The date of the surgery to remove all four of my wisdom teeth has been set for January 31st. I had my consultation yesterday morning and the surgeon pointed to multiple facts that led to his decision. All four teeth have erupted (pushed through the gums), the two lower teeth have cysts growing behind them which weaken my jawbone, and all four of the teeth are pushing against their nearest molar neighbors meaning that I can never floss in those spaces. All of these points, while not inherently threatening in their current state, will most certainly cause more problems in the future and his recommendation is for extraction of all four teeth simultaneously.
My consolation prize is the general anasthetic I will receive due to my age becuase the roots are now fully formed therefore much digging will be done in sensitive areas. My only real comfort outside of unconsciousness during the procedure is knowing that I'll be staying home from work and I'm hoping that getting the opportunity to play video games all day will help pyschologically numb the pain or at least distract me from it. I have the fortitude to play for upwards of eight solid hours and in that future state of discomfort I have also been told that I will lack the will to eat anything, furthering enabling my resolve to engage in unending animated distractions.
Speaking of distractions, here are some interesting ones that I have tried in the recent past. In Nanaca Crash!!, you will hit a man while riding your bicycle and the object of the game is to get him to fly the farthest distance. The game's instructions are in Japanese so part of the fun is figuring out just what is going on. I'll give you one hint, then you're on your own: Click, HOLD, Release. I really like the theme song. It makes me want to play Sonic the Hedgehog, Marble Zone again. Another less fun game is Zombie Grinder 60000. If nothing else, it's good for a laugh. An appreciation for Grindcore, even an ironic one, is almost essential.
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
This Is a Post About Movies
After last year, Dennis was unsure if he would attend B-Fest 2006 so a few days ago, I exchanged some email with him to double-check that his intentions hadn't changed. Basically, if I can't go with a friend who's into B-movies, it's just not a whole lot of fun. As I expected, he was still a little reluctant to go and we decided to wait on the release of the line-up of movies, which was released yesterday.
Originally, I had expected to get a look at the line-up and then hope that Dennis would change his mind and decide to go. But, when I skimmed the list of titles for 2006 I was actually a little disappointed myself. Earth Girls are Easy is just that: too easy. And the original King Kong? I know it's hokey, but come on, it's 73 years old this year! King Kong is probably one of the first big popcorn blockbusters of the entire film industry. It's like comparing Outlaw to UT2K4. Comparisons notwithstanding, Kong seemed a little gimmicky to me based on the current popularity of Peter Jackson's remake.
I will be a little sad to miss riffing on Graffiti Bridge and SuperBabies: Super Geniuses 2 in a public setting, but seeing as though there's only two movies I feel bad about missing out of thirteen coupled with the 75% price hike from 2005, I don't think I'll regret not going this year.
In other movie-viewing news, it is well known that my guilty cinematic pleasures are most satisfied through any kind of horror movie regardless of subgenre. Zombies are my favorite, slasher flicks are probably an easy second place finish, while gore for the sake of gore sidles into third. J-Horror is also catching up but I much prefer the original Japanese films to their American remakes. For instance, Ju-On was much more compelling than The Grudge, but I may make an exception with Kairo. I saw Kairo last year and I had trouble following it. I'm hoping that the American version titled Pulse will shed some light on what exactly was going on, without embellishing the original script for the American audience too much. I am probably expecting too much.
But, I digress. I brought up horror movies mostly to say that I saw Hostel last weekend and as horror movies go, it did not disappoint. When I see a horror movie, I have a pretty standard set of expectations that I take with me and as long as I'm not expecting cinematic genius, I can be satisfied as long as certain criteria are met. One: Are there zombies? If so, I'm automatically cool. Two: Is there a lot of blood, gore, or anything that makes my flesh crawl with disgust? Three: If there is little to no gore, is the film at least creepy? Four: The film doesn't take itself too seriously. One thing that horror movies are not is serious literary discussions. They require a great deal of that thing which boring, stuffy types lose over time: willing suspension of disbelief. I'd go crazy if every movie I saw needed to be some raw, shrewdly edited version of reality.
That being said, the reviews for Hostel gathered at Rotten Tomatoes are skewing more toward rotten than fresh the further time crawls away from the film's release date. But, this movies had enough blood and guts to last me for a while and it certainly agreed with some of my criteria above. My Achilles Heel (a couple of those get sliced in Hostel if you're wondering) when it comes to gory scenes usually involve eyeballs. Fulci's Zombie has a good eyeball scene, someone gets an injection in the eye in the Halloween series, and Hostel has a truly painful eyeball sequence that had me literally squirming in my seat with one eye open. I wasn't the only one either. I remember hearing a few tortured groans from the audience during that scene.
Hostel was a gory, fun time at the movies and I'm glad to see a resurgence in the genre that I loved so much in the '80s. I'm very interested to see what will be included in the invevitable unrated director's cut that will come DVD, although Amy said she was just fine with what we already saw.
Originally, I had expected to get a look at the line-up and then hope that Dennis would change his mind and decide to go. But, when I skimmed the list of titles for 2006 I was actually a little disappointed myself. Earth Girls are Easy is just that: too easy. And the original King Kong? I know it's hokey, but come on, it's 73 years old this year! King Kong is probably one of the first big popcorn blockbusters of the entire film industry. It's like comparing Outlaw to UT2K4. Comparisons notwithstanding, Kong seemed a little gimmicky to me based on the current popularity of Peter Jackson's remake.
I will be a little sad to miss riffing on Graffiti Bridge and SuperBabies: Super Geniuses 2 in a public setting, but seeing as though there's only two movies I feel bad about missing out of thirteen coupled with the 75% price hike from 2005, I don't think I'll regret not going this year.
In other movie-viewing news, it is well known that my guilty cinematic pleasures are most satisfied through any kind of horror movie regardless of subgenre. Zombies are my favorite, slasher flicks are probably an easy second place finish, while gore for the sake of gore sidles into third. J-Horror is also catching up but I much prefer the original Japanese films to their American remakes. For instance, Ju-On was much more compelling than The Grudge, but I may make an exception with Kairo. I saw Kairo last year and I had trouble following it. I'm hoping that the American version titled Pulse will shed some light on what exactly was going on, without embellishing the original script for the American audience too much. I am probably expecting too much.
But, I digress. I brought up horror movies mostly to say that I saw Hostel last weekend and as horror movies go, it did not disappoint. When I see a horror movie, I have a pretty standard set of expectations that I take with me and as long as I'm not expecting cinematic genius, I can be satisfied as long as certain criteria are met. One: Are there zombies? If so, I'm automatically cool. Two: Is there a lot of blood, gore, or anything that makes my flesh crawl with disgust? Three: If there is little to no gore, is the film at least creepy? Four: The film doesn't take itself too seriously. One thing that horror movies are not is serious literary discussions. They require a great deal of that thing which boring, stuffy types lose over time: willing suspension of disbelief. I'd go crazy if every movie I saw needed to be some raw, shrewdly edited version of reality.
That being said, the reviews for Hostel gathered at Rotten Tomatoes are skewing more toward rotten than fresh the further time crawls away from the film's release date. But, this movies had enough blood and guts to last me for a while and it certainly agreed with some of my criteria above. My Achilles Heel (a couple of those get sliced in Hostel if you're wondering) when it comes to gory scenes usually involve eyeballs. Fulci's Zombie has a good eyeball scene, someone gets an injection in the eye in the Halloween series, and Hostel has a truly painful eyeball sequence that had me literally squirming in my seat with one eye open. I wasn't the only one either. I remember hearing a few tortured groans from the audience during that scene.
Hostel was a gory, fun time at the movies and I'm glad to see a resurgence in the genre that I loved so much in the '80s. I'm very interested to see what will be included in the invevitable unrated director's cut that will come DVD, although Amy said she was just fine with what we already saw.
Thursday, January 05, 2006
Best Last Week of 2005 Ever
Happy New Year to the Green! The holiday coma is now over and I can return to living my normal, boring, day-to-day life. Amy was not feeling well over the actual Christams holiday so it was pretty quiet around our house. I spent some time playing the copy of F.E.A.R. that Amy got me for Christmas as well as Stubbs the Zombie: Rebel Without a Pulse that was given to me by her parents. Stubbs is indeed short, but being a huge fan of zombies, I'm having a blast with the game. The fact that it has split-screen co-op mode for the Xbox is an added bonus as I can force Amy to play with me.
After the following work week, Amy and I went to Vern and Wendy's last Friday night for an evening of tabletop gaming. It was good to hang out with Vern again. I haven't seen him since he left for LucasArts five years ago and due to life getting in the way, I'd never actually met Wendy before they left. Anyway, we played some games I'd never heard of because I don't usually run in the tabletop gaming circles like Settlers of Catan, Around the World in 80 Days, and Starship Jeff.
Since I couldn't find a link for SJ, I'll try to briefly explain it. Jeff was an interesting card game that involved the construction of a starship based on cards with segments of a starship printed on them. The player that finishes the starship so that no other cards can be played to further expand the ship is the winner. The incentive for greater strategy occurs through the use of a penny poker system of rent paid to other players based on where you play your cards. You pay a penny (or in our case a dime) to each player for every one of their cards that exists between your played card and your nearest card in the starship by travelling the shortest distance. Trust me, it's a lot simpler than it sounds. It's too bad I couldn't find it online or I might have bought a copy. Needless to say, neither or Amy or I won any of the games because we'd never played them before, but we did win a game at the end of the night that required us to use a net to catch as many plastic butterflies that squirted out of an elephants nose as we could before they were all gone. Strategy, shmategy.
The next morning, we picked Rachel and Ian up at the airport and they stayed with us through the new year holidays. We went to Evanston's First Night celebrations, but I found them to be overcrowded in general. The first three of four events that we tried to see were full by the time we got there so we felt like we had essentially paid $14 per person to walk around Evanston, which we could have done for free. When Amy and I had attended the same event in 2004, we were able to walk into any event at any point without an issue, so this year's shutout was a little off-putting. I'm not sure I want to go back now, despite the fact that we were able to see a few things that we wanted to see after our initial efforts to get into some events were turned down. We also took an excursion to the Field Museum on Monday that was interesting. The Field was the only museum to which Amy and I had never been so it was good to finally get a reason to go. I now have a new nickname for Rachel that I learned at the museum. Her new nickname is Luvon, which is short for Luvon Warty Pig, an example of a breed of wild pig that was on display at the museum. Education is an amazing tool.
In other news, Jeff, the ex-pastor of our church, his wife Jen, and their kids finally made their move to Indiana on January 2nd. It will be a strange transition getting accustomed to their absence. They were interesting people and Amy and I enjoyed spending time with them when we could. Jeff and I shared an interest in Commodore stuff and he even showed me how to win Impossible Mission once, although I think I'd be hard-pressed to actually pull it off. Best wishes, Jeff and Jen.
After the following work week, Amy and I went to Vern and Wendy's last Friday night for an evening of tabletop gaming. It was good to hang out with Vern again. I haven't seen him since he left for LucasArts five years ago and due to life getting in the way, I'd never actually met Wendy before they left. Anyway, we played some games I'd never heard of because I don't usually run in the tabletop gaming circles like Settlers of Catan, Around the World in 80 Days, and Starship Jeff.
Since I couldn't find a link for SJ, I'll try to briefly explain it. Jeff was an interesting card game that involved the construction of a starship based on cards with segments of a starship printed on them. The player that finishes the starship so that no other cards can be played to further expand the ship is the winner. The incentive for greater strategy occurs through the use of a penny poker system of rent paid to other players based on where you play your cards. You pay a penny (or in our case a dime) to each player for every one of their cards that exists between your played card and your nearest card in the starship by travelling the shortest distance. Trust me, it's a lot simpler than it sounds. It's too bad I couldn't find it online or I might have bought a copy. Needless to say, neither or Amy or I won any of the games because we'd never played them before, but we did win a game at the end of the night that required us to use a net to catch as many plastic butterflies that squirted out of an elephants nose as we could before they were all gone. Strategy, shmategy.
The next morning, we picked Rachel and Ian up at the airport and they stayed with us through the new year holidays. We went to Evanston's First Night celebrations, but I found them to be overcrowded in general. The first three of four events that we tried to see were full by the time we got there so we felt like we had essentially paid $14 per person to walk around Evanston, which we could have done for free. When Amy and I had attended the same event in 2004, we were able to walk into any event at any point without an issue, so this year's shutout was a little off-putting. I'm not sure I want to go back now, despite the fact that we were able to see a few things that we wanted to see after our initial efforts to get into some events were turned down. We also took an excursion to the Field Museum on Monday that was interesting. The Field was the only museum to which Amy and I had never been so it was good to finally get a reason to go. I now have a new nickname for Rachel that I learned at the museum. Her new nickname is Luvon, which is short for Luvon Warty Pig, an example of a breed of wild pig that was on display at the museum. Education is an amazing tool.
In other news, Jeff, the ex-pastor of our church, his wife Jen, and their kids finally made their move to Indiana on January 2nd. It will be a strange transition getting accustomed to their absence. They were interesting people and Amy and I enjoyed spending time with them when we could. Jeff and I shared an interest in Commodore stuff and he even showed me how to win Impossible Mission once, although I think I'd be hard-pressed to actually pull it off. Best wishes, Jeff and Jen.
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