Okay, no more journal entries in the middle of the night, I promise

Why does everybody call this thing a mouse?

I mean, really. It doesn't look like a mouse. Mice are furry and possibly grey. They have four legs and big ears and a tail. They squeak and eat cheese. This thing next to my keyboard is and does none of that. It only scrolls clicks and drags. So why's it called a mouse?

"Keyboard," now there's a nice, unassuming name. And it's even true. There are rows of keys arranged on this board.

It wouldn't surprise me to learn that, like so much else about computers, there's some arcane, quaint, or illogically logical reason why this ergonomic plastic with two buttons and a little spinny thing has come to be known as a mouse.

Floppies aren't floppy anymore, but we still call them that.

See, my friends aren't ignorant of movies after all!

Yesterday after the four of us had eaten lots of cookies and watched The Matrix, for some reason I asked Seth about who directed something, and he said he didn't know. I said that was okay; most people don't pay much attention to directors anyway. He agrred, saying he didn't think he could name five. So naturally he had to try. He started counting them on his fingers. "George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, the Wachowskis" (gesturing at the screen, of course)...

"I hope you don't think that counts as two!" I said. He counted it as one.

"... the Coen brothers, and ..." He looked at his pinky, the director yet to be said.

"Ron Howard!" Katie said. Which made Josh and I, at least, laugh quite a bit. But we couldn't argue with her, and so they had their five.

"I wonder if we could do another handful," Katie said. Seth looked at his other hand. Pause. "Which ones did you already say?" Kaite asked.

We laughed, and repeated them again. "Uh ... Roman Polanski, " she said. A director Josh likes.

So then he started in. "Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith ... "

I knew what he was doing. "You're just reading them off your stack of movies over there!"

"Yeah," he said. "So?"

"That's cheating!" I accused.

"What, using the movies we have?"

"No, I meant Josh participating at all. I know he can do it," I smiled.

And when they only needed one more, this time it was Seth who shouted it out triumphantly: "Peter Jackson!"

I laughed. "Oh, I should've known!" And I did know he wasn't being nominated for Heavenly Creatures or Bad Taste, but merely for Lord of the Rings.