Sadly, I have broken my streak of not cutting myself with sharp objects--I was cleaning my chef's knife stupidly tonight, slipped and sliced a knuckle (fairly shallow, but a bleeder). This is rare: I last cut myself sometime in the 90s. I have a particular affinity and respect (but not fear) for knives, so I'm very careful with them. Ah well. Once a decade isn't so bad.

I went to see 300 on Friday night, a movie version of Frank Miller's comic book, a somewhat free re-telling of the Battle of Thermopylae, where a very small Greek army stopped a very large Persian army. I haven't read the book, but I understand the movie is a faithful adaptation. That's a shame, because somewhat bizarrely, the movie is quite evocative and innovative, but not actually very good. There's a lot of gratuitous shouting, and the substantial liberties taken with the history serve no real purpose except a conspicuous desire to worship the Spartan army (the Spartans would have lost if their navy hadn't stopped the Persian fleet at Artemisium, but the story ignores the navies almost completely). That's a real shame, because the real story is more complicated and no less wonderful.