fontosaurus

I'm finally breaking down and going to go buy Little Big Planet for the PS3 after work tonight. I need a non-violent, cutesy game. And it'll be my reward after my 2-hour training ride on the Cervelo tonight.

Now. Who's going to knit me a Sackboy?
http://blog.craftzine.com/archive/2009/01/how_to_knit_sackboy.html

Palin and Obama will be downloadable content for Mercenaries 2. Might have to buy that game, based on this video:

First off, let me just say that it throws a wrench into the writing habits when you don't bring your keychain drive with you to the office. That's not the worst thing going, though. My friend, Wren, who works for EA, just sent me a pile of console games, and you know that shit's going to impact my writing time. Madden 09, Tiger Woods 09, NHL 09, and Bad Company for the PS3 and Boom Blox for the Wii.

I'm not quite at the stage of freaking out about the move, the major component of which starts three weeks from Saturday. I need to snag some boxes in the next day or two so that I can actually start packing all my shit for the upcoming move.

Last night was fairly relaxing...got home from the second job, wherein Penn informed me that I'm done for the winter. I can still order shit at the employee rate, and pick up shifts for people, but they're not going to be scheduling me. No worries -- I need the additional free time. After a little while, Kate came over, and we curled up on the couch and watched Iron Man. I informed her that an Iron Man suit makes a very suitable first anniversary gift.

I cannot remember where I was going with this post, if anywhere.

Have I mentioned lately how much I love thunderstorms? I do! They totally kick ass. I woke up to thunder and rain pattering against the windows last night...and it was relaxing. I just snuggled deeper into the blankets, laid there and listened for awhile before sleep overtook me again. A quiet moment of enjoyment without having to spend a dime. And incidentally, there's more on the way:


(Note that this is an updating image.)

Played some Roller Coaster Tycoon today -- the Volcania scenario is kickin' my ass. I've finally got 4 of the 5 coaster fragments finished, and I'd love to be able to ride some of these in real life. :-) I had to rebuild the suspended coaster from scratch because I only managed a 2.83 Excitement rating. Second time around, I managed a 7-point-something deal. Woohoo! (All the coasters have to be finished at 6.7 or higher.) So, I'm pleased with that. I've been stuck on this one for awhile. As I type this, it's running on the Win(D'OH!)s machine, so I'm building up some cash in there.

Mooch has been limping around a bit today, favoring her left front paw. Maybe she's having sympathy pains...my left wrist is killing me. Still. Even with their "it's not broken" verdict, the pain has remained pretty constant. Fucking VA hospital. Ugh. Anyway, if Mooch is still in her on-and-off limping tomorrow, I'll have to take her to the vet. Don't know how I'm going to swing the money for that yet. I worry about her. I love that cat like she was a kid...if anything ever happens to her I'm going to be a wreck. I was traumatized enough by her getting declawed (I'll never have that done to another cat)...and she was too. Basically, she was in for a one-day turnaround declawing, had the surgical sealant instead of stitches. The doc told me to make sure she didn't get up on anything where she'd have to jump down. He might as well have told me to follow her around 24-7...

So I'm in the living room of my place in Philly, about 30 minutes after bringing Mooch home, and I hear a squawk, and Mooch comes running into the living room, favoring a front paw, a huge trail of blood behind her. I panic and scoop her up, and she panics and pees all over the front of my shirt. I run out to the Civic and haul ass back to the vet... They decide to re-seal it and keep her overnight. I was crying the entire time...so much so I couldn't even drive home. I felt awful.

I never want to submit a cat to that again. Ever. (Yes, Pixel still has her claws.)

Let's see...I'm stoked to see that extreme sports thing at the MN Zoo IMAX. A lot of that was filmed at the X Games in Philly last summer, which I was there for. A good time was had by all. And the new Star Wars movie...ohmygodohmygodohmygod...it's going to be better than Empire! I cannot wait! mso ordered our tickets online last night...and we went to go see Changing Lanes. My advice: wait until video for that one. Star Wars we have tickets to the 10am and 10:45pm showing. I am so fucking stoked. I've been waiting since the end of Empire for a real Star Wars movie.

The soundtrack for it is nothing short of breath-taking. I'm convinced that Williams knew what was happened with the entire saga from the day Lucas spoke with him. Beyond "Duel of the Fates", the Episode 1 soundtrack was entirely non-memorable. With Attack of the Clones, it's a whole new story. You have this bittersweet love theme, a new battle theme, and Vader's theme all making appearances throughout the tracks...and the final track blends them all together in a way that gives me goosebumps. I am so crazy about this. I get weird looks for driving around in the XTerra with the "Confrontation with Count Dooku/Finale" track and the "Love Pledge and the Arena" tracks blasting. It kicks that much ass.

On the movie subject, mso and I went to go see Fellowship of the Ring -- my seventh time seeing it. I wanted to see the preview for The Two Towers at the end of it...and OH MY GOD. I must see that movie....whaddaya mean I gotta wait til Christmas??? My Xmas gift better be a ticket to that show! Holy crap. Dark, foreboding, and just downright bad-assed looking. The battle scenes look hella cool. I'm bummed about how the trilogy is ending though...I was talking to Batgar on Monday and he said that Peter Jackson left out the part where the four hobbits return to the Shire and have to liberate it. Damn! That's lunacy! It was a beautiful statement on the responsibility that citizens have to their community. I just can't believe they dropped it... *sigh*

Man, am I rambling or what? Yeah! Anyway, I have some fonts that need to be addressed, so I am going to go get to work on those.

The quote of the month is from Neil Gaiman, in response to people saying "Information wants to be free."

"No, that's pizza," I want to tell them. "Pizza wants to be free. Concentrate on liberating pizza from evil pizzerias. Information, on the other hand, really hates being free, and is never happier than when manacled to a wall, like Kirk and Spock in some piece of late 70s bondage-oriented slash fiction."

I'm starting to feel pseudo-guilty for not having read any of the Harry Potter books. Part of me feels that since Joe Average loves them, and Joe Average is also a retard, that they can't be that great. Then people like my buddy Batgar (and I think even mso did) tell me that they're great, and I get more and more curious. Tonight when we were at Old Chicago, Batgar says, "Remember that sense of wonder you got from the first Star Wars movie? I got twice that effect from the Harry Potter books." Damn. My reading list is long enough as it is.

And on the reading front, someone sent me a book from my Amazon.com wishlist. Now I remember why I run the Fontosaurus site. Anyway, the book was The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey. This is the book that became the bible for everyone's favorite group of eco-terrorists, the Earth First!ers.

Writing. I'm trying to get motivated to put the finishing touches on A Castle in the Sun. For those unaware, ACitS is the book I've been working on since last fall. Thematically, it's about growing up without a positive male role model, and how that affects your view on life -- goal-setting, what to do if by some miracle you actually achieve your goals, and so on. It's primary character is a professional bike racer in his rookie year. There's lots of parallels between it and my life (I was never a pro racer, obviously...and sadly), and I'm trying to make the writing eloquent and not a diatribe...it's hard to find the right balance, given that I'm writing it in the first person. I'm told that perspective isn't used much anymore. I'm also writing in the present tense, just to make it really weird. It reads nicely, I think. I just have to finish it up. (Don't get me wrong, I've written the ending already...it's just in strong need of final editing.)

In other fun, I've been talking to mso about starting a writers' group here in the Twin Cities. We could probably find a groovy coffeehouse in Uptown that would be happy to have us. Maybe I could use a group like that as the incentives to finish A Castle in the Sun. Anyway, I couldn't find any good writers' groups indexes on the web, so I registered writergroups.com, and I'm building a database-driven site that should be capable of managing itself. I think I need that support to get my shit together and actually write. Perhaps I'll call Uncommon Grounds later this week and see if they'd be willing to host us every other Wednesday or something like that.

The jobhunt isn't going particularly well. Not a lot of web design/dev/producer jobs available right now. Hell, I'd be happy with $55K, doing drone-work coding. Registered and set-up hosting for mso's site for her comedy -- bitterfatbitch.com -- I couldn't believe it was still available. Wow. maus asked me to do the design/UI for the porn site he wants to do, and he can pay me. Hallelujah. However, I'm taking that with a grain of salt until he talks to me about it while sober. The money would be helpful right now.

Game-playing has been keeping me sane. Chez Geek has been a lot of fun, thus far. Been getting my usual Scabble fiesta going, which rules. mso bought a learn-to-play-chess set, and she and Kellie are going to figure out the game. I'm tempted to buy her a copy of Bobby Fisher Teaches Chess, but I think the board/pieces she got will suffice. She's a smart girl...once she starts getting ahold of strategy, I'll bet she'll be able to kick my ass at that. I'm also wanting to find a group of people to play Apples to Apples with, and eventually scrape up some people to play Axis & Allies with. That would be good.

I should probably be asleep, but I think it's time I actually sat down and cranked out as much of writergroups.com as possible. Maybe I'll play some Roller Coaster Tycoon.

Who the fuck knows? All I know is it's time we kicked Israel out of Palestine. I'm not anti-Semitic, I'm just anti-genocide. I mean, Christ, is it obvious to anyone else that what Israel is doing to the Palestineans is the same was what Hitler did to Europe with his Leibensraum campaign? To Ariel Sharon I say this: the land given to you was a gift from the UN. The Palestineans are only asking for 22% of what you forcibly took from them. HAVE THE DECENCY TO GIVE IT BACK AND MAYBE YOU WON'T HAVE TO DEAL WITH THE TERRORISM ANYMORE, YOU JACKASS.

And on that note, I am going to bid you all a pleasant goodnight and go get writergroups.com up and running.

Peace out, lil honkies.

I'm just noticing how popular The Sims has become...I mean, holy crap. This thing must be heroinware. Personally, I was always happy with Roller Coaster Tycoon...but now I'm kinda thinking about loading a copy of the Sims onto the iBook and taking it for a spin. Hrmm.

Speaking of the iBook, sometimes, I am running a little app that lets you see whatever it is that I'm doing at the moment. If you click here, you might get to be a nosy little bastard.

[2/27/2002 4:02:53 PM | Dan Bailey]
Okay, so I'm writing again within 15 minutes. Sue me. I feel like it. I've been pretty damn unmotivated lately. Depressed, even. I need to get my shit together. That starts today. Going to take care of all the little petty shit I've been neglecting. And I'm going to kick serious ass in the proecss. How ya like me now???

Perhaps it's because I finally, finally beat Roller Coaster Tycoon yesterday. I'm trying to ignore the fact that I have the expansion packs and the Mega Park scenario that was unlocked when I beat the game, because dammit, it's addictive. No more Roller Coaster Tycoon until I get back on track and have a job. Period.

Incidentally, things on the to-do list: get this site redesigned, get caught up on my Font-of-the-Month shit, and get some new free downloads on here.