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On one hand I’m a little annoyed that Australia has to wait an extra week for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban… but on the other hand, that’s an extra week for me to finish my Gryffindor scarf! (I’m going to do mine in the new style.)

The Silmarillion in 1000 Words. Bwa ha ha! I’ve never even been able to make it through that book but I thought that was hilarious. (Link courtesy of miftik.)

I was just standing at our local café waiting for my felafel roll when a flash of green caught my eye. “What’s this? Diet Coke… with Lime???” Dammit, why wasn’t I aware of this? I was counting down the arrival of Diet Coke with Vanilla for months, yet somehow they slipped this one right past me. (I knew Lime was out in the US, but based on the Vanilla experience I didn’t think we’d get it for at least another six months.) No commercials, no website, no advertising, nothing! How on earth were the Australian members of the cult of Diet Coke supposed to know about this? I probably drink more Diet Coke than anybody in a five-mile radius but I had to discover the new flavor in the cooler like the rest of the unwashed masses? Hmmmph.

Anyway, after ten seconds of mentally ranting at Coca-Cola Australia’s incompetent marketing team, I grabbed a bottle and headed back to the office for a taste test. I’ve been reading Max’s raves about it for ages so I expected to be blown away. Unfortunately… not so much. Meh. It was okay. There was still a hint of the “pledge-ness” that I disliked about the Lemon version. Also, like the Lemon it gave me a very “diet soda” aftertaste that I never get with regular Diet Coke (or the Vanilla flavor). It just didn’t change my life like I wanted it to. I’ll be sticking to the old standbys.

NOTE: Hmmm. Now that I think about it, that bottle wasn’t ice cold since they’d just recently stocked it. It was cool to start but towards the end it was basically room temperature. Could that have affected my experience? Is it better colder? Maybe I’ll give it a second chance…

I just realized all those links came from MetaFilter. This is what happens when I don’t visit for a while.

The Snook and I have a running joke that the reason he’s so skinny is a tapeworm. He calls this imaginary friend “Alphonse.” (This is apparently a reference to an earlier college joke between him and his mates, where they’d tease another guy about having one.) Today I sent him a link to “The Worm Within”, a first-person account of really having a tapeworm. *shudder* See, that‘s why I don’t eat steak tartare.

Are you on drugs? Take this lame “How Well Do You Know Your Teen?” quiz and find out your risk factor. I scored a high risk. What can I say? I have been a bit sluggish lately, and I’ve been known to chuck the occasional sickie. And yeah, I own a can of hair spray and I occasionally use breath mints. I’m practically a junkie! But I swear the air freshener is only to cover up the smell from the litterbox, Mom.

Passport to the Pub: A Guide to British Pub Etiquette. Useful tips for anybody planning a trip to the UK anytime soon (and a nice bit of nostalgia for those of us who’ve left for warmer climes). Some of it applies more to regional pubs than the ones you find in London, but the advice on ordering, tipping, and buying rounds is spot on.

How to Unravel a Sweater. For all those times when you find good wool in an unflattering style! (Link courtesy of not martha).

Best. Survivor Finale. EVER. I thought Jenna seriously screwed up by not taking her chances with the purple rock. She had no chance against either Rob or Amber, and if she had stopped patting her own back for two seconds she would’ve realized that. She only ever stood a chance against Rupert. The Snook and I agonized over who Rob should pick to go with him. We figured he’d have no chance against Amber, but as he himself put it, he’d look like the biggest ass in history if he screwed her over right at the end. He played it as well as he could. That Tribal Council was the funniest, bitterest fifteen minutes of the whole season. What was up with Jenna’s make-up? She looked like a two-year-old that had gotten into Mommy’s purse. I loved Shii Ann’s comment about glass houses. (I was a Lex fan early on but his hypocrisy was hard to swallow.) I actually felt sorry for Big Tom though, mostly because he was a big dumbass. Everybody else got shafted while playing the game, but he got it out of nowhere. Oh, and what’s with Alicia’s lemon-suck face? I think she’s got a gorgeous body, but that expression makes me want to smack her!

Whew. On to the big finale. How great was Jeff’s helicopter entrance? I love Probst. We were like, “Props to him, but you know his ass is strapped up tight to that chopper.” As soon as Rob asked for a moment to speak, Snookums and I both started screaming. “He’s not!” “He wouldn’t!” “Oh my God… He is! That magnificent bastard!” How great was that? That’s good TV. I bet Probst’s dimples are still sore from all the grinning he did. I almost wish Rob had pulled it out though. He did play the game, and screw everybody else for getting so worked up about it. (Richard Hatch is a camera-hogging famewhore, though.) Which reminds me, I was surprised we didn’t get any discussion about the Richard-Sue “nekkid” incident. Maybe there was some sort of legal agreement. And poor, poor Jerri. I thought she left the game on such a high note. How could she not have realized that the big finale show in Madison Square Garden is not the time to start moralizing on reality TV’s detrimental emotional effects on the participants? And why didn’t we hear anything from Rob C? I liked him. The reunion needed more Rob C, more Colby and Ethan, less Rupert, and definitely less Rob & Amber ass-kissing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan, but by the end even I was like, “Quit showing us the friggin’ ring! We get it! They’re in lurrrrve. Now, what’s the damn surprise, Jeff?” (I voted for Rob C to win the second million, because if there was any justice in the world he would’ve won Jenna’s.)

All in all, that was three solid hours of entertainment. And it came none too soon… My self-imposed Internet blackout all afternoon – lest I get spoiled for the episode – was killing me! (I hope my Uncle Ron is sending off his application for the next season. He’d rock!)

Movie Roundup: I watched a couple other movies over the weekend in addition to Kill Bill. First up was Lady Jane, starring a very young Helena Bonham Carter as the nine-day Queen of England. A pre-Princess Bride Cary Elwes played her husband Guilford Dudley. I was really looking forward to this one, as I generally like English period pieces and one of my friends in college loved it. It started out well and I laughed my ass off during every scene of Dudley whoring it up, but eventually it settled into a completely cheesy Romeo-and-Juliet wannabe teen romance. Dudley and Jane decide they’re going to turn England into a utopia where nobody is poor and no kids are ever smacked, yet the only thing they manage to accomplish is minting a new shilling. They must’ve repeated the same dorky line from Plato about six times. I found the idea that Jane was some proto-feminist completely laughable. The soundtrack was completely bewildering. These kids would be sharing some soulful moment and then trimphant horns would burst in like a King Arthur TV movie. (To be fair, I did read a review of the DVD that suggested the sound mix was total crap, so maybe the original cinema version wasn’t so incongruous.) Basically, the only reason to see this one is if you A) really like Cary Elwes and want to see him as a teenager, or B) really hate Helena Bonham Carter and want to see her get her head chopped off. (Snookums liked that part.)

Next was Love Actually, which Ebert liked but I was rather ambivalent towards. It was just so non-offensive and safe and boring. If this movie was an animal, it’d be a puppy with great big eyes. Hugh Grant and Liam Neeson (and his little stepson) were the only characters that I felt any emotion towards. Other than the “Ant or Dec” joke, the Snook and I never really let loose with any big laughs. I said to him afterwards: “This is the kind of movie that wouldn’t have gotten made without all those big stars. There was no interesting story; there was just the spectacle of so many talented actors engaged in pure fluff.” Oh, and Keira Knightley still has duck face. She should get that fixed.