A New Chair! Huzzah!

I have obtained...a new chair. Remember how I went on and on at length, at ponderous, groaning length, about the multifaceted faults of my old chair? Well, those problems are solved. A new chair was recently bought, by me. (Great. All those years of my English teachers telling me "Avoid the passive tense" and I still construct sentences like that. I am made ashamed by it.)

Now, what's a good comparison, hmm...If chairs were cars, my current chair would be a sleek custom job, not even identified by such an illustrious name as Lamborghini or Ferrari - it was made by a master car designer who created it and then retired in tears of joy and sorrow because he knew he would never make anything this beautiful again. It goes from 0 to 60 faster than a person can say "0 to 60." It handles like it's held to the ground with powerful magnets, yet it whispers along like a shadow. It purrs as it drives, the low rumbling of thunder on a warm midsummer night. The leather on the seats was provided by cows bred through five generations specifically for this purpose. It does not use gasoline, but rather is powered by the joy of the driver, as merely being in the presence of such an automobile inspires rampant ecstasy in all but the most jaded of souls.

My old chair, well, it's a Yugo full of anvils.

This chair, this new chair, is wonderful. The seat is plush, the leather is smooth, and the price was quite reasonable. It was originally $299.99, but clearance had knocked it down to $119.04, and my parents very generously agreed to contribute $100 towards that cause, so such a marvel of sitting-down technology only set me back twenty bucks. That, and half an hour or so of assembly. It was quite the stroke of luck that, as I was wheeling the box containing the chair into my dorm building, I ran into a friend of mine who, oddly for him, had absolutely nothing to do. So he cheerfully volunteered to help. That turned out quite nicely, I believe.

My only lamentation is that I am not currently seated in this amazing furniture. The Internet in my dorm decided to go on the blink spontaneously, so now I am in the upper floors of the student union, where the wireless internet must suffice. After all, I do have to update this here blog...I cannot deny my urge to write, or my readers' urge to read.

Oh, that reminds me. Though I don't know why. There's a Cthulhu movie in the works, which I was very excited about originally. Then I had a gander at the wikipedia article on the film. From the article, verbatim:

The film moves the story from New England to the Pacific Northwest. Unlike the Lovecraft story, the film has a gay protagonist. Screenwriter Grant Cogswell explained that he and Gildark chose to exploit the metaphor for the horror faced by a gay person returning for a relative's funeral and having to face the horrors of small-town life.

Upon reading those lines, a wildfire ignited in the pit of my soul and rushed to consume my entire metaphysical being. My eyes bulged, my veins throbbed, a shriek of rage was hovering just behind my lips. My whole body seemed tightly wound up, ready to burst. Then I realized that I had been holding my breath, as I sometimes do what I'm bored, and had forgotten to exhale.

But, what the heck is that?!? Where in that putrid excuse for a plotline is there room for the true cosmic horror of Lovecraftian fiction, the sigils of madness, the Elder Gods, upon whom to look is to damn oneself to insanity or death? The buzz is that it's loosely based off of Lovecraft's famous short story The Shadow over Innsmouth, but it's about as loosely based off of anything Lovecraft ever wrote as it is off of Green Eggs and Ham. So now I want to burn down Hollywood. That, plus the horrific amount of liberties they took with Beowulf (sweet mercy, is there no story too sacrosanct for Hollywood writers to ruin??), has convinced me that there is nothing left of redeemable value in that town. Except Angelina Jolie.

I suppose it's just as well, really. Any real attempt at a film that carried on the story of Lovecraft's work would no doubt fail mightily. First, his true tone of horror and suspense would never translate well into movie format. Second, no CGI animation, no drawn art, could possibly display one of the Great Old Ones with any kind of justice. If it is so impossible and horrifying as to drive a man mad on sight alone, how are they really supposed to animate it? Perhaps one route would be to have the beings permanently off-screen, with only the effects of viewing them on the characters being shown, but no modern Hollywood producer would greenlight a film in which the monster is never seen. I can just imagine it now.

Producer: So, whaddaya whaddaya, you're sayin' that we never see Coothool in the whole flick?
Writer: (trying not to cringe) It's "Cthulhu," actually, and we feel that it would add the appropriate air of -
Producer: No way. Uh-uh. Get one of the boys in special effects to knock you up something with tentacles and, like, five hundred eyes. That'll do it, huh? Ol' Cuthoo can't be that scary, anyway, we got the parents-with-kids audience to consider. Don't wanna get sued for causing nightmares.
Writer: That doesn't really seem fitting to the whole concept behind -
Producer: Don't give me that "whole concept" shtick. We can't leave out a whole audience because you feel like makin' the kiddies wet their pants. And another thing, what's with this? At the end, Coolthoo devours the world? Where's the setup for the sequel? Where's the comic-book tie-in? You gotta think about these things!
Writer: *brain implodes*

It just wouldn't work, is what I'm saying.

Turkey Day is a-coming. I'll update on Wednesday, but it'll probably be a small update, seeing as everyone I know who reads this will be there to speak to me anyway, and nothing that remarkable will probably happen between now and then. Of course, I'll live to eat those words, as the universe is remarkably well-attuned to such things. No doubt a meteor will hit my building as I walk home tonight. I hope that if it does, it spares my new chair. Oh, and my roommate. Although, there are thousands of guys on campus I could room with, whereas this was the very last chair that the Office Depot had on clearance. I mean, it's not so easy to replace. The model's been discontinued. These things don't grow on trees.

I was very amused by reading the website which consumes so much of my life, http://tvtropes.org/ I read the section on "Defrosting Ice Queens," which mentioned that perhaps the pinnacle Ice Queen in the Marvel Universe is Emma Frost, the telepath. She has several students, the Cuckoos, who patterned their powers and appearances after her, as the article puts it, "effectively making them Ice Queen Clones." Oh, those wacky writers and their puns. At least it takes my mind off of that horrible excuse for a Cthulhu movie. It gets me enraged even to think about it.

Recently, at Game Night, a group of people near us were playing Arkham Horror, which is basically Call of Cthulhu in a board game. I would randomly shout over and taunt them, with such gems as "My character's last words are 'Hastur, Hastur, Hastur!'" (Hastur being a Great Old One in the Cthulhu universe whose name must not be spoken, as doing so alerts him to your presence, and that usually ends up in you and everyone within fifty miles of you dead or insane.)
That's about all the creativity I can squeeze out of myself in such an unfamiliar environment. I hope my Internet is back on when I go back to the dorm.

And as for the Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day, it's one of my old favorites. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJyOFXBPh2Q It's from a game I rather like called Team Fortress 2, a cartoony team-based shooting game, where you can be one of many characters - including this "Heavy Weapons Guy." It is a brief interview with said Guy, and it details his experience and joy on the battlefield.

REPLIES.

Stephe: I do, in fact, I rather enjoy it when...hey! And yes, that sentence sent my BS meter through the proverbial roof, into the proverbial outer atmosphere, where it collided with a proverbial television satellite and caused millions of proverbial television sets the proverbial world over to play nothing but proverbial Who's the Boss reruns constantly, which caused lots of cases of proverbial suicide. Yeah, I officially took that joke too far. Procrastination kills, although maybe not, because if it did, I'd be dead so many times. Like that twenty-page paper I've got due in two weeks that I haven't started on. At least it's two weeks and not two days...

I get it. You don't need to double-comment just to correct your freaking double negative. I understood what you meant, that's good enough.

Jake: I like to think I have a talent for riding on top of the turbulent waves of life. Things do generally work out. Though, the perverse nature of the universe being what it is, a meteor will have struck my dorm building just now, but in a precision strike destroying only my chair.

Vic: I "make sad"? What does that mean? And I did ask for constructive criticism, but there is a fine line between constructive criticism and "At last, now I can say terrible things without fear of retribution!" Not that I'm accusing you of that (I have only a hazy idea of what you're referring to at all, in fact), but, well, take it into consideration. <3

Stephe: I forgot. I never have really needed to before. Every time I set my phone on vibrate, I never remember to set it on ring again, and I look at it three days later and see 67 missed calls because I never notice it vibrating. And that's good to know about your brother.

Anonymous: Yeah. It's odd. By the way, who is this?

Stephe: Quality >> quantity, Stephen. I keep asking you to confine yourself to one comment...stick to that, hmm? Do as I do, and save your comments on others' comments for my next entry.

Mom: I do like my new hair, and it does make my life more simple. I know how difficult life can be, which is why I can laugh at simple problems such as these. And yes, I have decided. I have decided...to go along with whatever you and Dad decide. I'd like to go skiing, but I'd also like to go to Paris. So, whichever you choose is okay with me.

Dad: I have noticed that. Rarely does one huge error destabilize me, rather, it is more usually a collection of small problems that overwhelms me. It just struck me that morning, all of the things happening in sequence and me never getting an even break, that I decided to write it all down. As for not procrastinating, well, er, yeah. I'll get around to it. Eventually. And it's understandable about work...I know how it can be.

Later.