Critters
Ah, the 80s. Where would crazy killer mutant alien creatures be without this glorious decade? Critters is one of those movies that isn't afraid to make fun of itself. I mean, it's hard to be scared of tiny little rolling fur balls with teeth.
They're like piranhas if they had hair. The setup is pretty standard. The brood of flesh eating killing pint sized aliens crash land on Earth at a small farm house. They immediately began a killing spree and just as things start to go south, another ship shows up with a couple alien bounty hunters show up and start creating the own havoc.
It's up to the lovable idiot and the young teen to take out the critters and keep everyone safe from the bounty hunters. In the end, the alien critter menace is quelled and the idiot goes to work with the bounty hunters. You know, the typical Hollywood ending.
This movie was one of my favorites growing up. It came out in 1986 and had a number of b-list stars from Dee Wallace Stone to E, Emmett Walsh and even a young Billy Zane. The movie was a commercial success and spawned at least three additional movies. I guess everyone couldn't get enough of the furry piranhas.
It's filled with enough humor to make it funny without being ridiculous, but scary and gory enough to keep people interested. Sure, the critters themselves may not be too threatening, but this movie is definitely one of the best the 80s has to offer.
Writing game: It's a roller coaster
Writing for pleasure or business certainly isn't easy and it's an emotional roller coaster where you can feel like the king of of the world one day and complete loser the next. This is something you need to know before you get too deep into the game.
It all starts before you even write your first word. You battle with your own inner demons that are telling you that you can be the next Stephen King one minute and total hack the next. Most people can't get past this first barrier.
If you actually make it to putting pen to paper, then you'll start to question your writing. I know when I write, I think it's all complete and total crap as I type and it isn't until I go back and read it that I start to feel like “hey, that's not too bad.” I go through this page after page.
When the story is finally done and completely edited to the best of my ability, it's time to send it on for publication. Odds are by the time you're finished, you think your story is awesome. If you didn't, then you wouldn't try and get it published.
You may send it out to one place at a time or to several places via e-mail and/or mail. You hope that it's going to be snatched up right away, but be prepared for rejection. It may not fit the publisher's criteria, it may not have been their cup of tea or they didn't even get a chance to read it, but it was rejected and rejected and rejected.
Rejection is part of the game as well. No one gets accepted every time, especially when you're starting out. Be prepared to run the gambit of emotions especially when it finally gets accepted.
Supernatural shocker: Cas comes back
Things are certainly heating on Supernatural in what has got to be the best season the series has had in the last few years. The episode starts with Dean seeing a disheveled Castiel walking down the road, but when he looks back, the angel is gone.
Dean thinks he's going bonkers, but when the angel shows up and stays, we know that Cas is back. He gets a good shower and the trio are off to find Kevin who has been kidnapped by Crowley again. MCs mom got duped by a Craigslist witch who told her she was helping to make a demon bomb, but instead sold them out.
She did manage to capture one of the demons and Dean was able to “convince” him to give up Crowley's destination. He has the tablet and cut off one of Kevin's fingers to force him to read it. The brothers and Cas walk in and Cas puts on a good shoe for Crowley even though he's still really weak. The tablet is cut in half and and everything is copasetic.
It's then that Castiel is transported to what we assume is heaven and a new angel, Naomi, played by the amazing Amanda Tapping, best known for Col. Samantha Carter from Stargate and Helen Magnus from Sanctuary.
She cryptically tell Cas that he will stay with the Winchesters and tell her about what they do and that he will have no recollection of it. I don't know what her agenda is or whose side she's really on, but it's guaranteed to be cool.
There are cat lovers
I am a cat person. No, I don’t hate dogs. I find dogs fun, too. But cats, unlike dogs, generally come in one size range, tend to be neater animals (assuming they don’t shed hair or dodge the litter box) and need a bit less affection and play time. So I truly do love the cats. That being said, I don’t love them this much – a lady’s husband called for divorce because she was keeping upwards of 550 cats at their home!
A darker and edgier Mario and Luigi
Mario and Luigi are household names. The Italian plumber dudes were born of a Japanese dude’s idea or a fever dream. You just have to wonder what really inspired the madness of two plumbers saving a kidnapped princess from a giant turtle character surrounded by mushrooms and drain pipes that warp you places.
Either way, this strange tale of rescue and re-rescue has endeared many over the years. It as nonsensical yet light hearted fare that appeals to young and old, boys and girls – pretty much a game made for everyone. But even in seeing the heroic duo jump onto gomba heads and smash bricks with their heads, you can’t help but ponder what things would look like in their world if taken to its logical conclusion.
Are super realistic graphics in video games a bad thing?
Video games have expanded over time into more than just blocks on a screen. Games have plots, defined characters, soundtracks, mechanics that run circles around that game with the two moving lines and a block darting across the screen.
Video games are similar to movies in realism and quality. In fact, there was that Spirits Within movie years back that was full on CGI and based on the Final Fantasy series and years later Advent Children that had you near squinting to find the flaws in its realistic wrinkles and hair.
XenoMiner
Heard of Minecraft? I’d be very surprised if you haven’t by now. The exceedingly popular sand box game where you can craft to your heart’s content has captivated many a gamer. Realistic renderings of other universes and real life buildings showcase the amount of time and artistic skill a very dedicated Minecraft player can get up to.
Pu-Li-Ru-La
I love weird, quirky games. I love the video game that doesn’t try to follow normal logic or try to even approach a sense of real world logic. The ‘rule of cool’ and the suspension of belief are not only necessary to enjoy such games but make the strangeness just work.
Games like Katamari Damacy work because you know logically a large ever growing ball collecting anything and everything is not realistic, but the strangeness of it is just too strange to pass up. You want to figure out how this world creating ball works, how that world reacts to it and hours later through the use of simple controls, you find yourself having lots of fun.
Too many Pinkie Pies.
So many Pinkie Pies all in one place. Now, I will preface this with saying Pinkie is not my favorite pony. In fact, she tends to annoy me more often than not. Her hyperness can be downright too over-the-top as she seems like she’s in her own world at times from the others. That said, this episode had her shine AND made up for the lack luster season three opener.
What's wrong with you, brain?
This was by far the absolute weirdest experience ever. Let's start by clearing something up: I've been having a really really screwed up sleeping schedule as of late. I am usually in bed somewhere around 6 a.m. and awake by no later than 10 at best. I realize this alone can do insane things to the functions of one's mind. Yet I'm stumped on exactly how this situation played out.
I woke up largely against my will around 5 a.m., about an hour after finally forcing myself to go to bed. The weirdness came with the very fact that somehow I managed to drag a dream state with me. This was not your average “sleep walking” or anything. I was awake and aware of what was around me and happening in the real world. The problem was that the dream world was still there augmented atop it.
Odder still is that I was not myself and I knew it. It was a sci-fi-ish dream and I was a near-human species. An interesting note is the specie's wings. I physically felt them in the waking world. Physical sensations: their weight, altering how I moved to compensate for them, I could move them and see them. It was an extreme phantom limb sort of sensation.
I really can't describe it in any way other than a "naturally augmented reality" in all ways and to be honest, the science behind it has me obsessed now to actually try and understand what was going on with my brain. I should also note this effect took an HOUR before it fully faded away, but by then I had been able to file sensations to memory so being able to remember what my wings felt like as a limb is no different than a person recalling the scent of an orange in their head . I would LOVE for some of our science loving readers to look into this and let me know if they know what's going on, or perhaps had similar situations.