I got an amusing e-mail from someone regarding my review of the film “Children on Their Birthdays.” You almost certainly have never heard of this film. I’d forgotten about it. There was a press screening for it in the summer of 2002, and it was supposed to be released soon thereafter. Then it got pushed back and pushed back, and it was finally released on Oct. 18, 2002, but only in a handful of theaters. I don’t think it ever even played in Utah, where I lived at the time and where they had the press screening for us.

Anyway, I guess it’s on video now or something, because a woman named Loretta watched it, loved it, and took issue with my review. Her e-mail doesn’t qualify as an Angry Letter, but it is enjoyable for other reasons:

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As foretold last week, there is no new “Snide Remarks” column today. You can well imagine my sadness over this fact. I’m on the road, on a bit of a “vacation,” you might say, except that I’m still doing some work. Just not “Snide Remarks.” So very sorry.

There probably won’t be one next Monday, either, but you never know. As I’m lazing about my parents’ house later this week, the mood might strike me and I might dash off an exceptionally witty bit of commentary. On the other hand, next Monday is Memorial Day, so not publishing anything would be a perfectly justifiable action on my part. It is all part of the mystery of being me!

I’ll still have some blog entries this week, more or less one per day as usual, so don’t forget about me entirely.

Finally, did you know that one (1) spider monkey weighs the same as 9.41 placentas? Or that it would take 720 giraffes’ necks to equal the Golden Gate Bridge? It’s true! These and many other important facts can be found at Weird Converter. Go amuse yourself there for a while.

Devoted reader Joe sent me photographic evidence of something shameful he did recently, which was to edit (some would say “vandalize”) the Wikipedia entry on Utah Valley State College to reflect something I said about it in a recent column. The joke was OK when I wrote it; somehow it’s much funnier when it appears in an official-looking context. It’s at the bottom:

Sorry for the tardiness in today’s round-up. I got “In the Dark” sent out last night, and immediately after that is when the site’s server went down. So I went to bed, which is pretty much all the tech support I’m capable of.

Anyway, there’s not much to round up. “Shrek the Third” is the only wide release this week, the other studios apparently being terrified of opening anything against the Shrek juggernaut. The movie’s pretty funny, not that you really need my encouragement to go see it.

This week’s “In the Dark” podcast can be heard here, and you can plug this URL into your podcast-listening device to subscribe to it. And of course more details on the old-fashioned e-mail version are here.

What’s surprising to me is that “Snide Remarks” was around for four years before I made fun of PETA. PETA! A subject ripe for mockery if ever there was one, and I didn’t get to it until Sept. 7, 2001!

That column, called “I PETA the Fool,” is this week’s “Snide Remarks” Classic. I’ve written several PETA columns since then, but this one is my favorite

Incidentally, you’ll notice the date is just four days before 9/11. Isn’t it weird to look at pre-9/11 stuff now and remember how different things were then? There I was, blithely mocking PETA, and four days later the world changes. Of course, PETA remained the same; I’m pretty sure their major concern on 9/11 was whether any animals were harmed. But anyway.

When I was in Salt Lake City in January, I saw a truck pulling one of those combination trailer/billboards. The ad was in support of Utah’s new school voucher program, wherein the state will pay you money not to send your kid to public school, or something like that.

Here is a picture I took of the billboard in question:

In case you can’t quite make it out, here’s an enlargement:

This is a pretty good endorsement for the voucher program, actually. The people who made this sign were probably educated by public schools, and look where it got them.

Further to my last entry, about the new Snap Shots feature on this site: Go to the current “Snide Remarks” column and scroll down to comment #10, posted by my brother Lane. Hold your mouse over his name.

That is six kinds of awesome.

While you weren’t looking, my brother and webmaster Jeff, acting more in his capacity as webmaster than brother, added a new little feature to the site. It pertains to links. Let’s say I was linking to XKCD, a very entertaining web comic that often deals with math and science and other matters of geekery. See that little icon next to “XKCD” in that link? That means that if you hover your mouse over the link, a small window will pop up showing you what the linked page looks like. Move your mouse away and it disappears. Fun!

What purpose does this serve? Almost none! But it’s nifty, so there it is. It’s only for links that take you away from EricDSnider.com, since we figured you don’t need previews of what other pages on this site look like. (They’ll look like the page you’re already on, only with different text. Duh.) And if everyone hates it, maybe we’ll take it away again. But everyone won’t hate it! It’s nifty!

Actually, it is useful when I’m linking to a few specific sites. If it’s an Amazon link, like this one, instead of showing you a picture of that Amazon page, it presents you with a text description of the item being linked. (Harry Potter 7, in this case.) It does the same for Wikipedia links, IMDb links, and probably some others.

Anyway, there it is, in case you hadn’t noticed it. Enjoy your mouse-hovering!

EDITED TO ADD: For those who do hate it, you can disable it simply by mousing over one of the links and clicking “Disable” in the upper right corner of the pop-up box. As long as you have cookies activated, it will remember to disable the feature whenever you visit the site.

Monday! Fie upon you! You vex me!

But on the bright side, there is this week’s edition of “Snide Remarks,” hot off the griddle, entitled “The Feminine Mistake.” You can hear me read it to you via the futuristic SnideCast© player on that page. Or you can listen to it here. Or you can subscribe to the podcast by feeding this address into your podcast-listening-to thingee and listen to it that way.

Also, I somehow managed to watch “Delta Farce” over the weekend, and it somehow managed to be even worse than I was expecting. Let my review stand as a testament against it at the last day.

Oh, but back to “Snide Remarks.” There probably won’t be one next week or the week after, as I’ll be traveling and might not have time to write it. I wanted to give you some warning, lest you visit the site next Monday as usual and be disappointed. But I’d still like you to visit the site, regularly and repeatedly, because it boosts my hit count. The daily blog entries and weekly movie reviews will still be published at the regular intervals.

(Remember, if you get on the “Snide Remarks” mailing list you’ll get a notice whenever a new column is published, so you don’t have to worry about missing one.)

OK, that is all I have to say to you right now. I must contend with Monday, that brutal mistress, for her needs are many.

Your assigned viewing this week is “Waitress,” which is in limited release, so it might not be playing where you live. Which will make your assignment a little more difficult, I know, because you might have to drive a couple hundred miles. But do it anyway! Or, OK, I guess you can wait if you have to. But if it is playing where you live, I implore you to see it at once.

I love this movie. I’ve seen it twice, once at Sundance and once at a local screening last week, and I just adore it. I’m almost afraid to talk about how much I love it, partly because I don’t want to oversell it, and partly because I don’t want to run the risk of hearing someone tell me they didn’t like it. That would make me so sad. It would be like telling me you didn’t like my puppy.

In wide release, your best bet

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