Sometimes, I feel very reclusive. I like the idea of retiring to a cave. A place with a fire, a wall to draw on, and a personal store of food by an underground spring full of fresh water. Maybe an opening at the far end where the sun can get in, but not so close that rain gets everything.

Perhaps an oceanside opening, too, and a comfortable area to curl up with the Newt-cub.

Only the sound of dripping water from distant stalactites, and maybe torches flickering, leaving a little smudge on the wall where it burns a bit too close.

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If there is at least one person in your life whom you consider a close friend, and whom you would not have met without the internet, post this sentence in your journal.

Actually, I have some friends that I networked to via a net-pal, and the net-pals themselves is gone.

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Age of Empires III is out and about… may be my Christmas prezzie to myself. It looks gorgeous… and I imagine the gameplay will be up to the usual high standards.

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More thoughts about Wallace & Gromit… They didn’t have a bunch of science fiction fans called “the Inventive Cheese-eaters” or whatnot (though it does have it’s own fans, certainly), and I’m sure the movie will do just fine on it’s opening weekend. Fans Serenity could learn a bit from that sort of cinematic Social Darwinism… Good movies will do just fine, with or without some cult-like fan base. I really rather think the name “Browncoats” is just a smidgen too close to “Brown shirts”, too. I suspect that the Browncoats didn’t do much to get people to go see the movie.. other science fiction fans were going to check it out, because they’d already heard of it, one way or another… I figure they were preaching to the choir.

Wallace and Gromit did well, I’m sure, and it’ll surprise me if it doesn’t have better opening numbers than Serenity did.

That said, RT has W&G at – 95%… that’s a pretty fantastic rating. I know it’ll be something people will want to watch on video every Halloween with Great Pumpkin and Night of the Living Dead. I can’t say that about Nightmare before Christmas. (the closest similar popular movie I can think of)

vs. Serenity at – 81%, which is still pretty respectable, considering that most fans of the show really weren’t crazy about it… (and most non-fans that I know also didn’t dig it). I guess the Joss formula of the 80 lb super-girl is still pretty marketable. Will people want to watch it in 5 years? I imagine it’ll end up on UPN as part of the recycled Sunday sci-fi movie run, along with Ghostbusters II, because the better and more popular movies will be too expensive to syndicate. (Like Ghostbusters the first)

On a tangent – some favorite Halloween movies – Usually, I like a light opener (comedy or classic) and then actual horror after.

• It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
• Ghostbusters
• The Mummy (Both the Karloff original, and the Brendan Fraser vehicle)
• Young Frankenstein
• Night of the Living Dead
• Alien
• The Shining
• The Fly (Vincent Price)
• The Thing (Newer one) – I like to Follow up with Big Trouble in Little China
• Evil Dead
• Poltergeist
• Hocus Pocus
• Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
• Beetlejuice
• The Exorcist

Just of the top of my skull.

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