What's A Day Off?

Unless things start to look less pear-shaped, today (tuesday the 11th) will be my only day off in the entirety of October. This is good in one regard, I definately know that I've got a few pennies in my account in the future. On the other hand, it does make me a little bit more irrational and crabby with my fellow staff, who are just as hard-working as I am, if not more so. But the sheer amount of hours I put in last week was certainly wearing on me by monday and I'm happy to say that I had a decent and productive day off. Sort of.

Kerry and Tim both had days off as well, so we tried to hammer out a proto-game of Territory, something that I still need to sit down and properly work out rules for, but then that's what playtesting is for. The scenario we came up with was interesting and certainly has some potential. I seem to fill my spare time with gaming these days, what with my renewed interest in 'The Thirteen Games of Corridor Thirteen' and how to make them work. I still have my core gamers and it's a good way to focus my excess creativity and plot this epic, spanning world.

I think after November's Chalice is completed (what with November's Children finished and November's Chosen begun, Chalice would be the third in the trilogy of November games), we may well do The Isis, a game hell-bent on ripping off Pirates of the Carribean. I've put a few mentions of the Isis into some of November at the moment, almost like I'm J.J. Abrahms. Speaking of which, Kieran was saying how he was disappointed that he hadn't heard anything regarding the next Star Trek film, whether it was in development or it had begun filming or anything.

I frickin' hope not. The last one sucked.

JURASSIC PARK.

Oh yes, you read that right. A few weeks ago (in fact, on my last day off), myself, Kieran, Marsh, Alex and Carl all went to go see Jurassic Park on the big screen in Newbury Vue. Because the trilogy of Jurassic Park films are being released on Blu-Ray there was a brief cinema re-release and I felt obliged to go and see it, since it was one of the first films I avidly remember going to see at the cinema when I was a kid (that wasn't a Disney animated film, at the least). That was 18 years ago.

My only real comment is thus:

It is still as good as I remember.

There are one or two instances where maybe the special effects don't quite hold up (especially when you first see the Brachiosaur, and yes I had to look up how to mispell that), but the story is still excellently paced, still visually stunning and still very characterful. Jeff Goldblum, Samuel L. Jackson, Wayne Knight, Laura Dren, Richard Attenbrough, they are all still brilliant, but the stars of the show really are Sam Neill and Bob Peck. I mean, hats off to the pair of them (pun intended).

I'd just like to comment on just how often I quote that Jurassic Park contains one of my favourite moments of movie history and if you don't know what it is, then I clearly haven't ranted enough about it. But you know which scene it is. So do yourself a favour, dig out your dvd or video of this movie, whack it on and remember just how freakin' good it was. And it's only a little because it got to use it's own merchandise in the film itself. If that isn't meta forethought, then nothing is, to be honest.

Clever girl.

Next up: Jane Eyre.