This looks like it’s a regular event. However gentle viewers, tonight I get to sleep. Now some of you may be thinking, what’s his secret? Has he indeed organised his work effectively? Has an agent stolen his body? I think most of it is a direct result of having less work to do this week. Sorry to disappoint you folks. No miracle here.

In other news, Kmart is having a sale tomorrow. Finally, Enter the Matrix for me. The Animatrix has many interesting extras on the DVD so if you’re a matrix fan/anime fan or like DVDs with extras, it’s well worth checking out.

While watching the special features on the X-Men DVD, I cam across the amusing story of a kid who had come across an X-Men filming site, snuck in and deduced from the labels on some huge pieces of stainless steel that there would be a massive, satellite dish shaped laser in the film. Unfortunately for the kid, Laser was simply the name of the company who made the steel.

However other hollywood films have not been as lucky with their contractors. Oh My God Data Dies in this One Water Coolers were foolishly hired to provide the Star Trek: Nemesis set with it’s water dispensers. Fight Club director David Fincher was appalled to discover in 1999 that Ed Norton IS Tyler Durden, Dipshit! Electrics were doing the wiring on the set. And who could forget the massive 90s set design company – Leo DIES at the end! Ha ha. Loser Constructions?

This week’s episode of Angel featured many story elements we haven’t seen for some time… Flashbacks. Willow doing something useful with her magic. And of course, happy endings. Also pleasingly, last week’s cliffhanger was resolved in an interesting and believable way — which also involved some cool walking along corridors in slow motion, which I’m always a sucker for.

The idea of Angelus’ personal hell — having flashbacks of Angel’s good deeds — was a very amusing and fitting one considering the many vice-versa flashbacks Angel has had to endure. The twist of also having the experience about Faith was a good one, if a bit awkwardly handled. I’m still not entirely sure how Angel could have popped up in Angelus’ head before his soul was freed into the ether. Ooooh, let’s have a go…

Souls have a slightly blurry relationship with time, and there’s some temporal overlap in any process involving their movement from one vessel to another. Yeah, I’ll buy that. Better editing could have helped this bit however. I doubt it would have spoiled Angel’s (excellent) surprise entrance.

Meanwhile, in the real world, Willow’s back in town! And being not only funnier and more useful than she’s been on Buffy for ages, but also managing to have convincing chemistry with another female character for the first time in a while. Her scenes with Fred do rather show up the ‘relationship’ she’s having with Kennedy as rather pathetically constructed. I’m still not sure if Fred really was interested in her, or just overly chatty having someone vaguely happy hanging around the Hyperion though. I’d like to think the former, but that, uh, may just be me. Speaking of chemistry, the discussion between Willow and Wesley concerning their respective darknesses was very funny.

On the less exciting side, we had Cordelia continuing to be evil. I’m surprised that Connor hasn’t complained about her taking kitchen knives to bed before. My enjoyment of Connor’s character, while bolstered by his concern for Faith, was almost destroyed by his EXTREME stupidness in falling for obviously-evil-Cordy’s stupid ‘kill Angelus’ scheme. He’d better be having words with her next episode.

Oh, and evil-Cordy’s fake voice is still lamer than lame.

Someone who deserves a mention at this point is Lorne, who hasn’t exactly been getting the big plots this season since his Vegas trip. But his bedside song to Faith was a really soft and kind moment, of the sort that we haven’t gotten enough of just recently. Good on him — perhaps he’ll end up becoming the heart of the group now that Cordy’s otherwise engaged.

Overall, an above average episode, with the first sparks of happiness all season, a very nice resolution of Wesley and Faith’s Watcher/Slayer relationship (I’m thinking spin-off…), and some excellent special effects, handling both the Angel v. Angelus fight and his re-ensoulment. Well, excellent for TV anyhow. One has to make an adjustment from The Matrix.

You know, this would be a brilliant season if Cordy wasn’t dragging it down every episode.

Damnit. This looks like it’s a regular event. Someone should really give me a good talking to. I hate this cold winter. If I have to be up all night, at least things could be warm. Or perhaps I could go to bed. Who’s stupid idea was this anyway. Here’s the crazy plan for next week: Do work during the day and get lots of sleep. I’m a genius! I can’t wait for my sleep next week.

In other news, Myer didn’t have Enter the Matrix for GameCube. Bastards. They had it for all the other consoles. I could only buy The Animatrix, which is fortunate from a study point of view. Ah well, I might make do with a free version from the net for the time being. Why won’t you let me sleep!! Time for more coffee I think. Damnable apostrophes!!!!

My milk smells funny. It was only marked to expire yesterday. The one dated 27th May smells great, although I don’t really feel comfortable sniffing any of the others. I need to throw some of these out when I get the chance because one of these days I’m going to grab April’s milk for my coffee and die a painful horrible death.

Right now cleaning is something I do occasionally so I don’t contract hepatitis.

Anyway when I go to bed and wake up it will be my day off, and it will boil down to working on Andy C or sleeping a lot and playing my gamecube. It isn’t really a choice, which is bad news for anyone who is a fan. Because I know they are out there. Really.

C’ya starside.

What’s that you say? An essay due this week? Then it’ll be due in on Friday, at 5pm, yeah? Of course it will.

Do de do de do…

WHAT? Thursday??? Well, I suppose I can swing… 9AM??? Ah, right. Well done me.

I bought Die Another Day on Friday. In a 2 disc set, it’s got more special features than any other Bond film. The question is — do I care? Generally, the special features are pretty dull, at least after you’ve seen one of them. I mean, there’s a whole feature on the 10 seconds of surfing at the start of the film, which everyone forgets was even there. Well, I did anyhoo.

But the point of this is not to review the DVD — I’ll do that later — but to say that some of the effects look much much better on a smaller TV screen. The horrendous CGI when Bond does his parachute/surfing was hardly noticeable to my Dad, and he loved it. “I bet people were laughing at this bit, eh?” “Well, yes Dad, but not for the reasons you think…” I have yet to watch the end fight on TV, but perhaps it also improves as Dad looked fairly happy then, too. This is a bit of a surprise, as I’d previously noted that The World is Not Enough was much worse on television.

Firstly — I promise that my next entry will have no Buffy or Angel references whatsoever. But things have come to light that need mentioning.

My journeys on the internet have led me to the (frankly, shocking) discovery that some people out there think Spike is cooler, and an all-round better person, than Angel. So much so that fan pressure appears to have forced the-buzz.com to remove an ‘anti-Spike’ article. This is frankly absurd, and not just for the free speech issues.

Firstly – Spike looks dumb. He insists on waxing his hair back like a helmet – and then has the nerve to tease Angel about his hair. It’s clear to me which needs the most attention every morning. And his coat just emphasises how thin and weedy he is.

Secondly – despite going insane for a little while, getting a soul has had little discernible effect on Spike. He still dresses the same way, he still worries about his image, and he feels no need to apologise to anyone, or atone. All he’s after is a little bit of slayerey goodness – and that’s the only reason he got the soul in the first place. While Angel didn’t choose to have his soul, once he got it he spent a suitable amount of time repenting, before making the choice to help others unselfishly. While the more skeptical of us may have thought he did it to get Buffy, his willingness to give happiness with her up to continue being a champion for good proves where his real loyalty lies – with the people he has pledged to protect. And he was doing this well before he was told he’d get to be human some day.

And finally – Angel has a convincing character. He has the same flaws many of us do. He is cheap, he is petty, and he enjoys, to an extent, playing the hero in simple, good versus evil situations. But he rises above these in his actions. Spike has just as many petty flaws. It’s too early to tell whether he shall distinguish himself in the same way. But I suspect he won’t reach Angel’s heights. Why? Because he’s a big poo poo head.

Case closed.

Damnit. It’s late and cold and like the guy flying over Sydney on a giant dog, things look bad. I don’t know why I bother really. Is a little organisation so hard. I’d better get this epsiode done before the crowd starts complaining. It tried to BSOD me again but I was ready for it this time. I think there’s a problem with the colour palette. Who’s decision was it to start TAOKJ during exam week?

Aside from that I have to finish this assignment before dawn, and make up an excuse to placate my supervisor. ‘I was busy’ should be enough. These numbers make no sense. hmm umm Maybe more coffee will help.

Angel was another repeat. Why don’t I get repeat episodes. Stupid Buffy. Given me nothing but trouble from day 1. Why won’t she stay dead. I need a little silence to think.

gamecubegamecubegamecubehungrygamecubegamecube So many questions. So many miles to go before I sleep.

I’ve finally found a beginning to my script that I’m vaguely happy with. Which is lucky as the due date’s approaching and I’d really like to be honing it for the last day, at least. I promise to put it up when it’s done, but I reserve the right to remove it again if I receive a lousy mark. It’s about a lazy guy who figures that he has no real free will, and that humans are just big cogs in the universal machine. So to teach him a lesson the universe switches its rules around a bit.

Having bought the second half of Angel Season 3 last week, I got a chance to listen to yet another commentary by Joss Whedon. He still sounds vaguely clever, so I’m ruling out my ‘brainsuck’ theory as to why Buffy has been sucking so badly. My current one is that if we look hard enough we’ll find some spooky subliminal message in the last two years of the show that spells “Let us out, we’re being held here by a terrible monster and forced to make bad television against our will!” Or something like that.

I promise to get over this Buffy thing soon.