Happy Tolkien’s eleventy-first birthday! At 9 PM, raise your glass and toast “The Professor.” (Via MetaFilter.)

We pause in our mobile blogging frenzy to present some biographical information regarding Jarvis A. Wood. They say you should find your niche and stick with it; possibly this is mine. Someone asked, by the by, if I knew who the businessman mentioned in regards to the Sherman Act in Special Delivery 2. I don’t know, but I’ll see what I can dig up. The following excerpts are from The History of an Advertising Agency, Ralph M. Hower, Harvard University Press, 1949: ...

I’ve watched this trailer around five times now. Last night, this morning. Watching it again right now. And I believe. Yes, I do. I have no qualms about saying this: In 2003, Uma Thurman will Kill Bill (original).

It’s pretty much traditional among a certain class of geek bloggers to come up with a way to set up an email->blog gateway. I’ve sort of put this off for a while, but since I’m pretty sure I’m about to go out and indulge in a Sidekick (original), the day can be delayed no longer. Thus: this entry, which was in fact posted wholly from within my email client. Which is mutt, and you can’t tell me that doesn’t make it worse.

This Christmas, my mother gave my brother and I complete sets of something that my great-great-grandfather (my maternal grandfather’s maternal grandfather), Jarvis A. Wood, wrote every Christmas for the last several years of his life. They’re little booklets in ivory covers, about half the size of a mass market paperback and perhaps forty pages thick. The words “Special Delivery” are embossed on the front, along with hashmarks in later years to mark the volume number. The first one, which I’m looking at right now, is printed in red and green — mostly green, with lovely use of spot color. Inside the front cover there’s a little sketch of a tag, inscribed “Tag! You’re it!” It’s also signed, by hand, “Uncle J.” Turn the page, and there’s the title page in front of you. A photograph of the author is glued to the left hand page. If you’ll allow me the liberty, I’d like to share some of his writing with you. I find myself struck by his eloquence, and his turn of phrase. He was a minister, and worked in advertising, so perhaps his skill with the word is not entirely surprising. The year is 1912; it’s Christmas. Turn the page again.

Steven Dan Beste misses the point in arguing that we can defend South Korea and invade Iraq simultaneously. I think he’s right. We could. Except that he’s not really arguing that the US can defend South Korea and invade Iraq. He’s arguing that the US could provide air cover (with help from Japan) while South Korea defends itself. This is, by the by, multilateralism: the awareness that the US needs allies to successfully pursue its goals. ...

I was thinking about doing my year’s best film list, so I wandered over to IMDB to look at their list of the top movies of 2002 by popular vote. It’s just weird. I am not surprised that some movie fans decided to push their favorite flick to the top of the charts. Duh; it’s an online vote. That’s what happens. But from all appearances, we have a bunch of separate groups all pushing frantically without any hint of trying to pull down someone else. You’d think that the Nine Inch Nails fans might want to cement their number 1 position by voting against the obscure Polish flick, maybe. And where are all the people who hate Michael Moore? How did Bowling for Columbine rack up a 9.0 average over 4,986 votes?

As pretty much everyone who cares knows by now, Sean Penn recently visited Iraq and was promptly used by Saddam Hussein for propaganda purposes. You have to hope he wasn’t surprised by this. I thought it might be interesting to see what he actually said, though, since it’s been somewhat under-reported. Quotes are from various sources; search Google (for the next 30 days or so, at least) for cites. “I am a citizen of the United States of America. I believe in the Constitution of the United States, and the American people. Ours is a government designed to function

“In sports, the New England Patriots win the Super Bowl, thus using up all the sports luck that New England has been accumulating for decades, and thereby guaranteeing that the Red Sox will not win the World Series for another 150 years.” Dave Barry’s year-end report is up.

Glenn Reynolds notes that North Korea supports US unilateralism, but somehow fails to miss the irony inherent in the idea that this new supporter of Bush’s policies is one of our biggest foreign policy headaches. Me, I find it amusing. “You were right, guys; the North Koreans are in our corner!” OK, OK, some real commentary. This is kind of interesting. Who does North Korea want uninvolved? Answer: Japan and of course South Korea. Japan in particular is likely to be more worried about North Korea than we are, because Japan is a lot closer and definitely within North Korean missile range. In fact, Japan is strongly considering sanctions against North Korea. That’d have a fairly major impact. North Korea would love it if the US discouraged Japan from taking action. Japan’s more likely to take painful action (from the North Korean standpoint) than is the US. ...