Letting “Alligator” (1980) play while I work. I remember seeing this when I was 15 or 16 and thinking it was really funny. I’m only five minutes into it, but I feel so sad for the baby alligator. That’s true of pretty much any old movie I see that has real animals. I am a lot more sensitive to it now than I was when I was a kid. I have a hard time watching “Night Of The Lepus” (1972) nowadays.
I prefer fake-looking CGI animals over seeing real animals mistreated.
My very first RPG character was Dinara, a Chaotic Evil Magic User in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. I repeatedly manipulated the other PCs into betraying and killing each other so they (and I) could get the dead PC’s stuff. Back then, we always started characters at 1st level, so after a while I had the highest level character by a significant margin.
Unfortunately, after the … fifth time, I think? … the other players must have compared notes, because at the beginning of the next game session, Dinara walked into the tavern, and all of the other PCs stood up from the table and drew their weapons.
“We need to have a talk,” one of them said.
“Fireball,” I replied.
That killed all but two of the other PCs, who then killed Dinara.
It was worth it.
Keep in mind that this was 1980, we were 15 (or maybe 14, now that I think of it), we were friends, we were all new to the game, and we were the only AD&D players we knew. Also, we weren’t as emotionally invested in our characters as everyone is now (including me). It was a game. Those of us with dead characters made up new ones and moved on. My next character was a Lawful Good Fighter.
While I was typing this, Susan asked if that experience taught me that playing a character like that was not a good thing to do. I said no: I have never played a PC like that again, but I have run a few NPCs like that in games I have GMd since then. But what I did learn is that you can only pull something like that once with a given group of players.
Winaero has a step-by-step tutorial on how to revert Firefox (more or less) to its pre-Proton user interface. I am giving it a try. I have been using Chrome as my default browser for the past day, and I like it better than Protonic Firefox, but not as much as pre-Protonic Firefox.
We watched a movie called “The Colony” (2021) last night. It was kind of like “Escape From New York” (1981), but without the bright colour palette and upbeat tone.
Today we watched a very interesting movie on Netflix DVD, “The Current War” (2017), about Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and (to a much lesser extent) Nikola Tesla. We enjoyed it.
Comments Off on “The Colony” (2021) and “The Current War” (2017)
If you’ll take my suggestion, do not read anything about it or watch any trailers. I didn’t, and I’m glad. This is a much better film than I expected it to be. Susan called it “a lovely surprise”. Maybe you will enjoy it, too.
Have you seen “The Swimmer” (1968), with Burt Lancaster? I love that movie. At the risk of a possible spoiler, I consider it one of the creepiest ghost stories I have ever seen. (*Is* it a ghost story? It might not be. That’s one of the things that makes it so creepy. But *I* consider it a ghost story.)
It’s based on a short story that I had never read until recently: “The Swimmer”, by John Cheever, originally published in “The New Yorker” in 1964.
In honor of the 20th Anniversary of Cinema Insomnia, I present to you a papercraft Miss Mittens. Miss Mittens is the co-host of the cult TV show Cinema Insomnia (as seen on OSI74!). Now her paper doppelgänger can be your co-host!
Click the image below to download the PDF. For help in assembly, review the photos after that.
And now for the step by step visual instructions. Careful with those scissors!
Fun fact! It turns out that I can, in fact, read in my dreams, despite what TV and movies have been telling me for years.
Last night I dreamed I went on a trip to China with a group of people, one of whom was [the actor who played “Thirteen” on House and “Quorra ” in Tron 2]. For some reason, Susan didn’t go.
When we got back, I brought several members of the group, including [the actor who played “Thirteen” on House and “Quorra” in Tron 2], back to our house (which was completely unlike any house we have ever lived in) to meet Susan, and vice versa. In that house, we had a huge living room with lots of art — not classical art, but poster art and “pop” art, including a huge impressionist painting of [the actor who played “Thirteen” on House and “Quorra” in Tron 2]. Susan, perhaps wanting to prevent any awkwardness, had covered that painting and another (also of that actor) with other framed pieces of art.
Looking closely at one of them, I saw it was a certificate or award of some kind. An inscription on the frame read “Hochschule Bruderschaft” (roughly translates as “college fraternity”). So not only could I read in my dream, I could read German.
P.S. Why am I referring to Olivia Wilde as [the actor who played “Thirteen” on House and “Quorra” in Tron 2]? Because in the dream, I was going to introduce her to Susan, but then couldn’t remember her name. That’s why I went over to look at the new art to begin with: to buy time while I tried to recall her name. When I woke up, I *still* couldn’t remember her name. I had to Google it to write this paragraph.
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Blackmoor Vituperative
