I drink a lot of diet pepsi. A LOT of diet pepsi. Probably 3 a day. If that strikes you as bad, consider that I used to drink 4 or 5 a day, and it was real Pepsi. Nowadays I can’t even drink the real stuff — too sweet — but I get the occasional comment from someone about how the Aspartame’s going to give me cancer. This makes me want to smack them.

Snopes has lots of background on this, but I think the FDA sums it up nicely:

To date, FDA has not determined any consistent pattern of symptoms that can be attributed to the use of aspartame, nor is the agency aware of any recent studies that clearly show safety problems.

Or MIT:

Even daily large doses of the high-intensity sweetener aspartame, also known as NutraSweet, had no adverse effect on study subjects’ health and well-being, a visiting scientist at MIT reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition last week.

“We conclude that aspartame is safe for the general population,” said Paul A. Spiers, visiting scientist in the Clinical Research Center (CRC).

Leave me and my dp be. Haters.

It’s funny how things work out sometimes. This morning my Dilbert calendar is the strip about a guy with the choice between throwing $25 million down a rat hole or taking a Russian rocket ship into space. The punchline is here. (sorry, I can’t be arsed to find the actual strip)

Fittingly, Gregory Olsen got back from his joyride today.

It’s funny how things work out sometimes.

Apparently the new season of The Shield has been on for at least a week, maybe more. I had no idea. I saw no ad, I received no tvguide-ish warning.

Dagnabbit.

We came home from the movies tonight to find something kind of disturbing: one of the cats (probably Michael; he has a thing for sleeping on my clothes) had dragged one of my t-shirts from the bedroom to the kitchen, leaving it sitting right on their food bowl. As near as we can guess, Michael liked this particular shirt (he’d been curling up on it when we left) so much that he crawled inside it, then managed to somehow start walking around. Maybe he backed out of it when he decided to eat. Who knows?

I always knew I’d lose some t-shirts to my wife, but man…that’s one freaky-ass cat.

I finally finished watching The Dreamers (imdb | rotten tomatoes), which I didn’t hate, but I didn’t like that much either. I think I’d have enjoyed it more if I knew more of the backstory about the 1968/69 strikes in France, or if Michael Pitt didn’t annoy me (He just…he looks like Leonardo DiCaprio with Angelina Jolie’s lips sewn on. There, I’ve said it.) so much. If constant nudity, gratuitous (occasionally bordering on icky) sex and astounding pretention don’t bother you, and if you’re a French cinephile, then it’s probably worth watching just to see how beautifully Bertolucci shoots a film.

Flightplan (imdb | rotten tomatoes), which we just finished watching, was kind of the same: not bad, but not good either. Too many clichés, too easy an ending, and apparently enough geographic discrepancies to annoy my wife no end. Meh.

If I could choose to have lunch with any three people, I think John Kenneth Galbraith might be one of them.

Oh, and…gobble gobble.

Another road game, another original six matchup, another win for the Canadiens. First 3-0 start to a season since 78-79. Not bad.

All in all I’m digging the new rule changes. There are practically no icings anymore, nor are there many pucks shot over the glass by the players; under the old rules you saw plenty of both, and it just killed the pace of the game.

We’ve started looking at plans for both xmas and our Rockies trip next year. Neither will be cheap. But both will be fun (hopefully). I think we’re going to take one more stab at Da Maurizio; if nature or circumstance denies us this time, we’ll know it’s fate that we never eat there again.

The Ring Two (imdb | rotten tomatoes) sucked in the worst way. Such a letdown after the atmosphere of the first. Ptoo!

What an amazing film Vera Drake (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was. It felt like I’d been invited to spend time with a family in 1950 London, to see their existence, as if it weren’t a dramatization so much as a faithful recreation of something that never happened. The detail around the characters’ lives, the lingering effects of the war, the faithfulness to the period…all just made it such a real experience. I usually stay very detached from movies, very aware that it’s all just effects and scripts…but I got completely sucked into this story.

The most amazing part, of course, was Imelda Staunton. She went from such energy and cheer in the early scenes to such complete dispair and shame in the end, such transformation on multiple levels, it’s little wonder she received an Oscar nomination (and Mike Leigh for writing/directing). Amazing performance by the other cast members too. Can’t recommend it enough.

I’m fickle.

Girlfriend du jour.