I just got back from watching District 9… I was disappointed. I didn’t have any real expectations going in, just saw that it was getting better reviews than G.I. Joe and it looked interesting. So the aliens are bugs who live in a South African slum. The aliens were well done and the weapons made a big fancy mess out of the stuff they were fired upon. But I was bored by the film, annoyed by the camera work, and found nobody to sympathize with in the whole movie. And to top it off; it looks like they’re suiting up for a sequel. You can count me into the ‘don’t care’ crowd for that one.

The reviews are comparing this film to Blade Runner and Alien. Two movies that are good, this one’s not. They’re saying it’s got vision, grit, and realism. But I found it boring, slow, and not at all compelling; a complete waste of my ten dollars. I should have gone to see G.I. Joe, at least that movie knows that it’s all about the popcorn and action and doesn’t try to be something that people don’t care about. I’m annoyed.

I was big into City of Heroes, the online MMORPG, for about 5-months. But eventually I drifted away from it, just like I did with all of the other online games I’ve played. I was so into it that I started a blog to chronicle the adventures of one of my characters, that didn’t get very far. But for a short while I was really into it and had a lot of fun. The reason that I bring this up is because I thought my account was closing on the 5th, but apparently I had it set up to auto renew. And now I have the option of playing again anytime for the next 6-months. Lucky me. So allow me to offer you this bit of advice, if you’re going to let something expire due to lack of interest, make sure you don’t have it set to auto renew. I’m just saying.

Tonight I started patching some of my rather large holes in my blogging history with little bits from my files that I think are moderately interesting or well done or that I just want to archive online. I threw up a couple of backgrounds for roleplaying characters I made for superhero games that my buddy Doug ran a while back (see the tie-in with City of Heroes, eh. Eh. Aren’t I clever). Nothing spectacular, but I’ve got all these character write-ups on my machine and I figured I’d throw them on my blog. Just because I have them, I think I’ll add the character backgrounds that my player’s created for my games. You’ll be able to tell pretty quickly who was into it and who was just doing it because I asked for them.

Writing wise, I made some notes on what my characters want and what is standing in the way of them getting what they want. As well as writing down their motivations and all of the background information that I’ve been carrying around in my head. I figured I’d better get it down on paper before I lose it. And that has happed in the past. I also surfed the web a bit to try and figure what my options were for setting. I’m leaning toward the vast empty places in the country, the desert south west or maybe somewhere in the Dakotas. But for the most part I’ve not done much work on anything tonight.

I picked up my chest of drawers tonight, so the bedroom is coming together. But get this… I discovered as I was moving the TV stand/dresser into place and getting things set up; my master bedroom isn’t wired for cable. WTF. I talked to the maintenance guy about it and he was pretty much clueless. He told me that it’d probably be expensive to have Comcast fish the cable through the wall. Maybe, probably, who cares… shouldn’t the apartment complex take care of that? I mean who doesn’t have a cable hook up in the bedroom? Oh well, so I have a project ahead of me. In the meantime, I have a cable stretched from the unused cable outlet in the second bedroom, down the hall, and into the master bedroom. It’s very classy. Also, it’s a lot of fun at night when the lights are out. And by fun I mean dangerous. I’m going to end up tripping and falling down the stairs. Let’s hope not. Later.

Am I the only one who doesn’t get this whole Michigan budget thing? The gist of it, as I understand it, is that we have a 1.3 billion dollar deficit and our governor is making 300 million dollars in budget cuts. The rest of the deficit, ONE BILLION dollars, is being covered by the federal stimulus money. Not exactly a great plan to my mind and certainly not what I’d call tightening the states belt. What happens next year when we don’t have any federal stimulus money? And what about all that stimulus money that’s supposed to stimulate the economy and create jobs, isn’t that what we’re using to pay off our bills! I understand that Michigan doesn’t have the money to pay off the deficit and that huge cuts would be needed to get the books in line. That’s what’s supposed to happen during tough times. Right? And didn’t the feds put any guidelines on how the stimulus could be spent? It makes me crazy and I’m not going to talk about it anymore.

So I’ve been doing my research on angels, grigori (the watchers), and nephilim (giants). I’ve been using the Book of Enoch and the internet as my primary sources. And what I’ve come to find is that much like the bible, you can pretty much make whatever interpretation of this stuff that you want and find passages to support what you’re saying. I started this research with some basic ideas in mind and I haven’t found anything that actually contradicts my initial ideas. Which is good. I have found stuff that just doesn’t work, like the idea that the giants were 450 feet tall. Um… yeah, I think not.

Height-wise, I’m leaning toward the nephilim being nothing more than 9-feet tall and probably more like 7.5 – 8 feet tall and big. Og and Goliath, both giants from the scriptures, were 9 and 7 feet tall (based on a 12-inch cubit), or 15 and 11 feet tall (22-inch cubit). So it seems like that’ll work.

Story-wise Tasha and I came up with some good motivations for my nephilim and worked out the interaction between him and the other two characters. We also twisted a few ideas on their ear and got interesting results. If I couple that with some of the stuff that Doug and I talked about regarding my fallen angel and I’ve got a very nice skeleton to hang my story on. I need to finish note carding my scenes (and get away from a strange desire to edit up my own copy of the Book of Enoch) but I feel like I’ve got a good handle on this story.

Which is a great feeling, since I’ve had this idea stewing around in my head for three or four years now, but not ever feeling like I had enough of a handle on the story to really write it down. I tried once before with this idea, but all I had then was a fight scene and the idea that I wanted to do for angels what Anne Rice did for vampires. Not exactly the firmest ground to set a story foundation on. This time will be better.

Tomorrow is the writing call. I’ll let you know how things go and where we stand with our goals. Later.

Tonight we watched Chronicles of Narnia: Prince whatever-his-name-was. I’ve just got to say that I’ve not been impressed with the Narnia movies. Admittedly, I never read the books as a kid. Though I did read the first book just before the first movie came out. So I don’t have fond childhood memories of wanting to go to Narnia and I do have a skewed adult perspective of Narnia through the lens of all that christian mythos and symbolism. But for a series of movies that have all the stuff I want in fantasy; centaurs, minotaurs, dwarves, satyrs, and a host of other humanoid critters. These two movies are just plain boring. I can’t relate to or have any sympathy for any of the characters, and just seeing cool special effects got old a while back. Now mind you, I’m not the target audience for these films and I’m not a big fan of the movies in general, but still, I expect more for my entertainment dollar.

I’m just sayin’. Later.

I’m feeling like ranting. So I think I will.

Did you write that letter or did your husband write it and have you sign it? Selfish and wrong? So god wants you to be unhappy? Or did you just decide that you can be unhappy and live with it? Whatever. Yes, it was the wrong way to go about it and yes some people got hurt. My family, no, they didn’t get hurt… hell, they don’t even care one way or the other. Your family, yeah, I’ll agree that they got hurt. Sorry.

Fuck. If you’ve got issues with guilt and god, great, but damn it if I’m going be satisfied with that crap ass excuse about god making his presence felt to you. Unless everything you told me about the dynamic of your relationship was a lie, well, god don’t roll like that. At least my god doesn’t. He wants me to be happy, healthy, and at peace. But whatever gets you through this.

And b.t.w., your man will never let you forget this incident. He will never forget it either. You’re fucked whether you stay or leave. I just hope you take my advice and get some marriage counseling, because you’re gonna need it.

So the day that I felt things had finally blossomed, was also the day it all collapsed. You say you’ll never see or communicate with me again… well, okay. But I’ll be around, somewhere. Just remember that when things get bad in 6-months or a year. But from here on out, I don’t share and I don’t play second fiddle to any other man. I’ve learned my lesson.

Oh and when either of you read this and get pissed off and want to leave a nasty comment, just know that it’s expected, I’m not afraid of it, and it won’t get deleted.

I’m out. Peace.

I keep seeing news articles about the tsunami that make me angry. I’m not going to give you any examples, I’m sure you’ve seen them too. I don’t know what the deal is, we’re giving them help. I mean, I recognize that we’re the hall monitor for the world, with all that entails. Now, I’m not going to tell anyone not to donate their money to helping the people affected by this disaster. I’m not going to point out the growing list of countries that should be doing more. But, I am going to say that this happened in Asia, not in the U.S.A. So if it’s not our first priority, sue us. If you want to help great, if you don’t… Well, that’s your prerogative. And to put it all into perspective:

“We are six percent or less of the world’s population, yet we give almost half. We are a very small number of people, relatively speaking, and we carry the weight of a dozen countries. Secondly, we maintain a military structure that keeps the peace of the world. … Who is in the Indian Ocean with the aircraft carriers, helicopters, skilled personal? No one has the infrastructure in the world, we spend almost half a trillion dollars a year on our military structure, which is essentially the fire department of the planet and it is always at the disposal of people hit in a national disaster. … Incidentally on food aid, we give 60% of all the food aid in the world. It is simply irresponsible to talk about the U.S. as anything other than the most generous nation on the planet.”
–Charles Krauthammer, Pulitzer Prize winning Washington Post columnist

So take your “we should be doing more” crap and shove it in your ass. Later.