Review: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

August 8, 2006 · Posted in Reviews · Comment 

Opinions about this movie are firmly polarized between “it was cool” and “it was crap”. I wasn't expecting much, but I was pleasantly surprised. I was worried at the beginning — the plot was initially a bit incoherent and choppy (unpleasant flashbacks to Mummy 2), and they had obviously gone mad with the special effects budget — but it got better. I could have done without some of the special effects, and with a little more witty dialogue, but in the end I thought it was an enjoyable movie. I'll watch the third one.

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Sometimes I have to remind myself that I like cats

August 8, 2006 · Posted in General, Rants · 2 Comments 

So… having once again laboriously cleaned congealed cat spray from various places in our corridor, including the spines of all of the textbooks on the bottom shelf of one bookcase, I solemnly swear that if I ever get my hands on the stray tomcat who sneaks into our flat at night to nick our cats’ food (I can hear that it’s him, because he crunches the pellets really loudly, but he has excellent hearing and flees in a (justified) mad panic if the bed so much as creaks), he’s getting the Righteous Cold Shower of Pavlovian Conditioning. I don’t care how pitiful and fluffy he is.

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More catch-up, and sweetcorn soup

August 6, 2006 · Posted in General, Recipes · Comment 

On Friday we re-watched more Samurai Champloo (and a high-quality version of Amazing Screw-on Head; yay) on the projector with Kevin and Neil.

I have spent most of this weekend sleeping. Seriously. I slept almost all of Saturday, only getting up at around 5pm, in time to make the briefing of the playtest for Michelle’s Dragonfire LARP, Lenore. At least I was completely not tired while LARPing.

Today we were going to go mushroom-picking with my parents, but my mother was adamant that it would be too wet, so that plan has been shelved until next week. Instead, I slept some more. What I should have been doing is making corrections to Appointment at Atropos. I have, sort of, in my head.

Chicken Sweetcorn Soup

Today I decided to make chicken sweetcorn soup, so that I could simultaneously use up both the pack of (fresh) sweetcorn which was sitting in our fridge getting old, and the packet of minced chicken which was sitting in our freezer getting very old. It later turned out that the mince had actually gone off, but fortunately I was able to replace it with the chicken I had used to make the stock, so the story ended happily for everyone (except the packet of mince, which I am sure is feeling very miserable).

OK, I’m going to stop anthropomorphising the meat now.

Hodgestar bravely volunteered to find me spring onions for the stock, as well as miscellaneous supplies. He returned without spring onions, but with baby leeks, hence the substitution below.

Ingredients:
Stock:
Chicken pieces
Spring onion (or leek)
Ginger
Rice wine, apparently (which I didn’t have)

Soup:
Chicken mince (or finely chopped cooked chicken from the previous step)
Sweetcorn (from a can, or fresh, cut off the kernels with a knife. You can probably also use chopped baby corn.)
Eggs
Cornflour
Seasonings: Soy sauce, salt, sesame oil (the sesame oil really makes a difference)

Instructions:
Stock: Put chicken pieces in a pot; cover with water; add ginger and crushed spring onions (or leeks). Leave to boil. Skim the scum off the top. Leave it until the chicken is completely falling off the bone. Filter through a fine sieve.

Soup: Add sweetcorn (and the raw mince, if it exists) to the stock, and cook for about 10-15 minutes until the corn is done. Mix the cornflour with water and add, stirring. Whisk the eggs, with a little water, and add, whisking the soup to break up the egg into fine strands. Season to taste with salt and soy sauce, and add a few drops of sesame oil. If you’re adding cooked chicken, put it in right at the end.

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Amazing Screw-On Head

August 4, 2006 · Posted in General · Comment 

OK, now that Hodgestar has updated his blog, I have to as well.

I went to ICON. It was dry and packed with chainsmokers, and ran spectacularly late, as usual, but was overall a decent roleplaying experience — the competitive Cthulhu modules were good, and I got in some impromptu LARPing. There were three — yes, three — LARPs which concerned someone being recently dead and leaving some sort of inheritance or legacy. And two of them were written by the same person! What gives?!

Although I (wo)manfully restrained myself from going berserk at the stalls, since I do have a rather large backlog of graphic novels on order at the local Outer Limits, I was delighted to find and purchase 1) The Five Fists of Science and 2) a figurine of the alien from Alien (with base, egg and two facehuggers; fully articulated and with a retractable jaw!). I was particularly pleased by the latter; I had pined longingly after both it and the warrior alien from Aliens two years previously, shortly before I became employed. Later I purchased the warrior alien through OL, but was unable to find the original alien. Next year I will probably give in and buy the alien from AVP, even though I thought AVP was crap. I have no self-control. If they started making life-size poseable models, I'd go bankrupt.

Hodgestar and I managed to finish character sheets for the playtest of Appointment at Atropos, our science-fiction LARP for Dragonfire. It went a lot better after we hit on the novel idea of planning them out on paper first.

Argh, I have to run; watch this video. You must! It's a pilot for an animated short by Mike Mignola:

Amazing Screw-On Head

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