It seems so frightening, time flashes by like lightning

It was my birthday on Saturday. Alison and I went out for lunch at Pizza Hut and I ate all that I could, which amounted to 9 slices of pizza and some garlic bread. Not bad. After that we went to the cinema to see Syriana. It was confusing as anything. It was obvious from watching it that it was well made and well acted, but I couldn't understand what was going on half the time. Large chunks of it were like watching the business segments on News 24, being as they were utterly incomprehensible to someone with no knowledge of economic jargon. Still, I guess you win some and you lose some. Well done, by the by, to George Clooney for his Oscar win.

As an aside, I was extremely pleased that Crash got Best Picture and Best Screenplay. As I blogged a while back, I thought it was excellent, so it's great to see it honoured like this. I must admit I was also slightly pleased that it beat Brokeback Mountain, as I was concerned it might win a shedload purely on the basis of it covering such a push-button issue, never mind whether it was any good or not.

In the evening, we had a few friends round for drinks and cake and played the CSI board game which was a good laugh.

So, a pretty good birthday all round.

Gifts-wise I was mainly given cash, which is cool as I'm saving up for a digital camera at the moment. Good stuff. I also got a book, some chocolates and - bizarrely - some cheese. I think that was about it.

I'm still working on my big long free speech rant... it's taking forever. By the time I've finished writing it I probably won't be allowed to publish it.