I recently – okay, fine, not-so-recently – mentioned some of my literary kid-hood heroes. In the very upper echelon of Awesome Guys I Wanted To Be When I Grew Up – topped only by the über-cool Captain Nemo – were both the esteemed Mr. Sherlock Holmes and his stalwart partner and confidant, Dr. John Watson, MD. The key word there being “both” – Holmes the brilliant, grumpy, moody bastard and Watson the stoic and always-ready-for-action gentleman adventurer.

Unfortunately, the various cretins who have attempted to bring Holmes and Watson to visual life in movies and television have always had some unaccountable need to portray Watson as a kind of comic relief – a bumbler and a boob, a source of pratfalls and low humour. This filled me with seething rage in my younger years, and helped to solidify my core belief that the vast majority of the human population is worthless and despicable.

Stupid Hollywood fucks.

So I am stoked – stoked – for the new Sherlock Holmes movie coming out on Christmas day. Not only does it appear that they have found the true Sherlock Holmes – misanthrope, boxer, moody, manic, bohemian – but they have also rediscovered Watson. Man of medicine, recent from the Afghan Wars, decorated soldier, a gentleman rogue with a penchant for mayhem, fine clothes, and fine women. This is the Watson of my youth … not that stupid Basil Rathbone shit.

Guy Ritchie better not let me down here. I am in a veritable lather about this thing, and will be seriously pissed if I get disappointed.

Don’t make me come over there.

A couple of quick notes for the folks who wondered:

The unlocked and untethered iPhone 3.1.2 is indeed still up and active, ready for your general enjoyment (with instructions!) on the iPhone unlock page.

The instructions for getting onto your corporate Cisco VPN if your IT department hides and encrypts the group password in a PCF file are still up and still valid. You can check them out here.

It’s cool. I got ya covered.

Wow. Just when you think the Grey Cup can not possibly get any more epic, well, there it is. Honestly, words fail me. I’m just surprised that we didn’t actually see any Roughrider players be sick to their stomachs on the sidelines. It would have been entirely excusable.

That one will live in story and song for a long, long time.

And, in a not-entirely-unrelated note, you can get some of Blue Rodeo’s more stellar ablums on the iTunes store right now for less than eight bucks a pop. If you don’t go buy Five Days In July, Lost Together, or at the very least the Greatest Hits package, you are a fool.

A fool.