A Month Without a Modem

Isn't it ironic that the title of this rant refers to a large period of time during which I didn't update this page when this is honestly the first time in like half a year when I've gotten them up on two consecutive weeks? Hmm... you know, when I write this sort of thing I should really consider that there's no dates in my archives which means comments like this are rather pointless in the long run. Oh well. In any case, somewhere between the last rant I posted and the one before that, I lost all access to the internet for a good chunk of time, and now you all have to hear about what I did.

So... where to begin? As usual when I lose all net access, I went through a few phases. Phase 1: Denial. It'll come back soon. Phase 2: Annoyance. What kind of morons cut off all their customers for 4 hours and don't even notice? Then of course after I find out it'll be down for a couple days, there's the very brief Phase 3: Relaxation. Hey! This means I don't have to do any RPGamer type work of any kind for a while! I can leave the house and actually DO stuff! This phase is quite short because A- I love the aforementioned RPGamer type work, and B- Doing the afforementioned stuff only passes half a day tops for me. For those who aren't aware, I'm not exactly the most outgoing and active person in the world. Next comes Phase 4: Boredom. This is the phase where I lay on a couch staring at the ceiling for periods of time so long they freak those around me out. Then however comes the best phase of all. Phase 5: Hyperproductivity. When in this phase, I have been known to design a game from scratch, ending up with a hundred pages of work in a single sitting. Actually... that's what I do almost every time. That of course is why last rant I was able to present to you

While I'm on that subject by the way, so far a whopping one person has actually paid that shareware fee. That's not a sarcastic whopping either. I'm quite frankly shocked that anyone would play good money for a wad of free text files. Said person, whose name I'm not mentioning because last time I did that sort of thing, the friends of the person in question harassed'em for not sharing the wealth with them, and I try not to cause headaches for other people. Anyway though, I just need 4 more people to pay for the thing to get enough self-worth-energy to finish up the first expansion to it. Oh, and yes, I AM still forking all the cash I get to everyone's bolt-tossing buddy. Anyway though, back to the matter at hand.

This lack recent of internet access went on for so long that even after designing an entire game it still wasn't over. So, during the month of December, I was forced to resort to... Watching A Whole Bunch Of Movies! Normally, I have a policy against doing little movie reviews here, because there are enough pages run by people with my tastes dedicated to the subject that I feel like it'd just be overkill. Heck, there's enough just linked from this page! This is also why I tend not to link to pages run by lunatics or bizarre flash animations. Still, today, you get movie reviews... sorta.

First and foremost, there was Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust. I first wanted to see this movie when it was still in production, missed a chance to do so a year ago because the people I was going to hitch a ride with decided to go to a Magic tournament instead. I then missed ANOTHER chance in October because nobody felt like driving all the way to Boston. Fortunately, I DID get rope someone into giving me a ride to Providence, Rhode Island* to see it, despite the fact that the only showing was at midnight. Anyway, getting to the movie itself, it was, more often than not, wonderfully animated. Strange fact though, in many scenes, the backgrounds were actually far more detailed than the characters, as opposed to more or less all other anime. I thought the translators did a lousy job dubbing it, but then found out that the dialog was never recorded in Japanese to begin with. That explains why the main female character sounded just like Koudelka. Aside from that, the plot shifted tones quite a few times, making it hard to rate, but it really deserves saying that there is a character who uses a vampire slaying weapon that nobody else has ever thought of. Think about how many movies and shows have had teams of vampire hunters and you'll realize how hard that is to pull off. For the record: It was a giant wooden warhammer sharpenned to a point and wielded by a very large freak. Who needs to drive a wooden stake through a vampire's heart when you can just slam a huge stake through it's chest that not only pierces the heart but knocks it clear out of the vampire?

Then there's the first of the two required films. Harry Potter. Not much to say here. If you haven't already been forced to see the movie or read the book (which I did right before seeing it to be sure I could gripe about how it was better), then chances are you're cowering from the horde of zombies trying to beat down your door and pull you in. Either way, you don't need to hear about it, and I'm still surprised that a British fantasy novel series is the most popular thing with kids lately. That's supposed to be nerds only. Which brings us to our next film...

The Fellowship of the Ring. The movie everyone else is called Lord of the Rings, which will just give them all a headache since next year we get The Two Towers, and after that Return of the King, all three of which are the Lord of the Rings series. Anyway though, before I saw this movie, I had three predictions, based on how much the people making it loved the books. 1- It will be as well done as anyone could possibly expect. 2- A bunch of jaded nerds will rant and rave about how they ruined it anyway. 3- Whoever they get to play Frodo won't look anywhere near as much like a hobbit as my cousin does. I wish I had a picture of him barefoot and standing next to a normal sized person to show you, but suffice it to say the joke has been made since he was like 5. Anyway though, all three of these predictions came true. I'd love to see a making of special on the sucker though. I can see it now, day one of shooting the casting director says "OK. Now, if you aren't playing an elf, every day when you come in, the first thing you have to do is roll around in this big pit full of mud for at LEAST an hour." Oh, and I really must say how impressed I am with how they managed to recreate those 50 page descriptions of every single forest cave and city that kept me from finishing the whole trilogy back when I was 4.

I saw a number of other movies while I was out, mostly on the Sci-Fi channel, which ranged from absolutely wretched horror movies like Pumpkinhead, to the absolutely wonderful (but editted to death since they were on TBS) like The Matrix and Dark City, to the most-people-hate-them-but-I-think-they're-great like Idle Hands. Something about the concept of people becoming zombies because they were too lazy to head towards the light just amuses me to no end. I'm not going to get into those though, because it would take too long and I know I can't hold your attention for as long now that I've given up on having a scary pic every week.

I need to put SOMETHING down here on the bottom though... AHA! My non-hobbit cousin pointed me to a web site that let's you make little flash movies, with so many restrictions placed on you that you're honestly incapable of doing anything more amusing than a rather cheap novelty. You get to have 2 out of a dozen possible characters talk to eachother for 3 "scenes" (maximum of 32 lines I think it was), with a 100 character limit per line, and spacing and timing issues that make everything look wretched if you don't put those 100 characters in every bubble. The only possible use this has is if you want to turn a lousy webcomic into an even lousier animation, with just enough time to explain why the characters have turned into badly drawn pop stars and similar icons before it ends abruptly.

So I did. Do you see the potential this thing has to pollute the net now?