Lately I've been fretting over small things like finding a new job, re-outfitting the apartment, throwing a big bash, and giving my best man speech at my brother's wedding on Wednesday.  I feel like I just need the occasional thing to lighten up my day.  Today, it's Chocolate. 

The latest movie from Praya Pinkaew, the director of Ong Bak and the Protector, Chocolate is the story of teenage girl Zen.  Born to Yakuza boss Masashi, and his mistress Zin, who also happens to be the girlfriend of the local Thai Gang Lord Number 8, Zen is autistic.  She is raised on television and martial arts movies in a hovel next door to a Muay Thai academy, over the years developing incredible martial arts skills. 

When Zen becomes a teenager her mother is diagnosed with cancer.  With Zin being poor and unable to pay the bills, Zen decides to go out and collect on all of the old markers that her mother had put out back in her mob days.  To do this, Zen utilizes the powers of her autism and kicks everyone's ass. 

God, where have I been?

It's been near on a month since my last post (speaking of, thanks for all of the encouragement on the dating front, guys!  More on that in a minute.) and I feel remiss for this.  There's been a bunch of stuff going on, so I think I'll handle all of it in lovely, lovely bullet-points!

• I'm still dating the woman.  Her name is Kristi.  Things are going fairly well there, taking into consideration the sort of baggage I tend to travel with.  I'm getting better at not freaking out completely and pulling away and screaming when someone tries to get emotionally close to me.  That's mostly because she's a great girl and I'd like to not do such things to her.  So there's that. 
  
• Oh, man, Criminal Element.  I got in some really fucking good writing over the past day or two.  Edited some sections, rewrote a section.  Now I just have two chapters that I need to expand from notes into actual, "i'm a real writer" text and the Shotgun Bible should be ready to go. 
  
• Speaking of Criminal Element, I had the great honor of doing a podcast interview about my game on Rob Bohl's Independent Insurgency.  The podcast isn't up yet, but should be soonish, so I'll post a link as soon as it does.  You can check out previous podcasts over here.  It was the first time I'd ever been interviewed about the game and, if I'm going to be honest with myself, I'm not sure if I did my best work on "selling the game", but it was a great conversation that Rob and I had, and I think it might be an interesting thing for the people out there that are interested in any kind of game and design, or who just want to see what the hell I've been working on for the past five (!) years.  A huge thank you to Rob for having me over his place and giving me a chance to talk about my game.  (Sorry I couldn't meet up with you at PoliCon man.  You're still doing DexCon, right?)
• I should mention that I was sorry to miss PoliCon to Don as well.  eruditus , sorry man.  Work's been a bear, but that should be clearing up sharpish.  Still up for some DexCon, yeah?
  
• I'm being transfered from my current location at the Major Video Game Retailer I work for to one that is further from home, in a mall, and is open considerably later than my current store.  I'm not terribly happy about this...
• ...though I might have another job prospect lined up that will amend that situation quite nicely.  I'm not wanting to say too much, in fear of jinxing it, but hopefully I'll be able to be more lose with the tongue in the next couple of weeks. 
  
• Thanks to the kindly intervention of feanor1138  and feanorsgrrl , I was able to see the current "it" noir movie at the Philadelphia Film Festival.  "Blast of Silence" was a fantastic, bizarre, lurid crime novel committed to film, with a slick, seedy monologue laying over top of the whole thing that sounded like "Donald Westlake's Choose Your Own Hitman Adventure".  I found it completely different from what I expected and absolutely enjoyable.  Criterion Collection has secured my twenty-odd dollars for their upcoming release. 
  
• A lovely flub committed by my bank has left me with a negative balance in my checking account, when I should have something that is very much in the positive.  I've been afflicted by this for near on a week now.  I'm not happy, to say the least.  I should have enough gas in my car to at least travel to and from work tomorrow, so at least I have that on my side. 
  
• I bought Rock Band for my 360.  My band is called "Parker Black and the Magnificent Bastards".  This automatically makes my fake band more Rock n' Roll than Fall Out Boy.  I've also four-starred Run to the Hills on Vocals at Medium.  This makes my fake band more Rock n' Roll than Daughtry.  Info on a Rock Band based party action soonishesque. 

That should take things up to the present, so let's have enough of this "Previously on... Mike's So-called Life."  What have all of you magnificent bastards been up to?

The trailer for Iron Man. 

If you could see me right now, I would be typing.  If you could see me ten minutes ago when I first pulled up the trailer, you would have seen a man grinning from ear to ear and giggling from the pure joy of it.

May, can you come a little faster?

Used to be I'd post an entry here just about every other day.  Been a while since my last and that one was about some dice that I got in the mail.  I'm feeling like I should maybe put up some new stuff as I don't really get afforded the opportunity to see most of the people I know in casual social situations. 

A week ago this past sunday I spent some time with nodeva and her family.  Got together, had some dinner, had some wine, watched some children's programming.  It was good getting to hang our with Debbie and Tim.  I don't really get the chance to see them that much though I try to as often as I can.  Being around them is just good.  We talked about movies and books, travel, the army and life in an army family.  The food was spectacular; some risotto, grilled vegetables.  Delicious.  I also got to hang out with the little bug a fair amount.  That kid is way too much fun.  It was getting on late and I didn't want to be keeping the family up, so I said it was time for me to go.  Of course, the little man has to say "Don't go, Michael."  Damn that kid's got a way of breaking my heart. 

Works been going as well, of course.  Got robbed about a week ago.  Nothing too bad.  Happened after we were closed so nobody was there to get hurt.  Guy got in and stole some accessory crap and a couple of defective games.  Haven't had the chance to watch the security camera footage yet, but I have it on good word that it is "hilarious". 

Had some friends, including macgrrl, over on tuesday night and I cooked them dinner and we watched Heat.  I absolutely freaking love that movie.  I'm a bit of a heist/caper/crime/noir/darkscarybadpeople movie guy, so Heat definitely hits all of the appropriate buttons.  And the food turned out good.  The rice was spicy, the tatertots were nice and crunchy, the burgers were medium rare and, so I'm told, really quite good.  Nice to know a vegetarian can still cook a slab of meat well. 

Got word from my father the other day.  My grandfather, my mother's father, is in the hospital.  I don't know too much at all really, just that his legs apparently went numb and he wasn't able to walk.  He's also been using an oxygen tank at times over the past couple of months.  I'm far from a doctor, but that sounds like the stuff that happens when a person has a stroke, yeah?  My family is going to try and get down to Virginia to see him this weekend and I'm going to try and go along.  I should be able to arrange some sort of something at work to get the time away. 

And now it's off to work.  Iced coffee and an egg and cheese sandwich are in my immediate future. 

There's going to be a film adaptation of Atlas Shrugged.  It will star Angelina Jolie. 

I don't know how I feel about that.