Been sick these few days, laying low, not doing much. Tonsilitis, yet again. I really should have those things cut out of my throat, probably save me a lot on medicine in the long run, as I seem to get them infected at least several times a year.

Seems like everyone’s sick with something or the other. Clar‘s sick, and Womble. Several people at work, more coughing in general. Probably has a lot to do with the change of seasons, but I don’t recall it being so pervasive in seasons past. But this time around winter seems to be a bit more abrupt, going from brilliantly warm, sunny weather to cold, drizzly shit in the space of a few hours. Add to that contant rain for the past 4 or 5 days, a nock on the head I just had the pleasure of experiencing whilst changing a light bulb just now, and overtime tomorrow, a rush job of course. Whine much? Yep. Look, it’s this or nothing. Actually, it’s often this and a lot of nothing.

Anyway, to continue, we’ve run into a snag with the Lady X DVD: Namely, Mindcrime needs a .mov file format, and Premiere stops all exports to that format at just after 3 minutes. For some reason, I don’t know why. It’s a typical Windows problem, the kind I’m getting sicker and sicker of. This just simply shouldn’t happen, there’s no reason for it.

Of course, all the Windows gurus are out there going “Oh, you just need to re-set your confibulator syllogisms and temporarily destabilize the orbits of your deductive mites”. Yeah. Ok. Just go back to your caves and enjoy sex with your deductive mites; I just want a computer that fucking does the shit I want it to without throwing all this insane shit at me.

感冒上禮拜好了, 但是現在又回來了, 真麻煩. 昨天一整天在朋友的婚禮. 我

The weather was great on Saturday, crystal clear views all the way out to Danshui even from Xindian. I should have gone hiking in the mountains but instead I went over to the Sandcastle for chatting and guitar-tuning. Sandy told me of a musical get-together he and some friends were holding in the mountains that night, but due to the wedding the next day I declined. Maybe some other time.

Oh, the wedding: I had to get up at 6 am yesterday. Kirk and I were attending the wedding at our friend Victor’s wedding. Kirk was the best man and I was taking video. Victor’s helped both of us with our computers countless times, so we owe him, and of course the food was free. The wonderful weather had vanished, leaving dull cold drizzle in its place. We went out to the equally dull suburb of Zhonghe to follow the happy couple around as they drove from the new house to the bride’s house and back again, doing the whole traditional ceremony thing, which included the obligatory bride-stepping-over-a-small-fire on her way into the new house, among other things. Then that night they had the banquet at a restaurant on Xinyi Road. My head was killing me so I popped over to Watson’s to get some Panadol, but by the time I got back they were halfway though their vows. Oh well. Luckily they had another guy doing video as well. I told Victor I’m not much of a wedding videographer, but he said it didn’t matter as I was just getting supplemental material. What I got was mostly his crazy little brother galavanting around the ballroom telling bawdy jokes and getting really drunk. Everyone was getting really drunk, actually. Kirk was red-faced blitzed by the end of the evening, and we went out for coffee and awful hot chocolate with Harry and James afterwards to try to sober up a little before stumbling home.

I went to see Matrix: Revolutions Friday afternoon and actually didn’t mind it too much due to my super-low expectations after Part II. It wasn’t nearly in the same league as the first movie, but…well, read this deconstuction if you really, really want to hear about it. It probably won’t end up in my DVD collection, but neither was it a complete waste of money or time. I wish I knew exactly when the extended version of The Two Towers, scheduled for release on the 18th in the states, is coming out in Taiwan; I’d really like to see it before I go see The Return of the King at the theater.

But which theater? I usually go to The Estrogen Mall, aka Breeze Center, theaters, but it seems that they’re following the Taiwanese tradition of Slipping Service lately. They didn’t shut off the house lights until well into the League of Extraordinary Gentleman. When I went to see the last Matrix movie, they had aimed the projector so high that it cut off everyone’s forehead and even some people’s eyes, while the subtitles were just below the center of the screen, much higher than they are usually placed. I rushed out into the lobby to ask someone about it, but not a single attendant was there; it was completely empty. Afterwards, when I complained to the manager, she brushed me off saying “If it was really that bad, people would be complaining.”

“I’m complaining.” I said. She gave me a look that suggested that when she said ‘people’, she wasn’t talking about the likes of me.

“It’s just the way it was filmed,” she said, exhibiting wonderful creativity in coming up excuses for not doing her job. I know I may lack a certain amount of filmmaking credentials, but I do know a bit about framing, and I know the film wasn’t framed that way. Even the previews were shown correctly. It was obviously a projection or cutting error in Taiwan. Since it was the last Matrix movie, I let it go, but I would be royally pissed if they did that to Return of the King. I would walk out of the theater loudly demanding my money back so I could go see it at another theater. And, of course, nobody would notice. That’s the way it always happens, be it at a restaurant that previously had good food and service, or a theater, or any other commercial establishment. Give it a few months, and the people who run it will lose interest, the staff will become surly and rude (which I can appreciate personally, but these are people who want me to pay them for shit), the quality will fall, and people will rush off to the next new thing to spend their money there, while the owners of the previous place wonder what happened. Ah, progress.

I updated the piece I wrote about my trip across Australia on the Indian-Pacific railway, adding pictures and formatting. Next, hopefully some new video, but first I’ll have to clear out some older pictures first.

The other day I got a call on my mobile phone from a woman I had no recollection of meeting. She spoke to me as if we were old friends. Thinking I must know her but simply not remembered, I kept talking with her, hoping she would throw in a hint as her identity so that I could realize where I knew her from before she realized I didn’t remember her. But as we talked, I began to suspect she didn’t actually know me at all. “Where do I know you from, again?” I asked.

“We met at the thing, you know…” she said.

“What thing?”

“The thing, you know. The dinner. There were a lot of people; I don’t blame you for not remembering me.”

Gee, thanks, I thought. She called herself Xiao Xiang, or Little Smelly if you’re into discourteous translations. The more I talked with her the more I was convinced she’d just found my namecard somewhere. She wasn’t willing to divulge the circumstances of our supposed ‘meeting’, however, so I changed my tactics.

“Ok, so what do I look like?” I asked her. Smelly didn’t skip a beat, launching into a whiny spiel about how long it had been, how she didn’t remember exactly. I wondered if she knew how off-putting her whining was to me. Apparently she assumed that I was a ‘tero, but I was curious to see if she even knew I wasn’t ethnically Chinese.

“Ok, I can understand if you don’t remember details,” I said. “Just tell me what color my hair is.”

“Oh, what a silly question,” Smelly answered. “It’s not like you’re a Big Nosed foreigner…Your hair is black, of course. We Orientals all have black hair. Next you’ll be asking me what color your eyes are!”

Ah HA! “BZZZZT! Wrong!”

“Huh?”

I told Smelly that her cover was blown, that she did not in fact have any idea who I was. I imagine after I hung up she went to the next namecard she retrieved from some nightclub wastebasket. I don’t know what her scam was, nor do I particularly care. At least I got a laugh out of the whole thing, even if she did waste my mobile phone battery and phone bill with her nonsense.

I did tell Smelly to go find a bookstore if she wanted to see my picture, but I doubt she’s the bookstore type. Speaking of bookstores, I was at one the other day buying a copy of my book to give to someone. As the cashier rang the sale up, an old Chinese gentleman peered over my shoulder at my purchase. “Can you read that? It’s in Chinese, you know.”

I picked up the book and flipped through it. “Gee, I hope I can read it, seeing as I wrote it and all.” Yeah, I know, I was being unecessarily snarky, but I couldn’t resist. The old fellow didn’t take any offense, though. He even seemed impressed once he figured out that the skinny uniformed guy on the cover was actually me several years ago, and we chatted a bit before I left the store.

After seeing a link on my friend Simon’s journal, I spent the afternoon at Kutztown Dragon’s site, reading through all of the comics and other stuff he’s done. I’d try to describe it but I’m afraid I’m just not up to the task. Let’s just say Brian is a dragon and a furry. I know, dragons aren’t furry…oh, just go read it for yourself. If it doesn’t put you in a good mood for at least a few hours then, well, I’m sorry.

There’s a small typhoon scooting past at the moment. I had given up looking for storms this year as I thought it was too late. It seems like we still have our typhoon shield up, though, as it glanced off just like all of the other storms this year. Weird.

In other news, we’ve finally gotten our hot little hands on a copy of the software that will enable us to produce the Lady X: Clay Soldiers DVD. I’ve re-edited our two episodes into one feature, with extra footage and scenes to make it over 17 minutes long. The DVD should come complete with such extras as switchable subtitles, outtakes, and perhaps even commentary and soundtrack material as well. We’ll see. I’ll be glad to get that out of the way; I want to do something else now.

Mindcrime and I went to see Kill Bill yesterday at the Estrogen Mall. I originally wasn’t too eager to see it, but Mindcrime had seen everything else, and I have to admit I was curious, especially after seeing good reviews of the movie. I liked Pulp Fiction and didn’t mind Jackie Brown too much.

Tarantino’s latest film has some really nice moments, a great soundtrack and liquid cinematography, so kudos to the music/sound people and the DOP. Unfortunately, everything that Tarantino contributed to the film, i.e. the direction and writing, etc., was a complete mess. There was no story, no development, nothing to interest the audience except for eye-candy and music. I like a good fight scene as much as the next fellow, but this was one long fight scene, with no payoff, no emotional involvement as I didn’t know or care why any of the characters were doing what they were doing. The studio convinced Tarantino to split the film into two as it was too long; it’s too bad they couldn’t convince him to edit the thing down to a reasonable length, as there were many, many bits that should have been left on the cutting room floor, unecessary scenes that didn’t have anything to do with the story (mainly because there really wasn’t one). Yeah, so Uma Thurman (Is Uma a man or a woman, anyway? I can never quite tell) is getting revenge. For what? Why did they try to kill her? We’re never told, and I stopped caring about anything that was going on on screen after about 20 minutes. The guy sitting next to us eating a large meal was more interesting, though he didn’t have nearly as cool a soundtrack.

I could go on about this film, but it’s really not worth it. I’ve seen worse, more meaningless films, but this one was pretty close to the bottom. I wonder how many films are ruined because the director stops thinking of filmmaking as a collaborative effort and starts believing his own hype, to the point that the movie becomes his own little private wet dream. If I ever get to that point, hopefully I’ll have someone around to tell me to knock it off, because it really seems to result in awful films.

I don’t like to criticize films too much; it’s too easy, and it makes me sound petty. I know filmmaking is difficult, and it’s really hard to put something like that together. But someone needs to counter all of the praise this film seems to be getting for some reason.

Last night I went to a party at the large apartment residence of Iris, who took Trial Kitten off my hands about a year ago. It’s too bad Trial Kitten didn’t become Permanent Cat for me, but I think she’s much better off with Iris, who pampers her. I could have a cat where I am living now, but I am hesitant to put myself (and another cat) through that ordeal again.