Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

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Prairie and I went to see The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy last weekend, on opening night at the Cinerama. The perfect time to go, as far as I’m concerned. A gorgeous theatre, and lots of excited fans looking forward to seeing the show — including a few who showed up dressed for the occasion in bathrobe and with towel slung over their shoulder.

I’ve been perusing various reviews since then, and it’s been interesting to see the reactions. I haven’t seen many people who were entirely disappointed, but I haven’t seen many people head-over-heels in love with it, either. Most of the consensus seems to be that they did an acceptable job in translating the book to film.

For my part, I had a blast. It wasn’t perfect, but I thought it was quite enjoyable, and a reasonably good attempt at putting Douglas Adams‘ particular brand of absurdity on screen.

While I could point out a few things that bothered me a bit (Sam Rockwell as Zaphod, for instance, came across more as annoyingly-annoying rather than insanely-egotistically-cool-annoying-but-still-a-hoopy-frood) and a whole list of things that I was thrilled to see (the BBC TV series Marvin in line on Vogosphere, or the entrance to the Magraethea factory floor), there was one particular standout point for me.

In a movie that was cast fairly well overall — Mos Def as Ford and Martin Freeman Arthur were both good, Zooey Deschanel as Trillian is really cute, and I loved Alan Rickman as Marvin’s voice — far and away the single best piece of casting was Bill Nighy as Slartibartfast. He was, to my mind, jaw-droppingly perfect. While I don’t think any of the other actors will replace the mental images I’ve had in my head for years from reading the books, as far as I’m concerned, this was as if Slartibartfast was plucked whole from the pages and put on screen. Absolutely brilliant.

Even better, Royce called me on Tuesday to wish me a happy birthday and chat for a while, and as we were discussing the film, he said nearly exactly the same thing — good movie, pretty well done, Slartibartfast was perfect. It appears that great minds think alike…and so do ours!

iTunes “So Long & Thanks for All the Fish” by Hilary Summers, Kemi Ominiyi & The R’SVP Voices from the album The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005, 2:26).

The problem with time travel…

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Yes, the problem. Because there is only one. ;)

I don’t even remember how we got on the subject, but something in a conversation with Prairie last night got me rambling on about the biggest problem I have with time travel stories. As fun as they are, there’s always been one thing that bugged me about them — though, admittedly, it’s most likely because in the majority of instances, worrying about it would essentially negate the possibility of the story working at all.

Essentially, it’s that while what makes the story fun is the ability to travel temporally, nobody ever seems to take into account the need to travel spatially as well.

The Earth rotates at a little over 1000 miles per hour. It also orbits the sun at around 67,000 miles per hour. Our solar system is moving through the galaxy at approximately 447,387 miles per hour. Our galaxy is moving at roughly 1.34 million miles an hour through the universe. So, assuming that those are all the variables we have to work with (that is, assuming that time is a constant within our universe, and that there is nothing “outside” our universe to measure its relative speed), we travel (very) roughly 6,679,393,200 miles per second relative to our universe.

So, were I to invent a time machine and move myself one second back in time, I’d end up popping back into the normal time stream somewhere more than six and a half billion miles away from where I started! Needless to say, I’d be incalculably lucky to end up arriving anywhere that would allow me to survive — most likely, I’d just end up floating out in the vacuum of space somewhere.

Any feasible time machine, then, would somehow have to ensure that the traveler was able to move temporally while remaining stationary spatially relative to their starting point, and not to the universe as a whole.

Tricky.

Not that that keeps me from enjoying time travel stories anyway, of course. But there’s always this niggling little voice in the back of my head…

05/05/05 5:55:55

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From Jonas:

  • :55 seconds — once a minute.
  • 55:55 — once an hour
  • 5:55:55 — twice a day, once a day (depends on cultural approach towards 24/12h clocks).
  • 5th @ 5:55:55 — once a month
  • 5th of May @ 5:55:55 — once a year
  • 5th of May, 05 @ 5:55:55 — once every 100 years
  • 5th of May, 005 @ 5:55:55 — once every 1000 years
  • Thursday (5th day of week), 5th of May, 005 @ 5:55:55 — once every 2000 years

(And yes, I’m back-dating this post slightly just so it fits. Silly, sure, but why not?)

Happy Birthday Royce!

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Today Royce, whom I’ve known since fourth grade, turns 32. All these years and I’m still two days older! ;)

Happy birthday!

(The best birthday card I ever found was one I gave to Royce a long time ago. On the front was a picture of a man’s hand holding a hamster. On the inside, the card read, “Have a happy birthday or the hamster goes squish.”)

iTunes “Come Fly With Me” by Sheep on Drugs from the album One for the Money (1997, 3:02).

For Mom: One year of hair!

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After having had long hair for ages, a few years ago I cut it short, and for the past couple years I was regularly shaving my head. While I liked the way it looked, my mom always lamented the loss of my “beautiful curls.”

Last year on my birthday, after having found some old shots of me with long hair, I finally decided to start letting it grow out again. I shaved my head one last time on my birthday, and have just let it grow since then. This, then, marks one year of not cutting my hair…and here’s the result:

[One year of hair!][1]

[1]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/djwudi/12264104/ “One year of hair!”

It’s a bit bunched up from having been in a ponytail holder, but you get the idea. Long (and getting longer), red, curly hair. The curls are back, mom! :)

Of course, most of the time I keep it held back in a ponytail, so here’s how that looks (along with a birthday present to myself — my new favorite t-shirt, custom-made because I just don’t wear [white t-shirts][2] all that often):

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p align=”center”>One year of hair!

iTunes “I Don’t Think They Know” by Mesh from the album Cyberl@b (1998, 4:40).

Then it hit me…

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I was reminded of this poster tonight when I ran across an interview with its creator (Update: the original link seems to have died, here’s the Internet Archive’s cached version).

Then it hit me..., Seattle, WA

When did “it” (the concept for the poster) hit you?

Marilyn: I can remember exactly when “it” hit me. It was late one night after serving tables all afternoon and evening. I got home and I just laid down on the floor. I was exhausted and staring at the ceiling of my room thinking “what the fuck?” knowing that I would have to be back at the restaurant the next day and the day after and the day after…it just starts wearing you out, especially when you’re not interested in the work. […] With a 9-5 your time is completely strangled and sucked up.

[…] You go from pre-school to elementary school to middle school to high school and then off to college. Everyone is telling you how great you are going to be along the way like “Keep up the good work!”

Suddenly college is over and you’re pushed out into the meat-grinder (workforce) with no work experience and often times you just get ground up by employers who aren’t interested in you as a human being. All they care about is that you wear your name tag, smile, and work for next to nothing. It’s tricky.

I go through times like this every so often — generally, right around my birthday, when I roll another year forward without feeling like I’ve actually progressed anywhere of note. It hasn’t been hitting me as strongly this year as it has in the past (something I’m incredibly grateful for), but — without getting into much detail at all — recent frustrations at work (nothing in particular, just the usual day-to-day frustrations that come with any job) have stirred it up a touch.

Knowing myself and the way I work, chances are that it’ll fade away again before too terribly long (not entirely coincidentally, probably about the time things settle down on the work front again). Still…better to recognize that it’s there and work my way through it than just try to shove it onto my mental back burner where it can sit and simmer unattended until it boils over.

Current plans have Prairie and I moving in together in a few months, and as soon as possible afterwards, I’ll be taking a break from the 40-hour, 9-5 work week and putting my skinny butt back in school. Right now, I’m really looking forward to being able to do that, and start finding a way to give my brain something more challenging than glorified trained monkey work.

It won’t happen overnight, of course…but it’s long past time that I finally started down on that path. It’ll be nice when it happens, and it’s getting closer every day….

iTunes “Overture (from West Side Story)” by Green, Johnny/Orchestra from the album Movie Music: The Definitive Performances (1961, 4:40).

Camp Tomato!

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So yesterday was Jason Webley‘s Camp Tomato. Prairie and I weren’t entirely sure just what the day would have in store, but we figured it would be fun, so after waking her up from a nap — she, unfortunately, has been battling off the last stages of the same nasty bug I was fighting last week — we hopped in the car and headed over to Woodland Park.

(This one’s long, folks — around 3200 words, 17 images, and one video — the rest is after the cut….)

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