Frivolous Profundity

So I just finished watching a movie that actually made me angry it was so bad: Blindness. It’s about what happens when a large city is suddenly affected by a mass outbreak of blindness, specifically the circumstances surrounding a woman mysteriously immune to the disease and her husband in one of the quarantine centers.

Those of you familiar with my wide-ranging, eclectic, omnivorous taste in movies may be surprised to find that there are, in fact, movies I don’t like. It’s rare, but it does happen.

My main complaint about this movie is its complete lack of realism. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for fantasy, science fiction, sentient grapefruits, whatever – but not in a movie that is supposed to take place in our real, contemporary world. If it’s a movie that supposed to take place in “the real world”, then the people better behave like real people or the whole thing just becomes an exercise in stupidity.

To avoid spoiling plot points, I won’t list some of the more annoying examples until the end of the post (after the “Read on …” break). For now, suffice to say – many of the reactions of both individuals and the government / military are just stupid, and ridiculously contrived to fit the plot rather than to make any sense.

That right there was enough to destroy the entire film for me. I barely cared about any of the characters because they didn’t register as ‘real’ people, just actors going through their badly-written motions.

The reason this made me angry is because the premise of the film is awesome, could have really explored some interesting, thought provoking stuff. Instead it used that premise to shoehorn in nonsensical scenes and belabor obvious points.

Grr.

Giving this one a score of 4 out of 10. It would have been lower, but there were glimpses here and there of much better material hidden beneath the tripe.

continue reading…

Greetings all!

I’ve been back from Vegas for a few weeks now – had fun, took many pictures of the casinos we trekked through, I’ll try to get those uploaded to a gallery soon.

It seems impossible, but Christmas is once again just around the corner – as happens every year, I remember now my thoughts of last year, thinking to myself “Well there’s no way I’ll still be in the same horrible state of mind next Christmas as I am this year”. And the year before that, and before that, going back more years than I care to count.

Anyway, the reason I’m thinking of Christmas in early November is because I’ve had a couple people poking around already for gift ideas for Christmas and my birthday (same day!) – so, I’ve updated my Amazon wishlist for friends and family with gift-giving on their minds:

The big thing for this year of course is the new World of Warcraft expansion, “Wrath of the Lich King”. My dad and sister were kind enough to pitch in on that one as an early present, so I should be playing it in less than a week – woooo!

Forum Discussion

Well folks – visitors to TheMook.Net, Laid Back Assassins, SoF2 players, MookUI users, GURPS players, and any of the other sundry net crawlers who frequent these pages: I’ll be offline for a week (that’s right! a week!) while vacationing in Las Vegas with my family.

It will be unusual to be completely off the internet for so long (I’m not bringing my laptop), but my guess is there might just be enough interesting things going on in Vegas to keep my mind off it.

I hope everyone has as good a week as I plan to. I’ll catch up on email and forum posts once I get back, and I’ll be sure to take some pics … until then: be well!

Forum Discussion

So I notice it’s been nearly three months since last I posted. No surprise there, I tend to live in my own time continuum where weeks and months fly by and crawl by simultaneously. But eventually something sufficiently motivating will occur and I’ll do a little typing.

I just found out that George Carlin died yesterday, of heart problems. Sad news to hear. I’ve always had a lot of respect for Carlin – we certainly disagreed on a lot of things, but that’s completely irrelevant to me, because he was a thinker (and incredibly funny).

In particular he would think me a fool for believing in God: he passionately believed that all religion was the worst kind of ridiculous make-believe. But he was a thinker, he came by his beliefs after a lot of time and energy, and I have infinitely more in common with a man like that than with the countless hordes of my fellow believers who give no thought whatsoever to anything deeper than what’s on tv tonight.

My faith didn’t just fall from the sky one day. It is what it is today because of untold hours of thinking, reading, writing, meditating, praying; I’ve looked inside myself, outside myself, considered dozens of viewpoints about the meaning of life and humanity’s place in the universe. In short, I’ve worked at it – I’ve taken the time to consider the profound questions, the important truths, and while Carlin would doubtless be disappointed at my conclusions, I like to think he would respect the thought and self-examination involved in the process.

George Carlin was foul-mouthed, brutally honest, and very, very funny. He was a great comedian, but not a clown or a buffoon. He entertained his audiences by challenging them to think – think about themselves, think about those they allow to govern them, think about the world around them.

I’m sure many will fondly remember Carlin for his classic bits, like ‘Seven Dirty Words’, or his memorable movie roles, like “Bill and Ted’s” Rufus, or even his TV role as ‘Mr. Conductor’ on “Shining Time Station”. Here is one of my favorite Carlin routines – I’ll miss ya George.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HAGc521SAo[/youtube]

P.S.

The irony of this post’s title does not escape me – I believe George’s exact thought would be, “He didn’t ‘pass’ anything! He fuckin’ died!”

P.P.S.

Or, as my good friend Hydrophidian put it: “George Carlin Passes – TOUCHDOWN!”  I think Carlin would have appreciated that.

Forum Discussion

I am so, so unbelievably upset right now! I’m amazed I can even type my hands are shaking so bad from anger and shock.

It was supposed to be a great day. I’ve been planning on getting a tattoo for years, and my sister offered to pay for it with some of the tax refund she got back. So I made an appointment last week and today was the day, 9am, first thing in the morning.

Got a little lost finding the place, but was still there before 9:00 so no biggie. The place seemed a lot dingier than it did when I had made the appointment, suddenly I was thinking about hepatitis and infection and all sorts of horrible things, and the artist who was doing my arm either smelled like cologne or alcohol. Since it was still so early in the morning I chose to believe it was cologne.

continue reading…

So Gary Gygax died yesterday, at the age of 69.

I know that for very many of you reading this, your first thought is ‘Oh that’s too bad – who is Gary Gygax?’

He was the co-creator of the role-playing game ‘Dungeons & Dragons’; which gave birth to a galaxy of other role-playing games like Traveller, GURPS, Vampire: the Masquerade, and literally hundreds of others; which directly paved the way and provided inspiration for countless computer role-playing games, novels, and movies over the past 30+ years.

It’s hard to overestimate the influence Gary had on the landscape of modern entertainment – things would be very different today were it not for his ‘little game’.

But it’s much more than that – I’m not sure I can adequately explain what gaming meant to me growing up, or the impact it has had on making me who I am.

continue reading…

Made a few more site changes and updates for our enjoyment:

• Updated the Soldier of Fortune 2 Player Stats for those who play on our Laid Back Assassins server, the Kill-a-Rama.
• Changed the tracks in the site Jukebox; this set is a shout out to the smoking crews.
• Added a new section called Games and Gadgets – just a few little games and time wasters.
• The biggest change is that I added a second blog, The Hollow Valley. I’ve been meaning to do this for a while – it’s just too out of place to have posts about my unending depression or my mother dying in the same list as posts about TV shows or troubles with my internet connection. The new blog will be for more personal posts and thoughts; I’m not exactly hiding it, but I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea either, so I’m not putting it in the main navigation bar that shows up on every site page. It will only be linked from the core ‘Home’ pages, and the forums.

I think that’s everything. You know the drill – please let me know if you notice any errors, have any suggestions or comments, etc. Thanks for hanging out at TheMook.Net. 🙂

Forum Discussion

Wow.

Did you ever see someone and just want to slap the ever-living hell out of them? I mean seriously just want to pop them in the mouth until they cry?

This is the biggest, most obnoxious d-bag I’ve seen in years. Seriously, just watching this clip makes me want to break something.

[youtube width=”400″ height=”334″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GgWrV8TcUc[/youtube]

Sure, maybe the kids were giving him some lip – tough shit. The only one disgracing that badge and uniform was you, you worthless piece of trash bully.

Forum Discussion

Howdy Folks!

Had a pretty “productive” (as productive as working on TheMook.Net can be) weekend, most unusual for me, but I got a lot done around the site. Tons of little tweaks here and there to try and get everything working and looking a bit more uniform.

Some of the bigger changes/updates:

• streamlined some of the Blog categories and posts
• added a small Jukebox just for kicks (I’ll try to change the music now and then)
• moved the Gallery into the overall site template (though it still stretches the formatting, at least it looks more like the rest of the site)
• on the SoF2 pages, updated the Clan Roster and the Server Status page (the status page doesn’t look as pretty as it used to, but it no longer relies on ServerSpy, it just runs off TheMook.Net; aesthetics aside, this is good because it no longer sucks $7/month out of the LBA account for ServerSpy!)
• the RPG pages had a lot of work done – I got the fully indexed and cross-referenced version of Mudge in place, and I also posted the complete details for all four of my last campaigns. Took a long time to get it all formatted and uploaded, but I’m really happy that stuff is finally back online.

As always, please let me know if you have any suggestions, or find anything that isn’t working, whatever, I’m always happy to get feedback on the site, good or bad.

I’d particularly like to get some feedback on a new project I’m starting, a small database of combat examples using the GURPS 4th edition rules:

http://www.themook.net/rpg/examples/

That’s the only way to get to it right now, it isn’t in the usual navigation links yet, and the only example posted so far is under “Melee (Weapons) – One“.

I’ll be using that one as a template for all the rest, so I’d love to hear people’s thoughts on the format and layout, the colors, is the example clear enough, all that stuff, before I start using it for many more.

The next big project is a completely fresh reboot of our SoF2 game server, the Kill-a-Rama – expect a lot of changes there in the next week or so as we get things ironed out.

Forum Discussion

Ah, apathy my old friend – still with me after all these years.

So 2008 is upon us, and as I muse on the years gone by I see that, still, nothing has changed. Perhaps nothing ever will, I don’t know. As more and more time passes, it becomes more and more difficult to remember those days when I was happy, when I was normal, when I was alive.

It’s one thing to be depressed, distraught, but struggling against the darkness. Fighting to keep going, to overcome, to somehow reconnect with the great human family and rejoin life. I’ve had a few periods of that, over the years (15 years now since things fell apart). But since I’ve moved, probably since well before that, the fight is simply gone out of me.

I sleep. I wake. I eat. I sleep again. I think there might be the occasional tv show or video game in there somewhere, but everything tends to blur.

I have no shortage of ways to improve my life, to fight back: Pray. Write. Read. Exercise. Volunteer. Find a new hobby. Get back into karate. Join a club. Get a job. Really, pretty much anything. What I do have a shortage of is the will to do any of those things, the energy to actually lift a finger in my own defense. I simply – don’t care.

I’m like a man on fire, only inches from a swimming pool full of water, but I just can’t be bothered to move even as my flesh bubbles and pops.

Maybe someday I’ll find the energy. Maybe I won’t. Somehow, it just doesn’t matter.

Forum Discussion