Ok, yes the Mike Huckabee ad is pretty halarious. That doesn’t mean I’m climbing on board the Republican,conservitive Baptist train any time in my future.

Plus, I liked Young Chuck Norris better.

I was talking with my friend and Team Cthulhu member Craig about the Night Watch series of books by Sergei Lukyanenko. I know people have some mixed feelings about the books, but I love, love, love them. Some of it I am sure comes from 4 years of Russian in high school and a year in college but I just dig the russian outlook in literature. Sure it is a bit more grim than american fiction, and a bit more visceral.

Accept it for what it is. It isn’t Buffy, although some of the tropes are the same, it has it’s own spirit and I love it for it. The books have a spirit uniquely their own and it is all Moscovian and on a larger scale Russian. It is a very cool voice in fiction. I’d really like to see more genre russian works, we need to mix it up a bit more.

[  Mood: Happy ]
Hey, I just wanted to wish a happy and safe turkey day weekend to the ‘merican RevSFers out there (and you just have a good weekend in general Ubal and Dave).

I, for one, plan on eating so much dead bird that I might be declared a threat to domesticated poultry world wide. This will be followed by burping and sprawling and maybe, finally, watching the most recent David Lynch movie.

[  Mood: In Love ]
Dating a geek girl is sort of exhausting. We love almost the same things. but enough difference makes it hard. She loves zombies, that one we rock on, but she also loves Harry Potter (that I find puke tastic). So there is some nerd war. Still I love her and we have enough in common that the warfare bits are small, but combat worthy.

And no war is worse then nerd war. Still, I should always win, my nerd mojo is ascendant. Except when her’s is. Probably because I made the mistake of dating a girl smarter than me. Still, nerd war…I will win this one.

[  Mood: Amused ]
I got a write up in the Delta Green Wiki. I found it amusing. I am 38 now, not 36 otherwise it is still more or less accurate. You can find Shane Ivey here. Still no Joe Crowe though, that fink.

[  Mood: Neutral ]
Over at Team Cthulhu.org some members of the team have done a bit of a dissection of my last Call of Cthulhu one shot set in the Dystopian Cthulhu world. They noted something that I was afraid of doing, as this is a common criticism of Call…it was a bit railroad-y. I didn’t mean for it to be, it just sort of played out that way.

It was an event/timeline sort of game and the players essentially reacted to the world going on around them. They looked into clues, got a sense of the world and had a final, big battle with an almost ascended avatar of Y’golnac.

The end game also included riot police sealing the project, gangers fighting back and an exploding pirate radio station. Good times…good times…

[  Mood: Neutral ]
I picked up a Nintendo DS a couple of days ago. The gizmo itself I like, I am just going to need to find the right game to pull me into it while I am waiting for Warhammer 40k Squad Command. I snagged Resident Evil Deadly Silence only to disappointedly find out it is actually resident Evil 1 which I played through almost 10 years ago. I bought Call of Duty 4 but find the controls a bit awkward. I just picked up a Star Wars game to check out on it but haven’t played it yet.

Do any of you DS owners out there have any suggestions for me?

I also picked up Lost Planet for the 360 at the used media place for 17 dollars. It looks like fun.

On other fronts I watched 28 Weeks Later with my gal last night and I have to say I was a tad underwhelmed. I’ve seen it before back when it came out and was neutral then. Now I am sliding towards the dislike camp. It had all the elements to be a good movie but they just, for whatever reason, didn’t gel for me. Thankfully there has been a decent Brit zombie movie since them to redeem the UK in my eyes.

[  Mood: Sleepy ]
Sooooo we went to go see 30 Days of Night tonight. I have to say, I loved it. They stuck very closely to the graphic novel with only a few modifications here and there. The fly over shot of the vamps attacking Barrow was nothing short of fantastic. It had some jump scare moments and one great ‘hell yeah!’ moment involving a trencher. If you haven’t seen this yet and some pretty serious gore doesn’t bother you I’d highly reccommend it.

My Personal Rules Regarding Books In General And Genre Books Specifically

* Always try to have two or more books waiting to be read past the current one you are reading.

* If you loan out a book don’t be disappointed if it isn’t returned.

* Don’t bother buying books that are collections of blogs if you already read the blog.

* If you don’t like a book by an author give them one more try to win you over.

* With zombie themed books you can absolutely judge the book by the cover. The lamer the cover art, the worse the book inside.

* Just because something was published first on the net doesn’t make it subpar. David Wellington for example.

* Shared world short story collections (Wildcards, Theives’ World, etc.) will always have at minimum one lame short story that you will have to plow through per book.

* Look for reviews of books based on RPGs before buying/reading said book. This has helped me avoid some disasters.

* If you like a writer’s work, try to avoid meeting or talking to that person. At best it is mildly disappointing at worst very, very irritating.

The big Dystopian Cthulhu game is Saturday…and by big I mean I am going to have a metric assload of players. Normally in Call of Cthulu that is a bad thing. In this though I think it will work out, the location of the game is a close environment so I am almost going to play it like a live action game in real time, etc. I think with the themes and moods of the piece it will work better that way.

I’m not saying every game played in that same world would or should be handled like that but I think this is going to be a pretty unique and fun game. Plus, hell’s bells it’s frakkin’ Call of Cthulhu baby!