Blackmoor Vituperative

Current version of Karelia map, for my maybe-I-will-maybe-I-won’t D&D game. I like the overall look, but I am bumping into limitations in Inkarnate (which is what I used to draw this). namely, there is no way to group objects into, say, “Labels”, or “Rivers”, and change the size, colour, font, etc. in a simple way. Photoshop can do that fairly easily (no great surprise), so I am thinking about doing the landmasses in Inkarnate (which is easy to do with its built-in textures and POI icons) and then doing the rivers and labels in Photoshop.

Alternately, I am playing with the idea of loading this map into Campaign Cartographer (from ProFantasy), and re-drawing it in that program. Campaign Cartographer is a much more powerful mapping program than Inkarnate, and can do everything (or nearly everything) I would like to do in Photoshop. I have owned Campaign Cartographer for literally decades, and have subscribed to their monthly “Cartographer’s Annual” since 2007, but I have never taken the dive into learning it. It has a steep learning curve.

On the other other hand, I am wondering if perhaps I have gone down a rabbit hole on this whole map thing. Maybe I should just declare it “good enough”, and move on to planning the actual game. Maybe.

If you liked “Scream”, you may like “Freaky” (2020). It’s funny and gory, and Vince Vaughn and Kathryn Newton both deliver effective performances. I enjoyed it.

If you like the Richard Pryor/Gene Wilder movies from the 1970s, like “Silver Streak” (1976), you may like “Keanu” (2016). I think it’s probably the closest I have seen anyone come close to the style of movies that Pryor and Wilder made. It’s not 100% the kind of comedy I typically like, and I wasn’t entirely happy with the ending, but I enjoyed it.

We just watched one of the worst movies I have seen in a very long time. I have seen people compare this to “Alien” (1979) and “The Thing” (1982), but that gives this film far too much credit. If Uwe Boll were to make a crappy knockoff of Roger Corman’s “Forbidden World” (1982) (originally titled “Mutant”), it would look like “Breach” (2020).

Calling this “terrible” is an insult to terrible movies.

Fun fact! You can make a Christmas ornament out of a $9 Revell Snap Tite Star Wars Tie Interceptor model (link to the model).

1. Assemble the model.
2. Get a generic metal Christmas ornament hook, and one of those extra-long propane lighters for fireplaces, tiki torches, etc.
3. Un-bend the small end of the Christmas ornament hook to make it straight.
4. Heat up the un-bent end of the Christmas ornament hook with the lighter until the metal glows.
5. Push the hot metal straight down into the round part of the Tie Interceptor, but not so far that it comes out of the bottom. There is actually a tiny little circle on top of the space ship to show you where to put the hook!
6. Wait a minute or so for the metal and melted plastic to cool.
7. Hang it on the tree.

It doesn’t light up or make noise, but it is approximately the same size as a Hallmark ornament, and WAY cheaper! It fits right in with our Hallmark Tie Fighter and Darth Vader Tie Fighter ornaments.

P.S. The windows of mine are fogged up because I used crazy glue when I assembled my Tie Interceptor, and the vapours from the cyanoacrylate fogged up the inside of the windows (you have probably seen a similar effect on “CSI” or “Death In Paradise”, where they use crazy glue to reveal fingerprints on things).

A lot of states have a very nearly 50/50 split between reasonable voters across the political spectrum, and Republican death cultists. Who wins an election in most of the USA boils down to a tiny fluctuation in the electorate. There are two significant consequences of this.

First, in places like Texas, where that tiny difference leans ever so slightly in the direction of far-right extremists and would-be fascists, you get state legislators calling for their state to secede (taking with them the nearly 50% of the populace who aren’t overtly delusional death cultists).

Second, in places like Virginia, where that tiny difference leans ever so slightly in the direction of people of good will across the political spectrum, the state is run by well-meaning people, but those people are continually struggling against the nearly 50% of the populace who are death cultists.

Don’t be too proud of the fact that your state veers ever so slightly away from the Republican death cult. In most of the USA, it wouldn’t take much more than a stiff breeze for that to change.

Trump is just a symptom; Republicans are the disease.

It’s not uncommon for me to have a song in my head. I typically wake up with a song playing in my head. And it’s not terribly uncommon for me to walk around singing a song I haven’t consciously chosen to sing.

What was unusual today was that I was singing a David Bowie song (“Modern Love”, if you really want to know), and about halfway through, I realized that I was singing it in the style of Elton John.

So… huh. Interesting. After that realization, I started singing other David Bowie songs. And it’s funny, but most of the ones I tried worked just fine in the style of Elton John!

Naturally, I tried some other bands’ songs… Journey, Flock Of Seagulls, Queen… and it’s funny how easily that they lend themselves to an Elton John impression. “We Are The Champions” and “Separate Ways” sung by Elton John work particularly well, in my opinion.

So at this point I am almost done with my shower, and I think, I wonder if it works the other way around?

So I try , and you know what? It doesn’t work. I can’t do “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting” in the style of Journey or Queen or David Bowie.

So is that a strength of Elton John (or Bernie Taupin), or is that a weakness of my non-Elton John impressions?

Really makes you think.

Paul Bettany movies…

We watched “Uncle Frank” on Amazon Prime a couple of nights ago. Just FYI, it has a happy ending. I would have enjoyed the movie more had I known that up front, because I wasted a lot of time expecting something horrible to happen. Nothing horrible happens. Everything works out. So just enjoy the movie, and don’t worry.

Last night, we watched “Priest” on Netflix Streaming (it leaves Netflix today, so I’m not sure where you would find it now). It’s your basic post-apocalypse, fascist-church-vs-vampires movie: that same old story. Surprisingly, it’s pretty decent. The production design, sets, and so on are top notch, and all of the actors play it completely straight. This, too, has a happy ending. Oh, and the girl who gets abducted is currently on Netflix as the eponymous “Emily In Paris”.

Happy Halloween! Here is some World Of Warcraft wallpaper, if anyone still does that. 🙂

Tonight’s movies were “Vivarium” (2019), which had us saying “kill it” throughout much of the movie (why do the characters never listen to our advice?), and “Dead Weight” (2012), a zombie movie that isn’t anything like what you would expect from a zombie movie. As the person who recommended it to me said, it turns the “hard men making hard choices” cliche on its head.

Of the two, I would recommend “Dead Weight”. Be warned, it takes a while to get started (about 20 minutes, and if it hadn’t been recommended by someone I know, it probably would have been an 18 minute movie for me), but if you stick with it, you may like it.