Category: Nerdiness

Tonight at Anghold’s we (Yvonne, Ursula, John Crawford, and…Greg?) watched Tron and Logan’s Run. Many among the group had not seen either. There was a goodly amount of MST3King, mostly about the homoerotic nature of some of the Tron scenes. It had been a long time since I had seen Logan’s Run – it get’s really slow in the last third of the film. It becomes Logan’s Stroll.

Today in the astounding campaign of the World Wildlife Federation of Justice the heroes Metalligator, Invisible Fink, Go-Rilla, Otter Destruct and Drako duked it out with the villainous Dark Horse, Tarmadillo, Hypnopotamus and Rhinosferatu in a construction site. They captured everyone except Dark Horse. Lots of fun and Theo & Kate brought me a delicious bubble tea.

The San Diego Comic-Con was this weekend. I knew a couple people who went. I’ve never been. Stewie has been often. The next Star Wars movie got the title that in my brain I knew it would get: Revenge of the Sith

One article I read said “It was a risky move – some of the notoriously fickle Star Wars admirers initially bristled at previous prequel titles The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. ” – so how is yet another campy title along the lines of the precedent set ‘risky’? I actually think it is a much better – simpler title than PM or AotC.

In addition to the title, Lucasfilm also sent concept artist Ryan Church to show off drawings of a Wookie tree civilization from Episode III and played footage of Christensen’s climactic light-sabre duel – minus all the special effects – with co-star Ewan McGregor, who plays Obi-Wan Kenobi. Return of the Jedi was originally to be titled Revenge of the Jedi. Some advance promotional material even featured that title, but Lucas changed it later in production. “This time, George tells us he’s going to keep ‘Revenge’ in the title,”

This is a tough question for me, so I’ll let you work it out:

Which do you prefer, the Spider-Man movies or the X-Men movies?
And if you prefer one to the other, do you prefer the first or the second?

I got my pound of candy (licorice of course) in the mail while I was away. I got it in trade for a gmail account.

While I was away I did a lot of writing. I worked on the girly D&D campaign a lot. For a recap, the storyline is basically thus:

-PC’s (Player Character’s) wizard mentor has a prophetic dream of the apocalypse.
-Mentor sends PCs into woods to find old oracle/ranger friend to see confirm omen reliability
-While on quest group is underground in grimlock caves (grimlocks are the D&D version of morlocks)
-PCs come above ground to find the land has been afflicted by an aurora that causes blindness. During this aurora invaders from another dimension have taken over major cities and the cleric’s god has been killed.
-Home town has been evacuated, mentor and townsfolk migrated to bigger city through mountains, PCs follow trail.
-In mountains PCs meet old wizard who scries (scrying is looking through a crystal ball, basically) to find out much of what’s going on. He explains how Demon Lord of Undead (Orcus) and his new bride (Queen from alien dimension) are working on conquering the realm. This info ties in with mentor’s omen.
-Wizard (“The Hyrkanian”) sends them on mission to safeguard evil Queen’s little sister so she can return to her home dimension and possibly undo some damage.

That’s pretty much where we are now. Over the week I’ve been working on backstory and come up with some pretty interesting things for the near and far future. I would say that we’re about 2/5 of the way through the campaign, and that the group is slightly higher level than I anticipated they would be, even though I’ve been pretty stingy with the XP to hold them back to be in line with the advancement of the scenarios. Considering I’ve never DM’d a really long campaign where I had to plot out at what level the group would have to be to coincide with a given “module’s” recommended level several adventures ahead (this campaign is mostly a group of pre-published adventures that I’m stringing together with one common thread), it’s working out not too badly. No major hiccups.

I have also been working on a script for a tangentially Lovecraftian short film. I’m not ready to divulge any more info on that at this time though.

I got an email from a fellow at CBC radio who wanted to ask me some questions about D&D for a feature they may run on the 30th anniversary of the game. I may be out of town when and if they do an interview so they may just get David from Imperial Hobbies instead. Too bad, that could be fun. But we had a good long conversation on the phone about the game. We decided it’s really hard to try to explain it to someone who knew nothing about it, but we settled on a blend between a board game and a play. At least I pointed him to the Deadale Wives humourous mp3’s.

Ladies: “if you have any suggestions about female players (not necessarily the ones who play with you) I’d be interested in finding one as a possible balance for a male guest (don’t know the format yet).” Marlo? Tamara? Kate? Michelle? Kelly? Now’s your chance to be famous(ly linked to nerds).

Pick your favourite fear:

Asymmetrical things- Asymmetriphobia
Things to the left side of the body- Levophobia
Bowel movements: painful- Defecaloesiophobia
Bridges or of crossing them- Gephyrophobia
Bullets- Ballistophobia
Burglars, or being harmed by wicked persons- Scelerophobia
Chinese or Chinese culture- Sinophobia
Color yellow- Xanthophobia
Cooking- Mageirocophobia
Criticized severely, or beaten by rod or instrument of punishment- Rhabdophobia
Defeat- Kakorrhaphiophobia
Deformed people or bearing a deformed child- Teratophobia
Dining or dinner conversations- Deipnophobia
Dirty, being dirty or personal filth- Automysophobia
Englishness- Anglophobia
Erect penis- Medorthophobia
Everything- Panophobia, Panphobia, Pamphobia, or Pantophobia
Flutes- Aulophobia
France or French culture- Francophobia, Gallophobia or Galiphobia
Friday the 13th- Paraskavedekatriaphobia
God or gods- Zeusophobia
Greek or Greek culture- Hellophobia
Handwriting- Graphophobia
Kissing- Philemaphobia or Philematophobia
Knowledge- Gnosiophobia or Epistemophobia (stop reading if you’ve got this)
Mice- Musophobia, Murophobia or Suriphobia
Mirrors or seeing oneself in a mirror- Eisoptrophobia
Names or hearing a certain name- Onomatophobia
Needles- Aichmophobia or Belonephobia (Marlo?)
Objects, small- Tapinophobia
Ocean or sea- Thalassophobia
Opinions- Allodoxaphobia
Otters- Lutraphobia
Peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth- Arachibutyrophobia
Puppets- Pupaphobia
Railroads or train travel- Siderodromophobia
Relatives- Syngenesophobia
School, going to school- Didaskaleinophobia
Sharks- Selachophobia
Single: staying single- Anuptaphobia
Slime- Blennophobia or Myxophobia
Snow- Chionophobia
Stairways- Bathmophobia
Standing upright- Basistasiphobia or Basostasophobia
Step-mother- Novercaphobia
Tyrants- Tyrannophobia
Undressing in front of someone- Dishabillophobia
Ventriloquist’s dummy- Automatonophobia
Waits, long- Macrophobia
Wealth- Plutophobia
Wet dreams- Oneirogmophobia
Words, long- Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia or Sesquipedalophobia.

Satomi, Yvonne and I went to the Leaky Heaven Circus yesterday and it was really fun and wunderbar. I recommend you look into it and catch it while it’s still going. It goes to Sunday I think. http://www.leakyheaven.com
I went to their website and on the front page was the poster but it was cut up and rearranged so rather than try to figure it out I just clicked on the image and looked for an address inside the site. I found Leaky Heaven Performance Society 600 Campell Ave but it turns out that was wrong so we spent some time trying to find a poster or make calls to get the proper info. We found postcards in a community center that had the real address – 1500 block of Williams St – and when we got there it was sold out, but there was a waiting list that one could be added to, so we had our names added even though she said “it’s not looking too good.” We waited for a while and then they called out 6 more people on the waiting list, then another 6, then another 3 and so on and so on until finally we got in. So, despite my rushed research the day before, we got to see a fantastic circus, complete with madcap monkey shines, rockillicking revelry and haughty high jinks. I donated some extra money after the show was over.

We played D&D tonight and then Anghold and I went over to Ursula’s to play poker. Somehow I ended up with everyone’s money at the end of the night (even though everyone’s money was Ursula’s, and I didn’t get to keep it). I made some bold dealer plays – whatever the term is when the dealer calls what’s wild and how many rounds of how many cards are dealt – but most of my overtures were brutally frowned upon.