Christmas Thoughts 2009

So, an... interesting holiday season is almost gone... some random stuff, then.

First, my awesome sister-in-law Liz made me the coolest Christmas present ever: a very good replica of Jayne Cobb's orange and yellow poofball hat from Firefly. If you don't know Firefly, it is quite possibly the greatest television show of all time, and definitely the best show to not make it past one season (stupid Fox... first Futurama, then Firefly, now Dollhouse... lame!). Borrow it on DVD from a friend (I don't think all 14 episodes are on Hulu anymore but it's worth checking), and then watch the movie, Serenity. It's well worth your time. Serenity also works fine if you don't watch the series first, but it's even better if you have. Meanwhile, some context for the hat:

Jayne being hired by the Serenity crew (one of my favorite scenes from the show):

Jayne gets a gift from his mom in the mail:

And some artwork from DeviantART of Jayne looking threatening in his hat:

And now mine, home-made by my sister-in-law Liz. They even put it in a white box with fake straw and a note with roughly the same wordage as the one Jayne got:
And, finally, a picture of me failing to look as menacing as Jayne in the hat:

How's it sit? Pretty cunning, don't ya think?

Another random Christmas thought... usually I like to watch The Nightmare Before Christmas as a Christmas tradition. This year I watched It's a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart at my parents' house. It really is a good movie until it starts snowing again (if you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about). If you haven't seen it, I recommend it. It is much better than I remember from last time I saw it forever ago, very well done for all its tackyness at the beginning and end.

But it brings up an interesting problem... in the movie, the angel assigned to help the main character has to do this good deed to "earn his wings". However, the movie also states "every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings". Well, how does that work? Do you do a good deed, then wait for a bell to ring? Are there enough angels that this really works for every bell ring? Or, when a bell rings, if not enough angels have done good deeds, does an angel compulsively do a spontaneous good deed? Or if there aren't enough angels with good deeds under their belt, and someone tries to ring a bell, does it go silent? What if we run out of angels? Now I have a headache. Thank you, Jimmy Stewart.