Your Periodic Update

I apologize for being conspicuously absent over roughly the last month. I kept meaning to write, but wanted to wait until I had real subject matter. A few aborted essays later, and I've decided to just post regardless with a sort of general update about goings-on.

• U.S. health care reform passed on my birthday last month. I think that's awesome. We can all agree that the bill is not perfect, but it is far, far better than leaving things as they are. Thankfully, far fewer friends and relatives than I expected had elaborate online panic attacks over the fact that, in four years, the health insurance industry will be subject to soft regulations.

  To be honest, I had more to say about this, but it all seems a lot less timely now. People are kind of settling down about it now that they realize the world isn't ending.

• How to Train Your Dragon is the best Dreamworks picture to date, easily.


• I've been watching a lot of movies lately. The International Film Series is having an excellent semester, and there have been a few real winners at the cinema. Have you seen Hot Tub Time Machine? It is genuinely excellent, and sadly it's not making much money because the marketing campaign made it look dumb.


• Script Frenzy is this month! I meant to be working on Dalton, and I sort of am, but seeing a ton of movies has been eating up most of my evenings.


• Speaking of movies, I have promised myself that I'll start to do more with my handheld MiniDV camcorder. There are a lot of neat low-budget video projects out there. It's inspiring! And it'd be nice to have more photos and videos of my friends. I miss those guys.


• I really want to make some marmalade. I love marmalade so much.


• Max and I are going to Ann Arbor on the weekend of April 22-25, just before the graduation of the last generation of Gargoyle staff that I actually worked with. Everything changes after that.