(no subject)

First and foremost congrats to Aelf and team for another delightfully clever, well put together, and gorgeous group costume this year, click to see Baycon's latest Best in Show winners!

Second, long but lovely weekend with scads of socializing and getting shit done, even managed a couple of loads of laundry and washing my car (finally!), so I felt very productive. Even made time to swing into work and take care of some of the customer support that had stacked up over the weekend. Go me!

And last night I finally got to see Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End which surprised me a lot with how much I enjoyed it. I hadn't expected much as I'd liked (not loved) the first and found the second tedious but the third actually gave me a story wherein each character had an important part to play and it wasn't just the "Witty Jack" show. And, ok, I admit freely that I'm such a Geoffrey Rush fan that I'd happily watch him read the phonebook for nearly 3 hours...especially if he did it in character. So getting a lot more Captain Barbossa made me ecstatic. ( A few more spoilery observations behind the cut... )

(no subject)

When in doubt, make shit up:

THE HAGUE, 23/05/07 - Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen has said in a letter to parliament that Vlemmo NV does not exist as far as he knows. This company was named by US authorities as a link between Iraq and Osama bin Laden.

On or around 25 July 2002, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (OUSDP) of the US [Douglas Feith's operation] gave a briefing entitled 'Assessing the Relationship Between Iraq and al-Qaida'. This alternative intelligence report wrote that Osama Bin Laden's al-Hijra Company had contacts with the Netherlands-based company Vlemmo NV, which was allegedly involved in the purchase by Iraq of military equipment, Verhagen confirmed.

But "the company Vlemmo is unknown in the Netherlands," according to the minister. "The company has never been registered with the Chamber of Commerce in the Netherlands and is also not known to the tax service. That the company may have served as a front for illegal arms trade with Iraq is equally unknown to me."

The 2002 OUSDP report was made public last month by the chairman of the US Senate's defence committee, Carl Levin. "The contents of the intelligence report has only become known to me following the recent publication of the document," said Verhagen.