My folks just rode off into the sunset…  Very literally.  They’re not actually leaving until tomorrow sometime, but I won’t see them again this year.  I’ll be at work when they get up, check out, and head off tomorrow.

It was a fun, if vaguely crazy few days.

They arrived on Wednesday sometime…  And stopped over for drinks Wednesday night.  We spent a few hours just catching up.  It was great to see them again.

Thursday I had to work half the day, but we all got together for dinner.

Friday was Christopher’s graduation.  My father was digging in our yard that morning…  Trying to put in some kind of drainage ditch thing.  And I had lunch with my mother while Christopher went to his rehearsal and Terri decorated the house.  Then we went to Christopher’s graduation that night.  Christopher’s father showed up, but Terri’s sister never even responded to any of our messages…  I’m really not sure what’s up with her.

Saturday we had Christopher’s graduation party.  Mike and Sylvia and Jake came over…  And my folks…  And our next-door neighbors came over…  Christopher got some very cool stuff.  My parents got him a nice Dell laptop, and we got him an iPod Touch.  Mike didn’t approve of him getting those goodies and had a bit of a tantrum.

Today we went over to the Shelbourne museum with my folks.  Very cool stuff over there.  We saw all sorts of old houses, paintings, things like that.  They had an exhibit on motorcycles, which was very cool, but looked kind of odd there.  And they had a very strange “modern” house.  Had a great time.

And now they’re off.  The odds are that we won’t see them again until next year sometime.

We watched Flesh for Frankenstein last night…  Terri noticed it was airing on TV at some point last week, thought it looked interesting, and recorded it.  It was, most certainly, interesting.

So, it’s basically the Frankenstein story.  Mostly.  You’ve got the good doctor Frankenstein in his creepy castle up on the hill.  He’s sewing dead bodies together and bringing them to life.  Eventually one of his creations goes a little wrong and the good doctor meets a rather bad end.  Beyond that very basic resemblance, however, this movie has nothing to do with any Frankenstein story you’ve ever experienced before.

The doctor isn’t trying to just defeat death, he’s building zombies.  And the ultimate goal is to produce a perfect male zombie and a perfect female zombie, breed them together, and create a new master race.  His assistant is Otto, not Igor.  He’s living with his wife, who is also his sister, and they’ve got a couple kids.

The doctor’s wife is apparently a nymphomaniac.  And the doctor himself is a necrophiliac.

Part of his plan to create this perfect race of zombie people is to breed two zombies together…  And in order to do that he needs the head of a lustful man.  But he gets the wrong head and winds up with that of a gay man, which means his zombies won’t breed.

There’s some weirdly explicit 1970′s-era nudity and sex.

There’s some terrifically cheesy german accents.

There’s lots of drama and over-acting.

There’s lots of brightly-colored blood, and organs everywhere.

The whole movie is absolutely surreal.  It is largely humorous…  Absolutely impossible to take this movie seriously.  And the special effects are very dated and unrealistic.  But there’s something disturbing about how understated some of the gore is, which makes it even more gruesome than if it had been overdone or realistic.

There’s a truly bizzarre scene in which the good doctor gets off while fondling the female zombie’s internal organs.  Which apparently confuses Otto about how sex works…  He later tries to pleasure himself by ripping open a woman’s torso and spilling her guts on the floor.

But that isn’t even the strangest part of the movie.  That honor goes to a scene where the doctor actually climbs atop his female zombie (with Otto’s assistance)…  Inserts his hand into her abdomen…  And then makes love to her.  After several minutes of him humping the zombie while Otto tries not to watch, the doctor asks for Otto to help him down.  There’s an awkward moment between Otto and Dr. Frankenstein, Otto looks almost accusing…  And Dr. Frankenstein declares

To know death, Otto, you have to fuck life… in the gall bladder!

And while that’s a great quote, and a truly wonderful scene, it isn’t the only one.  The whole movie is full of strange scenes and wonderful quotes.

Part of what makes the whole film so wonderful are the facial expressions.  Otto is constantly making strange faces at the doctor…  Peering intently, rolling his eyes, staring in interest.  And then there’s the gay man who winds up being used in Frankenstein’s zombie…  He goes to a brothel with his buddy, and stares longlingly at his buddy the whole time, while the girl he’s supposed to be making love to looks pouty and offended.  And Dr. Frankenstein constantly has an intent, half-crazed look on his face – like his eyes are going to crawl out of his head at any moment.

Any of these individual things, on their own, probably would have just made for an awkward and forgettable movie.  But combined together the sum is absolutely unforgettable.  Terri and I have both decided that it is a movie we must own.

My only regret is that it was apparently originally shot in 3D, and is no longer available in the format.  The movie was hilariously over-the-top as it is now, and I truly wish I could experience it in 3D.

Now I’m going to have to locate a copy of Blood for Dracula…  Which is apparently by the same director, and in a similar vein…  But, according to reviews, even better than Flesh for Frankenstein.

Terri has finally managed to prod me into joining some of the new ‘social networking’ sites.

She’s been chatting with Mike with MySpace IM…  And Christopher’s been throwing stuff on MySpace as well…  And Terri put together some kind of animated MySpace IM thing she wanted to show me…  So I finally signed up.

She’s also been bugging me about Twitter.  I keep getting emails saying she’d like to be following me on Twitter.  And lately all the stuff going on in Iran is breaking on Twitter before CNN/MSNBC.  So, again, I finally signed up.

And, just to round everything out, I’ve also been using GamerDNA for a little while now.  I first signed up there because the guild we were in had their site hosted there.  At the time the GamerDNA site was pretty slow, rough around the edges, and painful to work with.  But it has gotten quite a bit better since then and offers some nice tools for talking about games.

So, for the most part, I’m not terribly impressed with this ‘social media’ stuff…

MySpace is just, basically, a pre-packaged website.  Not much different than the old Geocities pages, or what you can get these days from Blogger.  I really don’t understand the appeal of MySpace specifically, as opposed to some of the other services out there.  It really doesn’t seem to offer anything terribly amazing.

Twitter is vaguely interesting as a common way of distributing information, kind of like an RSS feed or something.  You’ll see that’s sort of how I’m using mine right now…  I’ve got a plugin for WordPress that updates Twitter when I post something new, and GamerDNA will also inform Twitter of updates.  So it’s a nice one-stop-shop for folks who want to know what I’m up to.  But it doesn’t really seem to offer much than an instant messenger or RSS feed doesn’t.

GamerDNA is the one site that I’m finding genuinely useful and unique.  It provides tools that let you record and rate the games in your collection, find other people who play those games, find similar games, record the characters you play in those games, post pictures and stories from those games…  All sorts of stuff that you could easily get elsewhere, but it’s all wrapped up in a nice little gamer-friendly package.

Of course, I’ve only been using MySpace and Twitter for a few days now…  So I may very well be missing something…  And I’ve never been the most social person, so maybe the purpose of social media is being lost on me…  We’ll see.

I’m not really a father, but I play one in real life.

I’ve never concieved a child.  Don’t want to either, I’ve never liked kids much.  But I’ve helped Terri raise her kids ever since we met…  And these days I refer to them as our kids more often than not.  And Terri apparently feels that counts for something, because we always celebrate Father’s Day.

All of which means, ultimately, that I got some goodies today.

Terri’s gift was a real surprise.  She didn’t ask me what I wanted, and I wasn’t really dropping any hints.  So I expected something fairly generic gift…  Something like a DVD or a book, maybe a video game or an alien figure.  I certainly didn’t expect what I got – a Garmin nuvi 205.

It’s a very nifty little Garmin GPS receiver.  I don’t normally do a whole lot of traveling to strange locales.  It isn’t like I normally even need a map to figure out where I am.  But last year I borrowed a GPS from work when we went out to Niagara, and that was damn handy.

It was great not having to look at a map to figure out where we were, or where to go.  It was great being able to just push a couple buttons and have it tell me where the nearest coffee shop was.  And ever since then I’ve been wishing I had one of my own.

I’ll get detoured somewhere…  Or the directions I printed out won’t be quite right…  Or I’ll suddenly decide I’d rather have something else for dinner in a strange place…  And I’ll wish I had a GPS to help me out.

This one’s really nifty too…  I downloaded a model of the Black Pearl to represent my car on the map.  And I grabbed the Dr. Nightmare voice to use for giving directions.  Lots of fun.

I also got to sleep in late today, spent most of the day playing EVE, and then we went out to dinner.

Not too shabby…

I dropped out of EVE University…

They’re great folks, very good corporation, but it was just never a very good fit for me.  I only attended one or two classes…  Never made use of the free skillbook program…  They hardly ever had any mining operations…  And the constant wardecs got to be too much.

Initially I just dropped into the Perkone NPC corporation and I was planning on waiting out the most recent wardec.  But I noticed, while I was in Perkone, that things hadn’t changed much.  There were different people in corporate chat, but that’s about it.  I wasn’t really missing anything about EVE University.  There were no activities or resources that I couldn’t get to.  And I could still ask plenty of questions in their public channel and on the forums.

So I figured I’d just sit in Perkone for a while.  Do some mining, run some missions, and not worry about wardecs.  Seemed like a good idea to me.

But then I saw a recruitment post on the EVE University boards for Veldspar International, and it sounded like a great match.  Lots of industrial stuff, some missioning, a bit of PvP, fairly active people…  Sounded like I’d actually have something to do with myself, rather than just a nametag.

I applied, and got hired, and then I had to relocate everything.  EVE University operates out of Caldari space, so I had equipment up around Poinen and Korsiki and Jita.  Veldspar International operates out of Amarr space, down near the edge of high security.

So I had to pack everything up…  Sell off the stuff that was easily replaceable…  And haul it all through 20+ jumps.  Then I had to move my jumpclones down…

The whole process took a couple days.  It was all pretty mindless travel through high security space…  Didn’t really have to worry about getting jumped by anyone…  But it was still a boring way to spend a few hours.

I also packed up my operations in Gallente space and hauled it down to Amarr.  I’m just going to ignore the Gallente for now…  As long as I’m careful not to shoot any more Gallente my standings shouldn’t get any worse…  And I can always work on raising them again later…  But, for now, I’ve got more important things to work on.

So I’m working for the Amarr now…  I can’t say I’m really happy with that.

The Caldari are mercenaries by nature.  They’re all about profits.  Their missions are all motivated by money.  Folks invading their space…  Corporate maneuvering…  Law enforcement…  It all kind of makes sense.  You can run missions for the Caldari and still feel pretty clean by the end of the day.  Even if you’re just blowing people up for the money, at least it makes sense.

The Gallente are peace-loving hippies.  They want freedom and happiness for everyone.  It isn’t quite as clear-cut as the Caldari…  You can’t just look at your checkbook to see which way the Gallente are going to move.  But it’s hard to argue against freedom…  It’s such a nice-sounding goal.  Even when you’re mowing down innocent civilians it’s all in the name of freedom.

The Minmatar want revenge.  After years of slavery and oppression they want their own chunk of the universe and a pound or two of Amarrian flesh.  And after how they’ve been treated, you can’t really blame them.  Their quest for revenge would almost seem noble if it wasn’t for the bloody wrecks they leave in their wake.

But the Amarr…  They’re a bunch of religious nutjobs.

They unthinkingly do whatever it is their Emperor tells them to.  Why?  Because he’s the voice of God.  And to question his command not only risks your life, but your soul.

So if the Emperor says it’s ok to keep slaves, you keep slaves.  And if the Emperor says a planet needs to be cleansed of all life, you start dropping bombs.  And if the Emperor tells you to stab a puppy, you stab the puppy.

And I’ve got to try to make friends with these nutjobs.

To that end I’m running missions for the Amarr Navy, and steering clear of anything that looks too much like a jihad.  I don’t have a problem hunting down criminals…  Or stamping out violent little cults here and there…  But I’m refusing any mission that sends me after Gallente or Minmatar targets.  Which means my agents aren’t nearly as happy with me as they could be.

…go away some other day.

It is a truly beautiful, rainy day today.  Dark, leaden, grey skies.  Steady but light rain.  Cars splashing through the puddles.  Water beading on the windows.  Nice and cool, but not too cold.

I had a hell of a time dragging myself out of bed this morning.  Weather like this makes me sleep very deeply…

And I certainly don’t want to be at work today.  This is the kind of day I’d much rather spend at home – curled up with my wife, with the windows open, listening to the rain and watching a creepy movie.