Another gray, rainy day. The office is depressing …
Another gray, rainy day. The office is depressing today, without even a hint of daylight. I walked over to Aurora at lunch to return Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, as it doesn’t work on my sytem. I plan to exchange it for Command & Conquer: Renegade Province. It’s going to be the next Big Thing, I tells ya.
I love First-person Shooters and Flight simulators, but more for the realistic environments than the actual combat involved, I have to admit. I would love a combination of the two, where I can fly around in my WWII fighter, then land, walk around the base, talk with people and maybe shoot them in the ankles. Someday AI and memory advances will let such an experience be realistic enough to make people feel guilty about it.
I was in a bit of a rush to get back to work after returning the game, so I broke down and ate at Burger King at Warner Village, which is strange in that they broadcast radio spots for the store in the store. What exactly is the purpose of this? If you’re already there eating, why do you need to listen to some woman have an orgasm over Burger King’s newest potato-based foodstuff? Probably the result of some obtuse marketing research.
The latest meme is, of course, the Virtual Self models I’ve seen at several blogs. I’m waiting for Tom to do one, and perhaps Darren as well, although not a single one I’ve seen has looked in the least like the person they are supposed to represent. I suppose I’ll try to put something together that looks vaguely like me in case anyone’s interested; just don’t hold me responsible for any loss of appetite this may cause.
Yeah, today’s the Oscars. Rah. I told my mate Simon that they were bollocks, and would remain bollocks until I personally won one. I can handle a little words-eating in that extremely unlikely case, I think. Oscar, shmoscar. I just want to make films. Sure, I love a good party as much as the next guy in most cases, but if getting a little golden statue is the be-all and end-all of your filmmaking career rather than actual filmmaking, then screwed priorities tend to lead to films that compromise too much, give in to the vaguarities of the mythical lowest common denominator, so that you end up trying to please a lot of people very little or a few people a lot, when you should really just be trying to please yourself and those you respect. If that includes your audience, excellent, but I still believe that the core of filmmaking lies in realizing one’s inner vision on the big screen rather than everyone else’s.
Okay, enough ranting. If I ever win an Oscar feel free to throw these words back in my face.
I finished a rough translation of the Damn Book‘s sample chapter and will try to get it into proper shape to give to local publishers so they can laugh at my 6th-grade level Chinese writing skills.
A recent observation: “Uh…”, “Um…”, and “Actually” are all new versions of ye olde traditional “Duh!” I find people who start a sentence with the former to be incredibly annoying, either in online forums or in real-life conversations. I think I’ll just stick with “Duh!” It’s simple and to-the-point. Plus I’m used to it.
