Every once in a while the universe gives you an opportunity to correct a wrong. And – as unfortunate as the accident was – Morgan Freeman’s recent car crash in a weird way provided me the opportunity to make fun of myself after last week’s poorly received anti-Shia comic.

Again, however, I paint myself into the corner or “What if things had ended differently?!”Thankfully, as we all know by now, Mr. Freeman is in stable condition and expected to make a full recovery.

Interesting how fast the news spread on this one. People were sending me e-mails about it before I even had a chance to read the news. Of course, Mr. Freeman’s condition went from critical to stable and back and forth. I also find it odd how the news reports couldn’t seem to get it right regarding his injuries. I heard everything from broken arms and ribs to broken hands and feet.

We talked about this a little bit during Monday night’s Triple Feature podcast and I commented on how I thought it was cool that Freeman flipped a 1997 Nissan Maxima. In some way, I saw that as him "keeping it real." Turns out the car belonged to the passenger of the vehicle. I guess Freeman was driving her home. Who knows?

What matters is that everyone is recovering and doing well.

And that Morgan Freeman cannot be killed by conventional means.

Shifting gears for a moment, I’m in a bit of a situation.

If you happen to be one of my LiveJournal friends or Twitter followers, you know that I suffered a catastrophic failure last night in regards to my external hard drive. It’s a real problem. This hard drive contains every single Theater Hopper comic produced since 2003. Not to mention the work I was doing on Theater Hopper: Year Three and basically every other piece of art I’ve produced in relation to the site for the last five years

The drive also contains over 15,000 MP3 files, and all of our download photographs and videos. Henry walking, for example. Important stuff.

I don’t know what happened. The drive was working fine on Monday night. I tried firing it up on Tuesday to work on today’s comic and it wouldn’t connect. The light is on, so I know it’s getting power and the driver appears in the device manager so I know my desktop is at least aware of the external drive. But when it fires up, it clicks three times like it’s trying to turn over and then powers down.

I don’t know a lot about computers, but I know that clicking sound isn’t good.

I’m gathering consensus from around the internet and people are helping me troubleshoot it. Most everyone thinks that the drive has failed and I am screwed.

I’ve had a few suggestions like "Leave in the freezer for 8 hours, boot it up and then try to move the data over." Kind of sounds like a wives tale, but I’ve had at least two people suggest it. Problem is, even if it works, I don’t have enough storage anywhere else to move it to. More importantly, if an attempt is made, I cannot accept anything less than 100% recovery.

I really need your help with this. If you have any suggestions, please e-mail me at theaterhopper@hotmail.com. Even if it’s just suggesting a data recovery firm that you’ve worked with and had a good experience with. I’m completely directionless on this. I literally feel sick to my stomach.

Once I decide a course of action (which will probably be sending the drive to recovery) I’ll probably start some kind of fund raising drive or art auction. From what I’ve been told so far, data recovery doesn’t come cheap and I have no way to cover the costs right now. So, I guess keep an eye out for that in the future.

I appreciate your help and consideration. Have a great week and I’ll talk to you soon.