Item: My secret shame – I recently re-watched The Phantom Menace (this being viewing #2, viewing #1 was at 12:05am on the release day) and .. it didn’t suck as much.

There were still some things that irritated me. They were, in order,

(1) Jar Jar Binks. No matter how I look at him, he’s still a steppin fetchit houseboy. What the fuck kind of crack was Lucas on? He’s clearly meant to be endearing, but he’s just plain irritating. In the words of Tim Bisley: “Okay, sure, the ewoks were annoying, but Jar Jar Binks makes the ewoks look like Shaft.”

(2) Midichlorians. Again, we can be sure that there were drugs involved here.

(3) The sequence where they drive their toy advertisment underwater ship thingie through … “THE PLANET’S CORE” … there are no words to describe my dislike for this pointless scene.

But, on the whole, it was better than I recall. Perhaps without all the hype and anticipation, I’m more ready to deal with it. Perhaps with all the hype and anticipation, there was no way it could have been able to meet expectations.

Item: I bought the new Transmetropolitan trade paperback, and a trade paperback of “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” – and they’re both excellent. LOEG especially is fucking fantastic – I hadn’t read it before. I really should just make a list of everything Alan Moore has ever done, or been associated with, or stood nearby while other people made, and go buy them all.

Item: About to buy another TeraByte of disk for my web server. Not to be a wanker, but because it actually needs it. Scary. I’m aiming for a PetaByte within the next decade.