For the Tolkien fans, 'Elric Saga' fantasy series optioned. Interestingly enough, the saga will be produced by Chris and Paul Weitz. The Weitz's directed "About a Boy", but this time they will just be producing and not writing or directing.

This is a sad story, Alleged murder-suicide in Concord. The news reporter on the radio said that the daughter was mentally disabled, and the wife had Alzheimers. The neighbours are calling it a mercy killing. The details are sketchy, but it's so sad.

Did the father and husband just give up on life and said screw it? The man shot the daughter and wife, and then himself. What would drive a person to do this? I think the man was probably taking care of the retarded daughter and the wife all by himself. What a burden. And now the daughter is alive, how messed is that? If she lives, who is going to take care of her. Is it a good thing that the daughter is mentally disabled because then maybe she won't have to freak out about her dad trying to kill her?

And I feel bad because the writer in me is saying in my head, "there's a story there, one heck of a story". But what a sad story it would be to write. I guess I would only be interested in writing the story so I could speculate what would drive a person to do this. It would be a fictional account of course, although it would be interesting to see if someone else wants to find out the real story behind the news headline and will write the true story.

What would drive a person to such depths of despair, that he or she would kill the only two people he or she loved?

A few short notes.

Suprisingly, the movie "Gods and Generals" was sold out at AMC 1000 on Van Ness on Sunday. You wouldn't think this kind of movie would be sold out here, but it was despite the reviews. The movie theatre only had two showings because of the film length, and that may explain why it was sold out. If I want to see it, I will definitley have to think about buying movie tickets online.

The news is full of stories about the high price of gas in the SF Bay Area. I'm lucky, because I pick up gas at Costco where the price last week was only $1.86. The gas station is right near my office, so I can go during the day when the lines aren't very long. I saw a gas station in my neighbourhood that was charging $2.99 for full service premium, and they were people at the station. I guess for some people the price of gas doesn't matter.

I see gas guzzling cars on my daily commute, and I wonder what their gas bills are like. My car gets okay mileage since I mostly drive city miles, and average about 22 mpg. Still, that's better than 15 mpg. I have a small car with a small gas tank, but a short commute to work. I drive about 260 miles a week, and end up picking up gas every 10 days. When I put together my 2003 home budget, I expected the gas prices to go up and planned accordingly but maybe I didn't budget enough. The war hasn't even started yet, and already the gas is going up. I wouldn't be surprised if gas goes to $4-5 a gallon if and when the war does start.

Look for the economy to further tank when the gas prices go that high. I'm not looking forward to that.

I rented the movie "About a Boy", and although parts of it were funny overall I thought the movie was kind of boring. One interesting thing I noticed is that hippies are the same in England as they are in the States. Toni Collette was great. She has a great voice, so it was funny to hear her sing that old Roberta Flack out of key, great acting. She reminded me of Julianne Moore in "Boogie Nights, who had to pretend to act very badly in the porno flicks.

Maybe I'm over the "isn't Hugh Grant just a doll" trip, because he just came across as a sad twerp, and biggest creep in the world. I felt sorry for the little boy, and started thinking we are going to have a generation of kids raised by single mothers, if we don't already. Will society be different because of kids raised by single moms? In college, I didn't know too many other people whose parents were still together. Most kids were from divorced families where there'd been multiple marriages for both parents.

A male friend has a theory that if you were raised by parents who never divorced, you will eventually marry someone who had the same family background. He has never seriously dated a woman who came from a divorced family, and actually neither have I. All my serious relationships including my marriage were with men whose parents never divorced.

My parents had one heck of a rotten marriage, but they were old fashioned and catholic so divorce was not an option. My guy friend tells me that this is the reason we both have problems finding relationships. They aren't too many people left who come from families where the parents aren't divorced. That's his theory anyway. Sometimes I wonder if he's right.

I think I will have to definitely read some Nick Hornby books. Maybe the book was better, or maybe it's just me because a lot of critics loved this movie. I thought it was good, but not very deep and somewhat trite. But then again, I didn't think "The Wonder Boys" was that great of a movie either.

Now "About Schmidt" - this is a damned good movie! Review to come later.