More Stuff In The Mail

I’m quickly beginning to realize that internet and credit card access pretty much connects you to whatever toys you’re into, without necessitating you having to live in a big city with access to all the amenities provided by metropolia on that scale. To whit; despite the fact that Suspect Video and Beguiling are just a few blocks away, the winter weather still makes a leisurely stroll down to these areas unappealing at best.

However, thanks to Amazon and other mail order services, it’s all pretty much irrelevant. There’s no particular drama for me, though the Wife continues to be thwarted in her attempts to get her scanner. Today, her laser printer arrived–a big ol’ thing weighing in at 60 pounds–despite the fact that she ordered that much later, so I suspect if a few more days goes by and the scanner doesn’t turn up, she’s going to bite the bullet and order it again, hoping this time it’ll actually survive the trip.

On my end, I was messing with my new toys, the first things I’ve ever ordered with my very own credit card. The big one was a movie I’ve been meaning to watch for the last few years since the Wife first mentioned it. It’s a precursor to the Japanese horror ambassadors like The Ring and Juon, and this one was called Kairo, which–surprise, surprise–got recently remade into an American horror film called Pulse. The story (and in particular the continuity, with people suddenly appearing in different clothes for no apparent reason and no perceptible jump in time) was disjointed, but on eof the things that seriously creeped me out about this movie was a serious use of dark and camera movement to creep you out. There were no long haired ghosts crawling around in this one, and none of the typical jump scares or gore as typified by American horror. Instead, the film relied on causing excruciating amounts of tension by letting you see shadows and things moving here and there, but rarely letting you actually see anything. Basically the director relied on the truism “It’s what you DON’T see that scares” to in order to achieve his goal, and it worked.

I now also have the Southpark movie (something else that was, you guessed it, illegal in Singapore!) and will be viewing it shortly. It’s terribly appropriate to be watching this film now, considering its plot. My only opportunity to watch it in Singapore, years ago, was aborted by the fact that it was on an extremely bad pirate copy burned to CD, and the disc jammed up about a half hour into the movie, so this will be a much more pleasant viewing experience.

And the IGN assignment is tentatively on. I’ll have to see about more details and nail down deadlines and the exact scope of the job, but I told “I’m interested” and they said, “Great,” so I guess it’s on.