Brewfest! Whoo!

World of Warcraft has several festivals during the year, and today marks the start of one of my favorites: Brewfest!

Backstory: it's a celebration of the harvest (not to be confused with the Harvest Festival, which is more a memorial of fallen heros and a Day of the Dead-type thing), and what better way than with a festival featuring bread, pretzels, cheese, sausage, and most importantly, beer! Basically, it's WoW's version of Oktoberfest. And yeah, this all thought up by the dwarves - we know how they love their ale.

More importantly, it's a set of quests involving getting drunk (and hunting critters that can only be seen while drunk), riding rams, and hurling empty beer mugs at raiding Dark Iron Dwarves.... all of which can be repeated once a day.

So if I disappear for a few days, you now know why: the World has sucked me in once again.

Brewfest: Kusa tested... Kusa approved!

This Week in Movies

I have watched an inordinate amount of movies in the past week. Some good, some bad, some really bad. Some, I'll even watch again. Here's the run-down of what I've watched recently.

• Children of the Corn - My sister-in-law has been broadening my horizons by introducing me to all sorts of bad 80s horror, including a jaunt with He Who Walks Behind the Rows. While I'm fairly sure Malachi's actor did indeed grow up to be a secret sociopath and/or the older brother in The Adventures of Pete and Pete, I think the most terrifying part of the movie was the idea of Bert and whatsername riding around with a dead kid shoved in their trunk for hours.


• Dune, circa 1984 - Dune is one of the classic books of sci-fi/fantasy. It is the fantastic journey of a young man from the pampered son of a duke to the religious leader of insurgents with a death grip on the throat of civilization. It's got political intrigue, deep characters, strong leading ladies, action, adventure, mysticism...
  
  The movie? Not so much.
  
  Sure, the effects and costumes were great for the early 80s, but that doesn't excuse their butchering of the plot and massacring of the characters, especially the women (What's that? You mean Chani actually spends time outside of Paul's bedchamber in the book? Nooooo...). Toss out the plot, add in rampant internal monologues, some epic rock power ballads, hip-thrust-activated blasters, random face-bleeding, and Sting, and you've got... something completely and utterly headdesk-worthy. Only watch it if you and your friends love to MST3K things. Otherwise, skip it and watch the SciFi Miniseries.. Or, better yet, read the book.


• The Spirit - ahaha, where to start... What can I say about a superhero who has an Oedipal complex for his city and gets stuck in a toilet seat in his big introductory fight? This is one of those movies made to be bad, but more often than not, it was the movie equivalent of nails down a chalkboard bad. This is what happens when you've got a mentally unstable vigilante whose only power is that he can't die. Too bad that whole transformation process didn't add a few IQ points, huh?
  
  Of course, I do have to give it credit for one thing: "THIS IS FOR MUFFIN!!!"
  
  You go, Spirit. You go.


• The Seamstress - What happens when you've got a serial killer of children, a desperate mob, and a psychic school teacher who keeps leading people to the bodies? Well, for starters, one dead school teacher and her unlucky husband. They set about haunting the island until a group of college grads show up 20 years later, all in support of their friend's search for her obsessive mentally ill father, and just lookit that body count rise! Lesson here: True friends stick together. Idiotic friends get themselves killed by wandering off on their own.
  
  Not a terrible movie, but not something I'll feel the need to sit through again.


• Boogeyman - Now, this is my kind of horror. Low gore, an unreliable main character, and plenty of playing with your head. Barry Watson gives a great performance as a guy who, after years of therapy, has finally been convinced that he's got no reason to be afraid of closets. Then, his mother's death forces him to go back to his childhood home... and see if those therapists were right.
  
  If you want the full effect, watch this one at night, when you're all alone in the house. Or maybe I'm just an easy target for what's just out of sight in the dark...


• Boogeyman II - Again with the "kid witnesses traumatic death grows up" theme, although this particular kid ends up in a mental hospital, in group therapy with agoraphobics, cutters, germophobes, and whatnot to try to work through her boogeyman issues. Cue the Boogeyman killing them off one by one.
  
  ... Yeah. This one lost all the psychological horror and tried to replace it with gorn. Did I really need to see maggot infestation and reverse lipo? No, no I did not. Do yourself a favor and just stick with the original.


• The Phantom - Hello, update! The Walker family line has a new addition in this two-part "movie event" from SyFy. This one was actually pretty enjoyable, and I do have a soft spot for parkour chase scenes. They probably should have rethought their casting, however, when the 5'9" hero's sidekick(ish) person is a 5'10" woman... in 3" heels. Kiiiinda makes him a little less intimidating when they stand side by side. Overall, a pretty good flick, and the ending leaves it open for sequels or even a series... and yeah, I'd definitely check them out.
  
  And yes, I was ecstatic that our hero refused the wear the purple unitard. There are some traditions that just need to be left in the past.

So, there you have it: what I've been watching in the past week. Now, on to Wimbledon!

Soul Caliber IV

A little over a month ago, I finally got a PS3 as part of a deal with a new TV. It also came with a free movie and game, but alas, the game choice was not something that really got my attention.

Then yesterday, my brother brought over a few of his games. He seems to have an intense interest in getting me to use my PS3 for more than a glorified Blu-Ray player. In any case, he brought over Soul Caliber IV.

Now, I've been a Soul Caliber fan since the days of Soul Caliber II, when the AI in our insanely evil little Dreamcast learned to beat the hell out of just about anyone who showed up. I swear, the thing was conscious. My brother left it on one night, playing itself in an endless battle between the two characters who could be any character, and the next day, there was no beating it until John brought out Siegfried and put its butt back in it's place.

Scariest part was that it actually gave up halfway through that team battle. Went from striking and countering and guard impacting to just... standing there. It recovered a day or two later, once it finished sulking.

Then, it started on the corpse mutilation. You see, once the computer KO's you, it's supposed to just stand there and wait for the next round. Not ours. It started with Cervantes. See, Cervantes has a move where he leaps up into the air, disappears, and comes slamming his swords down on the opponent halfway across the stage. So it started where the KO would sound, and the computer's Cervantes would take one step after. The next time, it managed the leap. The time after that, it teleported, but without delivering the blow. And finally, it came crashing down on my prone character with all the force Cervantes could muster.

After that, it was as if the dam broke. Any Dreamcast-controlled character could just walk right up to you after you'd been KO'd and start beating the heck out of your poor prone body. According to our stunned friends who had their own Dreamcasts and their own versions of SCII, this was not typical behavior.

Of course, those friends also came in, confident that they'd have no problem going through our arcade on Medium when they could beat theirs on Expert with ease. Yeah, they didn't make it too far...

So yes, when John brought over Soul Caliber IV, I could hardly wait to give it a try. Annnnd then proceeded to play it until 6am. -_-;; Story mode's a little... lacking, but it's got the same familiar play style that I love and there's still the arcade mode. I still have another mode to try, which will probably keep me busy tonight. Also: loving the character creation. It's one of those fluffy little extras that reeeeeally aren't necessary, but it is fun. Looks like I can make up to 50 characters, so I've got 48 more to go once I feel like I understand the game better. The over-complication, I'm not too fond of, but hopefully I'll get the hang of it soon.

Now, let's see if I can keep it to just a few hours tonight. ^_^;;

Oh Where, Oh Where Has My Brain Gone...

Eesh. I swear, this week, my brain hopped a flight to Tahiti and hasn't so much as sent a post card back.

It happens, from time to time. The old creative muse completely rebels, riles up the rest of the gray matter, and suddenly I've got a mutiny on my hands - or in my head, as the case may be. No matter how much I try to concentrate on what I need to do, Ye Olde Muse is bound and determined to fully immerse itself in frivolous fluff - sketches, doodles, writing that will never see the light of day...

It's a little like existing in a void where "out of sight, out of mind" is the going rule and if you don't keep a train of thought, it may well be gone forever. But for those things the Muse is interested in at the moment... well, when the Muse gets interested, it gets interested, and there's no room for negotiation. It's either draw or write it right now and get it out of my head, or suffer the consequences.

I like to call this a creative brain purge. Giving it a fancy name makes me feel like it actually serves a purpose... which it does. I guess it's the waking equivalent of dreaming for me. Dreaming, as my high school psych teacher fondly put it, is the same thing as flossing your brain. It gets out all the stuff wedged in the crevices, occasionally hurts a little, and leaves your brain better able to function when it's all said and done. These CBPs of mine seem to do the same thing, only since I don't do it every single night, they tend to show up out of the blue and dominate my life for a good week at a time. Forget continuing the story, doing a full finished picture, or turning out a post-worthy comic page: it's time for a CBP!

Which is why there is no comic page this week. No matter how hard I tried, the concentration just wasn't there. It's like trying to read a book while someone's pulling on your sleeve, going, "Hey! Hey! Hey! Look at that! Look over there! Hey!"

Yeah, not happening.

But, when it's over, I'll be able to concentrate again, and I might even have something to show for it. So, I am just going to ride it out and hope it's done by next week. Because really, I would like my brain back sometime before Christmas, thanks.

Top Distractions

Yep, life is distracting. It is very distracting. It doesn't even have to try very hard - just wiggle something shiny outside the window, and there goes my concentration! However, there are a few things that grab my attention more than others.

• The TV. If that's on, forget about writing! Whether it's Criminal Minds or HGTV or some SyFy movie (oh, how I love the cheesy bad SyFy flicks), it will just keep nibbling away at my concentration until I either have to put off writing or turn off the TV. Needless to say, TV stayed off for most of November.


• Facebook. Oh, Facebook and your many, many time-draining applications. It started with Pet Society, then spread to CafeVille and, most recently, FarmVille. The last two are particularly dangerous, as you have to check at certain time or else your food or crops will spoil or wither and die. I can't even say they're really all that GOOD of games, they're just addictive.


• RP Chat. Yep, I do some RP. Back in 2001 or so, I started a message board RPG dealing with mythology. Although the actual game is pretty thoroughly dead, the characters have lived on through AIM. While I am loathe to call this a distraction, as I do so love my characters, it does qualify.


• TV Tropes.com. Sweet Lord, this is the distraction of distractions. It is an endless maze of amusement and fascination and the ultimate time-sucking black hole for writers, lit majors, movie geeks, and anyone else with an interest in books or film. I am not kidding - this place is dangerous. You look at one entry, and suddenly you've got ten more opened in tabs to read through later, and each of those gives you three or four more, and before you know it, it's 5am and you're wondering where the hours went. I had no idea this place even existed until my brother revealed that someone had done a page for Strawberry Syrup.

So that's my list of top distractions. I'm sure there are more, but there's a shiny object demanding my attention!