Status Update

I figured that those of you who may read this may be interested to know that, according to traditional models, I am currently still not a werewolf.







Also, I'm employed now.

Freelance

So, seeing how I am now at last gainfully employed you might think that the last thing on my mind would be making a foray into the field self-employment. How wrong you would be! Now that I no longer have to worry about a source of income day-to-day, I can use my free-time to pursue a recent brainchild of mine and start an extreme/emergency cases consulting firm. Rather than deal with mundane things like how to best market a product, organize a department, or not destroy an ecosystem my firm will deal in only the certified awesome. While this will obviously extend to such things as how to best construct one's underwater fortress of solitude in order to make it defensible from Godzilla and super-villains, we would additionally provide an emergency help line for people stuck in extreme/emergency situations to call and get top of the line advice. Here are some samples:

Problem: Ninjas are chasing me!
Solution: Ninjas can't catch you if you're on fire. (solution courtesy of drmcninja.com)

Problem: I've been cornered by a hippopotamus!
Solution: Make your peace with God.

Problem: I just finally harpooned a twisted and unholy whale-leviathan from the depths, but I can't think of a suitable one-liner!
Solution: All's well that ends whale.

Problem: I've been abducted by aliens that are going to force me to participate in a focus group for a collection of Vogon poetry they want to market! How do I escape?!
Solution: Dude, this is exactly the sort of situation they made the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for. Sheesh, you probably don't even have a towel with you. Brilliant. Also, who's your wireless provider? You're getting really good reception for not being on the planet anymore.

As you can see, we can provide courteous, helpful, and most importantly awesome advice in a variety of situations! Look for our services in advertising sources everywhere, coming soon!










p.s. Not...not really.

Reboots, take 2

So, it recently came to my attention that there is another movie out there in desperate need of a remake/reboot/whatever. Unfortunately, it's a movie that no studio would want to touch with a pole of any length and no actor would dare affix their name to, given that its name has become synonymous with a complete money-hole of a movie that ruins careers (also known as an "EPIC MOVEE FAIL LOLZ" to you internet types). That movie is... "Waterworld". That's right, the movie that was intended to be Kevin Costner's magnum opus but ended up resoundingly putting an end to his career (at least for quite a long time). What's sad is that this movie had all the markings of a great movie: post-apocalyptic, lots of action, dysptopian society, crazy gill-man mutants (okay, maybe that's not exactly a hallmark of greatness, but whatever. It has potential). The movie even has pirates. Heck, they even brought Joss Whedon out to help rewrite parts of the script. How can you go wrong? Obviously somehow they did since the movie flopped like a sumo wrestler off the high dive. From what I gather, much of this was due to Kevin Costner's being kind of a diva and the whole "they built a giant metal city in the ocean that sank in a hurricane" thing (amongst other setbacks). The result was a movie that is at best amusingly bad and at worst mediocre and annoying. What it leaves you with, however, is a sense that it could have been done so much better had it only had better actors, better scripting, etc. And so I formally propose that this movie, so brimming with potential, be given the second look it deserves and be made into the movie it always wanted to be, free from actors trying to make a legend for themselves, free from horribly bad money allocation (I'm looking at you, Costner's CG hairline!), and free to become the seriously awesome movie it really ought to be.

*EDIT* I forgot to mention the fact that it also relates to a rather timely issue, namely that of global warming. In the movie, the fact that everything is covered with water is due in large part to said phenomenon. Whether or not you put any stock in global warming or are a global warming agnostic like myself, you have to admit that it's relevant.

Numerical Revelations

So, last night while as I was falling asleep I realized that the year 2002 was the last symmetrical year that will fall in my lifetime (the next being in 2112). As I thought more along these lines (my mind goes weird places when I'm going to sleep) I realized that anyone like me who has been alive between 1991 and 2002 has the distinction of being among the few generations that have had two symmetrical years go by in their lifetimes for almost a thousand years. The last time there were two symmetrical years closer together than 110 years apart was back in the year 1001 (it had year 999 before it). The next time this will occur won't be for another thousand years, with the years 2992 and 3003. Now, things were different before the year 1000. Back then, you had symmetrical years at least every 10 years apart. Anyways, I just thought those of us who have lived to see 1991 and 2002 should know that we have one more thing to be proud of that we had very little to do with. Props, everybody.

My, my. What is this business?

"Few cities in all of the greater Alcarion Kingdom were as quaint and quietly beautiful as this one. Nestled between rolling hills and the fertile plains spreading out beyond the small river Tiphen, its small cottages spread out from the stately yet unassuming stone keep and elegant cathedral at the city center. Buildings rested comfortably together, spreading out from the city’s center to dot the verdant hills. At least, the hills could have been called verdant if it weren’t for the fact that they weren’t green. The hills, like everything in the entire Earldom of Grey, were completely devoid of color. While many speculated that this was due to an ancient curse brought down upon the first Earl of Grey by a vengeful sorceress with an ironic sense of humor whose advances he spurned, the true cause of the land’s achromia was not known outside of the earldom. Since speculation on such matters was most certainly not the duty of a knight, Sir Wincent Tripost Drapery III didn’t trouble with it. Instead he troubled himself with the attention he was likely to draw in such a place. Not only was this an area of the Kingdom little frequented by the Alcarion Knights, but the fact that he would retain his color for a few days would make him stand out like a naked dwarf in a nunnery…not that an Alcarion Knight would be so crass as to use such a metaphor. Sir Drapery sighed heavily and spurred his horse on down to the path through the hills.

This was beginning to get frustrating. Sir Drapery had a sneaking suspicion that one of his superiors really didn’t like him. He had visited fifteen separate inns and none of them had any sort of provision for the long-term accommodation that his assignment would require him to have. After a full month of hard riding across the countryside where he had been forced to stay in seedy tavern lodging or camp by the roadside, now at the end of his journey he, a Knight of Alcarion, couldn’t find a place to sleep! And so he now found himself staring up at the sign for the small boarding house down by the river to which the last innkeeper had directed him. The sign read “Mister Sister’s Bookstore and Boarding House for Wanderers and the Whimsically Inclined”. The sign went on to list the regular mealtimes, half of which Sir Drapery had never heard of. Well, the innkeeper had warned him that the owner of the boarding house was a little on the eccentric side. With another heavy sigh, Sir Drapery squared his shoulders and walked inside."

Yeah, I'm weird

…Sometimes I wish I were arboreal. You ever have that? Probably not. I do though. Granted, it might be better to wish for more pertinent things, like not being nearsighted or, y’know, having a job but it is nevertheless something I occasionally wish. It just seems like it would be nice to able to easily climb up trees and swing around in the branches, take leaps from one to another… Now, you might say that I should just go outside, climb a freaking tree and get it out of my system. I would probably respond with some clever (or possibly quite lame) remark about not being familiar with the “freaking” genus of tree or something like that. Anyways. Speaking of jobs, I sometimes wish that life were more sci-fi and that there actually was a large job market for space explorers. That’d be pretty sweet. I mean, we’re not gonna find much I suppose, but as long as I’m wishin’ here, it could be a little more like Star Trek, although maybe not with every alien race looking like a dude with some rubber on his forehead. I also occasionally wish that zombies were real. Not rampant, but just kinda around. I mean, under what other circumstances would it be acceptable to carry around a shotgun and a broadsword and put them to use on a somewhat regular basis? Really, I just want a conscience-clean reason to go hack stuff with a sword and engage in some stress-relieving gunplay. At this point, you’re probably just going to look at me funny and try and change the subject. Or leave. Either way. If you were especially cool and clever you would remark, “If wishes were horses, we’d all be eating steak” at which point I would commend you for your Firefly reference and then go searching for some steak. Man though…that would be pretty sweet…swinging through the trees of some foreign world I’m exploring…cutting down the zombies that are chasing me through the forest after having tracked down our ship…dude, I should write this down. A little work and I’ve got myself a bread-winning sci-fi franchise of some kind. Or at least some half-written story ideas that I can shove on a shelf somewhere. That’s good too.





Man, now I really want some steak.