Blessed by the Potato

I saw the latest Pirates movie tonight, and quite liked it. I’ll talk about it in more detail after the spoiler warning. First I’ll talk about the theatre itself: the London Silvercity is the biggest, newest, and most conveniently located theatre around us. The movies themselves are always shown well: they don’t usually have problems with reel changeovers, scratched film, the sound is usually not too loud, yet never too quiet, and the airconditioning is usually comfortable — like many theatres it can be a touch chilly in the summer, but it’s never made me so cold I looked for my jacket before leaving (true story: one time at Empress Walk I was so chilled by the AC that, even though it was spring, I got confused and thought it was winter and spent a few minutes looking for my jacket before coming to my senses; I think this effect was helped by the fact that whatever movie I was watching was set in the wintertime).

However, the service there has always been sub-par. While the staff has never been rude, they’re very slow. The box office line can get fairly long at times, and it’s not usually because there are a ton of people, it just seems to take them a long time to move them through (perhaps this isn’t the staff’s fault though: the credit card machine could be slow, or perhaps customers are chatting them up or taking a long time to make up their minds, because we usually get our tickets in fine time once we finally get to the head of the line). The concession stand is much worse. The staff there are downright lethargic. Today, we lined up with only two people in front of us, and it took about two whole minutes to get to the front of the line. That’s with one person’s order already in before we lined up, and the next person only wanting a drink refill. Two minutes doesn’t sound like a lot of time, but for what got done in that time it was just ludicrously slow. The workers never seem to know their tills or how to count change, and are slow in all their actions to boot, as though everything behind the counter was happening in slow motion.

The staff there also have very strange habits when it comes to getting popcorn. Even if there’s a popper spewing forth fresh, hot, delicious popcorn right behind them (and when the lines are short, we’ll often pick which till to go to based on which one has fresh popcorn bubbling out), they’ll walk away, past the next popper and around out of sight (the concession is set up in the big round dish form) to get it. That, of course, adds significantly to the service time. Also, they’re really bad at popcorn management in general, often letting batches burn for a while before finally dumping them, and being downright neglectful in starting new batches during busy periods. Perhaps its because their concession has something like 6 poppers (at Cineplex we only had 3, and for all but the busiest opening weekends we would only run one or two), but they often let some run completely out before bothering to pop more — we always had to be one the ball, quite often putting in another batch as soon as the current one was dumped. In fact, it seems from casual observation as though they only have a few people “designated” to start batches. The popcorn is never very good there: quite often we get stale bags, batches without the proper amount of salt (generally not enough rather than too much), many batches with small, broken bits (which also comes from packing), batches where the taste is fine, but the texture is just completely wrong… and even when a bag of popcorn is generally good, there are always one or two pieces that are just rotten and make you go “blech!” We should probably complain to a manager at some point, but haven’t yet, although we have taken advantage of the free refills (on larges) and dumped a bad batch before. I find all of this quite bizzare, because the theatre makes most of its money off the popcorn: if it’s not constantly popping, people are less inclined to buy. If it’s not consistenly tasty, people are less inclined to buy. (We buy partly because Wayfare is a popcorn fiend, and partly because we almost always use “Night Out” passes that include a free popcorn). Even when they’re not very busy, they should consider keeping the poppers in use more, even if they have to close down part of their concession ring (we generally only go to “event” movies now, but even on weekdays they’ve got at least 3 poppers open — having just 1 or 2 open but constantly popping might work better for them), or pop half-batches so they don’t end up with too much excess. Finally, the seats there are not fantastic. They’re fairly comfortable for someone my height, but even just a little shorter (like Wayfare), and the shoulder support becomes a neck-wrenching headrest. The floors today were quite slick, and I couldn’t keep my feet in a civilized position, they kept sliding out in front of me, and I accidentally kicked the seat in front of me a few times when my foot lost traction.

Anyhow, on to Pirates:

Spoilers follow.

…

I really didn’t like the second movie — I saw it in the theatres, but even though my family has it on DVD, I’ve never watched it a second time (at least, not all the way through). A lot of the sequences were just way too ridiculous (Jack falling down the cliff while tied to the pole, the whole waterwheel 3-way swordfight), and really the whole thing was just the first act for this movie, right up to the (lack of an) ending. Plus everyone seemed to recognize the East India Trading co guy (Lord Beckette), but even checking IMDB I don’t think he’s in the first one. He has some sort of history with Sparrow, and it’s implied in this one that he betrayed Sparrow at some point (in fact, they may even have been partners in the distant past), but it’s never fully explained in this one.

This one I found a lot better: partly because it has an actual ending, partly because when the sequences get ridiculous, they’re kept shorter, and partly because Geoffrey Rush’s return brings the series up a notch. Not only does it add some more tension aboard the Pearl, he just simply looks like he’s having a blast in the role, which brings back some of the fun from the first one (the second really took itself too seriously for the amount of ridiculousness in it). This one had a few neat twists in it — I’ll give a second spoiler warning first — for instance, I never expected Will to take Davy Jones’ place, even when he was half dead. I thought Bootstrap would, especially in the seconds before it happened when he looked at his knife, or Jack, or even Elizabeth (who would follow him into death rather than waiting for him on shore for decades at a time, unaging).

I didn’t really care for the explicitness of Jack’s delusions (or the strange fascination with the peanut and licking things), especially since it was inconsistent in its lack of delusions right when Jack made his final decision not to captain the Flying Dutchman. I mean, the first one with him trying to captain the copies of himself in the Locker was ok, but I got really annoyed when he started talking to the miniature selves poking around his dreadlocks while everyone else was around.

Finally, one detail confused me at the end: Will proposed to Elizabeth during the battle, but didn’t the second movie open on their wedding being interrupted by East India/British troops?

Yes, I don’t know why I didn’t post on it earlier either… perhaps it was just too good to be true.

I’m really surprised that it’s not an MMO: there were so many good arguments for why it had to be one (all the infrastructure/back end programming is in place from WoW, WoW is getting old enough that there’s enough churn of players looking for a new Blizzard MMO to roll into, and last but certainly not least, the trainloads of money they’re rolling in from the MMO genre — no matter how well StarCraft 2 sells, it’ll never match that because they’ll only get the money once), that I just didn’t believe it at first when it was a return to RTS.

I miss having a Blizzard RTS to play. I’ve been playing C&C3 lately, but like all entries in that franchise, it’s less about strategy and more about “Mammoth tank rush”. True, I haven’t been playing online against real players, where more subtle strategic interactions may lie patiently in wait, but I don’t hold out much hope since the single player campaigns are often designed to help encourage using mixed forces — but after finishing the GDI campaign, I found that once I had the right mix of forces to defend my base, it was just as effective to send a force of Mammoth tanks as it was to coordinate a mixed arms force, and much less demanding of my skills, too. But StarCraft, now that was a game that was exquisitely balanced. Balanced three unique ways, too. While there certainly were plenty of players on Battle.net who were slaves to the zergling rush, or the hydralisk rush, or the all-mutalisk swarm, or of course the processor-lagging all-Carrier fleet, a good mix of forces (particularly Terran, since I tended to pick that when I wasn’t going random) could usually bring those monoculture swarms down.

I’ve actually tried to get my friends into playing StarCraft or WarCraft III again, but it’s been tough — very few of them love the genre as much as I do, and with StarCraft being over 10 years old, it does look a little dated (especially if you now have a widescreen monitor that stretches it). So the previews of the new units and abilities sound neat, and the gameplay trailers look amazing, but the biggest thing I’m looking forward to in StarCraft 2 is simply getting StarCraft back to the forefront of everyone’s minds so I can play with my friends again :) If it takes a new release and a visual makeover to do it, then so be it.

Warning: explicit, nasty, overly descriptive accounts of bodily functions gone horribly awry follow.

I’ve been pretty sick the last few days — I haven’t slept well the last few weeks, partly due to work, weddings, allergies, allergy medication-induced paranoia, and a nasty case of the nerves regarding the impending Japan trip. So it seems to have caught up with me in the last few days with some mild nausea, severe fatigue, and the sweats. I threw up a little yesterday, but after that I started to feel a bit better, and after taking the day off work and sleeping for 12 hours, I actually felt normal when I woke up yesterday evening (my sleep schedule is completely off-track now). Then today, it’s back to feeling sick again. I threw up a little again today — just a small purge like yesterday, but this time I didn’t feel better afterwards. I went to the sink to rinse out my mouth and brush my teeth, when I was hit with another wave. I took a quick step to the left to get back over the toilet…

Now, Wayfare has said that I’m terrible at throwing up, and apparently it’s true: I focus more on getting my head above the toilet than close to it. In other words, I don’t hit my knees fast enough (or, as is usually the case with me, at all: and leaning over while upright does seem to give more leverage, it doesn’t lead to aim)…

…so I lean over the toilet, and a huge wave of projectile vomit flies out. I’m pretty sure it was the entire contents of my stomach in just two heaves. Now, the interesting thing about this is that it makes a huge mess. In the force of my expulsions, I managed to create a cone that was wider than the toilet bowl — there’s mess on the back, on the sides, on the front… ugh. My eyes are all tearing up and my throat burns, and I don’t feel much better. Then I see that there are little droplets that have bounced off the toilet bowl and flown around the room — there are even a few on the wall behind me! That’s some crazy reflection ability! In fact, I’ve always kind of been a little bit in awe of just how hard my stomach could convulse when it wanted to. I always figured that disgusting slurry would lose some velocity on the way up, since I doubt reverse peristalsis is going along that quickly (or can handle a bolus that big), or at the very least when it has to make “the turn”. Although, to get even more disgusting, sometimes I get some in my sinuses that way (and all it takes is a drop to ruin breathing for the rest of the afternoon).

Of course, that leads to two very unpleasant conclusions: the first being that I am likely inhabited by some kind of demon, or possibly a hostile alien parasite. The second is that it is highly likely that if I got… ick… on the wall behind me, then I almost certainly got it on the nice, clean hand towels behind me as well. So I have to go down to the basement and do some laundry. And of course, as soon as I get to the bottom of the stairs, there’s a giant black spider waiting for death. I don’t get the creepy giant black spiders I’ve been seeing so much of lately; for years house spiders were small and pale yellow and liked hiding in corners where they didn’t bother you and you didn’t bother them. Now they’re these great big scary looking things that like hanging out in the middle of the floor or halfway down the wall — places where they look intimidating, ready to strike. This is also just perfectly horrible because part of the reason I haven’t been able to sleep is that I had a run of nightmares about spiders last week.

I think I’m going back to bed.

I really enjoy reading Orson Scott Card’s columns, even when he’s mostly wrong on a subject. I particularly disagree with him when it comes to global warming — but I do agree with a lot of what he has to say when it comes to creating pedestrian-friendly cities and a car-free life. Here are three of his recent columns:

Oil, past the peak
Walking Neighbourhoods
Life Without Cars

Now I have to ask myself, what can we do about bringing these principles to the new developments in the 905 and 519? I remember a conversation with Wayfare’s neighbours about one “innovative” housing project in the 905 that was popular precisely because it was on a grid layout with interspersed light commercial zones that aimed to be pedestrian friendly.

Oh, and I’m sure everyone’s already heard of New York Taxis going hybrid (it just makes sense — its a technology that works best in a city environment, and hybrid cab owners in BC have said that with a cab the cost of fuel over the lifetime of the car is far more than the car ever costs up front).

Update: Just wanted to add this post from the Green Party blog.

I just spent my long weekend Sunday writing a stupidly long article on hybrid cars, and it’s not even as helpful as I was hoping it would be. Ah, well, it’s up as a permanent link on the right there. Have a look (if you dare), and I welcome any other questions that it may have left unanswered! To give a quick reason for doing this, Wayfare suggested I take some of the insane amount of research I’ve been doing on cars and write an article, perhaps try to sell it freelance to the London Free Press or another paper that would have it. I don’t think either of us expected something like that to result.

I haven’t included many references, but I don’t really think too many are necessary for an article like this (plus, there was a long link list in one of the previous posts on the issue, which is linked in the article). There are probably mistakes, both factual and grammatical lurking in there: it’s why something like that can be churned out in one afternoon, but a scientific review paper of the same length languishes for years unwritten :)