All things considered, today was an improvement. I feel marginally better than yesterday. The Cold From… well, I’ll say Sniffleheim, which is a pun on the name of a bad place in Norse mythology that you probably wouldn’t recognize, seems to be retreating at last. And I stopped at a body shop after work to get an estimate on my bumper. They offered to let one of the technicians reattach it with a couple screws as a “side job,” and I got away for twenty bucks, which the girl who did the damage has promised to send me.

Ed Veith, over at Cranach, makes the sad announcement that the Luther At the Movies blog has been put to bed forever. However, Dr. Luther’s “miserable, execrable assistant,” Anthony Sacramone, has joined the blogging stable at First Things, so that’s some consolation.

He does a gorgeous takedown of The Golden Compass here.

New Line Cinema and MGM Studios have made an agreement with Peter Jackson to produce The Hobbit and a sequel film over the next few years.

Jackson and Walsh envisioned the first film covering the events of “The Hobbit” and the second bridging the 80-year gap between that novel and the first “Lord of the Rings” book.

It was that vision that led MGM, which holds the film rights to the book and is looking for new movie franchises, to insist that Jackson and Walsh make the films.

“Once (they) played out their vision for ‘The Hobbit’ as two movies … MGM just took the position that we wanted to deal with Peter and it was not an option to do it with anybody else,” Sloan said.

Here’s an appropriate quote for our modern political climate, courtesy of Bartleby.com.

“If you elect a matinee idol mayor, you’re going to have a musical comedy administration.” — Robert Moses, U.S. public official from New Haven, Connecticut

That could apply to a variety of people, couldn’t it?

America waits in hushed anticipation, one question on its trembling lips: “Does Walker feel better?”

Walker replies (in an impressive, deep voice), “I’m not actually sure.”

Saturday I woke up hopefully (I always feel sort of fair when I first get up), thinking “I can probably manage going to church to set up today…” (as I’ve mentioned, my church meets in a gymnasium, and my team is called on to set up the stage and chairs once every five weeks) “…and then do some Christmas shopping, and get a couple things at the grocery store.”

After an hour or two (spent mostly on the couch) I thought, “I’ll have to call in AWOL on the set-up, but I can probably do some shopping and go to the grocery store. I don’t have much left to buy.”

A couple hours later I said, “I guess I can still get some groceries. That’s not far to drive.”

And then I gave up on the groceries too.

Sunday I spent reading books, in a prone position.

Today I went in to work, and put in my time. I was not a human dynamo, but I was there and I did what a man’s gotta do.

I’m still coughing, though, and still don’t have much of a voice. If it doesn’t clear up soon I suppose I’ll have to see the doctor and inquire delicately about bronchitis.

I stopped at the drug store tonight, and while I was inside a young woman clipped the corner of Mrs. Hermanson, my Tracker, and tore her front bumper off. She had me paged in the store, and gave me her name and phone number (the young woman, that is. Not Mrs. Hermanson). She said she was driving her father’s car, and didn’t have any ID or insurance information on her. She wants to handle it outside insurance.

I’m not delighted about this, and I figure there’s a good chance she’ll just change her phone number once I give her the estimate, but I don’t know what else I could do under the circumstances.

Then again, I suppose if she were out to rip me off, she could have just driven away.



For Pete’s sake, girl, if you wanted to give me your phone number, you could have just introduced yourself!

How long do you think it’ll be before some expert announces that the smell of fresh-cut pine boughs causes cancer?