Boy oh boy, have I been hot and heavy on the stubble updates this week…

(apologies to Cassie, I just couldn’t resist ‘em on my old blog )

Well, it’ll all come to a happy end tomorrow. Meanwhile, another sterling Christmas episode from the folkses on JAG. From the three wise men to Scrooge…ahh, it was priceless. God forbid any other TV show should have Christmas episodes this moving and meaningful.

Just sent away for a bit of a Christmas treat. Yes, folks, you got it – you’re lookin’ at the new Ranger Sebulba, who will soon be treating you to a new-hotness premium Xanga. The check’s in the mail, as it were…w00tage!

Ladies and gentlemen, teh king has entered teh building!!!!

Yes, yesterday shall be a day long remembered; and so shall tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that, and in fact every day that I go to see Return of the Still-Not-King until it’s gone from the theaters. (Yeah, like that’ll ever happen.) Have you ever just wanted to go see a movie over and over again, just spend a day going back into the theater time after time and spend all day watching the same movie? That’s what I feel like doing over Christmas break. At the very least, I’ll be seeing this keeper once every week if I can help it.

I mean, how can you not fall completely in love with ROTK from the split microsecond that the very first frame flashes across the screen? Well, I guess you can’t if you’re a Tolkien purist…but I digress. It’s all about SAM, me hearties. Don’t you know your Sam? “I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you!” Hooboy…yay for Uncle Sam!!!  If Sean Astin doesn’t get an Oscar, somebody down at the AFI is going to drown in hate mail, I can see it all now. Really, was there a better moment in the whole movie? Well…perhaps so…I mean, when the Ring at last fell into the fire and the “Azg Nazg” script reappeared, I was like, YES. First of all, you can see Gollum doesn’t care (doesn’t notice?) that he’s falling to certain death – all he cares about is that he has retrieved hisss preciousssssssssss. And then that script appears…simply the greatest way to underline that the One Ring is being destroyed once and for all.

Ah, but then we come to my #1 moment, me hearties.

“My friends, you bow to no one!”

Oh. My. Lord.

There wasn’t a dry eye in the theater, I’ll wager. The entire assemblage bowing to the hobbits, backgrounded by a glorious rendition of the Shire theme. I could have laughed and cried aloud at the same time.

Bah, such a host of other great moments to choose from…I’ll have to come back to them the next three or four dozen times I see this movie, and come to think of it, I’ll probably wind up with even more when the EE comes out. That’s one thing I can wait patiently for, for a change.  Oyyyy…even though I missed Trilogy Tuesday, I’m not too worried. New Line will probably milk it by screening all three EEs next December. I mean, c’mon, they’ve got to give us something to look forward to next December.

Don’t they?

Well, at least I won’t be bored. That includes being inundated by old alumni who think that their mode of transportation is “embarrassing.” That’s what I was assigned, folks, and you didn’t want to pay extra for a coach bus, so suck up and deal. Yep, they definitely attended the University of New Hampshire, bloody penny-pinchers.

You know something, I feel like backpacking to Pennsylvania. *bounces off whistling hobbit songs to self*

One day.

Oh, how I wish that 25 hours from now, I could be sitting in a nice dark stadium theater with a bucket of popcorn in my lap and a mug of soda at my side, feasting my eyes on Return of the Still-Not-King. Alas, no dice, not in this bloody cheap area at any rate.

Whenever I first view it, though, as long as she’s not there, it will be one of the greatest experiences in cinematic history. Blargh, why can’t she just leave me the hell alone? Come back and wash your bus, Chris. Cover my shift, Chris. Listen to me and don’t be thick, Chris. Admit that you’re always wrong, Chris. Well, the Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away – He doesn’t just do the latter. I can’t even say her name anymore without an overdose of well-deserved contempt.

All right, so you’re probably wondering who “she” is. First you meet her, you think she’s the most wonderful, caring, kind and generous person God ever saw fit to put on the face of this planet.

Then you get to know her.

Then you wish you’d never met her.

She may be the prodigal daughter of the place where we both work, but I have had the dubious privilege of seeing the stuck-up, self-absorbed, prattling hypocrite that she really is. God forbid she should walk a mile in somebody else’s shoes; everybody has to see the world through her window or they’re of no use to her. God forbid she should care how the other half lives; if you haven’t had her handed-to upbringing, you don’t matter a damn. If you’ve had to fight tooth and nail to get everything you want, only to get rejected from it nine times out of ten, she’ll never understand and will never want to, because she’s had everything handed to her all her life.

Then she’s got the nerve to brag about it, to send out mass E-mails to everybody she knows so she can toot her own horn and impress the living hell out of the world with everything she’s done. Well, how, I ask, can anybody be impressed by an interminable ego? How can you be impressed by her when you’ve only ever tried to be her friend, only to be cast aside like an old boot? That’s false friendship, me hearties, and however good she is at anything else, she’s no good at being a true friend.

When somebody wants to be friends with you, you don’t just kick them coldly aside if they’re inconveniencing you. You work around it. You hear them out and you don’t blow them off. You especially don’t open the refrigerator at them, for crying out loud. Well? Do you?

Not if you’re a normal, conscientious, good-hearted human being.

I defy anybody who meets her to see if they think the same of her a few months later. I don’t recommend wasting your time, though. You won’t even make it past the first mood swing.

Gah, I can’t wait till Saturday so we can go watch Return of the Still-Not-King and then I can come home and SHAVE! Geez. Of course, this will not be terribly conducive to stubble updates, but then again, I’m fresh out.

YESSSSSSSS!!! Saddam Inssein is at last stuck between Iraq and a hard place. Go USA. It’s true what they say that fishing is all about patience when you’re angling for the big one. A family acquaintance now wants to have a Saddam Party. Personally, I’m all for it – load up on guns and bring your friends…

There is nothing more harrying than sleeping in on Sunday morning.

Well, actually there is, like being hounded by self-absorbed, prattling hypocrites, but I digress. You wake up, you yawn, you roll over, look at the clock and grumble a low expletive to yourself as you realise that you’ve been out for ten hours and slept straight through church. Thirteen-hour workdays…ain’t it a blast? Especially with a nor’easter coming through.

Anyway, it could have been worse – I’m sure the Man Upstairs would agree that sleeping straight through church was miles better than falling asleep *in* church. Riiiiiiiiiiiiight? Riiiiiiiiiiiight. Now, anything else before I submit myself to varicose veins, laundry-logged hands and overdue showers? Bah, I’m talking about water too much. Now I have to run a very important personal errand before all else.

We now return to our irregularly scheduled shovelling. Yay.

Yay for royal frogs and new blogs!  Have at last reached the promised land! Now to see how often I can get to it…Probably not going to be as chipper as I have been in the past, though. Much easier to write in a, shall we say, earthy tone. w00t. Well, anyway…back to the salt mines…I hate Boston…I hate Boston…I HATE BOSTON…give me New York City any day of the year. Especially April 12, 2003. Ahhh. What a mind-numbingly beautiful day that was. What a mind-numbingly stupid night that was. Thank God we came home after it was all over. Duhhh…didnt u no itz kEwL 2 RiOt??? w00t!!

Listen to me, I sound like a self-inserting 13-year-old. Blargh.  Bed sounds awfully impatient right now.

And one last thing: She knows who she is, so she is now fairly warned that if she keeps bird-dogging me all the way here, she’s going to get herself canned for online stalking. Capisce?