Pretty slick, Slick.

As my former colleague Dave found out, it was a very messy morning indeed. Not three cars ahead of me, going over a bridge that forms an overpass over the train route near our house, some bozo decided that there was really no reason to exercise any caution due to the icy conditions. He took off in his pickup truck at the traffic signal before the bridge when the light turned green, and promptly spun out across the bridge, finally stopping with the tailgate buried in the fence that runs along the perimeter of the bridge, the headlights illuminating the opposite lanes of the bridge. The car that had been tailgating him T-boned the driver’s side door — albeit at a very low speed, so I doubt there was any injury involved to either party.

Those of us in the other lane, apparently having a bit more sense, had started over the bridge at a much more reasonable if pitifully slow rate of about ten or fifteen miles an hour. We were able to safely pass the site of the accident. I heard sirens from the surrounding areas throughout my drive to work. My normally 25 or 30 minute commute was more like 45 minutes this morning. (Sorry, Dave, don’t mean to rub it in.)

My favorite part of the WTOP article Dave linked about the terrible tragedy involving the FedEx truck near the Dulles Toll Road:

All of the packages from the FedEx truck are strewn along the hillside. A spokesman for FedEx tells WTOP the spilled packages will be retrieved and sent on to their destinations.

Well, it’s good we have our priorities straight. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that FedEx is protecting its customers’ interests, but was it really necessary for WTOP to ask? Did anyone actually think they would just leave the packages there? Maybe I’m a bit sensitive this morning, I just thought this was really an unnecessary cheapening of the situation. I mean, someone died, and we’re worried about whether that extra fruitcake will make it Aunt Ethel’s house in time to be ignored at the Christmas party?

Hmm, apparently I need a listen of Mr. Blue Sky this morning too. Incidentally, I have been a big fan of ELO for a long time — my mom used to have a couple of their records, and one of the first CDs I ever bought was “A New World Record.” Instead, this morning I’m listening to Damien Rice and Death Cab For Cutie… Time to lighten the mood a little, methinks!

Triumphalism?

I heard this word today on the news and actually want no part of it. But the rest of the report was interesting in that it said that Iraqis are investing in real estate (as opposed to gold), and that refugees are returning, overall, in droves, which hardly seem like actions sane people would take if they felt their country was teetering on the edge of chaos. The elections are a brave step forward by the Iraqi people, and if they don’t demonstrably indicate that the U.S. led coalition has won the portion of the war fought on that front, then I’m not sure what more it will take to do so.

Will free your mind for food.

Here’s an interesting account of a Linux lover’s experiment in giving out freedom. I really enjoyed reading about the innovative way he chose to do this. What’s very sad are the many comments from other Linux geeks which completely missed the point of the article. Seriously, folks, you need to get out a little.

From the trenches.

Does anyone still harbor doubts about the utility and economy of free software? If so, here is confirmation from within the usually silent halls of Google. (And keep in mind the story is somewhat old, written by an ex-Googler.)

Have bag, will travel.

Don’t you love, with a sort of geeky fetishism, getting an official carrying bag for some new gizmo or other? Oh… you don’t. Above all that, are we? Well, sadly, I’m not. Nope, I love tucking a gadget into its perfectly-matched, accurately-sized carrying case, especially if said case carries some sort of emblem saying what’s inside — tastefully, of course.

Today Eleya brought me home my long-awaited carrying case for my newest Line 6 gizmo, and of course I wasted no time tearing open the box and pathetically rushing downstairs to tuck the hitherto unprotected gizmo into its fresh new case. And thus the terrible giant Geek of Tastefully Branded, Accessorized Goods is appeased, and falls back into its dreamless slumber until the next piece of portable electronic bric-a-brac goes too long unshielded from the merciless assault of the elements, or at least those not quite so merciless elements that occur more or less indoors.

A tale of two series.

No rambling, poorly-connected rambling lately, so here goes.

Over the last couple of months, I have been reading The Chronicles of Narnia to my daughter, who is a very precocious girl of almost five. I have been reading them to her not in the chronological order of the stories themselves, starting with Book 1, The Magician’s Nephew, but rather in the order of their publication, starting with Book 2, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. She loves the stories of the Pevensie children and their adventures in the enchanted land of faeries and magic. Having never read them myself — which is astounding even to me, given my childhood love of fantasy stories — I am enjoying them at least as much as she. As an adult I can appreciate the underlying allegory of the stories, whereas Evie takes them at face value, as excellent children’s stories where good triumphs over evil and we learn simple lessons of sacrifice, friendship, and love.

I haven’t made any plans, though, to see the new Narnia movie. I think it’s a noble endeavor for it to be made at all, but I suspect (unlike the global juggernaut that is Harry Potter) they will never make the entire series — especially not if the reins are handed off to hack directors used to dealing with technical CGI films like Andrew Adamson. I liked Shrek as much as the next guy (or kid), but it was far from a work of art. And although the Narnia books are not, by and large, some of the greatest literature ever produced in the English language, they are about a large theme and deserve to be treated as such.

This is the key behind the success of Peter jackson’s The Lord of the Rings adaptation — recognition of its large themes. The whole script development on those great movies demonstrated willingness to bypass weaknesses in the literature to satisfy the requirements of cinematic language and thematic structure. The advance reviews I’m reading of the Narnia movie seem to confirm my suspicion that this film — and possibly the series it heralds — was a response to Rings and not an endeavor undertaken on its own merit. And because of that, no one dedicated themselves to preserving the larger themes of friendship, sacrifice, and love, and making the movie about those themes rather than about reproducing in as much CGI grandeur as possible the great visuals to which the book alludes.

I plan on reviewing Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy before I let Evie anywhere near it. I heard good critical reviews about it, but I am a little disturbed by strident (and frankly off-putting) statements I read from the author some years ago that he wrote it as a form of attack on the Christian overtones in Lewis’ Narnia series. No matter what your personal beliefs, Lewis’ work holds up as good, solid fantasy works. If you like the overtones, more power to you, and if you don’t, you can ignore them. Or better yet, simply appreciate them for what they are and the depth they lend the story and emotion.

Vacancy.

Very little to report lately, with the band on a temporary holiday hiatus. I’ve found myself much more satisfied at work lately after moving my desk to a new office. It’s quieter, and although I myself am not a big fan of very quiet offices, I find that my concentration is improving there. This could be due to the fact that I’m not a kid anymore, and need more quiet than I used to, but I think it has more to do with morale.

One of the tenets of blogging is that you don’t write things you wouldn’t want everyone you know to read, because sooner or later, they surely will. So I’ll leave it at the fact that I’m sitting with a new group and it’s helped re-energize me daily.

Meantime, I put up the Christmas tree today and we’re getting ready to celebrate Ethan’s second birthday tomorrow. It’s hard to believe we’ve been parents of two children for that long now. I guess it’s true, what the ubiquitous “they” say, about how fast they grow up. Evie is going to be five in March and she already seems so tall.

Probably I’m late to the party again, but I am so hooked on Sudoku I can’t believe it. Eleya saves the hardest ones in the newspaper for me to puzzle over. Sometimes we stand hunched over the kitchen counter next to each other, silently puzzling our puzzlers over the little grids. Does that count as “together” time?