Curse you, reality!

Been reading the Dragon Tails webcomic some more. It's cute, and often funny in a much more harmless way than the other webcomics that I read. At a recent point in the archives one of the characters said something that will be my new slogan for a while: "Curse you reality, is there no simple task you won't hinder?"

Picked up a copy of the soundtrack to The Matrix Reloaded. Some of my friends commented that they felt the soundtrack was inferior to that of the first Matrix film, but I think overall they're talking about the songs with lyrics and such that appear mostly at the end of the movie and play during the credits. I wanted the instrumentals and orchestrations, and those are actually on one of the 2 CDs in the soundtrack, so I picked it up when I saw it cheap at Newbury Comics. Recently I was driving to Worcester on the highway while listening to the track that's playing during the freeway chase scene. It was kinda eerie. Sorta makes you want to weave in a and out of traffic as if someone's shooting at you.

I've got a bunch of soundtracks that I bought for the orchestrations. They make nice background music for stuff. Well, stuff besides the original movie, I mean.

Fear the wrath of my cactus monsters!

So, I got my box of the expansion for the Cute Game that has cactus monsters in it. Now I just have to get people to look past the cuteness and try the game. I've only played a couple of times, but it's actually more complex than it appears on the surface, from my experience. I remember one of the guys at 3 Trolls Games and Puzzles commenting when it first came out that he wasn't sure how it would do, because it was too cute-looking for serious gamers, and too complex for young gamers. Glad it survived long enough to put out the expansion that includes the Desert Region so we got cactus monsters, at least. I don't know if they're actually still planning expansions or not.

Much talk of cacti lately. Gotta scan in a picture of my Brain Cactus so I can show it to some people in my gaming group. It came up earlier tonight, but descriptions just don't do it justice. Ideally you've got to see it for yourself, but I don't really want to take it with me to the game. For one thing, it lives next to one of those freaking annoying cacti with the thousands of tiny barbs, which sometimes shed onto the neighboring plants, so I've got to worry that every time I pick it up I might have something tiny and painful stuck in me. Aargh, I _so_ prefer the cacti that just have normal spines. If you touch one of those it feels prickly, and if you're dumb enough to push harder maybe it kinda hurts. Those stupid things with their barbs, all you have to do is brush against it and you have a dozen tiny barbs stuck in you. They're pure evil, I say. Well, not pure evil, 'cause they're still cacti, but they're definitely the most evil of the cacti.

Mmm...Defenestration.

Happy Defenestration of Prague! On May 23, 1618, in Prague, a few royal officials were thrown out a window of Hradcany Castle by some noblemen, touching off the Thirty Years War. I've read various accounts of this event over the years, often on May 23rd when looking for good summaries of what happened so I could send them to people, and accounts seem to vary widely. Search out some for yourselves if you're really interested. Mostly, I'm amused by the fact that it's an important historical event with the highly underused word "Defenestration" in the title.