G-pinions

I spent quite a while yesterday repairing an old board game I played in my youth called Hero Quest. It's a game with a board that looks like a dungeon, and a bunch of little plastic figures, goblins and furniture. I won't go into the details of the game right now, because it's not the point of this post (maybe Dan will explain it in the comments if i'm lucky), but suffice to say, it kicks a lot of ass. And it was released in 1989. The four main characters you can choose from are a Barbarian (a "tank" of sorts), an Elf (decent at melee, but can still use magic), a Dwarf (good at fighting, can do some other shit too), and a Wizard (who has a weak defense and physical offense, but has plenty of magic attacks, all of which are based on various elements). I can only assume D&D has similar character classes, and about a million more, and it's been around for a fuck of a long time. I'm sure you can appreciate where i'm going with this. The character archetypes in these "nerd's games of choice" have been around for-fucking-ever, and to say that C.O.Norrath is ripping of off Diablo is ignoring decades of hard-earned nerdness. And just plain silly, you silly silly goose.

So I finally watched The Ring tonight; great stuff. I'm now having trouble walking to the bathroom, I fully expect scary TV water to be pooling everywhere. The difference in cinematic quality between this film and nearly every other horror/suspense i've ever seen is shocking. And this is from the same guy (him, not me) who directed Pirates of the Caribbean, which was fairly straightforwardly made (even though it too was great but for very different reasons). So, check that shit out if you haven't seen it. Although I suspect I was like the last person in the country to see it, kind of like Sixth Sense (which 50 First Dates gives away the ending to, for whatever fucking stupid reason).

Metal!