The Goat People of Alpha Centauri

Apparently Terry Pratchett will be in Philadelphia on Wednesday, 14 September. Maybe I'll go there, if at all possible. I guess if I get selected for jury duty, I won't be able to, but otherwise I probably will.

Yesterday, bethje and I went out to a nearby arcade to play pool. That was pretty fun. Incidentally, one of the video games at the arcade was X-Men vs. Street Fighter, and I had to wonder whether the Street Fighter characters would really have any chance against the X-Men. I mean, maybe Blanka or Dhalism would, but could you imagine Ken going one-on-one with Cyclops or Wolverine? There wouldn't really be much contest, would there?

As you may know, the box set for Season 6 of The Simpsons came out yesterday. The good news is that Beth and I found out it only cost $29.99 (plus tax) at Target. The bad news is that they were sold out. We got a raincheck, and then headed over to Wal-Mart to see how much they were selling it for. They had plenty of copies there, but they cost over $38. We asked if they'd do a price match for the price on the raincheck. We didn't have a Target sale paper with us, but Wal-Mart apparently keeps papers for their major competitors hidden somewhere behind the counter. Even though the lady tried to insist that the paper didn't say the Simpsons set only cost $29.99, she still gave us that price, but kept our Target raincheck (not that that's a problem, since we didn't need it anymore).

As it turns out, not only does the Homer's head box look stupid, but it wasn't put together very well. When you open it up, the contents try to fall out. We're going to use the mail order offer to get a more traditional box, even though the people offering it are insulting about it. The problem isn't that they changed the box, but that they changed it to a crappy design. (Mind you, I also think it's silly to change the box design after four similar ones, but that's not my biggest concern here.) For anyone else who wants to take advantage of this offer, be warned that the number in the box is wrong. The area code should be 888, not 800. If you follow the link I made earlier in this paragraph, though, you should be able to skip the phone part altogether.

After watching the latest episode of Stella, we checked out the box set, and ended up watching the entire first disc with commentary and deleted scenes (although we somehow missed out on the latter for "Itchy & Scratchy Land"; I think I had it set incorrectly). They were pretty cool, even if the commentary did include still more of the "Hey, aren't our cast, crew, and guest stars so incredibly talented?" stuff that gets boring after a while. As for the deleted scenes, I can recall people asking why they didn't use Sherri and Terri as the ghost twins in "The Shinning," and it turns out they actually did, but ended up not using the scene. It was a pretty funny scene, and I don't want to give the whole thing away, but I thought I should mention it in light of those comments.

Speaking of "The Shinning," Matt Groening admits in the commentary that he'd never seen The Shining, which surprised me. I mean, I hadn't seen The Shining until last month, but I'm younger than Matt, and didn't create a show centered largely around parodying popular culture. I think Matt also mentioned in the commentary for the Futurama episode "Fry and the Slurm Factory" that he'd never seen Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

I played a little bit of Paper Mario today, but I got bored and frustrated searching for the oasis in Dry Dry Desert, so I gave up after a few minutes. Maybe I'll get back to it later.

( Soul quiz result )