Writing this baby on my brand new external USB keyboard! Because my laptop keyboard no longer recognizes half the alphabet, and it takes a week to get a replacement part!

Side note: I am most likely about the richest I've ever been at this point. You'd think that by now, I'd feel at least a little more secure than I was when I was pushing broke. Unfortunately, that isn't the case, as EVERYTHING I OWN IS ON THE PRECIPICE OF DYING.

My DVD player broke a couple weeks ago. My record player (which I don't really use... but it gives me an excuse to collect actual records) is a few revolutions too fast. Among other things.

Hey. I saw some flicks recently. I'm gonna quickly comment on them.

The Artist: Bad as an homage to 20's silent films, but pretty good as a pure slice of entertainment.

It's by all accounts going to win Best Picture at the Oscars a month from now, and I think I might be OK with that. It's not as revolutionary as, say, The Tree Of Life, but it's fun... and it doesn't have the same "Oscar bait" scent to it that something like The King's Speech did. (I mean, if you follow the Oscar race at all, you could possibly argue that it does since it's been the frontrunner for so long... but for me, it's hard to say that anyone could have imagined something as gimmicky as making a silent film would be received so well.)

Moneyball: Manages to romanticize a statistical revolution in a sport pretty well. (Which is somewhat miraculous, because in terms of the statistical analysis method vs. the old fashioned method of evaluating the game, the statistical approach is the more boring, practical method.) Unfortunately, for some reason they don't treat the Twins' win over the A's in the divisional series as the triumphant victory that I have viewed it as for the past 10 years.

Quick note: I have seen only 5 of the 9 movies nominated for an Oscar. The two above I saw just so I could say that I've seen at least a couple. One I saw because my mother made me.

What this means is that my investment in the Oscar race is very low. Which is not surprising, because last year's sucked after a good stretch where (mostly) good-to-great movies brought home the gold. Also, I was going to try to see all the Best Picture nominees before the actual night, but that was before I saw War Horse and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close nominated, so... screw that.