The Last Candle

I like Akira Kurosawa’s films. A lot. So much that I have little doubt that I’ll likely own my own library of Kurosawa’s written and directed films (about 30 of ‘em, roughly) in the near future.

But not the too-near future, as the films are only really acceptable as released by the Criterion Collection…and each film as part of the Criterion Collection costs roughly $30 apiece.

Take Rashomon, for instance: Amazon’s price is 32 bucks. Kagemusha: $36. Even the ultimate classic Seven Samurai will set the discerning viewer back 30 bones. Kurosawa’s lesser known films don’t escape the heft, as Red Beard is a cool $36, although The Bad Sleep Well misses the bloat slightly at $27. And so on, and so forth.

But you can’t put a price on greatness.

Alright, maybe you can — especially if you belong to the Criterion Committee or whoever the heck makes these things. But let’s get something straight: I think these films are all worth the somewhat exhorbitant cost.

My complaint is largely about how Kurosawa fans must weep, as I will weep, when they’re confronted with the cost needed to collected together all of these classics. There’s one or two bundles out there, such as the 4 Samurai Classics collection, which lowers the cost of buying each DVD separately by about $20 total. But for everything else: hunker down, and pony up.

I know I will be. But yeesh!

Bruce Dickinson, having already conquered the metal world in the 80’s as frontman to Iron Maiden, now has set his sight on a new conquest: the skies. As a professional pilot, that is.

Not bad, Bruce. Not bad at all!

Hark: A new member of the Jansen family — that is, the family of my sister Becky and bro-in-law Dan, and young handsome nephew Charlie — has begun a happy life!

Welcome to the world, Alice Aileen Jansen! You chose a great place to hop into the world.

As your uncle, I promise that you’ll get your share of Miyazaki films and video games in the future, much like another Jansen youngster.

(More information, pictures later if I get ‘em.)

Yesterday and today have been noticably different. Namely, I’ve been at home almost all day, both days, instead of being at work giving Nebraskian and Hawaiian tax law a heavy working-over.

What elicited this change for the past two days? Here’s a hint:

Thanks, Monday night stormin’!

Actually, the above assertion is not exactly correct. A third of the business has power, but the other two-thirds, including the part I work in, is getting just enough power to allow the flourescent lights to flicker like semi-active bug zappers. No computers; no vending machine snacks; and no air conditioning. And no employees. And no Nebraska tax law development.

There must have been some sort of divine intervention involved with this spontaneous two-day vacation, because my replacement power supply was due back yesterday, and that means the main computer would return to life, and that means: after a one month delay, it was time to play The Great RPG, Oblivion.

After the PSU died mysteriously on its own one sad evening way back whenever, I suspected that a faulty powerplant was the cause of my previous hard-lock game problems when doing any kind of modern-day 3D rendering. Before the PSU up and died miserably, Oblivion, Half-Life 2, and pretty much any other modern 3D application would hard lock the OS when the 3D rendering began.

I didn’t have a good idea where to start troubleshooting…until the PSU went kaput. “Ah ha!” I exclaimed. “Bad power supply versus power-hungry PCI-Express card. Thar she be, error o’ computer o’ mine!”

And off went the dead ‘supply, back to Antec. One month passed (note: while Antec’s products are generally solid, their customer support is not), and after 30 days of semi-patient waiting, the replacement arrived. Then, yesterday, on a work-less Tuerday, the replacement was installed, the OS booted up, and I enjoyed the benefits of fast computing again, finally saved from the 750 MHz midget I’ve been using for the past four weeks…

But Oblivion and Half-Life 2 still crash, same as before. Damn.

Next suspect: the video card.

I gotta say, this was an exciting box to open up:

The Alphabet of Manliness is written by this brazen fellow and is as blatant and over-the-top as the cover looks, as well as being consistently obscene and usually offensive. It is also hilarious.

DragonForce is not the new power metal group on the block, but they’ve almost propelled themselves to the best in about two albums’ time. This English troupe is a riotous mix of Gamma Ray (except dealing with typical fantasy stuff instead of space and time and Egypt), Hammerfall (except actually sounding good), and a touch of Sonata Arctica for the melodies and frantic harmonizing. Except, DragonForce takes all of those pieces, amplifies and speeds them up by about fifty times, and cranks out the craziest, most frentic, most finely-tuned power metal I’ve ever heard. Here’s a bit of one of the songs from the latest album, Inhuman Rampage, pictured above (more available at the band’s MySpace page):

And to top it all off, I bought my first guitar capo this evening. Life is good.