Monthly Archives: October 2005

Halloween partyness!

Posted on 2005.10.30

Last night I hosted something akin to a Halloween party. Here’s the Jack-o-lantern I made for the occasion, using one of the patterns from Zombie Pumpkins:

shaun of the dea pumpkin

Marty didn’t like me enough to show up, and John’s friend was too shy, so it was just happicow, Rob, Beth, ctl, John, and I. Despite the small gathering, and the fact that we were really only going to watch movies (Call of Cthulhu, the MST3K of Space Mutiny, and The Giant Gila Monster [which I had actually never seen before]) I still bought a pile of snacks and booze for the occasion, which happicow enjoyed. Here’s some more pumpkin pimpin’ (the Jack pumpking is Beth‘s):

shaun of the dead pumpkin in the dark Jack skellington pumpkin

Tonight, I’m heading on out with happicow and Beth to a masquerade at the Haunt! (But first, we’re gonna try to take in some NOTLD Survivor’s Cut!)

Wee! This is fun!

Posted on 2005.10.29

From Samantha Blackmon via LC Live:

theory slut
You are a Theory Slut. The true elite of the
postmodernists, you collect avant-garde
Indonesian hiphop compilations and eat journal
articles for breakfast. You positively live
for theory. It really doesn’t matter what
kind, as long as the words are big and the
paragraph breaks few and far between.

What kind of postmodernist are you!?
brought to you by Quizilla

I dig her corset.

Doooooom

Posted on 2005.10.26

Last night, I went and saw Doom with Rob. It really wasn’t nearly as bad as the preview and common sense would make it appear to be (assuming you ignore all mention of genetics and pretend that they are talking about magic instead- more on this later). The beginning of the movie dragged a bit, but once it got going the whole thing was quite a bit of fun and went by rather quickly. At the end of the movie I turned to Rob and asked him whether the movie was only 20 minutes long… then I looked at my watch and realized it was actually nearly 2 hours long.

As for the effects, the CG wasn’t nearly as bad as the previe made it appear to be- I imagine that the preview used graphics which weren’t yet fuly rendered (why they would shoot themselves in the foot like this is beyond me). In the preview, the 1st person perspective aspect of the movie looked like it would last most of the movie, but in actuality it was only for a few minutes and was the most fun part of the movie- it really was like live-action Doom.

Now, back to the stupidity that was the ‘science’ in this movie. Apparently, 10% of the human genome is still unknown, but many people believe it contains the genes that code for the soul, that determines good and evil *eyeroll*. Also, to radically change a creature’s genetic structure to match your own, all you have to to is inject a portion of your DNA into that creature. Yeah… whatever. IMHO, the move would have been much more enjoyable had they let go off all the pseudo-science and gone the same route the games went- just say that monsters from hell are invading our plane via a portal humans have screwed with / created / whatever on the moon. Sure, there’s suspension of disbelief involved, but at least you aren’t fooling anyone about working in a fantasy environment, and people who have actually passed 8th grade bio won’t feel their brains melting from the crap that tries to get passed off as reasonable science.

Anyway, Rob and I figure that this movie is probably worth about $5.50 to see in theaters, as parts of it really are quite fun (assuming you enjoyed the games).

In other news, Ithaca also had its first snowfall last night. It starts… (duh duh duh)

“If You’re a Christian, Muslim or Jew – You are Wrong”

Posted on 2005.10.25

I think this is a brilliantly entertaining rant. Of course, my opinion on the matter is rather predictable. (via Metafilter)

Excerpt:

There are a lot of people I love dearly and respect wholeheartedly who believe in religion. I hate to do this to them. But we have killed far too many people, wasted far too much time on this nonsense for us to keep going in this direction for fear of offense.

Jesus was a lunatic. God is not coming to your rescue. He hasn’t come to anyone’s rescue in thousands of years, including Jesus. Mohammed was a power hungry, scam artist and ruthless conqueror. Moses and Abraham were figments of the imagination of some long dead rabbi. He would probably laugh his ass off at all of you who still believe the fairytales he made up thousands of years ago. He probably wouldn’t even believe it if you told him.

…

How long are we going to dance around the 800-pound gorilla in the room? The world is run by madmen. It’s not just Bush and bin Laden. It is the leader of all of the countries in the Middle East, almost all of the Americas and most of the rest of the world.

Have I offended you? That’s too bad. Stop killing each other in the name of false and ridiculous Gods and I will stop ridiculing you. Trust me, your offense is much worse than mine.

Personally, I feel that if people want to believe in magical fairy-tale creatures, there are far more interesting (though slightly obscure and clearly less destructive) options.

Religion meme

Posted on 2005.10.21

I got this from Gina via LC Live:


You fit in with:
Humanism

Your ideals mostly resemble that of a Humanist. Although you do not have a lot of faith, you are devoted to making this world better, in the short time that you have to live. Humanists do not generally believe in an afterlife, and therefore, are committed to making the world a better place for themselves and future generations.

0% scientific.
40% reason-oriented.
Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

Both my X and Y are much higher than I would have expected on a graph like this… but then again, it is only a 20 question quiz. Also, I don’t believe that Scientology actually has anything to do with science.

I hate blogging.

Posted on 2005.10.20

This is the third time I’ve tried to post today. Firefox keeps crashing and losing my posts. H8.

Here’s the brief summary of what I’ve been trying to say, because by now I’ve lost patience with this thing:

Yeah, I know this pi $#!7 backwards and forwards

Posted on 2005.10.18

Dude. This is sooo much weirder/decker than it appears at first glance. It starts out like any old 70′s edutainment TV/classroom PBS show, and suddenly there’s wizards singing and zapping, and a rapper describing pi in terms of his sex life. Again, dude.

I so need this song on mp3.

Hep thinks everyone’s seen this already, but I hadn’t so I figure there’s a good chance others haven’t either. Watch it. Now.

Marvel 1602 and Donnie Darko

Posted on 2005.10.18

I just finished reading Marvel 1602, which Marty got me. Just as I was finishing it, at a point where “time reconfigures itself” an mp3 from the Donnie Darko score started playing on my computer. Wooo-eee-wooo!

Anyway, the stories are similar in a few cool ways (otherwise I wouldn’t have thought the score playing at that moment noteworthy). I kinda want to see what happens in the “tangent universe” after the end ofthe 1602 graphic novel, though I suppose there wouldn’t really be that much stuff left to keep the universe new or interesting as opposed to the more conventional Marvel ‘verse.