Happy one hundred eleventieth birthday, JRR Tolkien.

(Wendy told me. Brian knew. John failed miserably. )

I celebrated, quite by accident, by watching Star Treks 2, 3 and 4 while sorting through all my crap. No, I'd never seen them. I never really watched TOS, so I never bothered with the movies. Yes, I'm a very bad geek, but at least I'm working to mitigate my geekly deficiencies.

I'm also catching the goofy Animal Planet quasi-"documentary" The Future is Wild, which theorizes about what sort of weird-ass creatures will evolve several hundred million years into the future. Strangely, there seems to be a hell of a lot of charismatic megafauna. I'm hardly a biologist, but would tortoises really get that big? I'm quite creeped out by the idea of spiders "farming" the last living mammals, but I do appreciate the "as a side effect, the sharks got smarter" beasties.

The best part? According the fabulous scientific minds that Animal Planet consulted, squids will inherit the earth. Vindication!

What do you mean, I watch too much television? What the hell are you talking about?

(Click. Click. Click.)