Episode IX: Return of the Blogger

So, I’m back from a short hiatus. It’s true that there was a rather unfortunate turn of events that cause me to not want to blog, but your out pouring of support has been overwhelming.

~chirp-chirp, chirp-chirp~

Well, whatever. I am not going to let stupid misunderstandings and grumblings keep me from writing. Certainly I love the grumblers, but I think we can all get over it and move on. So, today on “What’s up With the Fagan’s” Katelyn finds out that something new (but also old) is actually pretty cool, Josh manages to ruin his surprise birthday party, and Kate and Josh play a ton of Text Twist.

Let me tell you about the interesting things first before I bore you with my nerdiness.

This last Saturday Katelyn left me for SUPER SATURDAY!! I do support my wife being enriched and her enriching others because it is a good thing and my wife is awesome and because I really truly believe enrichment is a good program.

I also supported Brandon Jastal in his quest for football supremacy by jumping out of bed and running my smelly butt over to Kiwanis park and playing football on a very beautiful baseball type morning. Let’s face it, football season is over and shall remain so till next fall… but I need activity in my life so it was good.

Kate and I eventually got home from our various activities and jumped on the computer for a bit. We have been playing a ton of Text Twist lately. She is a huge Boggle fan and is very good at coming up with three to five letter-words, and ok at the six letter-words. I on the other hand am a six letter-words wiz and suck at the three to five letter-words. We make a pretty good team, I think our high score is +200,000.

I then hopped on facebook (Kate’s account because I have stopped all facebook use except this stupid game that she has on her account… I have been playing it with her) to play our game. I would never dream of going through Katelyn’s personal stuff, but just then she started hovering over my shoulder. Well, when the game was done she was still hovering over my right shoulder, so I thought that I would do her a favor and check her updates for her… dumb, very dumb.

It turns out that she has been planning a birthday party for me without me knowing. Thus, it was to be a surprise birthday party. Well forget that now because I saw the very first headline which was about a friend of our’s responding to the invitation to a party for me. I’m so dumb sometimes, but I contest that if she would have done one of a couple things this would not have happened (though I take full responsibility because it was my dumb fault)… she could have personally contacted people, or changed her password, not hovered over my shoulder, or just told me not to use her facebook. All would have worked and I would not have been the wiser. In the end though, like I said, it was totally my fault and I hate that I ruined it because I know she was really looking forward to the surprise. Lesson learned? I hope.

Recently, Katelyn and I have been reading to each other a lot. We read the crappy Twilight series (for more information view our TWO posts on these awful books) and I think if Katelyn had her way we would be reading the Harry Potter series. These are great books no doubt, but I found that there was something missing in our relationship that no mere Harry Potter book could fix; a language and thought encumbrance that had to be overcome in order to propel our relationship to higher and higher plateaus of understanding, peace, and ecstasy. This language I speak of is not the language of love, as we work on this regularly, but rather it is the very specific vernacular of (right now I am throwing all the cards on the table; at this moment you will for sure know that there is a big geek hiding inside my rugged if not robust exterior) Star Wars!

To understand my attachment with Star Wars one must understand that once upon a time there was a very sick boy (would it have made me more of a geek if instead of saying “once upon a time,” I said, “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…?). I was that very sick boy, and in fact when I think back on my childhood invariably two things come to mind, the first is the lesson about sitting on the sprinkler and what it does to your digestive tract for the next few hours (I’m a moron), and the second is being sick a lot. You may wonder what this has to do with Star Wars, well the long and short of it is this; I was in the hospital for like two weeks once, and while I was there the only movie worth watching that they had was Star Wars Episode VI, Return of The Jedi. I seriously watched this movie at least once a day while I was there, sometimes twice a day or even back to back.

I loved it, it was AMAZING! It had something that today’s movies do not have, namely it had action and character development, and it had a very strong plot that could stand on its own but that was augmented by cool special effects. Too many movies today lean to heavily on special effects and action to drive the movies. The original Star Wars trilogy was driven by its plot and its characters. Sure, at the time the special effects were simply awesome, but the story was good enough that it made for interesting reading as well, that is why there is such a large market for Star Wars books today. If you don’t believe me, go to Amazon or even Google it and count how many books have been written for the Star Wars Universe… I count about 136 books (though I have also read that with graphic novels included there are over 200 books) that have been written or are being written. If you don’t believe that, how about the Wall Street Journal; in April of 2005 they reported that Random House publishing has sold over 160 Million copies of the various Star Wars Universe Books. It may not be the best selling series of books of all time (Harry Potter) but it is on the list. As of 2002 the Thrawn Trilogy had sold over 15 million copies. In other words, there are a ton of Star Wars books floating around out there and people read them in droves.

One last number for you just for fun; the 6 full-length, live action movies (episodes I-VI) are the 6th, 25th, 9th, 3rd, 33rd, and 27th highest grossing films of all time respectively. They have earned an estimated total of $1,921,267,209… almost 2 billion dollars. Honestly though, that isn’t a good metric anymore for a movie being “good” in my opinion (look at what other movies are on the list), but whatever.

So, that’s a lot of information and crap about Star Wars books. I really only read one authors take of the Star Wars Universe, he being Timothy Zahn. He writes compelling characters, good action, and plenty of plot twists. I started reading to Katelyn recently Zahn’s first masterful Star Wars book, Heir to the Empire. We have also been watching the movies more recently, including watching The Empire Strikes Back twice in one week. All in all Katelyn is becoming something of a Star Wars fan. She doesn’t know everything about the Star Wars Universe, but she is a quick study and I hope to make a geek out of her soon enough… actually I would just be happy if it is something we can enjoy together.

Lastly, we went and saw the movie UP!, this weekend. Kate thought it was good, but not great. I on the other hand loved it. I know it’s a little slow at the beginning, but it was so utterly sentamental and just such a good story, I really liked it. I lament paying to see it in 3D though, I think it is just a dumb gimmick. They make you pay for the stupid glasses (roughly $3.00 per pair) and then they have the gall to ask you to “recycle” them after the movie. What, so you can spray them with Windex and sell them again?!? I was not down with that so I kept ours even though you can’t use them a second time. I would be fine putting a deposit down on the glasses and then getting the deposit back when I give them back the glasses, but the way it is currently set up, it is NOT worth the money.

So all in all this has been a weak return to the blogging bit, but it’s a start…

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