Bitscape - May 31, 2006

...And Life Goes On...

The words I write seem mundane in comparison with the photo. It feels as if there should be some words of majestic poetry to accompany it. Alas, that particular muse is not with me right now.

Last weekend, the Megafest at the Mideast Base came and went. As far as Megafests go, it seemed to be fairly low key, although maybe that was just my perception of things. I had a couple of good discussions with Nemo (whose frequency of web posting I seem to be slowly approaching), we played some Settlers of Catan, as well as a new card game called Illuminati (the play mechanics of which I found quite tedious, although many of the cards did have high amusement value).

Movie voting happened, although much of that part occurred in my absence.

(And no, I didn't regret momentarily deserting the festors for three hours to go hang out at the club. In addition to the always energizing music of DJ Blac, there were some seriously good vibes floating my way in that place that night. How else can one explain the experience of being administered a "sobriety test" by a pair of strange girls that involved a nice hard smack to the ass? My ass, that is. No offense guys, but I just don't think it would quite have the same effect coming from Jaeger or Yanthor. That was but one highlight of the club that evening.)

... As for actually watching the movies that were voted on... well... not so much. That's not to say there weren't movies being watched during the fest. In fact, I watched a few myself. But rather than getting together as a whole group and watching the top movies from the list, people would sporadically go to their individual computers and watch whatever movies they felt like at a given moment, sometimes in groups of two or three.

Advantages of this approach: People got to see the movies they actually wanted to see (presumably), instead of settling for some vaguely appealing thing that rose to the top by virtue of being vaguely appealing to everyone else.

Disadvantages: There is something to be said for getting together as a whole group to watch a movie. That didn't really happen this time.

Exception: We did all go together to the theater to see the X-Men movie. It was entertaining in many regards, though I wouldn't consider it a masterpiece by any stretch. Tim's thoughts about the movie echo my own, to a large extent.

And of course, there were lots of fun cooking projects. The duration of the event turned out to be just long enough for everyone to cook roughly one meal. How did we all get to be such a bunch of aspiring chefs, anyway?

Well, since I did happen to have my camera along, here's a few photos from the fest as well.