Went to see H2G2 tonight. Complete waste of time. I'm the fan and I just sat there waiting for it to be over. We ate at a chinese restaurant right before it that should be sued for impersonating chinese food. I thought about saying, "No thanks, just looking around" when we first went in there because hardly anyone was there and the place didn't look very clean, but decided to try it. Man, it was bad. From a limping, lisping waiter to the surly woman who slammed food into the trays and griped at someone on her way into the kitchen, it was horrible. That should have been my indication, my harbinger of what the night would bring. The movie started with dolphins jumping around, perhaps the most boring animals on the planet. You can't pet them, they're slimy and make goofy R2D2 noises. Then the movie proceeded to suck. Over the top performances from Zaphod and Ford, and when I could see a joke from the book coming, they omitted it. Then they would leave in some of the lame jokes I always hated (the made up words like "hoopy" and "zarquon"). The fact that I woke up with the world's worst backache didn't help. It still hasn't gone away. I'm taking Ultracet for pain, but it does nothing. I believe I asked for the wrong pain medication last time, and maybe I should have asked for Endocet. I always get them mixed up. I only take it about once a month, but the last couple of times I've had to take it and just suffer through, because the pills do nothing. I have to look into that.

I'm waiting for a book on Jack the Ripper's last victim, Mary Jane Kelly. She was the only one killed inside and the most disfigured and brutalized. What I don't understand is how everyone just assumes that this was Jack's victim. She was overkilled and he must have taken forever to do it. Granted, for the ones he killed on the street, he had to get it over with quickly, but it just seems weird that he would change his M.O. and indulge himself so much. Plus, very strange things happened during the course of the investigation. The coroner refused to allow all the evidence of the killing to be publicized or even discussed, and the person who saw Mary with a person before she died never testified. Hmmm. The supposed number one suspect for the police drowned himself about 6 weeks after the murder and the story is that he suffered a "complete break" in his brain after his indulgence and killed himself. To me, that seems too pat. I think the Loch Ness Monster did it.

So Tess, in my earlier post, goes on with her life without her husband. She goes back to work on a dairy farm and is reunited with some of her friends. Her husband is off to Brazil and runs into one of the girls Tess worked with. He asks her to go with him to Brazil! She assents, but can't betray Tess, so she leaves. Man, what a dick. The guy who raped Tess shows up in town and they run into each other. He has "repented" and wants Tess to forgive him. She says she does, but he takes this as encouragement and proceeds to pester her with marriage proposals. Imagine it! She must be bowled over with his romanticism. But her father takes ill, as well as her mother. She nurses her mother, only to have her father drop dead. They lose their home because no male heir is around, so they must move. The guy who raped Tess, D'urberville, offers her his old place as his aged relation has died. Finally, she gives in for the sake of her family. Plus, he keeps telling her that her husband will never come back. She has written to her husband and he never answered, so she begins to believe D'Urberville. So she moves in with him. You can see it coming, can't you? Her husband DOES show up, after getting a letter from her friends about her current conditions, and hires a farmer's cart, rushing to her like a sappy romantic movie. Except when he gets there, she rebuffs him and says it's too late. He leaves and she argues with D'Urberville, then stabs him and flees. She runs into Angel, her husband, and wind up, somehow, at Stonehenge! She falls asleep on an altar (how symbolic) and the men from the village catch up to them. She is hanged in the town square and the book ends. It wasn't possible for Hardy to leave well enough alone. See? He had to kill her because she had had relations before marriage. What a nice story.

Now, on to (finally) finishing Great Expectations. "I hate you. You may kiss me if you like."