where in the world is linoge?

At the prodding of one of my fellow bloggers out there, I thought I might fill the world in on where I have been for the past three weeks or so…  My job occasionally takes me far out of reach of the Internet itself (as it will be doing again in a week or so, only for much longer this time around), and such has been the case for the past few weeks…  Well, actually, I have had access to the internet on a fairly regular basis, but had no real desire to post anything, and nothing really to post about. 

My spare time, in all honesty, has been taken up predominantly with playing video games (defeated Halo 2 for the second time at the third difficulty level… forgotten the name, and I am almost done with Midnight Club 3), talking with my wife on the phone, and enjoying the scenery of my current location. 

Additionally, I have finally completed my story-in-progress, "The Summoning", though it would appear that even a recent copy of it does not exist online…  Once I integrate the additions I just wrote into my old copies and convert it all into a *.pdf once again, I will put it back online.  I suppose it is one of the many things I forgot to carry over from my last server. 

I honestly have not bothered to keep up with the news or world events, especially since I rarely have the patience for television news, no matter the broadcast channel, and, as I mentioned, have not had limitless access to the Internet…  Of course, it has been rather nice to be able to take a step back from all of the crazy jockeying for power, minor quibbling, and general-purpose backstabbing that takes place within the news agencies…  or the news itself. 

In all honesty, come to think of it, the entire "deep thought" (no pun intended, at least I hope not) portion of my brain has been pretty much shut off for the entire past three weeks…  And that has been a rather welcome vacation as well.  Sometimes, the thoughts that scurry about in the darker recesses of my mind need to be gathered up, burned, and discarded into the depths of space . 

In other news, I actually did get the chance to make it to a movie theatre in the past three weeks, and saw both Ice Age 2 and Slither.  Oh.  My.  Dear.  Lord.  Both of them were absolutely hilarious, though Ice Age 2 for potentially more family-friendly reasons… 

As for the first…  the opening sequence definitely caught ahold of your attention, raising up some rather poignant, if not outright disturbing, points concerning what our children know about in this "modern" day and age.  Once you got past that, however, it fell into much the same theme as its predecessor, relying on sight-gags, puns, and quite a few off-the-wall jokes that catered to all ages in the audience (and more than a few references to older movies and television shows that I still need to track down).  And then there was Scrat…  poor, poor Scrat.  I have to admit, after watching the first Ice Age, much of my motivation to go see the second revolved around this evolutionary predecessor of the common squirrel, especially after seeing his "lost adventures" on the Ice Age DVD…  Suffice it to say, he did not let me down . 

Now, as for Slither…  First, let me make this explicitly clear:  this is not a family movie, by any stretch, by any definition, or by anyone’s twisted idea of reality.  In fact, I would venture to say that this movie caters to a remarkably small cross-section of society…  Anyone who cannot stand excessive amounts of gore, colorful swearing, absolutely obscene uses for the human body, alien infestations, and general-purpose destruction and mayhem, this movie is definitely not for you.  For those who can handle the aforementioned items, this movie will bring you a limitless amount of entertainment.  It parodies off almost every other zombie- or body-snatcher-based movie out there, and does so without coming across as completely unimaginative or plagiaristic.  In fact, it could almost be identified as an homage to every other B-flick created… even digging down into the depths of the Evil Dead series .  Throw in Nathan Fillion (of Firefly / Serenity fame), a relatively decent bathtub scene, slimy little slug-like aliens crawling down everyone’s throat, body-burning acid vomit, a healthy explosion or two, more gore and gruesomness than you could shake a mop at, and the fact that the movie did not take itself seriously at any point throughout its entire length, and you have an absolutely perfect little flick.  Assuming you can keep your cookies down while watching it . 

Anywise, that is where I stand…  Hopefully this will satiate everyone’s curiosity .  I cannot guarantee future posting patterns, but something may crop up from time to time.  Toodles!