Free Candy For Everyone

I’m starting to wonder why I keep going to Flecks. Each month, I go and watch a completely awful movie that makes me question my sanity. This month was no different. We had the pleasure of watching Incubus.

This gem is an early William Shatner (I love that Shatner’s main IMDB photo is early Trek years when he’s all pretty, rather than what he looks like now) flick that is ENTIRELY IN ESPERANTO. Yes. Really.

It was subtitled, but it was as though they didn’t really want us to be able to watch the darn movie. I’ve never seen such large text. And it was almost in the center of the screen, which pretty well obscured what was happening. Which wasn’t much.

There was some sort of story involving evil succubi who lured bad men to death and hell. And Shatner was a true hero with a good soul and he was a tough cookie. But mostly, there seemed to be a lot of walking. Characters would walk from one place to another without any cuts, over hill over dale, they walked and walked. One fellow in the audience cracked, “It’s more like Walkubus!” We all chuckled because it was way too true.

This was the first Flecks that I almost left. But just as I felt I couldn’t take anymore, someone said “This must be almost over?” and it was confirmed that we were nearing the end of our self-inflicted torment. Thus, I stuck it out, like the true Flecks champion that I am! But really, stay away from this one. Far, far away.

I’ve played a lot of World of Warcraft in my time. Maybe not as much as some, but I’ve played 11 different characters to various levels. I’m currently playing with 3 characters at levels 60, 54 and 38. And I’m still having fun. Every time I begin to lose interest and take a break, something sucks me back in. With the Burning Crusade expansion coming out in 2 weeks, I’m unlikely to stop playing any time soon.

With all this playing, you’d think there’s nothing left to discover. But you’d be very wrong. There are tons of quests and zones I haven’t really explored. And it turns out that even the quests and zones I have been through can still surprise me.

Most of my characters have been Horde. While I started out with a pretty-pretty-Night-Elf, I soon discovered the joys of playing the unabashedly ugly Hordelings, and I hardly looked back. But my friends in my guild and I decided we’d role some Alliance alts together and give it a play. So I’ve been putting in time with a Human Priest. Today I picked up a quest in Southshore that made me laugh:

Here’s the funny bit - one of my favorite quest chains on the Horde-side involves gathering up some ingredients to make the Elixir of Pain. You then take this lovely beverage and feed it to the poor, hapless Stanley dog which grows large and evil and you promptly kill for mucho XP. It’s just this sort of referential dialogue that makes me continue to enjoy this game.

In the process of revamping my blog I took a look at what other people were using for plugins. I was examing Binary Bonsai because his blog looks awesome (he is developing K2, which is a large modification to Wordpress that the theme I’m using is based on). He had a link to a site which lead me to the network of 43 sites: 43 Things, a site for tracking things you want to do, All Consuming for tracking books/movies/music, and 43 Places for tracking where you’ve been and where you want to go. There are a few others, but you can explore on your own if you’re curious.

I love tracking stuff, as you may know. I already have myriad ways to track my consumption, as they call it, so I was most interested in 43 Places. The coolest thing about it that I’ve seen so far is that it plots out where you’ve been on a map. You can go check out my profile at the site. Or looky here, I can embed my travel map into my post! (Note that I have not at all entered everywhere I’ve been. I just got started tonight and I really should be sleeping already)

I’m going to go and fill in more places I’ve been (blue) and places I want to go (orange) as I have time. But it’s pretty cool. People will think of everything, won’t they?

Here it is, the New Year! Another one rolls in with stealth and surprise. Or at least, that’s how I feel most of the time. How’d it get to be 2007 already? I just don’t know. I have a new look for Free Candy, for the New Year. It’s mostly got the kinks worked out of it. Still a few things to do, but I’m happy with it, as a whole. It was about time. I’d been using that old theme for well over a year. In with the new!

What else do I have to look forward to this year? Well, we’re starting the year out with a big hoorah in the form of the Burning Crusade WoW expansion pack. That comes out in two short weeks. Like the enthusiastic fool I am, I pre-ordered the Collector’s Edition at EB. Here’s hoping they come through and there aren’t any snafus like seem to frequently occur with these limited edition pre-orders.

I haven’t been writing so much about World of Warcraft, but I’m still playing. Final Fantasy XII started out strong and really pulled me away from WoW, but the champion does still reign. I’m back on the WoW wagon (or off it?). FFXII is getting the scraps of my time instead of the other way around.

This year I intend to purchase a new console. Yes, indeed. Will it be the Wii, despite my early disdain? Or will the PS3 pull through to earn my pick? Or maybe I’d defy them both and pick up the Ninendo DS (in which case, Nintendo still wins, huh. But I already have a PSP, so that fight went to Sony in the first round).

And a new laptop! Surprise of surprises, I’m considering buying a Mac! Yes, indeed. I never thought this day would come. But with the advent of BootCamp, I can run Windows on my Mac. And they’re just so darn purty. Plus, I can play WoW on it either way. And I’ve never owned a Mac, so now’s my chance to learn something.

Those are just some of the things that’ll be coming up this year. What are you excited for?