May Contain Nuts

This’ll be fun…

I have a 4-11 shift tonight, and then a midnight-8am shift the following day. I know what it’s for, though, and I’m betting we can be done before 8… we’re going to be cleaning projectors and the booth windows so that we can get as crisp of an image as we can, and then we’re going to be adjusting the lens alignment and focus so there’s no ghosting or shadows or blurry images on-screen (the humor in this is that both Pat and I are near-sighted… I need new glasses and Pat doesn’t usually wear his unless he’s driving). I’ll be taking the laptop to work with me so I can continue to try and get caught up on my web development project in the downtime. Whee.

Hate Star Wars… *mutter*

Oh, and as of the 12th, we’d sold 3,227 tickets… our theatre, fully loaded, can hold a little over 3,600.

So apparently the person who wrote “So Long And Thanks For All The Fish” has managed to craft the most addictively catchy tune in the history of the universe… more devilishly annoying than “The Song That Never Ends” and far more attractive to sing over and over (and less likely to leat to beatings and social outcastings) than “Barney Is A Dinosaur”. If you have not yet gone to see The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, I highly recommend it, if only so you can hear a bunch of dolphins singing about the stupidity of humans ;).

According to the Associated Press, Hitchhiker beat XXX: State of the Union by 8 million dollars in the box office this weekend, taking in $21.7 million… which really didn’t surprise me one bit… XXX is crap, while Hitchhiker, even amongst some of the more rabid fanpeoples, has a passable chance of being not utterly horrible. I must say, though, that the overal insanity factor is set perhaps a bit too high for the average brainless teenager (having screened the movie with two of them, I can attest to their total confuddlement), but anyone who even has the slightest inkling of what sort of humor Douglas Adams showcases in his work will be bound to appreciate the film (unless you’re a continuity nazi, in which case I ask what the hell you’re doing being a fan of Hitchhiker’s Guide, a story that hasn’t been the same twice since it was first broadcast on BBC Radio in the 70’s). This is one book adaptation I would love to see churn out additional sequels based on the source work (except perhaps Lord of the Rings, but in that case there wasn’t much choice since they’d already done all three), though at this point there’s not a whole lot left to fall back on from the late and exceptionally great Mr. Adams, so that’s a bit of a dangerous path to take, ’cause I don’t think anybody but the chaps in Monthy Python have quite the same grasp of insanity that Adams had. Still, if done well, I would love to see adaptations of the rest of the series, if only to see some more of this fantastically warped universe that Adams crafted. I mean, when you’ve got a universe where the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything is “42″ and God’s last message to creation is “We apologize for the inconvenience” it just doesn’t get any better than that.

I think my favorite bit of the movie, without delving into spoilers, was the Infinite Improbability Drive. I mean, what you’ve got here is the ultimate Deus Ex Machina, capable of redecorating your bridge in less than a nanosecond and able to turn thermonuclear missiles into sperm whales and bowls of petunias. Normally this sort of thing gets in the way of telling a story with any real purpose or danger to it, but not in Adams’ universe. Pile onto that the utterly wacky effects that accompany its use (imagine looking into space and suddenly seeing a giant lemon flash into existance, being replaced by an enormous lawn chair, and finally turning into an enormous spherical spaceship with extraordinarily large, flashy brake lights, and that pretty much sums up what you see every time the IID is activated). The whale was expertly done too, though I was a little saddened when his landing didn’t grant the “gang” access to the bowels of Magerathea as it did in the book. Ah well, things change, and I imagine a 50-foot whale-innards-coated crater isn’t the sort of thing that translates very humorously to the screen.

On a totally different subject, I get to go to a birthday party today (since it is technically Tuesday) at a roller skating rink. This should be quite entertaining, since the last time I was at a roller rink was probably 1999…

Pahket update: render times may bring me down to the last minute on this one if the computer at school doesn’t render much faster than my desktop here, which literally chokes on the exterior mesh now because of the high polycount. Efforts to create an update image for your viewing pleasure have met with stout resistance from the computer, demanding 4 hours to finish just over a half of a single, final, full-sized image.

Took another trip to the Apple store today and got to play with a Mac mini… those things’re cool. And with as small and light as they are, I’ve no doubt someone will eventually make good on their eternal promise to throw their computer out the window the next time it does . It’d be a lot easier than tossing a tower (you’re liable to pull your back out doing that), and a LOT less expensive than chucking a G5 iMac or a PowerBook (or any other laptop computer for that matter) ;). I had to force myself to leave before I did something I knew I’d regret, like trying to buy a computer with no money… I had to warn the store employees not to sell me anything.

I can honestly say that tonight was a night at work where absolutely NOTHING happened. I got to monitor a trainee for almost 5 hours to make sure he didn’t botch anything up, and then I turned everything off and went home over the following 3 hours. Thrilling, I tell ya. On the bright side, though, I did get to see the new Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trailer. That movie looks stellar, really. Can’t wait for May… but first, must get project done and graduate and get Ash out here in March… and find a job… then I’ll worry about May.

And now, it’s sleepy time, or nearly so. So I’ll bring this to a close without explaining what the title has to do with this entry whatsoever, bwahaha!

Procrastination is gonna kill me one of these days… or get me killed. That, and WAY over-sleeping…

In other news, HBI is back. Considering that all of the various ranting and rambling things I had on the old Realm can be basically consolidated into this blog, I’ll officially declare the site as complete and move on to updating it whenever the hell I have a free moment or something to rave about. Might be able to convince a few friends to join me too… we’ll see.

Anyways… again, everybody should go see Brother Bear. Now. I don’t care if the theatre’s closed, go camp out in front of the box office. Really, get your screen time in while the movie has the slight chance of playing in a BIG house (house being a term for a single screen within a multi-screen complex, like “house 10″) at your local megaplex… once Matrix comes out (in TWO DAYS), the only place you’ll find Brother Bear is stuffed into the little 90-seat house. Damn hype. I’ll probably be pre-screening Matrix Tuesday night since we’re getting four, possibly FIVE prints of it, and they all have to be previewed to make sure they’re visually and aurally perfect. This speaks nothing of the film’s actual quality, though, and I’ll be sure to let the three people who know this site exists know whether the movie’s worth seeing or not (my initial guess is not, but I could be pleasantly surprised…).

It’s amazing how well my mind is capable of reacting to the growing concern that I’m insane and BS-ing myself…

I spent a great deal of time this year with very little ability to really feel connected to my Were-side, and I was starting to think I was either crazy, or just completely cracked for even considering the posibility that I really was Were. That is, until last night, for some reason. I started to make a quick little pawprint doodle in Photoshop last night (which quickly turned into a very long project because I’m anal), and in the process, I feel like I reconnected very strongly with that part of me. I’d commented somewhere a while ago that I would love to have the time and ability to better connect with my Were-side, because I’m not very good at it, and it takes a lot of effort to keep that line open at all. I don’t think my insane schedule and responsibilities to everyone and their uncle this past year have done much to help that either.

Anyway. Between the pawprint and seeing Brother Bear twice in the past 3 days, I feel like I’ve reconfirmed the fact that I’m not insane, nor am I lying to myself, because both of those things resonate on that same deep level that makes me realize it’s real and true.

Oh, and while I’m on the subject of Brother Bear… everybody should go see it. It’s a fantastic movie. Seriously. Probably some of the best stuff Disney’s done since their huge stint of filmmaking in the early 90’s with Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and Lion King. I made sure to take my little brother (who, like the rest of my family, is blissfully unaware of the fox living in their house…) to see it the second time I went, just to make sure it wasn’t my personal connection with the spirit of the film that was speaking for my impression of its quality, and since he was equally impressed and pleased with the film, I’d say it’s a good film even if you’re not “into that sort of thing”.

I wonder what CAP will have to say about it… (went to look, got the Blinking Red Light of Hell, wow…)

Oh, and another thing I wanted to mention (whee, stream-of-consciousness blogging), since I’m kind of playing catch-up… this kind of crap really makes me sick. I sent an email to the webmaster, and in the highly unlikely event that it DOESN’T get deleted right away, I’d love to see what this guy has to say about what I wrote to him. And for those who are wondering what’s wrong with the article that would get me so pissed, a cursory glance at the OCRT site’s account of Halloween should hopefully clue you in.

Really, I have nothing against religion, but when it’s used to spread obviously demonstrable lies defaming and attacking those who believe differently than they do, I start getting angry. If you’re going to attack a religion or its holidays, at least get your freaking facts straight, okay?

Enough from me for tonight, I think. ‘Night.