Anniversary Post

Well, what can I say. I've been doing this off-and-on now for six years and, while I have focused a little more on the Twitter and the Facebook of late, I do plan to continue with the blog for the foreseeable future. I still like having it around, for some reason. Possibly because those other forms of social media are not compatible with long thoughts or rants. 140 characters won't cut it when I want to go on about boxing day shopping, to use the last post as an example. I also still like the online record that I've left. You can go back through status updates or tweets, but nothing is quite like going back and reading through blog posts. It's like going through your old diary, looking back at what you've done, what you were interested in, and what you thought about it. A little meatier than the photo essays on FB.

Anyway, I'm not saying anything anyone with one of these doesn't already know. Just wanted to mark the occasion, blow the proverbial noisemaker in celebration and to wish everyone a Happy New Year and all the best in 2011, the Year of the Rabbit, which promises to be pretty darn good for a lot of us.

Thanks for reading if you have been. Your patronage is appreciated.

With that, I take my leave to begin year 7. Maybe lucky number 7, eh?

mike

Boxing Day Shop-a-Thon

As per usual on Boxing Day, I and the rest of the family head out and grab some decent bargains on the kinds of things we enjoy: DVD/BD for me, electronics for the wife, games for the boy, and clothes for the girls.

Among my many other acquisitions, I finally managed to complete the Star Wars saga on DVD for very cheap. I have always had the prequel trilogy and the box set for the original trilogy, but when they last released the original trilogy in the two-disc packs with the theatrical releases included as a bonus disc, I only bought Episode IV. I felt the whole 'Han shot first' thing was important to have since the Special Edition version of events drive me batshit crazy. I passed on the other two, however, due to their few alterations and figured I would pick them up when they became available for a reasonable price (reasonable for a double or triple dip, anyway). Four years later, here we are.

One thing I have enjoyed about the box set and these discs is the fact that they are covered with different kinds of Star Wars art, poster or otherwise. The covers are photo mash-ups of the original poster art, then there is different poster art, or possibly production art, on the sleeve inside, and more art on the discs themselves. I remember there being a very expressionist style to the inserts on the box set. Just very nice efforts on the packaging, overall.

So, I now have one set of original trilogy on VHS and two on DVD, but I have a strong suspicion that the BD release in the next year or two will not include the theatricals as a bonus feature since George would rather they be forgotten, hence my desire to grab these while I still can.

Among my other boxing day treasures, I mostly upgraded many of my DVDs to BD versions. I always make sure there is something different about the BD before I do so, otherwise I just feel like a tool for spending money again. There has to be new features, or exclusive features or being totally remastered or something to justify it. So, I grabbed the X-Men trilogy, the first 30 Days of Night, Star Trek II, IV, VI & First Contact, V For Vendetta, The X-Files: I Want to Believe, Chocolat, Hellboy II, Terminator Salvation and a couple others I'm probably forgetting.

Also grabbed some books over the holiday season like Joe Sacco's Footnotes in Gaza, the second book in Stefan Petrucha's Timetripper series, and George Lucas' Blockbusting, which I've had my eye on for a while.

Oh, and Jen bought me Homicide: Life on the Street as my Christmas present this year. A good haul, overall.

Until next year!

mike

Merry Christmas, Everyone!