My Political Compass
Economic Left/Right: -1.75
Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.90
I suppose this means I'm a wishy washy moderate, slightly liberal on social and economic issues.
Thursday, December 11, 2003
Tuesday, December 09, 2003
Wherein Angie is Hit By A Car
It snowed on Thursday night. No school on Friday; which for us dorks, means roleplaying all night long. Jeremy ended up severely aggravating Niall, who was GMing, by coming up with scientific uses for just about everything in our survival RP... "I take the pipe, the shower head, and the gasoline to make an improvised rocket launcher." "I take the wire from the hair dryer, coil it into loops and use it to determine the origin of the radio signal." "I take the styrofoam packing peanuts and melt them for napalm." "I wrap the wire around the electrical generator to create a giant EMP field, knocking out the signal from the satelite to the explosives detonators." It was in character, as the escaped convict he was playing was a criminal mastermind with a specialty in chemistry, detonation devices and improvised weaponry, but still, it was annoying.
Saturday, went fencing, was slashed with the edge of a foil (surprisingly sharp) across the knuckle (which is why it's good to wear gloves). Broke an epee, stabbed Jeremy with it (not on purpose), and inflicted a deep gash. We now have matching fencing wounds.
Sunday, we stood on the icy sidewalk as wind swept cold powder off snowy dunes and glacially jagged contemporary architecture rooftops, and scoured our faces with crystalline snow. The bus we were waiting for (to Hagerstown) never came. So instead, Jeremy spent the day futilely teaching me hirakana, a syllabic Japanese alphabet, ("ah... ee... oo... eh... oh... ka .... ki... koo... keh... koh... sa .. shi... shoo.... seh.. soh.. Jeremy, I'm bored!"). I thought that being Chinese would make it easier for me to learn totally random squiggly-line characters, but apparently not. Then, after deciding that 20 characters is enough for me for one day, we went to see Buried, a UMBC uh... 'original puppet performance.' It was an excessively abstract, pseudo-mystical puppet show about the horrors of war, which was very trippy and creepy. Good puppetry. Bad actors. ("Noooooo!!!") One of the good things I can say about it is that it utilized stage lighting, tin foil, and saran wrap to great effect. Sparkly sparklies!
Also went to see Timeline, later that night, thanks to Tim, Kay's Friend With Car. Kay scooped up a snowball in the parking lot and brandished it at me, yelling, "Run, Angie, run!" I ran backwards, into the side of a moving car. According to Kay he yelled for me to stop and I slowed down, so the car passed me, and (Jeremy says) the side mirror clipped my arm and my heel hit the hubcap of the rear wheel and I was thrown to the ground. Myself, I don't remember that much; I remember running backwards and going THUD against something hard and felt the tire moving against my shoe, and I thought in that split second that a car had run over my foot. I don't remember if I fell, but later on I recall having a scraped knee and elbow. My toes are fine, so evidently a car did not run over my foot. Jeremy says that if I hadn't hesitated when I did I would've stepped backwards directly into the path of the moving vehicle. The driving punched the brakes and rolled down a window; we were actually cracking up and told him that we were fine. It must've scarred him/her for a while though.
This is the sort of thing that's supposed to make you contemplate your mortality or whatnot. Well, it really didn't. Except for the idle joke that Kay both almost killed me and then saved my life ("At least kept you from having your legs broken") and that if it were Jose, with his notoriously bad luck, I would've been hit by the snowball and by the car.
Anyway, I liked the movie because it had people with swords in it. Was it a good movie? Nah. There was no time for charactierization at all. But I had fun with flaming trebuchets. Critics say it had bad special effects but I think this is because it was historically accurate, therefore, rather passe from an asthetic standpoint. No, it had no CGI orcs, no bullet dodging, no running on water and tree-top fighting. There were really no special effects; I'll bet they filmed exploding walls by actually planting explosives in a wall. I bet they filmed shooting a storm of arrows by literally shooting a bunch of arrows (probably with an arrow launching machine instead of real archers, but the point is they probably actually shot them). You want a trebuchet in the movie? You build a trebuchet. Not a lot of CGI; I guess it's what I call 'literalist special effects.' But at least they stayed true to their roots and I appreciated that. I also liked Marek as a character, because Jeremy can do everything that he can (riding, archery, long sword); someday, if he ever discovers a time machine Jeremy can be a Michael Crichton action hero too.
Monday, went to see Elf (courtesy Tim again), which was hilarious, and infectiously jolly. Went to Books a Million, and like total nerds, marched straight to the science fiction/ fantasy section and had conversations with random strangers about recommended reading. I went to Wizards of the Coast and bought myself some dice (the D&D set and some d10's) and a dice bag. The dice are green; the bag is velvety and maroon. That just wouldn't do, so I bought some pink translucent d10's so that my die and dice bag would be color coordinated. Jeremy and Jose were appropriately sickened. (Also pooled money with them to get Kay's Christmas present; Jose's Christmas present has just come in today through the mail, from E-bay.) Had coffee, relaxed, shopped for high powered hunting rifles, did not die, stuffed snow down Jose's coat collar and skated around (in our shoes) on patches of ice, and life, as it were, is good.
It snowed on Thursday night. No school on Friday; which for us dorks, means roleplaying all night long. Jeremy ended up severely aggravating Niall, who was GMing, by coming up with scientific uses for just about everything in our survival RP... "I take the pipe, the shower head, and the gasoline to make an improvised rocket launcher." "I take the wire from the hair dryer, coil it into loops and use it to determine the origin of the radio signal." "I take the styrofoam packing peanuts and melt them for napalm." "I wrap the wire around the electrical generator to create a giant EMP field, knocking out the signal from the satelite to the explosives detonators." It was in character, as the escaped convict he was playing was a criminal mastermind with a specialty in chemistry, detonation devices and improvised weaponry, but still, it was annoying.
Saturday, went fencing, was slashed with the edge of a foil (surprisingly sharp) across the knuckle (which is why it's good to wear gloves). Broke an epee, stabbed Jeremy with it (not on purpose), and inflicted a deep gash. We now have matching fencing wounds.
Sunday, we stood on the icy sidewalk as wind swept cold powder off snowy dunes and glacially jagged contemporary architecture rooftops, and scoured our faces with crystalline snow. The bus we were waiting for (to Hagerstown) never came. So instead, Jeremy spent the day futilely teaching me hirakana, a syllabic Japanese alphabet, ("ah... ee... oo... eh... oh... ka .... ki... koo... keh... koh... sa .. shi... shoo.... seh.. soh.. Jeremy, I'm bored!"). I thought that being Chinese would make it easier for me to learn totally random squiggly-line characters, but apparently not. Then, after deciding that 20 characters is enough for me for one day, we went to see Buried, a UMBC uh... 'original puppet performance.' It was an excessively abstract, pseudo-mystical puppet show about the horrors of war, which was very trippy and creepy. Good puppetry. Bad actors. ("Noooooo!!!") One of the good things I can say about it is that it utilized stage lighting, tin foil, and saran wrap to great effect. Sparkly sparklies!
Also went to see Timeline, later that night, thanks to Tim, Kay's Friend With Car. Kay scooped up a snowball in the parking lot and brandished it at me, yelling, "Run, Angie, run!" I ran backwards, into the side of a moving car. According to Kay he yelled for me to stop and I slowed down, so the car passed me, and (Jeremy says) the side mirror clipped my arm and my heel hit the hubcap of the rear wheel and I was thrown to the ground. Myself, I don't remember that much; I remember running backwards and going THUD against something hard and felt the tire moving against my shoe, and I thought in that split second that a car had run over my foot. I don't remember if I fell, but later on I recall having a scraped knee and elbow. My toes are fine, so evidently a car did not run over my foot. Jeremy says that if I hadn't hesitated when I did I would've stepped backwards directly into the path of the moving vehicle. The driving punched the brakes and rolled down a window; we were actually cracking up and told him that we were fine. It must've scarred him/her for a while though.
This is the sort of thing that's supposed to make you contemplate your mortality or whatnot. Well, it really didn't. Except for the idle joke that Kay both almost killed me and then saved my life ("At least kept you from having your legs broken") and that if it were Jose, with his notoriously bad luck, I would've been hit by the snowball and by the car.
Anyway, I liked the movie because it had people with swords in it. Was it a good movie? Nah. There was no time for charactierization at all. But I had fun with flaming trebuchets. Critics say it had bad special effects but I think this is because it was historically accurate, therefore, rather passe from an asthetic standpoint. No, it had no CGI orcs, no bullet dodging, no running on water and tree-top fighting. There were really no special effects; I'll bet they filmed exploding walls by actually planting explosives in a wall. I bet they filmed shooting a storm of arrows by literally shooting a bunch of arrows (probably with an arrow launching machine instead of real archers, but the point is they probably actually shot them). You want a trebuchet in the movie? You build a trebuchet. Not a lot of CGI; I guess it's what I call 'literalist special effects.' But at least they stayed true to their roots and I appreciated that. I also liked Marek as a character, because Jeremy can do everything that he can (riding, archery, long sword); someday, if he ever discovers a time machine Jeremy can be a Michael Crichton action hero too.
Monday, went to see Elf (courtesy Tim again), which was hilarious, and infectiously jolly. Went to Books a Million, and like total nerds, marched straight to the science fiction/ fantasy section and had conversations with random strangers about recommended reading. I went to Wizards of the Coast and bought myself some dice (the D&D set and some d10's) and a dice bag. The dice are green; the bag is velvety and maroon. That just wouldn't do, so I bought some pink translucent d10's so that my die and dice bag would be color coordinated. Jeremy and Jose were appropriately sickened. (Also pooled money with them to get Kay's Christmas present; Jose's Christmas present has just come in today through the mail, from E-bay.) Had coffee, relaxed, shopped for high powered hunting rifles, did not die, stuffed snow down Jose's coat collar and skated around (in our shoes) on patches of ice, and life, as it were, is good.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)