I've just been playing Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, and... uh... was this thing approved by all the right people? I'm an hour into the game and the best words to describe it would be "killing frenzy," "murdering spree," and/or "Jedi: Blood Lust." Kinda awesome if you're in the mood to storm through various Star Wars landscapes going ten different kinds of kill-crazy on old favourites like Wookiees, rebel fleet troopers, and astromech droids, but a bit disturbing once you realize that each and every moment of your existence is defined by how much wholesale slaughter you can bring to a particular environment. Sure, if I were hackin' away at zombies, I'd have nary a problemo. But there's something about Chewbacca death-cries that gets under my skin a bit.

I have picked up rather a fondness for electrocuting people, though.

Hey, while we're on the subject of the stupendously entertaining, go to Facebook, go to the bottom of the page, and where it says "English," switch it to "English (Pirate)". Literally laughed myself sick for my entire lunch hour. Still laughing, a bit, when I see the status update box say "What arrrrrrrh ye doin'?", Geoffrey Rush style.

And speaking of pirates, I can now watch my piratebayed TV episodes on my actual television set. It's like I'm living in the future! If the future was all pixeled out and gross, and took days upon days to download.

Posted by tederick at 11:13 PM in galaxy far & pirates & wii
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But it sure feels nice to have some.

Last night was lovely. El familia and I and Sarafina went to Scaramouche, and I had quail and pasta and a very strange and interesting wine. And boy, they're not kidding about that coconut cream pie. Everything golden and nice and I went home very happy. Adam and Caitlin gave me The Force Unleashed for the Wii, which didn't exactly set the world on fire, review-wise, but I'm ready to yank a Star Destroyer out of the sky with my mind right now anyways thanks to my contentious and highly frustrating relationship with Ikea over a certain $1300 they owe me and/or a couch that apparently is never, ever going to show up. Can I give you some advice? Don't ever buy anything from those Danish fucktards ever. "Ikea: Swedish for we're assholes."

Otherwise, things are coming together. Zam is now the nicest cat ever; she was apparently so traumatized by the move that she even started sitting on my lap while I watch TV on my complete and utter lack of a couch. I am going to get her a scratching post. I have internet at home at last, some more furniture hand-me-downs coming, and the makeshift couch-bed on the floor of the living room ain't bad for watching movies, looking out at the skyline, and/or musing abuot life / plotting the downfall of the wicked. And I ordered this. It's gonna be somethin'.

"Honey Kisaargi, an android created by her scientist father, is attempting to balance her dull office job and her secret life as the constantly costume-changing, pink-clad superhero warrior of love, Cutie Honey. When the dreaded Panther Claw gang returns to create evil and steal our hero's Love System necklace, it can only be Cutie Honey to the rescue!"

Posted by tederick at 10:23 AM in 1701 & foodin' & movies & wii & zam!
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Happy Pride everybody! I hope you all did something suitably queer-positive. I no longer truck much with the parade(s), so after the spanktastickest buffet brunch ever at the Bloor Street Diner, I helped Demetre move a series of belongings from one St. George high-rise to the high-rise immediately next door. Which meant I spent my yesterday with four dudes hoisting shit sweatily; queer-positivity: check. Plus, I am metrosexually jealous of his new place. Spacious, well-situated, good sized living room for Blu-Ray film viewings. I've got one last 3QF Double Feature to unroll this summer, and then I have got to find a place with similar attributes in which I may live for the foreseeables.

Wall-E action figures! I wouldn't mind an EVE to sit on my desk and come to my meetings and blow shit up, although the lack of articulated fingers suggests that the toymakers underestimated the degree to which that movie is about hand-holding. Meanwhile, I wrote in my journal that Ben Burtt should get a Nobel Prize for sound design. (No mere Oscar will suffice.) Between Wall-E and Artoo he’s done a thing that no regular audience members will probably ever notice or think about, but is utter artistic transcendence. Yikes, I'm going to cry. I'm going to cry about sound design.

After seeing Wall-E on Friday night, Sarafina and I took a dreamy walk down College to Kensington, and ate Mexican food on a patio as the sun went down and the margaritas flowed. We could have been anywhere, anytime. The hum of the world sort of matched the hum in my heart. That kind of sound design. Yeah.

Giving away boardgames is bloody challenging; oddly enough, it was Episode I Monopoly that was the hardest to part with. I kept Globetrotters. I have a lot of papers to go through - do people keep files any more? I have to do a book-off; I have to do a DVD-off. I have to get rid of my old TV and my old monitor. I am leaving behind more furniture than I'm taking. Plus, yet another Operation: Annihilate!, all the food in the house must be eaten. Two months out and I'm already obsessed. I played F-Zero on the Wii. Things feel right.

Posted by tederick at 3:38 PM in jedi antics & movies & toys! & wii
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...is just a great, great word. I have always loved that word. There are some words that make your spine thrum like a bass string, and archaeopteryx is one of those for me.

Brother Adam spent the weekend jerking around New York City, sending comments to the blog from various Jerk stores. He came back with candy. I helped him out with a project before he left so he put a gift-note on my desk with three items on it:

From the "chocolate bar" in NYC - they make their own bars and wrappers. PB caramel, yum!

[and hereunder was a peanut butter caramel chocolate bar with a retro wrapper]

You may wish to share with Sarafina - Dark rum! Zooks!!

[and hereunder was a Crash Dark Rum chocolate bar]

Chick in nSoho hand-knitted this for you!

[and hereunder was a knitted Spider-Man finger-puppet]

Suddenly, my brother is a way better brother than my brother ever was before. Except oh wait: he also got me that Wii that one time. That was pretty sweet.

Last night Sarafina and I tried to one-up our ratatouille/Ratatouille night of a few months ago, by doing Insomnia/Insomnia. This didn't work out so well, because Insomnia sucks, and Insomnia kinda sucks too. You can kinda see what it would have been like without the wrong casting and a bad script, but not enough to make you love it. Nonetheless: so pretty. As was our hastily-improvised non-Insomnia dinner. So, it was a pretty good Mondate anyway.

I lost one of my notebooks recently, and the apparent result is that I have been brain-dumping like a fiend into every notebook I can find, like I'm trying to retain whatever fragments of the DNA of my recent thought processes that I can, in spite of the mishap. Honestly: pages and pages and pages of exons. It's a weird feeling, but oddly satisfying in its way, too.

I, too, am over Sarah Marshall.

Posted by tederick at 10:47 AM in ADAM & i hate mac & movies & wii
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Last night I dreamed I was in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Sarafina was there too and between us we kicked many asses. But it was hard to figure out which of the main characters I was supposed to be, and therefore what I was supposed to do on that bridge at the end.

Flying felt wonderful, though.

By now I'm sure you've heard of the Super Mario demonstration of the Many Worlds hypothesis; it's fun to watch and makes me want to play Super Mario World, which hasn't happened in a good long while. One of the problems that comes up in all this Many Worlds talk is that if every single particle is creating multiple parallel universes every time anything happens, the number of parallels is so large that it's actually inconceivable to the human brain. Which doesn't make the theory implausible, because what do infinite variants matter to a whole darned universe? But my recent experiences with simulation and game design have me wondering if the whole thing doesn't get solved by the endless iterations of existence collapsing back in on themselves to form single straight lines again. I mean, if you're standing on a rock crossing a river and there are two rocks equidistant ahead of you, and a third rock beyond that, you'll pick either rock A or rock B to get to rock C but you'll still always end up on rock C. That seems to happen to Mario repeatedly in the example above, and it certainly happens in all the simulated conversations I've been working on for the past 10 months. Sooner or later, inviable paths collapse into nothingness or reconnect to the main group. Timelines are like bison that way.

Meanwhile, what I really want to know is: how do the laws of causality work in the James Bond universe? I mean, even before Casino Royale things were goddamned weird, what with the guy traipsing through 40 years of adventures while always in his mid-30s. (I mean, there are continued and specific temporal references throughout. Bond always knows what year he's in.) Then there's the moment in On Her Majesty's Secret Service where Bond is aware that he is now being played by another actor; what inter-cosmology glancing action is this? And even if you can excuse all of these actions, how can Judi Dench be assigned to head of MI6 while Bond was already an agent there (in Goldeneye), and then already be head of MI6 when Bond becomes an agent there (in Casino Royale)???

I do not know. I do know that in normal timelines it's acceptable that a character could say "Chris I miss the Cold War" five films after intimating that she was glad the Cold War is over, but somehow in the Bondverse it just feels like a refutation of self. Perhaps M, too, has jumped onto rock B.

Posted by tederick at 10:12 PM in dreams & movies & wii
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"Captain Teach assumed the cognomen of Blackbeard from that large quantity of hair which, like a frightful meteor, covered his whole face and frightened America more than any comet that has appeared there a long time.... In time of action, he wore a sling over his shoulders with three brace of pistols hanging in holsters like bandoliers, and stuck lighted matches under his hat, which, appearing on each side of his face, his eyes naturally looking fierce and wild, made him altogether such a figure that imagination cannot form an idea of a Fury from hell to look more frightful."
         - from "The Life of Captain Teach" in A General History of the Robberies & Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates

I went all the way up to the yogashoppe only to find it unceremoniously closed for this three-day weekend that all Ontarians but myself (and 60% of the rest of us) do not get to enjoy. Curses! So, I came back home and played Super Mario Galaxy. That thing is crazier than hell. It makes me wonder: does Mario even remember that he used to be a plumber? Or is it all just comets and stars and the ability to turn water into ice just by the consumption of a mushroom?

Gaining purchase on level 1, I switched over to a little classic Super Mario Brothers, and as my score was so greatly improved over my last similar co-venture, I must forcibly conclude that my previous weak performance was because girls have cooties and cooties inevitably destroy a boy's ability to play video games. This latter statement was the most important thing I learned in Grade 4.

I know it's a big awesome Internet and all, but when the guy who designed the tattoo that is on my arm actually comes along and joins in on the Tederick.comments, I get minor Saturday morning goosebumps. Now if I could only get Bendis to comment on my plan to throw an egg at his head and the subsequent ignominy (1, 2, 3), I'd call myself well-connected.

Right. More peanut butter cookies, a bit more Wii, then off to D-Coc's to deconstruct(Coc) his brain.

Posted by tederick at 12:18 PM in comix & galaxy far & pirates & tederickdotcomdotcom & wii
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Not to keep stressing the point, but what a godfucking terrible week. The illness gave way on Thursday or Friday and in its place, a big gnawing depression. I'm completely wiped out and run down. I can't even look at the world right now, it's so stupendously dismal out there. I guess I did all right making it this far without any other major incidents. But still, I would support the destruction of our planet in a heartbeat if it meant a fiery yellow sun burned through this grey bilge and scorched the earth with light.

I am filing this entry under "miscellaneous crap," because that's what my life is right now. The one area in which I am excelling is in finding and framing bits of art for my walls. Everything else is gash.

Hey guess what, zombies? YOU WIN!! I cannot fucking stand playing Resident Evil 4 any more. I'm just not up with the skill wit da vidja games. This Illuminados-killing suicide mission long ago ceased to be entertaining and became merely time-consuming, so I'M GIVING IT UP. Let the zombie hoards overtake this goddamned horrible world. I don't care any more, man. I am courting apocalypse.

And science: I'm tinkering around with something I call the Law of Facebook Status Response. It goes something like: the amount of time in which a Facebook "friend" replies to your status update as though it's a personal message to them is inversely proportional to the degree to which you have no desire to hear from that person whatsoever. Suffice to say, I shall shortly go on a Deleting Frenzy.

I, too, am fucking Matt Damon, and he's tight.

Posted by tederick at 4:42 PM in miscellaneous crap & the apocalypse & wii & zombies
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Who has my copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (book)? Cuz one of you does, and I want it back.

Oscar nominations are the usual list of toldjaso's, likesay Cate Blanchett getting nominated for Elizabeth and I'm Not There, Johnny picking up his Sweeney nomination, and Ellen Page getting the inevitable actress nod. My feeling of Atonement dread was nicely lessened by the lack of a director nom; the Juno support is heartening, and it'll be hilarious to watch There Will Be Blood get so utterly snubbed on wins versus the number of nominations it actually got. How Golden Compass stole a visual effects nomination will be a mystery to me until the end of time.

The monster in Cloverfield is a giant space beetle from under the sea. That's fine. It's possible that the writer's strike has actually cured me (and North America) of our collective TV addiction; that's fine too. I haven't watched a TV show, or played the Wii, more than once so far in 2008. There's just so much other stuff to do. And this is winter: can you imagine if the doors got blown open and we could all go outside and play soccer, sit at cafés, or read comics in the park? Television itself might cease to exist for ever more.

Posted by tederick at 9:24 AM in books & movies & tv & wii
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Last night Sarafina and I ordered a metric fuckload of sushi, and played Nintendo. Guess what? I actually still have some game on a classic Nintendo controller. This reverses last week's disappointment when I tried to play Super Mario 3 on the Wii and failed utterly. Turns out, the Wiimote is just a really, really shitty approximation of the classic controller. All the sense memory was gone. Back on the original system, my fingers knew what they were doing long before my brain even had to get involved. There's a metaphor in there somewhere, but I'm too tired and stinky to figure it out right now. I feel like Han Solo, what with the boots and sense of malcontent. I could do with a long, hot shower.

Three days after the Warner Brothers announcement, I have to work actively hard not to refer to the other side of the war as "chumps." That's the problem with this dog-ugly war: it has turned home theatre enthusiasts into a bunch of smug pricks on par with, or possibly even smugly prickier, than Mac addicts. I do not want this! The Digital Bits is largely unreadable now, what with Bill Hunt having turned into such a miserable, conceited fascist. I just want some nice programming and a hot cup of cocoa. I want Serenity and King Kong in Blu-Ray. I don't want a fucking subculture to grow out of this thing. If you're all into home theatre now, are you even a movie fan at all? Is it just technophilia in a demi-aesthetic cloak? If you had a really pretty Blu-Ray test pattern would you be just as happy as if you had Star Wars?

Two Star Wars refs in a single post. I'm backsliding. That's it: I'm going home and throwing out all my toys.

Incidentally, there is a small piece of my soul missing, and it is in a very good place. Otherwise, I am finding the season physically challenging as per the usual. My chest is tight. I haven't been to yoga in a damn long time. It's going to be fifteen degrees or thereabouts in Toronto tomorrow and if so, I am certainly going for a bike ride even if I have to do so after dark. In the meantime I've gotta do something to break out of the crusty shell of scar tissue and stale air that currently surrounds me. I could do with a nice breeze.

"It was the tension between these two poles - a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other - that kept me going." - The Rum Diary

Posted by tederick at 4:09 PM in galaxy far & i hate mac & shinybludisks & wii
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How the fuck ya doin', Internet. Apparently I feel the need to greet the entire cybercommunity every time I start a blog post now.

Recappin', Coles Notes style!:

On Christmas Eve, me and Bo and Adam went to Best Buy and I bought a TV. A fucking terrific TV, thankyouverymuch, a TV so large and lovely that my eyes actually started to water when Elizabeth met up with Tai Huang in the Singapore harbour. I gotta say, I enjoy impulse buying super expensive high-end electronics. It suits my temperament to walk into a store, point at a TV, let the Best Buy employees fight it out for five minutes about whether or not I actually want it, and then roll it on out to the car. Research is for wusses and their mothers.

Christmas at 108 was the usual deal-ie-o. Among other things my sister got me a game for the Wii called Trauma Center - the surgery game! So I spent a lot of Christmas Day trying to save the life of a guy who got brought into the E.R. with a gunshot wound to the chest (Dick Cheney shot him), but I only managed to get all the way through surgery when my brother tag-teamed in and helped me out. There's a lesson in that! I admit my medical knowledge is crude but I find it faintly hilarious that the realism of the game should be so shoddy, like how you can heal cuts with antibiotic gel. It's amusing that the video game industry is not only desensitizing the world to the effects of violence, but now to the treatment of violence as well. If you go by this thing, a grizzly bear attack can be treated by a guy (me) on his first operation ever, and reconstructing broken bones is like a game of pick-up sticks.

I made my second major attempt to break the Mom/Adam gnocchi monpoly on Christmas Day by having a go at making it myself; I was definitely nailing the finger-roll by the end but I've got a lot of practice ahead of me in kneading the dough. Plus the gnocchi log totally frickin' mystifies me at this point, although I know I've done it successfully before so maybe I just need to try again with instructions. Something was off about the sauce, too, but that wasn't my area of involvement this time. I blame Adam. Why not? Still, it's fun to learn new things and get marginally better at being awesome. Next up: global conquest.

Further to that end, me and Sarafina (because Sarafina and I sounds so weird!) abducted Boxing Day. We have it, and you can't have it back. In this case the abduction mostly involved watching Invader Zim and Harry Potter and doing a good bit of sleeping, plus that thing where I show someone some of my movies for the very first time which is awesomely terrifying. But it worked out. (Of course.) All in all I'm dusty and satisfied. Now I've got several days of absolutely nothing to do, which is rather novel. I may go into my cave and not come out. It's all to the good right now, Internet. I'm happy. It feels like a whole new thing, even if it's more just a better version of the old thing.

"I've been eating speed for the last three days and every time I close my eyes I see centipedes." - The Séance

Posted by tederick at 9:31 AM in foodin' & miscellaneous crap & wii
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I finally got my Return of the King complete recordings today, which yes is about as nerdy as I get, and yes is absolute fucking nirvana to me right now. Oh man I love this score almost past comprehension. And between this, the time of year, being within a hundred pages of the end of Spyglass, and my general stress level, I've got the emotional stability of a pre-menopausal camel. So don't fuck with me.

I am, on the other hand, exchanging pretty awesome emails with Mary Pants who guest-wrote the Powers letter column in the last issue. It's like being one degree of separation away from Bendis!

Tonight me and Admo went to a Wii party at Alena's house. To help us all vent our frustrations we made a Mii named D-Cert. D-Cert was fat, bald, and gender-confused. But stress relief was thin on the ground because D-Cert pretty much handed me my ass in every boxing match we fought each other in. It was pretty tight when I put Christina on the ground in like ten seconds, though. That was awesome.

Teen Girl Squad is no more: Dana has moved to Alberta, where all the cool girls live. The house is subdued and ghostly.

Posted by tederick at 10:57 PM in 3QF & j-o-b & pj's playground & wii
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Well, I guess my cold is getting better but the all-day headache that was brought on by the weather makes it sort of hard to say. Everything's kinda "shimmery" right now. Plus column: my back's way better. But I really feel like my head is about to come shooting off on a streamer of light.

Jim Broadbent! What is that guy's deal. He is in all the fantasy franchises. He's in Narnia, he's about to be in Harry Potter, he's in His Dark Materials and Indiana Jones, and he's the guy standing on Denethor's immediate left when old Denny jumps off the prow of Minas Tirith. True story. And he was Gamorrean guard #3 in Return of the Jedi and Moses Friend #1 in The Ten Commandments and also one time, he played Buddha. Who is his agent? I would like to meet such an agent, who seemingly does the impossible.

I haven't played the Wii in a really long time. I like to limit my Wii usage to really sporadic, but really intense sorties. Like a few weeks ago, I played for about 48 hours straight. Many shuvs and zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Slor that day, I can tell you. And maybe it's the October weather - which is just lovely, isn't it? I must be the only human alive who likes this sort of endless melancholic drizzle - but I am really in the mood for some zombie wastage. It's probably best I didn't attend the zombie walk on the weekend; there's no telling what I woulda done.

The problem is that usually when I want to go to something that involves getting dressed up in costume, dousing oneself with blood and/or rum, and acting outrageously, most of my friends go "sigh" not "yay." So I skipped the zombie walk. I'm really only disappointed with myself.

Man. This headache ain't gettin' better from sitting here writing about it. I need a shower and a cold dark room.

Posted by tederick at 5:13 PM in miscellaneous crap & movies & wii & zombies
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12" Sao Feng: worth every bloody penny. (And the penny count? Not small.) This falls in line with my new goal of buying less crap but buying way better crap. This is tip top crap. And I got him delivered to work, Brainwave of the Year. No back-and-forth with FedEx for their refusal to leave it on my porch. No sir. Two words: receiving department. Can't believe I didn't twig to this before. I'm going to take him home and have him fight Megatron. Why? Because one of the things I realized last week at Tony Robbins was that in spite of the fact that I own all these toys, I like never play with them! That's changing starting right now. And it's all about cross-franchise throwdowns this week.

Speaking of cross-franchise throwdowns, today in "hilarious things to link to," Lance Henriksen playing guns with Ewen Bremner. You know, there are days when I really don't want to know what it's like at Lance Henriksen's house. Is it really fun? Really scary? Sort of boring? I'm sure there's an answer, and I don't want it. I just want to ruminate.

When I was a kid we had this crazy dealie you plugged in to the ass of a Nintendo video game and then when you plugged the whole thing into the Nintendo, it did crazy shit like give you a billion bonus lives or make Super Raccoon Mario into a kind of living god. My question is: is there a Game Genie for the Wii? Cuz if so I gotta get that thing happening. Imagine what I could do to those motherfucking zombies if I was a Super Raccoon Mario.

I am feeling much better, thank you Internet for asking and for all your well wishes. Even the ones that were not technically English. Now I'm off to find a brownie and some ice cream.

Posted by tederick at 3:54 PM in megatron & toys! & wii & zombies
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I'm not saying this to impress anyone with my social fortitude, but I am actually booked for every evening between now on the fifth of October. Every single one. In the shower last night I strongly considered declaring People Bankruptcy to go along with all my other bankruptcies; everyone would just get an e-mail saying "I'm sorry, but through my own incompetence I massively overbooked myself and have begun to fear for my ability to survive, so if we made plans for this month I may just not show up." But then, I have to eat, right?

Stuff I got for my birthday!: a Wii and stuff for the Wii, a Blu-Ray player (yet to be bought), a t-shirt that says "time flies when you're having rum," Play Doh, books about salt, tea and rum, a 12" Jack Sparrow to go with the 6" Jack Sparrow and the 18" Jack Sparrow, and various cards, shots, and punches in the arm.

Resident Evil 3 was terrible. Absolutely fucking terrible. Possibly the second worst movie ever made. I was plenty drunk by the time we got in there so really I guess I didn't mind as much as I might have, but the movie was so bad that even the "get drunk and go see a terrible movie" thing didn't work out in terms of the humourous. Still, it was fun to hang out with everybody. Now let us never speak of my 31st birthday again.

Posted by tederick at 6:45 PM in miscellaneous crap & movies & the rum diaries & wii & zombies
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Now listen up you bastards!! Chris got me Transformers for the Wii! For ten glorious minutes I was a destruction-bent autobot with absolutely no idea what he was doing or why! I destroyed buses full of civilians! I shot holes in bank walls! I climbed the sides of buildings and rained fire down on a dim and unsuspecting public!! And yet, I never transformed... The Wii is a dreamspace in a box, with all the attendant ironies and vagueries.

Meanwhile: Brandy got me the SNES controller for the Wii! So now I can download and play Donkey Kong Country 2, my Favourite Game Ever! So there!!

I am absolutely not coming down with a cold. FYI.

I think I radically underestimated the recovery time for the film festival; I was so fucking tired yesterday I actually lost the ability to pull correct words out of my vocabulary by around 5:00. I was malapropping like a pro for a while there. I passed out in Caitlin's bed for an hour or so and that let me get through the night, but it was a near thing. Note to self: one night of solid sleep and then going hard like a demented undergrad for the next three nights, not so much "good."

Meanwhile, check this shit out:

But when you're Adam, you never get to be in the picture. We went to a place called Il Mulino, which is on Eglinton near Bathurst (though not very near Bathurst) and it was goddamned tip-top. Terrific beef carpaccio and I tried the octopus as well; an imported mozarella so lusty and flavourful it was like I could actually see the cow; and the best gnocchi I've ever had that wasn't made by my mother and brother. Plus, actually the best waiter ever: not only could he detail the interrelating qualities of the entire menu and twelve daily specials, and provide a fucking HUGE wine to go along with, but he could also enunciate the finer points of 3:10 to Yuma and crack a fairly solid joke. If I could import this guy like they import their mozarella, all would be well with the fucking world. I am so in need of a valet.

The owner came out and got to talking to Mom and Caitlin about Torino and Sienna, and I'm beginning to realize that for all my farther-east travel ambitions, I've made an error by not yet having been to Italy. That, and actually going to Egypt (where my mother was born), have been on my mind a lot lately, as little more than angsty sensation waiting to be made form. I wonder what I would do in a year with no film festival.

Posted by tederick at 9:03 AM in foodin' & photoblog & wii
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Wiimote meets lightsabre, in the long-awaited marriage of obvious applications of designed objects.

This review is so fucking funny, it actually almost makes me want to buy the Death Proof DVD. Almost. Actually I'd buy a Death Proof-only DVD quite gladly, if it were the cut I saw in theatres this past spring, but needless "deleted scenes thrown in" cuts just piss me off. Can we just for frickin' once let things be?

If you feel like saving the environment today, go here.

Otherwise, perhaps you'd like Jane Schoettle's job.

How pathetic is it that I've finally caved to the Facebook gods and can't get the fucking thing to send me a confirmation e-mail so that I can actually activate the gorramned account? Wow yeah, pretty fucking pathetic. Well anyways, I'll keep you posted; half a bajillion idiots can do this, so it follows that I can figure it out.

I'm becoming interested in wolves lately. Can anyone recommend any books about the use of wolves in folklore and the relation of wolf archetypes to psychology? (Hmmm... heavy request.)

OK... birthday ongoing, no time for jivin' suckah. Hit the road JACK!

"Take what you want. Give nothing back!" - Captain Jack Sparrow and Mr. Gibbs

Posted by tederick at 3:54 PM in movies & shinydisks & the apocalypse & wii
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Owwwwwww ow ow - my arm hurts from Wiimote use. Which I guess goes to show you how few punches I throw in real life.

Yeah, Chris and Demetre and I took the boxing for a few rounds last night. I managed to not play the Wii for the entire time I was working at home yesterday - and then 3:30 rolled around, I turned off the laptop, turned on the Wii, fired up RESIDENT! EVIL! ...FOUR. and the next time I looked up, it was dark. In the plus column though, I cut down zombies like a thresher cuts corn. Zombies have become the perfect metaphor for my life, my pain, and the entirety of confusing human existence.

So September's here. Did you know I only saw the Harry Potter movie once this summer? I've sort of been kicking myself about that lately. The book just sort of overwhelmed everything and now I've got some serious Order cravings I can't satisfy till the DVD comes out. (Actually, till a month after the DVD comes out, on account of DVD Bankruptcy not expiring until December 4.) Plus the first screening of a Potter flick is basically useless; it all just gets burned settling up the expectations vs. reality account and creating the List of Things They Changed From the Book. I never saw the IMAX 3-D, either, and I never will. So dumb. Sorry Harry. I really do adore you.

Speaking of movies, did you know that there's actually a serious ongoing debate on the Interwebs right now about the shakycam cut style of The Bourne Ultimatum? I thought it worked brilliantly, and I saw the flick in about the sixth row of the Varsity 8, over on the left side of the theatre, so I don't think screen proximity helped me out at all. Apparently a lot of other people had serious problems interpreting the visual data, however... or even keeping themselves from being sick. David Bordwell has some pretty interesting comments on the matter over on his blog, but on issues like this I start to wonder if matters more physiological and less psychological might be at work. (And again, I rail against the concept of an objective understanding of "how film works.") We don't really know a lot about the actual physical components of how a human body interacts with a filmed image; it's possible that the ability to sift through "run and gun" filmmaking is as genetic as hair colour. I can't smoke 2 Cuban cigars back to back to save my life, but I can sit through the entire Bourne trilogy and not even develop a headache. I drilled through the complex web of visual and aural information, found the thread I needed to hang onto, and hung onto it; the rest of the frenzy merely informed that relationship, rather than negatively interfering with it. I really do believe that Greengrass was doing something significantly more intelligent with the "run and gun" approach than, say, Tony Scott does with it; that he was working on a more coherent and intelligent schematic in order to make it all work. But maybe chaos is chaos, and finding order in it is as accidental as seeing faces in wet sand. Just like, you know, life.

Posted by tederick at 1:15 PM in h-pot & miscellaneous crap & movies & wii & zombies
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"Enough of this handgun shit. Close quarters killing! That's how you know you're a man." - Matt Brown

"I gotta admit, this is fuckin' fun." - Mark Brown

[Yes. I arrive at every single internet fad six months late. Today's fad: Wii love. Tomorrow's fad: Facebook. Get ready for it, I'm totally cruising March '07 right now.]

Posted by tederick at 9:15 PM in wii & zombies
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WHAT THE FUCK, my brother got me a Wii. A FUCKING WII, FOR FRII, FOR MII. For my birthday, almost a month early.

I am gobsmacked.

I think we now have a fairly good idea of who is in the lead for Tederick.com's Man of the Year.

Posted by tederick at 1:12 PM in miscellaneous crap & wii
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