Before I forget, itz your birthday, itzwicks! Have a happy one!

Mary and I saw "The Golden Compass" on Friday. Not a bad movie, though I've seen better ones. This one Seems to have been made so that they can make a sequel, perhaps several. (One can draw immediate parallels to "Star Wars", with Nicole Kidman's Mrs. Coulter as Darth Vader, Sam Elliott's Lee Scoresby as Han Solo etc.) As to those who refuse to see it because of its alleged anti-Catholic bias (or those who will see it simply because of its alleged anti-Catholic bias), I really didn't get that, and I've been a Catholic as long as I can remember, educated in Catholic schools most of my life, and still a practicing one. If calling the bad guys "the magisterium" was supposed to be a dig at the Church, I didn't see it that way. One could just as easily substitute "the Democrats" for "the Magisterium". I know it worked for me (Mrs. Coulter's obsession with "the chilllldren" was a dead giveaway), and Chris Muir seems to have picked it up as well. Seriously, the best part for me was the story of Ragnar Sturlusson, the exiled king of the ice bears. That alone could have been a movie. Anyway, go see it if you have nothing better to do, or, as Mary and I did, go see it because you're tired of doing something better.