Brad, Angelina, and Jen

Dear Goddess, why isn't there a spam filter for real life?

I haven't read one single article about this certain celebrity fiasco and yet I feel like I know every damn intimate detail from the headlines on screamsheets alone, and now the latest detail is a "Reuter's Top Story?"

Come the Singularity, I hope all three of these so-called celebrities and their whole entourages end up running on a Microsoft OS. I am tired, tired, tired of hearing about such petty, banal, ridiculousness.

Bruce Dickinson rocks!

As some of you know, I have a soft spot in my heart for technically excellent heavy metal from the era about which such critical lights as Beavis & Butthead knew so much: Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Dio, Ozzy, and above them all, Iron Maiden. A number of years ago I recall reading an article in which Bruce Dickinson, former lead singer for Iron Maiden who gave us such brilliant hits as "Run to the Hills," "Flight of Icarus," and "The Number of the Beast," had left heavy metal to sell insurance for a living, but he eventually returned, founding the band Skunkworks.

Their first album, Skunkworks was definitively unlike Maiden, and Dickinson had said in an interview that he didn't want to sound like he had during the Maiden years, saying that the band was writing stuff that made him too much of a parody of himself. Skunkworks succeeded in avoiding all of that, but for those of us who loved the human air-raid siren that was Bruce Dickinson it missed that certain quality.

So I was pleasantly surprised when I found The Chemical Wedding. It's already eight years old (good grief!) and it sounds absolutely amazing. Dickinson's voice is solid, and whoever his backup band is, they play metal guitar they way it will be played in Metal Valhalla: fun, heavy, excellent, powerful. Given how disappointed I've been with most modern metal ("Death Grunt Metal?" Oh please!) it's nice to have something that I can enjoy.

Now I gotta find a store that's selling his new album, Tyranny of Souls, which came out a few months ago.