Hey, you! Do you like the Evil Dead movies? Do you wish Sam Raimi still made crazy horror-comedy-cartoons? Well then, get thy sorry butt-cheeks to Drag Me to Hell while it’s still in theaters. Because, seriously, only the old-school fans are gonna love it.

Also, how in the world is this movie NOT rated R, when Evil Dead 2 went unrated for fear of getting an X? Have we — and the MPAA — seriously become so jaded that demons, blood geysers, and flying eyeballs merit a PG-13?

Yesterday was the semi-official fifth anniversary of this blog. It went live days before my first-ever visit to Seattle and Vancouver, BC. Before three cross-country moves, before migrating from MovableType to WordPress and from my old web host to Dreamhost… before a lot of things.

And the state of the blog today? I’ve almost stopped updating it altogether. Presently, the first 10 posts on the front page go all the way back to mid-March, which is still less dead than a lot of personal blogs, but would have embarrassed me when I first started out and was writing something — anything — here almost every day.

Why have I stopped?

Partly, since Internet years are even longer than dog years, this site is roughly the equivalent of this. New toys become old toys, and the compulsion to keep playing naturally fades, especially as shinier tech like Facebook passes them by. I’m linked to practically everyone I know there, so it’s easier to update my status if I have news to share or just want to remind people I’m alive.

Partly, I don’t have as much time as I once did. Work has been too hectic lately to goof off and write blogs, and my hourlong commute cuts into the rest of the day.

And partly, life isn’t going all that well for me these days, either at work or at home, and I tend to not write when I’m unhappy. I’m not the type to publish my personal life in a public space (at least I’m not anymore), yet I get too distracted by my problems to blog about much of anything else.

So what should I do with this place? Since Facebook has blogging capabilities and a larger (and controllable) audience, I’m tempted to just keep everything over there. On the other hand, I still use my front page every day as a control panel and convenient link collection, so I want to keep it around. Whatever I decide to do with the blog, thank you for reading it.

My knee-jerk reaction based on the first trailer turned out to be more right than I thought: Star Trek very much reminded me of the reboot of Doctor Who. It ramped up the action and enthusiasm so much that you didn’t care that the plot was a collection of massive coincidences and hand-wavey technobabble. (Although to be fair, Trek practically invented hand-wavey technobabble as a plot device.) Several characters had David Tennant Moments where they ran around excitedly being brilliant.

With all the time traveling and alternate universes, the only thing missing was “wibbly wobbly, timey wimey,” but I think that phrase is © Stephen Moffat.

(Very mild spoilers follow.)

Read the rest of this entry »

My new desktop wallpaper, courtesy of Kate Beaton:

I’m sure I’ll have a few words to say about the new Trek once I see it.

Without having even played it yet, I hereby declare this 2009′s Game of the Year.

(Okay, I tried embedding the video, but my blog isn’t wide enough for widescreen, so just follow the link. It may be time to overhaul the layout around here…)

Anyway. Tim Schafer has been making great, funny games for two decades, but they never sell worth a damn. I’m really hoping this is his breakout hit.