I’m Sick

But I still managed to finish my animated script.

I just didn’t manage to do anything else.

So there.

AAAAAAAAAAH…

Still trying to finish the animated series script.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH…

Still… Not… Done…

Seven out of the eight episodes done. Almost there…

And Now For My Next Trick…

Watch me pull a rabbit out of my ass.

Four episodes worked over in one afternoon and evening, and all it cost me was not being able to talk to my Wife or spend any time with my old college friend Aerin today.

Excuse me…

The Miniseries That Wouldn’t Die

Okay, I’ve got a crap load of work to do.

There was the first reading of the entire miniseries tonight. All the actors except one made it, and I ended up having to read for the actor that wasn’t there. Now there’s one last push where the other writer and I have to meet up over the next couple of days and punch out all the changes made, address the concerns voiced, and otherwise tear our hair out.

That’s on top of the animated script I gotta’ crank out, the concept synopsis that’s still pending, some articles that are looming, and helping the Wife organize her art exhibit.

Bleah. Too. Much… Work…

And now I have to get back to it. No rest for the stupid and all that…

Busy, Busy, Busy

A fairly productive day.

If there’s nothing of interest or stimulating intellectualism to report, it’s because there’s just a bunch o’ stuff to do. The mini-series is, for the most part, done. All the episodes have been written, so now the only thing left to do is attend a reading tomorrow where all the actors will finally get their hands on the script and see what we’ve done t0-… sorry, with them. I also had a talk with the guys at the studio that are currently in production on their animated series and they want to see a script out of me by Monday, which, concidentally, is when I’m supposed to submit an outline for a documentary, and possibly hand in an article or two for GameAxis.

On top of this, there is the Wife’s big thing.

It would seem in Singapore that there is a belief that there are only two kinds of visual artists; the Artist, and the Graphic Designer. The Wife has gotten into conversations where she’s mentioned she’s an illustrator and people have NO idea what she’s talking about. Then she says that she draws pictures, and the person she’s speaking to says, “Oh, so you’re an artist.” Then she says no, because it’s not artwork that appears in galleries, it’s stuff that goes in companies and magazines, and they say, “OH! So you’re a graphic designer!” and she has to explain that graphic designers don’t do pictures specifically, and it’s usually at this point the conversation breaks down completely and she’s left with an intense desire to find a large, heavy dictionary, preferably made of gold brick, and hurl it at whoever she’ s speaking to with the page open to “I”.

The result is, she got fed up and since there’s an exhibition of design going on in Singapore, she threw her hat in and proposed to the governing body of the exhibition that they should have something about professional illustrators since it seems that most people in Singapore are unaware the occupation exists. They thought this was a fine idea, and now she’s going nuts trying to keep it running smoothly for the big debut at the end of November.

So I am organizing stuff for her, since I can’t draw to save my life, and have thus contributed by writing artist’s bios (Artists don’t like to write, it would appear) and create forms with lists of artwork and such for the organizers to refer to.

Which is what I should be doing now, and so I will.

More Gaming Goodness

As things settle back into work, more work, and still more work (But now with a Wife instead of a Fiance) I find myself sitting down and playing one of the most beauitful games I’ve ever experienced. I actually ran into it at my favorite gaming store while showing Aerin around, and strongly resisted the urge to let her lend me money to buy it. Then later in the evening when I met the Wife, I told her ‘IT’S HERE!” and she flipped out and we ended up buying it anyway.

It’s called Shadow of the Colossus.

If you’re any kind of serious gamer, you’ve been hearing about this game for months. The magazines have been raving about it, anyone that got a chance to play it at E3, or the Tokyo Game Show went nuts, and now it’s available to the public at large, and I have to say, THE GAME LIVES UP TO THE HYPE.

First off, I have to reccommend this to the Jaded Gamers. You know who you are. You buy every game knowing you’re going to beat it in a matter of a handful of hours, you’ve seen–and trashed–every boss and final boss you’ve ever encountered, you’ve figured out attack patterns on shooters, you’ve got your combos down in fighting games and you are getting to the point where you are bored senseless with games and wondering if there’s anything you HAVEN’T seen anymore. Well you haven’t seen THIS game.

I don’t know whether I’d call it full on by the word or not, but so far, THIS game comes the closest to approaching Art as any I’ve ever seen. There is almost a luminous, palpable quality to the ambience of the game world, the art direction itself is empty, monolithic and beautiful, with spare landscapes punctuated by the ruins of massive construction from some ancient civilization. But the way the shadows play out, the mist clearing in the distance as you approach, even the quality of sunlight changing as the clouds pass and the wind picks up, all of this puts you into this dead, quiet world in a way few games have ever achieved.

The goal is simple and stated right at the beginning of the game. A girl who is important to you is dead. You place her on the altar in a massive, ancient, cathedral like space and a booming voice tells you that if you wish to restore her to life, you must defeat 16 giant beasts that are half organic, half giant statue. And that’s the game. It’s all about 16 titanic boss fights, each one more spectacular than the last.

It seems simplistic, but the atmosphere, music, sound, animation and intensity of the playing “Jack The Giant Killer” bring this game to a whole new level of sucking you in and making you forget the world. It’s really difficult to describe the experience of playing Shadow of the Colossus, except to say that if you ever wanted to see what it was like to live in a fairy tale of sorts, this would be it. This thing bleeds talent, passion and originality at every turn, and if you’re sick to death of another rehash of a GTA/FPS/RPG/Stealth game and want to see something NEW, then this is IT. If you’re a veteran gamer, this will make you feel like you’ve seen a video game for the first time again.

And if you’re not a veteran gamer, you’ll look at it and go “Neat!” and probably want to play it…

The After Action Report

Okay, now that things have calmed down somewhat…

So. I am married. Whoo hoo.

The wedding night (Since it took place in the evening) was for the most part, the kind of wedding I’ve always wanted to attend, but thus far, haven’t; small, intimate, and surrounded by friends with a nice ambience, good food, lots of conversation, and no hordes and hordes of relatives, strangers, and co-workers, cousins, vague acquaintances that I was only remotely familiar with. The ceremony itself took place in our actual hotel room, which was a suite at the previously mentioned Gallery Hotel. The only people in attendance besides me and the then Fiance were her immediate family–consisting of her mother, father and younger sister–my friend Aerin, who flown in from Canada to see the wedding and see a country she’d never been to before, and Eugene, a friend of mine who–in tandem with the Fiance’s mom–was acting as witness. And of course the guy that presided over the ceremony itself, the Solemnizer.

The ceremony was brief and relaxed, and I think it may have barely grazed past the seven minute mark. I didn’t bother with writing vows (The mercenary part of me figured since I wasn’t being paid to, why bother…) and so we just fell back on the standard vows the Solemnizer had on hand with the usual sickness, health, richer and poorer clauses, and then there were the “I dos” the kissing of the bride, and that was that. It was over and time for the inevitable round of pictures. My new mother-in-law hugged me and I could hear the choke in her voice as she said, “Take care of her.”

After that, the wedding party left the hotel and crossed the street for the book cafe where exactly one guest of the 20 invited had already shown up and claimed a seat. Eugene and the Wife’s family comprised a sizeable chunk of the other guests, with a few friends on both my side and the wife’s to fill it out. The Book Cafe has an area with couches and coffee tables which they’d cordoned off for us, and then the “light supper” we’d ordered started to arrive and we realized there was nothing light about it. It was good food and there was lots of it, a fact that some of the guests bemoaned as they’d read “light supper” on the invitation and so had gotten something to eat in the meantime, thus depriving themselves of valuable stomach space with which to stuff obscenely stuff themselves. C’est la vie.

It was a totally cool reception. The Wife and I flitted to the appropriate tables to talk to our various friends, and the tininess of the event really made it a lot of fun. It’s nice to know everyone there, and mostly have everyone know everybody else. And the few people on my side that didn’t know each other were sufficiently conversant in gaming anyway that they quickly bridged the gap and became friends fast as the inevitable topic of World of Warcraft came up, and they found common ground. But as all good things must, this came to an end, and we retired to our hotel room for the night.

The days since then have mostly been us playing tour guide for Aerin. So far we’ve subjected her to the Esplanade (Or as I like to call it, the Bug Eyes), the central business district, the shopping district of Orchard Road, our own neighborhood, which is going through Ramadan right now, the Singapore zoo, and even the SPCA and a columbarium (For those of you that don’t know what that is, it’s a “graveyard” for the ashes of the cremated).

Things are getting kind of busy now again though. The Wife now has an exhibition at the Singapore Design convention to oversee, I’m wrapping my mini-series, starting on an animated series, and getting involved in another documentary, we are moving very shortly, and there’s still the little matter of putting in her application for Canadian permanent residency.

All in all, a happy and productive last week. Except that I didn’t start on a new novel, but oh well…

Right On Schedule

Not only was October 19th our official wedding anniversary, it is also (Not so coincidentally, since I engineered it that way to have fewer dates to remember) the day we officially became a couple, and the day I proposed to the wife.

True to form, as our third year came and went, so too did our annual Kitten In Dire Need Of Rescue arrive. We found it in the middle of the sidewalk along the strip of bars and “massage parlors” while taking Aerin out for some food. The hookers, pimps and johns were all ignoring it as it sat there and mewed pathetically, so we delayed our supper and brought it back home, wiped it down, fed it and put it in a box. We are now bringing it down to the SPCA so someone can take a look at it, ’cause it seems sick. It’s eyes are encrusted with some goo, and it’s left eye will occasionally shut and stay that way for a while.

Oh well, off to save the kitten…

The Christian War

It finally occurred to me today what Christian soldiers really need to do in order to be ideologically consistent with their faith and still go about conquering every heathen culture they encounter in order to save them from burning in hell by killing them en masse in the name of God.

Before the start of every battle, you simply have to shout out the Golden Rule, ie, “DO UNTO OTHERS AS YOU WOULD HAVE DONE UNTO YOU!”

Then the soldiers proceed to punch themselves in the face, shoot their own limbs, or stab/amputate their own extremeties, thus making it perfectly okay to attack the enemy and do exactly the same thing to them, as they have now put their money (Or weapon) where their mouth is.

See, that makes sense, right?