thebitterguy

So, yeah, Monday Cynra & I sacrificed some brain cells on the altar of Vin Diesel (he used to be a movie star, back in the '00s. Man, the AV Club can be cruel). Babylon AD was not a good movie. It was OK at best. Seriously, if I'd paid to see it, I might be a little upset. I read a review where the reviewer stated that they found the ending so disjointed they expected a "missing reel" screen, and I agree. Seriously, it made NO sense whatsoever, and the most interesting twist at the end was given away in the trailer. All the dull as shit/confusing twists they kept secret.

A few action scenes and and appearance by the David Belle Parkour and Catering Team* give it a little interest (Plus: Michelle Yeoh!) but overall, I've had better times in a dark room with my wife.

There was a trailer for Max Payne before the film and it looked significantly more interesting than I'd think a film based on a video game would be.

Of course, I think the trailer is for a different film than the one coming to theatres. The trailer looked like it was for some kind of supernatural cops n' robbers film. The descriptions of the film and the game it's based on seem to indicate an awareness of basic mythology, but no actual supernatural elements.

And I don't think it's just a case of cute edits and stuff. This looked like actual shit flying around the screen type of stuff. Ghostbusters with .45s instead of proton packs.

And does everyone else agree that asking Ghostbusters cosplayers "What are you supposed to be, some kinda cosmonaut?" will never get old?

But everything else about Max Payne indicates it's a bog standard, mundane, revenge tale; if you take out bullet time (which is almost ten years old! Count the grays, kids!) it's pretty much been done to death back when talkies were innovative.

*Not actual name.

I went to the library today and got a the CD for Graceland out of the library. Apparently it's an Enhanced CD, which means it has stuff on it. Apparently I need to install a 12 year old copy of Quicktime to see it.

Now, my current version doesn't seem to recognize it. Is it too old for me to see?

[Poll #1253102]

I figure since I'm laid out on the couch unable to turn my head more than 8 degrees, I thought I'd ask a question.

So, I headed to the wellness centre this morning to get back onto the regular workout horse, and seem to have found myself also on the sore neck pony.

I was doing a press on the incline bench and arched into the last rep. That, ladies and germs, is what's known as a mistake. I'm gonna go home tonight and shotgun Ovaltine and schnapps (So it's an old man's drink! Fuck off!) with Advil and slap a heating pad onto my shoulders.

Man, you never appreciate neck mobility until you lose it.

We did Centre Island on Sunday, and today we relaxed and watched Babylon AD.

Centre Island remains nice, and the ferry back is always an experience. We grabbed a nice big steak from the farmer's market on Saturday, and it was delicious, even if my cut was a bit overdone (and Cynra's a bit underdone).

Babylon AD? Well, I'm interested in reading the BDs it's based on.

I've also started playing some of the games from The Orange Box and Bioshock, which is just as crazy-awesome as everyone said it was. Man. Big Daddies are nasty.

Feh. Bedtime, and work tomorrow.

Wait, why are they writing a contract for an unsanctioned match? This never makes sense.

I a totally hoping for a Y2J/Michaels match at Wrestlemania with Flair in Michaels corner and Bret Hart in Y2J's.

Hey, a boy can dream, right?

• 19:59 Gotta love the dinosaurs at the ROM. #
• 20:20 There are university students here. Why aren't they out getting drunk? #
• 20:38 Tyrannosaurus must have been the biggest jerk in the Cretaceous. "Hey there, bitches, I'm T-fuckin-Rex!" #
• 20:41 Then he'd wave his tiny arms in the air. #
• 01:16 @autodidactic Because I seek wisdom. #
• 02:15 Diesel is less than unleaded! Huzzah! #
• 09:47 In a just world, @redlianak would have as many followers as @feliciaday, but this is not a just world. #
• 13:04 This double flinging thing? Don't like it. #
• 13:34 Okay, fine, I can live with the flinging. #
• 13:36 @Rassey who thought releaseing Disaster movie was a good idea, period? #

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On the plus side, the weather has been so gray today that I'm kind of glad that we weren't able to go to the Ex.

Someone suggested going on Sunday, but there's also a suggestion to go to Centre Island. So probably gonna get to do something sometime.

Today is the wife's birthday, so I guess I should get her a card, eh?

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What's odd is that we had absinthe_dot_ca and vampyrehunterm over for dinner last night (and to be destroyed in Scene it! DESTROYED! GORMAN! kinra! I challenge you!), and vampyrehunterm mentioned she'd had a desire to try out paranormal investigating as a career, even though she's never had an encounter with Spirits Beyond.

The only spirits I've ever had an encounter with have been grain based, if you get my drift. Or possibly grape. Seriously, I don't believe in ghosts.

So I'm digging through my new acquisitions. The Runequest boxed set is... Man, I think I kind of missed out on something back in the day, eh? Perhaps I would have liked this a lot back in high school, but it's quite the thing to see. It's a deep box (Battlesystem or DC Heroes second ed deep) and it's got five rulebooks and a couple reference books, a map of "Fantasy Europe" that's pretty dull (it’s just like regular Europe, but Fantastic! And by Fantastic, we mean pretty not fantastic), and a few dice.

It also has a product registration card that lets you Do A Friend a Favour and send them a copy of AH's colour catalogue (Only one dollar! But an 1983 dollar, so that would be about $7.98 today). The catalogue that comes in the set is, sadly, only in B&W.

But, seriously, there’s a lot of game in here. The Guide to Glorantha is pretty thin (32 pages?) but has a nice amount of info. There was a Guide to Ernalda (?) for sale as well, but by then I was totally tapped out. I had managed to get half of the members of Power Pack (just need Lightspeed now) and the Isaiah Bradley Captain America Herocilx, though. And Pete Wisdom for the wife.

But, yes, it’s very neat looking, and I like the cosmology of Glorantha so far (but a lozenge floating in the sea? Okay, then). It’s a shame I’m only 22 years late coming to this party. Ah, well.

Of course, like everything I read I the first thing I wonder about it is “could I use it to play Al-Qadim?” I think that it seems a solid enough system that it would work quite well. I don’t know what level of lethality it imposes on PCs (it IS BRP, though) since I like my sand fantasy to be swashbuckling, but I do like how the magic system works on a general level. All pipe dreams, in any case.

What’s kind of impressive is that this boxed set (once again, an impressive boxed set) retailed for $38 in 1986. That’s a fair amount. I don’t remember what my red box cost (since I didn’t actually buy it for myself) but I think I know one reason why I never picked it up. I wasn’t going to be making a decent wage for a couple years yet, anyway.

The catalogue indicates you can get a Player’s Box for $20 and a GM’s box for $25, which each have about half the contents of the deluxe box.

I loved one particular bit from the catalogue:

"We spend more on product development than we make in profit"

You ask me, that isn’t exactly a great way to sell your organization. I mean, sure, it means nothing; if printing wasn’t crazy expensive back then, it’s entirely possible that development costs were the most significant part of the company’s expenses (especially if they rolled salaries into it) and it might be more than profit, depending on if they mean net or gross, yadda yadda.

But it just gives a weird impression. Plus, I’d assume that the licensing fees for James Bond might show up somewhere in there, too.

So, Cynra & I took in The Dark Knight at our local Imax theatre (which was about 40 klicks from home, but local is what you make of it) and on the way out, we noticed a “see Kung Fu Panda in Imax for extra awesome!”

What amused me about that was the fact that during Kung Fu Panda’s opening fantasy sequence, Po, the panda in question, says “there is no charge for awesomeness”. But if you want to see it in Imax, you will, in fact, have to pay a hefty awesomeness surcharge.