Your Movie Is Bad And You Should Feel Bad!

I hurt my back playing video games. I didn't realize that was it at first--I was walking out to my car Friday morning when I felt a sharp wrenching pain, so I figured I'd hurt myself walking out the front door. I spent all day glaring at doors, swiveling my whole body to look left and right, before I realized ten minutes into my post-work Call of Duty 4 shoot em' up that I was literally on the edge of the couch, tensely hunched over and gripping the controller hard enough to feel the plastic creak, doing pretty much everything in my power to injure my back. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, that's what happened. I have no idea why it all struck at once the next morning, but I had clearly gamed myself right into a back injury. On the one hand, I'm 28, but on the other, it's a very, very excellent game.

In other developments, Lizett and I finally watched At World's End this weekend, please enjoy my timely review. Thank Hades that was the last installment. I went into Dead Man's Chest still high on the unmitigated triumph that was Black Pearl, only to be uncomfortably disappointed. Still, if Dead Man was a tepid porridge of mediocrity after Pearl's hot, fresh slice of awesome, World's End was a steaming log of suck. Mmmm, that's good metaphorin'! Don't get me wrong, it had it's moments, it wasn't Bandidas bad. When Sparrow and the Pearl came crashing over the sand dune to the pirates theme I briefly remembered what made the first one so awesome, but those moments were almost completely overshadowed by the seemingly endless stream of deep yet surprisingly boring pirate mythology and mysticism saturating the film. Remember the first movie where the Pearl was initially regarded as a ghost story? As self-consciously absurd as the film was, we were at least grounded in some sort of relatable real world scenario. In contrast, the mundane had absolutely no presence in World's End, so the remarkable seemed at best typical, at worst tedious. Poop for sure.

My New Toys

Thanks to a glorious combination of double income, no rent, and of course the generosity of my mommy, I have now surrounded myself with an array of technical gadgetry heretofore only dreamed of by the common man. BEHOLD!

1. Toshiba 42" 1080p Falt Panel LCD HDTV
2. DirecTV HD DVR
   
3. Playstation 3
4. Wii
5. Sony Bravia Wireless Surround System
6. 15" 2.4GHz Core Duo 2 MacBook Pro

I have of course forsaken all social interaction in favor of my new inanimate friends. My impressions:

HDTV - The focal point. She makes it all possible. So good. I love her.

DirectTV - This is a pretty outstanding piece of technology with a terrible UI team. Dudes, just store the entire TV schedule for a given time slot in local memory, it's not like we're talking GBs or even MBs of data. If I'm on channel 305 it should not take 5 seconds to find out what is on channel 306. God help us all if I actually want to change to that channel. Remember in the 80s when you could flip channels instantly? What happened!?

PS3 - Call of Duty 4 is ridiculously outstanding, but mostly I use this as a blu-ray player. This has been good and bad, in that blue ray discs are so amazing that regular DVDs are now somewhat of a disappointment, and watching something in standard definition is about as pleasurable as a genital massage from a hungry raccoon.

Wii - MarioKart has given me endless enjoyment. Even if it wasn't an outstanding game, it would be totally worth it just for WaLuigi, a travesty of a character who is remeniscent of Dr. N. Gin from Crash Team Racing if you were to crank up the insanity by infinity. EEEEEAAAAAARRRAHHHH! WWWAAAAAAAHHHH!! MEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAA!!!

Surround - I love it. Lizett is at best tolerant. My sister, who goes to sleep roughly 30 minutes after her three year old daughter in a bed that shares a wall with my subwoofer, is not a huge fan.

MacBook - The fastest, most sophisticated and expertly engineered piece of equipment I've ever owned, which predictably I use primarily for fark.com. Thanks mom!