Category: Nerdiness

So – House of Flying Daggers. Very very pretty. And an excellent movie…until the end. I don’t want to SPOIL anything for you, because it’s still worth seeing, but the ending is ridiculously drawn out and melodramatic. The fight scenes were excellent and they weren’t just cut thrust dodge parry, they used the environment to excellent effect. I think sometimes wuxia films go a little too far with the superhuman abilities, and that’s never more clear than in House of Flying Daggers. Jumping really high – practically flying – I’ve accepted that. Throwing knives and having them defy the laws of physics like Batman’s batarangs…that’s a little tougher to swallow.

The Christmas season doesn’t have much tradition for me…except the playing of Baldur’s Gate. Last year I didn’t have much time to waste, but this year (once my last drawing assignment was finally pegged) I have had plenty of free time, which I am putting to good use putting xvarts and tasloi to the sword. Hey – I think I’ll go do that now.

So, as I mentioned, Morbo and I watched the extended edition of Return of the King. I think it’s my least favourite of the trilogy, but that has to do with Tolkein as much as it does Peter Jackson, I’m sure. Seeing it the second time a few weeks ago definitely didn’t have the same impact as seeing it the first time in the theater. I actually got pretty tired of most of the main characters. I was tired of Frodo and Sam and Aragorn doing the same thing all through the movie. The most interesting character work in King was in and around Faramir’s father, the rest of it, for the most part, seemed same old same old. Even for movies I don’t like, I don’t usually say that they’re too long. If it’s a good film, I don’t mind it going on for 4 hours. But I will say it about Return of the King and here’s why: too much slow motion. I wonder just how much time would be shaved off the film if all the slow mo scenes were done at real time, or go mo as I like to call it.

Specifically, for the extended edition, there was some stuff I liked and some stuff I didn’t like. Gimli and dwarfs in general were made fun some more, which is lame. There was a new character called the Mouth of Sauron which I thought was great – he was played by that guy in Road Warrior who flew the gyrocopter (he’s apparently going to be in Revenge of the Sith, too). The scene where Saruman gets impaled I found extremely silly, as was the tidal wave of skulls in the…grotto of the dead. Gandalf’s confrontation with the Witch King was interesting and I think it would have been fine to keep it in the theatrical cut.

One of the best (and coolest) foes in the entire story are the ring wraiths, I don’t know why they had to kick the Witch King up a notch from what he looked like in the Fellowship – I liked him better without the funky helmet and giant flail. It just seems they went over the top in King, I guess that’s what you get when Peter Jackson is at the helm. But it’s still a cool movie. It’s very pretty, the fight scenes are dynamic and interesting despite the fact that they go on and on and involve so many combatants, and Andy Serkis’ work as Gollum is no less amazing than in Two Towers.

The extras are pretty fantastic. We didn’t have time to listen to the audio commentaries, but we watched a lot of the documentaries and I would say that as a selling point for the extended edition they exceed the deleted scenes. I’m just amazed at how much detail and craftsmanship they put into the props on that movie – things that you would never notice or even have the opporunity to see in the film. And to hear the actors and crew telling their stories and saying their goodbyes on set was just as emotional as any musically-enhanced, slow motion drama scene.

After 3 weeks of hiatus we played D&D last night, and it was good. Two players, independently of one another, managed to throw my plans out of whack. This is actually a good thing since it proves to me that they’re not just resigned to let the wind take them whichever way it blows – that they are taking an active rather than a passive role in the story. I was worried that since they are in such a dangerous and precarious situation they have been paralyzed into doing nothing that could remotely compromise their safety. Pluses and minuses either way.

It’s also a good thing because I don’t want them to feel that “my plans” are the only way that the adventure can play out. Railroading in a campaign is the #1 “DM don’t.”

Project 1: When trying to take the stitches out of your former mole-hole, a pair of hair scissors and a utility knife do not, literally, cut it. Plus I can’t see a damn thing because it’s underneath my nipple. So after trying unsuccessfully for about ten minutes (except for the bleeding and pain parts – those were successful), I gave up until Marlo arrived later in the day. Even though Marlo’s mom is a nurse, Marlo herself is pretty Squamish, I mean squeamish, so I knew it would be troublesome. But, she hit upon the idea of using a needle and that worked like gangbusters!

Project 2: I got the free bed frame from Sam by calling the Vancouver Taxi and asking for a van. There was a $10 surcharge for bed frame transport, so it ended up costing me $20 in all but I was not dissatisfied with that. Sam showed me his new surround sound system by watching the battle at the beginning of Fellowship of the Ring. It occured to me this morning that (and I know that Marlo will make me sit in the corner for speaking out of turn) the main character of the movie is probably the most boring character. I don’t blame Elijah Wood so much, there’s just not much for him to do as an actor besides looked glum and troubled. But I digress.

I cleaned out my room to some extent, and made space for the new frame. Marlo and I put together the new frame with screws and nails and two very special alan wrenches. It worked like a big wooden bed-shaped charm. Even though I love that old wooden plank that Chris Woods lovingly carpented for me close to a decade ago, I couldn’t pass up the free bedframe, so the fruit of Chris’ lathe got flushed.

Stewie: “What are we doing with this?”
Toren: “Taking it down to the basement.”
Stewie: “I thought we weren’t allowed to put our junk in there.”
Toren: “Well who’s going to know that it’s mine?”
Stewie (grabbing one end of the board and opening the door): “I guess that depends on how quiet we are taking it downstairs.”
Toren: *SLAM!*

Project 3: Last night Stewie installed into my computer, while Marlo watched Monk and I looked gayly on, several more gigabytes of hard drive space and a new video card. I now have 16 gigs of hard drive space instead of 4. Dude, that’s like four times as much hard drive space! Yeeeeeeeehawwwwwww! Stewie has a theory that my cunning plan is to stay so far behind the rest of the world technologically, that another person’s computer junk that they’re throwing away is my upgrade. I’ll never tell, except that in the early days of Windows I remember always being behind the newest version by one, so that I got Windows 95 while everyone else was getting Windows 98. The strategy there was by the time I got the OS, all the bugs had been worked out of it by everyone else.

Deep thought: I think “The Moor the Merrier” would be a good historical sitcom.

On the 19th I had a mole removed. It was right underneath my nipple. There are something like ‘the five deadly signs of moledom’ that you have to look out for. If a mole changes shape, if it’s an irregular shape, if it’s raised, if it has dark spots in it, if it’s a new mole…stuff like that. This one was new and it had dark spots, so I went to the doctor. He said “better safe than sorry” so he laid me down on the table, poked me with a needle, cut the thing out and sewed me up. Three stitches. I took it as the perfect opportunity to bail out of work last week and try to catch up on my artwork, which was overdue. When the art director initially asked me how many pages of work I wanted for the book (The Divine Quarter) – I said three pages, and that was foolish, as it turned out to be pretty unreasonable given the fact that I’m already late on another art project – (very late…as late as I’ve ever been) and I’ve still got writing to do. Anyway, Stan! was very good about the whole thing and gave me an extension, so for the first chunk of last week I managed to knock off three drawings a day, which is unheard of. Normally I do my originals at 115%-133% (sometimes larger) so that when they get shrunk down in the book they look better, but these ones were mostly 100%-115%. Still, they generally turned out fine. The company doesn’t pay quite as much as I’m used to from the other larger companies I work for, but they’re books are so well put together that I just like to do art in them so I can get contributor copies. I used Thieves Quarter book for my current campaign and it was incredibly useful. What other D&D product has maps of the sewer system under the city? Great stuff. Anyway, come mid-week it turns out that I didn’t have to run myself ragged on the art, as an editing hiccup gave me yet another 5 days leeway, so I was joyously afforded some leisure time this weekend, which I’ll tell you about, Shortly.

If not the longest, this is the most in-depth D&D campaign I’ve ever run. I’m learning a lot about galleons and sea travel from it, too. For example:

-For lavatories, the crew uses seats overhanging the deck rail at the head (bow) of the ship.
-Everyone in the crew takes turns at the watch (keeping look out). Watches last 8 hours, and are timed with an hour glass. Sand takes half an hour to run through the narrow waist of this glass bottle.
-Sailors on the ship do not have cabins. They just sleep wherever there is space.
-Strict regulations control the use of candles, because of the risk of fire.
-Damage to the rigging (the sails and ropes) is common, so every ship carries spares. Rats eat even the sails if they can, so spare sails are often stored in empty barrels.
-Seawater that seeps into the ship collects in the bilge–the space between the hold and the keel–and turns into a foul brew. A pump clears the bilges but the smell of the water is disgusting.
-Cooking facilities are different on every ship. Often there is no chimney, so the galley gets very smokey.
-Many ships carry pigs, sheep, and chickens. Fresh eggs and meat are reserved for the sick and the ship’s most senior officers.

We played D&D last night and it was fun. The gang is on board a galleon. They’ve had to be hired on as workers, which required a lot of shenanigans, since none of them (except the NPCs) have any sailor skills. The ship is under command of their enemies, so they have to constantly be careful not to expose themselves. This is particularly difficult because Paul’s wizard character used a magical ‘hat of disguise’ to get on board the ship (wizards are not allowed) and they are now travelling through a zone that negates magic. This zone surrounds an island called The Flame of Mesir-Ramok. The island is all that remains of the domain of an ancient dragon god-king, who was so nasty that all the other gods got together centuries ago to destroy him and his continent.

Anyway, Marlo’s spindly elf character (Marwen) couldn’t pass as a sailor, so she was trained to be the cook. So far, even though she took 6 ranks in the Profession: cooking skill, she’s rolled a 1 for both consecutive meals she’s prepared for the crew, and the officers are demanding that something be done about her. The salty sea-dog captain, who has a thing for elves and orchestrated the whole arrangement for Marwen to be cook in the first place, told the crew he’d see to it “personally” and demanded sexual favours from her, otherwise who knows what will happen.

Meanwhile the wizard spent the last 24 hours hiding in the spare rigging or throwing up from seasickness, or both. It’s pretty entertaining as a DM.