Bjork Gudmundsdottir & Trio Guomundar Ingolfssonar, Gling-Glo. Yes, that Bjork. Singing jazz and goofy show tunes in Icelandic, with a 3-piece jazz trio. She didn't write anything on it herself, so if you like her for her clever compositions and sound construction and whatnot, but not for her voice, you won't like it. If you like her voice too, you just might. Two songs are in English; "Ruby Baby" is awesome and "I Can't Help Loving That Man" could have been but I don't really like what she did with it.

Animatrix soundtrack, which came with the DVD (haven't watched it yet). Junkie XL, Meat Beat Manifesto, and some others. A couple of quite good tracks. A few pretty good tracks. A couple of stupid tracks suffering from TMMSS (Too Many Movie Samples Syndrome). The first Crow movie is still the standard by which I judge all other soundtracks. (Not scores, that's different.)

The score from Tron. Re-released in the last couple of years or so. It doesn't quite live up to my fond memory, part of which came from the all-too-cool arcade game. (How could a movie with such an idiotic plot have captured the imagination like it did?) Like many movie score albums, there are a couple of tracks best avoided at all costs -- these two were performed by Journey. But in the actual score, it ranges from "cliche symphonic movie score fare" to "whoah, what universe did that progression come from?"

All of them get a B overall I think.

I went cell phone shopping today, sort of. My contract expires RSN and I plan to switch to T-Mobile. Amazon has a deal on the Nokia 3650 now -- color, camera, SMS, AIM, web, can act as a Bluetooth modem for a laptop -- but it's got a weird circular keypad which some people hate. I'd like to see one in person before going for it, even though it's free.

They didn't have one in the store though, and the lady tried so hard to get me to commit to something else. I felt sorry for her, because it must suck to be in sales like that... especially in a business where the best deals are online and you don't deal with a salesperson. :) But just because I felt sorry didn't mean I bought anything.

Also apartment shopping. I visited a couple mobile homes with Jeff Thursday, and pretty much decided I don't want to go that way. Granted, a recently built double-wide is very nice -- the last one I saw had a fancier kitchen than any house I've been in with the possible exception of a college buddy's family's proto-mansion. Seriously. I think that one was $42,000, but tack $260/mo lot rent on top of that, plus utilities and dealing with your own maintenance (huge lots there) and we're pretty much in the realm of the No, I Don't Think So. Besides, it would be a travesty to fill that house with $6 plastic patio furniture, $15 plastic shelving and a $100 futon.

But there's a place right near the casino with very reasonable prices on 1-bedroom (690 sq ft) and 2-bedroom (960 sq ft) apartments. Another place with slightly smaller but newly constructed 2-bedroom apartments for $50 more. My interest is piqued. I'm less thrilled by the $400/mo 1-bedroom place with no washer/dryer hookups, but I plan to look anyway just in case -- it might surprise me. If it's nice enough in all other respects and has an adequate place to put my shrine, I could cope with the laundry thing.

New Morrowind character is not what I first thought I'd do, but is primarily a mage. Breton with the Apprentice starsign, so resistance is canceled out but there's a lot of extra mana. Light armor and blunt weapons, though frankly, the staff I have now (Peacemaker) is just a delivery mechanism for a paralyzation spell... and not a good one because my weapon skill is laughable. Rather powerfully boosted domina armor, which was advertised as simply recolored with mildly enchanted boots and helm -- and instead it beats ebony, the boots give +200 speed and the helm (which I'm not wearing simply because it looked goofy, the dull black armor has a glowing pink helm) gave an extra 1xINT mana. But the way the skills work, except for the big speed boost -- which I was going to get with Boots of Blinding Speed anyway -- I still get hit in combat a lot and so it doesn't really feel unbalanced.

The chief attack and defense is Absorb Health. A ranged version and a stronger touch version, both with durations, drain them and keep me alive even while getting hit by multiple attackers -- if one of them is a rat and the other is not a Daedra or a smart tough NPC. My character's only level 3 after all, and has no resistance or reflection or absorption to speak of -- perhaps my enchantments will be along those lines first, instead of perma-chameleon.

It's a different game experience. Instead of being a stealth attack helicopter, I find myself needing to escape and regroup. Tactics actually matter, at the moment anyway. I've gotten killed a couple times but so far there has been no situation I couldn't deal with given another chance... if not with my life-stealing spells then with summoning, and if not that, invisibility and running away. And did I mention (no, I didn't) that I'm working for House Telvanni this time, and the Tribunal Temple? Probably the Quarra vampires and Morag Tong too, eventually. And then I might start the main quest. ;)

Posted 03:33 AM CST [Link] [Archives] [Index]