catvalente

 Last weekend I: 

Cooked, and later ate, all the things. I pickled, I roasted, I sliced, I diced. I roasted like seven pumpkins, I tell you what. 

Watched the truly terrible Thankskilling, and just about had a heart attack laughing. Also watched Mulholland Dr, GI Joe (Dima was sad that I watched it in Philly without him so HOLY CATS I had to watch it AGAIN), Dawn of the Dead, and then launched on an epic all-night bender of Dude, Where's My Car, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, and Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. (Verdicts: DWMC was incredibly stupid and not in a funny way, and WHAT, Jennifer Garner? Did you lose a bet? Harold and Kumar was surprisingly funny and kind of cute, but the sequel tried to be relevant and massively failed, and then made us sit through an uncomfortable scene where we all pretend that Bush was really a cool guy. Um, no.)

Made paprikash out of the leftovers.

Drank much black fig infused vodka.

Hugged my friends. A lot.

Put my hands over my ears and shouted LA LA LA at my email, ie, avoided work completely. 

Read The Left Hand of Darkness. More on that soon. 

Played Super Mario Galaxy 2. Which, I don't know, seems a little half-assed? Like, there's really only 7 worlds, the 8th is a BS go back to the other worlds and get hidden green stars thing, and the mysterious, lovely backstory with a Blue Fairy type and her star babies is replaced by...a purple blob in short shorts and a ship shaped like Mario's head. Ok? Also there is basically no difficulty curve at all. Levels go from impossible to laughably easy with no rhyme or reason. And many of them are simple linear platform levels rather than the usual creativity. And the whole thing is on rails, as stars are scarcer than before, so you basically have to play straight through to get through. It doesn't really feel like anyone's heart was in this one. Oh well. At least the gravity is fun. 

Discovered that Rock Band doesn't work on our new HDTV. We seriously cannot figure this one out, and have messed with calibration and settings until we could mess no more. Apparently there is no motion compensation switch off on our model, but the picture shudders and jiggles and pixellates, and I'm not sure how we're ever going to play Rock Band again. It's clearly that the tv can't handle the visuals, as it works fine on practice mode which doesn't have the moving background. But why the fancy new one should have such trouble where the old LCD was fine I have no idea. Kind of puts a wet blanket on the dreams of Rock Band 3.

Tomorrow I will make borscht for book club, which will be discussing The Left Hand of Darkness (locals, y'all should come to our book club! Next month's book is Hogfather.) And folding Omikuji, which is somewhat late because the cat destroyed the power cord to the laptop with all the databse info on it, and we're waiting for a new one to arrive. Sorry, guys.

That's all the news around here. Oh! And the next, and last til the sequel, Prester John event is December 11th at Pandemonium Books in Boston, 3pm. Still looking for other performers if anyone is interested! Hope to see you guys there!