The teaser trailer for Star Trek XI is out on the apple website now. IMDB also has a lot more casting details than the last time I looked.

Captain Kirk will be played by Chris Pine (never heard of him, but he looks right)

Uhura will be played by Zoe Saldana (never heard of her, but she looks right)

Bones will be played by Karl Urban, who played Eomer in Lord of the Rings.




And now the real reason why I'm now stoked to see this movie...

Sulu: John Cho. You know, Harold, from Harold and Kumar.

Scotty: Simon Pegg. That's right. I almost died laughing. Screw the rest of the movie, I want the adventures of Sulu and Scotty played by John Cho and Simon Pegg.

I really hope that the people who make this movie don't try to make it too serious or AWEXXXOME!!!, because that would spoil the fun.

Either way, I have to wait untill December. In the mean time, why not entertain yourself with this image.

As it turns out, the Keg is a little pricey for some, and not particularly liked by others, and they can't make a reservation for me on the 16th, so they're out. The Old Spaghetti Factory is likewise full to the brim on the 16th, so we can't do that either. I've also pushed back dinner time for people who work late on saturday, so here's the new plan (now 65% more laid back):

Sometime between 5:30 and 6:00, gather at our place to watch the He-Man and She-Ra Christmas Special.

If there's only a few people around for dinner near 6:30, we'll just go somewhere close (maybe the local sushi place?), or if there's more than a few, we'll order pizza or go to the Chinese buffet around the corner.

After dinner is A Christmas Story and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.

It looks like Saturday, December 16 will be my day to watch Christmas movies. Here's the deal:

4:00pm) show up at our place if you want to watch the He-Man and She-Ra Christmas Special

5:30pm) dinner reservations at the Keg on Columbia St. in New Westminster

After dinner, back at our place (8pm? Who knows how long dinner will take), we'll be watching my two favourite holiday movies, A Christmas Story and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (getting sauced during the first movie will ease the pain of the second).

Feel free to join us for any part you wish to join in. If you want to be part of the Keg reservation, get back to me by this Monday night and I'll include you when I make the reservation on Tuesday. If the Keg turns out to be full (I doubt it will happen for that early, that far in advance) I'll switch to the Old Spaghetti Factory and post an update. Also, I've timed things just right for the first show finishing and then hopping on the bus to make the reservation, and it's an easy trip back by transit too, so no need to set up designated drivers for dinner.

I've just spent about 20 hours in the last two days fooling around in the Gimp, and I've gotten the images for the box finished. Starting on the right panel, the rebellion and empire images were taken from this site, and made that panel the easiest to make, which is why it was done first. The images on the left panel didn't have as many high-res resources to be found on google image search, so I had to fool around with making vector based traces of tiny gifs and blowing them up. These two panels were finished a few weeks ago, so yesterday afternoon I started the front panel. I'd already image searched the lightsaber handles, and it was just a question of erasing whatever was around them, whenever they weren't available as gifs with transparent backgrounds. Making lightsaber blades in the Gimp is tricky if you don't know what you're doing, fortunately this person does know what he's doing, and made a script for the Gimp which turns any selected area into a glowing blade lickety split.

Finally, the top image. The Star Wars logo was found as a screen cap of some kind with just hollow outlines of the letters. Upon closer inspection, when I started doing effects with the letters I noticed that the lines weren'e at right angles or straight. So I lay down some guide lines and made a vector drawing of the logo, filled it, and manipulated it into the bezeled gold chrome logo with supernova effect that it is now. It was actually easy once I knew what to do, but figuring out what I wanted and how to achieve it was tough, and I'm very proud with the result. The two fighters are actually toys, and I drew the contrails behind, again using vectors, and a gradient fill.

Lastly, I wasn't sure if I wanted a plain black background, or a starfield. These images started plain, but now that I have them with and without starfield, I think the extra texture makes the image look a lot more finished. Let me know what you guys think though, I'm interested to hear what other people think looks better.

The last eight hours or so have been spent building a template for the flat box pattern, which was time consuming because my computer was chugging with the image size. Once I've finally made up my mind which images to use (also whether or not to bother putting anything on the bottom, maybe Jenn and I in our costumes?), I can just paste them on to the template and get them printed.

Which reminds me, Derek, could you get me a quote if you're still at the copying/printing place? The image is 23"x24", 300dpi, and I want really heavy, glossy paper, 74 pound being around ideal.

Here's the two images:
( cut due to largeness, although they're approx. half the working size. )

So, now that I'm three dvds away from having all the Star Wars movies and tv shows ever made, I find myself wishing it were in a fancy boxed set. The obvious solution is to make my own box. I've already started doing some stuff in photoshop, and I need to talk to Derek about a price quote and what kind of sizes and weights of paper he could hook me up with (at least 20x32 inches at 300dpi, ideally 74 lb or higher, uncertain if it's possible...) In the mean time, as I work with cardboard and occasionally get bored while the machine is running and I've done all I can to finish the last set and prepare the next, I decided to make a little prototype.

( six large-ish pics behind this cut )

So, I have been at my workplace for just over three years now, and this means two things. First, I'm eligible for the company bonus plan, in which they match my contributions, up to 5% of my earnings. Signing up for that and getting the full 5% was a no brainer. Also, I can now receive quarterly bonuses based on sales and production. I was only eligible for part of the last month for this last quarter, so when I got my bonus cheque on thursday I thought to myself "ok, I'm probably only getting $40, although $60 would be nice". I didn't open my cheque right when I got it, though, because I didn't want to see it and be disappointed while I finished out my work day. When I got home, there was mail from the government and a message on the answering machine. First, I looked at the mail, and it was good news. My return had been processed, as had Jenn's, and the balance of my reasessment was about $100 less than her return. The message was from Bel, saying she had friday off, and we could hang out as planned. Finally I opened my bonus cheque, hoping for $60 to cover dinner at the Memphis Blues. Well, I didn't get $60, I got $180! I decided that it would be appropriate to go out and buy myself the four Star Wars dvds I was missing to celebrate, especially because I had just seen the Clone Wars cartoons on sale in Lougheed mall.

Yesterday morning I went to the mall, and under the pretense of being responsible, my first stop was the CIBC to deposit my bonus cheque and pay the remaining balance of my reasessment. It was a relief to be payed off in full. It's definitely a pain to lose all that money, my tax return combined with Jenn's was supposed to be over a thousand dollars, which would have been nice to be able to spend, but on the other hand I was always worried that my 2002 return would blow up in my face some day, and now that it's dealt with it can never bite me in the ass again. After the bank, I stopped in at ebGames, thinking that if the dvds were no longer on sale, perhaps I could justify buying a refurbished xBox. Fortunately, the store didn't have any, so I couldn't persue that train of thought.

I did price comparisons for the dvds at London Drugs, Music World and HMV. For a change, HMV had the worst prices for everything. London Drugs had the best price on Revenge of the Sith, $30, so I picked that up. Music World had the double feature dvd with both Ewok movies for $10, as well as both seasons of the Clone Wars cartoons in the 2 for $35 section, so I picked those up. Jenn had wanted me to pick up Bride and Prejudice, which was also in the 2 for $35 section, so I wanted to grab one more movie to get the sale. The section also included Harold and Kumar go to Whitecastle, as well as Wallace and Gromit, and I was torn between the two. I decided to look through the rest of the store for other dvds that were part of the deal, and found Muppet Treasure Island, which I picked up immediately. I've had the songs from that movie popping into my head at work for months now, and I thought that the sense of adventure relating to pirates was much truer to the original swashbucklers in that movie than it was in Pirates of the Caribbean, for all that Muppet Treasure Island was intended to be a sillier movie.

I decided to pop in to Ming Wo and have another look for a burger press. I found a nice cannister style press for $10, although they didn't have any extra spacer disks, so I put those on order. I then hit the Safeway and got a couple items for dinner that night, and got myself some bubble tea at Cinnzeo and lunch at Kojos. Bel had a lot of running around to do herself, so I was able to take everything home, grab a Hulk comic, and go back to Braid station to meet her there. I showed her how to get to my place, and we hung out and she told me all about what's going on in her life right now. Colin came over after a while, and I made up some chicken parmesan and fetucine alfredo for dinner. Bel went home shortly after that, and Colin and I watched the Clone Wars together. I thought it was awesome, especially an underwater battle between the Quarren and Mon Calamari, complete with scuba troopers and Kit Fisto being an amphibious jedi badass.

Today I am taking it easy at the moment, although I should clean up the kitchen some time. Jenn and I want to go swimming, especially I do to make myself nice and hungry for dinner at the Memphis tonight.

UPDATE: I just added the new dvds to our database, and excluding the dollar store dvds and the ones we want to get rid of, we now have 201 disks, 18 of which are double sided, distributed over exactly 100 sets. Nowhere near the ballpark to compete with my brother, but a significant benchmark nonetheless.

This morning began with me beating Jedi Knight 2, which I had actually stopped cheating to play after about the fourth level or so. Last night, I made it up to the final boss battle, and found it unbeatable. I looked for hints, and one of the ones I found was to set down a bunch of automated defense turret things, and release floating defense drone things, which distract the boss so badly you can just cut him down. I found these items nearly useless for most of the game, so I had five of each. Worked like a charm, beat the game in about 15 seconds, although it's probably not the noble jedi way to do things.

I tidied up the place with Jenn's help, and we set to work prepping food for our barbecue. I also sampled some of the beer I've been brewing, and bottled two weeks ago with my dad. It's got a nice flavour developing, almost like white wine, but I accidentally gave my dad the wrong measuring spoon to put priming sugar into the bottles with, so now the beer is severely lacking in carbonation. Hopefully it will improve after three weeks. Jenn and I cut up potatoes, onions and mushrooms, and I made buffalo burger patties using this recipe:

2 lbs ground buffalo (consistantly available in 1 lb vacuum bags at the Big Fresh Farmer's Market)
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1 cup bread crumbs
4 cloves garlic, crushed
worcestershire sauce and montreal steak spice to taste

Just mix the ingredients and shape into patties. I didn't have wax paper to stick between patties, so I used paper towels. They actually worked really well, and absorbed a lot of moisture from the burgers, which seemed to make them stick together better. I do wish I owned one of those burger pattie pressing tubes with the plastic spacers, though, that would be awesome for doing them up ahead of time. The onions and mushrooms were fried up seperately, and Jenn deep fried the potatoes. I got the charcoal going using the starter can, worked like a hot damn, I love that thing. I managed to get some traditional lump charcoal from Canadian tire, which I thought was really cool because the pieces aren't a uniform shape like brickettes. What really knocked my socks off was that once they started glowing there was no smoke at all, so I'm never using brickettes again if I can avoid them. The burgers turned out magnificent, and I had kaiser buns from the Vianna bakery around the corner, and man, those kaisers, even when they're a couple days old they're waaay softer than fresh kaisers anywhere else, it's like the difference between sponge and styrofoam. We had cheddar and swiss cheese to put on the burgers, and goat's cheese to spread on the buns if you're into the fancy stuff. Colin and eventually Derek came over to join us for burgers and fries, I kind of wish we could have had more guests, but a) our place is small and b) we didn't have tons of food to go around, although there are a few leftover burgers.

While we were doing the prep work, I popped on to MSN messenger to see if I could find Derek. I set my status to busy right away, but that didn't stop one of my "pen pals" from pinging me. You see, I have this contingent of british teenage guys who have friended me for no real reason, and this was a new one. Anyway, here's the conversation we had, which I found amusing:

hearts r the shittest scum in the world says:
mongo

Bumbot says:
mongo to you too, buddy

hearts r the shittest scum in the world says:
r u sam williams?

Bumbot says:
no sir.

hearts r the shittest scum in the world says:
ye u r arent u

hearts r the shittest scum in the world says:
who r u then?

Bumbot says:
Steve. In Canada. Today is Canada Day, so if I don't answer, it's because I'm working my grill.

hearts r the shittest scum in the world says:
it is u i asked jack b

hearts r the shittest scum in the world says:
nice try

hearts r the shittest scum in the world says:
canada my arse

hearts r the shittest scum in the world says:
!!!!!!!!

hearts r the shittest scum in the world says:
!

hearts r the shittest scum in the world says:
!

hearts r the shittest scum in the world says:
u r sam i know it

Bumbot says:
Sorry, bozo, I'm not sam. Observe my ancient geocities page: http://www.geocities.com/bumbot/steve.html how many bumbots do you think there are?

I kind of wish he'd continued to be dim at me after this, but he seems to have figured it out and left me alone.

After foods, we hung around and chatted, and eventually went out to the video store around the corner, where after much deliberation and some railroading, we rented Harold and Kumar go to Whitecastle, which turns out to be at least partially Canadian (including a bit part played by Shaun Majumder, a favourite comedian of mine). I wasn't sure what to expect, the critics said that it was basically a standard stoner comedy, but it was written intelligently and managed to break the mold in some respects. I wound up liking it very much, and highly recommend it to just about anyone. The characterizations of the two protagonists were great, and I like the way that they weren't quite idiots or cool guys, but just a couple of normal young people with their own individual hangups and strengths, who happened to enjoy getting high on friday nights. I also liked seeing an asian and a south asian guy in the lead roles, playing these average north americans, as I see that all the time around me, but not so much in most films. Racism was relied on rather heavily to establish the antagonists as jerks, but it didn't seem entirely irrelevant. Potty humour was present, but kept to a minimal level in my opinion, and also used in what was to me a creative way. Unwanted homoerotic overtures ran rampant throughout the movie, but I am guilty of laughing at them. It was similar to Rat Race and The Stupids, in that a grand adventure is begun, goes out of control in a million different ways, and seemingly unrelated events wind up coming coming together to make things work out for the protagonists. All in all, I'd say it's an owner.

After watching some of the special features, Colin and Derek were kicked out, and as it was only 10:00 Jenn and I cleaned up for tea. This is actually the first time the barbecue has had time to cool of the same day I've used it, so all I had to do was bring it down to the landing so I could have light to scoop it out with, and the grills have a non-stick surface and are very easy to clean with the dishes. This actually made cleanup super easy, so all my grilling will be done in the early afternoon from now on, which means I should be able to get lots more grilling done this summer. Maybe after or during the next tea we host (not tomorrow, the one after) I'll set up the grill and have a little byom lunch with everyone. Anyway, between all the coffee I drank and the junk food I consumed, I'm wide awake, so I'm just going to stay up for a while, hence the blog.

I wasn't expecting this. Should have known the promise of the dollar signs would have worked eventually. It seems the original theatrical releases of the Star Wars movies are coming to DVD this fall, each movie sold individually in a two-disc set with both the original and 2004 special edition versions. Lucasfilm is claiming it's a limited release ending Dec. 31, so the big question for me is: do I buy each individual movie seperately, including episodes 1-3, as well as the ewok movies and the clone wars cartoons, or do I cross my fingers and wait for a giant, expensive, uber-box jammed with delicious special features? Currently, I'm leaning toward the individual movies for now, and if the uber box ever does come out, then sell off the old ones and upgrade. I figure this way I can wait for the tenth anniversary of episode three or when the second generation DVD race is over to finally get a massive, definitive box.

Read the official press release on the Star Wars website.

So here's what I've done lately:

Saturday Dec. 3rd, Jenn and I bought a tree, and my dad drove it home for us, and helped me carry it in. Then we bought rum, eggnog and groceries, and set about decorating while playing some christmas cds. The next day we went out to Granville Island in search of tree toppers. There was one, and I don't mean one style, I mean ONE tree topper for sale on the whole island. And it was ugly, in that kitchy style of "this was hand crafted so I'm going to purposefully make it look like it was done by a bored 8th grader who wants to go home, and it's rough and vague appearance will allow snobby artsy types to buy it and think they're better than everyone else because they have hand crafted stuff", which seems to be very popular in some shops. The thing about massed produced items that don't look like junk is they were molded from a hand crafted prototype to begin with. Machines can't make things look better on their own, you still need to get a skilled artist to make it in the first place, so why not make professional looking hand crafted items? Then again, what would snobby artsy types want to buy then? Anyway, after lunch at Memphis Blues we went to the self-proclaimed Christmas Headquarters (or whatever), meaning the Bay downtown. They do have some impressive displays (the purple and black "gothy christmas" is particularly amusing), where we found a nice, medium sized angel for our tree that we could agree on. Then we visited my father-in-law's horse, which took a little longer than I wanted but it was OK (I probably should have gone home and let it be a father-daughter thing, because I had to work the next day). Wednesday I went shopping, and was rather successful, and thursday I did approximately nothing. I worked the weekend, and this morning Jenn and I went out to see the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. All in all, it was good. Good casting, good treatment, good effects. Some highlights for me are:
-the minotaurs. Damned impressive creature effects.
-that bit with the sword on the frozen river. Much like the running down the stairs in Moria in Fellowship of the Rings, it wasn't in the book, but it was a worthy action sequence to throw in.
-Peter is still a paladin, but they played up his flaws a little more than in the book. They actually played up Susan and Lucy's flaws too, I think to show that it wasn't just Edmund who was imperfect. The neat thing about this is that most Paladin types are entirely devoid of personality (no room for character amid all that righteousness?), but that wasn't the case here.
My only real complaint is that there were a couple of places that I felt the sound should have been more overwhelming, echoing and thunderous, as opposed to just slightly louder than normal (the table breaking and one or two of Aslan's roars). Definitely worth the watch, though. (Especially if you can catch the trailer for Lady in the Water as well).

Now I'm off to buy groceries and cook up a storm, and tomorrow I should swim and assemble Lego. We'll see what happens.

Jenn and I were drinking tonight. We played drinking checkers, and I won, only because she didn't want to drink anymore (in other words, she set her pieces up so that I would have to drink them). Anyway, we just finished watching the Pirate Movie, and I must say that it was utter shite, the Kevin Kline and Linda Ronstadt production of Pirates of Penzance was way better, and Darkman beats the pants off both of them. Jenn disagrees, and goes so far as to be unable to see any redeeming qualities to Darkman, but what do you expect from someone who doesn't find Mr. Bean funny. The point is, I'm not too drunk to blog (not to mention spell Linda Ronstadt correctly on the first try) and she isn't, and since I said it first, what I said is true, and if she disagrees she's just being a troll, so there.

Darkman is way better than the Pirate Movie (which was not directed by Sam Raimi and does not have bit parts played by Ted Raimi and Bruce Campbell) and that is that.

First, an update from my last post: that set I won turned out to be a 1:10 scale technic Ferrari racer set, with working pistons and moving steering and such. Not something I really wanted, so I gave it to Tim for his birthday since I remembered him telling me about a similar technic model he had fond memories of when he helped me assemble the Life on Mars sets. The money I saved on purchasing his gift I used to buy a He-Man figure on eBay to replace my old one who's arm had broken off. Win-win situation.

THE MOVE

Packing! I had lots of stuff in boxes at my folks' place long before the move, and kept putting more stuff over there. We booked two U-Hauls, one for Tuesday, June 28, and another for Friday, July 1. We were hoping to get the keys by tuesday morning so we could move in before the end of the month, but that didn't happen. Instead, Russel let us move all of our junk into his living room and we stayed at my folks' place for a couple days. On tuesday Jenn and I had about 5(I think) people helping us, and it took about 5 hours to load the truck, partially due to last minute packing of odds and ends, partially due to divvying up stuff with Kim, partially due to waiting for the freaking elevator. To illustrate the magnitude of these delays, unpacking the truck at Russel's took 45 minutes, with just Russel and me doing it alone. Then I went to my folks' place and cleared out my old room enough for Jenn and I to sleep there for three nights, which took me untill 1am, and at 5am I got up to face a 12 hr shift at work. Needless to say, it sucked. It sucked so much I tracked down my boss and asked to have the next day off for cleaning, which he let me take. So thursday morning Jenn went straight to the old apartment from work, and I came by and took over vacuuming and shampooing. It seemed like I pulled up a beach's worth of sand from the carpet, and couldn't figure out why at first, but I eventually realized that it was just cat litter everywhere. Freaking cat. We got it all done, but the landlord couldn't come that day, so we made an appointment for the next morning. Later on I got a call from the new landlord, he had the keys for me, so I threw some stuff in the car and got the keys. Russel had been offering the use of his trailer on friday, which I was unsure of because of the weather, but it was looking good as I drove out, so I cancelled the second H-Haul and called Russel to take him up on his offer. He phoned me a short while later offering to take the bed over that night while we knew we had good weather, which sounded good to me, so my Dad and I made a trip with a few essentials and got that taken care of. Friday was the big move, which was over in about two to three hours, and it would have taken less time if the landlord hadn't given me one key that didn't work (the other was with Jenn, and I had to retrieve it). Derek showed up to help take in the last couple boxes, and I bought him and Russel lunch at the spaghetti factory for helping. I got Jenn from my folks' place that evening, and bought my family pizza for all their help. With the move done, it was time for unpacking, and the purchasing of things we were missing (wooden spoons, cookie sheets, cordless phone, toilet scrubber and plunger, two futon couches, etc...) thereby eradicating a surplus of dollars from Jenn's tax return. Our first sunday tea was July 16, and we had a mad scramble to get the place clean and assemble my barbecue, but we got everything ship shape without any snags. Tea was a great success and we had one of our new neighbours out, which was cool. After I fired up my grill and drank beer and ate burgers and was a very happy man. Since then, just little tweaks getting things a little homier, putting up Jenn's Welsh flag in the bedroom, reassembling the Star Destroyer*, that kind of thing. We're still needing stuff, but we've settled in enough for now.

THE MOVIE

So I've seen Episode 3 of Star Wars three times now, and that's enough for me untill it hits DVD and I can afford a big expensive box of all six movies. The first time I watched it I was absolutely shocked by how dark it was. I knew George Lucas wanted to make it dark, but I was expecting it to be as dark as Episode 2 was romantic. It confirmed a few theories for me (who killed Dooku, what happens to the droids), and answered a couple questions (exactly how does Obi-Wan get Anakin's lightsaber, how does Anakin take the news of being the chosen one), and also gave me something new (how does Obi-Wan know to join the force in Episode 4 but Vader does not). I still don't believe in comparing the old trilogy to the new one, because they're different movies made in different eras with different values portraying different themes with a different crew, and it can even be argued that George Lucas is a different person, the older, experienced and highly successful artist revisiting an old masterpiece instead of the young visionary flying by the seat of his pants, dodging cancellation by a hair drawing on his favourite classic movies for inspiration. In other words, STOP COMPARING APPLES AND ORANGES PEOPLE! Overall, Episode 6 remains my favourite original movie, even more so now because I felt that Anakin was a pawn of the force and I'm glad to see him redeemed. My favourite prequel movie is Episode 1 (and while I'm not a Jar Jar fan, his frothing-at-the-mouth critics can bite me), because it's so bright and colourful and it has my favourite prequel character, Qui-Gon Jinn (and if I ever buy a Force FX lightsaber, it will be his), although my favourite duel and space battle are both Obi-Wan vs Jango Fett, and my favourite fighter is the Episode 2 Jedi Starfighter. Final verdict: I like Star Wars, but I'm glad the movies are done with and I can geek out about other things like HE-MAN! (October 18th! I'll be at CNL when the doors open, getting my grubby little meat hooks on that DVD!)

THE PAIN

I am now the subject of the four most recent records in the first aid book at work. The first one wasn't a big deal, just nicked my pinky on a sharp piece of metal, put on a bandaid, no big deal. The second one was saturday, July 9, I tripped and fell chest first on a hard edge and bruised some ribs. The doctor said nothing was broken, no internal injuries, all the pain was from inflamation, just take ibuprofein three times a day untill it goes away. Sunday July 24, I lost my patience and put my knife in a pinch point to cut some paper, my right index finger got dragged in and a big flap of skin got torn up when I pulled it out. Again, the doctor said it wasn't too serious, just poly sporin and a bandaid, but I missed the last two hours of work because of it. Today around 10am, I was cutting paper with a retractable knife, when the knife slipped and I stabbed myself on the inside of my left forearm. Blood spurted out, and my skin folded in and I could quite clearly see the fatty tissue I had stabbed right into. This made me nauseous, but I started to feel better once I had it covered with gauze and couldn't see it any more. I took a cab to the clinic, waited an hour, got a tetnus shot, I was told it was really superficial, not a big deal, the laceration was only 2cm long, but he gave it seven stitches anyway just so that I don't have to worry about tearing it again while I'm back at work. I've taken the rest of the day off, although there's no reason why I can't go back on tuesday, so again, it's not that big a deal. The thing is, any one of these things are not that bad, but they're all mental mistakes of just not paying attention or being aware enough to work in a safe fashion, and all three happening in the course of two and a half weeks is not good. When I got back from the clinic the boss called me into his office to ask me if something was wrong that I wanted to talk about, but really my life is pretty good. The only thing I could think that would be causing this are the problems I have getting to sleep at night. Even when I go to bed at 8:30, which I did last night, after being up since 5:00am and working a 12 hour shift, it still took me at least 2 hours to get to sleep, and I just felt mentally and physically sluggish after I woke up, which is probably why I stabbed myself. I had already made the decision to see my doctor tomorrow while I was waiting in the clinic, because I haven't slept well since the move, and when I told the boss this, he was glad that I was aware of my problem and that I was taking the initiative to do something. My appointment is for tomorrow afternoon, hopefully I can get some good advice about my sleeping habits.

*As an aside, I have learned that Mega Bloks is a Canadian company, which makes them suddenly far less evil in my mind. While I have no compulsion to start collecting Mega Bloks (despite how cool the Ninja Turtle sets are), I do want to get the USS Enterprise to go with the Star Destroyer.

So last sunday Jenn and I watched the entire extended widescreen Lord of the Rings trilogy. We started at 5pm, and ended around 8am. It would have taken less time if we had watched it the whole way through without interruption, but we paced ourselves by stopping to eat dinner (meatball stroganoff, made in our new slow cooker, and it was incredible), walking up to Timmy Ho's for coffee, that kind of thing. Now, after that and the Mr. Bean marathon for my batchelor party, I am approximately turned off of marathons for a while. Although doing the Star Wars marathon around episode 3 might intrigue me enough to be involved in that.

Also, I've been having trouble with Jedi Knight 2. I wasn't able to change the action that the joystick on my game pad controls, which I should be able to do, so I emailed tech support, and they gave me some solutions that didn't work. I had a similar problem last summer with Taz: Wanted for the Xbox, and like last time, the solution was that the manual was missing some key information. In this instance, you can't reassign the joystick's function directly for some reason, you have to set the x and y axis to work as buttons in the preferences, and then reassign the funcions of the arrow keys on the keyboard, and then the joystick will do whatever the arrow keys are supposed to do. This is not intuitive in my opinion. The really annoying thing is that my dual Joystick controller doesn't work with Jedi Knight 2 in analog mode, which makes it difficult to do small movements. This is aggravated by the fact that the original Jedi Knight didn't have this problem, and worked beautifully with my dual joystick controller, despite the fact that dual joystick controllers didn't exist then. Not to mention the fact that this game undoubtedly works in analog mode with a dual joystick controller if you play it on the Xbox or PS2. I miss my Xbox again, but I have other things to spend money on. Like the Episode 3 collection of Lego sets, which only costs CDN$400, including a 10% discount for buying it all at once. I think I'll wait for Lego's next "free shipping on orders over X" deal.

I think everyone should do this now: an A-Z of movies, according to you. Here's mine:

The Abyss: I've met divers who like science fiction, divers who don't like science fiction, and divers who don't care about it either way, but all divers like this movie.

The Big Lebowski: I had to watch this twice to realize it was a perverted film noir.

A Christmas Story: One of the two greatest Christmas movies of all time, in my opinion. It was just last year (I think) that I realized that his father was the one person Ralphie didn't ask for a BB gun, and was the person who came through. After thinking about it, it seems to me that this is really a story about taking the first steps into becoming an adult.

The Day the Earth Stood Still: This is not a B movie. This is a well made classic of science fiction, who'se theme has been echoed in multiple movies, including The Abyss (provided you watch the director's cut).

Earth Girls are Easy: Colourful, mindless summer fun with aliens and a spaceship and Geena Davis in various skimpy outfits is a happy movie for Steve.

The Fifth Element: See above, only with more aliens and spaceships, and Milla Jovovich instead of Geena Davis.

Godzilla 2000: Originally, Godzilla movies had bad models. Then, they had bad models and bad compositing. This one has bad models, bad compositing and bad CG. The best part is, it was made this way on purpose.

Hulk: This shouldn't surprise you. My top three reasons to like this movie are: 1)The Hulk didn't know kung fu the instant he had super powers, in fact he was really clumsy at first. 2)Nobody wore a ridiculous costume. 3) Ang Lee always finds beautiful cinematography for his movies.

The Iron Giant: I like robots. Especially ones that can transform and go on a rampage but choose to be good instead.

Jingle All the Way: This is not the other greatest Christmas movie of all time, in fact I'm a little disappointed that this is my favourite movie that starts with a J. Then again, who knew that Arnold and Sinbad had such good chemistry? Then again, why is that surprising?

Karmina: Ridiculous Quebecois vampire comedy. The sequel involves a black market canned poutine deal that goes sour.

The Lost Skeleton of Cadavera: A B movie that was purposefully made as a B movie. Brilliantly done.

Mr. Accident: My favourite romantic comedy because the comedy is weighted more heavily than the romance, the heroine isn't some 2-dimensional trophy who is a vision of what is currently accepted as the perfect woman, and it makes me think of Jenn.

Naked Space: Basically a spoof of Alien in which Leslie Nielson acts goofy, but is actually upstaged by Patrick Macnee (TV's John Steed, in case you didn't know) acting goofy. How cool is that?

Office Space: A very funny movie, which also makes a very good point about trying to find a dream job versus making a living.

Priscilla, Queen of the Desert: I love this movie, and I think it kicks the ass of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, which I don't like at all.

The Quest: Watch out for that Donkegine, man. Kid inventor vs. the local lake monster. I'm still trying to figure out whether or not that surface supplied diving rig he made from two barrels, some hoses and a fish bowl would actually work. Either way, bonus points for creativity.

Rat Race: Zany madcap comedy with a wicked cast and a million things happening wich all tie together. I love this kind of movie.

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians: THIS is the other of the greatest two Christmas movies ever made. Such mindless crap, and very easy to MST3K.

Twelve Monkeys: This movie is pretty much exactly my view of time travel vs. causality, and Terry Gilliam portrays filthy in a way that no other director dares touch.

Unbreakable: This is the best superhero movie ever made, as far as I'm concerned. Exactly how it would happen if it were to happen in real life.

The Villain: Arnold is hilarious as the dim do gooder who can't figure out what to do with the large breasted sex pot, and then it turns into a road runner cartoon.

Watership Down: This cartoon is the best novel adaptation I have ever seen.

X-Men: Because I have not seen Xanadu or X-files: Fight the Future.

You Only Live Twice: Because only the Bond movies starring Sean Connery were made in an era where they were willing to do ridiculous things like send an attack helicopter from England to Japan in four suitcases. Current James Bond movies try to be realistic, which just doesn't go with that franchise.

Zoolander: Because I havn't actually seen Zardoz.

Hey Steve, what about the Evil Dead Trilogy and Star Wars? Well, I figured they kind of went without saying. Besides, if I broke them up into individual movies, I would have extra entries for A,A,E,E,E,N,P,R, and R, and yes, I am already including Revenge of the Sith as being awesome because I know it will knock my socks off.

Yesterday was the first annual official vampire day in Brazil. Why? Because only 2% of the poplulation gives blood, and the government figured this would help.

Boy, long time no update, huh? Nothing much to report really. The Leo party was fun, although I showed up late because I was busy assembling the Wild West, and drinking ensued. Drinking was followed by drunken dream. It was the day of the wedding for Jenn and I. Dinner was over and it was time for Jenn and I to cut the cake, but Jenn was somewhere else. The head cook dude told me that this cake was supposed to be tart, but how tart it was could be adjusted immediately before being served, so after cutting and tasting the cake, we would position our plate a certain way to indicate how we wanted the tartness adjusted. Then he showed me the cake, and it looked like it was made from equal parts bread pudding and boiled peas. I ran off to find Jenn, told her what was going on, and asked if she knew anything about it. She told me that she had requested a Soggy Cake (what, you've never heard of that? it's traditional british type thing), and the lady she had spoken to brusquely said "we'll give you (this), and it will cost (this)".

I woke up and had waffles. Tea was supposed to be cancelled, but it happened anyway.

Wednsday Jenn, Derek, Rick, Sean, Colin and I met up for fish and chips at Cockney King's. It was good. Then we played Deadwood, using Wild West minifigs for pawns. We had to stop early because I offered to drive Jenn to work, and on the way back I picked up the Lego Studios set with the webcam and movie software from Toys R Us, where it was marked down by $150. Unfortunately, the software is incompatible with Windows XP, but Lego has made new software and I'm just waiting to hear from them on how to get my hands on it.

Thursday night Jenn and I stayed in and rented Hellboy and Kitchen Stories. Hellboy was good, but Kitchen Stories was the movie of the night. Good old Norwegian art film on crack, about a swiss study on the kitchen habits of batchelors. My Dad must see this movie, so folks, if you're reading this, go rent it (it's a new release) and watch it together.

That's about it. Time for dinner.

Fri - Sun: Worked. Sunday night I watched HP&tPOA. First off, I like the new Dumbledore better than the old one. The old one was all squinty eyed and looked like a burnt out hippy to me. The new one has large clear eyes, which seems to say that he sees everything. He's also doing the eccentric bit way more, ie saying something that sounds like jibberish but makes sense an hour later. I also thought that this movie was going to be scarier than Chamber of Secrets, but it was completely lacking in suspense. I did like the werewolf, though. All skinny and hairless and creepy, almost like what I envisioned in the Call of Cthulhu game I ran last Halowe'en. And holy cow, did Nevil Longbottom shoot up! I hope the actor becomes all tall and beefy, just because Nevil is my favourite character, purely for the Batman factor. I totally (totally!) want to read a book about him as an adult being all badass and being "slightly" heavy-handed in capturing and bringing to justice all sorts of dark wizards. Lastly, I have this to say. The girl who plays Hermione is way too young to call hot. However, I shall be keeping an eye on her in the next five to ten years to see how she looks when she's of age.

Monday: Got my car fixed. Tow + rebuilt starter + new battery + oil change = $730. Not bad, considering that I had it off the road for 10 months and saved about $300 dollars a month by riding my bike to work. So I am once again piloting the Tie Fighter. While the repairs were being done I went to EBGames, and saw a copy of Aquaman for five dollars less than I payed at Blockbuster. But I passed. I picked up some really cheap Lego for parts, raced to pick up my car, and went to Jenn's. We had chili dogs and watched the rest of Holy Grail with commentary. Then I drove Jenn to work and did some laundry. I tried to play Aquaman, but my Xbox absolutely would not read the disk, so I returned it to Blockbuster.

Today I got up really early and picked up Jenn from work, as she was off before transit started up again. I went back to bed, and got up to cut the greens. However, the greens had just been sprayed with insecticide, so I won't be getting them till friday. I also went to the Zellers and the Safeway for Tums, pens, a new belt, and paper towels. I've just cleaned all the old glue off of the cases for my Xbox games, and now I'm just waiting for Jenn to get back from class so we can check out furniture at Knock on Wood, and go to EBGames for the cheaper (and hopefully functional) copy of Aquaman.

Last night I went to Jenn's and we watched A Mighty Wind. I'd seen it before, but it was worth seeing again. This morning I booked a reservation for our honeymoon at Oyster Bay Resort. Then Jenn and I went to Metrotown and watched Shrek 2. It was funny. I want to say more, but I can't discuss the interesting stuff without giving away plot. Then we went to Toys R Us, where we saw Creationary, a pictionary type game using Lego bricks instead of sketches. We also picked up some bulk bricks for our collections (Lego for me, Duplo for her) and something for Jenn's nephew's birthday. Then I came home. I've decided to put more stuff on my website in the Lego section, which requires some LDraw work on my stunted little PC. So now I'm doing stuff while I'm waiting for renderings. I've already checked my Lotto numbers, and nothing came up, which was fortunate since I forgot to buy a ticket. I've also checked my email, and I've gotten a response to the problem I reported with my game. Basically, the response said that they wouldn't answer my question because they don't answer gameplay questions, so check the web for a walkthrough, or look at the support section of their website, or just read the manual. I read the manual and checked their website before sending in the problem, so now I've looked at walkthroughs. I am convinced that the game is messed up, so I'll try playing it once more before emailing tech support back and explaining what's going on in smaller words.

So, not alot to report for the weekend. Jenn and I watched Big Fish and Underworld. Big Fish was surprisingly not dark, and Underworld was crap. That's all I feel like saying right now.

I also checked the calendar to see what May 19 (ep.III) was like. May 19 is a thursday, and I have that wednsday and thursday off, which means that catching the 12:01 showing is totally doable.

Furthermore... HULK SEQUEL! Script writers are being talked to, and Eric Bana has been secured, although a director will be sought after the script is made. This I partially dread, because if the vision is totally different from Ang Lee's, it won't mesh, but if they try to be similar and fail it will suck. We'll see. The possible antagonists being offered around are the Abomination (http://www.incrediblehulk.com/theabomination.html) and the Leader (http://www.incrediblehulk.com/theleader.html). I think it would be cool if the sequel meshed with the computer game, but I doubt that will happen.

As for Hulk merchandise, at the last Thickets concert Derek was wearing a button down spiderman shirt, and it made me want a Hulk shirt. I looked all over online, and I only found one, which was over $50US, so screw it.

You know, I never was a big comic book person, and I've never read any Incredible Hulk, I just really liked the movie, which may have been entirely because I was stuffed full of Memphis, beer and ice cream while on a date with Jenn when I saw it.

I just watched the Hulk with commentary by Ang Lee. Most of it seemed to involve "I really like this scene," and then you wait for him to extrapolate, but he doesn't. Actually, it's not that bad. You learn a couple of interesting bits of inspiration sources, and he talks about a couple things outside of the film that are neat to hear too. All in all, it's worth hearing if you like the movie, but it's nowhere near as good as Weird Al's commentary on UHF for pure informative value. Random aside: the "rock and roll" song that goes with the Hulk is so lame, so very, very lame. It is such glam rock written by comissioned old guys who used to be big, and then the world moved on without them. Who the hell asks Slash to write a song for a movie that they want for a summer blockbuster? Kids are the major box-office dictators for success, and who among them is going to know who Slash is? And who hires Ang Lee to try to make a summer blockbuster? Ang Lee makes art, and I can totally see it in the Hulk (like, wow man, totally.), but that doesn't mean it will sell to your target audience. Crouching Tiger went big because it was a beautiful film. Spiderman went big because it was a) Spiderman and b) from a Sam Raimi who makes entertaining movies which are a different kind of art. If Ang Lee and Sam Raimi were cooks, Ang Lee is the guy I would go to for filet mignon, and Sam Raimi is who I would go to for pulled pork. Very different cuts of meat, very different in preparation, not to mention the class of people associated with each, but they're both so very good in their own merits. The point is, why do you hire the filet mignon director when you want a cheeseburger crowd who will buy your action figures, playing cards, cookies, board games, pudding, pajamas, posters, skateboards, backpacks, shirts and all the other truckloads of unsold hulk merchandise that you see everywhere? And then you get some burnt out old dude who hasn't made any top whatever hits in years and can't escape a dead music style to make your theoretical chart-topper so kids will buy the soundtrack too? Do the people who made these decisions live in some kind of orbital station with a staticky communications beam to reality or something? If you ask me, it's more likely that the individuals responsible just don't like movies or music, and decided to gamble with names.

Okay, ranting aside, I really like that movie. It's my favourite comic book adaptation. But the song "Set me Free" is like the dead fly on the cake that the icing has hardened to. You just have to pretend it isn't there and avoid that portion. Okay, end rant now.

Stupid song.

New topic! Okay, so I make edge protectors. Non-corrugated cardboard things. The thickness is usually 0.170 inches, give or take 0.005. Today the boss stopped by and checked my work, and he told me I was running a little thick. I looked at the caliper he was measuring with, and it read 0.177". Too thick, unless you're producing our 0.180" ep's, which I was. I pointed this out, and the boss looked at the production chart, looked at the boxes the ep's were going in, and said "in that case, they're fine." I guess it was funnier in person, probably because I had made that same mistake that morning. Okay, fine, it isn't funny at all, nevermind.

Yesterday I got off to a lazy start. I just hung out for most of the day. Then I went to the Zellers in Royal City Centre and purchased a Duplo set (http://www.brickset.com/search.aspx?Query=3621), a gift bag, and an anniversary card. Jenn's been wanting this set for a while, and since the date we set was March 19 2005, that means yesterday was our negative first anniversary. As I figure, the plastic anniversary, since the wedding is still in synthesis. I tried to cut the greens, but the deadbolt to the club house was locked, and I only have a key for the latch. I saw Jenn and gave her her present, which she liked very much, and we had some dinner. Then we saw the Darkest of the Hillside Thickets. Last time we saw them their set was cut short, but this time they did a double set. No T-shirts, though, which was disappointing, but I did buy the one CD that Jenn was missing. After some (not enough) sleep, Jenn and I went out to see Bubba Ho-Tep. It was really cool, with some awesome lines. I also found it kind of sad though, mostly because Elvis was so depressed, and the director was a little heavy on the pathos, which I wasn't expecting. It left me feeling kind of depressed too, because if the King of Rock and Roll can get mopy about what he didn't accomplish and the condition of his life, what hope do I have? Then again, it's only fiction, and for some reason I allowed the movie to lead me by the nose for emotional responses. Maybe it was because the humour struck some kind of chord with me, leaving me in a position to sympathize with the rest of the movie. All in all, another owner, although I liked Lost Skeleton of Cadavera more, probably due to its fluffiness.

So now I'm tired and I have to work tomorrow, which is OK because I can go to bed early and try to rest up. I feel kind of bad for Jenn though, she had to go to work almost directly after the movie, and she was nodding off on the skytrain. I feel partly responsible for dragging her out to all this stuff, but then she wanted to see Bubba Ho-Tep, and she's a bigger Thickets fan than I am, so I can't really take all the blame.

Boring stuff first. Yesterday I worked an overtime shift. Today I cut the greens and bought groceries.

Good news: Today Jenn and I looked at another hall. This one was pretty good. The carpets were a deep red, which might clash with our blue/green palette, but it had the best sound system of anywhere, and a very neat floor plan. We both liked it, which is good, because the hall we preferred in Delta a) is expensive, b) is hard to get to by transit, and c) won't take bookings past the summer because they might be doing renovations. Also, I checked out the Oyster Bay website, and their rates are online and set untill April 30 2005! So this helps very much with estimating the budget.

Awexome Cross 2004!!!: Yesterday I saw The Lost Skeleton of Cadavera! It was so good! Their attention to detail in the recreation of awfulness was masterful, and they managed to include many campy B-movie sci-fi standard plot devices / entities! And the dialogue hurt so good! Half of it seemed to be written by Mojo Jojo, which is to say that it was a little repetitive, and they kept saying the same thing in different ways. It made me want to make my own terrible movie.