it correctly!

gruntle \GRUN-tul\ verb
: to put in a good humor

Example sentence:
“He spoke with a certain what-is-it in his voice, and I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.” (P.G. Wodehouse, _The Code of the Woosters_)

Did you know?
“Gruntle” is the result of a mistaken assumption about the verb “disgruntle,” which means “to make ill-humored or discontented.” The prefix “dis-” often means “to do the opposite of,” so people naturally assumed that in order to have a “disgruntle” there must be a “gruntle” with exactly the opposite meaning. But actually, “dis-” doesn’t always work that way — in some rare cases it functions instead as an intensifier. “Disgruntle” developed from this intensifying sense of “dis-” plus “gruntle,” an old word meaning “to grumble.” “Gruntle” began to mean “to make happy” only in the 1920s, when it was assumed to be the antonym of “disgruntle.” By contrast, “disgruntle” has been around since 1682, and the original grumbling “gruntle” dates back to 1589.

Though to be honest, I tend to use “regruntle” because it sounds more ridiculous.

Had a bizarro world dream last night. I changed some small details, such as a sink full of dirty water into a fountain, for coherence. There was more to it than what I wrote, but that is the only part I remember clearly.

There were a couple of questions where I wished they would have had a “Why is this funny” in addition to, “is this funny.”

Humph.

The second test is right, I think.
(more…)

So Kat, our large primary cat, if given the slightest opportunity, likes to dash outside and roll in the dirt.

This is annoying, as he is a partially white, inside cat. But he doesn’t run far, so if he occasionally dashed out, we didn’t worry about it.

Well, we forgot that there’s a stray in the neighborhood, who likes to spend time in our yard (taunting Kat we’re sure). What I didn’t consider is that the stray has fleas. And so Kat got fleas. And gave them to our small, secondary cat, Kit.

So yesterday Orkin came to spray, and we took the cats to get a flea bath. Kat started protesting as soon as the young lady took him back, and when she started to bathe him he began yowling–dare I say caterwauling?–so loudly, you’d have thought they were attempting to tear him limb from limb. It was so bad that the lady brought his pathetic, wet self out as soon as she was done, so I could see that he was okay.

I felt terrible because she kept apologizing, saying she wanted to let me know he was fine and that they hadn’t been hurting him in the back. I wanted to apologize for her having to listen to his whining for so long and at such a volume.

Kit was silent through the whole process, although when they brought her out (we took them wet, since we didn’t feel like waiting two hours for them to dry) she was shivering as if she was freezing cold.

With temperatures yesterday in the high 90s, about 30 seconds in the car took care of that.

But the cats are clean (and smell lovely!) and the house has been sprayed, so other than the unpteen loads of laundry I did yesterday, and not wanting to touch the floors with my bare feet, we’re good. And both cats seemed to have forgiven us immediately.

Getting out of the shower is NOT the best time to discover that you’ve forgotten to pack a towel in your gym bag.

Drying off with a washcloth? Not recommended.

The cover of this issue of Details features Tom Cruise looking so perplexed it would seem he’s just pulled his head out of his own ass, where it had been lodged for quite some time.

This weekend I had to get a new watch. Somehow I’d managed to enough damage to my current watch that it was no longer water resistant, and when I checked the time Saturday morning, found that the inside face had steamed up.

This is far from the first watch I’ve managed to ruin. My last watch somehow managed to get its face knocked off, it only took me three years to ruin a very heavy diver’s watch to the point that despite replacing its innards it would no longer keep time, and in college I managed to melt the face of the Swatch I regularly wore. (Apparently the Swatch guard [remember those?!] was good enough to reduce scratches but did nothing for melting.)

How do I do all this damage? I regularly crash my wrists, hands, and arms into walls and doorways that apparently leap out at them when I’m not paying attention. (I’m also really hard on rings, which is why the only ring I wear is my wedding band–and some days even that makes me nervous, like when I catch it on the kitchen storm door handle.)

I really don’t understand how I can be this clumsy, without having spent far more time in the emergency room.

Besides reading, I’ve also watched more movies this summer than I have in the past several years put together. In order of preference:

Batman Begins (repeatedly)
Hero
House of Flying Daggers
Fantastic Four (twice)
The Bourne Identity
Finding Neverland
The Incredibles
MIB
MIB II
X-Men II
X-Men I
Spiderman I
Spiderman II
Revenge of the Sith

I liked everything except Revenge of the Sith; I’d already seen MIB and MIB II before; And I loved Batman Begins–that’ll be on pre-order as soon as it becomes available. (And if that list doesn’t tell you something about me, not sure what does.)

I’m also planning to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as soon as the crowds go down. And some of the fall movies look good as well. This is the first time in a very long time that I’ve looked forward to seeing multiple movies. (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe; Serenity; The Corpse Bride) At this rate I may actually be able to discuss popular some form culture with my co-workers.

I’ll be spending the day sitting on the porch watching all the motorcycles go by.

I’m sorry I missed the Clydesdales–but aren’t there more than three motorcycle movies out there?

ADDENDUM the First:
I missed the beginning of the mass of bikes that went by my house, so my results may not reflect all riders, but I was struck by one thing. In all the bikes that went by I saw five bikes with stupid helmetless riders (illegal in West Virginia mind you), and I saw one (1) bike driven by a female. Lots of women riding, but only one woman driving her own bike?

Of course all the female riders might have been at the beginning of the mass of riders I saw, all riding together. But with all the bikes I’ve seen going back and forth since–no women.

I did see lots of pretty bikes though.

ADDENDUM the Second:
On the way to the movies we saw for female drivers–one of whom may have been the woman who drove past my house earlier. And no helmetless riders.

Happy Rain Day!

Apparently an habitual drunk with little grasp of reality painted the lines downtown after the repaving. Going down University Avenue now involves swerving all over the road in an attempt to remain in your lane, especially where once wide lanes are now narrowed to to width of a Volkswagon Beetle. (See: southbound lane by the Westover Bridge)

The only thing worse is the parody of lane control that they created by the new Osage shopping center, where you veer far to the right due to turn lanes were created whole cloth, and normal lanes were edged onto the roadside.

They need to put up a SLOW! Dangerous Turn! sign things are so bad.

I can’t imagine what posessed someone in Morgantown planning to think that any of this was a good idea.

So my blogroll seems to be dwindling. In the past couple weeks Memer and Solomon have said they’ll no longer be posting.

And others I like to read are posting less and less frequently. At this rate, I’m going to have to go back to reading the news.