"The tomatoes are ripe for revolution!"

Killer Tomatoes IV: Eat France! is on right now. I hadn't realized how good the theme song can be when fully orchestrated until now.

According to IMDb: "After being busted out of jail by his tomatoes, Professor Mortimer Gangrene begins a new plot to take over the world by inserting his hapless lackey Igor into the throne of the King of France."

"Into" the throne? That should prove interesting...

I'm not sure what scares me more - the fact that Space has been showing the Killer Tomato films recently, the fact that there were at least four of them (I only knew about the first two, and only own the first one on DVD - yes, I'm weird, and occasionally low-brow), the fact that this one stars John Astin (who must be the king of the B-movies) and Marc Price (formerly "Skippy" on "Family Ties"), or the fact that the opening dialogue was spoken in what must be the absolutely worst fake French accent ever recorded on film.

However, Marc Price's introductory monologue is somewhat amusing, in a fourth-wall-shattering kind of way:

What am I worried about? I'm 22 years old, I'm backpacking through France... Life is wonderful. Oh, who am I kidding. Michael J. Fox is a major motion picture star and I'm making a Killer Tomatoes movie, part 4!. What am I worried about? I'm making a movie. I'm filming in France. I've got a piece of the merchandising! It beats dinner theater.

And now he's picking up a girl by claiming to be Michael J. Fox. Oy.

Feels like I've been up for 18 hours already. :(

I don't know why I'm so groggy - I haven't done much today. :(

When I was getting ready to pop out this afternoon I checked the weather on TV, as it was supposed to be going up to 12 degrees. 17???!!! WTF????? And on the news, they just said that it had actually hit 19 at one point.

Needless to say, I wore my leather jacket - unzipped - rather than my winter coat. Fortunately, the rain held off until this evening.

During dinner, I watched the Canada For Asia concert that was being broadcast live from the CBC studio. It was quite a good show; I particularly liked the Barenaked Ladies' version of "One Week". It was also nice to see Murray McLaughlin - who still sounds just like he did in the 1970s - and Oscar Peterson was excellent. It still weirds me out a little to see Bryan Adams performing with Anne Murray, however. The comedy bits were okay, though Scott Thompson and Mark McKinney's bit sounded like they'd written it on a cocktail napkin five minutes before going on. Rick Mercer did a great job as co-host, I thought.

I had a burst of energy after dinner and emptied my cabinet of the rest of the Trek videotapes I've accumulated over the years (except for Enterprise, as it's not out on DVD yet), and reorganized my DVDs somewhat. My dining room table now has about 150 VHS tapes on it, waiting to be disposed of. (That burst of energy is probably what's responsible for my feeling groggy now. Either that, or there really was something to the theory I came up with in university that lethargy is inversely proportional to the outdoor temperature.)

I still want to get a DVD-only bookcase or cabinet, though, so that I can organize them properly. The only catch would be that I don't know where I'd put it, unless I completely get rid of my grandfather's old entertainment unit, but then I'd have nowhere to store my vinyl records, my hockey and baseball cards, and various action figures, not to mention some of my autographed memorabilia that I'm planning to frame and hang eventually - assuming I can get the frames. I ordered them from the local Black's Photography store some eight months ago, and again about five months ago when they never materialized; it seems that they'd taken the order down but never actually did anything about it - I assume that happened the second time I placed the order as well.

I think I actually need a larger apartment. Well, that'll have to wait...

They just did a story on the news about disaster relief. I find it somewhat shameful that most of the money pledged to help the victims of the earthquake in Bam, Iran in 2003 never actually materialized, while we're pouring money into tsunami relief. I find myself asking what the difference is between the two - it's not as though they both happened at the same time, and people chose to help the tsunami victims instead of the others. There was a year between the two disasters. What's the difference? Why is one effort working, and the other didn't?

And while I'm on a sociopolitical jag, this whole Newfoundland situation bothers me. I can understand Newfoundlanders being allowed to keep their oil revenues, but the purpose of federal equalization payments is to bring people in "have-not" provinces closer to the standard of living enjoyed in the rest of the country. If more money from oil resources is given to Newfoundland, why should they expect to keep receiving the same equalization payments? It seems to me that they should be reduced in some proportion as their oil revenues increase. Is there anyone on my friends list who can explain why this logic is wrong? Because obviously it must be flawed in some way that I can't see.