In old black and white war movies, just when you're hoping that things will calm down a bit so the hero can kick back with the rest of his platoon, grab a smoke, and relax for a few minutes... some joker yells "Incoming!" and the shelling begins again.  Just how *does* that guy know when the enemy is going to start shooting again?  I really think someone should question his loyalty...

Anyway... in that great tradition, Microsoft announced that next Tuesday's regularly scheduled patch-a-thon will be brought to you by the letter "C" as in "Critical":  Three critical updates (one for Office/Excel, one for the Windows OS, and one for the .NET framework), each one potentially delivering remote code execution goodness right to your desktop.

Accompanying those three will be be a duet of "Important" patches (one for Office/Publisher and one for XP Pro) and a niggling little "Moderate" problem in Vista.

Duck and cover, gang... duck and cover.