I really don't know whether Rhonda would make a better Homecoming Queen than Berry. To be honest, I'm not sure what the criteria for being a Homecoming Queen actually are, either. Does it involve taxing mental feats and a swift command of the English language, or is it more about waving and looking pretty? Chapel Hill obviously needs to get a voter education programme started, otherwise we'll end up looking as silly as the residents of Palm Beach.
You may have missed the slight update of my Sleater-Kinney review. I now have a few photos available here. Take a look at Han's tour blog for more reviews and pictures from the One Beat tour. I may gush more tomorrow, depending on how well their performance on Conan O'Brien goes tonight...
The things I do for you people. Today, for the good of the British nation, I tasted Pepsi: Blue. I expect to be paid handsomely for this arduous task. It wouldn't be enough. A lovely burning chemical sensation, followed by an aftertaste that makes Hershey's seem like Cadbury's Dairy Milk. Consider yourselves warned.
When I get around to listing my top ten films of the year, 24 Hour Party People will probably be in the higher reaches. It's a hopeless, shambolic documentary that somehow manages to be truthful whilst being completely open that it is making half of the story up as it goes along. And having lived in Manchester for three years, I love the portrayal of the city in all of its chaotic glory. Anyway, the DVD is out on January 27th, and it seems to be a worthwhile purchase:
- Tony Wilson Commentary (audio)
- Steve Coogan and Producer Andrew Eaton Commentary (audio)
- Artists Commentary (Video - commentary was filmed
- The film playing in a box on the right hand side) will include Rowetta, Peter Hook, members of Durutti Column and A Certain Ratio sitting in a Manchester bar
- Sleeve Notes - a Who's Who guide to the film
- 24 Deleted Scenes
- Interviews with cast and crew
- Michael Winterbottom Documentary
- Central Station artwork designs and commentary
- Peter Saville artwork designs and commentary with Tony Wilson
- New Order Music Video
- Genesis of 24 Hour Party People - featurette
- The Real Tony Wilson - Featurette
- Playing People who are still alive - featurette
Good Idea: Planning your time so as not to be overwhelmed by an impending deadline, the exam on Tuesday, and the marking.
Bad Idea: Having a brief look at the homework assignment, and realising that the deadline is tomorrow. Not Wednesday. Cue six hours of pain...
I was going to do this at the end of my last post, but I can't imagine anybody making to the end of that little rant. Trailers that I remember from earlier today:
The Recruit - Okay, so it started out promisingly (Al Pacino and Colin Farell), but it ended up telling me so much of the plot that I don't feel any inclination to seeing what it's like with 100 minutes of padding.
Antwone Fisher - I'm getting cynical. Throughout the entire trailer, with Denzel being a concerned analyst to a troubled young Navy officer, I could only hear "OSCAR! GIVE ME ANOTHER OSCAR!" in my head. I blame my British upbringing, obviously.
The Life of David Gale - Kate Winslet and Kevin Spacey? Can I give them my money now? With me paying double if Alan Parker does a shot for shot remake of the finale from Bugsy somewhere in the film? So it's a serious examination about the death penalty; does that mean that there can't be a song-and-dance number? I think not.
The Emperor's Club - Does the world need Dead Poets' Society II? Really? If it begins with the class committing suicide en masse, I'm in. The trailer doesn't give most hope of that, unfortunately...
Adaptation - Oooh! Nicolas Cage as a moody Southerner writer! With an identical twin! This is about a writer, Charlie Kaufman, who is trying to adapt a book into a film, and puts himself in the film. The actual film is written by Charlie Kaufman, and arose from his difficulties in trying to adapt a book. Should I mention at this point that Kaufman wrote Being John Malkovich? And that this is directed by Spike Jonze?
I was intending on going to Raleigh Airport to get my tickets reconfirmed today, but I made the fatal mistake of stopping off at Southpoint Mall, not realising that the buses only stop there every two hours, instead of the hourly interval everywhere else. As I told my professor that I'd be available at a certain hour, there was no way I would be able to get back in time if I waited for the next bus to the airport, so I decided that the only sensible option was to go to the movies.
Punch-Drunk Love. Paul Thomas Anderson, 90 minutes runtime, and Adam Sandler. An unlikely combination, but strangely enjoyable, even if it was fairly slight on the plot front. And I loved the Philip Seymour Hoffman scenes (if only because twenty or so minutes in, I started wondering, 'where's Hoffman?', and he turned up in the next scene). Anderson has got a lovely eye for beautiful shots, exemplified by the gorgeous Hawaii reunion scene that forms part of the poster for the film. Don't be put off by the presence of Sandler; he's rather restrained here. And quite funny. Shocking, I know. Never underestimate the power of pudding, that's all I'm saying.
Now, I admit that I'm probably not the best person to give an opinion on this film; Charade is one of my favourite movies. It has a great mystery, solid and twisted plotting, superb pacing provided by Stanley Donen's direction, a typically excellent Mancini score, and fantastic dialogue delivered by two actors who light up the screen with their wit and charm. The Truth About Charlie takes all this and manages to produce a dull, soulless facsimile, albeit with the correct copyright notice this time around. Remember Ronan Keating's cover of A Fairytale of New York? Yes. It's that bad.
The structure of Peter Stone's screenplay has been almost completely removed from the film. The cold opening of the original is replaced with a less interesting expanded version of Charlie's death, which manages to tell us as much in three minutes as Donen did in thirty seconds. It then follows the original (roughly) right up until the end of the police station scene. After that, Charlie veers away from Stone's script, sometimes lifting little pieces of dialogue, but not much more. The discovery of the secret is handled very differently (due to some important parts of exposition and foreshadowing being left out of the new film), and manages to lose quite a bit of the impact in contrast to the original. And then there's the ending, of which I'll complain about later.
The worst flaw of the film is that it completely changes the relationship between the two leads. In Charade, Hepburn and Grant spend the film trading barbs and bickering to comic effect. In Charlie, Wahlberg looks like he's having trouble remembering what country he's in, never mind his lines, and while Thandie Newton gives the best performance in the film, the new script saddles her with terrible dialogue (has any British person in the last ten years asked for a 'ciggie'? Do we really need "he was an orphan - an only child"?), and not much to do but look lost, as all the witty exchanges found in the original screenplay have been removed from the update.
So, the leads aren't interesting. What about the bad guys? Well, they've received a make-over, with one now being Asian, and another a woman. No problems with that. Except they seem to do a lot less than they did in the original, and are far less menacing. Ho-hum. It didn't need the part where Regina seems to feel sorry for the woman, either (after all, she had spent most of the film prior to that point threatening her life).
I understand that Demme wanted to recreate the film using the techniques of the French New Wave movement. It even sounds like a perfectly reasonable idea. However, after thirty minutes, I wanted to get a rivet gun and bolt the camera to the ground. There comes a point where it's no longer clever and fun, just plain irritating.
And what about the ending? Now, it would be fairly simple to follow the original ending, wouldn't it? After all, it was fairly suspenseful and entertaining. Or, I suppose, you can construct one of the most ludicrous Mexican stand-off scenes for many years, complete with a ham-fisted resolution. Oh, wait. And, just for kicks, you could eliminate the final surprise of the film, making the coda seem like dead weight. You will? Thanks.
Please go see Punch-Drunk Love instead. I would suggest that you get a copy of the excellent Criterion Charade DVD, which has a wonderful commentary by Donen and Stone as part of the extras. I would, but as part of the making of The Truth About Charlie, Universal revoked the rights to their Charade print from Criterion, so the DVD is now out-of-print. Which, of course, makes me dislike the new film even more, or at least the group at Universal who thought that it would be fun to withdraw the print. The useless, cretinous morons.
Yes, I'm biased. But there were a few other people in the theatre as well, who probably don't have the same interest/obsession (delete as applicable), and they came out saying it was one of the worst films they had seen for a long time. Remember, we need to stop Wahlberg now, before he starts on The Italian Job....
If only Radio 1 wasn't considering letting them go when their contract is up next year....
After four rewrites, several false starts, and many vicious epithets hurled at the screen, I finally have a threaded proxy server that can handle 30,000 requests/hour. Of course it would be much better if I was in this position last week, but at least I can now finally finish the assignment.
Spent most of today in my normal post-Great-Time fit of depression, not particularly helped by oversleeping, having a rather bad headache all through the morning, and managing to get my shoelaces caught in my chair (and no, I have no idea how it happened, or why it took me five minutes to untangle the lace from the wheel). Embarrassingly, I almost fell asleep during the Compilers lecture as well. The chairs in that room are just too comfortable.
This week's Buffy was a continuity fan's dream. References to Angel, Xander's role in Becoming Part 2, a flashback to 'Once More With Feeling' (with a new song!), and Dark Willow? Cool.
Global Frequency #1 turned out to be something of a disappointment. Like Ellis' recent Planetary/JLA, it felt extremely rushed, and the plot seemed to be little more than a slight scaffold for Warren's latest readings from New Scientist. I still like the concept though, so I'll give it a few more issues to improve...
They say that music has become plastic and anodyne. They say that music is no longer political. They're reduced to hyping rather mediocre bands, proclaiming them as the next big thing, despite the insipid 70s New York sound.
These people are Wrong, and Not To Be Trusted.
Sleater-Kinney played Carrboro last night. I've been eager to see them live for over four years now, ever since hearing 'Little Babies' as a Mark 'n' Lard record of the week.. Expectations? After that long, it would have to be one of the greatest concerts I had ever attended.
It was.
One of the benefits of arriving at least thirty minutes before the doors open is that you can normally get a good position in front of the stage. So I found myself less than an arm's length away from Carrie as the concert began. That didn't last long, as I let some short people go in front of me after the first song, but it was cool nonetheless.
They were absolutely fantastic. Playing most of their new album and a selection of old songs (sadly neglecting 'The Hot Rock', but they played 'I Want To Be Your Joey Ramone', so all is forgiven), they were even more energetic in person than on their records. Carrie was a Rock 'n' Roll God, pulling off poses that make Paul Simonon look tame in comparison, and dancing across the stage with a horizontal moon-walk (while staying playing the guitar, naturally). Corin was slightly more restrained, but just as irresistible. And then there was Janet. She was fabulous, ranging from the controlled precision of 'One Beat', to her showcase wild drum solo towards the end of the set.
They finished with a blistering version of 'Step Aside' that had everybody (and I mean everybody) dancing to the Motown-tinged beat. Of course, they came back for an encore, finally ending with 'Little Babies' and a roof-raising 'Dig Me Out'.
Sleater-Kinney are probably one of the best bands on the planet today. But you won't find them on the cover of Rolling Stone, or the NME, despite the critical acclaim that they have received on the past few years. They'll never be hyped as much as The Strokes. Partly, this is down to them sticking to the independent record label KillRockStars rather than moving to a major (unlike certain bands), but I can't help feeling that the a major part of this is the 's are icky' factor. So they remain one of rock's best kept secrets.
I'm still partially deaf in one ear. Every bone in my body aches. But Carrie winked at me. I wouldn't have it any other way.
UPDATE: Pictures (a few, anyway) here
The funny.
Slight correction to the holiday dates - I'm only going to be staying until January 6th, as classes begin on the 7th, and I suppose I shouldn't be missing them.
It looks like I'm going to become the Official Supplier of Robot Goodness to the V Forum, as Diamond will no longer be shipping any of the Transformers mini-series to any location outside of North America. And there's no UK distributor yet (and even when one is found, you can be sure that they'll resize the comic to the standard UK comic size), so British readers have to find black market back channels to get their Giant Robots fix.
Someone lock my credit cards away. Yes, I know they serve no use. But they're so cute. Just try and tell me you don't want to see Mr. Pink trying to outrace Amelie on a Tron lightcycle. You can't, can you?
Still slightly terrified. But look! A squirrel!
I wish I had something exciting to talk to you about, but my absence for the past few days has been due to 10+ hour days of revising, supplemented by wandering around a very empty residence hall. Not many people hang around in the fall break apparently.
The backlog of films I want to see seems to be growing. Currently, the list is: Bowling For Columbine, The Rules of Attraction, Punch-Drunk Love, and The Truth About Charlie. Three of these films have been out for two weeks now, but they don't seem to be in a hurry to make it down to the Triangle region. The DVD list is getting longer as well; this week should see The Killer and Battle Royale arriving at Bicester, and we're getting closer to the release dates for Roman Holiday and Sunset Boulevard. I refuse to submit to the authority of the Christmas Zone. Unless threats are made, of course....
One depressing thing about living in a residence hall is that you spend your time in supermarkets looking at all the things that you can't take back and cook, no matter how appealing they look. I can fit a tub of Ben & Jerry's ice cream in the freezer section though, so it's not all bad.
Midterms now less than a week away. And I haven't even started revising yet. This is not going to be good....
I'm now on my third attempt. It seems that American cheques are just different enough to create confusion in just where I'm supposed to sign, so they've helpfully sent the cheque back, and realising that I've already got it wrong twice, circled where they think the signature should be.
There was a reason why they got rid of all the different flavours of Kryptonite in 1986 - they were fun at first, but soon became an obvious crutch that writers relied on all too often. Smallville hasn't learnt that lesson, dragging out a by-the-numbers Red Kryptonite story early in the new season. Predictable and insipid. And I resent the hyping of the soundtrack afterwards, which gives the impression that the WB are selling music spots on the show.
Fall Break begins tomorrow. I plan to celebrate with work and revision. Although I do have a 400W power supply on order, so I might try to upgrade my computer again at the weekend. Hopefully it'll go a bit smoother than last time. I've also ordered my plane ticket for home - I'll be back on December 18th, and staying until January 7th. I will obviously expect Bicester to have undergone huge changes in my absence...
Low laughed and made jokes. Not quite what you would have expected from listening to their records. They played all the songs that I wanted to hear (with one exception; the second greatest Christmas song ever wasn't performed, but it's not Christmas yet, see?), and more besides. The music felt like it was an intricate cobweb that the slightest touch would disintegrate (especially on Point Of Disgust), only to suddenly transform into tempered steel as they became louder and faster, faster and louder. I met two nice people, April and Jo, who had driven all the way from Charlotte to see the show. They bought the support act a drink, that's how nice they were. I also bumped into one of the students in the Operating Systems class that I'm assisting, so the first concert in Chapel Hill wasn't quite the solitary pursuit that I thought it would be at the start of the evening.
Of course I forgot to bring my camera, but I will hopefully remember to take it for next week's main event: Sleater-Kinney.
After talking to Luke yesterday, I decided to have a look through my logs and see what search requests have been hitting the site recently. Amusingly, the site is the #1 result for 'You broke my heart, Fredo'. I'm also on the first page for seaches on 'Jack McCoy'. There's a few hits from the V Forum's egosurfing event last weekend as well.
Worked a little better today, managing to get the web proxy server mostly finished this afternoon; I just need to add some code to generate the statistics for the report, and then I can move on to the testing phase. I still didn't do as much as I wanted though, so there's room for improvement.
MSCL update: AnotherUniverse hasn't paid BMG one dollar for the box sets. Which means they've been sitting on over $300,000 for about nine months now. As you can imagine, people are even less happy than they were when the box set was listed on Amazon. AU is apparently going to meet BMG tomorrow to sort out the financial details, but I don't think we're ever going to see the box set materialize from them.
This entry is being written whilst being curled up in my bed, Linus-style. I did plan to get some work done today, but I just seemed to collapse every time that the thought of doing anything entered my mind. This probably has something to do with the pressure I put myself under for the compiler project this week. So I spent the day reading some more of my book, and watching His Friday and Broadcast News.
Hopefully, I'll be able to get some work done tomorrow...
Considering it was still warm and sunny at the start of the week, the amount of rain that's been pouring down for the past twenty-four hours is extremely impressive. It should help the water shortage somewhat, I suppose.
This week in Transformers: Armada: the kids take the minicons to a carnival. FOR THIRTY MINUTES. Look, it's quite simple to write a half-decent Transformers story; you take big giant robots, and have them fight each other. Having them wandering aimlessly around a fair is not exciting. In the slightest.
Did I mention that I was going to see Low on Monday? Mormons are cool.
Akaka (D-HI) Bingaman (D-NM) Boxer (D-CA) Byrd (D-WV) Chafee (R-RI) Conrad (D-ND) Corzine (D-NJ) Dayton (D-MN) Durbin (D-IL) Feingold (D-WI) Graham (D-FL) Inouye (D-HI) Jeffords (I-VT) Kennedy (D-MA) Leahy (D-VT) Levin (D-MI) Mikulski (D-MD) Murray (D-WA) Reed (D-RI) Sarbanes (D-MD) Stabenow (D-MI) Wellstone (D-MN) Wyden (D-OR)
When yesterday's vote is as infamous as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, remember that these Senators (and some Congressmen) voted no. In the strongest possible terms:
Make no mistake, we are voting on a resolution that grants total authority to the president, who wants to invade a sovereign nation without any specific act of provocation. This would authorize the United States to act as the aggressor for the first time in our history. It sets a precedent for our nation -- or any nation -- to exercise brute force anywhere in the world without regard to international law or international consensus.
Congress must not walk in lockstep behind a president who has been so callous to proceed without reservation, as if war was of no real consequence.
In lieu of anything else to talk about, my three recommendations for this week:
- Black Panther #50
The best monthly superhero comic that nobody reads. Nobody ever thought it would ever make it to #50. Nobody seriously expects it to last until #60. It's about one of those nutty characters that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created in the 1960s; King T'Challa is The Black Panther, king of a wealthy and technologically advanced African nation. For thirty years, Black Panther wavered from being a goofy adventurer, to the token honourable Black Guy on The Avengers. Five years ago, Christopher Priest (Marvel's first black editor, and the person who hired Peter David) started writing the Panther's first solo title for over a decade. Priest has long suffered from what is affectionately known as 'The Curse', where he would write five or so issues of a title before it was cancelled beneath him. We weren't expecting it to last, but normally Priest manages to get a few good stories told before the title disappears.I don't think anybody expected Panther to be the best work of Priest's career. From the dubious origins of T'Challa, Priest crafted a deeply funny and complex book, soaked in the politics of Black America, African tribes, and superheroes. It was The West Wing, but with explosions. It had multi-layered plotlines, sharp and witty dialogue, fabulous art by the likes of Sal Velluto and Mark Texakira, and the Devil's Pants.
And nobody bought it.
Priest has tried just about everything to improve the sales of the title, reducing the cast to a more manageable level, having guest-stars such as Wolverine make an appearance, and streamlining his complex plots. Nothing has worked. Black Panther #50 is the final attempt. Priest's own take on the revamp is 'less West Wing, more Law & Order'. King T'Challa is missing, presumed dead, but someone in the Black Panther costume has been spotted around New York, using extreme measures to stop criminals. New artist Dan Fraga's art is quite impressive, and the 'widescreen' panel layout used throughout the issue gives it a very cinematic feel. It's not Black Panther as you knew it. But it's still infused with Priest's excellent dialogue and plotting. You should buy it, or at least have a look at the first trade paperback, Black Panther: The Client, featuring the Devil's Pants.
- Stormwatch: Team Achilles #4
Yes, Richard, there's a new Stormwatch title. This is a little different; the new Stormwatch is a UN military unit, whose mission is to seek out and kill superhero threats. This issue kicks off a new storyline, where the team discovers that their current targets are located in Chechnya. Which just happens to be under the protection of The Authority (a hyper-violent version of the Justice League, who don't have any qualms with interfering with the way the world works). Micah Wright, a newcomer to the comics scene, is writing an interesting story here, but the art drags it down quite a bit; Whilce Portacio's storytelling seems stilted and rough, but if you can get past that, it's quite enjoyable. - Transformers - The War Within
Shut up. I've so far avoided all the new Transformer comics, as a sample reading of G1 #2 turned out to be very disappointing. However, there was no way I was going to miss this series, as Simon Furman is doing the writing. Furman was the writer on the Transformers: UK comics, and was responsible for some fantastic stories, involving extremely high body counts and copious amounts of mighty robotic angst. Titan Comics is currently reprinting some of his best work. I advise you to check out the Target: 2006 trade paperback, his first 'epic', featuring gorgeous artwork from Geoff Senior and Ron Smith. Anyway, this new mini-series is set in the beginning of the Autobot-Decepticon War, and is the tale of how Optimus Prime became the leader of the Autobots. And it's got Grimlock shooting things and being Grimlock in it. I can't really justify the purchase on grounds other than it had big giant robots blowing things up and lots of Optimus Angst. Just like when I used to walk in the driving rain to get my copy of Transformers UK.
The University finally caught up with me today, so I'm $2,500 worse off. Curses.
A minor war seems to have broken out over the troubled My So-Called Life DVD set. People have been double charged, release dates have been announced and missed, special features promised failed to materialise, and so on. Everything went crazy last Friday, when Amazon listed the supposed 'exclusive' box set for about $30 less than AnotherUniverse's pre-order price. It doesn't come with a lunchbox, or the special features disc (just a few interviews so far), but it does have a release date. The MSCL site is full of angry diatribes, especially as they come to realise that AU has probably been making a nice profit off the interest from the 3,000 original orders. Not a great situation. I cancelled my original order today; I would have paid quite a lot in shipping costs, as it was going to my UK address, and I'd rather have the 19 episodes than hold out for a lunchbox and a rather sparse feature disc.
There's a huge list of comics I have to pick up tomorrow, one of which features an appearance of The Authority....
Apparently, I am now known by sight at my hall's mail desk. I haven't been ordering that much. It's just that Amazon is being very helpful and splitting my orders up to send them faster. Yes, that's the reason. Denial is great.
Firefly finally found its mark last Friday, with a witty and inventive episode written by Joss Whedon. No sound in space! A gun called Vera! A special place in hell reserved for people who talk in theatres! Pity it'll probably be cancelled by Fox in a few weeks (although last Friday's ratings were up from the week before).
Somebody needs to tie Amy Acker down and feed her several Elvis-sized burgers. In last season's Angel, she was extremely thin; in last night's season opener she seemed to have had all the fat in her body sucked out with a twin-vortex Dyson. Not pretty at all. Go on, have a chip, Amy.
I'm planning on going to the cinema this week. Mainly because I haven't been for almost two months now, which is actually worse than my record back at home. What should I see? The Rules of Attraction, or White Oleander?
The Warren Ellis Forum is dead. Long Live The New Flesh. After four years, Warren decided to call it a day and get back to writing, rather than spending sixteen hours out of twenty-four flirting with his many female fans. The WEF comprised a total of 25,000 members during its lifetime (incidentally that's more people than who bought Transmetropolitan last month), and it provided a home for lively discussion about comic theory, comic titles, current news, films, music, and Giant Death Robots. It created movements, memes, various satellite groups (such as The V Forum and Grammarporn), and, hell, it almost single-handedly saved Top Shelf Comics from bankruptcy when their distributor filed for Chapter 11 protection. Over $20,000 of comics were purchased. In one afternoon. Companies such as Cyberosia, Oni, and AiT/PlanetLar used the forum to promote their works, advertising to a more diverse audience than would be normally found on a comics website, and reaped the benefits. We were mighty. We were Making Comics Better.
Sadly, there was a flipside to all this. The WEF at times resembled little more than a personality cult centred on Warren's rather Spider Jerusalem-like online persona. Sycophancy ran high, with many posters regurgitating Warren's screeds about superhero comics and work-for-hire contracts. The forum was regarded by most other Internet comics communities as being too elitist for its own good. After Warren's blistering 'This Is What You Want' discussion, where he highlighted that many people on the Forum were talking up a storm, but continued to buy the same superhero comics every week, there was a definite decline in the atmosphere. The WEF had a strict moderation policy to prevent flame wars in the USENET style, but the satellite fora were not so controlled. Instead of preventing the bickering, all the 'Stalinist' moderation did was move it to the satellites. In someways, this was even worse than the USENET system, as it just built resentment rather than dealing with things out in the open; people explored various forums such as Memecenter to find that they were being mocked mercilessly. The 'old-guard' WEF posters drifted away from the forum, many saying that the sycophancy of the newer crowd, plus less interesting threads to participate in, meant that they were less interested in the forum now, Ellis attempted to cut back on the extraneous threads, especially the news threads that sprialed out of control whenever somebody brought up Israel. But it didn't seem to help much. I imagine that eventually, it just got boring to Warren. People kept on asking the same questions, month after month, and Delphi's removal of the search facility for guest users made things worse. The ending of Transmetropolitan gave Ellis an escape hatch, which he used with glee.
Having said all that, I'm glad that the WEF existed. Without it, I wouldn't have discovered the work of people such as Matt Wagner, Jason Lutes, Carla Speed McNeil, Wong Kar-Wai, and Takashi Miike. I wouldn't have started up this site, I wouldn't have got back into writing comics again, and I probably wouldn't be sitting here in America writing this (I had several discussions with a CS grad student on the forum, which convinced me to apply). It was the best arena for comics discussion anywhere on the planet, and I'm going to miss it a lot.
We were the WEF. We were Mighty. Now it's time to go outside. It's a wonderful world; let's go exploring...
I managed to get through all the marking...only to discover that there's about ten students whose work I forgot to print out on Thursday. Again, I don't have the energy to write anything today. You might get something tomorrow (possibly about the WEF closing). I know you're quivering with anticipation, but I'm sure you can hold out.
Or drags it to a screaming halt.
Um, nothing much to say. Actually, that's not really true, but it's almost midnight, and I've spent the last ten hours working, so I'm not entirely thinking straight at the moment. So maybe you'll get more tomorrow....
Looks like Todd McFarlane is going to be slightly poorer after all the details are hashed out. I wonder if we'll be seeing that Spider-Man/Spawn series next year after all, depending on the amount of money Gaiman asks for tomorrow. One less obstacle to the reprinting of Marvelman, only 1,873 to go (we should start having bets as to whether Zenith or Marvelman will make it out of the gate first at this rate).
Tropical Storm Kyle. Heading this way. The temperatures are still crazy here - it was 32?C today. But this is most unusual for this time of year, so don't send death threats just yet....
Yay, I finally found the link to this place. Hopefully this should work. I'm going to try something else that probably won't work but who cares?
On Monday, I decided that I wasn't going to install RedHat 8.0 until a few weeks after its release, having just attempted an unsuccessful CPU upgrade. So why am I sititng in front of my computer trying to regain control of my system after installing 8.0? I have just over an hour before The West Wing starts. I've only managed to do two hours of work today, not counting lectures. There are times where I'm simply stupid.
Having a summer break inbetween episode 1 and episode 2 of the second season? That's classy.
Chuck Palahniuk doesn't look like the type of person who would write Fight Club. He's older than you think, as well. The Q&A session was quite enjoyable, with lots of useful information being given and funny stories being told. Of course, I managed to forget my camera, so I didn't get any pictures.
Something Big is happening in Buffy. I've get a few theories, but I'll stay quiet for the moment. Especially since most of you won't be able to see it until January...
Bonnie - you will cry when you see this Smallville episode. And there's still half of it left to go. I'm sensing that we might even get some kryptonite before the final credits roll. It's that good.