The Artificial World is Yours

I love the crazy angles on those buildings.

Last night's tweets

A blank screen can start a nasty rumour.
Jerri Blank is never acceptable.
The tall centaurs have no sense of humour.
But to courtesy they're susceptible.

Sometimes World of Warcraft reminds me of an enormous miniature golf course, which, I know, seems to be a contradiction in terms. But the way it has theme areas partitioned off from one another, there's no way anyone could mistake it for organic, unlike the regions in Oblivion.

When one looks at the area where Durotar ends and The Barrens begins, one sees that the dirt changes abruptly to a drastically different colour like stripes in Neapolitan ice cream. Last night, I ran all the way from Crossroads, in the middle of Barrens, to some mountainous area in the west and then north to a small, isolated valley with a bunch of elks and centaurs. My character's level 22 and everyone there was between levels 24 and 29, so I figured it was just right for me. I did okay, so long as I could fight one at a time, until I ran into some level twenty-nine elf-centaur lady, who mopped the floor with my ass. Didn't stop me from trying five times--I got her down to less than half her hitpoints. Tantalisingly close. Of course, sooner or later, I'll just level up and it won't mean as much when I beat her.

I watched the 1932 version of Scarface last night, which I hadn't seen in a while. It's a little more sensational than I remember, but I still think it's easily a thousand times better than the cheesy Brian DePalma version. I love Paul Muni's innocent glee and the way he pushes around his bosses. You get the impression he's like a monstrous puppy, playing with the world and not quite having a sense of the harm he's causing or what his decisions say about him. The violent anger provoked by his sister going out with guys would disturb even the most meagrely introspective person, but not Tony. Which is what makes him seem so dangerous--he has absolutely no internal compass. At the same time, it's what prevents him from seeming evil. He just seems like another hapless force of nature.

Happy birthday, Robyn Massachusetts (it's her birthday, nothing's meant by the juxtaposition. Though she may be a hapless force of nature, who knows).