I just got on-line and saw the news that Heath Ledger died today.  To say I am shocked is an understatement.  He seemed very down to earth and didn't run with the Hollywood crowd--you know, the one where it wouldn't surprise you to hear that they'd OD'd.  I hope that's not what happened to him.

I've liked Heath as an actor ever since '10 Things I Hate About You'.  I adored him in 'A Knight's Tale', and still think he was robbed of the Oscar for 'Brokeback Mountain'.  I think he was a highly talented actor, and would have grown even more talented with time.  I'm so sad to see him gone at such a young age.

Heath Ledger  1979--2008

On a much, much lighter note, my family thinks I'm crazy.  And it's all because of my IPOD and National Geographic.

FIrst off, I got an IPOD for Christmas, and I have to say, I've been having a blast with it.  I've become a fan of podcasts, especially nature oriented ones.  I downloaded some from the National Geographic: Atmosphere series, which is nature oriented, but without narration. 

Anyway, tonight I'm watching this podcast titled "Serengeti Rollers', which turns out to be about Dung beetles.  Well, dung beetles are funny enough in their own right, but in this podcast, I was literally laughing out loud and rewinding repeatedly, and making my family watch...you get the picture.  In one spot, the beetle tries to take off, only to fall forward onto his nose.    Then, a little later, you are flying along in the beautiful Serengeti with this Dung beetle (come on, haven't you always wanted to do that?) and suddenly the beetle dives down and tries to land on this pile of shit, but bounces off!    Thank God, at this point in the podcast, you are no longer seeing things from a beetle's point of view!  Then later, he's rolling his little ball of dung around, and rolls right off an edge (it wasn't really all that high, but it was a cliff for a dung beetle) and dung and beetle go bouncing down the side.    I was cracking up at this, and my kids were just looking at me like I was nuts.  Even after I showed them, they didn't find it nearly as funny as I did, which is surprising, because they usually find anything to do with anything disgusting totally hilarious.  I must have watched the podcast 5 times and rewound several more times.  I guess I was just in one of those moods.