The Full Monty

What completely cracked me up about this movie is that is an American movie. No, no one involved it was American, but the structure of the script and the filming style is indistinguishable from an American flick. Maybe there's hope for the British cinema after all -- every movie doesn't have to take 3 years to tell. (I happen to be a big fan of the American style, in case you can't tell.)

If, once you've seen the movie, you would like me to explain the structure to you, drop me a line. But I insist you support your local imported film first, so you have to tell me the answer to:

Gaz asks his friend to steal a jacket from the market for a funeral. What is the first color he asks for?

The guy who plays Gaz, by the way, played Begbie in Trainspotting. You know, the indecipherable sot who wouldn't do heroin, but enjoyed ripping apart people's faces in pubs.

Letters, I Get Letters

Stacks and stacks of letters

I finally returned to the mailbag today and started trying to reply to all the nice messages that I've gotten over the past month or so. Whenever I get a message that I think needs a reply but more time that I have right then, I mark it Urgent, which puts the header of the message in a nice red font, and know that I have to get back to it.

I've had a lot of red staring me back in the face of late, and if there's one thing this nice girl can't take, it's guilt. And so --

• Lots of people out there who can't name all the movies in The Spoiler Game and they want answers. Fair enough, I was planning on providing them. I wanted to do something keen, like you click on one and it takes you to a page with just the answer for that spoiler. Then I was going to make a page with the answers for all of them. Then I was going to...sorry, I've been busy. The answers page is coming.

• Most recommended place to buy CDs: CD Now. Also mentioned: CD World.

• The Critique on Critiques -- feedback I've gotten from the Diary Crit List and what I have to say about it -- is also coming.

• I've gotten critical feedback regarding my essay Why Web Journals Suck. Probably enough feedback to warrant an entry of its own. A lot of this feedback wants to know if I read web journals (um, yes) and why I have to be so critical (because, dammit, I have standards).

  Hm. I guess those are inadequate answers. At some point in the future I'll try to explain again why lazy writing, lazy design, and lazy committment piss me off so much.

  One of the letters I received is from a reader of a journal named Today's Stream. This may or may not be a well-written journal; I will never know because I can't read it. I find it very difficult to read a single line of text that stretches infinitely (or near thereto) to the right.

  I could be wrong.

• Dave Smith writes in to say that "sig alert" refers to a traffic reporter (who died in traffic?) named Sigmond or Sigerson and not "signal" or "significant event" alert.

• For those who just can't enough Patrick Stewart (I'm not one, but I sympathize), a reader directed my attention to the Patrick Stewart Estrogen Brigade. I am also aware of a David Duchovny Estrogen Brigade, but not enough to hunt down the URL.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

I got up this morning at 7, went for a 3.5 mile run, and then came back...and promptly went back to sleep for 2 hours. Isn't physical exercise supposed to perk one up (until such time as one's body figures out what it's just done, then collapses)?