Would it be wrong to make this my sig at work?

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Could someone explain to me why one of the top stories in my google news view is that Ralph Klein almost — almost — poked the Queen in the head with an umbrella? Who cares? Ralph was probably drunk, fer chrissakes, and ten bucks says he’ll try to blame it on Paul Martin anyway, so why is this such a great honking affair? When will people realize that the Queen is just some self-important old woman of no consequence whatsoever, a truly boring holdover from an archaic tradition, and that a poke in the hat with an umbrella is of no more importance than what I had for breakfast this morning.

I’m pissed. Today I had absolutely nothing to do, so I was hoping to relax on the couch or go outside and enjoy the nice weather, but ever since breakfast this morning I’ve had a brutal headache and felt generally lousy. Maybe CBGB brought back a case of Dengue Fever from Cuba…

Right after we got home from the movie last night we watched the final episode in season 3 of Six Feet Under. As always it’ll take a while to sink in. We’ll probably watch it again after the list of borrowers are through with it, but for now it feels like season 2 did: a bit underwhelming. But I suppose that’s the whole point of the show, to be quiet and restrained and always leave a little too much bubbling under the surface, just waiting to boil over. Or even explode.

And now HBO’s gonna make me wait for a year to watch season 4.

Yes, it had some bad dialog, and yes, it smelled slightly of cheese in a few parts. But Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith (imdb | rotten tomatoes | metacritic) was without a doubt the best Star Wars movie to come out since Return Of The Jedi. In fact, it may be better than Jedi; I’ll need a few more viewings to really tell.

It had more (and better) action. The acting didn’t seem quite as wooden. The battle scenes were killer. They did a nice job of tying episode III to episode IV (albeit with a few continuity problems, but I suppose only geeks like me would notice those). They added wookies and beefed up the screen time for R2D2, while practically eliminating C3PO and Jar-Jar. And the plot seemed to have more flow this time; in episodes I & II it felt like we were watching set pieces being moved around a stage turn by clunky turn.

It wasn’t a great movie, but none of them were. I just think that Lucas finally made another episode with the same feel as the originals. So if this really is the last Star Wars movie that I’m to see, it went out on a pretty good note.

The perfect woman according to Lt. Dan.

Notes

1. When I say curvy, I mean a) I can’t see your ribs, and b) pardon my vulgarity, but nice hoo hahs. The requirement is not “huge”; the requirement is present. And before any women reading this get all indignant, ask yourself if you’d date a guy without any muscles, or chin, or car. That’s right.
2. Being short isn’t a requirement, just an added bonus.
3. Psycho is just a catch-call term I use to describe the common female psychosis of saying one thing and meaning another. For example, the whole saying “I’m not mad” when she is in fact mad, and then getting mad at you for not figuring out that she really was mad in the first place. It’s present in all women, but there’s an acceptable threshold, above which women are considered “psycho”.
4. By “shit”, I mean she enjoys any of the following: The Gap, Shania Twain, American Idol, Fifty Cent, Celine Dion, Wal-Mart, King of Queens, Republicans, White Chicks (the movie, not the demographic).

As part of our lazy weekend plan we watched After The Sunset (imdb | rotten tomatoes) last night. Pah. I liked it better when it was called The Thomas Crown Affair.

I’ll be blunt: had Salma Hayek not been in a bikini (or some other wonderfully revealing outfit) for most of the film, I couldn’t have finished it. Don Cheadle? Barely in it and totally wasted. Ditto Chris Penn. Woody Harrelson I don’t like at the best of times, so his presence wasn’t really a plus. Pierce Brosnan seemed to be phoning it in. Really, the only one I liked (apart from Salma) was Naomie Harris (I didn’t even recognize her as Serena from 28 Days Later). She at least seemed to be putting some effort into it…

Blech. Avoid.

There’s a lot of entertainment to consume this weekend. We’re five episodes into season 2 of Six Feet Under and plan to watch the remaining eight by Monday evening, we’re seeing Revenge Of The Sith tomorrow with CBGB, and Monday night is the 2-hour season finale of 24 (followed by an episode of The Shield). Not to mention the three Zip movies sitting on the speaker.

Geez, what a beautiful day. We were up early so that we could hit St. Lawrence Market before the crowds got too bad, walked past the hole, ran a few other errands and called Dad with belated birthday wishes before settling in to watch an episode or two of Six Feet Under.

A three-day weekend, accounting assignment (practically) done, beautiful weather…I’m in a pretty happy place right about now…

The item which has lived on my Soulseek wishlist the longest is undoubtedly Body Of Song by Bob Mould, and tonight for the first time ever it showed up. The disc, long talked about, is due out in July but I guess this is just the first copy.

It’s a bit of a moot point; I plan to order an advance copy anyway. I had been a tiny bit wary after Modulate, but the word all along has been that this was something of a return to older form for Bob. So I’ll download it, but unless it’s a complete turkey I’m a-buyin’ it in two months anyway.