At last: Atlas Shrugged The Movie!

I could not be more excited. It's a movie I've been waiting to see for at least 5 years. And it finally arrives April 15, 2011!


IMDB info:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0480239/

and the trailer:
http://www.atlas-shrugged-movie.com/atlas-shrugged-movie-trailer/

Having loved the book and waited 5 years for the movie, I'll probably be disappointed. It has cheese potential coming out its arse for about 80 different reasons. And frankly, with a limited budget and the tortured way the movie came to be it might not even make it to a local theater. Still, I'm stoked.

Now if only we could get The Dark Tower series into production.

1000 & 1 Things - almost literally

That's what it feels like, anyway.

There is so much to do at this point. I won't bore you with the entire list, but here's a representative samep of the interesting stuff:

- I'm editing-reading my sister's novel,
- keeping in mind that mine has to be done, probably before the triplets
- gathering baby stuff for the triplets,
- caring for R. who is doing well but is exhausted and starting to get large and who needs to rest as much as possible,
- checking into day cares,
- investigating Nannies who might come to the house
- finishing the bedroom (it's essentially done, though not yet furnished)
- financial planning, which is always busy this time of year but more so with triplets
- playing 2 hours or so of Fallout: New Vegas per day
- walking the dog
- general house stuff
- reading about Buddhism, which I'm really enjoying and might have a post on shortly

All that said, I realize I haven't posted here in almost a month. I've considered creating a triplets website to document our journey. The reality is that once the triplets are here, I probably won't have time for both, so I'm not sure. I'd like to keep one alive to document what I'm doing, keep in touch with certain people and have a place where I can have a dialogue with myself, but who knows.

Better Bryan '11

A month late, but thankfully timeliness isn't one of the goals.

In fact, I'm not sure there are any solid goals at all. I had intended on having two (1 + 1 equating to 11 and not wanting to have 11 after last year's 10).

But now I have not one, not two, but three kids on the way. My entire childbearing activities done in one shot. So I have the usual child-prep work times 3, not to mention the financial planning and strain that will cause. Because frankly, we planned and worked and put ourselves in a place where we could easily handle one and could do two. Three at once is another whole game.

I'm stressed about one thing or three just about any minute of the day and any day of the week. It's draining my energy to make posts here, I know that.

So I think just getting through the next six or so months is goal enough.

I never assist slavers

Yesterday's post got me thinking about the way I play video games. I thought I had posted on this before, but I couldn't find anything on it, so here goes:

No matter my intentions going into a game, I always play the "good" guy.

I play a lot of games that permit choice - you can rob, kill, help out the bad guys, or run errands to help a town whose water supply is poisoned, a person held captive or cursed, what have you. Pretty much no matter the setting - outer space, post-apocalypse Washington, New Vegas, or mythical land - I choose to help out the good guys. Sometimes I do it with a gruff attitude and with little leeway for what my character will put up with and little remorse for negative consequences, but I almost always chose to try to help. Sometimes I'm what you might call a reluctant good guy, but I'm always what you would call - I think - a good guy.

- I never assist slavers. In fact I relish in wiping them out.
- I never provide comfort the the bad guys. I don't always actively wipe them out (until they turn actively hostile), but I don't help them.
- I usually donate money to the poor, and though I usually suspect there is some "in game" angle, I do so even when there isn't an obvious end game in the game.

This isn't to toot my own horn. I actually think the behavior cuts both ways - its a pro and a con, in other words. It shows both what is best and what is worst about me. And sometimes, it reflects the moral black and whiteness that composes the gray of my real life, as it did with Boone. Because although he had murdered woman and children, he regretted it now and I took him on as an ally. I helped him kill the person who sold his wife into slavery (the laws of good and bad are a little loose in post-apocalyptic worlds missing a court system, in my estimation). I genuinely wanted to help him wipe out the Legion who had taken his wife. And I was sorry to see him die.

And its not just companions in general - I got a second, a robot, and lost him in the first mission with little remorse. I'm now on my third companion, mostly because I know want a companion in tow. Partly for the company, partly for the help carrying stuff and partly because I'd like to replace Boone. But she's kind of annoying.

Another example: I freed some slaves from the first batch of Legion I happened upon. Boone was in tow, though I had stowed him away up on a cliff. This was both to prevent him from dying in a battle against unknown forces and also benefited his style. But as the family fled a soldier I missed started shooting at them. I killed him, but not before he took out the mother. That broke my heart and I kicked myself for it. I couldn't find the other two, so I assume they got away. But I honestly wished I could have protected her.

It's an interesting psychological study, I think. Or maybe I just don't get out enough.

Boone has died

... and with those words I had a very weird experience.

Boone, I should explain, was a companion in the game Fallout III: New Vegas. He had been with me for about half of the game at that point. He was quiet and personal and conflicted: not only had he participated in slaughter as a military man, his wife had been sold to slavers and he killed her to save her. His was a sad story of regret, loss and the resulting demons.

My affection for him was heightened because he had helped me out of several tight spots in the game and I gave him all the scavenged stuff to carry, effectively doubling my carrying capacity.

But then I made a bad decision and we ended up in the middle of a pack of wild dogs. Close combat where Boone's sniper rifle skills amounted to very little help. And then he was dead. And I was actually a little moved. Not to tears; I wasn't really sad. But I certainly felt a sense of loss. I felt enough that I ceremoniously dropped a hat he had given me with his corpse and placed his sniper rifle in an unused locker in the shack I use as home base. Then I took a moment and moved on. He had just gotten finished telling me that he felt bad things were due him because of the bad things he had done. I guess he was correct.