Karin and I just settled in to watch an interesting documentary on PBS about Mars and the nifty little rover “Spirit” they just plunked down there a couple days ago. It was a very odd thing, especially as I had been reading Slashdot that night and coincidentally stumbled upon a link to the blogfeed of someone sitting in the control room at JPL as the module landed. I saw blurry copies of those pictures that showed up in the newspaper the next day a few hours before a lot of other people. Of course, that’s not to say I had anything at all to do with the multi million dollar mission — but it was very cool to be among the handful of eyes witnessing an (at the very least, hearsay) account of the live event.

In stark contrast, we took some of our afternoon freedom and — against all traffic advisories to the contrary — drove over to Silvercity to see “LOTR: Return of the King” for a second time. Big screen. Big sound. Big price. (Though that BUCKET of popcorn didn’t help.) Tolkien was apparently a luddite, at heart, and would not only have hated the idea of his books being turned into the eye-candy, mind-popping, technological extravaganzas that they have been — but he would have shivered with disgust at the idea of me sitting in my pajamas looking at (nearly) live images from halfway across the solar system.

Of course, that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy either.