Toren Atkinson’s Absolute Blog

Phil: The question is, do you have any character at all? And if you want my honest opinion Bob, you do not. For the simple reason that you don’t regret anything yet.
Bob: Are you saying I won’t have any character unless I do something I regret?
Phil: No, Bob. I’m saying you’ve already done plenty of things to regret. You just don’t know what they are. It’s when you discover them. When you see the folly in something you’ve done. And you wish you had it to do over. But you know you can’t because it’s too late. So you pick that thing up and you carry it with you. To remind you that life goes on. The world will spin without you. You really don’t matter in the end. Then will you attain character because honesty will reach out from inside and tattoo itself all across your face. Until that day however, you cannot expect to go beyond a certain point.

After a weekend of bad sleeps (I always sleep poorly during gaming convention weekends) it was hard to get up this morning. But I’ve got a lot of drawing to do so I forced myself. Also, they’re doing fire alarm tests in the building this morning. I’ll report later on my weekend but it was fun and I pity the fool who didn’t make it out! The most astonishing part was that I happened to catch 2 garage sales while I was wandering around near the con.

Holy smokes! Who wants to draw for me so I can go out and play tennis and go swimming and biking and looking for crabs on the beach?

I watched A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi over the past couple of days (while I’ve been drawing, of course) and after having watched Revenge of the Sith, the end of Jedi has a little bit more of a punch.

Also it made me want to watch all my episodes of Samurai Jack.

Tomorrow is the free Drexoll 24-hour game-a-thon at the Marpole Curling Club. What possible reason could you have not to go?

Last night Taylor, Mike Jackson, Nathan, Marlo and I played Spaceship Zero (Web of the Space Bee). It was my playtest for the Cloud City gaming convention this coming weekend. Some of the bits went pretty much exactly as planned, but as always, lack of proper pacing is my downfall. We probably would have gone for another 2 hours (after the prescribed 4 hour block) to finish the scenario properly at the rate we were going, so I’m going to have to make sure I don’t dawdle on periphery when I run it next time. Marlo said that this adventure and the last one (Bring Me the Head of Dr Quisling) were her two favourites so far, so that’s good, and it looks like I’ve made a SSZ convert out of Mike.

Chris Woods’ birthday party weekend was full of gifts to me. He came to my place to pick up Marlo, Stewie and me. We drove to Chilliwack and shopped around for games for his new XBOX. The pick of the litter was the Godzilla game, for which I proceeded to slip away from many social expectations throughout the party. I saw my brother, Tara & Jordan, Bob & Karen and spawn, Josh and his gal, Tasha and Chris’ parents. Birthday dinner was tacos and I ate constantly, including cake and ice cream. We slept over and on Sunday we drove out to Metrotown to watch Revenge of the Sith. My biggest complaint was the child who sat next to me and kept idly caressing my arm with his fingers as he fidgeted during the non-action parts of the film. I won’t say anything else about the film on this blog for the time being, because I know certain people are holding out before they watch it, except I really want to watch episodes 4-6 in a row, right now, and that the acting was far better than eps 1 and 2. Then they chauffeured us home after a late dinner at Denny’s. It was so satisfying for me to watch Sith with Chris & Marlo, my closest friends and definitely the two biggest Star Wars nerds that I know. It was perfect! We even got good seats, and only the occasional baby “wah” from the back of the theater interfered with the enjoyment of the movie. But that’s the price you pay for going to the cinema, along with the obligatory, “let’s show up to the theater at the last minute so that we can scour the theater for the three disparate remaining seats in the dark, so that everyone else who arrived 90 minutes early so they could get a good seat are too distracted to enjoy the first scene of the movie.” Chumps! The only bad news is that Marlo left her umbrella in Chilliwack, and the whereabouts of her cute brown cardigan is at present a mystery. So if you see it, grab it! Marlo will no doubt post on her blog the many photos we took of the weekend.

Even though I had terrible dreams about being eaten by crocodiles when I was a kid, I think that being eaten would be a great way to go. Because then at least you’re giving something back to the world, or to the crocodile at least. Stupid old humanity and their respect for lifeless husks, it’s a needless burden on the environment to burn a body or to build a graveyard. Let it be known that when I die, I want my body to be fed to sharks or wolves or something. Maybe a swarm of starving chihuahuas so that they acquire a taste for human flesh.

Also I think that when you fill out the organ donor form, you should also be able to write a test. And I don’t mean take a test, I mean write it. When you die and the doctors divide up all your pink goodies, prospective recipients have to take the test you wrote — sort of an application form. If they don’t pass the test (and you can set it so that passing means you have to get 50% or 100% or whatever) they don’t get the donation. That way I can make sure my kidney isn’t going to someone who is stupid (because that would be a waste of a perfectly good kidney), or someone who is anti-abortion and anti-gay, like, say, the Pope.

Dr Who was pre-empted due to the BC Election last night. Why? Do we really need to know who is counting what on every channel? Can’t they just give us the results once the counting is done, say, during a normal news hour program?

I voted for the Green Party, by the way. It’s kind of like spoiling my ballot because they never win. I was saying to Stewie, if the Work Less Party and the More Sex Party joined forces, then they’d really have something.

Meanwhile, SW III: The Sithening opens tonight at midnight. I’ve heard (of) 2 good reviews so far, one from a friend whose tastes in movies I trust. He didn’t say it was great, but he did say “Certainly, I did not care for episodes 1 and 2, beyond a few choice scenes. Having seen the final cut of the new film, I do recommend seeing it. Lucas’ claims that the movie has relevance to the Bush administration and the average American’s approach to freedom may sound over-stated, but it’s valid. Best Star Wars film since Empire Strikes Back. May sway more voters than
Michael Moore. That goof Lucas may have redeemed himself. Dammit.”

I don’t plan on seeing it on opening night (I don’t like opening nights because I don’t like crowds), but a few more good reviews will get me into the theater sooner or later.

Marlo bleached my hair this weekend and my scalp objected by having a bad reaction to it. At first I thought the crusty bits of hair were spots that somehow passed un-shampooed, but it turns out that it was some kind of nameless ichor that oozed out of my head. This has happened once before. Welcome to my blog, everybody!

Oh my! What a busy weekend! Oh my my my my my my MY! Drawing, eating out, watching The Birds and the last 2 Enterprise episodes and Justice League and misc. The coming weekends will be busier still as Cloud City approaches but not before Chris’ birthday smellabration. Also a Painting Potluck Party and 2 gaming nights fill the week days. I want to write a poem about it all, but no time!

Stephane does website work for the Vaneast Theater, and therefor he can go see free movies whenever he wants. He took me to Kingdom of Heaven last night. I give it a 4/10. The costumes and props were fantastic and it had Alexander Siddig from DS9 but Orlando’s acting was as flat as a tortilla (and not one that’s been rolled up around delicious fixin’s), and the action was mostly the stupid kind where they shake the camera a lot and do a lot of quick cuts. Also a lot of it made no sense, and the characters’ ideals and philosophies seemed to flip flop whenever the story called for it. Boo, I say.