Eric J. sent me a YouTube video that you must not watch with a drink in your hand. Or food, either.

It’s from Geek-Week.net: Secret Wars re-enactors. It is absolutely hilarious, and the ending is doubly so. Click on the link, and laugh.

There’s a reason it’s the box office champ. Actually, there are a lot of reasons. Let me count them. Wolverine, Storm, Magneto, Iceman, Shadowcat, Colossus, Pyro, Juggernaut, Mystique, Callisto, and yes, even the Beast. Oh, and Sentinels. Yes, there were Sentinels. References to Days of Future Past. Morlocks. Angel. Moira McTaggert, replete with mega-Scots accent. Hey, they even had the Evil Terrorist Wife from last season’s 24.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Kelsey Grammer made a halfway-decent Beast.

The Kitty Pryde character was great. I just love how she handled Juggernaut, whom they portrayed perfectly. It’s a laugh-out-loud moment.

Mind you, there are a few things in the plot that I didn’t like at all, particularly a few disappearances, but overall, wow. The Danger Room. They had a session in the Danger Room! (And fans of the X-Men knew it straight off. I sure did.)

I caught Stan Lee as soon as he showed up onscreen, but I did not know that Chris Claremont has a cameo as well. Now I’ll have to look for him when I go see the film again.

By the way, if you go see it, stay through the entire credits. It’s actually a scene I had a few problems with, but it’s probably important if you want to see X4.

Of course there will be an X4. X3 made $120 million over Memorial Day weekend, and broke the box office record for Friday, I think.

Overall, I’m a happy woman. Now I only have to wait about a month before seeing Johnny Depp and the Pirates of the Caribbean sequel.

Oh. Six commercials. We had to sit through six effing commercials. I hate Hollywood.

Update: Kindly put very long spoiler warnings in your comment if you intend to give away major plot points so soon after the film’s release.

So what do you think Tig is thinking in this picture? He’s sitting on the very top of my comic collection, which is on a large shelf in the bedroom closet.

There’s nothing on the wall where he’s looking. There is, however, a shelf that is probably too far for him to reach in a jump (which may be what he was thinking about).

Of course, he may also be thinking about how gorgeous he looks. He’s sometimes a bit vain.

Remember a day or so ago when Terrorist Chieftain Ismail Haniyeh said that the checks were in the mail?

PA Bagman Omar Abdel Razek says otherwise:

The Hamas-led Palestinian government does not have enough money to pay tens of thousands of employees, the finance minister said Wednesday, pulling back from a pledge to begin paying long-overdue salaries to all workers in the coming days.

…

On Wednesday, however, Finance Minister Omar Abdel Razek said the government has raised enough money in tax revenues to pay just 40,000 workers.

He said only the lowest wage earners, those who earn up to 1,500 shekels ($333, or ?260) a month, would receive a one month salary. People earning more than that will have to wait, he said.

…

“When we have enough money for the rest, we will pay. We don’t know when,” Abdel Razek said.

I suppose it’s no coincidence that this announcement comes just as the UN is ratcheting up their goals for the latest Adopt-a-Terrorist Begathon.

This post was originally published on August 2, 2003.

I stayed at Heidi’s last night. Woke up bright and early because Worf got into the compost can, which is a small garbage can of the type that you have to step on for the lid to open. Heidi used to keep a great glass bottle half-filled with pennies on top to prevent Worf from opening it. So one day Worf knocked the entire bottle off the top of the can. Then Heidi put the pennies into a metal scoop (sorta like those scales). Worf figured out how to knock that off last night. So this morning, because this dog is nothing if not bright, he knocked the scoop of pennies off again. I got up, shooed him and the other two dogs out of the kitchen, and started cleaning up the compost, as everyone else was still asleep, probably because the guest room is closest to the kitchen. I do believe they planned it that way. Sure, what does it matter if their guests get woken up by the dogs? It’s not like they have guests every night.

The dogs immediately take advantage of my distraction by running into my room and seeing if I have smuggled any food. I have not, but that wouldn’t stop Sparty from tearing apart my pocketbook. So I run into the guest room and shoo the dogs out of my room and this time, I close the door behind me. I finish cleaning up the compost, put the compost can in the TV room so the dogs can’t get it again, and go back to my room.

The door is locked.

It locked behind me when I closed it. I am locked out of my bedroom. Inside are all of my clothes, my computer, and my glasses. I can’t even read. Or watch TV. Not without sitting inches away from the screen. And anyway, I don’t want to read. I’m tired. I want to go back to sleep.

Nobody else is awake. I have no idea where the little tools to unlock the doors are. So I lie down on the couch in the Great Room, because the couch in the TV Room, although more comfortable, smells like dog because, well, the dogs lie on it a lot. Heidi gets up about half an hour later, sees me on the sofa, and says, “Did the dogs wake you up?”

We will stop here.

Post-terrorism stress syndrome. I am tired of constantly writing about the gazillion attempts to destroy Israel and Jews. I think today, instead, we’re going to concentrate on other things.

Like Powerline’s “Greatest American novel” poll.

Oh, wait. I don’t want to discuss it, because it’s pretty much an arbitrary thing. And frankly, a lot of their choices suck. But there’s this utterly classic part of the post that I simply must highlight:

We tried to select candidates based on literary merit. Politics and sociology were ignored.

In an update to the post, Joshua Sharf says that The Sot-Weed Factor should be replaced with The Grapes of Wrath. Hinderaker’s response?

Joshua, Joshua, Joshua. You’re fortunate that Denver has a fine public library. I’m sure they have The Sot-Weed Factor. It’s not too late to catch up with one of the most entertaining (albeit nihilistic) books ever written. But, beyond that–The Grapes of Wrath?? No socialist realism for us, thank you!

You know, that one’s such a gimme, that I don’t think I can add a snarky response to it.

Oh, of course I can. Hypocrisy, thy name is John.

Hebrew University adds details to the story, describing the species and the cave.

The invertebrate animals found in the cave – four seawater and freshwater crustaceans and four terrestial species – are related to but different from other, similar life forms known to scientists. The species have been sent to biological experts in both Israel and abroad for further analysis and dating. It is estimated that these species are millions of years old. Also found in the cave were bacteria that serve as the basic food source in the ecosystem.

The Palestinian Authority has released a statement saying that the Israeli species displaced the native palestinian species, and are demanding reparations and the “right of return” for the palestinian species.

Oh, and the Israelis are digging in a Muslim burial ground, too.

In an interview with Der Speigel, the president of Iran proves that once again, he is able to manipulate the media at will.

Here is the problem. He has set the debate starting from the false position that the Muslim and Arab world, and frankly, the Israel-hating part of the world, begins from: Namely, that Israel exists only because of the world’s guilt after the Holocaust. No one ever reminds Ahmadinejad that Jews originated in Israel, that there has been a continuous Jewish presence there for 3,500 years, and that it is the ancestral homeland of the Jews — just as Iran in the ancestral homeland of the Persians. Instead, we get idiotic journalists who counter his lies with things like this:

SPIEGEL: Well, we are conducting this historical debate with you for a very timely purpose. Are you questioning Israel’s right to exist?

Ahmadinejad: Look here, my views are quite clear. We are saying that if the Holocaust occurred, then Europe must draw the consequences and that it is not Palestine that should pay the price for it. If it did not occur, then the Jews have to go back to where they came from. I believe that the German people today are also prisoners of the Holocaust. Sixty million people died in the Second World War. World War II was a gigantic crime. We condemn it all. We are against bloodshed, regardless of whether a crime was committed against a Muslim or against a Christian or a Jew. But the question is: Why among these 60 million victims are only the Jews the center of attention?

SPIEGEL: That’s just not the case. All peoples mourn the victims claimed by the Second World War, Germans and Russians and Poles and others as well. Yet, we as Germans cannot absolve ourselves of a special guilt, namely for the systematic murder of the Jews. But perhaps we should now move on to the next subject.

Ahmadinejad: No, I have a question for you. What kind of a role did today’s youth play in World War II?

SPIEGEL: None.

Ahmadinejad: Why should they have feelings of guilt toward Zionists? Why should the costs of the Zionists be paid out of their pockets? If people committed crimes in the past, then they would have to have been tried 60 years ago. End of story! Why must the German people be humiliated today because a group of people committed crimes in the name of the Germans during the course of history?

SPIEGEL: The German people today can’t do anything about it. But there is a sort of collective shame for those deeds done in the German name by our fathers or grandfathers.

Ahmadinejad: How can a person who wasn’t even alive at the time be held legally responsible?

SPIEGEL: Not legally but morally.

Ahmadinejad: Why is such a burden heaped on the German people? The German people of today bear no guilt. Why are the German people not permitted the right to defend themselves? Why are the crimes of one group emphasized so greatly, instead of highlighting the great German cultural heritage? Why should the Germans not have the right to express their opinion freely?

That crap plays really well to certain people. And it is utterly not germane to the existence of Israel. Just once — just once, I’d like to see a journalist confront him with these historic facts, and see what he says. Not that I think he’d say much different, but to see just one journalist push and push until he has answers the question or gets pissed off.