Author: Toren

Toren’s Video Lending Service

Hey, frenemies in Vancouver – tonight after watching a bunch of Clone High I decided to write down all (or most) of the movies I have on video and DVD. The list is below. Do you have anything that I don’t have? Would you like to do a lending trade? Let me know!

ON VHS:
Akira
Alien
Aliens
Amelie
American Beauty
Apocalypse Now
The Big Kahuna
Blood Simple
Box of Moonlight
Brazil
Bourne Identity
Bottle Rocket
A Bug’s Life
Bridge over the River Kawai
Big Trouble in Little China
Castle of Cagliostro
A Chinese Ghost Story
Clockwork Orange
Comedian
City of Lost Children
Crumb
Conan the Barbarian
Dark Crystal
Day of the Triffids
Dead Poet’s Society
Die Hard
Donnie Darko
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Drunken Master 2
Dress to Kill (Eddie Izzard)
Evil Dead 2
The Exorcist
Fight Club
Forbidden Planet
Fubar
Final Fantasy
Ginger Snaps
Ghostbusters
Godfather
Green Mile
Ghostbusters 2
Ghostworld
Grosse Point Blank
Grave of Fireflies
Happiness
How to Get ahead in Advertising
Heavy Metal
The Hobbit
Hudsucker Proxy
High Fidelity
Joe Gould’s Secret
Impostors
I Married a Strange Person
Iron Giant
Kiki’s Delivery Service (Miyazaki)
La Femme Nikita
Life is Beautiful
Laputa: Castle in the Sky (Miyazaki)
Last Night
Life of Brian
LA Confidential
Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
Light Years
Magnolia
Man who Wasn’t There
Matrix
A Mighty Wind
Meet the Feebles
Monsters Inc
The Majestic
Men in Black
Mystery Science Theater 3000 The Movie (This Island Earth)
Other MST3Ks
Naked Lunch
Nausicaa in the Valley of the Wind
Porco Rosso (Crimson Pig – Miyazaki)
Peewee’s Big Adventure
Princess Mononoke
Pulp Fiction
Resurrected
Rushmore
The Ring
Ringu
Safe Men
Sixth Sense
So I Married an Ax Murderer
Saving Private Ryan
South Park
Schizopolis
Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger
The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad
Golden Voyage of Sinbad
Spider-Man
Sexy Beast
Spirited Away
Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan
Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home
Star Wars: A New Hope
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
Star Wars: Return of the Jedi
The Thing
Time Bandits
Twin Town
Toy Story
Trees Lounge
Tron
True Romance
Unbreakable
Vidocq
The Usual Suspects
Waiting for Guffman
Witness for the Prosecution
Withnail and I
X-Men
Secret of Nimh
Yellow Submarine
You can Count on Me
Miller’s Crossing
Top Secret
Time Masters
Lifeforce
Terminator
Panic Room
Powerpuff Girls: The Movie
From Beyond
G.I.Joe The Movie
Fantastic Planet
Transformers the Movie
Ninja Scroll
Reanimator
Citizen Cane
Mars Attacks
The Negotiator
The Shipping News
Hearts in Atlantis
Blow
Finding Forrester
Das Boot
Maltese Falcon
Uzumaki (Spirals)
Tetsuo the Iron Man
The Insider
Donnie Brasco
Mad Max
Dracula

ON DVD:
Animatrix
Army of Darkness
Barton Fink
Best in Show
The Big Lebowski
Blade Runner
Laputa: Castle in the Sky (Miyazaki)
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Dagon
Fargo
Gladiator
Galaxy Quest
Justice League
Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Miller’s Crossing
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
O Brother Where Art Thou?
Princess Bride
Royal Tenenbaums
School House Rock
Shawshank Redemption
Star Wars: Attack of the Clones
A Beautiful Mind

It snowed for most of the day yesterday but now it’s all a-sunning and the snow, she’s practically gone. I had a dream this morning that I was at Chris & Nicole’s (Green Ronin Publishing) playing some board game that I didn’t understand. At the end of it, nobody was quite sure who won. Is this a metaphor for my life?

Another not-so-random thought:
I think The Meta-Four would be a cool name for a band, or a superhero group.

All of my conversational dialogue writing for the ESL books is now done (at least for the book they’re working on at the moment). I have badgered many of you about certain subjects over the past couple months. I appreciate all the help. Here are two samples of the final results.

JUNIOR: Dad, they have an awesome webcam at London Drugs, will you get it for me?
DAD: How about you buy it yourself?
JUNIOR: Duh, ’cause I don’t have any money!
DAD: You should start saving up your allowance in case your mother and I get hit by a meteor.
JUNIOR: If a meteor kills you I’ll inherit the house.
DAD: You’re free to take the house as long as you don’t mind the meteor holes. What have you been spending all your allowance on?
JUNIOR: Stuff.
DAD: Crack cocaine?
JUNIOR: Come on Dad, be serious.
DAD: What do you want a webcam for? Nevermind, I don’t want to know. I’ll start buying you webcams as soon as you learn how to fix my car.
JUNIOR: How about a raise, then?
DAD: Is it your birthday already and nobody told me?
JUNIOR: No but I deserve a raise. Tommy Fielding gets twice as much I do.
DAD: You better start buttering him up since you’re more likely to get the cash from him than from me. You know when I was a boy I didn’t get any allowance at all.
JUNIOR: Yeah and you had to walk two hundred miles to school in the snow, and you ate newspapers for breakfast. I know. Welcome to the 21st century, Dad.
DAD: You know you’re awfully snippy for a kid who’s begging for money.
JUNIOR: Come on….I’ve been doing all my chores, and my grades are up. Won’t you at least loan me the money?
DAD: Oh, I guess so. I’ll give you a loan even though you don’t deserve it. You can pay it back with your allowance.
JUNIOR: Thanks, Dad!
DAD: Wait a minute, how much is this webcam?
JUNIOR: $149.99
DAD: Sweet merciful Christmas!!!

LUCAS: Augh! I’m so mad at the public library.
ANGELA: You can’t be mad at a public institution.
LUCAS: I can and I will!
ANGELA: Why mad?
LUCAS: They wouldn’t let me check out any books because I had borrowed some book on samurai in 1997 and brought it back late.
ANGELA: How late?
LUCAS: Twenty-three dollars in overdue fines late, that’s how late.
ANGELA: Then maybe it’s time to pay the $23?
LUCAS: Maybe it’s time to burn the damn thing to the ground.
ANGELA: You could go to another library.
LUCAS: They’re all connected, you know? They’re all branches of the same big library. It’s like the cola wars – both Pepsi and Coke are owned by the same company.
ANGELA: I don’t know if that’s true. In any case, there are a billion libraries.
LUCAS: A billion? A billion? Your unabashed hyperbole only makes me angrier! I thought that there was a statute of limitations on late fees. Don’t they go away after five years?
ANGELA: Nope, they are like hepatitis C – it stays with you forever.
LUCAS: Except you can’t pay $23 to get rid of hep C therefore you’re metaphor sucks.
ANGELA: Be that as it may, the libraries in the suburbs are not affiliated with the city library. You just need to leave the city.
LUCAS: Hmmm, I could avoid the late fines however that would mean taking the transit out to the ‘burbs. I don’t know which is worse.
ANGELA: Yeah life is tough. Still, you only have yourself to blame for not returning your samurai book on time. Perhaps some ritual suicide is in order?
LUCAS: Very funny.

Holy smokes – the snow! Hooray!
Originally we (Anghold, Marlo & I) were going to go to the PALM (Paperfolders Around the Lower Mainland) origamist potluck tonight, but that’s a snow-go now. (That means we’re not going). Last night I treated (trot?) myself to pizza because, well, just because. It was no gingery sweet yams but it did the job. The Comicshop on 4th is having a big RPG blowout and I’m tempted to go, but I think I will resist that temptation on the grounds that it would probably be in my best interest(s).

I like snow. Some people don’t. I like it, I think, because it’s rare. If I lived in Calgary I probably would not be so fond of it. The Sunshine Market was closed yesterday so I couldn’t restock my Christmasy oranges. I think that’s my #1 plan for today: buy more oranges.

I got practically no email yesterday. I guess everyone is out holidaying. I don’t blame them. Since there was precious little going on internet-wise I actually got some work done. My bosses will be so proud of me! I also re-organized my VHS collection – just the movies, not the cartoons. I keep having this schism about whether or not I should keep the DVDs separate from the VHS tapes, or mingle them all together alphabetically on the shelves. I am going with the latter, for now, but if tradition holds I will go back to segregating them. I still have a bunch of movies in my collection that I haven’t watched yet: Godfather; Grave of Fireflies; Kiki’s Delivery Service; others. I’ve just been waiting for the right time to watch them (that time being when I can actually pay attention to them) and it has yet to come. I checked in on Weetzie, Ed’s cat, again yesterday and picked up some more vids from him: Ringu; Fubar; Meet the Feebles (a weird R-rated muppet movie from Peter Jackson – yes that Peter Jackson); Waiting for Guffman; Cradle Will Rock. The last two I have seen before.

It started snowing around 1:30 this morning so I went out for a stroll in the snow.

Don We Now Our Gay Apparel

I got socks for Christmas! Stripey socks! Huzzah!

I am typing this from the home of Anghold, though it won’t get posted until I
get back home. I realized today that my cold has been gone for a while. Funny
how quickly you forget something was wrong with your body when it stops being
wrong. WRONG!!!

I’m helping to make the December 25th dinner. We’re having tofurkey with all
the tofrimmings.

Now comes the list of all the Christmas swag I got (not including cards):

Stewie got me a bunch of miniatures suitable for Spaceship Zero. They’re fantastic and maybe I’ll take the time over the holidays to paint a couple. There are doctors and space pirates and guys in space suits. Some females mixed in the bunch, which is swellariffic. He also got me a book on the making of The Big Lebowski – one of my favouritest films.

Anghold and Hoolie got me an amazing comforter, which blew my mind and is going to go on my bed the minute I get home. Kodos will be excited. I also got the stripey socks in my stocking (socks within socks it’s like some crazy moebius strip) along with a much-needed toothbrush and some licorice flavoured twizzlers to negate the toothbrushing. And earplugs and lip balm and chocolates. I also got a bookmark – you know…for marking books!

What did you get?

Does anyone know when or if (or what) episode 87 of Cold Squad is on? Apparently “Dies ist Unverschamtheit” is being used in the episode. In other Thickets news…”Shoggoths Away” is being used in a Flash promo for a game called The Everlasting. I don’t know much about it, but I probably should.

I’m taking care of Ed & Janet’s cat while they’re on vacation. I get to take advantage of Ed’s vast video and DVD collection. Right now I’m borrowing Boogie Nights, Ghost World and Monty Python’s Meaning of Life while I work on Anghold’s Dec 25 present.

Did I ever tell you the story, gentle reader, of when I took care of Carina & Tim’s cats while they were away, a few weeks ago? Well they had The Temple of Elemental Evil (hey! synchronicity!) on their computer so whenever I went over there to feed the cats I would stay for a few hours and play said video game. Of course, I would never pick up the phone while I was there because, hey – it wasn’t for me. You all know my hours. I usually stay up until sometime between 3am and 6am, and such was also the case at Carina’s. When Carina & Tim got back from their vacation they told me they got all these noise complaints from a neighbor, and were being threatened with eviction. Now I couldn’t see how anyone could say that I was being noisy – I was playing the game at a normal volume level. Sometimes I kept the TV on when I wasn’t there, so that, you know…burglers would think twice if they looked through the windo. But again, normal volume. If not quieter than normal. Still, I was afraid Carina and Tim were never going to speak to me again, but as it turns out, the lady was crazy. And also it was somebody else in the building who was making the noise she was complaining about. And also the landlord apologized for overreacting. So everything turned out fine and they even invited me over to Tim’s birthday get-together the other day. And that’s my story.

Go Growlbacks!

Finally we (The Vancouver Gaming Guild) got our new site up at www.vancouvergamingguild.com complete with forums. I’m excited. And exciting. Let the nerds convene where they belong: online. We are pushing our big convention in January – Weathertop. Come one come all and play some games.

Made possible by Shawn, Stewie, Adrian, Michael Beck, Kathryn and Slater.

Stewie has left the building. I hope he will bring back some of his mother’s fantastic cooking. In the meantime, Kodos and I are partying on his bed. I gave him his Dec 25 present. He gave me two! One of them he made me open: it was a bunch of miniatures that fit perfectly with Spaceship Zero. I’m excited to run a game next month.

Well the episode of Enterprise wasn’t the Vulcan zombie episode, and it was in fact kind of sucky, and I’m really tired of Captain Archer being all deathly serious all the time. It was the one with the slave girl with eerie powers. The end was a lot more satisfying than the beginning or the middle though.

Tomorrow Stewie goes away for a week. So – I should give him his Dec 25 present.