I finally organized the field trip to go see Matrix Revolutions tonight, for values of "organized" that include "forgetting to call the person in San Francisco to tell her to meet us" and "getting there 5 minutes before a sold-out show so that we had to sit in the second row on the right-hand side and be looking upward and left the entire time". Well, okay. I bought the tickets and drove people there.

We had a good time, and the movie was better than the second one, which is only to say "awkward rather than painful". The story is more coherent (again, not saying much), and they did fix the music: Matrix Reloaded was scorched with the music of angry suburban white boys, Linkin Park and Rage Against the Machine and Marilyn Manson, an awful lot of sound of fury signifying a conspicuous nothing, which pretty much describes the cardboard-cutout feel of the film. For Matrix Revolutions, they brought in someone to do dramatic Carmina Burana-like choral music, which if a bit dramatic was definitely an improvement. And there are boring, unnecessary talking scenes, and the action pauses in stupid places, as if to remind us that we can't possibly believe what we're seeing, and characters flash by and disappear without being needed. So it's not a great movie, but it's fun and worth seeing once. I'd advise a matinee or second-run theater.

*snicker* from the second page of this NY Times article on troop deployments:

For months, soldiers at Camp Doha, Kuwait, have been wearing T-shirts that say, "Operation Iraqi Freedom: Mission Accomplished." But recently a new T-shirt has appeared suggesting that the mission may be more open-ended.

It reads, "Operation Iraqi Freedom: Established 2003."

The comment from the guy who shared this was "Sometimes I miss being in the Army."

In other news, Nebraska jurisprudence joins the ranks of Texas and Alabama. Good work, guys.

I've had a lot of sugar cravings recently, which I've noticed from trying to cut down a bit on my sugar intake. In part this is because I've gained weight and I don't like it, but also my teeth have been hurting when anything sugary gets pressed into my molars, so I figure it's time to cut back.