Captain'sLog:

Captain'sLog: another kerplosion! After a night at Hays, and a supposed car repair, we continued the adventure. we got as far as Colby before another battery died. luckily the hockey team was behind us so now we're crammed in with them. It continues!

We're

We're stuck! the shancole-mobile just kerploded on our way to colorado. don't worry tho. the marines are on the way (in the form of amber's parents). Oorah. i'll keep you posted on our little adventure.

I'd like to hit him, too.

If you know who Uwe Boll is, you almost certainly dislike him--he's the guy who's spent the last five or six years taking video games and turning them into flamingly bad movies. House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark, Bloodrayne, and several more to come between now and 2008. These are the movies you see previews for when you're in the theater to see a good movie, and you say 'Holy crap, that looks terrible. I wouldn't even watch that movie to make fun of it.' So I've never seen any of his movies. I hate him simply because he gives a bad name to movies made from video games. Granted, he's not the only one to make a bad video game movie, and in fact, nearly all such attempts fail. The thing is, though, that most directors who make a bad video game movie quit after the first one. But despite the abundant criticism on the internets of nearly every facet of Boll's directing, he still just doesn't get it.
Instead of quitting, or maybe becoming a better director, or trying a different kind of film because he obviously can't do this one, he decided a better approach was to issue an open challenge: any critic who would step up could face Uwe Boll in a boxing ring. I'm not even kidding. Four brave souls stepped up, and here's the video.



So. You challenged them all to a boxing match because you already know how to box? Very noble, Uwe. You deliberately set up an unfair fight. On the other hand, those four guys seem to know more about good movies than you'll ever know, so they find it easy to tear your movies apart. Also an unfair fight.
So, the moral of the story is that we should all stick to what we're good at--like you and boxing. And if you don't like that one, the alternative moral is that you suck.

I updated the + List.

Yep. I did. (I think the '- List' is in Purgatory at the moment.)

Vampire watermelons!

Ok, there are a few things to cover before we get to vampiric fruit. First of all, we went to the K.C. Renaissance Festival last weekend, and I think it just might be the coolest place on earth. I mean, come on. Adults who dress up and pretend to be from another time? Freaking awesome. There was a parade of all the vendors and characters who work there. Here's a video of it; it should give you a sense of the coolness.

[Edit: the video somehow got fubar'd. I'll have to repost it.

There are around 130 shops there, selling such things as armor, weapons, jewelry, clothing, leather goods, and a whole lot of other fun things, most of it handmade. There were several things I kinda-sorta wanted to buy, but what I did actually buy was this most excellent of journals. It seemed like someone in our crew needed to have a log of our adventures/plunderings. And, it's actually just a journal cover, with a generic blank book inside, meaning I can put whatever book I want in it. Keep that point in mind--it'll be an important step in getting us to the aforementioned blood-craving fruit. So anyway, having gone to the coolest place on earth, I naturally want to go again, as does the rest of the crew. They're having a "Phantom's Feaste" in October, which is a dinner theater kind of thing, hosted by Count Dracula. Kind of expensive, but it'd totally be worth it. So I'm thinking of making a vampire hunter costume to wear to it (and it'd just be a cool costume to have anyway). So I'm thinking about it, and I'm trying to figure out what a vampire hunter would carry with him. And it seems to me that he'd have some kind of record of his travels, plus some vampire lore, maybe some ways of killing them, etc. And where would he put such text? In his spiffy leather-bound journal-majig, of course! So I start scouring the internet for vampire stuff to put in my book (because I'm really getting into it at this point) and I'm finding all sorts of interesting stuff. Then I find an article about Gypsy vampire legends, and I learn that not only did they used to believe in vampires, but in vampire fruit. I'm not even kidding. I present to you a sample from the "Vampire pumpkins and watermelons" wiki:

The belief in vampires of plant origin occurs among Gs. [Gypsies] who belong to
the Mosl. faith in KM [Kosovo-Metohija]. According to them there are only two
plants which are regarded as likely to turn into vampires: pumpkins of every
kind and water-melons. And the change takes place when they are 'fighting one
another.' In Podrima and Prizrenski Podgor they consider this transformation
occurs if these vegetables have been kept for more than ten days: then the
gathered pumpkins stir all by themselves and make a sound like 'brrrl, brrrl,
brrrl!' and begin to shake themselves. It is also believed that sometimes a
trace of blood can be seen on the pumpkin, and the Gs. then say it has become a
vampire. These pumpkins and melons go round the houses, stables, and rooms at
night, all by themselves, and do harm to people. But it is thought that they
cannot do great damage to folk, so people are not very afraid of this kind of
vampire.

Fascinating.

Oh, and one last thing: I got a pirate pistol! I got a pirate pistol!
Go eBay!