The Lost Realm

It all started when I asked for a Bumblebee. Carolyn answered on behalf of the universe, and Bumblebee appeared:

After that, Talk Like a Pirate Day brought about the world’s first pirate herb garden, containing a pirate ship lovingly hand-crafted from balsa wood:

After the pirate ship, Carolyn secretly worked on yet another balsa project. Then, just before Christmas (because she couldn’t wait), I was given a small package that contained this:

I shall never, ever, ever incinerate you, my weighted companion cube

Duke Nukem Forever is out! Well, at least the teaser trailer. The sad part is that it doesn’t actually look as interesting as the trailer they released in 2001 or even this joke trailer.

It’s taken 10 years of development to make it… worse?

Last night Carolyn and I were child free. This is a fairly rare event, so we decided to go see a movie with the free tickets we had. We planned everything nicely, and went out to see Beowulf in 3D. At least, that was the original intent of the evening.

Traffic was terrible as I left work, and the 30-40 minute drive took about an hour and a half. This of course meant some bad news: we were too late to have dinner before the movie. Watching a movie on a critically empty stomach can make it a less than enjoyable experience, but this didn’t turn out to be the case. Because we didn’t see the movie. At all.

Hoyts, in their infinite wisdom, have decided that because Beowulf is a “special 3D movie”, it will cost $2 extra per ticket. This means that they won’t take “movie cash” or “free tickets” of any kind. Not even with an additional $2 in cash. Apparently it’s all just far too hard for them. Math is difficult, and we have to remember that if these people were good at math, they probably wouldn’t be employed sweeping up stale popcorn and plucking gum from under seats. It was a hopeless cause.

Given the current state of our Christmas-induced over-spending, we decided to skip the movie, grab a pizza, and watch a DVD at home. This was an excellent plan. Until we found that the pizza place we like was closed for Christmas. And we remembered that our DVD player is broken. Two and a half hours after leaving work, we’re standing in the rain, hungry and with no plans.

The evening ended up being a random drive to find a new pizza place, a wander through the nearby IGA supermarket while we waited (how romantic), and then an evening of pizza gobbling while watching TV at home until we fell asleep.

So, in summary, Beowulf 3D is possibly a great movie. Or not. At least the new pizza place was good.

I’m going to give Beowulf 3D: nullity / 5 stars

For the next 22 hours or so, you can get Cellblock Squadrons for 60% off the normal price.

I may have mentioned the game once or twice before, but it was written by my (starving) brothers and some people seem to like it. For just one small donation of US$9.95, you can make their Christmas just a little bit happier. And blow some stuff up.

When exactly did I stop being “that guy who never updates his blog” and become “that guy who doesn’t blog”?

So it seems that the Universe listens. Well, at least Carolyn listens (on behalf of the Universe).

I am now the very proud owner of Bumblebee. He’s a lot smaller than he seemed in the movie (8cm or so) so I still had to drive my old car to work today, but he’s here, making sure I keep out of trouble.