Top Almost Twenty-(ish) Movies

On a whim the other day I went through some of my old draft posts and realised it was getting kind of cluttered. It was full of thoughts that never got finished and half formed ideas that I never got around to. Most of them were unpublishable, either due to the moment passing or me just not remembering where I was going with the ideas. I ended up deleting a large amount because I know I’ll never get back to them and their time is gone but I kept a few to work on over the next few weeks.

This is the first one that I’m performing thread necromancy on. I’ve polished it off as best I can and added a few bits here and there. Let’s see how it goes.


So a little over a year and a half ago (Holy crap, I swear it was just yesterday! – Editor), some of you may remember that I did a 7 day book challenge on Facebook. Seven covers of books posted without explanation. Of course I followed up here with the explanation as to why they affected me so.

When it ended, I said I would revisit the topic because there are so many more books than 7 that have affected my life. The more I thought about it though, I realised that every book I’ve read has shaped my life in some form or fashion. Even the ones I hated.

So, what else could I do. Well, this being the modern age and me being a typical Gen-X-er. Why movies of course. I grew up in the middle of the movie rental era (heck come to think of it, I witnessed the whole lifespan of the movie rental phenomenon right to the bitter end, but that’s a blog post for another day.) Back in the days when “please be kind, rewind” actually meant something, I’m pretty certain that I watched most of these movies before it was age appropriate for me to do so. It didn’t do me any harm beyond fuelling my already overactive imagination. Movies may not have had the same impact as books on my young life, they certainly stoked the fires already there.

So without further adieu, here are some of the movies that shaped my youth (In no particular order)

Continue reading “Top Almost Twenty-(ish) Movies”

Ninja Stealth Update!

Now with extra filling!

For those of you who aren’t stalking me full time, you may not have noticed the addition of the Gallery link up in the top right corner of the page.

I finally got around to adding a place to show off all my painted miniatures. Unfortunately time and tide have had their effect on my old stuff and I have fewer surviving old pieces than I’d initially hoped. There are some that are salvageable with a few touch ups so I will get them up as soon as I can.

In the meantime, what I have is an empty space to put pics of my new painted miniatures when I finish them :-/ . Guess I better get at it and actually finish a miniature soon.

Challenge Accepted!

Unexpected Downtime

Well, I didn’t expect that. Firefox crashed while I was updating a wordpress plugin… and when I came back to the site, it was deleted. I managed to eventually recover a backup from December 9th, but it was a last ditch effort on my part. I had very little hope of it succeeding.

For the two of you who even noticed, sorry for the interruption. For the rest of you. Carry on!

I was going to blog tonight about the latest renovations going on in the house and progress on the Nerd Cave but all my time was spent trying to fix the error.

I shall endeavour to update you tomorrow. Until then, good night!

A Dream of a Thousand Cats

My cat is an asshole.

I was supposed to go and see Neil Gaiman tonight, but my cat decided that I would be spending time at home with a tweaked back.

The little #&$@!! tripped me at lunch time in the kitchen today. I managed to catch myself but the effort twinged something painfully in my back. Then, one of the day home kids pulled a stupid and I had to haul him up from where he’d wedged himself in between the wall and the bed, further exacerbating the issue to the point where I’m hobbling and immobile.

You have no idea how much I hate and disappointment I have flowing through my veins right now. If Palpatine ran out of hate lightning, I could easily refill his supply about 1000 times over and still have some to spare.

This was something I was really looking forward to. Beyond anything else this year and it all comes crashing down because of a stupid cat.

Somewhere, Bast is laughing.

Excelsior!

One of my heroes passed away today.

Stan Lee shaped a lot of my early life without even knowing it. Through the pages of Spider-Man, The X-Men and the rest of the comics that make up the Marvel Universe I learned to differentiate right from wrong. I learned that good guys win. Most importantly, I learned that with great power, comes great responsibility.

He told stories about heroes. Heroes with super-normal powers. Those heroes were flawed. They struggled against adversity. Those heroes fought for a better world. Sometimes they stumbled, but they never stopped fighting the good fight.

I remember watching some mid-80s Incredible Hulk cartoon with Stan’s iconic “True Believers” narration and being instantly hooked. I watched the cartoon because it was cool and it was the Hulk, but I went back every week for more because Stan’s voice over made everything cooler.

He will be missed.

‘Nuff Said.

Shameless Self-Promotion

In case the picture of a metal D20 in the top left corner didn’t clue you in, I’m a bit of a geek. Specifically, I’m a roleplayer and like all roleplayers I desire a place to roll my dice in style.

To that end, I’ve wanted a gaming table to set up in my place for some time (since I was like, 12). Last year, there was an amazing kickstarter called the Table of Ultimate Gaming that suited the bill just right. I backed without hesitation and it would have been glorious… except it was a bit more expensive than I would have liked and after some serious self-reflection and adult conversations with myself, I backed out and missed out. Part of me regrets that decision still.

However, the dream has not died. One day, I will have both the gaming room and the table to go in it. Because the nice folks over at Table of Ultimate gaming are mind readers and fellow geeks and they want to help me out, they decided to run a contest and another kickstarter for a new table style they’ve created. I figured I would enter and see if I could get lucky. If you’re a gamer yourself, I highly suggest you follow this link and enter for yourself.

“Dovie’andi se tovya sagain.”


Storied Dreams Come to Life

Multimedia adaptations of books have long been a thing. Some are successful. Some are not. Either because they only have a 2 hour window to visually depict a world that’s been described in detail in thousands of words or they deviate from the author’s vision or the fan’s expectations too much.

My favourite author, Neil Gaiman, has had a spate of recent adaptations of his works with a fair amount of success. Stardust was awesome. American Gods is a wildly fantastic show. Lucifer is decent. Neverwhere was great and even How to Talk to girls at parties was quirky and off-beat but cool just the same.

While rumours swirl constantly about Gaiman’s opus, a movie of Sandman, I can’t see it happening any time soon. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see it visualized, but I can’t see it being done with the right tone or with enough justice to the source material for it to be truly successful.

Another one of Gaiman’s works that I always thought would be difficult to adapt to the screen, was his collaboration with the late, great, Terry Pratchett. Good Omens. However, I was wrong. They’re doing it as a mini-series over at Amazon Prime. Not only that, but it has David Tennant (the 10th Doctor for those of you playing along at home) and Michael Sheen as two of the main characters.

Right then. I’m in and I’m looking forward to this. Moreso now that they released a teaser/trailer at this year’s Comicon. It looks amazeballs…. but don’t take my word for it.