Seriously! We watched the director's cut of Donnie Darko on DVD over the weekend, and I was freaking out before the movie even started. Part of the problem was the surround sound system was way too loud, and the other was the giant (and sinister) rabbit appearing on the DVD menu. Creepy! Thankfully Frank the rabbit wasn't as menacing in the movie itself, but he was still a substantial contributor to the general weirdness of it all. It was entertaining despite being quite baffling at times. Apparently the director's cut makes more sense than the original theatrical release, thanks to the excerpts from the "journal of time travel" between scenes.

In addition to sinister rabbits, we also watched Ashton Kutcher acting confused in the director's cut of The Butterfly Effect, and Sam Neill having a flashback in The Dish.

The former was a real downer of a movie, but we enjoyed it just the same, if only to see how bad things could get. The ending to the theatrical release seems oddly anachronistic when compared against the rest of the movie, which makes me wonder if the studio made them use a comparatively happy ending. The director's cut ending is considerably more grim, yet faintly ridiculous at the same time.

To balance out the grim and moody movies, we watched The Dish. The story revolves around the Parkes dish (in the middle of a sheep paddock, no less) in Australia and its role in relaying signals from Apollo 11 throughout the first manned moon landing. The view of 1960s Australia was amusing, as were the colourful characters populating the small town of Parkes. I thought I might've been a bit bored with the whole thing, but there was plenty of tension when things started to go wrong! Well worth a look :)

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We celebrated St. Patrick's Day by visiting an accountant to get our taxes done, followed by a takeaway Irish dinner from a local restaurant. Sadly, after all that excitement we weren't up for boozing the night away drinking Guinness and singing Irish songs. There's always next year ;)

In-between the weekend movie watching we did some tidying up around the house, and went out for Chicago-style pizza on Saturday night. That was the best pizza we've had in quite awhile--a good pizza place is hard to find these days. We came away with plenty of leftovers for lunch on Sunday, too :)

Oh, and our home phone decided to conk-out, so we were without landline until sometime today when we got it repaired. It wasn't a huge problem, since we've got cellphones, and our internet access is via cable. Still, it was a minor nuisance.

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After many late nights, I finally managed to hack off the fat from my epic short story, slimming it down to 5500 words--a reduction of 2300 words! A quick polish, followed by a trip to the post office before work on Friday, and it was on its way. Now the wait....

Meanwhile I've been having a gander at an old story I need to whip into shape. I've gotten a lot of positive feedback on this piece (including scribbled notes on rejection slips), so it must be close. The biggest problem seems to be the ending, so that'll need to be reworked before I can send it out again.

As for the new story, I've got plenty of ideas; too many, in fact. I just need to pick one that seems doable before the end of the month. Failing that, there's always the seat-of-the-pants approach: sit down, tap on keyboard, and see what appears on the screen :)

2005 Stats:

2005 Word count:	14,784
Stories written:	2
Total submissions:	5
Total acceptances:	0
Total rejections:	3
Waiting for response:	3
Books read:	4
Fiction Mags/Chapbooks read:	6
Audiobooks:	8

What I'm Reading:
Gunning for the Buddha, Michael Jasper
I, Robot, Isaac Asimov (audiobook)
Locus 2004 issues: November, December