Why does one of the Taliban spokesbeards wear an eye-patch? It is not helping. He might as well bite the head off a kitten at every press conference.

I had a hell of a time getting to sleep last night. It was one of those nights where as soon as I hit the mattress I knew it was going to be rough. Does your bed ever just feel slightly off somehow? That's how it was.

I tried everything. I pulled out all the usual pre-sleep bedtime musings that usually put me right out. First, I went with the lottery fantasy. I guess the idea of having millions of dollars to burn makes me sleepy. It was only after I bought up several city blocks on the lakefront and started building a huge mansion that I realized the sandman wasn't coming. Then, I switched over to the travel fantasy. It's loosely connected to the lottery fantasy and involves long train rides through Europe and drunken weekday afternoons in rustic pubs. No go. Finally, I imagined that I was the owner of a company that devised a way to work strips of metal into city streets that warm up and melt snow in the winter. Now that's desperation. I don't even drive, really.

I must have fallen asleep at one point, though, as I woke up this morning, and I've found that waking up implies that I was asleep. It's a brilliant conclusion, I know. Someone get me one of them honorary docotorates.

Anyway, I touched on this the other day. This is my problem with 'Shallow Hal': Jack Black is no excuse to see this movie, I'll wager. Despite the star's protestations, it certainly looks like one big two hour 'fat chick' joke, doesn't it? The big irony is that it's a movie about a guy who falls in love with a woman's beautiful personality, and how do they choose to represent that beautiful personality onscreen? Through a gorgeous body. They make a movie about why bodies shouldn't matter and cast a starlet with a perfect body. God forbid they choose to represent a woman who has such a supposedly incredible personality through, oh, I don't know: an incredible personality. Calling this kind of device 'magical realism' is far too kind a compliment. The Farrelly's are now becoming jokes themselves, and if they had any real kind of artistic guts, they would have made a movie about a guy falling in love with a woman who was truly fat. There's no denying that that's a story. It's also a film that will probably never be made, at least not for mainstream audiences. So, to hell with this film for being soulless.

Oh, and, gosh golly. Do you think that, maybe near the end Jack Black will see Paltrow for what she really looks like, run away from her, only to return and give her a big kiss when he realizes that looks don't matter after all? I can only wonder!

Bad art pisses me off.

On a lighter note, I have to write a paper for one of my classes in which I pretend I'm being interviewed by Conan O'Brien. Is there a reason I should ever leave school?