Brief update on the situation - she's now ignoring me (showing her maturity). Her friends have naturally tried to stick up for her (despite knowing little about what's happened, because unsurprisingly she never really told them). I've offered to leave her alone forever more if she just comes clean and admits her mistakes (I've admitted mine). Not much else to say really as it's all in the comments of my previous messages.

This week I have mostly been working. In fact, aside from that, watching TV (mainly Big Brother), and all the other usual stuff, the only interesting thing I did was go to the cinema last night (Saturday) with Paul (thunderdome) and his girlfriend. Like a lot of other people will have done this weekend, we first saw Spider-Man. Chances are you've probably already seen it, so I'll say little more than that it wasn't half bad. The plot was interesting as there were a lot more details than I ever remember from the cartoon series. CGI wasn't amazing but was good enough. Acting was satisfactory (although I got annoyed with the way that Peter Parker would come over very cool one minute, then like a nerd at others). My biggest criticism would be that Kirsten Dunst could have been in it a lot more - she rocks my pants (and I'm debating whether to get Crazy/Beautiful on DVD now that it's out). Anyway, overall it was still a good flick (helped simply because it was Spider-Man!) and is worth seeing - 8/10.

Second film of the evening was Monster's Ball, with an Oscar winning performance from Halle Berry. I guess not many people will see this, so I'll quickly outline the plot (taken from IMDb): "Hank Grotowski (Billy Bob Thornton) is an execution prison guard. He works with his son, Sonny (Heath Ledger), and lives at home with his racist father, Buck (Peter Boyle). Lawrence Musgrove (Sean 'Puffy' Combs) has just been executed and a horrible tragedy has happened at home. Now, Hank has just met Leticia (Halle Berry), a young black woman struggling to make ends meet and they quickly fall in love to ease each other's pains. If only he knew that Leticia is Musgrove's widow..." So, the plot wasn't actually that amazing, but it wasn't really about that, I guess - more about character change and interaction. The acting was great, so I suppose Halle deserved her Oscar - I just hope it wasn't because of her rather lengthy sex scene in the middle of the film. As great as that was to watch, I wonder why it was put/left in like that - I didn't feel it was necessary to the film to be so long. The production was also polished, with good cinematography, interesting and original music, and it was nice to see a non-sci-fi/epic film using 21:9 screen ratio (strangely Spider-Man was only in 16:9!). The conclusion of the film did have something to say, as such, but I didn't think it was particularly significant. I liked the movie overall though - 8/10.

Also watched Withnail And I the other day - the film that (sadly) introduced Richard E. Grant to the world, which I suppose I should have seen years ago as I actually knew what seemed like half the lines from it just due to the way people say them all the time. It was funny in parts, but it didn't quite do it for me, due to lack of overall plot. Not much more to say really - 6/10.

For those who care, swagshop.com is coming along slowly. The product catalogue is just about complete, with stock control. The shopping cart is almost fully working. Following that I just need to do the checkout section and get the site looking nice(r) and it ought to be ready to go. Hopefully before Glastonbury Festival next week, which I'll be going to (line-up to finally be announced in Q and The Guardian this Wednesday).

Well done to England F.C. I don't really think we've got any more than a chance of beating Brazil (or Belgium if they're good enough to beat Brazil), but that's not to say it's impossible. If we do then we could quite easily go all the way, and my fantasy world cup team ('36 Years Of Hurt') would do rather well out of it too (5 UK players on the 23 man squad, who've put me comfortably in front of my league-mates). We shall see on Friday morning...


P.S. Hello to any new readers finding their way here courtesy of this mention. It's nice to know that the previous posts and their comments are entertaining you. Big Brother 4?