'Bred Crumbs

11:10 AM It's funny because it's true (and because it's The Onion): "Who says Java Programmers Don't Have a Sense of Humor?"

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12:15 AM Warning: The wording of many of today's entries is inexplicably peculiar. Proceed with caution.

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Grownupedness barrels relentlessly toward me. Today: my first home repair project.

The shower quit working this morning. The immediate suspect was the little pull-up thingy in the bathtub faucet, and, I reasoned (to the extent I can at 7:30 a.m.), surely the ceasing of water flow to one of the fixtures must be intricate and require hundreds of professional plumbing dollars to repair. And I saw no means of attachment of the spout to the wall, which must surely mean inaccessibility by the likes of me.

Enter our modern miracle, the Internet. Mere minutes after my assumption that I faced a costly repair, I knew that it would really be cheap and simple, and even the likes of me could do it. Hell, now I even knew the terminology. The diverter was broken. I would need a new spout. It screws off and costs only 11 bucks or so to replace. Again I used the 'Net (why am I telling you this? You know the drill) to locate a hardware store near work. Get it home, wrap "teflon tape" around the threads of the nipple (a metal extension whose length and rigidity suggest that this plumbing part has been misnamed, anatomically speaking), and screw the new one on. Ta-da: shower.

Isn't it pathetic what it takes to make me feel competent?

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Speaking of plumbing terminology: it delights me regularly to see that the urinal industry has its own measurement unit to rate the power of its devices. Gpf. Gallons per flush. Beautiful.

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While very much enjoying Moulin Rogue this weekend, I had two peculiar recurring thoughts:
-- It will be very difficult to format this movie to fit my TV.
-- [At each major plot point:] Hey, it's just like I Accuse My Parents!

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Why I'm probably not going to see Harry Potter Episode 1:
-- I liked the book because of the charm and subtle wit of J.K. Rowling's storytelling. I don't see Chris Columbus achieving this.
-- When I read the book, I did not visualize the children as being precociously British, even though the story was clearly set in England. Maybe that just shows the limits of my imagination, but it surely made the reading more enjoyable.
-- The abundance of marketing tie-ins would seem to ensure that the film is wretched.

The alarming thing about the Potter marketing theory, though, is that the oozing of merchandise is beginning for The Lord of the Rings, which I had been looking forward to a lot. Now, as I see the mythic heroes of the trilogy reduced to fun-meal mug embossings, I can't help but hear the furious revolutions emanating in the graveyard at Oxford or Cambridge or whichever tweedy campus crusty old J.R.R. toiled for. (I could look it up, but I've used the 'Net enough today.) And I tried to rationalize this, thinking, well, Greater Tolkien's son Christopher must be OK with it all -- but now it's clear he's not, to the extent that the heir codger to the legacy of Middle Earth has quit speaking to his own son because of the films.

So, while I'll still see LotR1 and hope it is done well, my new list of eagerly awaited entertainment goes as follows: (1) Special-edition DVD release of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back on Feb. 12. (2) Tenth-anniversary super-special-edition DVD release of Clerks. (3) Terry Gilliam's film version of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's exceedingly humorous book Good Omens. Marriages of book and director rarely come so perfect.

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OK, night-night, and don't let your genital-hungry teammate bite.

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