| Undead Stormtroopers and a load of movie trailers... |
[Dec. 17th, 2009|02:32 am] |
 So I'm starting this festive holiday book called "Death Troopers," which, given the current trends in horror fiction, is probably about Star Wars Stormtrooper zombies in some fashion or other. I'm only a few chapters in, and I've noticed a few things:
1. I wish they hadn't named one of the main characters "Trig." I'm a bit of a news wonk, and I can't help thinking his mom was the former governor of Alaska. His last name is "Longo," which doesn't help, either.
2. Star Wars seems to be the last refuge for people trying to toss off comparisons that go "that's like a [planet]ian [made-up word] [animal name] trying to eat a [planet]ian [made up word] [animal name]" with a straight face. And that sounds about as natural as a Pelemaxian Tentacle Bird trying to eat an Atrisian Shredder Bat.
3. Nobody swears in Star Wars, even if the story takes place on a prison ship. The exception is when an alien says something in non-whatever-passes-for-English, and the best you get is a clinical description of what is supposed to be inserted where.
Geeky-snarking aside, it seems to be coming off as a decent "popcorn movie" novel. Nobody has even mentioned the Force yet, and if it (and the Jedi) are left out of the picture, I think that'd be kind of refreshing. I just hope we aren't going to see a follow-up novel, "Sparkling Vampire Troopers."
In other sci-fi stuff, i09 has listed its 20 greatest SF movies of the past decade, and I did enjoy a lot of 'em, especially "Primer" and "Serenity." I would have included "The Man From Earth," as well. And quite a few on that list are "sci-fi to varying degrees," but actual science fiction is hard to sell. I think the last hard sci-fi films (or at least, the less fantastical ones) I can recall were "Gattaca" and "2010," the latter of which still remains one of my favorite films. It's also fun to see who starts getting uncomfortable listening to John Lithgow hyperventilate while spacewalking over Io. :)
The trailer for "Iron Man 2" was just released, and I think Marvel's got another winner on its hands. I will say I'll be interested to see how "Whiplash" (the guy who turned Tony Stark's race car into a modular vehicle) gets around. That's a big thing with superheroes and supervillains: Transportation. Especially in this case, if you can't really disguise yourself instantly and you don't have a fast getaway, how do you expect to last more than however long it takes for the first cop with a gun to show up? Even if you do leave, what's to stop you from being followed? We kind of give Batman a pass at this kind of stuff, because he's wonder-rich guy with super-high tech that can stop people from following a highly conspicuous car and what have you. But shirtless Russian guy with electric streamers should have a clever plan to vamoose, even if Iron Man doesn't have his armor handy.
There's also a new "Clash of the Titans" trailer. While it still follows the heavy metal concert theme, has a three word "slogan" embedded in it, and at times looks like two or three different movies, I have to say the design for the Kraken is pretty darn cool-looking. I wouldn't have minded that thing being the Cloverfield Monster.
And then there's "Robin Hood," or "something that looks a lot like the last King Arthur movie meets Gladiator." The trailer sets this up as "the story behind the legend," which seems to be code for "guys on horses with swords, yelling and chopping bits of each other off, set to rock music." Though in retrospect, rock music is preferable to Bryan Adams, I think.
I'll most likely be catching "Sherlock Holmes" on Christmas day with the other "kids" at our family gathering, and I'll dutifully report my findings. Until I can make it to 221 Baker Street, we've got:
- If you like things traditional and old-fashioned at your holiday meals, and you have less-than-perfect relations with your relations, here's some tableware that might come in handy.
- Nature, though sometimes seemingly cruel, can be quite the entertainer: It offers us octopuses who use coconut shells.
- I ran across some new interpretations of the Portal song, "Still Alive": First, version that sounds like a pop ballad, the other a techno remix by Raddox. Both YouTube links have info on getting free mp3s of each track in their extended info sections.
- Almost like a harbinger of the upcoming "Epic Disney" game, here's a collection of photos from 'River Country', an abandoned section of Walt Disney World, closed since 2001.
- From Adult Swim games comes Mountain Maniac. You're a crazed mountain man, using your hammer and (slightly steerable) falling boulders to cause as much destruction as possible.
- There are some out there who have gotten away with avoiding mandatory dress codes for too long. Next, we have to make them wear proper boots in bad weather.
- I'm not sure how "free" is defined here, but Steam appears to be offering Team Fortress 2 for free this weekend.
- How do silent medieval monks sing for Christmas shows? Quite creatively, it seems.
- Nerd-rapper MC Frontalot is quitting smoking, using a most unique method based on D&D.
- Shooting, physics, and removing blocks are all a part of Blosics. Knock as many blocks off of the screen as needed to pass each level, but watch out how many shots you use, as each costs you points. |
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| Familiar Faces |
[Dec. 16th, 2009|08:50 pm] |
Some holiday comics! The Kiss Elves return.
Oh and I am posting journal type comics on twitter sometimes. If you are on twitter I am @beatonna |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 16th, 2009|12:51 pm] |
To aid you in your travels we will be implementing double experience weekends over the next three weeks. These bonus weekends will affect characters levels 1–35. This includes crafting and gathering experience as well. After the upcoming three weekends, we plan on hosting bonus experience weekends once or twice a month. We want to make it easier for you to experience what Aion has to offer for your characters after level 35.
Man, Aion is basically a study in how not to westernize a game. |
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| Obsessions are so weird |
[Dec. 15th, 2009|07:28 pm] |
Since I've been enjoying the Hssxxlllo packed love that is this years X-E Advent Calendar, I'm throwing my default icon back to my favorite bunny from Amalthea.
Oh and life's fine. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 15th, 2009|04:39 pm] |
Nostra finally finished his goblin writeup
Slutty goblin secretaries hanging around a tropical resort, voodoo gnomes, bomb-lobbing monkeys with mining picks, Thrall being an absolute badass, overcharging your utility belt and turning yourself into a living weedwhacker.
Also dialogue like "Stay back, I'm going to resuscitate him! I hope these wet jumper cables don't kill us all."
And a slingshot-powered rocket with extra rockets strapped to it for more boost. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 15th, 2009|03:03 pm] |
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my name is kevin costner, knock three of your friends unconscious and force them to watch my medieval epic "robin hood: prince of thieves" starring myself, alan rickman and morgan freeman or i will break into your house and stare at you all night |
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| words about words |
[Dec. 15th, 2009|01:51 pm] |
Made bi-weekly trek up to Borders and picked out some new paperbacks. Was very, very tempted to grab Boneshaker but the $20 price tag was a bit of a turnoff, might just wait and grab it from the SF Book Club cheaper. They didn't have the next Codex Alera book again so I decided to continue sating my lust for pulp.
Pirate King because the last Drizzt book actually ended on a decent cliffhanger and this looks like more of a political thriller than anything else. Also I'm horrible.
Shamanslayer because the Gotrek and Felix books just keep getting better and better with the new author on board. I like that he jettisoned most of the secondary characters over the last couple of books and drove home that when you hang around with a dwarf on a literal suicide quest, you're probably going to fucking die in short order. This one's also going back to the beastmen, which starred in my second favorite G&F novel after Skavenslayer.
Dog Days by John Levitt. I wanted to step up the urban fantasy thing since my last few books have been swords and sorcery and I'm continuing to run into writers block on my own urban piece, and Dog Days seems uhhh. Unique. It's apparently set in a magical San Fransisco where the main character used to be a member of the wizard gestapo but something traumatized him so bad that he retired young and is now a jazz guitarist who wanders around and lives off scotch. And then he stumbles over an abandoned familiar/ifrit in the shape of a cute dog and gets drawn back into the magical underworld, where he kills the hell out of monsters, has manly bonding moments with his hound, makes a lot of musical references and continues to live off scotch. Since they didn't have the first of the Felix Castor series in stock, I guess this'll have to do.
My own writing so far: I have a basic plan of attack laid out for those submissions and what order I want to approach them in, as well as very rough outlines (like a paragraph each) for the stories themselves. Warmed up by writing Serena a piece of Warcraft fluff that isn't quite done but should clock in at two, three thousand words. I also delved into my literary cryo chambers and pulled out Overdue (the thing with the murderous librarians), which I am going to scrap and rewrite as slightly weirder and set in the Stained world. Trying to make it into less of what honestly feels like torture fiction and make the antagonists a bit more sympathetic by better explaining their actions. I've done, oh, 1.5k on it so far and I'll probably do some more from work.
After that, I'm going to try and tackle the Aztec story. The main problem I'm running into is making something that will allow me to showcase the world but have a definitive beginning, middle and end. It really does feel like something I could do a whole trilogy about, but I'm going to try and constrain it to 8k at max. What I'm thinking is a brief overview of the world through the eyes of my enforcer character, who is something of an agnostic. Gets sent after some "heretical" priests who have been stirring up trouble, and they give him a bit of the world's supernatural backstory and claim that it's the industrial ruling class that is heretical and will soon awaken and anger the gods even worse than the Spaniards did a dozen generations back. I really like the idea of metal-plated mesoamerican step-pyramids belching smoke into the air, the temples still stained with blood but mostly abandoned, and something of a Great Awakening movement in the population, with the twist that there literally are divine winged serpents and skinned men sleeping under the earth and the lack of worship will eventually piss them off. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 15th, 2009|12:14 pm] |
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I just got a postcard for Technicon 27 in the mail, saying it'll be on the VT campus the "weekend of March 20th, 2010." There's nothing on the website about it, and this is the first I've heard. Anyone know what's up? Guests? Registration? Anything? |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 15th, 2009|09:58 am] |
Hey Ender, I know how much you love HuffPo's take on the sciences!
It is commonly assumed that homeopathic medicines are composed of extremely small doses of medicinal substances. And yet, does anyone refer to an atomic bomb as an extremely small dose of a bomb?
The homeopathic principle of similars makes further sense when one considers that modern physiologists and pathologists recognize that disease is not simply the result of breakdown or surrender of the body but that symptoms are instead representative of the body's efforts to fight infection or adapt to stress.
Using a nanodose that is able to penetrate deeply into the body and that is specifically chosen for its ability to mimic the symptoms helps to initiate a profound healing process. It is also important to highlight the fact that a homeopathic medicine is not simply chosen for its ability to cause a similar disease but for its ability to cause a similar syndrome of symptoms of disease, of which the specific localized disease is a part.
Enjoy your morning stroke.
edit: oh god, they start talking about water memory. im dying, squirtle. |
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| Nothing like last-minute around the holidays, eh? |
[Dec. 15th, 2009|03:51 am] |
 Everyone thank Alert Reader Michael for inquiring about a 2009 holiday card. Thanks to his prodding of my feeble brainmeats, it has been forged and awaits downloading and printing to fulfill its purpose. Sorry for them being so late in the season, but they do make great gift tags, too, right?
Speaking of the holidays, I noticed a couple of oddities when out looking over deals sites. As a sure sign that our technological advances are misplaced (and that money and taste don't necessarily go together), I've come across these wall-mounted gel-fueled fireplaces a couple of times. Granted, were I still working in a cubicle, I'd probably get one for the ol' office, provided I had a written guarantee it wouldn't set off the sprinklers. And really, if we've finally made fire you can hang on the wall, where are my torch sconces?
Also, there's "Tony Hawk: Ride." For those unfamiliar with this item, it's a video game that simulates skateboarding via a skateboard that interfaces with your game console. This game has also taken a royal drubbing on almost every review site, the critics pointing out its overly sensitive sensors (that can be set off by pants cuffs or nearby furniture), difficult gameplay, lackluster locations, and a pretty high price point of $120. One deals site I look at can give an impromptu chart of the game's decline into bargain-bin territory in very short order, falling to as low as $70 in under a week.
But speaking of games, many sequels had trailers come out on the intertubes, including "The Force Unleashed 2." I liked the previous installment because (1) it had a good story, (2) force lightning, (3) tossing stormtroopers, (4) and force-lightning stormtroopers and tossing their bodies into other stormtroopers. So while another chapter in this troubled young man's life is welcome, I would like to see fewer quicktime events. For those unfamiliar, the game would give you a major opponent, like a Jedi master. To defeat him, you'd do the usual action-game stuff of running around, using your light saber and force powers to do damage, sometimes playing some kind of timing game with a background obstacle (say, dodging a giant plant-monster's swinging tentacles). But when you got near the end of the fight, the game turned into "Dragon's Lair" where you had to press the right buttons at the right times to execute a series of moves that have nothing to do with the controls up to this point. The idea, I assume, was to give a dramatic send-off to your foes, but if you screw up, your enemy gets some health back and you have to wear them down all over again. Also, like a lot of games that give you some kind of "choice," in this case to be on the Light Side or the Dark Side, the sequel has to pick a decision for you to continue the story. I'm kind of reminded of the old "Clue" movie on video tape that came with three endings. I'd be highly amused of "Force Unleashed 2" started off with "it could have happened this way..."
Now I have to get back to clearing space for the Christmas tree (and hucking an aquarium. Look for it cheap on Craigslist soon) which, for some reason, involves moving a piano. While I interact with tinsel, here's some other shiny objects:
- Have you ever wondered what a live-action Simpsons opener would look like in Estonia? We have some good news for you...
- I might actually watch Wimbledon if it adopted a similar theme.
- Attention TV show makers: enough with the 'enhance the image' stuff. You can't pick a face out of a pixel, so just stop it.
- Though I'm sure this game was for Halloween, here's Roly-Poly Monsters. Use your bombs to destroy every roundish creature on the screen in puzzling ways.
- There's something wrong with advertising in America if we're missing out on cereal commercials like this.
- As was pointed out in the comments last entry by Loswick, there's a new Simon's Cat episode! Sadly, it's only first part of a 2-parter, but still...
- The blogger behind "Serial MMOgamy" has had her Lord of the Rings Online account suspended for quite vague reasons, indeed. I haven't seen customer service that heartless since trying to convince a Texas utility that I lived in another state and didn't owe them money.
- C'thulhu loves his Mr. Potato Head. Perhaps a noggin of hollow plastic is the only one he can be himself with and not drive it to madness...
- Arcanorum awaits! Pilot your medieval helicopter with smashy-arm, swinging it around to destroy all who oppose you! |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 14th, 2009|12:40 pm] |
Bruckheimer, Cage and Turteltaub have used that scene as a jumping off point for Disney's new live action movie which has Cage playing Balthazar Blake, an ancient sorcerer who has been traveling the world looking for the magician who can finally put to end a conflict between two magical factions: the Merlineans and the Morganians, whose names come from two of the most famous wizards, Merlin and Morgan le Fay. If you know anything about the legend of King Arthur or Avalon, you can figure out which ones are good and which ones are bad. Balthazar, a Merlinean, thinks he's found his answer when he encounters Dave Stutler, an awkward NYU physics student played by Jay Baruchel, an actor on the verge of breaking out big-time since appearing in Judd Apatow's Knocked Up and Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder. Balthazar makes Dave his apprentice and after training him, they go on a quest to find and recover a number of Grimholds, ancient containers which contain the spirits of some evil sorcerers. (In the trailer that went up last week, you can see what looks like Russian dolls and in one scene, the film's main baddie Maxim Horvath, played by Alfred Molina, emerges from one in the form of lots of bugs.)
sold. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 14th, 2009|12:13 pm] |
All I remember from last night's night terror was an otherwise pleasant dream somehow turning into a dark room with a little kid in it repeating "they came out of the blood" in a progressively deeper voice, and then being half-awake paralyzed watching pools of oil floating across the ceiling. And then hyperventilating until I woke Athena up and she shook me awake.
PLEASANT. |
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| All together now... |
[Dec. 14th, 2009|02:49 am] |
Yesterday, I joined my parents in a cold warehouse at 8 am to put together Christmas baskets for charity. It's a yearly drive done by my dad's former employer, and it's become an annual thing for he and my mom--and now me--to join them for it. Area businesses donate goods and boxes, a lumber warehouse donates space, and employees and retirees and their families donate the manpower and deliver the boxes.
Each "basket" is actually a cardboard box filled with 75 pounds of dry goods (cereal, beans, pasta), canned goods, non-perishables, and occasionally non-grocery items. It's done assembly line, with several flat dollies holding boxes being pushed slowly along while volunteers stationed in front of stacks of boxed food put their items in, while still others unpack the boxes. Once they're all packed, people take boxes and deliver them, mostly to the elderly, but also a few families.
During the packing, someone brought a radio and tuned it to Q99, which is playing nothing but Christmas music right now, just for background music. That blasted Alvin and the Chipmunks Christmas song came on. No one seemed to pay any attention to it, but it was clear we were all listening when all of the sudden about eight people all at once sang, "I still want a hula hoop." It tickled me to no end!
Usually we're out until 1 or 2 pm doing deliveries, but luck and efficiency won out. They greatly increased the assembly line's efficiency so we did 450 boxes in less time than we used to do 300, and all our deliveries were in a single building. People are always glad for the boxes, some are very grateful, and we get a lot of "God bless you"s, even a few hugs. I wish we could do more, but I know what's in the boxes can go a long way for some of them. (Even the Little Debbies that always show up.)
The whole thing is something I really enjoy doing, and I'm glad I have the chance. (And I will keep giggling about the "hula hoop" thing all season.) |
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| that's a good one old buddy |
[Dec. 13th, 2009|10:50 pm] |
I saw a stage production of A Christmas Carol today. I love Dickens, I will always love A Christmas Carol. Even if they don't do smoking tricks in it. |
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