The word of the day, boys and girls, is surly.

I've been feeling a lot of surly lately. Mostly, I try to keep it to myself. It's not the most attractive mood in the world, you know? So I've been venting it, where possible, into high levels of snark and a lot of eye-rolling.

But last night, it came out of nowhere, for no apparent reason, and it hit me so hard I wound up feeling not only surly, but sorry for myself. Which is even worse, and has no acceptable outlets. What fun.

I'd hoped that little explosion would drain off the bad mood, but I'm back to being mildly surly this morning. I don't know why. I don't have a particular target in mind. I expect it will travel around, as people say things that, in my current state of mind, come across as stupid or rude or even just boring.

Maybe I'll stay offline today. I'd kind of like to still have some friends left when the funk passes and I'm feeling happy again.

So, we went with K.T. and Kevin last night to see X2.

If you didn't see the first movie, I'm afraid you're going to be missing some things. They didn't re-introduce the characters, they didn't re-explain the relationships, and they didn't re-setup the situations.

Not only did they build the movie as a sequel, they also built it to have a sequel. At least one character was totally and completely pointless, except to position him for the next movie.

The editing could have been tighter. There were lots of bits that could have been shortened or cut. There was no reason at all for this movie to be two and a quarter hours.

On the other hand, it was a pretty good plot. The funny bits were intentionally funny, and the action was full of zip and zoom and bang and pow. I didn't get bored, and I didn't feel the need to go in search of any eighteen-wheelers to drive through the plot holes. They held it together well enough that I will in fact probably go see X3 when it comes out.

Overall - it was a fun, leave-your-brain-at-home popcorn-muncher of a summer action flick.

--Liz