generical

more toe surgery. basically i’ve now had the left and right edges of both my big toenails permanently trimmed, ie they killed the matrix and it won’t grow back there again. this should never happen again.

i can mostly walk again, hopefully i won’t have to take any more days off.

did i mention that i went up north last weekend for lan party 3 at dave stockman’s house? that was cool. i’m no good at quake 3 but playing games with other people is half the fun. next time we need to get some worms 2 going on. hopefully, next time i can afford to go, i’ll have upgraded my computer to half life 2 standards, i can trick annie into giving me a ride both ways, and we can get at least some two player half life 2 multiplayer going on. that would be sweet.

one ebay seller sent me the wrong item by mistake, another has apparently had his email account fail on him. no word from him in a week, my third attempt to email him bounced. that’s no good.

sg-1 is trying to do some larger story stuff and rushing it and it would fail utterly if the characters weren’t so goddamn solid. still, the show has definately gotten a bit weak this season. i’m not sure it’d be worth watching if carter and o’niell were both out next season, even if john crichton comes by to replace them. o’niell is the soul of that show.

atlantis, on the other hand, is doing a fantastic job of telling a larger story while also doing unrelated weekly side missions, which it turns out relate to the larger story after all. the character dynamic is still a little shaky but is already totally good, and will only get better with time. the only real weak link in the series is dr weir. i don’t like her at all, and i’m still kind bitter about the fact that the first girl they had playing her was much better. maybe they’ll kill her off, but i doubt it. her perpetual scowl is starting to drive me mad in the way teal’cs did at first. when he loosened up in season 3 or so and started to even smile on occasion, i liked him more. maybe wier will do that too. she’s got potential.

battlestar galactica is so goddamn good.

the 2pack of pitch black/chronicles of riddick for $20 at freddies is seriously tempting. it’s the widescreen unrated directors cut of both films, so i think i’ll end up getting it. part of me says there will/could be a better version with more extra stuff. another part of me says that the only dvd extras that have ever really impressed me were the episode one mini-documentaries and the extended lotr appendices. it’s not really fair to compare those to most dvds, but i can’t help it.

most movie documentaries fall into the category of a little bit of inside information about what it was like on set, some generic interviews with all the big stars, and an overview of all the characters and some plot points. essentially worthless since if you watch it before the movie it ruins half of it, and if you watch it after the movie it’s like the end of chapter review in a textbook.

all i really want out of a dvd is the movie in glorious dvd quality, all the trailers, some deleted scenes if they’re worth watching, and the commentary. behind the scenes stuff is only good if it’s discovery channel quality and you actually learn something, or if it’s entertaining in it’s own right.

the halo 2 bonus disc was largely worthless. i got a better impression of what life was like at bungie from frankie’s five minute video weekly update than from over an hour of documentary footage that consisted mostly of the guys at bungie going ‘fuck, we don’t have enough time to finish this…’ and ‘man, the mongoose looks pretty damn sweet doesn’t it? BUHLETED!!!’

anyways. $20 for two good movies. i should check for more expansive releases with more stuff, but i’m not going to. those versions wouldn’t be in a $20 two-pack anyways.