Finally after a month’s hiatus I got in some roleplaying last night with the Mutants and Masterminds group. The scenario involved a radical Greenpeace splinter group and Christian fundamentalists who hate aliens and those humans infected with alien diseases, with superhumans allied with both factions. The PCs were caught in the middle while trying to issue an arrest warrant. I thought it was an interesting idea but I didn’ t have as much time to put into the actual writing of the plot as I’d hoped. Still I thought it went okay and we’ll see if anyone shows up for the next session.
Greyhound Bus to Chocolatetown
While I was sitting in the Greyhound station in Chilliwack yesterday waiting for my land ferry back to Vancouver, a large spider started strolling across the tile-white expanse of floor. There was a family-a moderately attractive young lady, her dad, and her mom who the gal was going to look exactly like in 20 years-a few feet away and the mom kept saying “go step on it.” I wanted to say “stupid lady…that spider is going to save you from the west nile virus by eating hundreds of mosquitos” which, though fun to say, would probably be wholly inaccurate since while I didn’t recognize the species it looked more like an active hunter than the kind that builds a big web to passively catch prey. It started to head towards an old couple so before it got there I got up and grabbed it with my ticket and transported it outside where it probably got run over by a car. Sadly no hot girls hung on my neck swooning over my heroic act so I just fell asleep on the bus despite a high dose of caffeine. I’m funny that way.
Karaoke Revolution
On Saturday Joe invited me to a house party at Pat’s, so I finished up my French maid drawing for Kelly and headed out to Burnaby. The party, not unexpectedly, had some annoying drunks, as drunks tend to be, but it had an X-Box game called Karaoke Revolution, which was stupidly fun. It comes with 2 microphones. You can just sing with the songs like normal karaoke, but you can also play for points. It’s pretty sophisticated in that it tracks how well you sing along with the little on-screen bars that signify where to start and stop singing, and change your pitch. It tells you (with a little arrow) if you’re flat, sharp, or completely off the mark. Depending on the skill level of the game (and of you), that can be helpful or annoying. If you do well, you can go “gold” or “platinum.” Typically you play with two people singing the same lines at the same time. You can also do “true” duets. There were a lot of sucky songs, but we got to do some Men at Work, some Police, and Darkness’ “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” with the crazy falsettos. Joe and I also nailed Cindi Lauper’s “Time After Time” with 100% – a diamond score! You also custom design your character and can choose the venue that you perform,m which is fun. I took a photo of me in my giant furry costume, which I’ll post tomorrow…BECAUSE…I purchased a digital camera in the afternoon. And I took the opportunity of being unsocial at a party by putting it together and figuring out how to use it while everyone else was talking and drinking. Go me!
Goodminton 2: The Goodening
BADMINTON!
The new program is out at the Mt Pleasant Community Center and it’s $42 for 12 sessions of badminton (drop in is free but no guarantees for a spot) – 7:45 every Thursday night (or 9:15 if you prefer). Let’s get a team going. Starting April 13 (the night of our Hanson Brothers show – after that I’m good).
Introduction To: Introduction To (aka The Lazy Layman)
I had this whacky idea. Let me share it with you. A group of people, i.e. you, me and a bunch of our friends, organize an “Introduction To” every-so-often event. We all get together and talk and learn about a subject for a couple hours. Typically (but not necessarily) one person is the teacher. For example, one week, Marlo gives everyone an introduction to Mandarin or communism. The next week Stewie gives everyone an introduction to culture jamming or screen printing or game design. Later, I give an introduction to Lovecraft or drawing or voice acting or Scrabble strategy. We could get special guest speakers in whenever possible. Chris Woods might tell us about painting or art history or donuts. Arinn can introduce us to writing and Martin can give us a history of DC comics. Repairing a bike; haircuts; miniature painting; cooking; nutrition; reading music; optimizing your computer; getting the most from exercise; using Flash; Photoshop; building a web site; photography; guitar; first aid; investing/finances; yoga; tai chi; gardening/growing avocado plants; woodworking; plumbing/fixing your terlet; basket-weaving; the list goes on. If we all decide we want to learn how to do a certain something but nobody is more qualified than anyone else we can take a group approach and just discuss, share snippets of knowledge, read from books, etc. It’s a chance to share interests, show off, and be social. The best “classes” would probably be ones that didn’t require “students” to bring big heavy or expensive things, like pianos, but at some point I could see the classes being held at places with useful facilities, like community centers for ezzample.
A Thought About Men and Women
Not that I’m expecting it will, but imagining for a moment that the Western population became 51% homosexual, do would segregated restrooms and change rooms become irrelevant? There’s a comedy bit in here somewhere.
Since I started browsing http://www.frightenstein.com/ I’ve had the Hilarious House of Frightenstein end credit song in my head.
I'm 29!
You know what would be fun? Telling people that I’m as old as they think I am. I should start doing that. Plus it would make them feel special for guessing correctly.
I was reading on Pharyngula: The Blog the post discussing how an Ottawan Professor [was] denied research funds for assuming evolution to be scientific fact. In the comments they started discussing how, yes, in Canada we have religious nutjobs too. I wanted to share my favourite comment with y’all:
I have to humour my future uncle-in-law (devout baptist) about evolution. I’d love to be up front with him, but ironically, his farm hosts a most impressive, fossil-rich outcrop where I can find Cretaceous fish. I’d hate to cut myself off from access to it.
Meanwhile, not far away: Have you ever thought about what side a snail’s shell coils on? I haven’t, until today. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060324/ap_on_sc/southpaw_advantage
Rumple Tweezer ran the Dinky Tinky Shop, At the Foot of the Magic Oak Tree, by the Wobbly Dumdum Tree, Down in Dingly Dell
I just changed the address for somebody who is moving to a street called Dingly Dell. I had a hard time not laughing as I was reading his address back to him.
Before that I had someone moving from some small hick town in Edmonton to some small hick town in BC. He was living on Pickles Crescent. I said “So you’re moving away from Pickles Crescent?”
“That’s right” he replied.
“That must be disappointing”
“No.”
Oh My Leg!
This morning I was woken up with an intense pain in my right calf. It was unbearable. It was horrible. It was some kind of cramp from scorned girlfriends past (or maybe future?). I was writhing around in bed hitting my calf with my fist in a vain attempt to beat the pain away. It was difficult to walk in the morning so I called in pain. That’s like calling in sick but different. I’m at work now, a few hours later, and I took advantage of the leg rest time by also getting some everything else rest time.
I can walk okay now but I was too worried to ride my bike, which is sad because it’s a perfect day for it. And I haven’t been getting any exercise in the past 2 weeks because I’ve been too busy drawing. I’ll have to make up for it soon with extra tennis and badminton and drag racing. Oh wait, scratch that last one.
Who’s with me?
Has anyone heard of or seen “Robin’s Big Date” http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0487044/ starring Sam Rockwell as Batman? Clearly, I’m interested.
My last Mandarin class is next week. Yesterday’s class was crazy – I don’t know if it’s from lack of sleep or if the lao shi was going through words and phrases too fast for me to keep up, but I was having a hell of a time following. But nevermind, it’s all written down and I’ve been listening to my language tapes so I’ll be asking for chopsticks in restaurants in no time. Especially Denny’s.
Oh, AND I watched The Thin Man last night and it was great fun! Scratch that from my list.
More Than This
While I was drawing cowgirl pinups last night, Lost in Translation was on CBC. I haven’t seen that film since it was in the theater. I missed the beginning but saw pretty much everything else. It was good. I recall a discussion with some friends about how Japan was portrayed, but I’ll reiterate that to me the movie isn’t really about Japan at all. It’s about two characters brought together by being out of their element and by not getting the attention they need from their “standard” sources. Plus I love Bill Murray. I drew a portrait of him at work the other day which I was going to give to Stewie but his (Bill’s) nose turned out too big. My coworker asked me if she could have it and now she does.
I’m sure I’ve blogged about this before but I’ve known people (in the Biblical sense) who couldn’t enjoy a movie if the characters were not being faithful to their spouses or suchlike. I guess because the characters have bad character. To me that’s like not being able to enjoy a gangster movie. Obviously garroting somebody is not something I condone, but I can still appreciate a well executed story about it.
Speaking of being lost in translation I had a dream this morning that I was in China and trying to talk with a couple of girls on top of this mountain but having to resort to rudimentary sign language. Later there was a cat that bit into my fingers and I couldn’t get it’s little curly fangs out.