I imagine most everyone has seen this, but somebody at Lucas Films figured out we'd want the original Star Wars films. Who knew? So this fall you can buy each film in a 2 DVD set for only $30. The sets include both versions of the film and will look so nice right next to that copy of the "Special Edition" version that we all bought last year. (sigh) Still, better now than never. I'm not sure I feel a burning need for the original version of Empire and Jedi - I'll have to review what they changed. My favorite part is this though:

This new set of DVDs does not constitute "George changing his mind," Lucasfilm's Jim Ward told USA Today.

Because we all know that George has had one single vision throughout the process and has never changed his mind. Right? Right. So now that we're a month into the web serial I'm curious to hear what people think about the pacing and frequency. At the moment the deal is I post around one thousand words a week and I'm trying to get an old pulp-style cliffhanger at the end of each chunk. Are they too long? Too short? Is once a week too slow, too fast? What do people think? Has everyone quit reading it because of the whole Sgt. Riker name discussion? Let me know.

Chris Roberson writes a sentiment that had occurred to me although he writes it with far more eloquence than I would have. To wit: "Just how the hell is one third of 2006 already gone?!" On that note I noted with great glee yesterday that no magazines with a 2005 cover date remain in my magazines-to-be-read holder. And as of this morning I have no more than three issues of any given title to read. I will triumph over the to be read pile. I will, because I must. Today's magazine was the Jan 2006 issue of Locus which focused on Canadian Sci-Fi. There was an interview with Dave Duncan, who I've never read but I quite enjoyed the interview. My favorite bit was this:

As for anyone who doesn't believe in evolution, ask them how they got there -- because they probably came in a car, driven on gasoline, which comes from oil. I was an oil geologist, and I know that they couldn't have found that oil without using stratigraphy, which is based on index fossils, which require evolution. So they shouldn't drive cars if they don't believe in evolution, right? If God created everything all at once, then God was lying. (emphasis in original)

In other media consumption, I accidentally forgot to put a Babylon 5 disc at the top of my Netflix queue so I got Lost in La Mancha instead. Has everyone else seen this already? It's a bit slow to start but it's interesting viewing. Looks like it would have been a great film as well, had it been made. The part that really caught my attention is about an hour in. They've had a disastrous first week of production, a flash flood, unexpectedly heavy jet traffic overhead, and to top it off the star has fallen ill and can't ride a horse. The head staff regroup on the weekend and the producers have a solution, because that is what producers do - solve things. The producers want to fire the first assistant director. Not that he did anything wrong you understand, just that it's traditional to fire the 1st AD if shooting goes poorly. WTF? How does something that insane become industry practice? (There's more producer-based comedy scattered throughout, mainly of the "We're on hold, so do work, but don't spend any money" variety.) The second WTF moment is at the conclusion. The final outcome is that the insurance company now owns the film and Terry Gilliam will need to buy it back from them if he attempts to make the film. Isn't that fabulous? After all, who is a better caretaker for a creative concept than an insurance firm?

All kinds of stuff to discuss today! I'm not even gonna try to make it thematic, just blurb 'em out. 1) Battlestar prequel announced. SciFi will be doing a series concerning the creation of the original Cylons. It will be called Caprica. Color me tentatively excited, although it sounds like a better mini-series concept to me. And I'm worried about the "family drama" quotes - I don't really want to see Dallas or Knot's Landing in space. And given that I think the second half of season two was weaker, the concept of splitting Ron Moore's focus even further could have some downside. But I'll have faith for now. 2) Wii think the the name is stupid. Nintendo renames the perfectly usuable Revolution to Wii. You know what - I'm tired of kicking Nintendo around. I'll assume this makes sense in Japan - to my ears it's just stupid sounding. This is the textural equivalent of the Gamecube's industrial design. It's like Nintendo always has to do something to make your feel vaguely embarrassed to even have their console in your AV system. 3) Oblivion continues to rock. I'm like 18 hours into Oblivion and the "time to giant spider counter" is still running - a possible record for a fantasy RPG. (Were there giant spiders in Morrowind? I don't remember any.) There might be some in Oblivion, I've spent more time in towns than dungeon crawling. Oblivion's disc however is giving me fits. I rented it from Gamefly, as is my way these days and played several hours. Then I started having trouble in towns - it would noticeably freeze before playing certain voice clips. Then I found several shopkeepers where talking them would actually cause the game to kick back to the Dashboard with a "the disc is dirty" message. I took it out and noticed it was pretty badly scratched. So I sent it back to Gamefly and bought a copy at Best Buy. Well, that was great until a couple of days ago the "disk is dirty" behavior started happening again. I took the disc out and noticed it has a faint set of circular scratches. I don't think I put those there, but I can't say 100% I didn't. I finally buffed it with the GameDoctor, but now it's sort of iffy whether the 360 will read it. Sometimes it doesn't read at all, and sometimes it reads as a DVD-Video disc (which plays a movie saying "put this in your Xbox 360 console". Thanks guys!). But if it does boot then it seems fine, so I guess I'm slightly ahead - although nervous my $60 disc is going to crap out entirely.

So as the GamerTag shows, I have a copy of Oblivion now (rented from Gamefly). I'm just barely getting into it, but I've already sunk several hours in, and I can see how I'm just scratching the surface. I don't know where the Odiils are, but not only did I break into their farmhouse and steall all their beer and brandy, I went into their fields and picked all their tomatos, lettuce, blackberries, and watermelons. Of course, then I was over-encumbered and couldn't move so I left them a nice Rusty Iron Warhammer I found in some dungeon. And those freaking watermelons weighed 5 pounds each so I brewed them right into potions while standing in the field. I'll be curious to see how it holds up. As I recall the thing that finally wore me down in Morrowind was all the jogging to and from various places. But Oblivion has the handy-dandy travel map where you can insta-warp from city to city. This could pose a problem. As for the Gamertag itself, I did it mainly for the hell of it, and then realized if you click it you have to log into xbox.com/Microsoft Passport. Mind control lasers disclaimer and all that. Passport is fairly evil in my opinion, but there you go. But even if you don't click it does serve one interesting function - it shows you the last five games I've played on my 360. I don't have a sidebar with what I'm watching, reading, listening to, etc. because I know I'd never keep it up to date. But this now provides a zero-maintenance way to show what I'm playing. That's pretty cool.

Podcasts! Have you tried listening to the Penny Arcade podcast yet? They are recording a half an hour or so of them working on a strip, once a week and it's both entertaining and enlightening. It's interesting to hear their creative process and and listening to them rip on each other as they come up with a strip is good fun. I though it might be interesting for an episode or two but I've been surprised by how often I laugh at offhand comments they make. Highly recommended for a listen. Snack Foods! I have a new favorite - Snyder's of Hanover's Buffalo Wings Pretzel Bits. Pretzel-y goodness with authentic hot wing sauce flavor. Yummy. So Xbox 360 Gamertags. I stuck one on the right sidebar over there. Cool? Goofy? Thumbs-up? Thumbs-down? What do people think?