Heath Ledger is dead. Amanda and I (mostly Amanda) were watching American Idol when I fired up the ol’ Duke message board. I was scanning the topics when I saw that. I thought it was a fake post at first, but I clicked on it and saw real reactions to it along with a link to a story about it on the CNN website. He was apparently found naked and unresponsive with a bunch of pills and was pronounced dead when the authorities arrived. Obviously I didn’t know the guy but he seemed like a pretty cool person. He had been up-and-coming for a while but gained a lot of credibility with his Oscar nod for Brokeback Mountain. He’s also playing the Joker in the upcoming Batman movie, and from everything I’ve seen so far he looked like he did it pretty well.

Amanda kept saying every five minutes or so that she couldn’t believe he was dead. He’s probably the biggest actor of our age to die since, well, I don’t know. A while.

In happier news, the Kentucky Wildcats beat the fifth-ranked Tennessee Volunteers. It was another big win for UK. Maybe Billie Gillespie’s system is starting to kick in.

I was sick today. Sore throat, stuffy nose. I had a bit of a headache too, but that could have come from being busy at work as well as having to deal with a few difficulties today.

My brother Adam called today to tell me that he did something he was thinking of doing a few days ago- he traded in all of his video game stuff (PlayStation 2, some Guitar Hero games, his Gameboy) and bought himself an Xbox 360.  He felt bad about it because he didn’t consult Renee first, but he’d had a rough day and she didn’t care.  Amanda summed it up well when she said it’s not like he goes out and buys himself a bunch of stuff anyway.  He got the version without a hard drive, figuring he can pick one up later if he wants, and he’s not going to be getting on Xbox Live anytime too soon anyway.  He got Mass Effect, so I guess the night he came over and played it until 5:00 in the morning had an effect on him.

And speaking of spending stuff, Amanda bought a bunch of clearance clothes at Express during lunch today.  I didn’t mind but I gave her a hard time about it.  She was cute about it, telling me she’d gotten some stuff from Express and that she’d forgotten it in the trunk.  When I started teasing her about it she said that she hadn’t said which Express she’d bought from, implying that she’d gotten me something.  I still said she now couldn’t buy lunch for three weeks, and it turned out that all of the clothes were, in fact, for her.

Zach Dotsey