You Have Died of Dysentary

Normally, I don’t like these “Sorry I haven’t posted in awhile, I was hunting wolverines in Alaska” kind of posts, but given the amount of things that have happened lately, it’s the best way to catch up, and let me get back into posting regularly.

Missed a week of work

After getting BBQ for lunch at work a couple of weeks ago, I got really ill and had to go home early. Without getting into all the gory details, I was out sick for an entire week and saw the doctor twice. He ran some tests, but didn’t find anything abnormal. So either it was a crazy case of food poisoning, or I had some sort of oddly specific stomach flu. On the plus side, since I wasn’t up for doing anything other than lying in front of the TV, I managed to watch the entire first season of Deadwood.

Weekly Delicious Posts

You have probably noticed the “Weekly Delicious Links” posts that have been popping up here. Delicious is a bookmarking service, and you can display your most recent delicious links on the sidebar, which I’ve done. In addition, I wanted to archive the links that I posted here on the blog, so I got a program that creates a blog post once a week with all the links I posted that week. I’m playing catch-up right now, so the weekly posts are pretty big, but they’ll settle down to a more reasonable size once I’ve cleared out my bookmarks file.

World of Warcraft

Last week I attended a family gathering and watched my cousins play World of Warcraft all day. It reminded me of just how much I enjoyed the game, and I decided to start playing again. To avoid the problems I had last time, where I felt like I was spending all my time trying to keep up with my guildmates instead of just having fun, I’m intentionally not joining a guild, and spending most of my time soloing. As a result, I don’t feel obligated to play at certain times or for a lot of time in any one sitting, and I’m really enjoying the world again.

Movies

• District B13: This movie kicks ass the same way that early Jackie Chan did - not because of a great plot or special effects, but because your jaw is on the ground the whole time watching what these guys are capable of doing.
• X-Men 3: Largly disappointing, but if you go in with low expectations, you’ll be able to appreciate the good bits. It wouldn’t have been so bad if they hadn’t tried to cram two movies’ worth of material into one.
• Inside Man: I love a good heist flick, and Clive Owen is a great criminal mastermind here. If you’re a fan of the genre at all, you owe it to yourself to check this out.
• Highlander 1, 2, & 3: Wow. Just wow. Here’s a tip: When both the director and leading man try to remove their names from your sequel, something has gone wrong somewhere.
• Nacho Libre: Not as funny as the trailers make it look, and nowhere near the quality of Napoleon Dynamite. Still, all the actual wrestling scenes are great, and the training montage is brilliant.

DVDs

• The Venture Brothers, season one: This cartoon is easily the funniest thing to come out of Adult Swim, and I say that as a devoted fan of Aqua Teen and Sealab. The Monarch is the best villian ever, and the Boston accents just add to the craziness. Plus: Patrick Warburton.
• Dr. Katz, season one: Very very dry humor, but when it’s good, it’s genius. All the bits with Ray Romano are great, and the commentary tracks are funny too.
• Red vs. Blue, season one: The whole season is good, but nothing beats the part where they’re talking about the Warthog with Sarge.
• Strong Bad Emails, discs 1-4: Not only are all the email here, but so are all the easter eggs. The only problem here is that there’s so much stuff to watch that I’ll probably never get through it all.
• Deadwood, season one: I watched the whole first season while I was sick, and I’m completely hooked now. Calamity Jane and the Doctor are my favorite characters.