Thursday, July 28, 2011

Zzzzz

I am too tired to string coherent thoughts together. Instead you should go here, for there are some truly awesome and amusing things happening there at the moment. In fact I may just set this blog up to redirect there as it would be far more enjoyable for all of you. Allegedly.

We watched Sucker Punch the other night. For a movie with no plot it was alright. Certainly pretty, but it's Snyder so that's pretty much the default setting. I can't really recommend it, but it wasn't the worst thing I've ever seen either.

I can recommend you go watch this though. Can not wait for that to come out. Day one.

I think that's about all I'm good for at the moment.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

More noise than signal

Kiss Me Deadly is a great example of film noir. Detective Mike Hammer gets roped into a case by a dame and then stumbles his way through a plot that ends with quite a bang. If you like old detective movies, this one fits the bill. Some truly wonderful moments in this one. Track it down.

Hatchet was a decent old school slasher. I'm beginning to like Adam Green. And it had some really funny lines. It would have fit right in with anything we watched in High School.

Jo Nesbo's The Snowman was an interesting Scandinavian thriller. It follows detective Harry Hole as he confronts Norway's first serial killer. Or at least first acknowledged one. I still haven't read Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but I can see why there's some appeal to foreign crime fiction. This one had a nicely escalating plot and some pretty dramatic moments. Worth reading.

I've been hearing the siren song of the Dungeon Crawl of late and so I've gotten back to Dungeon Hunter: Alliance - still lots of fun it is. Although I do not approve of giving the enemies bows. It's my job to stand back and pick them off, not the other way around. And those magic users!

My sisters have started the campaign to try and convince me to drive down to Arizona for my birthday this year early. I remain pretty steadfastly unconvinced of the merits of this campaign. Mass chaos and uncertain sleeping conditions are more bugs than features. Although, yes, it would be nice to see everyone. We should just meet in Moab and take over the Aarchway Inn again.

Fortunately it's a three day weekend. I'm feeling a strong need to sleep through it...

Thursday, July 14, 2011

From amusing to not so

I recently had the chance to read The Adventures of the Princess and Mr Whiffle: The Thing Under the Bed by Patrick Rothfuss. Yes, I've mentioned him before. I am very torn on what to say about the book. It's a picture book, that's obvious from the outside. It's also subversively brilliant. I think I'll leave it as that as you should all track down a copy and read it for yourselves. If you choose to read it to young, impressionable children types stop at ending the first. You have been warned. Otherwise enjoy it. And once you've read it go back through it again and really look at the pictures (no really looking at the pictures the first time!). It's truly a brilliant book and there's a lot packed in. I'm a little in awe actually.

So. The Fit decided it was done going about a week ago. Lovely wife managed to get it into the shop bright and early this morning. Where they promptly ignored it for several hours. Not impressed. They finally did get a look at it, realized some parts were bad and then informed us that they didn't actually have said parts, but they'd show up by tomorrow at 4... Impression now below sea level. Fortunately I've been able to drive our other car to work, but that's left lovely wife a little stranded the last couple days. And we actually had things that needed to be done today. Honda won't get all that amazing a review from us this time should we actually get a survey. On top of all that lovely wife has plans tomorrow that this is once again going to get in the way of. Oh well. The silver lining is that at least the parts themselves are still under warranty so that saves us about $700. We still have to pay the $200 for installation and adjustments though. There goes the lovely little bonus we got from work the other day...

The kids have decided to re-enact that Calvin and Hobbes story line where he finds the injured critter and tries to take care of it prior to dying like most injured critters tend to do. They are going the baby bird route. I believe we have sacrificed a wash cloth and some sugar water.

The recent animated film The Illusionist (not to be confused with the Ed Norton live action flick from a few years back) by the guy that did Triplets of Belleville is amazingly beautiful to look at (and features Scotland - there are some great scenes of Edinburgh as well as landmarks that I actually recognized) but something of a downer. The rabbit is pretty awesome though. It's worth watching, but do take note that it's not exactly a happy tale.

I managed to once again squash those puny investigators as we played Mansions of Madness over the weekend. It was a pretty good game. I liked the scenario we were playing and even have a few ideas about things I'd try differently if we were to do it again. Lovely wife then proved quite the rail baron and eked out a victory in Ticket to Ride: Marklin. Gotta watch her like a hawk. That game really plays better with four or more players.

Thursday, July 07, 2011

In which I succumb to Eliot

Well, this morning certainly started not with a bang but a whimper. From my car that is. I went to leave for work only to have my car express different intentions. It contemplated starting up before deciding to die once placed in reverse. It then started up again only to display the check engine light a couple blocks down the road. So I came back home and stole lovely wife's van. I attempted to explain this to her, but she was less than conscious at 6 AM. Oh well. She figured it out. And ran around a bit in an effort to fix my car. So hopefully it's running a little better now. I suspect a bad batch of gas was the culprit. Engine was running lean. Whatever that means...

I have finished the Portal 2 single player campaign. And it was awesome. The ending is great. Such a great game - I highly recommend it to everyone (and some of those last puzzles are fiendish!). Now to attempt the co-op puzzles. Mwa ha ha ha.

McK did indeed place 2nd in the Girls' Softball league. So congrats to her. The were doing ok in what might have been the penultimate game until that third inning and the other team managed to rack up more points than they could overcome. Alas.

I am ready for summer to be over. In spite of the fact that it hasn't been around that long. It's seriously messing with my sleep schedule. Stupid heat. I'm in the wrapped in cotton insomnia phase. Not quite the waterbeds for cats phase.

We had a decent 4th if I ignore the stomach bug that attacked Saturday evening. Got dragged over to the letter 'r's so we could enjoy the show from their balcony. It was a nice fireworks show. Still kept me up too late. Apparently we scored them a few points with their neighbors when we shot off our fireworks. We bought one of the fancy no longer illegal types. I like fireworks. I think it would be fascinating to learn to make them.

In slightly amusing G news, he decided to play Uncharted at the park the other day and run away from the yetis while traversing the various playground equipment. So funny that kid. We're not waiting for Uncharted 3, nope, not at all.