Yesterday was pretty spectacular.

Woke up around 7:00 or so, and the hurricane/tropical storm had already arrived.  It was raining heavily and just didn’t stop all day long.

We had rain literally all day long.  Simply didn’t stop.  Periodic gusts of high winds.  Leaves, sticks, and assorted debris flying around the house.  The stream behind our house – normally a foot or so wide – rose and spread and engulfed our entire back yard.

Power started flickering somewhere around noon.  Our satellite TV kept cutting out, as did our Internet.  Eventually had to just shut things down and un-plug them and wait for things to pass.

Around 8:00 or so, we noticed a bunch of emergency vehicles out on our street, and the smell of burning rubber.  Turns out there was a power line down less than a block from our house.  The smell was the insulator burning as the line arced and sparked.  They shut down the road until NYSEG crews were able to look at the line…  And then they shut down our power around 10:00 or so.  Didn’t come back up until 3:30 this morning.

The weather is fine this morning.  All that rain and wind has moved on up North, into Canada.

We’ve got a couple trees down, but nothing I’m worried about.  Lots of debris that’ll have to be cleaned up.  There’s a big tree down across the street.  Lots of bridge closures on my way in to work this morning.  The hospital is half-deserted – a good number of people were unable to make it in today.

We’ve got one dead computer already.  Reports of trouble at some of our health centers.  Reports of trouble with VPN connectivity.  Sounds like today is going to be busy.

It was annoying, yesterday, to hear folks on the news talking about how New York was in the clear…  How the hurricane had moved on and things were OK and whatever else – while we were in the midst of the storm.  Obviously they were talking about New York City…  But there is a lot more to the state besides that one city.  And it was vaguely insulting to be completely ignored while the winds whipped around our house, trees fell, people were with out power, and rivers flooded.

Got the kid moved into the dorms OK.  Was kind of painful to watch though…  He’s always been quiet, shy, withdrawn, reclusive…  He was trying to put on a confident front, but it was obvious he was overwhelmed.  He was barely able to talk to the RAs when they were trying to help him get checked-in.

I’m sure he’s going to be fine.  He’s a smart kid.  But he’s in for some growing pains.

Terri also had a rough day yesterday.  Between her kid moving out and the impending hurricane, she had enough stress to give her chest pains.  We spent a good chunk of the afternoon just trying to come up with distractions to help calm her down.

D&D has been re-scheduled to next weekend.  Looks like a few people had to cancel.  I’m a little disappointed…  But, honestly, I think I’d rather spend the day with my wife today anyway.

I haven’t been doing anything terribly interesting in EVE lately.

I’m splitting my skill training between an assortment of trade skills and working towards an Incursion-ready Maelstrom.

I’ve been popping in and running roughly one mission a night…  Collecting my salvage…  Storing it up for a shopping trip on the weekends…  And I’ve also got PI running on a couple planets.  The oxygen complex I set up a little while back is fully functional, but not terribly profitable  The coolant complex I set up more recently is much more profitable.

But, for now, EVE is requiring a little more focus than I’ve got available.  At the end of a rough day, I just want to escape into something fun and fluffy – not a heavy, dystopian paradise.

To that end, I’ve been playing some other games to let off steam in the evenings…

Looks like Space Pirates and Zombies is now on Steam.

Not only that, but they’ve made a large number of changes to the game.  Added some new features, tweaked gameplay, added more of a tutorial and storyline…  Basically turned it into a real game.

Plus, they were able to transfer all the previously-sold activation keys over to Steam… So I was able to convert my Impulse purchase over to a Steam purchase.  Very nice.

Suckerpunch came out a while back.  I wanted to see it – looked very interesting.  But the reviews were horrible, and there was other stuff going on at the time, so we didn’t.  Finally got around to renting it from Redbox last week…  And, honestly, I’m glad we didn’t go to see it in the theater.

The movie starts with a scene of some dead woman and a couple weeping women – probably her kids.  There’s also a mean-looking guy we can assume is their father.  The kids look genuinely distraught that Mom is dead, Dad does not.

Then there’s a shot of a will, and it says everything was left to the kids, and Dad looks even more frightening – like he’s got something planned.  He storms around the house, one of the girls locks herself in her room, and he goes off after the other girl.

The first one, who’ll later be referred to as “Babydoll”, climbs around the outside of the house and tries to confront Dad.  She grabs a gun, fires it, blows out a lightbulb…  Finds her sister…  But sister looks dead.  And then Dad calls the police and hauls Babydoll off to some kind of assylum.

The problem with this whole opening sequence is that it’s absolutely dialogue-free.  We’re just given a series of images set to music, like some kind of music video.  It isn’t entirely clear who these people are and how they’re related to each-other.  It isn’t entirely clear what happened to Babydoll’s sister…  Did Dad kill her?  Did Babydoll accidentally kill her?  Is she just injured?

And this kind of ambiguity in favor of style pervades the rest of the movie.

Babydoll gets taken to the assylum…  But it quickly turns into some kind of bordello.  The inmates become dancers or prostitutes of some sort…  And the doctor is their matron…

But then Babydoll needs to dance.  And in order to do this she has to face down her inner demons…  Which is portrayed as some kind of kung-fu battle inside her head.

The visuals for these internal struggles are absolutely amazing.  Very stylish action sequences that look truly kickass.  But it’s not at all clear what is actually going on…

The internal sequence shows Babydoll and her friends cutting their way through hordes of steampunk Nazi zombies…  But that’s representative of an internal struggle while Babydoll is trying to dance in front of people…  Except that she isn’t actually a dancer in a bordello – she’s a patient in some kind of asylum…  So…  What is actually going on?

Is she dancing?  Is it group therapy?  Is she just sitting there, drooling?

All this ambiguity makes it very hard to understand what is going on, and very hard to care about the characters.

Are these a bunch of girls banding together against an oppressive system?  Are they just acting out and causing trouble for folks who are genuinely trying to help them?  Is it all happening inside one girl’s head?

There are suggestions that some of the fantasy is based in reality…  One of the custodians gets cut with a knife.  One of the girls appears to be injured or even killed.  But a lot of it – such as the death of the madam/doctor – seems to be completely unrelated to the real world.

Then there’s the strangely passive, us against them, misogynistic tone of the whole movie…

Pretty much all the bad guys are men.  Pretty much all the good guys are women.  The women are generally portrayed in a sexualized manner.  The women are beaten, injured, and abused constantly.  Babydoll’s primary weapon is, apparently, suggestive dancing.

The basic subtext seems to be that these girls keep getting beaten and abused, and the only way they can protect themselves is with sex.

All of which could, maybe, have been OK if we had some kind of heroic victory in the end…  But we didn’t.  Babydoll winds up getting a lobotomy.

I wound up feeling kind of dirty after watching the movie.  Like I wanted to go take a shower or something.

The internal fight scenes were downright awesome, and I’d happily pay for a movie set entirely within one of those worlds…  But the rest of the movie – the framework that those internal scenes fit into – was just depressing and confusing.

We went to see Cowboys & Aliens a couple weeks back.  Surprisingly decent movie.

I really didn’t expect much.  I just wanted to see cowboys and aliens shooting at each-other.  Wanted some special effects and some explosions.  And that’s exactly what I got.

I’ve heard some reports from other people that were disappointed with it…   But, honestly, what did they expect?

You aren’t going to get amazing depth and complexity from a movie called Cowboys & Aliens.

Prototype was on sale on Steam a few days ago…  Only $10.  When the game originally came out, it looked downright awesome.  Some kind of zombie outbreak/killer virus/free-roaming mayhem type game.  Very cool.  But, of course, it was something like $50 initially…  And I just can’t pay that for a game these days.

But, hell, $10 is a steal!  So I picked it up.  Downloaded it.  Eagerly fired it up for the first time…  And crashed to desktop.

I figured it was just a glitch or something initially…  But after another half-dozen crashes to desktop and a quick search of the interwebs, it was obvious that the game had serious issues.  Serious enough that most people reported it was completely unplayable.

I was going to ask for a refund on Steam…  But it was late, so I went to bed.

I came home the next day to find Steam downloading something for Prototype.  Curious, I tried it out again – and it worked!  Wound up spending the entire evening playing.

So…  You play the role of some poor guy named Alex Mercer, who wakes up in a morgue just moments before being chopped up for an autopsy.  He’s got absolutely no memory, and some new super powers.  You make a run for it…  Get shot full of holes…  Live through the bullet wounds…  Leap over a wall…  And then start stumbling your way through the city.

There’s some kind of nasty virus on the loose.  I’m not sure if it’s the same thing that makes Alex into this super-powered monster, or if it’s something different…  But it’s turning people into monsters and covering the city in festering ooze.

The military is trying to contain the situation.  They’re hunting Alex and shooting the infected.

There’s some kind of shady military group called Blackwatch…  And a biotech company called Gentek…  And lots of innocent civilians in the line of fire…

And Alex is some kind of super-powered monster.  You’re inhumanly fast.  You can run up the side of buildings, leap over walls, and glide through the air.  You can transform your body into a weapon – sprouting claws and swords and things.  You can consume people – gaining their memories and skills.

So far, I’m really not sure what’s going on.  I’ve rampaged through the city and killed a lot of people – military, infected, and even civilians.  I’ve uncovered some clues as to what is going on, but none of it makes a whole lot of sense yet.  But I’m having a hell of a lot of fun.