Saturday Sidebar Update

This week's Object of My Affection is Hilary Swank, the most unlikely double Academy Award winner ever. I mean, she was The Next Karate Kid, for cry-yi. She was kind of a surprise contender for OoMA this week, frankly, but have you seen those Vanity Fair photos? Lookin' hawt. Also, she's single now. As always, that doesn't actually improve my chances with her significantly, or at all. But hey, it's nice to know the option is there.

Reading: Lemony Snicket's The Penultimate Peril. Hey, didn't I start reading that almost two months ago? Yep, that's who I am. I'm the guy who takes two months to read a children's book. In all fairness to myself, I haven't picked it up since I put it aside to read some Wodehouse instead. But now that I've finally finished one of the other three books I was supposedly reading (I was right, I finished The Gun Seller first -- good stuff!), now it's back to those unfortunate Baudelaires.

Watching: I visited Amoeba in L.A. last weekend, and picked up a bunch of junk. That place is awesome! I finally got the Robocop Trilogy on DVD. Only $20 for all three movies! Or, as I like to look at it: thirty bucks for the first movie, and a five dollar rebate for each of the shitty sequels. I had to buy the set because the only individual version of the first Robocop on DVD is the edited version, with no extras. Oh, except for the Criterion version, which appears to have the exact same extras as the trilogy set, and the trilogy was cheaper, so... here we are.

Listening: Also picked up a couple of Monster Magnet albums at Amoeba. I was in a metal mood. Powertrip kicks all kinds of ass. Plus, as you can see from Lyric of the Week, it's got a reference to Marvel villain MODOK in the song "Baby Götterdämerung." How can you not love that? By the way, a big [sic] goes with that title, which is as it appears on the album; of course, we all know "Götterdämmerung" has a double M. Silly Monster Magnet!

Hating: I have so much hatred for our Monkey-in-Chief's decision to veto the stem cell research bill I can't even see straight. First veto of his presidency, and he uses it to ban scientific research that could potentially save millions from suffering and death. Of course he does. Because that's exactly the kind of backward-thinker he is. Executing prisoners at a record pace while governor of Texas, though, that's totally cool, because actual post-birth human life is meaningless to him. (I should say, I myself am actually in favor of the death penalty. In fact, I would make more crimes punishable by death. Like using a cell phone in a movie theater, say, or driving slow in the fast lane. I'm just illustrating Bush's hypocrisy here.) And sending thousands to die in his manufactured war, that's okay, too. That's super keen! It's what all the cool kids are doing! But using embryos already marked for destruction as medical waste in scientific research -- God forbid! Literally! (In his mind, anyway.) I need to stop, or I'm going to wind up shouting at the walls. What a bad, bad man he is. Is it 2008 yet?