Do you know what an Easter Egg is? I don't mean dyed hard-boiled eggs, or Cadbury eggs, or things like that. I mean little hidden goodies on dvds (and cds and video games sometimes). They're amazingly fun! The Housekarl first alerted me to their existence when the third Lord of the Rings extended edition came out. But then the site mom of the place where I post my fanfic told me there were some on the first two LotR extendeds too, and that there are Easter Eggs on other dvds too. Some of them are lame, but some are brilliant! The Kieth Richards interview on Pirates of the Caribbean is particularly adorable...

Anyway, here are a few sites that tell you how to access Easter Eggs on various dvds. Happy hunting!

Hidden Features
Easter Egg Archive
DVD Dungeon

My writing process is a coffeemaker. The little bits of ideas for a story are the coffee grounds, and I dump them into my brain, where my hot-water imagination flows into the ideas, initially just mixing with them and percolating, getting the ideas to mix together and get warm and tasty. Then slowly the story itself starts to drip out, leaving the idea-grounds behind and forming a pot of steaming story. When other people drink in my story, they can add their own cream and sugar if they want to, bringing their own perspectives and preconceived ideas with them, or they can just imbibe it fresh and black--undiluted and potent.

I watched two amazing movies this 'weekend', and I've got to blather on about them for a bit...

First, Equilibrium. Whooo! That one blew my socks off! (At least, it would have if I'd been wearing socks when I watched it; I was barefoot, however, as usual) It's like taking the basic premise of Fahrenheit 451 and tossing it into a Matrix-style setting. And with Christian Bale and Sean Bean, how can you miss? Not nearly enough Sean Bean for my taste, but at least for once he wasn't completely eeeeeeeeevil. And okay, the religious references were a bit overt (what with a character called 'the Father', people called 'clerics', and that reference to the 'opiate of the masses'...). But still, it was a totally energizing romp. Thank you, Rescue Ranger (aka The Banana Stalker) for recommending it to me!

Second, Ordinary People. Oh my word! Timothy Hutton is gut-wrenchingly amazing! The dude was like 19 or 20, and he was acting more intensely than most 'grown up' actors ever ever ever do! No wonder he got the Oscar that year--I'm surprised they even nominated anyone else. To some of you young squirts reading this who have never even heard of this movie, let me say that I think Matt Damon and Ben Affleck watched Ordinary People a lot before writing Good Will Hunting. Robin William's character in the latter is especially reminiscent of Judd Hirsch's in the former, right down to those saggy blue-grey sweaters.

Hooray! My latest piece of fanfic has finally been posted on the Purple Hearts site! It's called "Searching", and it's a crossover between Combat! and Angel. Unlike my previous crossover, "Bulletproof", this one takes place in the world of Angel. So if you want to, surf on over and check that out ;-)

Also, I've started a new blog, which I call Hamlette's Other Soliloquy. It's just a dumping ground for poetry and stuff that I want to have handy for referencing. Stuff I'm sick of googling for over and over, but don't feel like keeping on my harddrive, basically. Plus, gave me an excuse to get a livejournal account too so I can interact with a bunch of my friends' blogs better...