Short Sunday links.

* Can't The Hobbit catch a break?

* Mars may have more water than previously suspected.

* I really hope They Might Be Giants isn't joking about upcoming albums called There Goes Your Liberties and Here Comes the Syndicalists.

* Why can't writers talk extemporaneously?

* And William Safire has died.

The Hobbit as 419 scam. Via Cynical-C.

And just because it's been a while: Leonard Nimoy's psychedelic and inscrutable "The Legend of Bilbo Baggins."

"I was never into heroic fantasy. At all. I don't like little guys and dragons, hairy feet, hobbits—I've never been into that at all. I don't like sword and sorcery, I hate all that stuff." Those are the words of Guillermo del Toro, who has now been officially tapped to direct of the upcoming Peter-Jackson-produced Hobbit duology. Sounds promising! I'm very nervous.

The Hobbit has a director: Guillermo del Toro, director of Pan's Labyrinth. If they couldn't get Jackson, he may be the next best thing—though longtime readers already know how I feel about the decision to split the movie into What Tolkien Wrote and Other Stuff.

The news is all over the Internet: Peter Jackson and New Line have reached a deal for two more Lord of the Rings films—though right now Jackson is slated only to produce, not direct, and they're going forward with the absolutely terrible idea of a filler movie based on original, non-Tolkien material.

I am looking skeptically askance.

Even when it's good news it's bad news: Entertainment Weekly reports that New Line Cinema and Peter Jackson may have begun to reconcile (fantastic news) and that Jackson hopes to make two movies (no worries there), one The Hobbit in its entirety (wait, what?) and the other "filling in the story arc between the end of The Hobbit and the beginning of Rings" (WTFJackson?).

This is pretty close to sacrilege. If Jackson wants to retroactively ruin his first three movies, why not film a sequel with the original cast—Return of the Return of the King—and be done with it?

Has no one learned what George Lucas has to teach us? Via Slashdot.