Before time began, there was the Cube.

Still 'fluey, with today being distinguished by a particularly vicious sinus headache which took an icepick to my temple every time I coughed, i.e. every few minutes. My complete absence of brain seemed to suggest that tonight was the perfect time to watch Transformers. This worked well: it's a vaguely entertaining and particularly stupid film, vintage Michael Bay, with occasional moments of cute dialogue and endearing robot action; unfortunately, the portentous and supremely cheesy opening voiceover made me laugh so hard it took about ten minutes for the coughing fit to subside. I also seem to have been badly imprinted by Top Gun when a hapless teenager: figher jets make me happy. I have to say, though, that making out with your girlfriend on the bonnet of a car which also happens to be a sentient robot creature, is strangely kinky.

I also watched Paprika, which was ... interesting. It's about dreaming, which is right up my alley, except that its feel and narrative structures were all Japanese and anime, leaving me feeling as though I was wandering aimlessly through someone else's dream in an unfamiliar language - it's not that it was all meaningless, it was just that I didn't have the key to its meaning. Either it was a particularly culture-specific or individual-specific set of images, or my dream-analysis-fu has been seriously disturbed by my state of health. But there were some lovely moments of surreality, primarily with Paprika herself dipping in and out of dream and reality.

Department of Random Linkery: SF Nostalgia Subdivision: John C. Wright does a severely tongue-in-cheek definition of science fiction, the real point being all the lovely old retro covers he digs up (and mercilessly pillories).