Current Ramblings
Sunday, May 29, 2005
SO OLD
It occurred to me yesterday that it's been ten years since my friend Sean and I made The Warworld Gambit. Seriously. Ten years. And it's still probably one of the better things I've done...
I need to get a good rant in about work. School has just really reminded me how I used to be the Golden Child wherever I worked, and while all of the sudden I'm not good enough for them at this job, school shows that I've clearly still got it. In kindergarden I tested with an IQ so high my parents would never quite tell me what it was for fear I'd get an overgrown ego (fat lot of good that did, maybe they shouldn't have later reassured me it was over 150 ;) ), I was promoted to assistant manager at my Doubleday when I was 18, I was responsible for pretty much running the store while the manager was setting up the ShopKo thing while I was at Payless, and yet I'm not good enough to be treated with respect at this job, not good enough to ever be promoted or even transferred to the store I want to work at. It's enough to make me want to go about my day muttering, "Here I am, brain the size of a planet..." It's great motivation for school, but I'm really hoping this negativity doesn't fester too much and drive me mad in the meantime. Graham was right when he observed that this was usually the point where I left a job.
I'm gonna put together an interview for Simon, now that we know he's involved with the new licensee. Anybody got anything they're dying for me to stick in there?
posted@12:34 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Man, my new cable has Nicktoons, and Nicktoons has Zim. Combine that with Toon Disney's Gargoyles and Digimon, and this Wow! cable business is looking better all the time. Now I just need Boomerang and G4.
posted@1:31 AM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Monday, May 23, 2005
I am the guardian of the gates...
...the junction of your destruction...
...the laser lighting the way to your doom...
...the planner of your obsolescence...
...the furnace that fires your demise...
I am the number you cannot compute, Decepticon.
posted@12:24 AM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Friday, May 20, 2005
Finally.
Yesterday Newsarama posted an announcement about the Transformers comic license. In a move that probably susprised most people just because they hadn't even heard of them, Hasbro awarded the license to IDW Publishing, who do a lot of licenses and also apparently a bit of creater-owned stuff. (Some of it gives me flashbacks: Remember Grimjack and Wynonna Earp? Probably not.) Though they don't seem to have much in the way of their own creative vision and seem to exist mostly as an outlet for other things, I see that as a good thing. Dreamwave had all sorts of "artistic vision" as a company, which they proceeded to smear all over our poor license. I think the absolute ideal - something that a big company like DC certainly wouldn't have given us - is to let the right creators have the comics and just leave them alone with it. And I'm really, really hoping that their talk of "utilizing the best Transformers writers and illustrators globally" translates into "We've already talked to Simon and Guido."
Currently reading: What Should I Do With My Life? by Po Bronson
posted@2:19 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Thursday, May 19, 2005
Dude.
First, some other things:
I've pretty much come to the conclusion now that my poor ulcerated intestines are strongly opposed to me scarfing a big tub of greasy movie theater popcorn in the evening. I seem to be okay if I have it in the daytime (like when we caught Robots at a matinee), but there's something about trying to digest it while horizontal that results in waking up in extreme pain around 5-ish and having to rush to the bathroom for what I have come to call a "jettison". I'm just glad Graham was dead tired, because I'm sure the pained sounds I was making would have caused him a great deal of panic. I mostly force this story upon all of you because I have no short-term memory and no self-control when it comes to food, so at some point someone will have to remind me of this.
And of course once I went back to bed I proceeded to have a really disturbing dream - and in fact even returned to it after Graham's alarm woke me up - because the idea of Revenge of the Sith being a parable about the Bush administration seems to have burrowed just a little too deep into my subconscious. The gist of it was that Bush had just kind of gone crazy and was ordering the military to attack the strange futuristic-y city I was in with a sort of sick Zaphodesque glee, and nobody was fighting back all that much. The scene that stayed with me really well was travelling on a subway train through a tunnel that was for some reason lined with armed guards, and watching the armed guards get taken out one at a time as we moved through the tunnel. I came back to this tunnel with the dead guards later in the dream, too. On the plus side, it's raining here, so the roof work was halfhearted at best this morning and nonexistant right now.
We decided to get comics and dinner before heading up to Marcus Crosswoods on the north side of town, so we got into line around 7PM. The crowd wasn't too bad yet when we got there, and it turned out many of the couple dozen people there ahead of us were going to the "ultra" screen showing anyway, while ended up splitting off from the main line and going inside soon after we got there. (It wasn't digital, just a bigger screen or something.) Our group - me, Graham, Walky, and Steve-o - ended up being the second group in the line once the ultra showing people went inside, but the line became pretty impressive as night drew closer. I talked Walky into bringing his new Tablet PC so we could look for unsecured hotspots (Isn't there a term for that?), but we didn't have any luck from the line and he didn't really want to walk all the way to the Starbucks just to post to his LiveJournal. So we read our comics, discussed our comics, played DSes, used DSes to send crude drawings of genitalia to each other from two feet away, and played a pretty good game of Apples to Apples, during which a guy came by and gave us free Red Bull. I may have to make Red Bull my official coffee substitute, since the aforementioned ulcerated intestines go into revolt over coffee. We got into the theater a good hour and a half before the movie actually started, but by that point we were pros at killing time.
I'd also like to say one thing about the trailers: I don't know if all of you got the trailer for Stealth, but our whole theater thought it was the funniest damn thing they'd ever seen. It's like super-serious action-packed Short Circuit.
Okay, so here's the good part: the movie itself. Skip this part if you don't want to be spoiled.
When I was little, the original Star Wars trilogy was one of those things I'd try to stay up and watch with my dad whenever he put it on, even though I'd inevitably fall asleep somewhere near the beginning of Return of the Jedi. I've never read any of the novels, but I've loved the movies for about as long as I can remember. So it hit me kind of hard that this would be the last such event I would be taking part in. Usually I can't stand overmarketing, but I've embraced this because it's the end, at least of the big stuff. It makes me smile to see three commercials for three different things that all involve Star Wars tie-ins while watching Adult Swim. I want a good hot day to walk to 7-11 and buy a Darth Dew Slurpee. So this movie had a lot to live up to. And I think it did it quite well. My only real complaints are the complaints I had against Attack of the Clones: Hayden Christensen is not a particularly likable Anakin and Padme seems much too stiff and distant, and it makes their romance - the focus of the tragedy - hard to really feel. Ironically, though the whole prequel trilogy was intended to show Darth Vader's humanity, the moment when I truly felt that was at the very end, when Anakin wakes up in the familiar suit and asks, in that familiar James Earl Jones voice, about Padme. That was the moment that drove the entire idea home for me, and it wasn't until the end. I just wish he had been more likable before that. Also: How did Padme not know she was carrying twins? Do they not have obstetricians in space? But those things aside, I was floored by the movie. A couple times I got a little teary-eyed, like when Yoda felt the massacre of his fellow Jedi, and when the "younglings" were killed. Mace Windu's fight and fall against Palpatine and Anakin left my jaw literally dropped. It was just an amazing, emotional movie, problems with Anakin and Padme aside. I should totally go see it again.
And Steve: They totally didn't show Shaak Ti get killed. Time for fanfic about how she survived! :D
posted@2:27 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Back from Episode III!
OMG!
More tomorrow.
(LOL)
posted@3:25 AM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
*sob*
They're still working on the roof.
On second thought, I don't think they're trying to fix it at all. I think they're intentionally destroying it.
posted@11:00 AM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
*whimper*
posted@11:00 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Blarg.
Usually I get along fine with the landlord and the maintenance guy here, but...do they really need to be working on the roof over my bed at 9:30 in the morning on my day off?
posted@9:42 AM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Sunday, May 15, 2005
If only some of them were cute...
I guess it should have occurred to me when I was put in charge of the computer books at work that whenever I was booted out of the section by an abundance of customers, it would pretty much invariably be a sausage party.
posted@12:45 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Saturday, May 14, 2005
Mating Habits of the Wild NeoCon
Usually I stay away from politics here, mostly out of respect for some conservative friends whose opinions I can understand if not agree with. (Also, unlike some friends I can think of, I'm not all that big on my comments turning into a political firefight.) But two things have popped up this week that, especially in proximity to each other, bore mentioning.
The first is funny, and I'm totally ganking it from Hoop's LJ: anti-abortion extremist Neal Horsley stridently defends mule-fucking on nation TV. The thing I like best is this exchange:
AC: "Are you suggesting that everybody who grows up on a farm in Georgia has a mule as a girlfriend?"
NH: "It has historically been the case. You people are so far removed from the reality... Welcome to domestic life on the farm..."
It really, really amuses me to see a conservative talking head use that "You people are so far removed from reality" bullshit they like to throw at liberals to defend having sex with farm animals. Liberals only look down on that sort of perfectly normal blue-collar behavior because they're elitists. And not because it's having sex with farm animals.
Less funny is the revelation that Dr. W. David Hager, who Bush appointed last term to the Advisory Committee for Reproductive Health Drugs in the FDA and who has written the demeaning "Christian" women's health books As Jesus Cared for Women and Stress and the Woman's Body, also regularly forcibly sodomized his wife, leading to their divorce. Yeah, that's totally following in how Jesus treated women. It's just sick how Bush has to cover his grossly un-Christian activities - y'know, starting wars, screwing over the poor, that sort of stuff - by appointing hypocrites to do things like restrict women's access to birth control. And it's even sadder how many Christians either can't see through this charade or actually feel it's more important to punish people for not sharing their religion than it is to help the poor.
posted@12:40 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
I love opening sealed toys.
I decided when I went back to school for computer science that I wanted to get Autobot uber-geek Mainframe to be my little mascot. After a few months watching eBay a guy on the Allspark pointed me to oldschool dealer Dave Mamer's Big Island Toys, which had a minty-sealed one listed for an expected MOSC-Action-Master $19. And now he is mine!
Okay, mostly I just wanted to pick on AM Thundercracker, who is both braggable and hilarious.
posted@10:36 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
I'd vote for him.
I picked up a copy of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy soundtrack (which is mostly score, but good score) on Saturday and I've been meaning ever since to post about it, specifically "Vote Beeblebrox", a stirring campaign song that wasn't actually in the movie. But now there's a video up for it, and an official one at that, so you can all experience the joy for yourselves without waiting for shipping.
Every three months at work we get a "profit-based" bonus check, based on, well, how the company's profit was for the previous quarter. It's almost always triple-digit, but I've seen it range anywhere from $53 to $450, making it a bit of a wild card. But naturally, in anticipation, I've been thinking about what I've really been meaning to buy once I had a nice little chunk of money. After poking around the internet for a few hours I've pretty much decided that it's time to upgrade my PC to match this lovely broadband we got in March. My PC is about the cheapest thing Dell would sell me a year and a half ago, which means it's got a reasonable 2.4gHz processor but a mere 128mb of RAM and basic onboard video hardware. I really wanted to play Neverwinter Nights when we got it in at work, but it just hurt too much. About $130 will get me a gig of RAM and a decent 128mb video card from NewEgg.com. I can't really argue with that. I was just thinking that Guild Wars looked pretty sweet.
posted@1:12 AM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Monday, May 09, 2005
But this says I should get along with Pic... ;)
| Haughty Intellectual You are 85% Rational, 28% Extroverted, 28% Brutal, and 71% Arrogant. |
You are the Haughty Intellectual. You are a very rational person, emphasizing logic over emotion, and you are also rather arrogant and self-aggrandizing. You probably think of yourself as an intellectual, and you would like everyone to know it. Not only that, but you also tend to look down on others, thinking yourself better than them. You could possibly have an unhealthy obsession with yourself as well, thus causing everyone to hate you for being such an elitist twat. On top of all that, you are also introverted and gentle. This means that you are just a quiet thinker who wants fame and recognition, in all likelihood. Rather lacking in emotion, introspective, gentle, and arrogant, you are most certainly a Haughty Intellectual! And, most likely, you will never achieve the recognition or fame you so desire! Sweet!
1. You are more RATIONAL than intuitive. 2. You are more INTROVERTED than extroverted. 3. You are more GENTLE than brutal. 4. You are more ARROGANT than humble. Compatibility:
The Emo Kid: Intuitive, Introverted, Gentle, Humble. The Starving Artist: Intuitive, Introverted, Gentle, Arrogant. The Bitch-Slap: Intuitive, Introverted, Brutal, Humble. The Brute: Intuitive, Introverted, Brutal, Arrogant. The Hippie: Intuitive, Extroverted, Gentle, Humble. The Televangelist: Intuitive, Extroverted, Gentle, Arrogant. The Schoolyard Bully: Intuitive, Extroverted, Brutal, Humble. The Class Clown: Intuitive, Extroverted, Brutal, Arrogant. The Robot: Rational, Introverted, Gentle, Humble. The Haughty Intellectual: Rational, Introverted, Gentle, Arrogant. The Spiteful Loner: Rational, Introverted, Brutal, Humble. The Sociopath: Rational, Introverted, Brutal, Arrogant. The Hand-Raiser: Rational, Extroverted, Gentle, Humble. The Braggart: Rational, Extroverted, Gentle, Arrogant. The Capitalist Pig: Rational, Extroverted, Brutal, Humble. The Smartass: Rational, Extroverted, Brutal, Arrogant. |
 |
My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:
|
| Link: The Personality Defect Test written by saint_gasoline on Ok Cupid |
posted@12:47 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Saturday, May 07, 2005
...
The local UPN station is showing THE LITTLES.
I guess that explains why the books have been selling so well here lately. And that seems like a decent response to the lack of Saturday Morning cartoons: dredge up some ancient ones.
posted@9:34 AM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Thursday, May 05, 2005
Yeah, I know you shouldn't blog when you're pissed...
...but I'm really not thrilled with my job right now. Yes, again. Due to things that don't have a damn thing to do with me, I don't get to transfer to the store that's actually close to where I live at all, which fucks a lot of stuff up. Well, maybe it does have to do with me. Maybe it has to do with how content the Powers That Be are with telling me "no". Maybe it's that I don't get much in the way of respect, I feel like I don't get taken seriously by them. If I hadn't gone back to school it'd be worse. At least I'm doing something about it, albeit slowly. I know I'm not going to get some magic IT job where people will cater to, well, I'm not even asking for my every whim. If they'd cater to a single heart-felt request it'd be an improvement. But they'll pay me enough to put up with that kind of shit. Graham was wrong. It's not that I don't like to be told what to do. It's that I don't like to be told what I can't do for no acceptable reason.
I guess this kind of ties in with some of the things I've been thinking about lately re: my creativity or recent complete lack thereof. I've really wanted to return to my Firestormers stuff, but I'm just not feeling it the way I used to. I know my current lack of privacy has been one problem, and I think a bigger one is the overabundance of not only official fiction but official universes. Setting stuff after the G2 comic with lots of UK references thrown in doesn't have quite the relevance it had when there were only two major continuities. None of the universes feel particularly relevant anymore, they just feel like little shards of a big messy multiverse. But I've realized that another big factor is a simple lack of emotional relevance. I used the series in the last few years to channel and express feelings that I just don't have with that sort of intensity anymore. I don't need an outlet for being emo anymore. What bothers me nowadays, at age 26 at a reasonable latitude rather than age 19 and dealing with seasonal depression? I feel alienated from a social group that used to mean a great deal to me. (Maybe that's why I liked LONAC so much: #wiigii! is sort of like a neutralist refugee group from Transfandom.) I feel, as I said, that I'm not really respected by my higher-ups, both locally and on a much larger scale. (*coughgovernmentcough*) I feel like I'm not thrilled with where I am now but I'm working very hard to turn my life around. I feel...like Firestormers was supposed to be, before it pretty much immediately stopped being punk and started being whiny. I mean, was Upstart created to be Trixter's truest love who she would never reveal her feelings for? No! He was created because I didn't feel up to actually writing Hot Rod! The romantic entanglements were added later so I could have an excuse for whining! (Also, he became an actual character.) What I need to do is get my head together and write Firestormers as something like Micromasters could have been if Adam Patyk had ever been half the punk I am. Fight the man!
posted@10:36 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
Geekery.
I've decided to put my newfound Access skillz to use by creating a database for #wiigii!, with handles, real names, addresses, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, and birthdays for everybody. Why? Because I'm sick of forgetting everybody's damn birthdays, and if I'm gonna do the people who send me stuff and who I then feel like a heel for not remembering when their own b-days come around, I might as well do everybody. So if you're part of the fandom's most infamous clique and your info either isn't up or isn't accurate on the database Phil created at groups.yahoo.com, then e-mail me or reply or something.
Oh, and I found my tool keychain. It was in a stupid place.
posted@11:26 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
Addendum.
I wanted to link to this in the last post, but I couldn't find the actual URL: an awesome Flash-animated sing-along of the dolphin's song from the Hitchhiker's Guide opening.
posted@4:25 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
I need to clean stuff.
Today was supposed to be a nice day to relax and put together another bag of old clothes I'm really clearly never going to wear and my children aren't that likely to want for being "retro" to take to Goodwill. Sadly, I realized last night that at some point after Saturday when I used it to open some boxes from Amazon, my tool keychain went missing. I really liked my tool keychain, a Lego Hagrid keychain with a little Maglite, a nifty pink Swiss Army knife, a Cross Ion pen, and a 256mb SanDisk Cruizer Micro USB drive with all my school files. I'm hoping I just set it down somewhere stupid while revelling in the excessiveness of the Invader Zim DVD set box and I'll find it soon. I actually went out to the dumpster and found the Amazon boxes to make sure it didn't end up in one of them.
I would like to talk about Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for a bit, desperate search for my gadgets going on or not. If you care that much but still for whatever insane reason haven't seen it, skip this next paragraph. I'll add a cut to the LJ version.
I haven't gone on about it much here, but I am a certified, towel-carrying Douglas Adams fan. I would go so far as to say the books changed my life, but that might be an essay for another day. The release of the movie has been bittersweet for me, since it was one of the subjects he went on about looking forward to when I saw him speak a month before he left us. It breaks my heart to think that he never got to see it come to fruition, though at the same time I wonder if it was sped along after his death as absolution for holding it up so much when he was alive. As for the movie itself...well, I really, really liked it. It seems strange to think that people could throw fits over changing something that itself was changed from the source material: the books themselves made serious plot and character changes from the radio scripts. Admittedly, the first part - the actual Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy part - stayed pretty much the same, but it's a series that Adams himself changed whenever he felt something needed tweaking and so I didn't expect it to be, well, Sin City. I felt the characters were pretty dead-on portrayals, and I thought Trillian lived up to even more of her potential than she has in a lot of the previous versions, even if it did just result in romantic complications. Okay, so maybe I relate a little too much to the cute-AND-intelligent woman who'll follow any guy with a spaceship. I was thrilled that she was attractive but not eye-candy. Ford could have been played up a little more, but it was great how he just pulled out his towel for everything. Zaphod was very Zaphod, though the Bush thing was a little distracting and is going to date the movie a bit. I was really impressed by the old-fashioned effects for the Vogons. Too many movies these days fall back on CG effects when costumes, prosthetics, and animatronics can look much better. But what I appreciated most about the movie was how much it felt like it was done by people who actually appreciated the source material, right down to a handful of nods to the BBC miniseries. In a time where I'm seeing some other things I'm a big fan of handed over more and more to business interests with no real appreciation for the material (okay, yes, I am sniping at Master Collectors in my Hitchhiker's Guide review), it warms my heart to see so much love in this movie, both for the source material and for Adams himself.
Also, I'm sick of seeing movie reviewers who are so vapid that every British-originated comedy must be called "Python-esque". Though I will accept Gilliam-esque for this one. Greg Dean at Real Life has some good things to say regarding the movie and its loyalty to the last version of the script Adams had written.
And now I'm gonna go look for that damn keychain.
posted@2:19 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Sunday, May 01, 2005
It would have been better if I had ever gotten Linux to run...
Your Geek Profile: |
Fashion Geekiness: High |
Music Geekiness: High |
Gamer Geekiness: Moderate |
Geekiness in Love: Moderate |
Internet Geekiness: Moderate | Movie Geekiness: Low | SciFi Geekiness: Low | Academic Geekiness: None | General Geekiness: None |
posted@10:04 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments