Well, they caught the guy...

The gunman at my school? A former student. An MBA. Sixty-two years old, so it's not as if he were back for revenge against some prof who dinged him last year. He had worked at Case at some point, too; maybe there was something in his employment history that went wrong, I don't know. His name is Biswanath Halder. He wounded two people and killed a third.

The dead man's name is Norman Wallace; he was thirty, he was from Youngstown, Ohio. Norman was a graduate student. Older than me, but a graduate student still. I'd say 'go, Norman', but... ( Read more... )

On a lighter note: I've finished The Seventh Curse.

And it's really not all that bad.

There are two things you need to bear in mind about this movie before watching it. First of all, it's a horror movie, and a fairly low-budget one at that. If you're looking for an action flick with supernaturaly creepitude you're gonna be disappointed, but if you're looking for something more along the lines of Evil Dead you'll be much happier. There's no 'tree rape' scene in this; instead they've got what Dr. Freex referred to as a 'murder muppet'. It's. . . um. This slimy little fetus-looking thing with fangs and claws and a tail, only we're not talking a fun waggly tail, oh no, we're talking about what happens when a lamia gets drunk and bangs a giant scorpion. It's one of two major Supernatural Menaces in this movie, the other one being a mummified skeletonish kind of thing with a limited shapeshifting ability and pretty good kung fu for someone who's been dead a couple hundred years. They're both at least partly tied into an Evil Villain who really does sound like he's saying 'hee hee hee hee hee!' when he laughs, which I consider creepier than the murder muppet.

The other thing to remember is that this isn't a Chow Yun-Fat movie. He's in it, but he's a secondary character. The star is Chin Siu Ho, who's been in a number of films - he's the attractive apprentice in Mr. Vampire, Jet Li's antagonist in Twin Warriors, and Jet Li's competition for Head of School after master dies in Fist of Legend. I gotta say he's kind of... um, bland. He reminds me of tofu. He does a good job of filling up the space they put him into, but I don't get a whole lot of sense of involvement off him in any of his screen roles. I always wind up either locking onto the secondary characters or the other main characters, as they're generally a bit more interesting. He's not all that bad as the star, but in the end I was more interested in Dick Wei's character Heh Lung, as well as Chow's character (who gets to use a rocket launcher! Yay!).

Overall it's not a bad movie at all, if you're in the mood for cheapie horror. And unlike some movies I could mention, the secondary characters generally have enough sense to bring in either backup or BIG BADA BOOM when they go somewhere dangerous. Granted, it's usually to save the main character's butt, but still. Worth renting if you run across it. I dunno that I'd bother tracking it down again, but worth renting if you run across it.

Want a full review? http://www.stomptokyo.com/badmoviereport/7curse.html .

Vacation update

Prices for Alaska travel still screwy. Dunno if we crossed the magic time barrier when it became May or what, but a ticket that once cost $505 before taxes & fees is now $700ish (Tuesday-to-Tuesday, first two weeks of September). Current best price is about $688 from Alaska Air's own web site, which is rather lower than anything Orbitz will admit to.

Parents have said they'll give me money for part of this trip. For the past four years my prime Christmas present has been a three-weekend course at the Culinary Institute; this past Christmas, however, they told me they'd pay for part of a trip to China. I was happy, as you know, but then came SARS - hence AK. They're still going to give me the Christmas present money, but they're also giving me $$$ for my birthday - more than they're giving me for Christmas. Insofar as my ancient addition skills can tell, I'll have enough from them alone to pay for my ticket up there and most of my hostel time.

Right now I have about half of what they propose to give me in my vacation account, and am adding $50 a week to that. I'm going to buy my plane ticket as soon as they give me the money, regardless of whether prices are scheduled to drop any time soon - I'm paranoid that some Dreadful Event will happen and prices will soar despite scheduling concerns. After that, all the $$ goes towards first towards hostels, then towards food, and then towards activities. $80 for a day trip to Chena Hot Springs, $65 for scenic rafting in Denali - that adds up right quick, you know? So I'm glad of all this, I really am.

Still wish I were going to China, but given that my family refuses to listen to such arguments as 'if mountainspeak is a silent carrier of SARS just because she's from Toronto, then keeping her from visiting the house while my sister is home won't do any good anyway, because I'll just carry the Doom Virus back with me', I will be quite happy with Alaska. And I'll keep saving $50 a week as long as I can afford it, so that someday next year or something I can visit China.

... ... ..!

I got. A phone call. From my penpal.

The one in Wuhan. In mainland CHINA.

o.o

~.~

~.o

o.O

!.!

^^^--------------- roughly the sequence of facial expressions I went through when I realized that no, the slightly broken English on my CELLULAR PHONE was not in fact my friend Kin-Hon. (Cantonese ancestry, Malaysian born and raised, speaks Malay, something that I think is Fukien dialect, and a bit of mangled Mandarin - he's better at English than Mandarin. WAY better.)

That was quite possibly the absolute last thing I expected when I looked at my cellphone and saw 'Number Unavailable' on the Caller ID section of the display. I'd given him my cell # so that he could send text messages, but I'm not sure I can receive 'em. Either he tried and failed, or he just went straight to voice. He's really pretty good with spoken English - a bit more understandable than written - but I blanked out when he asked if I could speak any Chinese. All I could do was blurt 'wo bu jidao!'. At least my pronunciation was comprehensible to him...

Well, now. This is shaping up to be an interesting week already.