…Re-imagined by my subconscious had me playing the part of the Joker’s right-hand man. Contrary to his claims of anarchy (after all, how do you spontaneously rig a whole hospital for explosive demolition), we were planning a heist of some diamond required to power a death ray. There was, however dastardly the acts involved, a definite sense of excitement and accomplishment from them coming together. Remnants of that rival Black gang—ours was comprised of Latino members—we left bound in the basement, swearing others were on their way. We proudly took our seats in an outdoor amphitheater and watched as our satellite hovered over the water in the distance and shot a thick White beam below. To the rescue came Christian Bale captaining the USS Enterprise, in both retro and J.J. Abrams versions, apparently so as not to disrupt the continuity.
In the second billing of my double feature I dreamed the neighbor upstairs or in the suite next to ours had a dog that looked just like Oreo, except she was named Daisy.
We’ve been making up for the snag in Netflix’s subscription model—namely, the United States Postal Service—with selections from their smaller streaming library. I prefer using a computer to assist with delivery because the Xbox version seems to be far more bandwidth-hungry, and the hassle of resetting the quality after it does evens out any convenience from the whole convergence thing. Lack of close-captioning means subtitled foreign films like Let the Right One in are your best bet; too bad they chose to dub the French in JCVD, because I really would’ve preferred to hear that rambling soliloquy in his own voice.
Shadow of the Colossus, while providing holiday TV viewing admittedly more interesting than basic cable, unfortunately came at a time when I was realizing you shouldn’t put all your hobbies in one basket, because you get tired of carrying it. But I’m more eclectic now (or at least have to be, after dropping them all like that), so the third offering from the Ico team has a better chance of winning me back:
Now that the going rate on eBay for four-year-old graphics finally reflects the real world’s turn towards a Thunderdome-like post-apocalypse, I replaced the ati2vag‘d Radeon and got the 20-lb. beast back to 1680 x 1050. Thawing’s never without its deleterious effects or discoveries: sound card went undetected, as did the camera, and FF won’t uninstall (unless it’s re-installed first, it seems), much less run. Registry has so many iterations of “PlayOnline” after both versions came and went that I’m wondering if it’ll take a complete reformat to get it working again. All I want is one last go at the game with windower, take some nice hi-rez movies and compile them in a video to the last track of hitomi’s huma-rhythm.
With each lap around the track I still look up at the sky hoping it isn’t hypoxia and that cloud really is one of their ships. But maybe I’m too old now, got too much at stake, etc., to join the resistance and make a difference. Though the concept, as far as I’m concerned, cannot be exploited enough: I always thought an alien invasion would make a great better backdrop for a Street Fighter sequel, and am up for a remake that makes me question my loyalties.
(A)DSL seems to be back up—either that, or it’s because everyone else is asleep—so I’m making up for being disconnected over much of the weekend. Woke up, anyway, from a dream about an episode of House from presumably an earlier season, where the teaser showed him in spacesuit, chatting via split-screen to a sick young patient friend… I don’t recall him ever being recruited by NASA, and I’ll surely give up on the series if the writers turn him into Homer Simpson like that, but for the sake of argument: she suffered from a seizure or syncope, prompting the titles, then we see House back on Earth, in a glorious mood. To Foreman’s dismay, he leads Chase and Cameron to join him seated in front of the open windows to appreciate the beauty of the day. I suppose it could happen, when he’s out of the nut house.
There’s no remembering all the others I’ve had lately, except for Kim quitting (which is bound to happen eventually, so probably doesn’t qualify as a premonition), one where I was playing George Huang’s role in SVU and trying to explain a perp’s motives to Stabler in as fluent psychobabble as possible, given that stammering was unbecoming of a professional, much less scripted television; and another which left me with the actual impression that a sitcom about the Silver Surfer working at a restaurant would be a good idea.
So we were all wrong about that overnight detox (including, it seems, the resident head of oncology and diagnostic genius); if House’s writers treat his psychiatric care like they did his time in rehab, then I’ll re-classify it again, from sci-fi to comedy. Though that shot of Kutner was downright creepy, like Dave Bowman appearing in 2010. Human eyesight being continuous and all, even during hallucinations, I’ve always wondered why directors cut back and forth for the effect.
My dysplastic hip is acting up, despite the hyaluronan injections last fall, but instead of shopping for a cane with flames on it, I decided to run yesterday. I want to live! (Let this serve as damages testimony if there’s ever the need to value the use of my body in this capacity for a future personal injury suit.) Didn’t hurt in the least, even into my fourth mile. Strangely it only does when I’m in sedentary サラリーマン mode, like the pelagic shark that’d asphyxiate if not in constant motion.
As much as I liked Darren Aronofsky’s previous work, I haven’t picked up Iris’s costly Blockbuster rental downstairs (using it instead, to justify our Netflix trial); our eponymous titular character is instead the [other] former state governor from Predator, who KFC’s the chickenhawks on Larry King.
Microsoft’s up to its tricks again. Now we’re supposed to believe their subscription model actually saves people money? Let’s see: four or five years of Live, you’ve already made up the price difference between a PS3 and under-equipped 360. Not to mention uncompensated RROD-time. And at least with Netflix we can rip the movies we borrow.
Last week’s experience with Redbox was the last straw: $1.07 (or $1.08, depending on where the higher taxes round to now) does not factor in the drive time and mileage between locations with faulty machines, 2/3 among the nearest Albertsons. A ratio only to worsen. So 老婆, she of the torrents and myself more at home on the Amazon, we decided finally to take the plunge—see what I’m doing here with the metaphors; it’d impress in high school English—and become a Netflix couple, which is surely some salient stage of household settlement.
I moved the Xbox to the big TV from the small monitor where it’d been running FFXI, and poorly at that, though the fault there’s less in the hardware than lazy programming from SquareEnix. That the app requires paid Gold membership, however, I’m not forgiving. Fuck them, a 48-hour code from 남재 proved streaming through Live (even with DD-WRT priority over a wired connection) is no superior to just hooking up my notebook on WiFi; in fact, Ping Pong Playa jumped after a ten-minute pause into YouTube resolution …speaking of which, that Jimmy Tsai sure looks like 송강호’s son. Oh, and those two White devils? Ted & Emmett from Queer as Folk.
