Stuff I did since I last posted anything substantial...

I watched the movie eXistenZ... It's like Videodrome but with videogames. It was interesting, but in the end it came down to the standard problem with 'fully-immersive' video games. It may as well have been called "Better than Life".

I watched an interesting "Air Crash Investigations" about DC-10 accidents in the '70s. The reason I was interested is that, growing up, I always knew there were problems with DC-10s, but I never knew why precisely*. I knew their cargo doors fell off - funny thing is, there appears to have only been one incident in 1972 and a crash in 1974, that's all, so I'm not sure why I was aware of it. Maybe the investigations took up the rest of the '70s and that where it entered my consciousness. (I was aged between a half and ten-and-a-half in the '70s.)

It's that weird thing where there's stuff you 'always' 'knew', but it's a lot of years before you learn the real story. And this is such an esoteric thing to know, I guess it's because my parents like to travel a lot.

I watched R.E.M. on the Colbert Report. The song was okay. I guess I should probably buy the record.

I watched the final episodes of a couple of great shows - Life on Mars (Yes, torrent fans, I waited until the ABC showed it, given that trying to download it - even if I knew how - the torrent would use up my monthly bandwidth allocation) and Intelligence, a great Canadian show about spies and drug dealers in Vancouver where everyone was informing on someone else and lying and double-crossing the rest. There's a conspiracy theory going around that the Canadian government got it cancelled because Stephen Harper (the PM) is a U.S. Arselicker and the show was perceived as being anti-American.

I learned why so many people think Dane Cook isn't funny. Dane Cook, Vicious Circle was on the Comedy Channel. But I acknowledge that I am not his audience, not being a drunk white guy from the south side of Boston.

I watched Flushed Away, another CGI animated film; this one about rats, mice and frogs in the London sewer system. I don't think it made much money in America. It's very frenetic and it's very British - Americans usually like their jokes to be telegraphed. It's an Aardman film, so it's weird to see Nick Park-like designs being computer animated.

I watched some Indian Premier League cricket. I don't know who I support yet, but what is interesting to me is how in the Knight Riders vs. Chargers match, Australian captain Ricky Ponting was telling Indian bowlers how to bowl to Andrew Symonds. If this continues, International cricket will get very interesting because players from all countries will be privy to these typoes of team secrets. Except for the English.

I bought the R.E.M album and Fountains of Wayne's back catalogue from Amazon. (I used to own the first FoW album, but it got nicked from the car, or the cafe or somewhere.) They should arrive next month.

I received all of my Fountains of Wayne albums and the R.E.M. one, except the FoW b-sides compilation; because I've been writing this for weeks. I haven't listened to them all yet.

I bought a $2000 treadmill. I'm hoping to teach the dog to walk himself. Jane get me offa this crazy thing!

I watched more Indian Premier League cricket. I think I like Kings XI Punjab. I don't know why, I just found myself hoping they'd win. I thought I'd support teams that had my favourite Australian players in them, except it seems that for every Michael Hussey, James Hopes or Adam Gilchrist each team also has a Picky Ponting, Andrew Symonds or Matthew Hayden. I also discovered that I don't really dislike Warney as much as I thought.

Australia's Next Top Model and Project Runway have started, So You Think You Can Dance has ended and can someone please kill David Archuleta on American Idol?

This wasn't supposed to be anywhere near as long as this. It was supposed to be a simple "This week I watched TV and ate a lot of crap", like at the end of Charlie Brooker columns. But I forgot to send it home from work three weeks running.

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