I wonder if anyone would be interested in attending this anime convention which I just discovered. I’m particularly interested in seeing the panels with voice actors and voice directors, but that’s just a small part of the con. There’s also gaming happening, though there seems to be zero structure to it at this point. The bad news is it’s $35 to get in. I am trying to contact the organizers to ask some questions – maybe I can get a deal if I run some Spaceship Zero. It’s August 20-22 which is a little poopy.
They told me it was a good idea…
…so I thought I’d share it with you.
Whenever I save a file to my hard drive that I know is only temporary, I save it with the word ‘toast’ in it. So, let’s say I’m downloading an exe file to install a new program, or I’m saving a jpeg that I want to convert to a gif and then send it to someone. When I hit SAVE AS I’ll add the word ‘toast’ into the file name, so the file ilikeyourwiggle.jpg becomes toastilikeyourwiggle.jpg or ilikeyourwiggletoast.jpg or some such.
Then, when it’s clean up time, I just do a search on my hard drive for the word ‘toast’ and when they all come up I can send them to the trash can with…as Grand Moff Tarken says…one swift stroke!
I Can't believe it's not butterday
It’s already the 12th? Crazyness.
Tonight I played D&D. It was mostly the party trudging across the blighted hills without incident, but there was an encounter with strange beetle swarms, and a rogue displacer beast. Then when they used the cromlech to mystically transport to the continent of Maal, they appeared in the middle of a fight, and couldn’t see much because of the mist (a byproduct [biproduct?] of the teleportation) but they were attacked by these floating demonic jellyfish which had paralytic venom in their stingers, and that’s just for starters.
Today I did some voiceover work, but due to confusion about the time difference between here and PEI, I couldn’t get ahold of the director so I had to direct myself. I hope they turn out alright. Right now I’m uploading angry amounts of wav files to the ftp space I got in a trade for a gmail address.
Wonder Toren Power – ACTIVATE!
Sixteen episodes of original Superfriends (1973) plus 16 episodes of All New Superfriends Hour (each of which actually consists of 4 different tales) (1977) plus 16 episodes of Challenge of the Superfriends (1978) plus 24 episodes of World’s Greatest Superfriends (1979) plus 62 shorts plus 8 episodes of Legendary Super-Powers Show plus 8 episodes of Galactic Guardians equals 150 episodes of Superfriends, only one of which I am missing (Shark Attack) as of receiving a new tape in the mail today! Neato.
What? No Yog-Sothoth?
Many of you have seen my felt Cthulhu on the bookshelf in my living room. Tim Emrick made it along with all the other characters in my “Where the Great Old Ones Are” drawing. He’s put up the last two on ebay- Chaugner Faugn http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5513207614 and Ithaqua http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5513207006
Meanwhile, not far away: The Cobalt is closing.
Scare Tactics
scary
Function: adjective
Definition: frightening
Synonyms: alarming, bloodcurdling, chilling, creepy, hair-raising, hairy, horrendous, horrifying, intimidating, shocking, spine-chilling, spooky, terrifying, unnerving
Let’s agree on some ground terms as there are different types of horror films. I’ve split into four categories the techniques (tactics, if you prefer) commonly used in, and often defining, horror films.
The Gross-Factor: they pull out all the intestines and eye slashing stops; most zombie films I’ve seen rely on the gross-factor to get by.
The Creep-Factor: Ringu, Jacob’s Ladder and even Donnie Darko are great examples.
The Suspense Factor: this is my favourite – think of the part in Alien when Dallas was crawling through the ducts with a flame-thrower. Terminator, Jaws & The Shining had lots of it.
The “BOO!” factor: this is the one where your senses are assaulted by sudden flashes of visuals and audio – it’s all I remember about Event Horizon and it’s the cheapest kind of horror.
Now let’s look at a few really good horror films.
Alien. This came out when I was 9. I don’t remember when I saw it. Very little gross-factor, as far as I’m concerned. There’s the chest bursting scene and apart from a few short scenes of blood, that’s it. They’re all well done and I wouldn’t say they’re gratuitous. Oh, I guess the scene where Ash goes nuts is kind of gross, but still, I’m sticking with my low GF rating.
The Ring. High on the Creepy Factor. Disturbing and unsettling. I don’t remember any GF but there was definitely some Suspense Factor. If I recall correctly the BOO Factor was minimal to nonexistent.
King Kong (’76). I saw this when I was quite young, and it had an impact on me. Fighting with that snake had some GF but to me the most horrifying will always be the part when Kong was spinning that log to make the people fall down into the chasm. That was probably a bit too intense for me at my tender young age, so that’s stuck with me.
The Shining. Lots of creepiness, lots of suspense. No Gross-Factor to speak of. A real class-act.
John Carpenter’s The Thing. There was a fair amount of Gross-Factor in this – but it was divided between the blood ‘n’ gore kind of gross and the horrific-looking-slimy-shapechanging-alien kind of gross. Mostly it was suspense, with a touch of creepiness and a tiny smidgeon of BOO-factor at the end.
The Blair Witch Project. No Gore-Factor, no BOO-Factor. All SF and CF. I saw this in the theater and it actually had me shivering, but that could have been because the air-conditioning was up way too high. Also it played upon my fears of being in the woods at night (which comes down to bears, actually).
The Exorcist. Demon vomit definitely qualifies as gross, but I would say the main technique here is the Creepy-Factor.
Yvonne asked me if there were any movies that scared me. Well, if we’re talking about jumping in your seat because the scene went from quiet and serene to violently loud, then yes, Punch Drunk Love scared me when the semi came out of nowhere.
However, if you’re talking about a movie that leaves you with nightmares and noctiphobia, then the only movie that’s truly given me the heebie-jeebies in my adult life would have to be The Blair Witch Project. But they have yet to make a movie that is so scary that I wouldn’t watch it alone.
How's that for a berry blast?
And by that I mean…a blast to your berries?
Strawberries are mean. Because you’ll spend five minutes going through all the baskets to find the best “package” and then you’ll spend your three or four bucks, and then you’ll get home and enjoy them until you get to the very last one, which is – despite all appearances – mouldy and makes you run gagging towards the sink or garbage and spoils the whole experience. Mean old strawberries.
Tonight we played D&D and I was thoroughly amused. I think it’s safe to say that it brought out the best character roleplaying I’ve seen from the group. There were a lot of tense moments, and a lot of comical moments. In the end, they finished their current quest – so now it’s on the to next one!
Did you wreck the car? Did you raise the dead?
Today and yesterday will be forever known as The Two Days of Zombies. In a strange flash of synchronicity, I was invited to a new roleplaying game by Palle, the gm of that Call of Cthulhu campaign that I was in for oh…almost two years. The game is described as “Punk Rockers versus armies of Zombies. 1983. A punk rock dance club in a bad part of East LA, on a hot Friday night.” They system we’re using is FUDGE – which I’ve never played before but apparently used a lot of d6’s. Tonight we’re making up characters. Mine will be modelled after Igby from the movie Igby Goes Down.
The other part of the synchronicity is that last night we had a Zombie-themed TV marathon. We watched the zombie episode of Buffy, the zombie episode of Spaced, the zombie episode of Kolchack, Shaun of the Dead (which I liked a lot better when I saw the whole thing all the way through), Day of the Dead, and the zombie segment of Treehouse of Horror IV. And there were donut holes and watermelon slices, amongst other things.
Just a word of advice
If you go to Popcap.com and start playing Astro Pop (“galactic puzzlement!”) and enjoy it, do yourself a favour and resist the urge to download the “deluxe” version, because you will find that just when you’re getting your highest score ever on your highest level ever, and things are really starting to heat up, the program will close and tell you that your 60 minutes of trial time is over and that you need to register for $20 to play more, and you will want to put something large and brick-tasting through your computer monitor.
A hot time in the old dungeon tonight.
These grapes are shaped like pears and I find that disturbing. Maybe they were genetically modified to include genes from my oil painting instructor in college, who was also pear-shaped. They certainly do taste a little like paint thinner.
D&D tonight was fun, if hot. I blame Stewie for stealing one of the fans (I’m not really concerned whether or not it is his fan, thanks for asking) and keeping it in his room. And by that I mean I blame him for the heat, not for the fun. I blame the fun on Kelly, who brought home made blueberry ice cream. And by home made I mean it’s made in her home. I’m wary of restaurants who declare that I’ll love their “home made” meals. I choose to believe in that case that somebody is living in the restaurant, therefor it is his/her/their home, therefor the meals are ‘home made.’ I guess there could be rats who call the restaurant home too, so okay – yeah, by that logic, no matter where you go the meals are home made. Swanson tv dinners are home made because gypsies and spiders live in the factory. “It’s gypsy-licious!” their new ad campaign begins. No? I digress.
In D&D the kids are finally putting together pieces of the information I’ve been feeding them to come to various conclusions. These conclusions may be right or they may be wrong, I’ll never blog, but it’s nice to see them putting their heads together as a group. Most of the time NPCs will tell them what to do and they’ll just assume it’s what they’re supposed to do seeing as how it came from the DM. Not necessarily, my pretties, not necessarily. They parleyed, and in the words of Paul Simon, time it was oh what a time it was. Now they may make choices that I haven’t planned for and even though it means more improv for me, I think they’ll enjoy the campaign more that way, knowing I’m not railroading them.