Little Bit of This, Little Bit of That

• When I first brought home my X-rays showing the big ol' break in my finger, PigPen's immediate reaction was "Hey, I do good work*." I told him that yes, yes he did, and I would be sure to recommend him to all of my friends.
  
  
• Upon hearing that I was going to have a screw placed in my finger permanently, people usually do one of three things:
  
  1. Make a crack about the fun I'm going to have with metal detectors
  2. Make a pun involving the word "screw"
  3. Make a Six Million Dollar Man reference
  
  Option number three was favored by Zinger ("You going to go for the Six Million Dollar Man thing one body part at a time?"), Li'l Random ("I'm going to start calling you 'Bionic'."), and PigPen ("We can rebuild you; we have the technology. And tell Zinger I'll be preparing the next piece to be replaced soon.")
  
  
• One of the few up-sides to waiting around in doctors' offices for hour s just so that you can spend 5 minutes with the doctor is that you can get a lot of reading done. Almost finished the first book of Gregory Keyes' Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone series, which is shaping up to be just as interesting as his excellent Children of the Changeling books. Guess I should go pay my fines at the Public Library so I can check out the next two, although it might be cheaper to just go and buy copies elsewhere . . .
  
  
• Been trying to decide how I'm going to entertain myself at home while recovering from the surgery; really wishing I hadn't reduced my Netflix subscription now.
  
  
• Another contender for favorite comment on my TMI interview comes courtesy of Flunky, who opines that the overshares listed weren't all that bad considering who they came from. That's a positive comment, right? Right?
  
  
• Allow me a brief minute of comic geekery: While I loved portions of Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-men and thought Grant Morrison's New X-men had some really cool ideas, Ed Brubaker's Rise and Fall of the Shi'ar Empire is by far my favorite X-men story in ages -- not counting Peter David's X-factor run, which is its own private kind of awesome. We no return you to the non-comic-geek portion of your blog
  
  
• I finally tested out the "Watch Now" video on demand feature of Netflix and was pleasently surprised by just how well it worked, even if the film I watched was an incredibly low-budget horror flick shot on DV. Wish I would have tested it out earlier, since I now feel like I've been missing out on some of the value of my Netflix subscription.
  
  
• Favorite quote from the Lost panel at this year's San Diego Comic-Con:

  I would actually argue that were you to go back and look at season one, you would find more acts of violence that our guys committed on each other than violence that the Others committed on them,” Lindelof added. “But our guys are just a lot prettier. So, when Sawyer is like, punching you in the face, you're like ‘More, please. You're just so attractive. Do you want to take your shirt off while the beating continues?' But when Pickett or Friendly is beating you up it's like, ‘Oh this is brutal violence!' So, we promise that as the show moves forward if the violence stays intense it will only be perpetrated by catastrophically good-looking people.

• Not too long ago I finally bit the bullet and arranged my MySpace Top Friends list into something other than strict alphabetical order; of course, this led to PigPen's righteous indignation at being relegated to the #2 slot under Li'l Random. When I pointed out that I'm #17 on his own Top Friends list, he defended my placement there by informing me that every friend listed above me is either family or like family to him, apparently not realizing that (a) my point wasn't that I was bothered by being so low on his list** but rather that in the grand scheme of things he was relatively high on mine and (b) basically telling me "yeah there are 16 people that I care deeply about, and then there's you" wouldn't be all that effective a tactic in convincing me that he should be my #1 friend.
  
  
• It looks like PigPen has managed to postpone starting his new hours another week so that he can finish out the final week of softball season, which has made him happy; I'm sure once he realizes that this will also minimize the time he has to spend with post-surgery, whacked-out-on-pain-meds Todd he'll be even happier.
  
  
• PigPen's girlfriend's*** review of 300 after we watched it Tuesday night: "too much killing." Obviously, she was not the target audience, a fact that was driven home when some dust of the disc made it skip back and play the same sequence of the Spartans killing off wounded men three or four times in a row, making her exclaim "I don't want to see them kill him again!" Women, huh?

*Yes, PigPen was partially responsible for my injury; no it was not on purpose; yes, he expressed genuine remorse over it; no, that does not stop him from continually mocking me and using it as a reminder of what happens when you "mess with the bull"
**No, really -- everyone above me on his list is either kin, the PigPen equivalent of the Parkerites (i.e. friends he's known for years and years ) or his girlfriend, so I can't complain about any of them being ranked above me. Honestly, I'm just happy that he finally moved me above Dane Cook.
***Until I come up with a good nickname for her, it's either call her that or Squiggly's sister. Incidentally, PigPen is #2 on her Top Friends list as well, while she's #16 on his; just thought I'd throw that in there.