At last, at last! Vanilla Diet Coke is launching in Australia. I can’t believe it. Now all I need is TiVo and the iTunes Music Store and my consumer dream trifecta is complete.

Defective Yeti said to drop what I was doing and go watch this movie. I did not regret it.

Roger Ebert has such a great sense of humor. A couple weeks ago he reviewed Vincent Gallo’s film The Brown Bunny and pronounced it “the worst movie in the history of the Cannes Film Festival” (a view that was shared by many others). Gallo is pissed and has been badmouthing Ebert in all the papers, calling him a “fat pig” and saying he has “the physique of a slave-trader”. An excerpt from Ebert’s response:

Vincent Gallo has put a curse on my colon and a hex on my prostate . . . I am not too worried. I had a colonoscopy once, and they let me watch it on TV. It was more entertaining than “The Brown Bunny” . . . It is true that I am fat, but one day I will be thin, and he will still be the director of “The Brown Bunny.”

Classic.

From today’s Column 8:

[T]hree hours into a Virgin flight from Perth to Sydney on Sunday, horrified cabin crew spotted a security lapse. A passenger armed with two long plastic needles was busily knitting away, reports a Willoughby reader. He says the potential weapons were seized and handed to the purser, who carried them discreetly to the cockpit, apparently trying to avoid attracting the attention of other passengers. All went well until the purser dropped the ball of wool, which “trailed . . . up the aisle as he went to advise the captain of the breach in security.”

Damn. Knitting on the trip is out. I wonder if a crochet hook is acceptable? Maybe it’s time to acquire a new skill…

Max has a great discussion going on about terrible reading experiences. What book was so bad that you’d give anything to have those precious reading hours back? For me it’s Gibson’s Neuromancer. *shudder* I hate that damn book.

Hate seeing commercials at the movies? A Chicago attorney has filed a class-action lawsuit against the theater chains for breach of contract (i.e. not starting the movie at the advertised time). While I totally agree with this action, I think the example mentioned in the court documents is ridiculous. The movie started four minutes late. Four minutes! Heck, your watch could be off that much. In both England and Australia it’s common knowledge that you’ve got at least 15 minutes after the advertised start time before the movie actually begins playing. In fact, commercials are so prevalent here that I get more pissed off when a theater doesn’t have them. The Snook and I missed the first three minutes of Fellowship of the Ring because it started immediately while we were still out buying ice cream cones. I just want some consistency, you know? I remember when I lived in Germany they clearly advertised both the times when the ads would start and when the film would begin. That was nice.

First Alexander Graham Bell… and now Benjamin Franklin. Next you’ll be telling me Al Gore didn’t really invent the Internet!

Singapore is now offically SARS-free, which means my family should be slightly less anxious about us flying through there. On the news tonight they showed footage of the celebrations going on. It reminded me of the end of Return of the Jedi, where everybody’s celebrating the fall of the Empire. (In my geeky defense, it was just on last night so it’s not like I pulled that observation out of nowhere.)