Monday, November 29, 2004

Followups

Item 1: I caught a few minutes of NBC's A Christmas Carol: The Musical last night, specifically, the part where the Ghost of Christmas Past shows Ebenezer's father being led off to debtor's prison and his mother consoles him from her deathbed. Ummmmmm.... I'm sorry... I know the story has strong autobiographical inspirations, but what page of Dickens' book are we on again?

Memo to all Hollywood: Judicious cuts are one thing, but classics of literature DO NOT need your additions. (Oh, and will someone put Alan Menken out of my misery?)

Anyway, obviously the producers have a take on this Freudian "Ebenezer's father messed him up" issue which Lemming and I were discussing. For the record, what I actually see in these scenes is that Ebenezer was once, basically, an innocent. We know he's going to make bad choices. We know he's going to screw his whole life up, and I think Dickens says it's nobody's fault but his own. But it's in these scenes where we see that there is something in Ebenezer worth redeeming.

(Aside: This is also why Severus Snape is the most interesting character in the Harry Potter books.)

Item 2: When you download U2's new album from iTunes, you get an "electronic booklet" with it. Sounds a lot like my call for PDF liner notes. (See also my previous post about "People are doing what I say!")

Hmmm... as long as this is working, I think the guys should get me an iPod, that U2 electronic box set, and an invitation to whatever party they're going to New Year's Eve. Oh, and continue the fight to forgive world debt. (That way I'll be one-for-four.)

Item 3: Microsoft increased the size of my Hotmail quota. I now have at least 1.45 Gigabytes of total email storage. This is rediculous. But then, as we're telling users all the time, storage is cheap... it's data recovery which is expensive.

2 Comments:

Blogger lemming said...

I agree with you about Snape - the more I reread Sorcerer's Stone, having read Phoenix, the more interesting I find him. We don't know everything about Snape yet, and the possibilities - well, endless.

I don't deny that rejection by a parent will give one a pre-disposition to having a troubled life. Yet Scrooge had choices and chances -lots of them. Snape obviously took a chance given him by Dumbledore. I don't know that Scrooge would have done the same.

1:09 PM, November 30, 2004  
Blogger Joe said...

Scrooge takes the chance offered to him by the Ghosts! And we don't know how many chances Snape passed up... or chose poorly.

5:14 PM, December 01, 2004  

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