-(27/June/2004): Anyone even thinking of seeing Michael Moore's propaganda film
"Farenheit 9/11" should read this article first. And Hitchens is a leftist.

-(21/May/2004): Our Prime Minister this week repeated a comment he'd made before to an
interviewer: no music made after the turn of the century is worth listening to. And he means 1900 here, people. You have to admire his convictions...not only is that filthy rock-and-roll music worthless, but so is country, blues, jazz, swing, big band, folk...heck anything not made with a harpsicord and a lute. What an odd fellow Paul Martin is! And he told this to a CBC interviewer. That's right, CBC, the network whose pretentious personalities frequently ask guests "so, what's your favorite jazz song?" I'm with Paul on that one.

-(28/April/2004): Amazon just recommended that I buy Depeche Mode's The Singles
1986-98. Uhhh...no thanks, I'd like to listen to their good music, if that's okay.

-(25/April/2004): ...and I thought I was excited about Stephen R. Donaldson's upcoming
Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant series. Check out these people!

-(18/April/2004): I saw Kill Bill Volume 2 and Scooby Doo 2 this week. The former was
inferior to its predecessor. The latter was mediocre...which means it was much, much superior to its predecessor.

-(14/April/2004): Nothing much going on. Just wanted to update the page for the Easter
season. I'm swamped with work now that I'm once again teaching grade 12 physics (that's "twelfth grade physics", for my two American friends, and any others who may be surfing by).

-(19/Mar/2004): The Temple of New Wave and the Heroics page have been updated.

-(17/Mar/2004): It's Saint Patrick's Day. Why aren't you drinking yet?

-(13/Mar/2004): Go see The Passion Of The Christ if you haven't already.

-(29/Feb/2004):  Stephen R. Donaldson is about to publish book one of "The Last
Chronicles of Thomas Covenant"! Click here to read why he's my favorite author and why many critics and literary types agree he is the most important fantasy writer of our time.

-(17/Feb/2004): This just about says it all. It's a nifty little manifesto that keeps turning up around the net. The original author is unknown.

-(08/Feb/2004): Hey! I need your help. I cleaned out my hard drive this morning and found
the following unfinished pieces of writing. Which one should I continue? Let me know.

-(07/Feb/2004): The Temple of New Wave has been updated! Go check it out. Now.

-(05/Feb/2004): Survivor All Stars is great. Love Richard's solo speeches to the camera. I hope he wins it all again.

-(30/Dec/2003): Yes, that's right, folks. It's time once again for...

Jeremy Sumpter plays the title role this time, and does a credible job as the boy who wouldn't grow up (although he's no Robin Williams). Jason Isaacs plays Hook, and, although he's no Dustin Hoffman, he does adequately bring the villain to life. Ludavine Sagnier - who's no Julia Roberts - portrays Tinkerbell with a more mischievous bent than I was expecting. Richard Briers is underused as Smee, although he's no Bob Hoskins in any event.

The movie is directed by P.J. Hogan, who's no Steven Spielberg.

-(16/Dec/2003):

"WE GOT HIM!" There were no sweeter words. One down, one to go.

-(03/Aug/2003): Here's what Eddie Vega, a mentalist who has studied both oriental and
hindu occult techniques, has to say about magician David Blaine and his levitation trick.

'David Blaine can actually levitate. It's not a trick, he can do it. I know exactly how he does it, moreover with proper training, anyone can do it. There is a problem though. The only way that David can do it is by using the life energy of those that are watching him. I believe David is a master energy vampire. He can mesmerize and manipulate people up close and personal and has no qualms about doing so. This is not fair to spectators, as he uses an age-old trick to get command of their life energy. Here's how it goes:

'He asks "Do you want to see something cool?" then he touches or moves toward the person or group and repeats the question, he then backs off and adds "can I show you?", "can I show you?" and says "check this out," "check this out," "watch this," "watch this." By this time all or most of the spectators have agreed internally to take part, and David has already invaded their energy field. He then commences a massive transfer of energy from the spectators to himself. At this point the audience is in momentary shock and completely defenseless to the energy depletion. In a trance state, he literally floods himself with with the collected energy and in a timeless moment he uses the surge of energy to levitate, and has more than enough power to complete the takeoff. Evidence of these events can be clearly seen in his video-taped presentations of levitation.  He can remain suspended momentarily according to a number of factors including but not limited to the number of people present, the time of day, the season, the specific audience present, its collective energy output potential, and the location.

'This trick is one David would probably not want to perform in a large crowd. A large crowd may contain individuals like myself that would recognize what he was doing and resist. This has dire consequences for David: he would surely collapse and possibly become seriously injured if a powerful mind prepared with defense mechanisms were to percieve his energy borrowing as an attack and retaliate. This happened to him in his recent video. He was in Greenwich Village and one of the spectators was wise to his system. David fell and threw up, got very confused and scared as he came out of his trance.  I believe he injured himself a bit.'

                                                                         Excerpt from "The Simple Explanation Of A Complex Concept"
                                                                         By Edward Vega (edited slightly for clarity)
                                                                         VRN / Multiaxiom Inc (Web)
                                                                          November 27, 2002

Anyone have an opinion on this they'd like to share?

-(31/Jul/2003): Ok, I haven't seen this idea anywhere yet, so let's call it original. Here's how they could have made Pirates of the Caribbean better.

   They try to build up the Black Pearl as some sort of legendary, ghostly ship - but it's only been doing its thing for a few years. Similarly, how can we feel like its crew is cursed with a fate worse than death...when they've been cursed for five years or so? This problem is due to the fact that they needed Depp to be the original captain. To which I say...why? The movie would be much better, in my opinion, had Depp's Jack Sparrow not had anything to do with the Black Pearl. Make the Black Pearl 200+ years old. Make Orlando Bloom's character the great-great-great grandson of Bootstrap Bill. Maybe ol' Bootstrap sent the gold medallion to some long-dead relative, and it slowly made its way down to Will Turner over a period of hundreds of years. After all, Cortez destroyed the South American natives in the 1500s, not the swashbuckling 1700s.
    Maybe Jack Sparrow is just a pirate captain who's down on his luck, needs a ship, and decides to go take the legendary Black Pearl. What kind of loony would purposely set out to steal the ship from a crew of undead pirates? How cool would that lunatic be? The fact that it used to be his ship is unneccessary. Plus it causes the problem of why the 30-something Sparrow has a 60-something first mate like Barbossa. Then again, Depp chose Mr. Gibbs as his new first mate, so maybe he just likes to have old guys to boss around.
    Anyway I think detaching Sparrow from the Pearl would let the filmmakers really set up how legendary this ship is - it's been around for centuries, etc. I'd feel a lot more for the poor cursed pirates if they were suffering for more than a few years. Some of the material would have to be reworked, but the underlying plotlines could be very similar (Will Turner still struggling with the 'pirate blood' in his veins, the undead crew still needing his blood as the only living Turner, etc...). Barbossa could even still strand Jack on the island (the second time), although the first time he does it would have to be edited out. I think it would make the character of Sparrow that much more crazy to want to take the Pearl if it didn't originally belong to him.
    I guess the only thing that would have to be junked is the "one shot" in his gun...although they could even keep this by having him say "I'm saving this shot for the legendary Captain Barbossa", etc.

    Cool movie, though. In my summer top 3.

-(27/Jul/2003): Hey people! I'm up to about page 35 in my fantasy novel, Cloudtop Keep.
And on another topic altogether, here are my top summer movies of 2003.

1) The Matrix Reloaded.
2) (tie)Terminator 3 / Pirates of the Caribbean.
3) Bruce Almighty.
4)blah! Everything else either sucked (Charlie's Angels 2, Dumb and Dumber 2), I avoided it like the plague (Bad Boys 2, Tomb Raider 2) or both (Hulk). Still want to see League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, though, despite what I've heard.

And, for the record, I haven't seen Finding Nemo yet. I did see (and didn't like) X-Men 2.

-(01/Jul/2003): Ah, yes. You know you've made it in life when you appear on your very own Spellfire card. Sweet. For autographed copies, email me.

-(28/Jun/2003): I'm thinking about posting a chapter of my fantasy story a week up on the web page. What do you think of that idea? Say, every Friday during July & August. I think it would really keep my feet to the fire when it comes to writing. By the way, the book's working title is Cloudtop Keep. I'll post a link to the page when I start.

-(27/Jun/2003): Updated the site a bit. Got even more hero and villain templates for the RPG up. You know where to go to find Heroics stuff by now, right? You can also check out my DVD collection.

-(24/Jun/2003): As the school year winds down, I'm looking forward to working on some long-delayed projects during my down-time. Yes, i'm talking about Heroics, as well as an unnamed fantasy novel idea I've been kicking around.  Check the Heroics page for more on the game...I'm going to post up some new superheroes complete with powers and abilities. More stuff to come.

-(09/Jun/2003): My favorite movie of all time is "Ghostbusters". What's yours and why? Send me an email and tell me, and I'll print any letters I get here in the near future. There are at least three or four people who read this webpage from time to time. You know who you are; I expect to hear back. That's it for today, I'm off to watch game seven of the Stanley Cup final.

-(06/Jun/2003): The trailer for "Dumb and Dumberer" is fairly funny. That guy really looks like Jim Carrey as Lloyd Christmas. I don't know what's scarier, the fact that there are actual Jim Carrey lookalikes out there, or the fact that they are apparently also working in show business. Maybe there should be a Jim Carrey lookalike in every major motion picture. Imagine, you're watching Star Wars: Episode III, and suddenly 'Darth Ventura' pops onto the screen. And he's totally CGI!

-(17/May/2003): Saw 'The Matrix Reloaded' last night. Unbelieveable...simply awesome. Need to see it again as soon as humanly possible.

-(10/May/2003): Changed the graphics again. Watching hockey...Ducks vs. Wild. I'm outta here, 2nd OT is starting!

-(01/May/2003): Updated Overlooked Album and the graphics (Mohammed Saed al-Sahaf...I miss him already. Is he stewing in some US prisoner of war camp yet? We can only hope).

-(25/Apr/2003): Popped in for a minute and puttered around a bit. Nothing major.

-(01/Apr/2003): Updated stuff. Been incredibly busy lately. No, for those of you who keep asking, Heroics is not finished yet (not by a long shot). Afraid you'll just have to wait.

-(10/Mar/2003): Heroics is coming! Think of it as Extreme Heroes II. Keep watching the EH page for more.

-(06/Mar/2003): Updated the Homepage and Temple of New Wave.

-(23/Feb/2003): Added "Overlooked Album" and other stuff.

-(18/Feb/2003): Updated Homepage and Temple for the first time in months.

-(03/Dec/2002): Comic-book movies are all the rage now, with X-Men a hit, the upcoming Daredevil and Hulk movies, and of course Batman and Superman planning cinema comebacks. I've been reading comics for about 20 years, so I thought I'd list some of my favorite comic book heroes and villains here.

-(03/Oct/2002): My super hero role playing game (RPG), Extreme Heroes, is now available online. Files are in Word format and can be downloaded/viewed here.

-(3/Jan/2001): ForRisk ramblings, click here.

-(30/Nov/2000): For some of my favorite movies, click here.

-(13/Sept/2000): My personal factsheet is here. I update it from time to time.