I shouldn't have watched End of Days again. I really shouldn't have. See, I love the genre. I loved Prince of Darkness. I even liked The Seventh Sign! I love Arnie, and Gabriel Byrne just... words cannot express how much I am attracted to this man.

So I was pumped for this movie. I was ready to love it. I was torqued! And I was disappointed, but it was ok. I should have left it at that, but no - I had to order it on pay-per-view.

Let's run down the high points, shall we?

• [Arnold] "Out of 10,000 people in New York City, how are we going to find her without a name?"

  Umm, through an inane plot device? Maybe it's just me, but if I was watching and waiting to prevent the impregnation of a young woman by Satan come to earth, I would not be carrying around her name carved into my chest. Come on - you can pretty much assume that if you're in that position, you're going to be killed by a bad guy (and he was). So just in case the bad guy doesn't know the woman's name, you're going to provide it to him??? I mean, what the fuck?

• [Radio dj] "An increase of random acts of violence is being attributed to satanic cults, who seem determined to wreck New Year's Celebrations all over the world".

  Those pesky satanists!

• [Radio dj - he's on a roll!] "This is it, NY. The very last day of the first two thousand years."

  *blink* *blink*

  Okay... how did this get into the script? I just wanted to start shrieking in outrage at such an idiotic statement. Jesus Christ.

• The number of the beast was not 666, because "in dreams, numbers often appear upside down and backwards. 666 becomes 999, as in 1999." The priest then goes on to explain that actually, 1999 is not the only year this can happen - evidently, every 1000 years the devil has the chance to impregnate the woman and bring about the "end of days".

  Well, I had a problem with this before the 1000 year cycle explaination, and I'm sure it is the same problem every other person with a brain has. I don't know when our current calender was implemented, but I think it was somewhat after the Bible was written. Wasn't it? So the last day of the 999 year wouldn't necessarily be the same day by our current calender. But let's assume for a minute that I'm wrong, and this is perfectly reasonable.

  It's still stupid! I mean, Robert Heinlein's theory in Number of the Beast was that it was 6 to the 6th to the 6th - an exponential statement. I think his explaination was that the Greeks denoted exponentials by bolding or something, and that was lost in translation. But 666 backwards and upside down is 999... bullshit! Inane bullshit!