Howdy Folks -
Been tweaking around with my interface again (shocking, I know!), figured I’d post what I’m playing with now for the AddOn addicts out there.
Here’s a screenie with nothing targeted:
No Target
Howdy Folks -
Been tweaking around with my interface again (shocking, I know!), figured I’d post what I’m playing with now for the AddOn addicts out there.
Here’s a screenie with nothing targeted:
No Target
Just a quick note – as I’ve done for the past couple years, with Christmas and my birthday coming up fairly soon I’ve created an Amazon Wishlist for friends and family looking to tickle my gift fancy this year. As always, the WoW Gift Card is the thing that really floats my boat – since WoW is about the entire extent of my socializing and entertainment, an extra two months is always cause for celebration!
Just a quick note to let everyone know I’ll be out of town and away from the computer until around Sunday August 30th. I’ll catch up on email and forum posts when I get back.
UPDATE: Actually I’ve extended my return date three times since I’ve been here! Currently scheduled for return on Saturday September 12th.
UPDATE2: This is it now, for real – flying back to Tucson on Saturday night, September 19th … my week long visit turned into a wonderful month-long vacation and retreat.
So I just finished watching a movie that actually made me angry it was so bad: Blindness. It’s about what happens when a large city is suddenly affected by a mass outbreak of blindness, specifically the circumstances surrounding a woman mysteriously immune to the disease and her husband in one of the quarantine centers.
Those of you familiar with my wide-ranging, eclectic, omnivorous taste in movies may be surprised to find that there are, in fact, movies I don’t like. It’s rare, but it does happen.
My main complaint about this movie is its complete lack of realism. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for fantasy, science fiction, sentient grapefruits, whatever – but not in a movie that is supposed to take place in our real, contemporary world. If it’s a movie that supposed to take place in “the real world”, then the people better behave like real people or the whole thing just becomes an exercise in stupidity.
To avoid spoiling plot points, I won’t list some of the more annoying examples until the end of the post (after the “Read on …” break). For now, suffice to say – many of the reactions of both individuals and the government / military are just stupid, and ridiculously contrived to fit the plot rather than to make any sense.
That right there was enough to destroy the entire film for me. I barely cared about any of the characters because they didn’t register as ‘real’ people, just actors going through their badly-written motions.
The reason this made me angry is because the premise of the film is awesome, could have really explored some interesting, thought provoking stuff. Instead it used that premise to shoehorn in nonsensical scenes and belabor obvious points.
Grr.
Giving this one a score of 4 out of 10. It would have been lower, but there were glimpses here and there of much better material hidden beneath the tripe.
Greetings all!
I’ve been back from Vegas for a few weeks now – had fun, took many pictures of the casinos we trekked through, I’ll try to get those uploaded to a gallery soon.
It seems impossible, but Christmas is once again just around the corner – as happens every year, I remember now my thoughts of last year, thinking to myself “Well there’s no way I’ll still be in the same horrible state of mind next Christmas as I am this year”. And the year before that, and before that, going back more years than I care to count.
Anyway, the reason I’m thinking of Christmas in early November is because I’ve had a couple people poking around already for gift ideas for Christmas and my birthday (same day!) – so, I’ve updated my Amazon wishlist for friends and family with gift-giving on their minds:
The big thing for this year of course is the new World of Warcraft expansion, “Wrath of the Lich King”. My dad and sister were kind enough to pitch in on that one as an early present, so I should be playing it in less than a week – woooo!
Well folks – visitors to TheMook.Net, Laid Back Assassins, SoF2 players, MookUI users, GURPS players, and any of the other sundry net crawlers who frequent these pages: I’ll be offline for a week (that’s right! a week!) while vacationing in Las Vegas with my family.
It will be unusual to be completely off the internet for so long (I’m not bringing my laptop), but my guess is there might just be enough interesting things going on in Vegas to keep my mind off it.
I hope everyone has as good a week as I plan to. I’ll catch up on email and forum posts once I get back, and I’ll be sure to take some pics … until then: be well!
So I notice it’s been nearly three months since last I posted. No surprise there, I tend to live in my own time continuum where weeks and months fly by and crawl by simultaneously. But eventually something sufficiently motivating will occur and I’ll do a little typing.
I just found out that George Carlin died yesterday, of heart problems. Sad news to hear. I’ve always had a lot of respect for Carlin – we certainly disagreed on a lot of things, but that’s completely irrelevant to me, because he was a thinker (and incredibly funny).
In particular he would think me a fool for believing in God: he passionately believed that all religion was the worst kind of ridiculous make-believe. But he was a thinker, he came by his beliefs after a lot of time and energy, and I have infinitely more in common with a man like that than with the countless hordes of my fellow believers who give no thought whatsoever to anything deeper than what’s on tv tonight.
My faith didn’t just fall from the sky one day. It is what it is today because of untold hours of thinking, reading, writing, meditating, praying; I’ve looked inside myself, outside myself, considered dozens of viewpoints about the meaning of life and humanity’s place in the universe. In short, I’ve worked at it – I’ve taken the time to consider the profound questions, the important truths, and while Carlin would doubtless be disappointed at my conclusions, I like to think he would respect the thought and self-examination involved in the process.
George Carlin was foul-mouthed, brutally honest, and very, very funny. He was a great comedian, but not a clown or a buffoon. He entertained his audiences by challenging them to think – think about themselves, think about those they allow to govern them, think about the world around them.
I’m sure many will fondly remember Carlin for his classic bits, like ‘Seven Dirty Words’, or his memorable movie roles, like “Bill and Ted’s” Rufus, or even his TV role as ‘Mr. Conductor’ on “Shining Time Station”. Here is one of my favorite Carlin routines – I’ll miss ya George.
P.S.
The irony of this post’s title does not escape me – I believe George’s exact thought would be, “He didn’t ‘pass’ anything! He fuckin’ died!”
P.P.S.
Or, as my good friend Hydrophidian put it: “George Carlin Passes – TOUCHDOWN!” I think Carlin would have appreciated that.
I am so, so unbelievably upset right now! I’m amazed I can even type my hands are shaking so bad from anger and shock.
It was supposed to be a great day. I’ve been planning on getting a tattoo for years, and my sister offered to pay for it with some of the tax refund she got back. So I made an appointment last week and today was the day, 9am, first thing in the morning.
Got a little lost finding the place, but was still there before 9:00 so no biggie. The place seemed a lot dingier than it did when I had made the appointment, suddenly I was thinking about hepatitis and infection and all sorts of horrible things, and the artist who was doing my arm either smelled like cologne or alcohol. Since it was still so early in the morning I chose to believe it was cologne.
So Gary Gygax died yesterday, at the age of 69.
I know that for very many of you reading this, your first thought is ‘Oh that’s too bad – who is Gary Gygax?’
He was the co-creator of the role-playing game ‘Dungeons & Dragons’; which gave birth to a galaxy of other role-playing games like Traveller, GURPS, Vampire: the Masquerade, and literally hundreds of others; which directly paved the way and provided inspiration for countless computer role-playing games, novels, and movies over the past 30+ years.
It’s hard to overestimate the influence Gary had on the landscape of modern entertainment – things would be very different today were it not for his ‘little game’.
But it’s much more than that – I’m not sure I can adequately explain what gaming meant to me growing up, or the impact it has had on making me who I am.
Made a few more site changes and updates for our enjoyment:
I think that’s everything. You know the drill – please let me know if you notice any errors, have any suggestions or comments, etc. Thanks for hanging out at TheMook.Net. 
