Pass the supersized (and overpriced) tub of hot buttered popcorn...

Your LJ meme for today, shamelessly purloined from faxpaladin:

A. Pick 16 of your favorite movies.
B. Pick a favorite quote from each movie.
C. Post the quotes in your journal.
D. Have those on your friends list try to guess what the movie is without Googling, you cheating bastards. (And no fair using IMDB.com, either!)*
E. Strike out the quote once it has been correctly identified and place the guesser’s username directly after the quote.
*Bonus points for each quote wherein you can also identify any of the following: the speaking character, the actor playing him/her, the scene, the character[s] spoken to and/or the actor[s] playing the spoken-to character.

( Quotes from my 16 all-time favorite flicks )

Tempt thee not the wrath of the great god Murphy...

As soon as I posted recently about having to buy a new cell phone because I lost the old one, and then went to the hassle of actually buying the new one and transferring my number and TracFone credits to it, I just knew that the old one would, sooner or later, turn out to have been left not in some impossible-to-remember place that was not my home, my car or my workplace, or stolen by someone, or lost out the car window, but rather somewhere at home, in a spot I would kick myself all the way to Alpharetta and back for not having thought to check.

This morning I was remaking the makeshift daybed in our home office (actually, our secondary bedroom, which serves as home office for me, art studio for my beloved and storage room for us both) which we cobbled together awhile back from some old futon-platform parts, a foam mattress and some various boxes, trunks and whatnot. I lifted up a piece and, sure enough, there was my old phone, lying in a hidden cranny where it had lain since weeks before, when I had no doubt carelessly placed it on the bed-substitute's window rail before dozing off and allowed it to slip down onto the floor. Had I looked just a little bit harder that frantic morning when I was searching for it... but I was already beyond making it to work on time that day and didn't have any more time to waste on it.

Sigh. Oh, well, I guess I can keep it as a backup in case something happens to the new one. And it's not like the new one cost me tons of cash (just $19.97, astute readers will recall), or, really, anything other than the annoyance of transfer mentioned above (one of the few things I hate about TracFone, but it may well apply or be worse with any other cellular service). And the new one does have a pretty color screen and a more compact size. And at least I can finally play Snake II again.

There are times I hate being right.

On one of my favorite writers...and not just of SF

A discussion elsewhere in the startrek LJ community re the original series' anniversary led to a mention of one of its most beloved episodes, "City on the Edge of Forever," and its original author, Harlan Ellison. I made reference to the fact that Mr. E. still bitches about how the late Gene Roddenberry and others bastardized his initial script, even to the point of writing a book on the subject wherein he includes the original draft. I also remarked that "Harlan bitches" is a redundancy to anyone who knows him well. This reminded me of an essay I wrote a few years back about the man after finally getting to meet him in person. For anyone who is interested (or wants to avoid it), I've posted it behind the following cut-tag.

Addendum, 9/10/06: When I originally posted this yesterday, I had been completely unaware of Harlan's egregious behavior toward Connie Willis at the just-concluded 2006 Hugo Awards ceremony. osewalrus  has kindly posted links to video of the incident, commentary from female bloggers angry about it and Mr. Ellison's response (despite his personal disdain for the Internet, he does have a friend maintain a website for him, Ellison Webderland, which apparently had to shut down for a day or two due to a sudden overload of visits -- gee, I wonder why...). My own commentary on the controversy is posted below the links in the comments section. (Talk about great moments in unwitting perfect timing!)

( Defending Harlan Ellison )