What's the word, turd?

I went to a tournament at Battleforge Games last weekend. There's a write up on my 40kology blog.

Books: I recently finished Imperial Life in the Emerald City, an inside look at Bremer's coalition provisional authority that set up in a big palace in Baghdad's green zone at the beginning of the occupation and proceeded to spend buttloads of money while accomplishing next to jack shit and many times making the situation worse. It was shocking, depressing, etcetera. A blissfully naive effort to create an insta capitalist democracy in what sounds like a backwards, corrupt(ed) dump. Oh well, launch all zigs. For great justice. Thereafter I read Vonnegut's Jailbird, which was good, but not especially funny or memorable. Now I'm reading Bluebeard which so far feels about the same. Both are told from first-person, both are loaded with coincidence and irony, and both feature playful little digs at different elements in American culture. Labor and economics in Jailbird, art and literature in Bluebeard. At least, that's my early take.

Movies: It's been a while since I reviewed any movies, let me play catch-up here and spin a few quick ones:

Daria: Is It Fall Yet? - Lame. I netflixed it for some goddamn reason, forgetting that we'd actually watched it already. It wasn't any better the secondtime around.

Flags of Our Fathers - OK, but it's no das Boot.

Land of the Dead - Decent, definitely in the idiom of his earlier movies (e.g. Day of the Dead). Some interesting innovations in zombie mythos.

Pan's Labyrinth - Meh. What was with all the big hoopla about this one?

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days - Definitely worth watching, depressing but very tense and dramatic.

28 Weeks Later - OK sequel to my current favorite zombie movie. Very violent, sometimes a little too extreme for extreme's sake.

Smokin' Aces - Meh. Who shot what now?

TV: Lost had the best 2007 season finale, hands down. Can't wait for the next season to begin. Heroes wrapped up fairly nicely, maybe a tad anticlimatic. The Shield and The Riches final episodes were both kinda lame, nothing really revelatory or cliffhangery. My current netflixed HBO series is The Wire. I'm nearing the end of the first season and it is fucking great. I can't believe the person that just got shot just got shot! Fuck!

Beer: Real Ale keeps me coming back for more Rio Blanco Pale Ale and Fireman's #4. Damn!

Fish: We picked up a couple new Oscars, very little but already showing the same kind of bossy, fearless personality as their predecessor. Behold, Romulus and Remus.