November-09-2009

It's funny, I haven't even been doing this comic thing for a week, and already i have a Lost Episode. I didn't think I'd cross the line of acceptability so quickly. It's not that it's any more foul than the other stuff I've made or posted, but there's two elements that really caused me some concern while I was making it. The first is the subject matter, it's really not funny in itself, it's based on the politics of an incident that happened recently. I thought it had a humorous end to it, but the joke doesn't quite outweigh the heavy feels on either side of the initial debate in the strip. The other problem is that when i told one of the two guys who I based the characters off of about it, he was less than thrilled. The reason that really deters me from posting it is becuase all of the other stuff I've showed him and told him about has all gotten a great reaction. I really make this guy look like an asshole in the comic, but he never cared until this particular strip, and I think that I agree with him on it. So I'm not gonna post it, but maybe down the road I'll show it as a lost episode, because more than anything it really skews the character that I've built up for him. It should also be noted that enough though there are only two comics posted, I've written and finished several already, so although my two readers haven't gotten the full picture of who these characters are yet, it's already been flushed out. go to war-gamers.com today!



November-08-2009

Well, it happened. i took some initiative and started my own web comic. For the first time in my life I have a .com site, and it features potty mouthed stick figures. It's truly a dream come true. Check out the new site, www.war-gamers.com.



November-06-2009



I've been experimenting with comics lately. I've been hand drawing some, but since my scanner isn't compatible with my operating system, I decided to channel my creative inspiration through the greatest digital art program ever created, MS Paint. Believe it or not, the character designs are the same as they are in my sketch pad, and not for lack of artistic skill, but instead for want of consistency and easy-on-the-eyes-ness.

This is one of the few, if not the first instance of a comic made by me, but not starring me. It's a bad habit I've had since i was a kid because most comics i make are based on my own experiences and reactions to those experiences. The characters in this comic are actually based on friends of mine, though they already don't act anything like their real-life counterparts, lol. I'd like to use their real names in the comic, but since i haven't actually revealed their digitized selves to them yet, I'll refrain from naming them untill i get their input. One thing I semi-forgot to do was put rank insgnia's on their shirts, since i'd like them to be in the Air Force (i have a long standing dislike of the only air force comic out there, and I'd like to make a more true-to-life one). But this is evolution time, so i'll base any changes on outside input and suggestions, which anyone reading should feel free to provide.

I think that a lot of the inspiration for this comic comes from what i feel in missing in other comics that I regularly read. I'm trying very hard not to repeat or copy any of those comics, though i have to wonder if anyone would care since there's comics like Frazz out there in national syndication. I must be really absorbed by writing this because Dora the Explorer has found it's way onto my TV, and I have yet to throw a brick through the screen. I'm gonna go find a brick.



November-02-2009

I want a cotton candy machine.

Ya know, it just figures. For 6 years I had money to spare and could do all kinds of projects, btu I never had any inspiration. But now that I'm poor as dirt and can barely afford to breathe, I've got more ideas than I know what to do with. I really wanna make a skiball machine.

Ever notice how some birds are herbivors, and some are carnivors,a dn some are flightless and some are flightfull, and some are prey and some are predators. How come cats aren't like that?



November-01-2009

Just finished watching Orphan. I read a bunch of reviews before seeing it, and they were very mixed. It seemed like people either thought it was laughably stupid or mind-blowingly shocking. Can't we find a middle ground here?

I can! I found the movie to be very comfy. It was easy to watch, the "Boo!" stuff wasn't over done, and the story itself was nice and smooth. The plot twist was a rare treat for me, as it's one of the few that I didn't see comming. It's not often that I can say "Whaaaaaaaat?!" while watching a movie, but this one made me say it. It's not terrible by any means, nor is it stunning, it's just a good suspense movie.

Golf?



October-31-2009

When I think back to my favorite Seinfeld quotes, this one always came to mind:

George: "Don't we have a deal with the pigeons?"
Jerry: "Of course we have a deal. They get out of the way of our cars, we look the other way on the statue defecation."

The pretext to this quote came from an identical situationt hat i encountered ont eh way home from work today. I was driving down San Mateo Blvd, doing 40mph (the speed limit), eith one car to my left and a normal group of traffic behind us. Up ahead, in the middle of my lane, I see a pidgeon, just chilling out, walking around. I thought to myself, "It'll move," and why wouldn't I think this? They always move! He just look at me as if to say, "This here's MY road when I'm-" That's about the time I hit it with the dead center of my bumper, and i'm pretty sure I saw a wing go flying over the hood of the car next to me, follow by a cloud of feathers trailing in my wake. The lady next to me got up beside me, probably to give me a look, but I jsut stared staight ahead and laughed ghoulishly at the absurdity of it all. That has NEVER happened to me before.

I have an idea for an invention, but i need motivation to flush it out.



October-27-2009

Right now i could be sitting on a stool, surfing wikipedia, hoping that nobody comes in and asks for hazmat, wishing that i were doing something more meaningful with my life, and getting paid $33,000 a year to do it. If only i had lost some weight so that I could have kept my job.

How many people can say that without following it up with "which is why I'm suing the hell out of my former employer"?

Over the weekend I heard that the chowhall on base, which has won numerous awards,a nd is considered one of the best chow halls in the United States military, is being shut down, and will not be replaced. Somehow, after 200 years, the modern American Military has found a way to fuck-up providing free meals to low ranking soldiers. Instead of the government paying the government owned chow hall about fifty cents a day to provide fresh, healthy, varied, hot meals for hard working young soldiers, the solution is to pay low ranking soldiers, who are forced to live in the dorms with no cooking appliances except for a microwave, $250 a month to buy their own food from the commissary, which they can bring back to their dorm rooms with no place to store the food and no way to prepare the food. Well, they can store it and prepare it as long as it's all frozen and microwavable. Afterall, toquitos and white castle hamburgers are the conerstone of any terrorist fighting soldier's diet.

Toward the end of my soul crushing career, that I'd go back to in a heartbeat if they offered, I felt that the corruption of corporate America was seeping its way into the military. By shutting down the chow hall to get soldiers to shop at the commissary (what else could the reason be), without care of concern for the well being of those soldiers, it's undeniable that the military is going to follow the same fate as Wall Street. It's thing slike this that make me wonder if I should be happy, or numbingly depressed about being kicked out.



October-23-2009

Blank-Disk's Utopia: All dogs and dog owners put to sleep.

According to a customer today, my dislike of her dog growling, barking, and climbing on me and giving me an anxiety attack was "such silliness". Well fuck you lady, I hope your dumbass dogs jump out the car window and get their skin shredded off by the asphalt. Then after you pay all the medical bills to put skin back on your stupid dogs (which you'll no doubt rip from the bodies of orphans with cancer), your million dollar house will get foreclosed on. And while you're homeless and giving hand jobs for nickles, you can look at your franken-dogs and think "it was so worth it to let my dogs do whatever they want, and blame other people for my lack of responsibility." Because you're right, you're always right, and your dogs take priority over everything else. Maybe if you weren't such a cold selfish bitch you could have gotten married and had kids. But instead, since other humans found you to be such a repulsive person, you had to go out and buy animals that love you automatically. That is until you drop dead and your precious dogs stop getting fed, and then they eat you off the livingroom floor. But you won't mind, anything for your dogs, they're more important than anything. I hope you get syphilis from a toilet seat.

It's a really fucked up world when diseased stray dogs can get free 24-hour medical care, but low income families can rott.



October-06-2009

Dethklok is the greatest metal band in the history of music, I odn't care if they are "fake". The second album, Dethalbum II, is friggin' amazing. More amazing thant he first? Equal, dead equal, and that's just how I wanted it, because the first album replaced my entire metal collection.my two current favorite tracks are "Black Fire Upon Us" and "Laser Canon Deth Sentence."

I combined Pineapple Jell-O and Power-C Vitamin Water with pleasing results.



October-03-2009

Ya know how I always complain that when i go to the movies, people always jump up and run out of the theatre as soon as the credits start rolling? At most, when I sit until the end of the credits at a movie, there's 2 other people in there with me, but that's very rare. Usually i'm the last one in there. I just went to see "Capitalism: A love Story," the new film from Michael Moore. At the end of the credits, i counted, including myself, 26 people in the theatre. i guess it was a good movie (it was).



October-02-2009

Remember all that complaining I did about my job yesterday? Well, it looks like I'm gonna have to eat it and shut up. Today when i came into work I was instantly told that our Flower Shop was voted the #1 Florist in the city by some big Consumer Reports thing. It's a really big deal apparently, so it looks like I gotta keep wearing my HAPPY FACE! Another reason why this is a big deal is because we crushed our big competator, People's Flowers, who have nine shops around the city, compared to our one. While I'm out making deliveries, I often run into People's or anotehr chop's delivery people, and they always seem to be just, dot dot dot, lame. (inside joke)

A few weeks ago I delivered 5 huge arrangments to a funeral early on a Saturday morning. I pulled up to the church, and I was walkinga round, it seemed liek the family was kinda avoiding me. I talked to the minister and he told me where I should put everything "Jus tbring it all up front adn we'll figure it out." Something seemed odd though, I just got this vibe that the family was really out of it, like their mourning was pretty intense. I struggled with the arrangments (1 urn border, and 4 wreaths), and I was sweating ang huffing pretty hard as I lugged them all over. When I got up to the front of the sanctuary, I decided to display them as best I could instead of letting the family decide what to do. I used what artistic intuition i have and came up with a nice pattern to display them in, with the urn in the center. This is not part of my job, I'm not there to be artistic or arrange anything, all i have to do is drop them off and go, but my gut said to go the extra distance. WHile I was going backa nd fortht ot eh truck, People's showed up with a very small vase arrangement. The guy delivering it looked dumpy and goofy, and he walked up to one of the family members, handed it to them, had them sign, and left. After I finished arranging everything and making some OCD adjustments, I went to the offices to find the Minister so that he could sign, becuase i didn't want to botehr the family, who were getting emotional. I couldn't find him, so I just stood to the side and waited. Eventually the woman who got the other small arrangment from people's came up to me and asked me if I needed a signature. I said, "Oh, you donit have to, I'll just wait for the minister." She said, "Oh no, it's fine, i can sign." While she was signging I told her that I put everything that way based on what I've seen before, and that if she wanted it different it wouldn't be a problem. She said she loved it the way is was and we exchanged thanks yous and I walked out. I walked outside and as I was getting ot my van I heard a woman call to me. I turned around and it was another woman. She thanked me for my attention and effort and gave me a very generous tip (I very rarely get tips), and told me to thank everyone back at the shop. I'm not saying all this to toot my own horn or make myself look like I'm the msot caring flower delivery guy in the world. I'm saying it because it's an example of what people want out of business, sympathy toward one's situation. The guy from People's did what he ahd to, but he could ahve done more. He could have put the flowers in a nice spot, but he didn't. When people get over this widepread notion of "That's not my problem", this world will become a better place. All i did was treat these people the way i'd like my family to be treated, and it paid off for everyone. I think that's why i had such a hard time with the Military, nobody was every responsible for anything, it was always somebody else's job. We live in a very selfish culture dot dot dot.



October-01-2009

I just played the "Need For SPeed: Shift" demo, and here's my impressions: it sucks. Everything you've hated about Need For Speed since they started those gay ass Underground games is all too present here. Steering is my biggest peave. The game will NOT turn the steering wheel as fast as you need it to. Understandably, in real life you'd need a second to cut the wheel to one side, but still, I shouldn't have to start turning 5 seconds before I get to the curve. the cars behave like garbage and the fun is gone. However, there is one thing that is rpetty cool about this game, adn that's the Crash Reaction. If you hit a wall, you get dazed and it really does a great job of adding that human vulnerability to racing. Aside from that, it blows, as expected. Grid is still the best racing game to come out since Gran Turismo 3, I'm still convinced.

People are rude and need to learn elevator etiquette. How hard is it to let people off the elevator before you get on? Every time, EVERY TIME, I go to get off of an elevator, there's someone shoving their way passed me, without an "excuse me" or a "sorry" or whatever. One woman said "EXCUSE ME SIR!" as she shoved by me, but that's not what I'm talking about. oh and god forbid if i'm walking down a hallway with flowers and someone is standing in my way that they should even make a slight effort to move. No no, don't trouble yourself, I'm onyl carrying a 50lb arrangement, stay where you are, i'll squeeze by. Lately what I do is I hold the flowers way up over their head as I side-step by and make them duck down, though some don't even bother to do that, they just stare at me. My patience for human ignorance and impatience is wearing very thin. I've already begun scolding people for saying "For me?!" when they see me carrying flowers, I only hear it 20 times a day. If I don't feel it appropriate, or just don't feel like explaining it, I just ignore them. I know I'm supposed to be the happy flower guy, who skips along delivering tokens of love to people, but most people don't care when they get flowers (I'm interrupting their day), and everyone else just gives me grief for not delivering flowers to them, as if I just walk around with flowers and randomly pick the person who gets them. Women really are weird, they'll happily take someone else's flowers and pretend that they're for themselves. In fact, most receptionists do just that. People get weird about flowers man.



Septermber-17-2009

I'm rarely inspired to post immediatly after seeing something amazing, but this is one of those times. I just finished watching Celebrity Jeopardy, with Wolf Blitzer, some lady, and Andy Richter. I've been a fan of Andy Richter since i first saw him on Conan O'Brien way back when (and, BTW, I'm thrilled that he's involved with the new Tonite Show), so when i saw he was playing, i decided to watch. What's funny is, he won, and not only did he win, he DOMINATED! he ended up with $68,000 for his charity. Wolf Blitzer, who is a journalist on CNN, did so horribly and was so far int he negative, that they gave him $1,000 to use in Final Jeopardy. Not that I have anything against Wolf Blitzer, but anyone inolved in 24-hour news networks tends to not be on my good side either. Funny FUnny stuff.



September-14-2009

First thing I need to say is that I can't believe people are still longing for a Nissan Skyline in this country. I don't know where people got the idea that these cars are the ultimate street machine, but it's NOT. People think that these cars have like 900hp and are faster than Formula One cars. They're fast cars, but not any faster than a Subaru WRX Sti. It's a regular sporty car by today's standards, that's it. To talk to these tuner car retards you'd think it has a wormhole generator in the trunk that'll shoot you from the start to the finish line in half a second. It's just a car.

Next up, I'd like to invite the Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare development team to come to my house. WHy? SO that they can play CoD4 on my PS3, with my internet connection, and see why I broke 2 controllers in 2 days due to the frustration caused by playing this game online. Maybe I jsut suck at it, or maybe the system is very flawed. I'm learning toward the second choice.



September-09-2009

I should really learn to heed my own advice. For about the last 7 years, I've been telling people to watch out for colleges, because they'll make you a ton of promisses that they can't keep.

For the past few months, i've been planning to, arranging to, and telling everyone that I'm going to be going to the Universal Technology Institute (UTI) in Phoenix, AZ. My primary contact at the school was working with me to get all setup, move down there, and start classes on October 5th. There was a hold-up with my VA paperwork to get my GI Bill going to pay for the tuition, but I finally got it all sent in a couple weeks ago. Today, on a whim, I decided to call up the VA co-ordinator and see where he was at with processing my paperwork.

Let me back track a little bit. When I first contacted the school, it seemed like the perfect fit, and the counselor assured me that my GI Bill would pay for everything and that this school was the perfect fit for my plans. The more I talked to this guy over the next couple months though, the more my confidence in the school began to deteriorate. I felt like i was getting read a script, and I was hearing things that judt didn't sound right. The biggest alarm went off when i was told that I was suddenly told that I needed to apply for Financial Aid, even though my GI Bill would cover all costs. They told me that it was because if I qualified for grants, I could actually get money later. It made sense when i heard it, but the more i thought about it, the more it seemed odd. Then, I was told that my GI Bill might take some timeto kick in, so I'd have to take out a couple student loans so that I could pay tuition, and then when the GI Bill started I could just use that to repay the loans. This is really weird to me, and I told several people to get their thoughts on it, and everyone agreed that it sounded fishy.

So I call the VA co-ordinator today. he instantly starts pissing me off, acting like I'm interrupting him and it sounds like he doesn't really care. So I got a little more focused and started asking him specific questions. "How far along is my paperwork? Will everything be ready for my october 5th start date?" The guy starts feeding me a bunch of dodgy answers, but lets one thing go that unleashes hell. He said, "Have you recieved your Certificate of Eligibility?" I said, "No, our partner there said that you guys would get that after I submitted my paperwork to you." He says, "No, you need to go online and fill out an application for Educational benefits, and then submit it to the VA office, then in 3 to 6 months, you'll be able to recieve your benefits." I freaked, I NEVER heard of this before. Maybe i wasn't paying attention the half dozen times I'd asked about this very thing over the phone, or maybe somebody there dropped the ball. "So you're telling me that no matter what, I won't be getting any tuition money for at least 3 months?!" He says, "Yeah, that's right." I said, "I start classes in less than a month! I don't have any money to pay tuition! What the hell am I supposed to do?!" "I honestly don't know. i'm sorry to hear that but there's really nothing i can do about the time it takes." "I know," i siad, trying to calm down, "and i'm not mad at you, I'm mad at the counselor who I asked about this but he never told me anything about a 3 to 6 month wait." He asked who my counselor was, and said that he had to report that I wasn't given proper information. I centered my brain and thought about how much of a financial risk I could take while waiting for the GI Bill to kick in. I said, "Okay, so just so I'm clear, if I did start classes on time and submitted all this paperowrk and got everything moving along, the GI Bill is still going ot cover my full tuition right?" He goes back to being dodgy, "Well, every case is different, and I can't say for sure how much would be covered..." I said, "Listen, you're the co-ordinator for all of this stuff, every Veteran goes through you, you have to know a BALL PARK figure here." "Well..." "Collin (my shit counselor) told me that my total tuition cost would be just over $37,000." He says, "That sounds about right." I said, "How much of that will the GI Bill cover?..." "Umm..." "From what you've seen before." He hesitates, "... Probably about $13,000." I'm about ready to explode. It takes a lot to get me angry, and this was doing the job quite well. "Okay," I said, "Then I'm not going to school there. Unless you can tell me some way, right now, that the GI Bill can cover the entire tuition, I'm cancelling my enrollment." "... Sorry, but there's nothing I can do from here." "Well, that's that then, I'm not going. Thanks for being honest with me." And the conversation ended there. I threw my phone, screamed obscenities and paced around the house for 10 minutes thinking of ways ot kill the counselor who tried to fuck me over.

It explains everything though, why at first I was told not to bother with financial aid, and then suddenly applying for financial aid was the most important thing i could do, calling me up 3 times a day untill I did the Financial Aid paper work. They found out that the GI Bill wouldn't cover my tuition, but still wanted to make money off of me. So they told me to apply for student loans "which the GI Bill will cover", to gaurantee that they'd get the full tuition amount. Then, whent he Gi Bill stopped paying out, I'd be stuck with $24,000 in student loans to pay back. But UTI doesn't give a fuck, they would have already gotten their check. So they decided to tell me that the GI Bill would cover it all, but I should get student loans to help pay the bills at first, and then use the GI Bill to pay off the loans. This is exactly why our economy is in the shiter right now, because of companies pulling this kind of shit on people and not carring what happens to them later. I have numerous friends who up to their assholes in debt from student loans, and I refuse to get tangled up in that mess.

I've already asked for info from a few other schools, and the entire thing is going to be based on how much tuition the GI Bill will cover. I was just trying to think of a comparison like "next thing you know, ----- will be trying to screw you out of money." But I realized that there is no money based anything that won't screw you out of your money if they can. I wanted to say "churches", but after what i saw at a local church here (where they convinced a member to give up 60% of his annual salary to the church, and left him bankrupt) you really can't be safe anywhere. Crooks everywhere. I hate saying that, becauseit makes me sound like a republican, but it's sadly true.

Fuck UTI



September-08-2009

So I got Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box for the Minitendo DS. Just like the first game, it's freaking awesome. dot dot dot more later



September-02-2009

Break it down! "Wet", is a HORRIBLE game, and I'm glad I only played the demo.

Batman: Arkham Asylum was recently recognized by Guiness World Records as the highest rated Super-hero video game of all time by world-wide review averge. And rightfully so. I've beaten the game, unlocked everything, and I still hunger for more. Is it the best game ever? No. Is it the best super-hero based game ever? Oh yeah, no contest. Not even X-Men for the Sega Genesis could topple this one. Batman AA is great because it does what few games do, it excells in ALL aspects. There is no one thing in the game that felt under tuned, or overlooked, it was all polished to as good as it could possibly get. Worth the money? Yes. Did I buy it? No. My roommate bought it and I borrowed it from him. What a guy!

Uhhhhhh... I think that's it.



August-24-2009

I've been playing the game BlazBlue a lot lately. It's a fantastic fighting game, and is lots of fun. At first, palying online was fun too. But now it's Street Fighter 4 all over again. I noticed something that I do in both games when I play online. I join matches, and select characters, but I don't play. I just stand there. All I want is to see if the person I'm playing against will stand there too until time runs out. So far, nobody has. They jsut can't resist the urge to hit someone who won't fight back. Just like how people instinctively walk through open doors, even when they have to walk farther to do it.

In a passive way, this brings me to the show "Intervention." I've watched this show many times, where they follow around someone with an addiction or mental illness, and then their family suprises them with an intervention. I find myself identifying a great deal with the addicts, and one episode actually made doing Meth look pretty awesome.

In each episode, the families say the same thing, "You have so much to live for." Really? What does that even mean? If a person ahtes their life so much that they need drugs and alcohol to escape from the reality of their horrible lives, then what is three to live for? When you think about it, I mean really think about it, what is the point of living a life that you don't like? I find it hard to believe that the majority of people out thre generally enjoy their lives. What could possibly be so good as to warrent all the shit that the average person deeals with every day?

The other thing you hear is "we dont' know what we'd do without you." The thing is though that all, ALL of these people have already disconnected themselves from this person becasue they can't stand them. What would you do without them? Go on like you have been. I have "friends" that tell me that I'm really funny, and that they love having me around, and that I can come by any time. Yet when I invite them out, they can't go, or when there's something going on that I hear about, my invitation seems to go missing, or when I do show up, I'm interrrupting something. It's these experiences that make me wonder why people care about these worthless drains on society. I honestly can't think of a single friend that I have here that I couldn't live without. If they all vanished, I don't think that my life would change at all. I guess what I'm wondering is, what is the value of each individual life, really?



August-10-2009

Explain this to me. Lately I've been hearing a phrase a lot in movies, "increasing at a geometric rate." Geometric? Isn't that shapes? Can something grow at an octagonal rate, or a rectangular rate? Maybe they say it because it sounds kinda mathy. Can something increase at an algebraic rate? What about a mechanical rate? Maybe they should just start tossing words together. "The meteor weighs over a billion kilowoods! We tried to destroy it with a neutra-beam, but it was travelling at such a granulated rate, that we couldn't get the nanodrive to lock-on." But it's cool, because as long as people dig through the $5 DVD bin at Wal*Mart like chickens at feeding time, looking for a misplaced copy of Transporter 2, and then argue at the register that it was in the $5 bin so it should cost $5 even though the price tag says $15, Hollywood can get away with anything.

About a month ago I was at a party at my neighbor's house, and we were talking about "above expectation" movies, and one guy said, "What about The Transporter?" We promptly ignored him, and closed the circle with him outside of it.





August-07-2009

Brief update. First, I really like the new Monster Import cans with the resealable top, it is hella convenient when I'm driving around in the delivery van. I predict that like wide-mouth cans, in a couple years you'll be seeing that feature on most large beverage cans.

Today I tried the new Berry flavored Diet Mountain Dew. The flavor is great, but the Diet factor stills makes it unbearable to drink.

The Final Fantasy tower-defense game came out today, and it's not too bad, but not worth any amount of money (thank God I got the demo first) considering the multitude of similar, and often better free TD games online. Plus, Pixeljunk Monsters is a WAY better TD game for the PS3. The two things that I have to give the FF game is that character upgrades are pretty satisfying, and the fact that they can run around and chase after monsters rather than just attacking from one point gives the game a nice feel, though it's methematically the same as a stationary tower setup.

the quote of the day comes from they guy in front of me at the McDonald's drive through when the speaker lady couldn't understand him, "Mc... NUGGETS!"



August-03-2009

Guitar playing is a conspiracy instigated by the government to keep average people feeling inferior to a select few who use illegal drugs which have government-added chemicals that make playing the guitar possible by pushing the brain's control over the fingers beyond normal limits, and allows the brain to slow it's perception of time. Either that or I have no control over my body, I'm completely retarted, and my hands are actually feet. It's like everyone in the whole god damn world has super powers expect me. "Hey, meet us at the top of Mt. Everest in 10 minutes... oh you can't? Oh well, maybe next time."



July-30-2009

So ever since the 2010 Taurus SHO was announced, I've been doing some research on the new features, and one came up that kinda concerned me. It has a feature that alerts the driver when someone is in their blind spot. This got me to thinking about driver-car interaction.

A blind-spot alert feature is not a bad thing, in theory. I'm sure that it will prevent a lot of accidents. But I saw a commercial recently that really irked me about the usefulness of these features, as included with the new Mercedes E-Class.

The E-Class can wake-up the driver, keep the car in it's proper lane, and stop the car if it gets too close to an object. What this causes me to envision is some dumb asshole reading a newspaper while he's going to work, "It's cool, i take this road the whole way." As these cars evolve forward, the drivers "de"volve backward. I think that the best way to prevent people from falling asleep at the wheel is to keep them aware of their surroundings, instead of having a computer do it for them.

My case-in-point, because that makes sense, my 1993 Taurus SHO. I drove that car from NY to NM once, it took about 30 hours. Within two hours of leaving for the trip, I had to pull over and take a nap. The car was too comfortable and easy to drive to keep me alert. Then, the next 3 or 4 times I made the trip, I took my 1994 Mazda Miata, with hard seats, hard suspension, and no luxury items or features anywhere. Though I'd get tired, I was always alert. The lack of comforts and commodities kept me from losing my concentration, and the trips went well each time (as well as driving 12 hours a day can go any way).

I take driving very seriously. Every time I drive a car I'm practicingdriving techniques and methods. To me, driving is like an Olympic sport, I have to gear my life around maximizing my ability to do it perfectly. A large part of the reason of why I rarely drink alcohol is because the 5 minute drive home is more important to me than the 5 hour party I'm at. I know that not all people, very few people in fact, think or care about driving the way that I do, but it's small things like these no-need-to-worry features that are going to lower the bar for a nation of already bad drivers. THe problem with safety features is that they break very quietly. You won't find out that your air bag doesn't work until your face is planted into your steering wheel, and you'll find out that your blind spot detector broke when you've got a Toyota fender in your lap. The point is that if you shouldn't, SHOULDN'T depend on a safety feature at least 99% of the time, then it shouldn't be there at all. Not all safety gear is always going to work every time, but when it's a simple device like a seat belt, you're better off depending on IT rather than a complicated, delicate, sensative computer that may or may not work when you've got snow on your car. Maybe the car will tell you when a device isn't working, but even that's gotta go through a computer.

George Carlin said, "People think that just because they own a safe car it excuses them from the responsibility of having to learn how to drive the fucking thing." He is 100% correct.



July-28-2009

So I jsut watched The Daily Show interview with Bill Kristol (you can see the interview on the site), and my mind is all a-twitter. Bill Kristol is a well-known republican, so nobdy was suprised that when the interview shifted to health care, that Kristol supported the Privatized system. However, when Jon Stewart asked him if he thinks all Americans deserve equally good health care, Kristol's response was very unexpected, in that it was expected. Kristol flat-out said, "No." Everyone knows that this is what Republicans think, but none of them have ever said it that blatently and publicly.

In high school, my 9th grade Government Studies teacher showed us a documentary on Government Health Care. It told of the horrors of no choices in doctors, long lines in the emergency room, and bureaucrats standing between you and your doctor. Something seemed odd about this to me back then, but I didn't care that much. Now that I'm older and have to care, I've done a bit of investigating. The biggest example of the opposite view that I can give is the Michael Moore documentary "Sicko". It shows the benefits of Public Health care systems, and documents people's experiences with it. It even shows Americans going to Cuba and recieving free health care without even being citizens.

One of the things talked about in this movie is the attitude of the people working in the systems. Now that I'm currently on a Government health care system for civilians, I can tell you that this is VERY true. In the private sector, health care companies try to talk you down from getting certain proceedures done, and focusing on the ones that have to be dealt with. In the VA, they thoroughly go over your conditions, and give you treatment for all of them. Then, they ask you what else they can help you with. After my first visit to the VA, I sat in my car, and had tears in my eyes, because for the first time in my life, somebody had taken care of all of my medical issues.

People who are against public health care say that taxes will rise to pay for it. Well, that's true. But there's something that they aren't mentioning to go along with that. When health care is turned over to the government, the drug companies will be selling their products to the government. When the government gets a $200 bill for one prescription inhaler, there's going to be some major changes, like legislation. The government will NEVER pay as much for drugs as we do now. So a pill that costs $8 to us, will cost the governmetn about .05 cents. Why? Government health care, government drugs. Don't believe me?

Find the one who will profit, and you will find the person making all the rules. Every politician who is lobbying for privatized healthcare makes money from that system, be it through their profession, stocks, or simple kick backs. I assure you. These people do not care about you, they only care about your money. Why would rich peoplego over poor people's money? Because poor people don't know how to handle their money, that's why they're poor. Kristol actually said that the government is looking for ways to provide affordable health care to those who can't afford it. In the stock market, a cheap stock is about $50. Can you afford a $50 stock? In the healthcare industry, a cheap monthly payment is $350. Can you afford that? I can't, I can't even afford to put gas in my car to get me to work to make money to put gas in my car.

Socialized health care is the gretest thing that ever happened to me, and i think that everyone deserves it.



July-19-2009

I just finished playing Devil May Cry 3, which had been sitting in my game pile for about 3 years. It affirmed to me something that i already knew... Devil May Cry 4 is the best in the series, by leaps and bounds.

When Ilook back on Devil May Cry 1 2 and 3, it amazes me that the series actually got to 4. But good thing it did, because it was AWESOME!

So the big stink on PS3 right now is Battlefield 1943, which looks to me like a less fun version of Warhawk, so play it I will not. I know that Battlefield did the whole multi-role war thing before Warhawk, but that still doesn't stop it from sucking.





July-13-2009

I just finished watching the documentary, "Who killed the electric car?". It makes an interesting point about the value of electric cars, and fuel saving technology that is in development.

The main car that they use as an example in the film is the Saturn EV1, which was a major breakthrough in electric car technology. It could manage a 100-120 mile range on one overnight charge, and California was even setting up charge stations around the state to help extend that range for long trips within the state. Unfortunatly, most of the cars were leased, and when the leases expired, GM took back, and destroyed all of them. The question, as the title of the movie suggests, is why?

This film was made in 2006, and some interesting stuff has surfaced since then. The thing that i kept thinking of, and what will undoubtably fall into the same pattern as the EV1, is the Chevy Volt. Or, maybe not. When we first heard of the Volt, it was 100% electric. But now, it's only electric up to a certain point. After 40 miles, the gas engine kicks in. Well, there went that dream. But let's analyze that.

40 Miles before the gas engine kicks in, when the EV1 could go over 100 miles with no gas. SO why isn't the Volt using the same technology as the EV1? THe movie brings up an even more interesting point to back up this question. The inventor of the EV1's power Amplifier has since kept improving the technology, and currently has a car that can go over 300 miles on one charge. Looks like he solved the problem, so why isn't GM using his technology? Oil Companies. This is a tired concept isn't it? Let's blame the oil companies for everything. Well, sometimes you just have to call it like you see it. Who the hell else could it be? Did you know that you get a bigger tax break for owning an H2 hummer than an electric car? True story.

The other fuel technology investigated was Hydrogen. I first learned about the inner workings of hydrogen cars a few years ago, and the technology sounded like something that I'd steer very clear of. It's so complicated, and so fragile (which was also pointed out in the film) that a hard stop could rupture the system. On top of that, the cheapest Hydrogen car made right now costs about $800,000. On top of that, the amount of hyrdogen used to fill the "tank" on a hydrogen car costs 3x as much as gas does at it's current price. Blank-Disk says, Hydrogen cars will be available someday, but not affordably or within our lifetime.

This criis is world wide, I know, but it makes me have serious thoughts about moving to another country. I love my Miata, and I'd hate to see it rendered useless one day by the depletion of oil reserves, or my inability to afford gas for it. But I'd also be willing to set it aside to do my part in helping with the cause to free us from the grip of government and industry.





July-07-2009

I'm going to tack on to my previous post. I was just checking my e-mail, and I saw a few letters about moving stuff out of my Grandparent's house. No problems there. But pat of the initial letter from my Uncle said that he'd be willing to pay people for their help. Again, no problem, but it brings up a thought.

Durring my military days, it was widely accepted to ask your fellow military pals for help on big things such as moving, painting, car fixing, cleaning, and other multi-person jobs. Since 99% of us didn't have family nearby, we all helped fill that void by lending help like a family would.

Every time one helped someone out, it was quietly expected to be compensated in some way, which was usually announced durring the asking process. Sometimes people paid, sometimes they gave stuff away, and sometimes they traded out for previous or upcomming services. But the big one, the sure fire help getter, was a cookout. Personally, I find it VERY awkward to take money or keep tabs from friends or loved ones. It works, but it's kinda flooby. Know what I mean? But a cookout, what awkwardness can be wrought from that? Hard work followed by free eats and socializing with friends, works out great every time. Pizza comes in second, dining out a close third. But breaking out the grill and making a stack of burgers and hot dogs for everyone really hits the spot for everyone involved. So just keep that in mind next time it comes up.

I often woder why the hell i keep updating this crap. Very few people read it. I guess what I can hope for though is that in the distant future, when this site has merged with the ether, some 14 year old like I once was will stumble on it, read the entire thing, and become an angry disconnected white boy like me. that's the dream.

-------

So here's a few Items that I've been focusing on. First up is Cake Boss on TLC. I'm pretty entertained by this show, but this episode stands out especially because of Bridezilla. There's a lot of debate online as to if this girl is for real or not, but we already know how I feel about that topic. Plus, I work in a flower shop that deals with Brides all day, and this kind of behavior is NOT uncommon. The sweet old lady who runs the shop has gone off on Brides because of stuff like this, so i say it's real.

In searching for info on the episode I came across etiquettehell.com I particularly enjoy the Faux Pas of the Year stories.

In other news I'm attempting a record on a PS3 game called Noby Noby Boy, so I'll update on that after I finish.





July-5-2009

Time to bitch again. This time it's about local matters. In the last few years, Albuquerque has been expanding on a Bicycle-minded transit shift. THis means that they are trying to encourage people to ride bikes instead of driving. Ever since Lance Armstrong became a hero to skinny guys everywhere, bikes are all over the city. Do I have a problem with this? No. I am a huge supporter of bike riding. A huge portion of my pre-driving years was spent on a bike, just riding around. Nearly every day after school I'd get my bike out of the garage and just ride around town. They were some of the best times of my life, and a highlight of my childhood. Thanks to bike riding, I maintained a really healthy lifestyle, and I have no regrets about it.

But, there's a difference between what I did on a bike and what people here are doing on bikes. Let me direct you to this, which I found on bikeabq.org. I've been seeing these stickers around town, as well as a number of TV and radio ads promoting "Sharring the road." I wish I could find some of these TV ads to post here, because they are so biased and one-sided that it's like watching an anti-smoking or pro-life propaganda campaign. All the blame and negativity is put on drivers, and cyclists are depicted as the innocents. BULL, SHIT.

As a delivery driver, I spend all day on the road, and bikes are the #1 reason for problems that I've seen around town, or encountered myself. These assholes have a twisted view of traffic laws. For instance, one of those stickers says that you have to give 5 feet to a bike when you pass, "it's the law!". Well, I'd be happy to give them 5 feet if they'd stay to the side of the road. But no, they ride right down the middle, and let traffic back-up a half mile behind them. Then, they sit in the turning lane at intersections, and when the lights goes green for all of 10 seconds, they putter around the turn so that a whole 2 cars can get through at rush hour. Now I know that according to the "law" bikes are considered a part of traffic, but that doesn't mean that they HAVE to be in the street. When I rode bikes, I spent most of the time on the sidewalk. Skinny, broken, bumpy, mangled sidewalks. Here in Albuquerque, the sidewalks are huge, smooth, cement paths, that NOBODY USES! When my car broke down, I had to ride my bike around town for a couple weeks, and I road it on the sidewalk the entire time. I even rode up and down the sidewalks of Central Ave, that's Route 66, the most congested streets and sidewalks in the city, with no difficulty at all. Sometimes people would move aside for me, and sometimes I'd move aside for them, depending on the situation. It was not rocket science, it's was courtesy, something bicyclists in this city lack. But still, I drive down central and there's some dildo on a banana bike peddling down the street in his bare feet, making an already tight space even tighter.

Then you have these people, these Livestrong dickheads, in their faggy spandex, riding on fucking highways like their in the fucking Tour De France. Hey guys, you see those semi trucks doing 60 mph? How about you and your Schwinn get the fuck out of the way. I read that someone got killed on Tramway. Tramway?! Tramway has a bike path running the entire length of it, a safe 20 yards away from the road, seperated by a hill. If someone was actually riding a bike on Tramway, a 50mph hill that runs the length of the city, they had it comming. Now if they were on the bike path, and the car jumped the 20 yard slope UP to the bike path and hit the bike, then fine, they were innocent, but I somehow doubt that was the case.

But the worst, the WORST offense that these numbnuts commit is blowing red lights and stop signs. At the intersection of Texas and Hardin, where there is a bike path, with it's own stop signs FOR the bike path, I've nearly killed 3 people. One guy blew right out in front of me so fast that I damn near had a heart attack. I mashed the brakes, smoked the tires, and braced myself on the steering wheel as hard as I could. Everything went into slow motion. I thought to myself, "This is it, I'm going to kill this guy. He's going to go up my hood and through my windshield, and I'm gonna have his blood on me." Somehow, through a miracle, I stopped what felt like a quarter inch from the guy's leg. What'd he do? He just kept on going. Was this a one time thing? No. Not even close. Nearly every day I found myself yelling out the window at people, "How 'bout that stop sign?!"

Laying the blame on bike accidents on cars is total bullshit. I'd be happy to share the road with bikes when the bikes learn to share it with cars. In my opinion, if you want to take a bike on a street, you should have to apply for a license, otherwie stay on the trails and sidewalks that nobody uses anyway.



June-27-2009

I'm gonna bitch about this, again, because it really stands out in my head tonight. Friends, what are they good for? I feel fairly confident that anyone who regularly checks this site doesn't fall into this catagory, but just in case, get paranoid.

Today I was looking through my friends list on my PS3. My friends are listed in the order of most recent log-ins. As I was looking at whose been on today, something popped into my head. These people never contact me. I contact them, usually just to say something random, or to invite them to a game. As I looked through each name, I recounted the last time I heard from that person, and what the nature of our interaction was. With the exception of 3 people, all of them wanted something from me. Not to say, "Hey, want to go to a movie?" or, "What's up?". It's all, "Can I borrow some DVDs?" "How do you do this?" "Where's your roommate?" The only people that didn't fall into this catagory were two guys i never talk to anymore, and br0kenreality, who still invites me to his parties, even though I live 2,000 miles away, just IN CASE I can make it.

Now, I'm guilty of this too... sorry, Mermaid. But the difference here is that a lot of these people that I'm talking about reside within a quarter mile of me. I have all the entertainment one could ask for, yet I rarely get visitors. I, of all people, get easily bored and go looking for people to annoy, but then stop myself and go back inside. I hate inviting myself over to places, and I hate most places that aren't my house.

So the question i have to ask myself is, what is it that prevents people from hanging out with me like they do with others? Is it a problem with me, or a problem with them? Logic dictates that the problem would be with me, which I don't doubt. When people do come over, they always seem in a big rush to leave my house, which I either think is because there's a smell that I'm unaware of, or they just detest me that much. Or, Am I that guy?



June-25-2009

Okay, Michael Jackson died. I'm glad that MTV is treating this like their own September 11th, because that's what it is for them, an huge symbol of culture from their past that is gone now.

I was only a kid in the 80's for 6 years, but one of the top memories that I have from then was Michael Jackson. To me, there were only two musicians in the world, Weird Al, and Michael Jackson, and they both did the same songs. Every time you turned on MTV, one of them was on.

I've been watching MTV for about an hour now, and I find myself getting enthralled by the videos they're showing. It's bringing back not jsut memories, but the feeling of the era. It really was like watching a spectacular event, that couldn't be rivaled or repeated, right in front of you.

I remember when I was about 5 years old, I was at Mermaid's house, and he and my sister were watching a tape of "Thriller". My sister said to me, "This is pretty scarey." I said, "I'm not afraid." Then, Michael Jackson looked up with those big yellow eyes and I was gone, "WAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!" I went from the back of the livingroom to my mother in the kitchen in half a second.

I never believed the accusations against him in all those child abuse cases. The guy was surely weird, but I can't rightly believe that he was vicious like that toward children. Guys like that get evidence agaisnt them piled up so high that they have no choice but to pleade guilty. Yet here's a guy, who lives in the public eye, who has paparazzi around him all teh time, and nobody could produce a single peice of solid evidence against him beyond word of mouth. I also recall someone saying that when his kids were around he would drink alcohol out of a Sprite can. Sounds like a father that wanted to relax with a drink, but didn't want to be a bad influence on his kids, as opposed to millions of other fathers who tell their children to grab them another beer.

I think that Michael Jackson is a serious legend of not jsut music but art in general. I think that what sets him above the rest is that he is one of the few artists in history that EVERYBODY liked. There was no demographic that shunned his work. Anyone who was alive in the 80's listened to, and liked Michael Jackson.

I also have to say that I saw one of his recent videos that got almsot no play, and damn, he really never lost his edge, it was really good.

In other news, I saw Transformers 2. THe quick review is this: The special Effects are great, but nothing that really says "how'd they do that?!" Shia LeBeuf's character is a douche bag for no reason, not sure about that. The end boss fight was about 2 mintues too short. Overall, I'd say that it was jsut as good as the first movie, but it lacked this fun factor of the first movie, this one was just a tad too serious for my tastes.



June-22-2009

Wow, lots to talk about, mostly media related. First off I can now say that I have played and beaten every console-based Metal Gear game. I played and beat Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake for the Sega Master System (though on a PS2 port). The first game was good, but I was very impressed with MG2. If I had played that when I was 6 (when it came out) i'd been pretty damn blown away by it, very advanced for it's time. Some people have said that Metal Gear Solid is a remake of MG2. Having now played both, I can say that that theory is total bull crap. There is definitely a lot of gameplay and plot mechanics that are used in both games, but story wise the two are totally seperate. The Metal Gear games I have left to play are Metal Gear Mobile, Metal Gear AC!D Mobile, and Metal Gear Ghost Babel. In time, i will take them all on.

Next up I have to talk about last night's Ninja Warrior. What a very suprising outcome to that one. The last 4 or 5 competitions have been total busts. The course is so stupidly hard that even the big names were getting knocked down left and right. In the last competition, Makoto Nagano (the current champion) made it to the end of the 3rd stage, but couldn't hold on to the ring glider at the end and fell, and that was the best anyone had done in years.

This time though, the tables and expectations got turned, and tossed. The 3 groups that everyone was watching performed much differently than everyone expected them to. First off, the All-Stars (guys who've been doing it since the early days) were expected to do great this time, but all got squashed in the first stage. The three G4 contestants were expected to at least make it to the 3rd stage, and none of them did (Levi Meeuwenberg was expected to go all the way after how good he did last year). Now I want to say that of the G4 people, I like the hell out of Luci Romberg and Levi Meeuwenberg. They're great athletes with great sportsmanship, and they deserve anything good that comes to them. But the 3rd guy that Olivia Munn picked was to DOUCHEBAG!!!!!!!! David Campbell is this baldy headed guy who eats bee pollen to improve his muscle stamina. I don't care if the guy reads to blind orphans, that right there makes him a douche. Now, I'm not saying that the guy did poorly on his run, but maybe if he had spent less time doing tai chi and more time running the course, he'da made it in time. Don't represent America in the most difficult obstacle course in the world and waste valuable time centering your chakra. The two guys who've won it in the past never stopped to do yoga, so it must not be necessary.

So the guys who ended up doing the best were unknown before this competition. The super muscular guys counld't hold on to the end of the third stage though, and one got disqualified for grabbing an out-of-bounds support beam. The last guy though, a skinny shoe salesman, who failed the try-outs last year, ended up demolishing the 3rd stage, and then came within 1 second of beating the final stage. Damn dude, I guess bee pollen, protein shakes, and working out a lot doesn't mean shit, as if I didn't already know that. That just goes to show how mental this competition really is. I'm really glad for that guy, and I hope he comes back and wins it next year, everyone knows he deserves it.

And lemme say one more thing. As I've stated many times before, I'm the kinda guy who stays to the end of the credits. I stay at events till the bitter end, even if I'm not involved, because that's just respectful to those still going. In past Ninja Warrior events, the All-Stars always stuck around to the end to cheer each other on. But this time, no All-Stars made it past the first stage. So durring the last three stages, I noticed that the usual reaction shots fromt he All-Stars were missing. Are you kidding me? The All-Stars, the guys who always do the best and are always such great sports won't even come to see the new guys compete. That's pretty shitty of them. But wait! In the third stage, durring one contestant's break, they switch over to a shot of Katsumi Yamada! Mr. Ninja Warrior himself! If there is any man who had the right not to watch the new guys, it's him. Katsumi Yamada, though a great competator, has had the screws put to him in every aspect of his life ever since he nearly won 10 years ago. This is a guy whose put so much effort into winning the competition, but comes up short, int he worst ways, every time. This is a guy whose own family is so disgusted with his obsession that they won't even come to see him compete any more. I actually get worried about this guy, I worry that he'll give up on life because of it. But there he stood, looking on as a new generation went farther than he has in years, and added so much more salt to his wounds. I've always had a feeling that Yamada's best features were in the places that count the msot, and that's being a good sport and standing by to support the other competators to the end. I have a new level of respect for Mr. Ninja Warrior.

Okay, movie time, I'll keep it short and sweet. Year One, funny as crap and worth the $10. Fanboys, funny as heck and worth renting. The Hangover, funny as poop and worth renting when it comes out on DVD.



MC- "Our next comedian sucks ass. I'm just kidding, he's a great guy. Please welcome, JACK MOHAN!" (applause)

I walk out on stage wearing my BDU shirt, with all of my patches and chevrons still attatched (illegal, but nobody cares). Before me is a room of about 400 people, and I'm performing for chartity at Sandia Resort and Casino. It's my 3rd time doing stand-up, and the first two were for crowds of about 20 people.

"Thank you. Oh man, I'm nervous. But that's okay, being nervous builds character, just like diarrhea." (good laugh) I hold the lapels of my BDU shirt. "As you can see I am a veteran." (Huge Applause and cheers) "Thank you. There are other veterans performing tonight, but I'm the only one that decided to prey on your sympathy by wearing my old BDU shirt." (good laugh) "The other day in the shower, I was looking down at myself, and I wondered 'could i get my scrotum to stretch over my penis?' SO I grabed my scrotum, and pulled down and stretched, and eventually I pulled it up and over, and I had my whole penis wrapped up my my scrotum. Only problem was that I had shaved my scrotum three days before, so it was like wrapping my penis up in a cactus." (Big Laugh) "Yesterday I was lying on my livingroom floor, thinking of ways to die, when a thought occurred to me. Do you ever see fat insects? When i go into my house at night, and I flip on the kitchen light and roaches run everywhere, I never see one roach lagging behind going, "Aw come-on fellas! Wait up! I had seconds on that Coco Puff under the counter!" (Big Laugh) "I hate most bugs, but I like lady bugs, because they're really chill. But that also makes me think that that coulda make them lazy jerks. Sometimes you see a lady bug with it's wings sticking out from under it's shell, and another bugs comes over and says, "Hey man, you're wings are sticking out. Do you think that's appropriate? i mean, we're trying to have a nice lunch over here. Why don't you grow up?" And the lady bugs says "Why don't you go cry about it?" (Unexpectedly good laugh) "I think that moths are the opposite of lady bugs though, they act like their on cocain and super paranoid." I shriek into the microphone and flap my arms frantically. (Good Laugh) "Quick, fly into that guy's mouth! I've had that happen before, and it's not fun. It was like a dusty fan fluttering around in there." (calm-down laugh) "I don't know if I should talk about this, but who cares. I'm a virgin. That's very true, I am a 24 year old virgin." (Woos and cheers) "Yeah, yeah, whatever." (nice laugh) "This weekend I was at a party at my friend's hosue,a nd his girlfriend was there, and she found out for the first time that I'm a virgin. She says (in high vally-girl voice), 'Oh my God you're a virgin?! That's cool. I wish I was still a virgin." (good laugh) "Everybody says that. So later on, we were standing around tlaking and she says "Oh my God, guy love to get blow jobs... Well I guess you wouldn't know!" (Big Laugh) "Ha ha! Ha! Ho! Go to Hell you Gonorrhea infested whore!" (HUGE LAUGH!) "Thank you! Good night everybody!" I walked off to great applause.

I didn't win, not by a long shot, i think it was because the voting system was highly flawed. But whatever, it doesn't matter. I will say though that a guy congradulated me int he hall durring intermission, and gave my $5 durring the voting, and he ended up being an organizer for the event. All the old comedians told me that i was great, and that I "opened the flood gates" (that term got used a lot) with my closing remark, and it got everyone else saying risque things. What's funny was, my last line was toned down from it's original form for the sake of decency, lol. One older guy asked me if I'd be a part of a local comedy tour he's doing. I told him that I probably wouldn't be able to because of what's going on with my upcomming schooling, but to keep me in the loop just in case. I got hand shakes all around, and constantly supprised people when I told them how new I was to it all. The guy who went on before me looked about my age, and said that he'd being doing it for 8 years, which showed because he did really well.

Since I was a little kid listenign to Bill Cosby tapes, I've always wanted ot be a stand-up comedian. As time went on, my desire to try never went away, but the reality of how difficult it is became more evident. To be a successful stnad-up comedian, you can't half-ass it, it has to become your life. Jay Leno said that if you work less than 2 days a week, you'll never get anywhere, it has to be a full time job. After this experience I see now how true that is, it's either a hobby or a career, and nothing in between (you can try, but it won't be worth it). Stand-up comedy ranks as one of the hardest, and most emotional experiences of my life. The anxiety, self-doubt, and terror that goes into standing in front of a crowd of judges and trying to make them feel a certain emotion is almost more than one can bear. I felt very comfortable on stage, but that meer 4 minute act took everything i had in me to come up with and execute properly, and i just barely pulled it off. If I never do stand-up again, I feel comfortable with the idea that at least I tried, and did well at it, and didn't back out (and believe me, the temptation to cancel was enormous). What I did tonight, performing at a Casino, is something thta many if not most comedians never get to do, so I'm very honored to have been afforded the chance to try. I have a lot of appreciation for the 19 other comedians there, because my experiences with them showed me what the life of a comedian is really like. Honestly, I don't think it's for me. But maybe one day I'll try it again, and see where it goes from there. For now, I'm retired.



May-26-2009

I'm gonna bitch a little bit about something that nobody cares about, Gran Turismo, and how it's getting gay. In May of 1997, the first Gran Turismo was released for the PlayStation, and it wasn't long before owning a copy was pretty much mandatory. The entire summer of 1998 was spent either riding my bike, or playing Gran Turismo (it took me a while to save the money, but back then, there were no other games worth buying). It was so over the top that nobody thought a game like this was even possible, and more amazing, that it could fit on one CD. The cars were programmed to look, drive, sound, and function exactly like their real world counterparts. On top of that, there were 150 cars, all with the same details present. It was a huge departure from what was seen on all other racing games.

At the time, the best racing games seen up to this point were the Need For Speed games. Need For Speed specialized in exotic cars, that most people could never drive, and even see in real life. The games were given a presentation that matched the cars, and playing the games really gave you a sense of at least dipping into the rich man's Kool-Aid. But once Gran Turismo came out, it wasn't long before the exotics were abandonned, and crap ass ricers were introduced. Need For Speed is worthless now.

The appeal of GT to older gamers was that they could actually buy, race, and modify a car they actually owned in real life. To 13 year olds like me, it was like looking into the future of cars that you might be able to own in a few years. Gran Turismo devilered an above and beyond game that was geared toward the average person, and it worked out great.

But there was another appeal to the game, one that was for everyone, and what became the foundation of gameplay in all subsequent GT games. It was the idea of starting out small, and working your way up. My first car in GT was a 1994 Honda Prelude, a car that I still have a high regard for, simply for that reason. Also, I had a terrible time controlling Rear Wheel Drive cars, so I went with a front wheel drive one that I could manage and afford. There I was, putting along at highway speeds, barely holding last place, and I was having the time of my life. First modification that everyone makes to their first car, a lightweight flywheel, because after your first win it's all you can afford. What's a lightweight flywheel do? I dunno, I'm 13, but look! It's actually making me go a little faster! HOLY CRAP! Imagine what TWO Flywheels could do!

And so it went on liek that, gradually upgrading, testing, tweaking, until the last big race, when you're adjusting gear rations by 1/1000th of an inch, you're Mitsubishi GTO is pushing out 928hp, and there's no way in hell you could keep from hitting the wall at every turn, and you enjoyed every second of it.

Now, though, it's changed. By GT4, you could be in a $500,000 car in an afternoon, and races were easily beaten by just having more power than the other guys. As if it wasn't bad enough that GT1 had a Subarua Legacy Station Wagon, GT4 had a 1hp Mercedes buggy. Sure it's cool to look at, but it's useless. That code could have been used to put in a car that somebody wanted to see and, ya know, use. Now, instead of 20 big championships, there were hundreds of small championships, requiring you to buy a shit load of cars you don't want,a nd can't use in any other setting. Now, there's races that last 24-hours, which is a cool idea, but not when you actually go to do it, and realize that they actually expect you to sit there and race for 24 hours straight. But even they saw the flaw in that, so they implemented a feature that, for me, killed the whole purpose of the game, B-Spec. In B-Spec mode, you acted as the team manager. You sat int he pits while an AI driver drove your car, and you decided how fast he shoudl go, whether or not he should pass or stay back, and what equipment he could get in the pits. On top of that, you could set it to what you always wanted him to do, set the race to 3x speed, and leave it running while you went to work. By the time you got home, the race had been won, and you weren't even there for it. STOOPID.

Gran Turismo 5 is comming, and E3 is expected to be where they give a release date and details about the game. I'm hoping that it's not another travesty, but I get the feeling that it will be. Sob.

BTW, I'm really looking forward to E3 this year. Somewhere on here I bitched up a storm about last year's E3 (where the sweaty, nervous, and fidgety Sony VP Jack Tretton said the words that summed up the whole thing, "Thanks Chew-back-uh."), and this year they're redoing the whole show and taking it back to what it used to be. I guess they finally realized that 35,000 fans spending crap loads of money isn't a bad thing, as compared to 500 reporters sitting quietly and taking notes. When I was a kid, going to an E3 was a dream, maybe now it's not so unachievable.



May-22-2009

I forgot to update about the NIN show last week. My roommate got tickets for the Albuquerque Nine Inch Nails show that was being advertised as NIN|JA because it was Nine Inch Nails and Jane's Addiction. From the get go I didn't give a flying dog turd about Jane's Addiction, I've never ever ever liked them, and I'd even go so far as to say that I dislike them. The opening act was Street Sweeper Social Club or something along those lines. Basically it's some black guy and the bassist from Rage Against the Machine, Tom Morello. The first time I ever heard of Tom Morello was in Guitar Hero 3, so i was unknowingly familiar with his work.

We go to the show at Journal Pavilion, which is a massive outdoor concert stage just on the edge of the city limits. I'd never been there before, but I instantly recognized the shape of the stage from the old NIN live DVD. My friend had been there several times before, so i pretty much let him lead the way the whole time.

First, the last time I went to a NIN concert was in May of 2005 with Mermaid and Hoagie down in Tempe Arizona. It was only my second concert ever, so I had no idea what the quality standards were for this kind of thing. They both assured me that the staff and security at the 2005 concert sucked horribly and that they made things way more difficult than they had to be. Well now that I've attended my second NIN show, I know that they were 100% correct. The Journal Pavilion staff and security were laid back, and had no trouble keeping things running smoothly, I was quite impressed. My only complaint was the fact that I paid $5 for a 20oz Dr. Pepper. Unfortunately I had no money for t-shirts or other "I was there" stuff, which I didn't want anyway becuase it all had Jane's Addiction logos on it.

We got there about 15 minutes before anything started, but the pavilion had tones of stands and stuff to do in the mean time, so the wait wasn't bad at all. The sun was murder though, and our white ases had to hide for a while. The street sweeper guys came out and did 5 songs. They sounded exactly like Rage Against the Machine but with different vocals. I will say though, that Tom Morello was prety awesome, and I would have much preffered to hear just him playing for 15 minutes.

After they finished, the stage crew went out to change the equipment. Now, when I hear that Jane's Addiction and NIN are playing the same show, I assume that Jane's Addiction will go first, and then Nin will go last and make everyone forget about JA. Well, it seems that everyone there thought the same thing, because suddenly Trent runs out on stage and starts "Somewhat Damaged", and we and everyone around us did a collective "Whaaaaaa?!" Boy am I glad we showed up for the whole show, because we were considering not going untill later so as to avoid seeing Jane's Addiction, who would surely play first. The lines to the bathrooms and food stands were huge, and as soon as they heard NIN, they came crashing back into the arena. Durring the song, I swear that I heard Trent say "Jane's Addiction bailed", and I know other people heard it because there was a mixed crowd reaction. My friend and I were pretty happy about that. Further testament to the fact that other people heard him say that was that after NIN, about 30% of the people left. So the show continued and seats continued to fill because, like us, nobody thought NIN would go first.

Lemme say this, I have mixed feelings about the whole show. It balanced out in the end, but... eh. To start with, there was no dedicated Keyboardist, which resulted in several songs having sounding half-there. On the plus side, Robin Fink was back as the lead guitarist, and kicked ass, so that made up for it (for me at least). What really kinda irked me was that the things I wanted so see the most didn't get used. The big drop down screen, was there, but didn't get used. The big drum machine, also there, also not used. The only visual effects came from the exact same vertical light bars they had at the last concert I went to 4 years ago. On top of that, the rest of the lights were totally stationary, and had almost no variety to their patterns. Pretty disappointing. The positive side of it? Trent said a couple times throughout the show that he was really pleased with the show, and that we were being a great audience, and that he "really needed this." Sigh, well okay Trent, if you're happy to perform for us, I GUESS I can live without the cool visual effects. That's the downside to living in a "small" big city, the best stuff gets saved for the "big" big cities.

So NIN finished out after about 20 songs, and left the stage. People started leaving in huge groups, but I decided that we should stay on the slim chance that something else is gonna happen. We got into a big group discussion witht he people around us about when things started, and if Jane's Addiction were going to come on. Everyone had conflicting information, so again, we all agreed that the smart thing to do would be to stick around untill we heard something official. The guys behind us were pretty bummed out that they got there half-way through the NIN show, and I can't blame them. Sure enough, it became clear that Jane's Addiction was up next. As if that wasn't bad enough, THEY used the drop down screen that I was so hoping for NIN to use. BOO!

But some interesting things came to light durring their show (which we stuck around for after we both agreed that we didn't spend $55 each to leave early). First off, JA's visual effects weren't amazing, but they were about 50x more impresive than what NIN did 10 minutes before. Second, Dave Navarro was there. I first heard of him as an individual after he goty some notariety when he did this commercial in the late 90's, which was deemed a tad too weird for the GAP customer base. I found the guy pretty creepy at first, but he's since made a good public persona as an encouraging, funny, but still "rock and roll" kinda guy. His performance at the show as freakin' amazing, he really lived up to the hype people put behind him. But man, I hate the lead singer of Jane's Addiction.

I first saw the guy in an interview about 12 years ago, and he creeped me out so bad that I instantly hated him, and I still do. Me, he creeped ME out, that's bad. His biggest claim to fame is that he started Lollapalooza, which usually is headlined by Jane's Addiction, which is the only way I can figure that they got any fame at all. People showed up for the good bands and endured his untill enough people became fans. Not only is the guy creepy (one of the guys behind us said to someone, "I don't care what you say, that's guy's a pedophile, I just know it." I get the same feeling. First off, he greeted us as Sante Fe, which if he was trying to be funny, it wasn't because Sante Fe sucks and everyone knows it, even Sante Fe. Later he asked us if we eat Coyotes, which is like asking a black person if they eat friend chicken. Ha ha ha, it wasn't funny the last million times I heard it either. But hte worst part is his voice, it's irritating to no end. My friend and I decided that we couldn't stay in the direct path of his voice any mroe, so we went to a snack stand and finished the show there, eating chicken and fries. While there, we both agreed that the rest of the band needs to dump the singer and find someone else, becaue musically the show was great, but lyrically, ugh, that guy ruined it for us.

Now, the third interesting thing that happened when JA was on stage was how short their set was, 10 songs tops. Turns out that for whatever reason the Journal Pavilion has to stop all performances at 11pm (as my friend found out at last year's Ozzfest), because the city fines them $5,000 for every minute they go over that time. Ah ha! Trent had a plan all along. He wanted to make sure that NIN got as much time as they needed, so that JA wouldn't short change them by going on first. Ah Trent, I knew you wouldn't have done something like that without good cause. So I guess overall, it was a good experience, with some minor complaints that don't matter in the long run.



April-30-2009

I have to admit that I've gotten caught up in this whole Susan Boyle thing. I watched the video numerous times, and found her performance to be freaking amazing each time. But what gets me is how many people think that this whole thing is a load of crap. I've been reading things where people say that it's not her real name, she's a profressional that they hired to make the show more interesting, and some people are even saying that it's not her singing.

What, may I ask, is so hard to believe about this? A woman who lives in the middle of nowhere, who has no family or friends, never got a break and is just now getting recognized, and stunned a panel of hard to impress judges. Stranger things have happened. I've done some research and she's been singing for a long time, and there's even audition tapes of her in the 1990's getting laughed at and taunted. It sounds to me like this poor woman has had to run the gauntlet of shallow people who can't look past a normal face and recognize true talent.

I'd also like to point out that I'm shocked at how hearltess people are being when they just straight-up say, "she's ugly." I mean, major media personalities just flat out slam her looks. Whoa, let's have some decency here, surely she's going to see these TV spots about her, and surely it's not going to help her self esteem to hear so many people call her ugly. She looks like a 47 year old white woman, and nothing more is to be expected of her, becuase that's freakin' life man, you look the way you look.

But back to the issue at hand, which is how skeptical people are of reality TV. I've been watching reality TV for a long time, and it's VERY easy to tell when something is setup, and when it's not. Jerry Springer, for instance, is about 50/50. I know a lot of people trash shows like The Real World, for being fake, but I dont buy it. I saw an interview with a girl that was on the Real World, and she said that no MTV employee was allowed to speak to her or anyone else on the show until after the season ended. in fact, she said that durring the 5 month taping, the only thing a crew member ever said to her was "thank you". People seem to have some odd line of thought that makes them think that nothing they see on TV is real. I heard one guy say that Mythbusters is bullcrap and that they fix it so they prove or disprove whatever they want. What?! The whole point of the show is to either prove or disprove myths, why would you tamper with that? Is there some kind of crazy conspiracy to make people think that dog's have clean mouths, or that fecal matter can get on your toothbrush if it sits by the toilet? No, there's not, the powers that be are smart, but not that smart. Nor do they care about whether or not a guy really stuck a rocket on his car and crashed it into a mountain. In fact, they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to test that myth, and the car blew up on the launch ramp, but they still showed it!

A guy once said to me, "I don't think reality TV is true, ebcause it always seems like the camera are right where the action is, and the people are always the right people to watch." Well duh. The Osbones got a show becuase they're freakin' weird. Road Rules was a show because putting that many people in a camper for 8 weeks is bound to result in something film-worthy. They wouldn't make movies about people in ordinary circumstances, because that's not interesting.

My point is that although reality TV can and usualy is edited for dramatic effect, most of the time it really is real. Most rality shows end up with thousands or hours of footage taht all have to get condensed into 12, one hour episodes. Surely 12 out of 1,000 hours had something interesting going on. There is no conspiracy, sometime real life is just that entertaining.



April-24-2009

First, I've noticed that my use of profanity on this site has tapered off, so I'm gonna try to increase it.

Second, what the fuck is a 3G network? According to the TV, I'm supposed to know this. All I need to know about cell phone netowrks is, "How many bars do I have? At least one? Good enough."

Third, i got my windshield fixed today. I must say, Safelite autoglass, damn good organization. It took them 40 minutes to do the whole job, and it only cost my friend about $250. Plus, my new windshield has a greyed tint at the top, which I really wanted. I'm really enjoying being able to see through my windshield clearly now, but I doubt it'll last for very long what with all the sandblasting cars deal with out here.

Job hunting sucks.



April-23-2009

I hate working on this stupid laptop. My main computer that's been running nearly non-stop for the last 6 years took a huge dump, so I'm stuck on my laptop. The laptop is fine for what it needs to do, which is find me job applications. What rally sucks is that it's 1/3 the speed of my main computer, and it shows, plus the fact that my main computer has been shaped and perfected over 6 years of use. So using this laptop is like going back to square one. The biggest problem with this laptop is that every single program that I use crashes eventually. My main computer could run a program for as long as needed, but any kind of strain on the CPU causes a crash. My solution to the problem is one that i've been considering for a long time, which is buying a new computer, but it's going to require money that I REALLY don't have. Sucks.

On sunday i went to my friend/former roommate's new house for Easter Dinner/Lunch (yes i know it's a week late). While I was there one of his step sons was playing catch in the street and wanged my windshield with the baseball. So now I have a Sandwich plate sized ring cracked into the glass. I'm going to get it fixed tomorrow at my friend's expense. I honestly wasn't mad about it, it's just that it's one more thing to worry about at a time in my life when I'm living day to day because of my huge financial uncertainty.

As far as the job hunt goes, it's still a major hassel. Of the countless applications I've submitted, I actually got my first real prospect for an interview comming up in May. It's doesn't look good though, because there's a trend that I've noticed. Nobody is doing personal interviews anymore, it's all group interviews. Even a flower shop that I looked into had a 3 day interview free-for-all going, for one damn position. So when I apply for these jobs, there's a 100% chance that someone way more qualified is going to apply and get the job. There are few things in life that I can truely say are unfair, but the current job market surely is just that. To get money, you need a job. To get a job, you need an education. To get an education, you need money. To get money, you need a job. A job gives you experience. But to get that experience to get that job you need an education courtesy of the money that you don't have to begin with. I don't have 4 years to get a job, I need a job now, or I won't be able to get an education. It just goes to show that it doesn't matter how good you are at anything, money is all that counts. I'm just about ready to hit the sidewalk with a sign that says "For FUCK'S SAKE, I need a JOB!." i'm selling my guitar for some extra cash, and I predict that a lot of my other stuff is going to go with it soon. The most expensive thing that I own is my car, which I doubt I could get $500 for in it's condition, and without that there's no way I could get a job. My VA benefits are taking forever to kick in, which for all I know may not even be worth waiting for.

I attempted stand-up comedy, it went worse than i could have ever imagined. I will never look at comedy the same way again. it is 1000x harder than it looks.



April-16-2009

It's been a while since my last update. My damn computer took a dump on me and so I'm stuck using my underpowered laptop which degrades in efficiency every day.

I've been bothered by something lately, and I recently found enough proof of my suspicions to make a formal statement about it. White people don't dress their babies. Allow me to explain.

At this point in my life, I have a lot of friends who are newly married and are having or have had babies. I've noticed that whenever I'm at a white person's house, the babies are usually in just a diaper. Sometimes they're in a diaper and shirt, Tommy Pickles style. You rarely see socks on them, and the only kind of full-body clothing they have on is pajamas.

Since I live in the Southwest, there are more mexican babies than any other, and it's astounding how well dressed they are. Mexican babies are always fully dressed, in a shirt, socks, and pants. Even a baby that can't walk will have shoes on in public. I went to my friend's house once, and his six-month old was wearing a collared shirt for crying out loud!

This being said, I'm not sure which, if either, is wrong. My instincts tell me that dressing a baby like an adult, or even a slightly older child, may promote a more professional outlook in that child. They're instinct is to present themselves in a more sophisticated manner, which could go a long way in earning respect from peers and elders alike. On the other hand, an under dressed baby would be more geared to freedom, self expression, and doing what feels good. Neither of these things are bad, so I'm not sure if it really matters. I'm sure it does, and one day we'll see a news report about baby clothes affecting brain developement. Till then though, dress with the future in mind.

I hate the american job market. Apparently most Temp Agencies are just online job site links now. That being said, i'm pretty well prepared to say that job sites are useless. I've submitted countless of applications and the only responses I've gotten are from credit stealing scams. At this point I don't really even bother looking at the job descriptions any more, I just send in my resume. It doesn't matter because at least 500 qualified people applied before me, and since i don't have a Bachelor's Degree and 10 years of experience in organizing Nuts and Bolts (an actual job that I applied for, and those were the actual requirements) I'm not of any use to the American work force. Tomorrow I'm applying for a job cleaning houses. yes indeed, High Honors in engineering and all that Air Force training is really paying off.



March-24-2009

Today i went to Wal*Mart to get some soda. It was supposed to be an in-and-out deal. I grabbed a 12-pack, and walked up front to check out. I saw 3 lines at about 20 people each, so i picked one and stood in the clothing section where the line ended. A group of Mexicans and their kids got in line behind me, and so I listened to them blather on and roll their R's. The people in front of me were getting very impatient, and one lady said "I don't do well in long lines." I'm sure there's a medication for that.

The more impatient people around me get, the more I try to be patient. Even when people offer to let me go in front of them, I usually turn them down unless I'm in an real hurry. Today, i was not, so I did the Buddhist thing and used waiting in line as an exercise of patience and good manners. A few other registers opened up and people flocked ot them, but I stayed in my spot. The mexicans behind me had split up to hold places in each line, and whoever got to a register first would call over the others. Two of the kids stayed behind me and wrestled each other non-stop. I left a gap between myself and the people in front of me so that the heavy foot traffic could get through. When I felt the gap was large enough, I stepped forward. Not suprisingly, the two kids behind me stepped up too and filled in the gap i had left open, so now cross traffic had to split up and cut in front of everyone in random spots. I have a long standing problem with this tyep of scenario, because it seems like people always choose to squeeze in front of me, and nobody else (I have a similar problem with homeless people, I always seem to be the only one they ask for money, maybe I look like a sucker). I had more on this trip to walmart, but I suddenly don't care anymore.

This weekend I watched a move called "The Starfighters", which is an old movie about Air Force fighter pilots. The movie is terrible, and I mean terrible. I'd say that at least 45 of the 90 minutes is footage of jets doing mid-flight refueling, and that's not an exaduration. The rest of the movie is about the life of fighter pilots, and boy is it realistic, and that's sad. One of the two "exciting" moments in the film has one of the planes losing hydraulic pressure in flight. Being prior aircraft maintenance, I instantly recognized all the jargon, code talk, and plane systems they talk about, and losing hydraulics in a common problem (hydraulics systems are split up, so that if one system fails, others can still operate). The plane's hydraulics went out right after the pilot put down the landing gear. So another plane came by to check if his gear was down all the way so that he could land. It was, and so he did. That was the whole scene, and true to life it was. It really demonstrates just how boring the Air Force is, even when it's exciting. The onyl thing that saved this movei for me was the two robots and a guy at the bottom of the screen making fun of it.

Today's quote of the day is such becuase I thought of it durring my trials of WalMart:

Fry: "Bender, this world isn't good enough for you."
Bender: "Not even close."



March-18-2009

I watched the movie "Wanted" for the first time today, but amazingly, this post is not a review of that movie. This post is about a growing trend I've been seeing in fictional guns, or more specifically, fictional bullets. It's science time!

First things first. I haven't been shooting guns for very long, but in the short time that I have, I've done tons of research, enough so taht I began to run out of material to find on the subject. So when I see something like a rifled bullet, I have to wonder just where this idea came from. In all of my research, I've never found anything about a rifled bullet. The closest thing I could find was a rifled shotgun slug. But I'm getting ahead of myself here. So let me explain.

A rifle, is called a rifle because inside the barrel are long, spiraling groves called "rifling". As the bullet is traveling down the barrel, the rifling has two effects, the first being that it rubs against the bullet, causing it to rotate. The other is that the high pressure gasses behind the bulet, push around the bullet, through the rifling groves, and cause yet more rotation. Rotation of the bullet causes it to become more stable in flight, and greatly (GREATLY) increases it's accuracy.

Quite often in the last year or so, I've seen more and more movies and games with rifled bullets. Usually the rear half of the bullet has rifling marks on it. This would imply that the barrel is smooth-bore (no rifling), which we'll get to shortly. Now some may say "maybe both the barrel and the bullet are rifled, so taht they inter twine and cause even faster rotation. Okay, imagine this: You're driving down the highway at 1,000mph, with no tires, and you cut the wheel to the right. A rifled bullet in a rifled barrel would rip itself apart, there's no way.

So now that we know the science of rifling, let's look at Hollywood's future of bullets. We'll start with Wanted since that's what broke my camel's back of silence. Here is an early 3D model of the sniper bullet used in Wanted. This one defys all explaination as a 3-stage rifled bullet. But wait! The first stage is smooth, so that means it must ahve come from a rifled barrel! Too bad the double helix final stage would act only to slow the bullet down and slow it down like a parachute on a fruit fly. I'm not even bitching about the "bullet curving" that the movie flaunts so shamelessly, yikes.

My next example comes from the commercial for the game "Killzone 2". From the get go, they try and justify the bullet rifling with a sabot. Just as the bullet leaves the barrel, you'll see numerous small fragments breaking away from the bullet. This is a sabot, something ofen used in canons and more commonly shotguns. A sabot usually acts to form a seal around an irregularly shaped object so as to secure the pressure of the exanding gasses behind the projectile. Since most shotguns are smooth-bore, rifled slugs have sabots on them so that the rifling doesn't damage the barrel. Ah ha! It seems that ballistics engineers have already deemed rifled projectiles as damaging to barrels. If this gun were smooth bore, the bullet/sabot would build up so much friction that the barrel would quite posibly melt durring rapid fire. If I were the Defense Secretary of the future army, I wouldn't approve such a weapon. Plus those guns aparently have their bullets loaded from the butt stock, which makes no sense no matter how far into the future you are.

You may be thinking, "It's a movie/game, who the hell cares?" Guns users, that's who. If you made a movie about cars with pistons made of wood, all the car guys would be waving the BS flag just like I am for this rant. So there.



March-13-2009

A few years ago when Fahrenheit 9/11 came out, it was a time of turmoil in my social life. The reason is because I agree with the film, and was a fan of the film maker, Michael Moore, and I worked with Republicans. The hatred demonstrated by the vast majority of people taht I knew toward Michael Moore was on par with the hatred that radical muslims hold for America and Jews. After hearing so many people lobby against the film and Michael Moore, I decided to ask durring each rant, "Have you seen the movie?" I must have asked this question a dozen times, and each time the response was "No", or "Fuck no." So when I saw Bill Maher's movie, "Religulous" up for rent on the PlayStation Store, I decided that despite my problems with Maher and what I knew this movie was about, I'd have to be the better man and at least watch it to have my opion of it be a valid one. So I rented, and I watched.

Maher is hardly a balanced listener, as he spends most of the movie arguing with his interviewees. However, between his rants comes very valid points. What unravelled along the way was a very modernistic view of spirituality, which is to say that one should look past the literal words of ancient Holy texts, and see what we know to be true today, and apply it positively to our lives.

Maher makes an excellent point when he asks why there is no commandment that says, "Thou shalt not rape." He points out (and I know this from my own reading of the Bible) the Story of Sodom and Gomorrah, wherein two angels visit the only righteous man left in the cities. An angry mob attempts to rape the angels, and so the righteous man turns over his two daughters to the mob for them to rape. Similar scenes of women being tossed to mobs for rape are not uncommon in the Bible (I did a report on one in Christian school and even got to make story boards). So we take something like the Ten Commandments so seriously, when in fact they don't pinpoint what is seen as problems in modern society 5,000 years later (exluding dishonesty and murder of course).

The ending though, takes a turn for the worst, and undoes what trust we built up with Maher, and the thought that maybe he does have a valid point to make. In the end, Maher goes on a rant about how religion needs to be destroyed, and anyone who even remotely follows a religion is a baby and needs to grow up. So we went from healthy debate to shit flinging, and lost us all. So my conclusion is only slightly different from what it was before I saw the movie, and that is that Bill Maher's made a good argument, but his intentions are so shady that he himself is no better than the zealots he preaches against.



March-09-2009

So my Guitar Hero guitar took a trip to see my livingroom floor at about mach 12, and then it went to visit the back wall doing 80mph. Being a piece of malfunctioning junk durring one of the most frustrating games in history leads to these sight seeing adventures. Could I have fixed it? yes, in fact I've fixed these guitars before. Did I care? No, I barely play this game anymore, and was attempting to get back into it, but maybe I'll try again with a new guitar on another day.

So the job hunt is looking to be a laughable endeavour. Everywhere that I look for a job, it feels like there's a lot of people gunning for the same position. Yesterday the news confirmed this when i saw a story about a small town highschool getting over 500 applications for one janitorial position that pays $15 an hour.

My brilliant plan was to stay in Albuquerque after I got out because it would be easier to find a job. Come to read in the news that the unemployment here is so bad that crime rates have soared. White people can't afford to hire mexicans anymore, so the mexicans are doing whatever it takes to make cash in worse ways than usual.

The more i analyze my situation the clearer it gets that my military experience doesn't mean anything. All low level positions are taken, and any openings higher than that require a master's degree and 40 years of experience, because as usual nobody wants to take a risk with a fresh face. Lower level guys are struggling as it is, and now they're behaving and kissing their boss's ass to keep their job. Another thing I've noticed is that companies are combining positions. On job sites the average want ad has at least 20 major duties for each position, things that from anyone's position are not related at all to the job title. I saw several secretary positions that read more like Accounting and Quality Control positions. Afterall, one job title means one paycheck, so the big companies don't mind working you to death if it means not hiring two other people to do other jobs. Greed greed greed, we are surrounded by it.

Though many may disagree, I do feel that we're at the start of a mini-depression here. The difference between 1929 and 2009 is that it's not happening in one day, and everyone still has all their creature comforts to mask the feeling of hopelessness. Maybe a better reason that the average Joe isn't too worried is because Joe still has his job. Well Balnk-Disk doesn't have a job, and now I'm seeing the wood from under the docks, and it's pretty rotten.



March-04-2009

Follow up post! Last night I beat the Killzone 2 single player campaign, which was tough, but rewarding, kind of. Through the entire Killzone sotry, it's hard to know for sure which side is the "bad guys". The Helgast bear a strong resemblence to the Nazi's, but their cause if far more just as the current war is a retaliation against the humans of Vekta. The end video was rewarding to me, as it played on this confusion even more. Your character and Rico (one of two characters from the previous game) reach Visari, the leader of the Helgast, and what insues is a very checkered dialog that makes the situation clearer, yet more complex. I won't spoil it for anyone, but I will say that it was a pleasant suprise of an ending, because it didn't involve someone running away from an explosion and jumping out of the way just in the nick of time.

After that I went and played some more online games, and I found that it's best to just run around and kill people. Accomplishing missions is a hassle, and shotting guys in the face with a shotgun is way more satisfying. So my opinion of the game has improved over the last 24 hours, but there's still room for improvment, as Penny Arcade has been talking about.

In other news, job sites are a pain in the ass. Every damn job requires you to fill out another application. Why can't I just attach my resume to each application? Most sites are setup to do just that, but it rarely ever works that way for individual applications. One recurring theme that I've noticed is that you basically are doing your interview when you apply. That means that I have to rewrite my career goals, team managment strategies, and what I want to be when I grow up every time I fill out an application. Copying and pasting isn't an option, because the questions tend to be very specific. The worst part is that I probably won't get the job after I spent 30 minutes taking a company personality quiz for Asstech Industries or whatever. The search goes on.



March-03-2009

Two big games are out right now, first we'll go with Killzone 2. First, I'd like to say that Killzone (1) was mediocre at best, and had a dumb story, with an interesting background. Killzone 2 has a better story, based on the same background, and featuring the worst of the characters from the first game. Blah blah whatever, now let's talk about the multiplayer.

KZ2's multiplayer is good, by itself. By that I mean that compared to Call of Duty, it sucks. With the amount of time and money people have sunk into the CoD franchise, i think that all other game developers need to realize that CoD is now the industry standard for first person shooters. If you do something like, for example, make the characters move sluggishly, you've failed at beating the competition. And that's exactly why this game failed for me. I cannot, cannot, cannot get used to these controls. By the time I start shooting, the enemy is miles away. On top of that, the draw distance and motion blur gives me a freakin' headache.

What really gets me is that none of my friends seem to have any problems or complaints with the game. Maybe I'm the odd one out, because I don't see the fun of it all. One of my friends, who has a job, a wife, and a baby, has already maxed out his rankings online, and it's only been out for 4 days. I've barely started at it, and I have nothing to do all day, litteraly. But I asure you, I am NOT envious of his position. One cannot spend that much time on one thing without neglecting something far more important, I often wonder if an intervention is in order. Anyway, Killzone 2 is okay, but not great.

The other game of interest is Street Fighter 4. This is another case of failure by comparison. SF4 is a fantastic game, and no question, the best of the series. But Capcom vs SNK 2 was way more fun. SF4's problem is that it focuses so hard on being technically superior, that it forgets to be fun. The boss character, Seth, is as lame as they get, not only because he's damn near impossible to beat, but because his story is jsut rehashed garbage. Seth is an experimental human-type guy who gathers data on fighters to maximize his own fighting abilities, for the purposes of becomming M. Bison's next hsot body. Gee whiz, we haven't heard this plot in every Street Fighter story arc ever, oh wait. Why the hell can't we just have a good ol' fashioned martial arts tournament?

A big disappointment for me was how underwhelming Akuma is in this game. In past games, his power was unrivaled, but here he's just a weak guy with more moves. The inclusion of Gouken was very nice, and he's a good character, but similar to Akuma, not strong enough. As far as the new characters go, the best one, to no one's suprise, is Abel (said like Apple but with b's, so Abble). Abel is a french fighter with amnesia, who is trying to peice together his past. Not only is the guy likable, but of all the new characters, his moves are quite respectable, while not being reminiscent of any other characters. He's the most welcome character of the lot.

Now there's a lot to praise the game for, namely the unbelievable graphics, which always impress me every time I play. But I'm a negative guy, so lets go to teh negative. Since Street Fighter began, I've always wanted a real online fighting feature, and this game finally delivers it. A few minor whines aside, the system is pretty solid, and works well. So what's the problem? Ken. That's right, Ken. Every stupid asshole in the world uses god damn Ken. Ken has the largest variety of the cheapest moves out there. One Shoryuken (flaming upper-cut) will take out half of your life... BULLCRAP! But Ken's not theonly one, Zangief's pile-driver is easy to do and demolishes opponents. Ryu, sadly, is almost as cheap as Ken. One would think that a powerhosuelike Akuma would quell the Kens, nope, he gets beaten faster than anyone. My only effective anti-Ken character is Cammy, because she's faster, and my success rate is still below half.

My main complaint here is that the online community for this game is so rittled with cheaters that it sucks the fun right out of the game. I can't play as my favorite characters, because I'm too busy using the best anti-cheater charcters that I can come up with. What really irks me is that these people see no problem with just going, "Hadouken! Hadouken! Hadouken! Hadouken! Hadouken! Hadouken! Hadouken! Hadouken! You Win!" God forbid anyone actually try and learn the game, and the skill it requires to be a well balanced fighter. The Saturday after the game came out, my preffered EB Games store was holding an SF4 tournament. I signed up, thinking that my 17 years of fighting game experience would surely get me at least to the finals. Nope, lost in the first round, but onyl because they made us play on a damn X Box, which feels completely different from a PS3 controller. But guess who won the tournament, that's right! Ken! Actually, the final match was Ken vs Ken, what a show! Two morons doing the same moves to each other until one guy misses a block. Lame. But I will mention this, not all players are cheap. One character that mystifies me is Gen. His move list short as crap, yet the number of moves that he can actually perform seem limitless. I tried very hard to figure him out, but with little success. I went into an online match, tired and frustrated from a day of Kens, and my opponent chose Gen. I figured that it'd be an easy win, as Gen is tough to figure out. No sir, not for this guy. He proceeded to kick my ass so hard that I didn't know what to do. The kicker, he never repeated a move. The guy behind the controller was truely a dedicated and experienced player, and i had a great time getting destroyed. See, I don't mind losing when my opponent has integrity.



February-23-2009

I heard a while back that Fidel Castro had to get a prosthetic anus, and it got me thinking today. I wonder if there are aesthetic options involved in replacements anuses. Can you get different colors? What about shapes. Maybe you can get a star shape, and then make litteral references to your chocolate starfish. And then your turds would come out in the shape of a star. Maybe you could do like the play-doh factory and make squares or spaghetti turds. Maybe you could do other pasta shapes like tortilini. I bet if you had great control, you could make turd bow ties, just squeeze gently at the right intervals. Something to think about.

Oh, I'm out of the military.



February-7-2009

Normally, a bad movie will have a low budget, with lousy camera work, makeup, and authenticity. Not so when it comes to "Bottle Shock," the biggest budget load of shit ever to turd it's way across my TV screen.

It's about the true story behind Napa Valley wines beating out French Wines in a 1976 taste testing in France. Numerous big names were at the tasting, and it was covered by a very famous journalist, and organised by a famous wine coineseur. When I say "famous", and "big names", I mean that they're famous big names that only wine tasting prudes would recognize. This is a movie made for about 100 people, by one person who gave a shit about wine, and just so happened to have the money to back up the movie.

A cast of notable actors grace this Ca-Ca heap, like Bill Pullman, and Allen somebody, and the girl from True Lies. I'll bet if the actors had any idea how the movie would turn out, they'd have rejected the script in a heartbeat. On paper, the movie sounds like a Oscar worthy endeavour. But, like punching a bully and not knocking him out, their cards are ont eh table, and Oscar, as well as everyone else, can clearly see that this was a sneak attack by the cast to try and get some awards. Too bad the directing and editing was High School quality.

There's endless absurdities in this movie. But I'll narrow it all down to my favorite dump. Early on, the three young main characters are in a bar, and to prove his worth, one of the guys decides to bet everyone in the bar that he can do a blind taste test and get it right. A bar, filled with drunken truck drivers and farmers. The main bet comes from two guys playing pool in the corner, dirty and unshaven, in plaid, sweat stained shirts, slurring their speech and guzzling beer, looking like they were 2 days out of prison. This movie, like no other, had the sheer balls to have one of these men say, and I quote, "Any idiot can tell the difference between a merlot and a chardonnay! If you wanna impress me, you'll have to guess the vintage!" Wow, just wow.

As I mentioned before, the editing and writing took on a whole new meaning to "crap". There are dozens of instances where we have no idea who people are, or why they're doing things. In the beginning, a guy shows up to the vinyard and gets mad and walks off when one of the guys isn't there... we have NO CLUE why. Later, Pullman arrives at a farmer's meeting that was apparently happening, to pick someone to represent the US at the French wine tasting. Everyone picks Pullman to go, when all we've seen is him being a dick to everyone for the entire movie. Pullman says he wants his son to go, and when the crowd opposes, Pullman gives a rousing 3 second speech that states the obvious and convinces everyone to back him up, AND dump money into a hat to send the son to France. After the tasting, we're somehow transported through time in such a way that we're lead to believe that the son returns home and talks to NOBODY untill he goes to work in the vineyard one morning, where he freaks out with happiness when he sees his girlfriend, who at no point was ever going to leave him or go anywhere. I dunno, if I flew around the world and came home with exciting news, I'd probably go and tell my girlfriend first, or at least sometime durring the first few hours that I was back.

To compare, a couple weeks ago i watched a terrible movie called "Bad Girls From Mars". It was so cheesey and bad, that it defied logic. I'm talking, a girl jumps into a pool, and comes out of the other side with her hair dry. Ya know what, it was still WAY better than "Bottle Shock" . I give this movie a G-, for negative garbage. P U



January-16-2009

There's no tangible evidence that luck exists, but I've been awake for 2 hours and already i have a wealth of theory to back it up.

This morning I had two appointments scheduled, one at 9am and one at 10:30am. Not to mention that i have PT at 2pm and then i have to go to work. I tried to go to sleep at about 1am last night but my internal clock wouldn't let me sleep untill about 3:30am. So when I woke up at 8:30, I was feeling a bit lousy.

I went to my first appointment, which ended up taking all of 5 minutes, so I ended up with an hour and a half to kill before my next appointment. (in the military, appointments are a big deal, missing one can result in disciplinary action, so I have no choice about whether or not to go). So as I'm heading home, I decide that i'm too tired and need to wake up, so I head to IHOP for some breakfast and coffee. I get to IHOP, and as usual, I buy a paper. I go inside and things are looking upbeat. I sit down and order a drink, and then I notice a guy I know across the way waving me over. I don't work with him, but I know him through work. He and another guy I know in the same way are there and want me to sit with them. Being the grouch I am I told them that I didn't wnat to and that they weird me out. So I went back to my seat, ordered a Colorado Omlette. So after about 5 mintues, my food shows up, and at the exact same time that my omlette hits the table, an internal omlette hits my colon, and I gotta go bad. But this is not a resturaunt caliber movement here, this could kill people. I have no choice but to eat quick, and leave.

With each bite of this thing I'm adding weight and pressure to the situation. It's getting rough, and suddenly my phone buzzes. It's my First Sergenat, calling to tell me that my 10:30 appointment got canceled. This is good and bad. It's bad because now I know that I coulda just gone home and slept and dealt with my bowel movements as needed. The plus side though is that he saved me a lot of time and aggrivation of getting to my appointment only to find out it was canceled.

I'm getting desperate now, so i ask my waitress for the check. She brings around one of those leather things that you can stick your money into. I don't have enough cash for the bill, so I put my card in the pocket thing. She comes to pick it up, and when she does, the card falls out. It goes under my table, and stupidly, but instinctively, I lean down to get it. Not only does this hurt, but when I sit back up, I hit my head on the bottom of the table next to me. Now I got a big red spot on my head and I'm about to have a brown spot on my pants.

She comes back to get my signature, and I leave her a generous tip as I usually do. I get up, sneer at the guys from before, and leave. I get into my car and head out. The road I'm trying to pull into is 3 lanes both ways, and it's a left turn, and it's busy as crap. As I'm looking for an opening, I see something that I really wish wasn't there. Two houses, being trucked up the road, in the direction that I'm trying to go. There's no alternate route, I'm stuck. So I wait and I wait and I wait for an opening, even after the houses go by. Finally i get my chance, and as luck would ahve it, I end up right behind the second hosue that is unpassable. So not only am I going 15mph below the speed limit, but I'm staring at a huge sign that says "OVERSIZED LOAD." After three taffic lights, I finally hit my turn and go flying into my housing area. I show my ID at the gate, and fly to my hosue at 20mph, lightspeed compared to the 15mph speed limit here. As I get to my house, I fumble for my keys, open the door, take off my jacket, and run to the bathroom for a photo finsish. Except that my butthole is so cramped from holding it in that I can't get it to release everything in a mighty blast. SO I struggle through, and decided to post about it. The end.



January-10-2009

I went and saw Gran Torino today, which I'd been looking forward to for a while. First off, this is clearly not an attempt by Clint Eastwood to get another Academy Award. In fact, it almost seems like a blatant attempt not to get one. That doesn't mean that the movie is bad, it means that it doesn't fall into Oscar criteria, and really lets you know it.

Clint Eastwood plays a retired man whose wife just died. At her funeral, Eastwood's two sons show up with their families, and Eastwood gets disgusted with how disrepectful his grandkids are when they show up in school clothes.

From here on we get a glimpse of just how rocky the relationship between Eastwood and his family is, and how it's no-win for his kids now that his wife isn't around to make him behave. On top of that, his older son sells Toyota's, which Eastwood takes as a slap in the face since he worked for Ford for 50 years (durring which time he bought a 1972 Gran Torino which he keeps cherry in his garage).

It becomes clear though, that Eastwood's heart is not unwinnable. He dishes out racial slurs and insults left and right, and only respects people who do the same to him. So when the girl next door turns out to be a trash talker, Eastwood instantly befriends her and gets involved with her family.

Ther'es a lot of plot from there, and I'd rather not spoil it. The one thing that I can say about this movie is that each character retains their personality, even if their outlooks change. Eastwood stays true to his convictions (and crabbiness) from beginning to end, it's his social status that changes. Same with a troubled kid that he tries to help. The kid doesn't grow up in 90 minutes, but he does learn a couple things that'll help him in the future. Plus, my favotire, Eastwood's family gets exactly what's comming to them. The movie isn't about changing and becomming a better person, it's about dealing with the present because of what's happened in the past. I get it, but I don't think the Academy will. Not that I care what they think anyway.



January-3-2009

I dabble in the online dating scene periodically. I've gotten a couple dates out of it over the years, but nothing notable came of it. The site I widdled it all down to was plentyoffish.com, which is supposed to be "Plenty of fish", but I always read it as "Plenty Offish". It has one of those e-harmony type profile matcher dating things where you answer questions about yourself and it matches you with women based on that. Both times I strongly question the integrity of the survey, as well as my ability to fill it out. I say that because every match I've ever gotten on any of these sites is so far gone from what either of us is looking for that it's kinda laughable.

Much like trying to meet people face to face, it takes a lot of effort to get even a small response. Most of the conversations I've had on POF are so tedious and full of shit that I began to wonder if I was the one with the problem. One girl told me all about how she had some kind of STD that was the worst case ever recorded, and yet she spelled the name of it wrong. No matter who I contact or what I say, there's no mutual connection. I don't think there's been a one-sided connection even.

My point is that these sites just aren't for me. I've gotten to the point of offering cash rewards for a reply to one of my messages. No takers so far.

There's a whole lot that I want to say about other subjects but I won't for fear of jinxing it all.



December-31-2008

Every time I go to a store on base, it makes me more understanding of why so many people around the world hate this country. I look around and all I see are angry white people, being selfish and obtuse. They stand there muching down on free samples and buying the latest in shit they don't need. They'll push and shove to get through the store quick, but stop dead in your path when they see something they want to stare at for hours while rubbing their face. They'll do the pee dance the entire time they're in line, but have no problem holding up everyone else to argue the price on a sign that they THINK applied to what they took. God forbid you spend an extra 15 cents on fucking tortillas. With all there is to worry about in this world, why are people breaking their balls to save couch cushion change at the supermarket? Let's not forget the people at the gas station who buy alcohol in bulk. Every work day I stop at the base gas station to pick up some drinks for work, and every day I have to wait behind some dildo with a shopping cart full of booze. This is not an exaggeration, there are litterally dozens of people in line at all times waiting to buy gallons upon gallons of alcohol at this place. Yo, if you buy more than a six pack of beer a week, you may want to stop and evaluate your life. Surely, something is wrong that demands your attention. Sometimes our society really does embarass me.



December-27-2008

I feel weird about posting every day like this, but I have more crap to talk about than usual. Right now I have to point out how unbelievably impressed I am with the new "Prince of Persia" game. I knew just from reading articles about it that it was gonna be good, but I'm so pleased with the end product that it really did exceed all of my expectations.

Ever since I played the first Prince of Persia game on my friend's computer back in 1995, I've always held the series in high regard. It was very well done for it's time, with the smoothest graphics you could find anywhere, and was one of the few big games that was the result of one man's work. Oddly enough though, through the years, I've only ever played one other PoP game, "The Sands of Time." This game though, reinforced my admiration for the series, as it was very well done overall. On top of that, when the game "God of War" came out, I instantly hated it becasue the mechanics of the game were a clear ripoff of Sands of Time. I mean, there's games that are similar, and then there's just plain copies, but you couldn't convince Johnny Game Buyer of that, because God of War has tits in it, and therefore is the greatest game ever made. I've wanted to get into the other games in the franchise, however few of the PoP games since then have gotten good reviews.

This latest game is a total restart for the series. New characters, new story. What really links this to other PoP games though is the acrobatic gameplay, and the Persian setting. Fights are still very focused, there's no hack-n-slash. When you get into a fight, there's no running or taking another route, you're in it til someone dies, which I like.

Your companion, Elika, is very handy, and rarely gets in your way. I read an interview with a programmer who said that the goal was to have Elika act as an assistant, not baggage, and they managed to pull it off quite well. Elika's main contribution is that she has the ability to "fly", though it's more like she can hold herself in mid-air for a moment. What happens is, if you try to jump across a gap that's too wide, you hit Triangle (the Elika button) and she grabs you hand and tosses you the rest of the way. Similarly, if you miss a landing and fall, she'll gab you and hoist you back up to the last platform you were on. This inability to fall isn't totally bulletproof though, as she can wear out if you use her abilities too frequently to cover up your goofs. Aside from some technical stuff (like trding places on a narrow beam or waiting for her to help you turn a crank, she stays very much out of your way. On top of that, she's unaffected by traps. So if you narrowly miss a patrolling enemy, she won't get caught by it just because she's a few feet behind you. That's great stuff because I'm in no mood for babysitting in a game like this.

I knew that the graphics were gonna be great in this game, and they are, but two things about the presentation really surpised me. First, the dialogue. From the outside, the game looks so serious, but when the characters start talking, especially the Prince, it gets pretty funny. You can chose to talk to characters, and the dialgoue is presented in small snippets, but themroe you select the talk button, the deeper the conversation goes. I've sat around talking for a good 5 minutes, with no repeated dialogue in sight. The relationship between the Prince and Elika reminds me a lot of Han Solo and Princess Leia. It makes for great conversations and give great depth to the characters.

The second thing that suprised me was the music. I'm constantly reminded of Aladdin, Indiana Jones, and Princess Mononoke (this is a good example of the quality of the music in PoP, performed by the Eminence Orchestra, who's other stuff is well worth checking out). I looked up the composer, and he's only done some minor stuff before, but I'm sure after this he's going to be seen a lot more.

Overall this is a great game, and I forsee it becomming a valued part of my collection.



December-26-2008

Here's why my life sucks: My friend invited me over to his house for Christmas dinner. He and his wife got the family Guitar Hero 3 for Christmas, so that their kids can fight over it and hit each other with the plastic guitar. I've never played Guitar Hero, and I have a pretty large hatred for the game. The reason is because Guitar Hero is one of those games that every shmuck, schmoe, and shmeghegi plays, and yet they still piss all over avid gamers like me for being nerds. Plus it's primarly for frat boys and teenage girls.

So i walk into the room where the two kids are killing each other over who gets to play, and in resolution, the one kid offers the guitar to me. "Ah screw it, I'll give it a shot," I said begrudgingly. The kids watched in awe as I completely destroyed, pillaged, and asserted dominance over their new game. It was my first time playing, and I absolutely killed it. Foghat never knew what hit 'em.

Now, I was playing on easy, and at first I thought that doing so disqualified me from feeling good about my performance. But over the next couple hours I remained the ultimate champ among 4 other people who couldn't even come close to finishing a song, let alone challenge my scores. It seemed to become more and more evident that I have a natural talent for, of all the damn things, Guitar Hero.

So here's why my life sucks. Do I put this ability aside and remain true to my convictions of hatred toward a game that I feel is giving the gaming community a bad rap. Or do I explore this avenue more, and quite possibly become very good at something I have lobbied so strongly against, and therefore become a hypocrite. Arg.



December-25-2008

I just finished playing Tomb Raider: Underworld. This is the Tomb Raider game I had been waiting a long time for, but not specifically. What I mean is that the first Tomb Raider has always been my favorite, and even though other games were okay, they didn't quite capture what made the first game so great. This latest installment was exactly what I was wanting in a Tomb Raider game. Dark, underground tombs with no one around. Massive puzzles to solve with enjoyable outcomes. And did I mention the tombs? Yeah, the Tombs are finally back to what made them great before. Now that I have the praises out of the way, it's time to complain!

First off, the game ws a tad glitchy. Lara frequently would get stuck in the floor on multi-angled surfaces. It wasn't hard to get out, but it was annoying. Lara's moves, while plentiful and awesome, need more refinement in their control, it's easy to try to jump up and instead jump sideways because your analog stick is just a tad to far to the side. I often found this leading to illogical moves, like leaping backward off a cliff to her doom, when I wanted to jump up to grab the ledge. Why would I want to leap to my doom? Fighting bad controls should not be a part of the game's puzzles. (that's a bit harsh though, because compared to any other TR game, the controls are amazing, just not amazing enough). I had a major glitch in the last level, and my video cut-out entirely. All i could do is run around blind and hope to die so that it would relaod, which it did. In that same level, the boss would often freeze, which was a nice break from being pummelled, but still an illusion killer. My biggest complaint though, without question, has to be the camera. It's not the worst I've seen, but it's close. Trying to look around while on a ledge was the toughest, as the camera would debate as to whether it should follow your inputs, or go where the programers said it should for that spot. Since the camera angle as such a huge impact on your movement control, this was something that should have been more refined. Other than that, great game.

XBOX 360 and anyone who owns one need to jump off a cliff and land in a medical waste disposal facility.

Merry Christmas i guess.



December-17th-2008

This is why we can't have nice things, part 4. The place where I work, or rather, the building where I work, is seperate from the rest of the flight line. To get from my building (which is just a small warehouse really), to the part of the hangar where the rest of my unit works, is about a 5 minute walk. The reason they are so far apart is because between the two places are parking spots and taxiways for our planes, which are big. So there's a lot of ground to cover.

A problem for a lot of people is where to go to the bathroom when they are over by us. Several planes are parked right outside of our building, so people will often come into our place and ask to use the bathroom.

Here's the deal, where I work is kinda like a pharmacy, except we give out tools instead of pills. People must stay on the entrance side of the counter, and it is actually a security violation if non-CTK (Consolidated Tool Kit, what my shop is called) personel come behind the coutner without an escort (one of us). Our bathroom is way behind the counter, and letting people use it is, in a roundabout way, against the rules.

Even though we shouldn't, we usually let people go back and use the bathroom if they need to, because there's rarely any real threat in doing so. Occasionally you'd find that somebody left the sink running a little, or didn't get the paper towels in the garbage, or got some water on the floor. None of that really matters, we just sighed in aggrivation and dealt with it. Eventually though, the more we let people use it, the worse it got. We started finding pee on the floor, dirty handprints on the wall, toilet not flushed. So we decided not to just let anyone back there, only the truely desperate. Well, even that went sour after a flight crew guy did an aerosol shit, and left the inside of the bowl looking like a red-headed kid's freckles. After that, we'd had enough, and banned all non-CTK personel from the bathroom.

This was rough news to deliver to those who were used to using the bathroom, as they now had to walk all the way back to the hangar. But, rules are rules, and I enjoy crushing dreams. A few weeks ago, another flight crew guy bullied his way to the bathroom by yelling at me and claiming that if I didn't let him go he'd shit on the floor. Begrudgingly, I let him go, which my boss gave me a hard time over. Luckily though, nothing bad happened.

So today, yet another flight crew guy comes in, asking to use the bathroom. I told him that it was off-limits. He told me that he really had to go and he wasn't going to make it back to the hangar. As someone whose endured a lifetime of intestinal problems, I sympathized, and let him go. However, I explained to him that if my boss saw him back there, he'd be pissed off, and that he'd (the flight crew guy) have to take the heat for it. He agreed, and went back.

After he left, I went back and he had blew it up pretty bad. My boss saw him leave and gave me a hard time again for letting him back there, but I explained that I felt genuine pitty for the guy. I turned on the exhaust fan, and it took a good hour before anyone could stand to go back there. It was pretty awful, but at a glance, the bathroom looked okay, it just smelled bad.

So, when it finally seemed okay to go back, I decided that it was my turn to go. I grabbed some alcohol to clean the seat with (i don't want no poop particles on my butt), and started cleaning. When I did, I noticed that I had gotten some... residue from the edge of the seat. I lifted the seat to reveal some horrific shit, literally. The poop had hit the water, bounced up, hit the bottom of the seat, splattered out, and ran down the outside of the bowl. This dude, BOMBED the toilet. I went up front and asked around if any of my coworkers had used it since the guy left, to which they all replied "No". So i told my boss about it, at which time he charged to the back to survey the destruction. He called up our pro-super, and told him that he wanted the guy tracked down, and made to clean it up. The guy was long gone, nobody knew who he was, and we were all waiting to use the bathroom. So, the responsible guy I am, did the honorable thing, and cleaned it up. I was the one who let him go back there, so it was kinda my fault, but don't think I wasn't gagging the whole time.

But this is how it goes, you bend the rules for some people and they remind you why we have the rules in the first place. I wish that I could say that it's an isolated incident, but it's not. Plus, I've never met so many people who clearly had no potty training as I have in the Air Force. Geez.



December-16th-2008

I bought, played, and beat Mirror's Edge this weekend. The game is very good, but the story kinda blew in my opinion. The main characters are free runners, which is a really cool sport that I and any person would like to be able to do. Problem is, these characters come off as the most boring, single-minded pile of bricks one could imagine. They come off as lording their abilities over each other, and sit around drinking Starbucks coffee when they're not being cooler than everyone else. For a gamer, it's not fun to be around characters that remind you of the people who piss you off in daily life.

Control wise, it's could be better. The top left shoulder buttons are used for going up and down, but it feels very unnatural. I switched them to the right side, but then found that the attack button got moved to the L2 position, which is the opposite of where it usually is. I think that system needs to be rethought, or at least have custom controls. It's difficult to get your character to land where you want, because once you jump, there's no control. Realistic, yes, fun, not really.

The game is SHORT, I think it took me about 3-4 hours to beat it, and half of tht was spent screwing around and watching cut-scenes. But i'm not complaining, because lately I've been on a crusade against overly long games. 6 hours is about all i feel like spending on games anymore.

So Today I popped-in Tomb Raider: Underworld. I was excited about thisone because it was made by the same people who did the remake of Tomb Raider 1, which I really liked. The game is really good, and is very well balanced. When you're exploring ruins, you're not constantly checking around corners for animals, when there's a fight, they let you know. This way you can concentrate of the puzzles at hand. Anotehr great thing about this game is that if you die, all the items you've found up to that point remain in your inventory, so you're not running around picking-up the same medipack over and over at a difficult spot in the game. There's still the problem of guys taking way too long to die. You stand there sinking dozens of bullets into them while they stand there sinking bullets into you, lame. But that's not important, the important part is that the game exploring and puzzles are solid, and I'm looking forward to a lot of fun times. Though I am pissed that there's no trophies, arg!



December-15-2008

I've been meaning to post about this for a while, and I decided to do it now while I'm thinking about it. On Nickelodeon there's a block of shows that are part of this TeeNick thing, where they do shows that appeal more to teenagers. One of the shows is Drake And Josh, which sucks beyond belief, and could only be funny to people who've never watched TV before, and are unfamiliar with tried and true concepts like hiding a dog from parents and a girl being mroe attracted to her date's friend. An actress on this show though, Miranda Cosgrove, ended up getting her own show called iCarly.

iCarly is about a girl named... Carly who has her own webcast show where she and her best friend do goofy things like stay up late and hula dance. I don'tknow why this seemed like a good idea for a show. I've been forced to watch teenage girls trying to be funny in front of a home video camera, and there was nothing entertaining or memorable about it. This show isn't as bad as Drake And Josh, but it still blows hard. But there's something that really irks me about the show.

In the show, Carly's friend is a girl named Sam. Now, Miranda Cosgrove (Carly) is clearly one of those super-talented kids who get lots of recognition, and when she hit puberty, she ended up being pretty to boot. Now, since time began, one mathmatical constant has always existed, for every pretty girl, there's a less attractive friend that makes her look even better. That's Sam. Sam is played by Jennette McCurdy, who I very much believe is put in a demoralizing position as the second banana. She's portrayed as a tomboy that no guys really like. She's nice looking, but next to Cosgrove she may as well not exist, and I very much feel that this was intentional.

I understand that she's an actress and it's her job to portray herself as the character dictates, but she's still a 16 year old girl. Whenever I see the show, I get the overwhelming feeling that McCurdy feels some resentment at being put into this negative light so blatently. Actors are often identified by their most popular character, especially TV characters. I worry that being in this position will hurt her self esteem in the long run.

I recently heard Chris Rock in an interview on Howard Stern where he talked about Chris Farley. He talked about how even though Farley was a funny guy, and did a great job playing his parts, it always got to him that he could never come out on top. Rock pointed out the famous Saturday Night Live sketch where Farley and Patrick Swayze try out to be Chippendale dancers, the joke being that Farley was far inferior but still managed to impress the judges. Rock said that the original script had Farley winning the competition, but at the last minute they decided that the audience would expect that and instead let Swayze win. Apparently that really got to Farley, who's role in the sketch would be very embarassing for anyone. So my point is that I worry for McCurdy, who's character is likely to have her typecast for the rest of her career, and that she might start to feel like that really is her place in life.



December-06-2008

When the first Punishermovie came out, I remember saying that I liked it a lot, but that I hope the sequel has more action. Well, my hopes came true, because Punsiher: Warzone has no shortage of gun fire and action. It was made under Marvel Knights, which I'm assuming (by the way this movie differs grossly from the previous) is the production company that Marvel will use for it's most hard-core stuff from now on. This movie is pretty gruesome, and has no shortage of the word "fuck". There's some pretty funny stuff though, It's been a while since a guy getting his head blown to smitherines has made me laugh so hard. It obviously follows the comic more closely, as there's a few stereotypical characters that act as tear-jerking canon fodder and comic relief.

My biggest gripe about this movie since I first read about it was what Thomas Jane wasn't going to be in it. But, it's okay. This movie isn't a direct sequel, it's history is different from the first film. Also, Ray Stephenson plays a much more comic-esque Punisher, with the slicked-back hair, eternally mean face, and really just an all around anti-hero vibe. So Thomas Jane's Punisher was more for people unfamiliar with the story, while Ray Stephenson's is more for the fans of the comic. So what I'm saying is, both actors did a fine job.

I do have a complaint though, serveral actually, but I'll concentrate on two of them. First, I'm so sick of Italian mobsters being the villains, they gotta come up with something better. The crazy brother was a nice touch, but not enough to cover-up the hokey mob crap. Second, and more annoying to me, was a single line. At one point, Punisher, a detective, and an FBI angent team-up to rescue hostages from a heavily gaurded, abandoned hotel building (that's fine). They don't want the cops involved because the kidnappers have some kind of diplomatic immunity, and the cops wouldn't arrest or kill them (also fine, I guess). Punisher says to the FBI agent, "The cops are gonna show up as soon as the fireworks start." To which the FBI agent replys, "Got it covered, I filed a construction permit for this building, and said that they'd be blasting dynamite all night long." WHAT?! Right, because in New York City, it's common for construction crews to rennovate buildings with dynamite at 2am. I honestly can't think of a way to explain explosions in any urban environment that would be okay with the police. That was just stupid. Otherwise though, the movie was okay.



November-25th-2008

On my way home just now, something happened that inspired rage and hatred. So much so that it begs the question, "What is the difference between a flashing yellow light, and a flashing red light?" If you need the question answered for you, go to the DMV and turn in your license immediately.

On base, after about 7pm, all the traffic lights switch over to a flashing red and yellow configuration. So I pull out of the parkinglot at work, and pull up to the flashing red light. As is the case with all flashing lights on base, one direction flashes yellow, and the other red. I see a car comming, so I stop at the flashing red. I notice that the guy is taking forever to get to the intersection, and then I realize that he's slowing down, and comes to a complete stop. He then looks at me like I'm a retard for not going, hesitates, and then goes.

This leads me to the most major traffic cluster-fuck I ever saw or was a part of. Off-base, a traffic light on a major road broke, and so the DPW set it up so that the lights flashed red and yellow. The main, 3-lane each way, street got the yellow lights, and the side street got the red. Every, single, car that came to the yellow light, stopped. Turn in your license, burn your car, and don't leave your house.



November-20-2008

Here's what pisses me off about dating. After work i went to Denny's because I wanted a meal that took longer than 27 seconds to make. When I walked to my table, I could see that the girl at the table across from me was waiting for someone in the bathroom. I had to go to the bathroom, and I was right, the guy she was with was in there. But I didn't think anything of any of these factors at the time.

So, as I tend to do at Denny's, I sat in my booth, doing a crossword puzzle, and (as I can't help but do) listening to people talk. Eventually my focus landed on the aforementioned couple. I could tell that this was a first date, especially evident because neither of them took off their jackets, and it was about 400 degrees in there for some reason (even i took my BDU shirt off, and you're not supposed to do that in a public place). The girl seemed okay, but the guy was a total goober.

This schmo sat there talking nervously about internet hackers and how his friend knows a lot about computers. I wasn't even involved in the conversation and I found it to be tedious, and she clearly did too. Eventually this guy started dealing out TMI info, and then caught himself and after a long pause, then decided to not finish his story. I was dying just listening to this guy sink himself.

But here's the kicker. So the guy wisely turns over conversation control to the girl, who ends up talking about how she's excited to see the new Friday the 13th movie (me too!). She then goes on about how much she likes different horror movie villians and why, and how she's a big fan of horror movie trivia (ARG!). So here's this weiner wasting this girl's time, when 4 feet away is someone (me) who she coulda had a rousing conversation with, and wouldn't leave her alone at the table (big dating No-No, go pee before you pick her up). I'm not claiming to be a super dater, but I'm the freakin' Love Master compared that that soggy dorrito. Nah, bad analogy, Dorritos have good flavor... Soggy piece of cardboard. I'm sure ol' Soggy's friends will be glad he got a date, but the contents of it were shameful. And here I am, bitching about it on my web site. In a fight though,i think I'd still come out as the less off-putting one.



November-11-2008

I got "Call Of Duty: World At War" today. Awesome! Even though it was made by a different developer, the main gameplay aspects that made CoD4 so much fun are still there. In Multiplayer, things like the in-game Expeience meter, local radar, and Custom gear setups are just like you remember or better. Aircraft surveilence, and air raids are still part of the "kill streak perks", but this time, instead of a helicopter attack, you can send out dogs to attack enemy players. This is actually pretty cool, becasue the dogs are pretty deadly, but if you see them comming, you can shoot them at the last second and get 3 points. The dogs keep comming for a certain amount of time. As other players respawn, a dog respawns with them and runs out to find enemies, so now there's a reason to not kill enemies soldiers, making the perk even more deadly for the defending team.

Single Player mode is just as good as in CoD4, with characters to care about, a story that matters, and rarely a feeling of "what do I do now?" The Japanese soldiers, as promissed by the developer, are very cunning. Head-shots are the best way to kill them, because anything else will result in them either pulling out a pistol (like the last-stand perk) or crawling to the nearest gun to keeping firing back. Some will play dead, and wait for you to walk by before they attack (which leads you to ritualistically go through a battlefield and shoot bodies just in case). Sometimes they hide in trees and snipe you, or they hide in the grass waiting for an ambush. Very tricky enemy this time around, you really gotta "kill em till their dead".

The trophies system in this one is different from other games. In this one, you get Silver Trophies for completing missions on any difficulty, and bronze throphies if you complete them on a hard difficulty. This is kinda backwards compared to other games, but it makes sense to me. This way if you play through on Hard the first time around, you can get a lot of Trophies at once, or,if you're a Trophy-hound (like me) your rabbid addiction will cause you to play multiple times for that little extra bump in points. BTW, I have something around 210 Trophies at the moment, I'm a sick sick person, lol. I had the day off today, and since I've been meanign to see "Saw V", I decided to check it out today. This one was by far my least favorite, and for many reasons. The two main things that annoyed me about this one was that the antagonist (revealed at the end of the 4th film) is so unlikable and such a douche-nozzle that it kinda ruined the feel of the series for me. The other thing is that watching one of the dectectives try and solve the case (who, himself survived one of Jigsaw's games) was so tediously boring that I actually caughtmyself almost falling asleep in the theater. I've noticed that the SAW movies have been gradually turning into a copy of CSI, a show that I avidly hate.

I think that Saw is one of the many movie franchises that should have stopped after the first film. The first Saw was so good that it thwarted every audience expection in the best way possible. The first time I saw it, my friend told me that I would never figure out who the "killer" was, and he was right. I thought for sure that I knew who it was, and I was 100% wrong, but in a way that didn't make me think "oh that's stupid", it made me think "Holy Crap! I NEVER saw that comming!" Plus, the movie was faithful to it's original plot right to the end. As I often complain about, too many movies break away from the original plot late in the movie. This is especially true for any competition-based movie. Any tournament or high-stakes situation will always get tossed aside right before the end in favor of a no-rules duel with explosions. Saw followed a strict set of rules from beginning to end, and the result that movie-goers were waiting for was "will following the rules pay-off, and at what expense?" And it worked, beautifully.

Saw II followed a similar setup, but suffered from a less-interesting game (which had so many broken rules that it kinda got ruined), and the fact that it starred Donnie Wahlberg, like anyone cares.

Saw III had horrible writing, and focused so intently on the police that it was a drag to watch. Plus, in this one, the gmaes had been tampered with and became un-winnable (as Jigsaw put it), and so there was nothing to hope for. The whole movie was basically an excuse to show people getting brutally killed.

Saw IV was better, but still not that great. Too much time spent with the police, and the main characters weren't likeable, but the games were more interesting.

I read that despite this movie being billed as the last one, there are plans for a 6th due to too many plot holes still to be filled-in. Lets hope it doesn't suck next year.



October-23-2008

A while back I made a comment about how PlayStation's "Trophies" was stupid and anyone who participated was a huge loser. Welp, consider me a huge loser. I'm hooked on Trophies like frat boys on Maxim magazine. I have more trophies than anyone I know. Of all the people on my friends list, only two others have trophies, one has 4 and the other 19. I have 139. The lengths I've gone to to get that many is pretty appalling in itself. I bought two games, one didn't support Trophies, and so it's gathering dust now. Most trohpies lately are just tedious to get, but some games made it really fun. WarHawk in particular was difficult, but lots of fun to get trophies for, because the task required wasn't impossible, it just took some ingenuity. Many games reward hard work with crap trophies, while others are a breeze. Some games offer Platinum Trophies, which are next to impossible to get. If I had nothing but time to sit around and play games, I'd get them eventually, but my patience is just a tad too short for that, and I'm patient as hell.

The game of the moment is Dead Space. It's a survival horror game that takes place in a space ship that has been overrun with an alien infestation. Many years ago I read an editorial article in a game magazine about how scarey games rely too much on "Boo!" tactics, but admitted that there aren't many alternatives. Well, this game figured it out. I've found that even though the monsters in the game are scarey, fighting them isn't an agonizing process, nor is navigating the game. This games thrives on suspense. Alfred Hitchcock once talked about how a movie has to manage the suspense factor. He said that if suspense is a bomb, the director must decide if the bomb immediatly explodes, hesitates to explode, or never explodes at all. This game does all three. Sometimes you'll just be walking down a hallway and RAH! Monster! Other times you'll catch a glimpse of a monster, but when you turn the corner it's gone, and then RAH! Then, sometimes you'll catch a glimpse of a monster, or hear a monster, but then you never see it again. Sometimes the music will change, but to no end or result. Sometimes you'll hear voices, or see something move, but nothing's there. When you come near an item that you can pick up, your suit's computer makes a sound, and then points out the item. Lately I've found that the suit just makes the sound randomly, but doesn't point anything out, and I'm quite sure that it's intentional. Eventually you become so friggin' paranoid that you have to stop moving to determine if you're hearing a monster's footsteps or your own. Usually it's your own. This isn't the scariest game I've ever played, but it does have me looking over my shoulder from time to time. It was really great last night what I was paranoid as hell while playing the game and the friggin' power went out. I was feeling really good about that, ya know, suddenly being in the pitch dark and eerie silence while being in a tense, nervous state. Woo! Feelin' good about life!

That's it for now.



October-16th-2008

For most of my life I've loosely followed video game magazines, starting in the early 90's with Sega Visions. In 1997 I started subscriptions with several magazines so that I could stay on top of the industry, and also because that was the era when you had to read about the latest game secrets every month, instead of just looking them up on the internet.

The best ones were Electronic Gaming Monthly, and PSM (PlayStation Magazine/Monthly, which is now PlayStation The Official Magazine, not to be confused with the now defunct The Official PlayStation Magazine), and Tips & Tricks, which was mostly cheat codes. Nintendo Power has always been around, but I don't care about them. The two crappy magazines were Next Generation (long dead) and GamePro. Since I started working where I am now, I've been reading game magazines a lot, and pick up all the ones that have anything to do with PlayStation. EGM and PSTOM (formerly PSM) are still the best, and GamePro still sucks.

When I say that GamePro sucks, I mean it in every way. Their news is old, their writing is generic, and it feels like the people who make it are fan-boys more interested in being game authorities than actually making a good magazine. It's not that it's put together poorly, but compared to others like it, it's nowhere near as good. Magazines like EGM flow nicely, you can read it cover to cover and not get confused. GamePro on the other hand, is more like a mish-mash of articles squeezed together where ever they can fit them, and the articles contain contradicting or confusing text. For example, in this month's issue, they did an article called "Brutal Legend: Gears of War 2". So the article was about Gears of War 2, and called Brutal Legend. This is stupid, because there's a game comming out soon called "Brutal Legend". It's as if nobody proof reads these things. This was the case 11 years ago, and it still is today.

Despite all of this, I still read it (read like red, past-tense), but begrudgingly. A few months ago I noticed something odd in the Reviews section that I had never seen in a multi-platform magazine before, so I wrote them a letter:

I noticed in several issues of GP that in your reviews, you only list one platform that the games are available for, even if they are multi platform. For example, in the August issue Battlefield Bad Company and Grid were both listed as XBOX 360 games, when both are available for PS3 as well. The only way I can see this validated is that you're listing the system that you tested the game on. If so, you should point that out, as I'd actually like to know that info, while also listing what other systems the games are available for.

The next day, i continued to read the magazine, and in the Letters section, I spotted this entry from a reader:

GamePro like the XBOX 360 more than the PS3?: Why is it when GamePro evaluates a game that's available for the PS3 and the Xbox 360, you review the Xbox 360 version first, and not the one for the PS3?

"A valid question!" I thought to myself, "let's read GamePro's response."

While it may seem that GamePro (and others) favor Xbox 360 reviews first and foremost, the reality is the Xbox 360 is typically the lead platform when it comes to developing multi-system games because more people own an Xbox 360 right now than a PS3. As a result, developers start with the Xbox 360 version, then port it to others like the PS3-as a result, they usually send out the Xbox 360 version for review. There are a handful of developers who decide to develop first on the PS3 (and sometimes even on the Wii) before porting to other consoles: but for right now, the Xbox 360 remains the lead development platform of choice.

So what they're saying is that they list the version that they reviewed, much like I suggested, yet they don't point that out at all in the reviews section. They also imply that they only list Xbox 360 because it's the industry leader at the moment. So I wrote again:

Yesterday I sent you a letter asking about why you only list XBOX 360 as the platform for games that are multi-platform in your reviews. I later saw that someone else already asked the question, and your response just about blew my mind. George W. Bush does a better job of explaining away bullshit than that. The average person doesn't follow video game news, so they often don't know what system a game is going to be on. I can't begin to tell you how many 360 owners told me they were going to get MGS4. Listing only XBOX 360 for a multiplatform game would lead not just the uninformed, but news followers like myself to believe that those games were exclusive to that system. The only reason I knew that some of those games were also on PS3 is because I own them. By only giving XBOX 360 credit for multi-platform games because they are selling more systems is giving them more power by misleading casual readers into believing that PS3 has substantially less games than they actually do. As a magazine that covers all platforms, it's your journalistic duty to be unbiased, and give credit where it's due in all cases. Hell, even PlayStation: TOM acknowledges when a game is also on XBOX 360. Maybe you all can justify such a horridly biased decision as that, but I, and fellow PS3 owners certainly can't. You have most definitely lost a reader.

Of course I have to eat it ont hat last line because I bought the latest issue when I saw that they printed my letter. My disgust witht he rest of the magazine is still such that I didn't even want to read the rest of it, I got it so that I could relay the edited version of my letters and their response (exactly as printed):

Give credit where credit is due
I noticed in several issues of GamePro that you only list one platform for a reviewed game, even though said game may be multiplatform and available on several other systems. Why? The only reason I can see is that you're listing the system that you tested a game on. If so, you should point that out-as I'd actually like to know that info-while also listing what other systems the games are available for. The average person doesn't follow video game news, so they often don't know what system a game is going to be on. As a magazine that covers all platforms, it's your journalistic duty to be unbiased, and give credit where it's due in all cases.
Mohan-Via Cyberspace

Thanks for your feedback, Mohan. Traditionally, we only list the platforms that we've actually reviewed to avoid confusion; if we only reviewed the Xbox 360 version, for example, we don't include the PS3 platform logo because we don't want people to think that the review covers both. I don't agree that not doing so reflects negatively on our journalistic credibility or makes us biased in anyway, but you raise a good point and we will look into your suggestion of listing other available platforms as well.

I feel like that basically says, "You're an asshole, we do our job just fine, stop sending us e-mails." Well, jerks tend to think that they're leaders, killers tend to think that they're problem solvers, and terrorists tend to think that they're freedom fighters. So the concept of a biased person thinking that they're fair seems easy to swallow. People can always justify their wrong-doings in a way that makes sense to them, and think that you're an idiot if you disagree.

This is an easy problem to fix, and doesn't require any looking into. EGM lists the primary console, and then the secondaries next to it, for example, "Xbox 360 (also on PS3, PS2, and Wii)." That's all I ask. Is this a stupid thing to get riled-up over? You bet it is, but at least I can admit to my faults, unlike a certain crappy magazine called GamePro.



October-11-2008

Movie time! I went and had myself a double feature today, and I watched another movie last night. Last night I watched "The Happening" by M. Night Shyamalan, which got horrible reviews, but interested me with it's concept. The reviews were right, but only to a certain degree. The acting was either bad, or written to be hokey. The story goes that plants begin emitting a toxin that causes people to want to kill themselves. The people start talking nonsense, stop moving, walk backwards, and then take the first opportunity they see to kill themselves. Mark Wahlberg is a science teacher who, with the aid of a botanist, discovers that the plants only attack people in groups, and so each group spreads out more and more. Eventually though it begins attacking single people. The movie may have had bad acting, but it was genuinly scarey. I found myself looking over my shoulder at some points. Worth a rent if you ask me.

Today I first saw "Quarantine." As a survival movie fan, this was my kind of movie, and with zombie-esque baddies, it was right up my alley. The idea in this one is that a new strain of rabies was discovered, and the origins were traced back to an apartment building where the first infected animal lived. As the government is moving in to close-off the building, the police and fire departments get a call about strange screams comming from, you guessed it, that building. On top of that, the fire fighters who respond to the call are being filmed for a documentary of some sort. So as the rescue team and film crew are in the building, the government locks it down and traps everyone inside. The rules of this infection are like that of zombies, menaign that the infection is spread through bites and scratches, and turns the infected into flesh craving animals, and the onyl way to kill them is to destroy the brain or central nervous system. The difference is that there's no walking dead, they're all alive the whole time. The whole movie is done like Cloverfield, 100% shoulder-cam. I honestly thought that it was pretty good, but lacked a really plausible reason for the cause of the infection. I don't want to give anything away, but it was like a combination of Resident Evil, and Resident Evil 4, if that makes any sense, which I don't think it does. Anyway, good movie, I'll buy it when it hits DVD.

Next I saw "Blindness", which is also a survival movie, but in a more round-about way. The story goes that a man goes blind while driving, and is helped by numerous people. He goes to an eye doctor, who cna't fi8nd anything wrong with him. The next day, everyone who encountered the man goes blind, including the optomitrist. The government sees that the copndition is contageous, and takes anyone infected to a quarantine facility (lots of quarantining lately, huh?), wherre they have ot take care of themselves, as anyone who touches them would go blind too. Julianne Moore is the wife of the optomitrist, and tells the government that she's blind so that she can go with him and keep him safe. She ends up in the facility with the original blind man and all the poeple who helped him, plus the patients of the optomitrist who saw him after the first blind man. Julianne Moore is inexplicably immune to the infection, and acts as caretaker for everyone in the facility, untill too many poeple come in. Eventually a coup starts, and a group of jerks, aided by a naturally blind man, take over the facility. After this, things get crazy, and it turns into Lord of the Flies, except with tons of rape. I'm sure that this movie had to fight pretty hard to avoid an NC-17 rating, it's pretty well loaded with nudity and blind people sex, not to mention one women gets killed durring a mass raping. Eventually the enitre world gets hit by the infection, and everything goes full-on dooms day. The movie is good, but the mass rapings were unnecessary, and is the main reason why I won't be buying this movie when it comes out. I understand that the film-makers wanted to convey how inhuman and horrible the conditions were, but Moore's character had the ability to stop it from ever happening, but instead let it go on without a fight untill the one woman got killed. Dumb.

On a lighter note, i did get to play alot of pinball between movies.



September-11-2008

So I was looking around on YouTube at some street fighter videos, and came across a video displaying Akuma in the new Street Fighter 4 game. In case you didn't know, I've been itching for this game to come out for a long time, and was particularly excited to see how Akuma would be portrayed in this installment. Well, the game has been released in arcades, and people have already managed to get to Akuma.

In case you didn't know, Akuma is the end-all be-all of Street Fighter characters. He's so fast and so strong that beating him is supposed to be by pure luck. Well, the guy playing the game in the video whooped his ass using Ken. I thought that maybe it was a pro doing the playing, so i found another video where one of the brand new characters, Abel, fights Akuma. Again, Akuma gets destroyed. Ummm, this isn't supposed to be happening. Akuma should be wiping the floor with his opponents. This causes much confusion and doubt in me.

I would sit here and philosophize, btu i need to go to bed. Arg.



August-30-2008

Back when I was younger, which was not too long ago, I felt the need to launch my car at every red light. I felt the need to speed past everyone and change lanes with inches to spare. I'd never let anyone pass me, even if it meant doing 75 in a 30. I never got into an accident, I never got so much as a nick or a dent in my cars. It seemed like I could easily get away with driving like this. But then something came along, a little show called Initial D. From there I expanded my knowledge of driving, and learned what it really means to be a good driver. I took it very seriously, bought Hoagie's Miata, and began traning.

Many people who have ridden with me in my car say that I "drive crazy." One of my friends often tries to mimic my driving when we meet in traffic, but he he doesn't mimic me at all. Instead he mimics what he thought he felt in my car. I rarely speed, yet when he tries to drive like me, he drives excessively fast...

Tonight I went down to WalMart to get some things. While I was there I grabbed a couple 12-packs of soda. I loaded up my car and left. The way home is a long straight road, with a sharp right at an intersection, followed by another long straight road leading up to my housing complex. I should also note that the roads vary between 2 and 3 lanes in either direction.

As I was driving up the first street I was in the front of the traffic pack, moving along normally. Suddenly, I see rally lights dart out from behind me and come racing up on my left. It was a Subaru, not a notable model, but an early 2000's build. I let him get in front of me, and he took off. He came to a red light, and I rolled up behind him. He had a fart can installed, and was revving the engine at a cavalier that was in the turning lane (yeah). The light turned green,a nd he jumped off the line. I decided to see just how good his engine was, and kept up with him till 40mph (the speed limit), and then he took off, doing about 55mpg. My theory was that his engine was 5% more powerful than mine at best, so his fart can was clearly the only real mod. But lets not forget, it is an AWD car, it does have a strong handling advantage.

Comming up to the end of the road, I could tell that he was planning to take the same right turn as me. It's a sharp turn, but the sidewalk curves with it smoothly, with a drainage gutter along the edge. This was my attack point.

You may be wondering "if this guy's such a douche, why bother wasting time on him?" Because of two things. First, it's my turf, and I don't like retards causing trouble in my neighborhood. Seocond, remember the guy at Taco Bell with the bluetooth headset? Same reason why I wish i had said something to him, because if nobody corrects him, he'll just keep doing it.

The turn is comming up, and the main risk factor here is that he has AWD, which means that he's far more stable going through turns. We come up to the turn, I'm still going the speed limit and pull my soda packs up agaisnt the center console so they wouldn't slam into it. He slows down to take the turn. He takes the turn, and goes a tad wide, but still stays int he right lane. I go in, and let my inside tires hug the gutter, taking it smooth as silk. From the entrance to the exit, the distance between us went from about 30ft, to 2ft. This is training versus cars.

I'm not sure what he was thinking about at that moment, but after a few seconds, he decided to pull into the center lane to let me pass. But I didn't, this wasn't about who's faster, passing him only would have fueled his desire to drive fast. Instead, I stayed right behind him, and escorted him out of the neighborhood. It's strange what you'll do when a jerk challenges your territory.

On a brighter note, youc an now rent movies fromt eh PlayStation Store! This is great. So now instead of me dumping money on movies at the store (me no rent from renty places), I can just download em for $3 a pop. Sweet! This weekend is featuring an Aliens marathon which is costing me $9, whereas I would have spent about $40 on it at Hastings. Hazzah for cheapness! Speaking of cheapness, I was really looking forward to seeing CJ7, but tis' special order only. What the fart?!



August-25-2008

Yesterday I went out to a shooting range with a guy I work with. He heard about my recent interest in guns and shooting, and invited me out to his range. Well it's not HIS range, but he is a Range Master, so he's an official there. You have to have a membership to shoot there, which he has, so i came in as a guest.

He let me shoot a few of his guns. First I shot his Springfield M1911, which is a classic military handgun. In fact, it's often used by Snake in the MGS series as the basic handgun. He had it at .45 calibur, and it was the first time I had ever shot a handgun, or even handled one at that. The recoil what about what I expected, and affirms my theory yet again that what you see in movies is nothing at all like the real deal. So when I say that the recoil is what i expected, i mean that it was much more than you see in movies. It deffinetly wants to come back and wang you in the face (heh~!). Beyond about 15 feet it's inaccurate as hell unless you don't mind taking 10-20 seconds to realign your shots, and though I wanted one (and still do from a collector's standpoint), I see no practical application, even if all you do is take it to the range.

The next gun I shot was a Walther G22. When he told me that it shoots 22's, I thought he meant .223 M-16 rounds. Nope, he actually meant .22 Long Rifle rounds, making it the most delux, bad-ass pea-shooter you've ever seen. It was actually a lot of fun to shoot. It has recoil like a mosquito landing on your shoulder, and is very accurate provided that there's NO wind. As nice as it was though, I'd be kinda embarassed bringing it to teh range with me. That would kinda be like showing up at the drag strip in your mom's PT Cruiser.

Now the next gun I shot was my favorite of the 3 he brought. The Walther P22 is a .22 LR pistol. This, to me, is the most sensible personal firearm I've ever seen. This is ideal for the paranoid homeowner or "too beautiful to be walking down this street at this hour" woman. It has very little recoil compared to the M1911, and it's fairly accurate when shooting quickly. It holds 10 rounds, and weighs very little, while being well balanced. It's small enough to take anywhere, but intimidating to look at. Most gun guys will tell you (and have told me) that when it comes to dealing with an attacker, the more intimidating a gun looks, the less likely it is that you'll have to use it. This of course is pure male fantasy, because the likelihood of being attacked, as well as being attacked and given enough time and the opportunity to pull out a gun, is probably about 1 in a zillion. In most cases, you don't realize that you're being attacked untill it's all over with and you regain your bearings. In summation, p22 good, I like it.

What really got me, what really really got me at the end of the day, was the gun fantasy speech (much like the one i just mentioned) I got from my co-worker. These stories are common at the gun range, and usually close out the day when the gun owner's confidence in his weapon is recharged. What he laid out for me was the strategic location of every gun in his house. He explained to me that he keeps an unloaded gun on the door-side of his bed, so that when a murderer comes into his house, they'll take that gun (because all murderers do on-site weapon procurement). THen, when they try to shoot the gun, he'll be woken-up by the sound of the click, at which time he'll reach over to the other side of his bed, grab his fully-loaded AK-47 (I'm not making this up) and shoot the murderer where he stands (because all bad guys just stand there and wait to get shot in male fantasies). Wow, just wow.

When i think back to my childhood, I was a pretty nervous kid. Thanks to the media and public school, I was pretty well conviced that anyone I didn't know was out to kidnap me and take me to their dungeon filled with mal-nourished six year-olds, and chain me to the wall where I'd be held captive for the rest of my days, eating gruel and wearing tattered clothes, with no hope of ever seeing afternoon cartoons again. After a while I grew out of this state of mind and just didn't think about the "what ifs" of walking home alone. Now, when I hear stories like the one above, and I can't help but feel like these people are the children that never grew out of that state of mind. Or, perhaps, they grew into it. It's hard to say, and it seems to resonate strongly with hard-core republicans. I can't imagine living in that much fear. I'm stating it right now, if I ever have a Rube Goldberg setup of firearms and weaponry throughout my house to defend me from murderers or burglars, please, come into my house, and shoot me. Not fataly if you can help it, just enough so that I can realize what a doorknob I am, and that no male self-defense fantasy ever works. If my co-worker ever was about to be killed in his sleep, but woke up just in time, he'd probably flail around in a panic, get tangled up in his sheets, fall off the bed and skewer himself on a bayonet that he cleverly planted end-up for the murderer to foolishly step on if he crawled through the window. I hope he has a lot of luck with his plan, and kills many intruders who risked it all to get their grubby hands on his Terminator 2 skull with the red, light-up eyes.



August-20-2008

Today I was reading the latest issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly, and came across an interesting interview. The theme of this issue was the Japanese Game Industry, and explored issues concerning the changing (and sometimes worsening) aspect of it. There were a few interviews throughout the issue with some big names, but the one I expected tolike the least, was the best of the lot. The interview was with Tomonobu Itagaki, who headed up Tecmo's production of the "Dead or Alive" and "Ninja Gaiden" series(s). He recently made the news because he quit his job with Tecmo, siting numerous grievences with management and also unpaid bonuses. He's since sued the company for the money owed to him.

I first heard of this guy a couple years ago when a former employee of his charged him with sexual harassment. So right fromt he start, i thought of the guy as kind of a scumbag. Turns out she was just sore because they dated briefly and then he broke-up with her. But honestly, just looking at the guy, it isn't hard to put the notion passed him, he looks like the type to do something like that.But anyway, that's not the point, I just got a bad vibe from the guy initially. Thing is, I'm a big fan of his games. Ninja Gaiden is the type of game that people expect to be above expectations, and Dead or Alive still holds the record as the only game I ever rented 3 times in a row. That being said, despite what kind of guy he is, he does turn out a good product.

Normally in interviews, the interviewee is getting grilled about upcomming games and other business related things, and are under corporate obligation to say the right things with the right spin. Itagaki isn't working for anyone now, and so doesn't have to censor himself at all. He really lets his views fly, and doesn't cheapen the meaning behind his words one bit. What really interested me was the way he viewed the video game business over the last 30 years. He explained the key differences between the US and Japanese markets, and what he did as a game maker to stay in the safest position. The thing to remember is that Dead Or Alive was released in both arcades and on home consoles, so he knows the numbers on each side in each country. He also revealed (to my suprise) that Japanese arcades aren't doing as well as people say. They've been a doomed business in the US since the 90's, but only recently in Japan have they lost popularity.

Throughout the interview, he compares things to fighter planes. He compares the video game insustry to them by relating how as technology advances, less planes are needed to fight bigger battles. Using the same comparison, he goes on to make the most intelligent argument in favor of XBOX 360 that I've ever heard. When asked why he chose to make games only for the XBOX, he responded:

"First of al, I think that the PS3 was an attempt by [former Sony chairman and CEO Ken] Kutaragi to create a uniquely Japanese computer to take on the intel standard; in that sense, I have a lot of respect for him. But to me, having a fighter that's powerful and easy to pilot makes it easy to win. That's my main goal, and thats why I choose to pilot 360."

The PS3 is notoriously difficult to program for because of how complex and advanced the system is. The 360 however, is based on existing technology that was just bumped up to support bigger games, so programming for it requires much less puzzle solving. So Itagaki chose to go with easy programming, which makes for more flexibility is game design, and (theoretically) leads to a better product. Like I said, that's the best defense for the 360 I've heard so far. Interesting stuff, right fromt he horse's mouth.



August-17-2008

The bulnk of what I'm going to complain about today was inspired by one trip to wal-mart.

I am so god damned sick of Mexicans. Everywhere I go, it's nothinbg but brown, smelly, jibberish spewing wellfare suckers, with legions of screaming, brown, disobedient kids running around them in circles. I'm so sick of mexican teenage boys, with shaved heads, knee-high scocks and basketball jerzees on. The only white people around here anymore are military people who got shipped here from the east, and even they're few and far between. I think that I understand why black people grvitate toward each other, because I find myself doing the same thing with white people. I went to a Wendy's the other day, and a white guy was working the drive-thru. A white guy! It was like fucking Christmas for me! I didn't have to talk extra-crystal-clear into the box for once.

I'm also god damned sick of flip flops. I can't go anywhere, ANYWHERE without hearing "flap, flap, flap, flap, flap, flap, flap..." Feet, everywhere. Toes wiggling around, cracked heels staring back at you. Jagged bones sticking out every which way. The toes are the msot easily injured part of the human body, and people are just going around, totally exposed. When I see people in flip-flips, i see ignorant, lazy, single-minded people, who think only of their own comfort, and are blind to consequences. Have you ever met someone in flip-flops and felt intelectually inferior to them? I haven't. For fucks sake, put on some shoes.

I'm so god damned sick of people who drive the wrong way in one-way parking lot lanes. These are the same people who wear flip-flops. They drive up and down the lanes in the wrong direction, and get pissed at the line of 10 cars comming the other way. THen, when they see a spot, they try to cut their Ford F-950 Super Cab into a 230 degree turn in a space of 15 feet. Finally, after about 5 mintues of backing-up and turning over and over, they get the truck into the space, but sticking straight out so that the person to their left can't back out.

I've bitched enough abotu how much I hate kids on here, but it pissed me off again today. Kids just screaming their god damn heads off. Put a fucking cork in it's mouth! 10 years ago, i was in a resturaunt and a baby started screaming at the top of it's lungs. The mother put her hand over it's mouth, and the noise was gone. That's all it takes. But on top of this, today it seemed that kids were being just as oblivious to their surroundings as the adults, which is actually kinda rare. Kids were bumping into me left and right. I was getting aggitated, and on my way out, I was following a slow as shit mother-daughter combo. THe kid musta been about 4 or 5 years old. Comming the other way, i saw a guy, with shoes on, and the little girl was right in hsi way, not paying attention. He did what my Obsesive Compulsive Disorder prevents me from doing: He just pushed the kid right out of the way. And I don't mean gently, I mean like, it was a "get outta my way you stupid kid" kinda push. The kid turned and looked discouraged, and then just kept walking. The mother didn't see it becuase she was too busy day-dreaming and holding up traffic, but if she had she probably woulda thrown a fit. I laughed, because it was equally as brilliant as the hand over the mouth move.

I said before that it was rare to have kids get in my way. I find myself having to push my way passed women with shopping carts more often than not, because they just fucking stop right in the middle of the aisle. THen, anotehr woman comes downt he other way, and stops adjacent to the other cart. Now, to get to where I was headed, I have to go back down the aisle, walk downt eh next aisle over, and go back down the original aisle from the other way. The women who caused this, don't care, because they aren't paying attention. Then, as I'm standing in the mile-long express chkeck-out line, i notice that one of these shopping cart women is right behind me, but whatever. I'm already in a bad mood, and the people in front of me have about 30,000 kids with them, all of whom seem to have just done several lines of cocain. I keep my distance, but it doesn't matter much, cuzz the kids just kept running into me anyway. Now, because of the way that the registers are setup, there was a gap between a closed register next to me, and the open register that I was waiting for. This gap was being used by people at the register on the other side of me to walk toward the door. I havea long-standing problem where if I'm in a line, cross traffic will always cut in front of me. So, I decided to hang back, and just leave room for people to walk. I could feel the people behind me getting impatient becaue I wasn't standing with my dick up the ass of the guy in front of me like they all were, but I held out. The guy in front of me moves up, and there's now enough room for me to put my stuff on the counter. So I do just that. As I expected, everyone behind me moves up and blocks up the aisle I had left open, so that now everyone behind me is crashing into each other. It's like the old traffic problem where there will be two lanes, one is open, and the other is full of cars and backed-up for miles. Like clockwork, one asshole will go flying passed everyone, thinking we're all too stupid to notice the open lane next to us. Then, he gets to the front of the line, sees why everyone is in the otehr lane (construction, accident, whatever) and then puts on his blinker to merge in. Then, also like clockwork, everyone is thinking "block him out!" but then one douche gets nervous and lets him in, and the smarter class loses again. So anyway, I'm waiting now for the guy in front of me to get his bags and go. While he's doing that, i notice a soda fridge next to me, and decided to grab one. I walk all of 3 feet, get the soda, turn around, and the shopping cart woman who was behind me has moved her cart into the spot where I was standing. Bitch, if you're that desperate to get out of the store, leave your cart and get out, because nothing that you're buying could be needed for the emergency that you're in such a hurry to get to. For years now I've been getting pissed-off at shopping car ladies. I honestly feel that I'm getting to the point where I'll find it acceptable to pick up their carts and throw them out of my way. i'll look like a big asshole and probably get kicked out of the store, but she won't block an aisle again.



August-11-2008

Watching Rednecks shoot guns is about as much fun as shaving your scrotum, so i wouldn't dare post links to videos of such things. I would, and did, however, postlinks to the opposite end of the entertainment spectrum, watching the results of rednecks convincing their girlfriend's to shoot guns. Enjoy:

Click Here: 1
Click Here: 2
Click Here: 3
Click Here: 4 Not a gun video, but shows why fat people kick ass!
Click Here: 5
Click Here: 6
Click Here: 7
Click Here: 8
Click Here: 9
Click Here: 10
Click Here: 11
Click Here: 12
Click Here: 13
Click Here: 14





August-07-2008

Life just keeps getting better. Both guys that I usually work with are on leave, so they have a guy from another shift helping me out. This guy outranks me and, to top it off, is a douche bag. Today he mentioned that he wants to be an MTL (Military Training Leader, aka the people at Tech School who are in charge of the trainees and make their lives miserble). I asked him why the hell he'd want to do that, and his response was, "To make Airmen who aren't like you." I informed him that making comments like that to trainees will gaurantee that they turn out like me, because that's why I turned out like me. But it leads me to another thought. What is it about me that nearly everyone above my ranks hates about me so much?

You could stick to the basics, like a wrinkly uniform, unpolished boots, big belly, individualist attitude, none of which have anything to do with how well I do my job. But some people (ass kissers) get really worked-up over stuff like that. I think what it is is that I'm surrounded by an above-average surge of people who don't like me, and so the bad wrap is bigger than usual. Hmmm... but I won't toss out the idea that they're all right and I really am a piece of shit. Speaking of which, it looks like I'm going to mid-shift, where all the criminals, degenerates, retards, and ugly people go to stay out of the public eye. I should fit right in.

Speaking of people who don't deserve to suck air, has anyone seen the show "Jon and Kate Plus Eight"? It's a reality show about a couple who have a set of twins and a set of sextuplets. I've watched it periodically, and I msut say, if there were any two people more undeserving of children, it's these two shmoes. In particular, the mother. What an awful woman. She just picks on her husband and her kids and screams and bitches all day long. Whenever I watch the show I find myself getting aggrivated. It also helps reinforce my desire to never have kids. Everywhere I go, I see endless examples of people whose lives have been destroyed by having kids. Their kids just bitch and whine and complain and take and need and devour and give nothing back. I never see parents having fun with their kids, only arguing with them. That's not to say that parents and kids don't have fun together, but it's such a short and fleeting moment, and usually ends up with the kids getting yelled at, and there goes all the fun for the day. Parents go to take the kids out to do something fun, and it always turns into a disaster due to misbehaving or disagreements. I've been told time and time again, "that's what I thought, but then I had kids and it's not true at all." Bullshit, I have yet to meet any parents who treat their children as blessings and not burdens. Not to mention this obsession with needs to keep an eye on the kids at all times.

I've told this story countless times, and I'll keep telling it forever. When i was in middle school, I went to a classmate's house to do a school project that we had been assigned. This kid had three brothers, and all four of them were rowdy as hell. When I got to his house, his parents were there, and all I saw and heard was screaming, chaotic, ballistic mayhem throughout the house. I couldn't believe that six people could live like this and manage not to kill each other. Words really cannot describe the level of absurd disarray that this family was in. The youngest one in particular would get screamed at and burst into unconsoled tears relentlessly. I dealt with it the best I could, but after about an hour I had had just about enough, and considered calling my parents to come get me. Just then, the parents left to go grocery shopping.

Once again, words cannot effectively describe what happened in that house. What happened was, everything got quiet. Two of the brothers went outside to play catch, another sat and watched TV, and my classmate and I did our project. When we were done, we all went outside and had fun doing whatever. Afterward we went inside and started watching TV, when all of the sudden, the parents came home. I shit you not, the instant they stepped into the door, it was as if someone had flipped a switch, and it was right back to uncontrollable mayhem again. So that's when I called my parents to come and get me. My point is that a lousy family is usually the fault of the parents, who aren't able to handle responsibility, or the use of birth control.



August-04-2008

This weekend sucked. It's not that anything particularly bad happened, it's just that I had to work Saturday morning, and then I had to get up and go to a class at 8am today (which is like 3am for most other people, considering I normally go to bed around 4am). But, thankfully, I got the rest of the day off to make up for those two inconveniences. SO, I decided to do something nice.

A few weeks ago I was driving around and saw an Indian Resturaunt called Taj Mahal. I swung around and checked it out, but upon walking in, i noticed that it was very fancy and that I was very underdressed. Plus they had cloth napkins, which automatically makes it fancy. So I decided to leave and wait untill a day like today to go back looking appropriate. So I did. I dug out the only nice clothes that I have, ironed em, and headed out.

I was seated promptly, and looked over the menu. I decided to get two drinks, one Indian, one American. I ordered a drink called a Lassi, and a Dr. Pepper. For the meal I ordered the Tandoori Khoobiyan, which is a mix of Tandoori Chicken, Lamb, and Shrimp.

So, my drinks show up, with the Lassi looking like a delightful milkshake with some kind of seeds spread on top of the foam. I picked up the glass, put it up to my face, took a sip, and nearly broke the glass when I lost all control of my senses. It was, without a doubt, the most vile thing I have ever drank. Think about that, I'm a guy who drinks any drink providing only that there is no alcohol in it. I've drank Tea made from a bird's nest (gotta love China Town), and it wasn't nearly as bad as this. I can't imagine anyone wanting to drink that unless the promised result was the desire to jump rope naked on the roof.

So after I guzzled down about half of my Dr. Pepper to wash out the taste of Lassi, my food showed up. Thankfully I can say that the Lassi was the only bad part of the entire dinner. Though the shrimp was average, the lamb was fantastic. But the real star of the meal was the Tandoori Chicken. It was so well marinated that the surface was smooth, it almost looked like it was made of glass. It cut so beautifully, that you ould see the imperfections of the knife in the cut. Whatever Tandoori is, it's good, because that was the best chicken I've had in a long time.

They brought me so much otehr stuff that I couldn't finish it all, nor did I want to, because I had to have an Indian Dessert. I decided to have something that i can't remember the specific name of, but it was basically Rasagollas with some kind of honey suace. Holy frakin' crap was that good. So overall I had a very nice dinner. Avoid Lassi at all costs.





August-02-2008

First, I'd like to state that Rambo friggin' rules. Tonight was a gun movie night, with Frist Blood 1 and 2, and Lord of War. Something I noticed in these movies was something that I've noticed a lot in film and TV, and that's gun shot sounds.

I once saw a documentary about the old movie "Bonnie and Clyde", and it pointed out that the film makers, especially the lead actor Warren Beatty, wanted to convey the harshness of a gun shot, and so edited the shots to be far louder than any other movie. When the film had it's big premier, the attending crew noticed that all the gun shots were quieter than they were in editing. Warren Beatty ran up to the projection booth to ask the projectionist what was wrong with the sound. The projectionist, as it turned out, had gone through the film beforehand and reduced the volume of the gunshots, because he thought it was a mistake on that particular reel.

Ever since then, I've noticed that gun shots in movies are horribly low-volume. Anyone who's ever shot a gun, or even been to a shooting range can tell you that guns are friggin' loud as crap. I went to the range with my friend not too long ago, and every time he shot his Mosin-Nagant, I'd jump outta my skin. On top of that, after spending the day shooting, my hearing was pretty much done for the day. So when you see guys talking normally after firing off about a hundred rounds, in reality it should be followed with, "WHAT?!"

I theorize that the main reason for the decreased volume is the use of blanks. When you fire off a blank, all you're doing is making a lot of fire and noise, thanks to the massive amount of air pressure being dissipated at the end of the gun barrel. With a bullet, that sound is nearly doubled in volume. The best wya I can explain that is to show you this. The thing to note in that video is that the first three rounds are super-sonic, and create a tiny (in physical size) sonic boom. The next 5 rounds are sub-sonic, and have no sonic boom. Since the gun is silenced (which is another movie myth to be discussed), MOST of the actually gun powder "bang" is eliminated. So essentially what you're hearing is the sound of the bullets, not the gun powder.

Another similar complaint i have is in movies where people are talking at normal volume in military aircraft. A good example is Transformers where the guys are talking in the back of a CV-22 Osprey. Bull. As most of you know, I spend a lot of tiem around military aircraft, and being inside one when engine re running means that you can't hear anything. To talk without the aid of a headset requires you to practically put your mouth in the other person's ear and yell your brains out.

Just for the fun of it, here's another gun video. The first gun he shoots is an MP5, a very nice sub-machine gun. Second is a Sig551... apparently (I never heard of it). Next is a personal favorite of mine, the P90 (bull-pup with forward hand grips, holds 50 9mm rounds in one magazine, DAMN!). And the last is a Glock modified to shoot fully automatic.

Another P90 video. Even though it's in Japanese, it fairly obvious what they're talking about.

And just for the hell of it, everything you ever wanted to know about Metal Gear Solid, here.
As well as Metal Gear's entire chronology, part 1, and part 2. I know the entire story inside and out, and it was hard for me to take all the info in. lol



July-28th-2008

This weekend I picked up a copy of the new NIN album, "The Slip". I dunno, maybe I'm getting too old, or Trent Reznor is, but I wasn't feeling this one at all. All the songs were very ho-hum, nothing memorable or worth paying attention to. For the first time ever, I felt that I was "sufferring" through a NIN CD. As soon as it was over, I popped it out, and popped in Killswitch Engage, and proceeded to forget all about "The Slip". I know that as a NIN fan I should be thrilled that we're getting flooded with new stuff after waiting 5 years between albums before. But I'd rather wait 5 years for something that took time and tweaking to perfection as opposed to an "on the fly" slap together of basic songs. Where did all the rage and hate go? Where's the zazz? Where's the catchy riffs and the multi-layered lyrics with cryptic meanings? One could retort, "Well the angry songs were done before, now it's time for righteous political outrage." Bull, I want angry musical annihilation. I'm still angry at the world and I'm feeling let down by the music that I depend on to help me feel better about my state of life.

On another topic, I read an interesting article in GameInformer today. They surveyed 1,400 console owners on various topics, all centered around online features. Of all the charts and graphs and percentages, one really caught my attention. They asked the people being surveyed if they would (or have) buy games to download over the internet, to be stored on the console's hard drive. A resounding 75% said that they'd rather buy a hard-copy of the game. Amazing? In the age of downloadable everything? Not at all, that's a market flub. Here's why:

Ever since the whole Napster ordeal, companies have tried various techniques to capitalize on the newest and hottest technological trend: downloading media. So they set up things like iTunes and what not, to let people buy the songs they want without paying more for songs they don't. On top of that, they can do it all from home, and store it all on their iPod. At $0.99 a song, this ain't too bad, even though it does add up. However, people who have iPods usually love them, and so they're willing to have intangible songs on them. A similar, and soon to be huge deal now, it NetFlix downloadable movies. As was jsut revealed at E3, Microsoft's response to loosing the HD Format wars is now to allow XBOX 360 owners to download their Netflix movies and watch them on the console. This is a very good idea, because this greatly supercede's NetFlix's current "Movie rental by Mail" setup. But note that word, "rental". You download the movie as if you were renting it, so once you download another movie, the previous one is gone.

So game publishers see that PC gamers pirate games left and right, and download them from pirate servers all the time. At first one would think "well if they're okay with downloading a stolen game, then downloading a gaame that they pay for shouldn't be any different." Wrong. If you steal a game, and your hard drive crashes, you don't lose a single penny on that game. If you pay for that downloaded game and your hard drive crashes, you just lost money, not to mention all your progress. Most places will let you redownload it provided that you can prove that you bought it to begin with, but on a PC, they can't get a gaurantee that it's going to the same comptuer, and staying on the computer.

Now, here's Johnny Q. Gamer, who's old enough to buy games on his own and has his own online account setup with whatever game system he has. A game comes out, and it's available to purchase in two forms. You can buy it online and download straight to your console's hard drive, or you can go to the store and pay the same price for the CD. Well, if Jonny's hard drive takes a shit, that means his game will vanish. It's likely that he can redownload it at no cost, but that's providing that the network he downloaded it from still offers it, or is even running. How long will the PlayStation Netowrk or XBOX Live be up and running? Who knows, so in the long term, that digital copy of the game will be long gone, but Blanky McDisky's actually CD will still remain. Plus it saves a lot of space on your drive. Interesting logic that slightly restores my faith in general humanity.

Speaking on online things that don't make sense, why did Sony introduce the new "Trophies" thing? My super-educated guess is that they're trying to do something like XBOX Live's "Achievements" deal, where when you do something impresive in a game, you get a gold star sticker to show your loser friends that you're a bigger loser than they are. Copying a gimmick from your competition makes you pathetic, even if it's better.

Speaking of pathetic attempts at copying things, how about PlayStation Home? Yeah, wow, can't wait for that to fail horribly. I guess this is Sony's attempt to copy Nintendo's Mii thing. So far I haven't heard one thing about Home that makes me feel like it will improve my gaming experience even one tiny bit. It sounds like taking the long way around to do something that I should be able to do through a menu system. But instead I can take control of a character that I model after myself so that people all over the world can see what a poorly dressed, fat, geek with thinning hair I am. And I can walk around town and look at people socializing and doing things, while not doing any of thsoe things myself. So it's kinda like being at the mall, where I can walk to a distant place in order to play a game, rather than just selecting it from my basic game menu that I already have and works fine.

I think that the real deal with Home is that Sony realized shortly after last year's E3 what a colossal hunk of shit it really is, but have hyped it so much that they can't scrap it, and are now scrambling to make it usable.Like anything Sony, it's about a year behind schedule, and probably won't come out for another year.

A similar, but more promissing disaster, is the game "Little Big Planet." I'll admit, the game looks good, and I would like to play it, any time within the next 5 years. I saw ads for this game not long after the PS3 came out, and every time I've seen it since it's been "just around the corner", for the last year and a half. I've been subjected to so much press for a game that nobody has played that I'm starting to resent it. It has a high position on my campaign to stop advertising games years before they come out. I estimate that LBP will be out in 2009, because like every holiday since the release of the PS3, the big holiday games won't come out until after everyone spent their money, and then can't buy it. I also think that Final Fantasy 13 will be the last big hurrah for the PS3 just before the PS4 comes out in 5 years. Also, White Knight anybody? yeah, where'd that game go since we were promissed it 2 years ago?



July-27th-2008

I went to see The Dark Knight today, or last night, it was a late show. I had planned to see it at about 7:30pm, but when I got to the big delux theater, it was so overcrowded that there was no way I'd get a seat anywhere expect in the front show between people who wouldn't want me to sit next to them. So I went across town to ol' reliable, that is UA Four Hills theater, where a packed theater means that half the seats are empty. So I got to plunk down in my usual corner and enjoy a $4.50 medium Mr. Pibb. I was in a good mood going in because I got to play a few satisfying rounds of Austin Powers pinball in the lobby.

So the movie starts off, and wastes little time going into the plot, which I love when movies do. The whole damn thing is expertly done, there are multiple plots that all come together nicely, while not being tied together. Now, many would and will debate my next comment, but as the presiding chairman of everything sensible and right, you can trust me when I say that Heath Ledger's Joker cast a shadow over the rest of the movie, and every other Joker performance ever done. The only one that comes close is Mark Hamill's Joker from the Animated Series, but the character as a whole is much more formulaic. Ledger's Joker is smart as hell, and isn't afraid to get his hands dirty. In fact, his hands get filthy, right down to the bone. Something that even the movie points out, though anyone could see it, is that this Joker (as stated in the movie Psycho) commits crimes of passion, not profit. This Joker's goal is to turn the world into chaos, just to watch it burn. The Joker states at one point that he's not crazy, and quite convincingly. Again, that's just it, he's not crazy, he's pure freakin' evil. I'm very bummed that Ledger died, because that was a character I'd like to see more of. But like most good things, it's small disage is what will make it even better.

Harvey Dent plays a major roll in the movie, and eventually we see him as Two-Face. I don't want to say that this Two-Face is bad, it's different though. The Two-Face of yore was out for revenge on "The Man" in GOtham City, as it were, and so wasn't afraid to do a little thugging here and there. This Two-Face though, was all about revenge against the "heros of Gotham". His plight was more pure, but a little too fast and too extreme. I think that they should have pushed his story out a little further in the timeline of the movie. The great thing about this Two-Face though was the burned half of his face. Think of Two-Face from the animated series, with the lid-less eye and lip-less mouth, and add what would really happen if one got burned. It was pretty horrifying, and therefore right on target.

Now, the movie is over, the theater is dark, and the credits start to roll. My mind, is blown, because nobody has stood up yet. Gradually, as the credits roll, people get up to leave, but slowly. When it was all over (and there's nothing after the credits), there were three of us left. WHen the two other guys who stayed got up to leave, I said "At least some of us are patient." It helped to slightly restore my faith in humanity.



July-14-2008

I was just trying to sit through the G4 coverage of Microsoft's E3 presentation, and I coulnd't do it. I felt embarassed, even in the privacy and confines of my own home, watching corporate execs and software programmers fumble through scripted lines, and deomonstrate games that they have no clue how to play.

As much as it pains me to say this, but I realized it last year as well, Peter Moore was exactly the type of person that Microsoft needed up on stage, pushing merchandise. The guy may have been kind of a douche, but the guy knew how to organize a presentation with style that also flowed well. This year, Microsoft's presentation (now without Moore who no loner represents MS) is just as bad as Sony's was last year. Man oh man, that's saying a lot. Last year, Jack Treton, who does something at Sony, ran the entire presentation, and turned it into a tedious marathon without the rewarding end.

In recent years, E3 has been getting bashed by the media, as well as game publishers, because of it's increasingly disorganized state. I remember many years ago, 11 actually, when E3 was new, and what a tremendous deal it was. The biggest stuff you could think of was on the show floor, there for anyone to see and learn about, and then spend the next year or so giddily awaiting the release of their favorite games which they saw first at E3. That was then, when things made sense. Now, E3 is media only, no fans. In the age of internet and communication, the dumbest thing you can do is present these things with a media filter on it. Telling your customers, especially the ones willing to shell out the money to get into E3, that they aren't invited to look at the things that THEY'LL be buying, is a horrible marketing move. Proof of that is that ever since it's become a media-only event, nobody likes it any more. Somehow it's statyed afloat, as the last 3 events were said to be the last E3 ever, each year. I read that a large number of 3rd party developers decided not to even show-up, and I can't say that I blame them. Why bother setting up shop if there's no gaurantee that customers will ever see your display?

Now, the reason that I say all this, is that despite the fact that E3 is media only, the big 3 companies all put on a show as if fans were in the audience. They try pulling the same advertising tricks on journalists, who've seen it all before, as they do on stupid average joe's who think that the pretty girl by the TV will go out with him if he buys one. So, what happens when Chewbacca comes out on stage to present the new Star Wars PSP? Crowd cheers and joyous rapture? No, more like dead silence and reporters waiting to jot down when the release date is. It's bad enough when your meer presence on stage is a downer, but to be giving a doomed performance to a crowd that doesn't care, Jesus H. Christ on a cracker. If I were Sony, I'd have Billy Mays on a plane to California to save their company. Seriosuly, Billy Mays can push any product, so if he could get behind a product that people care about (electronic entertainment, as opposed to garden drills and industrial silly putty), it'd go over like Gang Busters. Seriosuly Sony, get Billy Mays to do the Sony Presentation this week, and I gaurantee positive results.



July-07-2008

Why do I even bother going to the movies anymore? I just went to go see Hancock, and I want my damn money back. What a piece of shit. I don't have the wherewithal right now to bitch up a storm about what a god aweful travesty of a movie that was. Absolute nonsense, with no links, reasons, or motivation behind anything. The story is NEVER fully explained, the characters have no explicable history, and the "bad guys" do things with no knowledge as to why or if they'll work. What a hunk of shit. Hollywood really does think that they can just crap in our faces and we'll eat it up as long as there's explosions and side-boob.

And once again, people are ready to shoot out of the theater like the damn building is on fire as soon as they see a black screen. These people are the problem with movies, because they live in a hypnotized dream state, where as long as basic needs are fulfilled, they can just piddle-shit through life. "I saw explodie, I saw boob, screen go black, me leave now." No wonder Hollywood thinks the American public is such a bunch of dullards, they are!

I'll finish with a quote from Futurama,
Fry: "Bender, this world isn't good enough for you."
Bender: "Not even close."



July-05-2008

This week I finally got something that I've wanted for a while, a front Shock Tower Brace for the Miata. I got it from GoMiata.com, who I won't give a link because doing business with them sucked. I order the brace and new Tail Lights from them. When the package showed up, it had the lights, and the bar, but nothing else. So I had to e-mail them and tell them to send me the rest of the Shock Tower Brace. No apologies, just said that they'd send it out. So the mounts finally showed up, and everything installed fine (though i did have to modify the Air Filter Box to get the brace to fit).

On a note not related to the rest of this story, GoMiata.com really sucks ass. That's not to say that they don't have good products, I mean their business sucks ass. I've noticed that the Miata has been burning oil quickly how that it's hot out, so I looked up the Oil Cooler Kit on their site. I notice though, that there's no way to attach it to the oil system. I e-mailed them, and they said that the Oil Filter adapter (which every other Oil Cooler Kit on the planet comes with) is a seperate order, and msut be bought with the Oil Filter Relocation Kit! (Miata Oil Filters are notoriously difficult to get to, so many aftermarket palces sell kits to put the filer someplace more accessible). So, if you want the Oil Cooler Kit, you have to buy the Oil Filter Relocation Kit, whether you want it or not. That's BULLSHIT. I wrote them an e-mail, and explained as nicely as I could that such a tactic is basically extortion, and that if they don't change it, they've lost my business. They didn't respond.

Anyway, back to the story at hand. Like I said, the products are good, and the brace was worth every penny. I didn't realize until I put it on just how much flex there is in the Miata's chasis. Now the Front wheels work together instead of getting all off-kilter. Really really worthwhile purchase, I just wish that my money went toward someone I like (like FlyinMiata.com, but they dont' sell those).

So tonight I decided that I'd give the new brace a real test, up on my favorite Mountain Pass around here, Sandia Crest. The trek up the mountain was a pain, as always. It's so steep that the Miata has trouble climbing up into the stratosphere. After the long schlep, I get to the top. The top has a resturaunt (which I've never been in, as I've heard it's terrible), and a couple big parking lots.

Usually, this is where I get disappointed, because I always want there to be someone in a decent car waiting for someone else, me, to go down the mountain with. Well since it's 2am, I'm not counting on it, but Holy Crap! There it was, a Subaru Impreza, waiting in the parking lot! This was potentially exciting for two reasons. First, it was a car that doesn't suck, and Second, I recently talked to a guy who said that he had an Impreza and often drove on Sandia Crest, so there was a chance that I knew the guy. I swung around and got ready to go down (it's one-way up and down). I was expecting the guy to follow me, but no such luck. So I went to the start point, and just as I got there, I saw a camera flash behind me. Not thinking about it, I took off down the mountain. After a minute, I stopped to see if he was gonna follow me... nothing. So I kept going. The further down I went, the more I started to wonder why the hell the guy took my picture. Was he cataloging late-night racers? Was he looking for someone to turn into the police? Was he just a camera-happy geek who likes taking pictures of anything that interests him? THe first and third options seem the most likely, but the second one stuck in my head. The last time a picture was taken of my car, it came to me in the mail with a ticket attached. So, my paranoia and realistic thinking leads me to hope that the guy doesn't do anything with the picture, and if he does, that he has the smarts to censor my license plate.

So, the results of the Brace test were top-notch. The car handled way better with it. However, I'm still not satisfied with the handling. I think new sway bars are next on the list.

Speaking of cars and handling, I bought the game "Grid" today. Very nice suprise. It's very well balanced racing, and with real cars and real damage. Gran Turismo has been wearing on my patience, and this game is a nice change of pace. Though it's not my favorite feature, the car damage is something that I welcome. One of the few other games to have car damage on real cars was "Need For Speed: High Stakes". I attribute much of my racing game abilities to that game. Before that, you could slam a car into a wall at 200mph and drive off without a scratch, but NFSHS forced you to drive carefully while also driving fast. I think that this is just what the new generation of gamers needs. The drifting is ideal, not as easy as Burnout, but not as hard as Tokyo Extreme Racer. Many people are already claiming this to be what Gran Turismo should be, and I'm starting to agree. Gran Turismo is great and all, but "realistic" shouldn't mean "tedious".



July-01-2008

I had no intention of updating tonight, but something came to my attention that I just can't neglect ranting about. Capcom has been known to do several cross-over games, such as X-Men Vs. Street Fighter, Marvel Vs. Capcom, and (my favorite) Capcom Vs. SNK. It's been quite some time since the last cross-over fighting game has come out, and I'm thrilled at this one. Capcom Vs. Tatsunoko. Or as it's actually called, "Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Cross Generation of Heroes". As usual, The Fighter's Generation is the only site that has any real info about it.

I know I know, "What the hell is Tatsunoko?!" I asked the same thing, and when i found out what that is, I was freaking thrilled. Tatsunoko is one of the oldest anime production companies in the world. They've produced some of the most famous anime's to come to america. Most notably, Speed Racer, Gatchaman "aka G-Force, aka, Battle of the Planets, which had character designs by Yoshitaka Amano, who rules), and Neon Genesis Evangelion. All that's great, and I can't wait to see if Samurai Pizza Cats get involved, but that's not what I'm so thrilled about. What I'm thrilled about is the fact that Chasshan, one of my favorite anime characters ever, is FINALLY in a game, and a fighting game at that.

Casshan (Casshern in japan) was one of the first anime movies I ever saw. A Live Action movie was made a few years ago that I thought was pretty good. One of the big draws to Casshan is his ungodly cyborg strength, which he demonstrates by ripping huge robots apart (as Allen Harris once put it) like a box of tissues. But don't be fooled, I'm still pretty stoked about Gathaman, they kick ass too. I don't know if the Lil' Bits (the last anime ever shown on Nick Jr.) are gonna be involved, but one can hope.

Just on a side note, I'm freaking loving Death Note. I'm about ready to include in my coveted "Top 5 Anime's of all time" list. I especially like the new opening song. It's loud and nasty, just like I like my music.



June-29th-2008

Q: Hey, Blank-Disk? What's the weather like in New Mexico this time of year?

A: Well, it's June, so ya know, hot, unbearabley sunny, with the occassional HAIL STORM! That's right, Marble sized hail, in June, in New Mexico. I'm convinced that this state is the above sea level version of the bermuda triagle.



June-27th-2008

I normally don't talk about things like this, but I feel compelled to do so right now. A couple weeks ago, I went out with some freinds to see a movie. On the way home, 3 of us were in my friend's car, and a guy who I know from work who came with us, took his motorcycle. When we got on the highway, he zipped ahead of us. Next thing we saw was him on the side of the highway standing over his bike. He was wearing a helmet, gloves, and a bike jacket with slide pads in it. The story was, he was doing 80mph, and went to change lanes. He suddenly hit a bit of sand (common here) and the bike slide out from under him. He landed on his face and slid about 30 feet, and judging from his helmet and the bike, that sounded about right. He skinned up his knees, but was able to ride home. Wow, that's pretty crazy. Especially since he freakin' survived. The brake handle on the bike was sanded down, that's how bad it was, and he walked away.

Now, I came to find out a couple days ago, that another guy that I know from work, but this guy I know quite well, got in a motorcycle accident. I didn't hear what the circumstances were, but again, a helmet was involved, so he's alive. What I do know though is that he ripped 5 out of 6 tendons in one leg.

Over the weekend, I just so happened to be relaying the first story to a guy, who turned out to be the Executive of the Base Safety Office. He said that in the AIr Force alone last year, there were about 165 deaths, and that 58% of them were motorcycle accidents, and that most of them weren't wearing helmets. The whole point I'm trying to make is, wear your freakin' safety gear.

In other news, I'm trying to be nicer to my car. I bought new tail lights for it, and today after work I washed it for the first time in... a long long time. When you can't see out of your rear window, it's time to wash the car. The engine seems to be having soem idling issue, which I am chalking-up to bad Alternator/battery. Neither would supprise me.



June-24th-2008

Today at work, we had a brief discussion about Mortal Kombat. Today when i got home, I noticed that Mortal Kombat 2 was one of the games that I bought off the PlayStation Store when I first got my PS3. So I decided to give it a try, again, as I usually do every couple years. Maybe I'm an ignorant retard, but I just can't grasp this game. At one point, many years ago, I knew Sub-Zero's moves, and I think I learned Scorpion's "Get over here!" move, but that was about it. Also, I remember the first time i played MK3, I won by continually doing a smashing move with the 4-armed chick. In all of my Mortal Kombat experience, that seems to be the only way to win, doing the same move over and over, usually a move that is unblockable, or renders the opponent immobile in some way. If you don't do this, you'll be beaten to a pulp by the computer in about 4 moves.

Speaking of moves, I went online to find out just what the hell the moves are. These moves make no sense in the scheme of fighting games. They seem to be a half-assed jumble of various directional button presses, followed by a specific action button. There is no real tactic behind them. What really bothers me about them is that they all seem to be based primarily on 4-point direction inputs. So you can't just roll your inputs like a normal fighting game, you have to do one input, stop, then do another.

I wasn't allowed to play the game when I was a kid, and instead played Street Fighter. Let me tell you about a game worth mentioning. TO this day, Super Street Fighter 2 is considered one of the most balanced and well plotted fighting games ever. THe controls are fluid, and the tactics one must use to win are varied and require patience and timing to win.

I once saw a documentary about Mortal Kombat, and the creators said that it was meant to be a bargain-bin, throw away game to help generate a little money to help fund a more promissing project. I can see why. I don't understand what the hell the attraction is/was to this game. All of it's fans seem to have hovered over to Tekken, as it has a similar nonsensical control scheme, and tactics that... well, there aren't any. Just do a backward flip kick about 20 times and you'll win.

Speaking of fighting games, but good ones, Street Fighter 4 is looking promissing as ever. It looks as if they're pretty much denying Street Fighter 3 ever existed, which is a sad state of affairs because it was considered a pinnacle in 2D fighters. It had excellent animation and programming. However, it didn't do well because it was made to be played by advanced players. It's rediculously hard, I've only beaten the Arcade mode once. This one seems to revive all the characters from SF2, and adds a few more. But once again, teh new characters don't really mix-in very well in my opinion. One guy, Abel, and some Lucha wrestler look okay, but the other two aren't the stereotypes that Street Fighter fans love. As always, I'm holding my breath for Akuma, and hopefully a top-notch version of Shin Akuma.

In other news, I saw the new Call of Duty: World At War video today. Once a-friggin'-gain, it takes place in World War 2. Why? WHY? I thought we were done with this. THe last game took place in modern times, and it was friggin' incredible. It got Game Of The Year from a lot of reviewers. All i can say is that this one better come with a free gun, otherwise it's just gonna be another WW2 crap-fest. Pearl Harbor, Normandy, Iwo Jima, tap dancing on the poop deck, been there done that about a zillion freakin' times. Get a new war to mimic. Hey, I'd take a Revolutionary War game over a WW2 game any day. Why? Cuzz it ain't been done yet, at least not well.

Hey, here's an idea. Indians vs. Protestants. You play as an Indiain, fighting off John SMith and the Pilgrim Menace with rocks and sticks. It's a timeless struggle, it'll even have biological warfare. The settlers give the indians diseased blankets, while the indians shit in the creek and give the Quakers dysentery. Uh oh, the indians did a rain dance (aka Colonial WMD) and gave an entire village pneumonia. Now that's a game.



June-23rd-2008

I read that George Carlin died yesterday. That's really sad, I enjoyed his comedy more than anyone else these days. I had suspected that he was in poor health the last couple of years, and it seems that was more or less true.

I think that my favorite act of his was "Complaints and Grievences," Especially the part where he lists people who oughtta be killed. I also enjoyed his act on the Ten Commandments, and how he simplified them down to two commandments: "Thou Shalt always be honest and faithful, and thou shalt try real hard not to kill anybody."

I'm off to watch some Carlin acts.



June-23rd-2008

After quite a long period of on-and-off play, I finally beat Professor Layton and the Curious Village. I don't know if I'd classify it as a "best game ever" or "favorite game ever", but I have no problem calling it a classic.

The game basically tells the story of Professor Layton and his protege Luke, investigating a mysterious treasure, called "The Golden Apple" (the treasure isn't a golden apple, but rather that's what it's reffered to as nbobody knows what the treasure is), left behind in a man's will. Along the way, Layton and Luke have to solve puzzles in order to unlock the secrets of the treasure, and numerous other mysteries around town. There's over 120 puzzles, most of medium difficulty. You can unlock bonus puzzles though, that are of very high difficulty.

The game puts the two elements together well. My only critisism is that the plot mysteries are solved for you, almost like the puzzles were jsut inserted into an already written story. I think that some kind of device to compile evidence and then submit a final verdict would have been better. Still, it was a great game and tons of fun to play. I read that there's already a sequel in Japan with antoehr on the way, so I'll be looking forward to that.

One thing that really stuck out to me was the art style. I recognized it instantly, btu I can't quite place where I've seen it used before. I wouldn't doubt if the artist adn animators were part of an anime I've seen. The animated sequences were very well done, and I've also heard rumors of a movie, which I think it would work very well as. Good game, good game.



June-20th-2008

I wish I had more time to talk about this, but work calls. Last night I saw a preview for Bill Maher's documentary, "Religulous". Now, i've heard Bill Maher's "comedy" in the past, and while I didn't disagree with what he said, i always felt that it was too self-righteous. Or, to put it better, as if he expected everyone to agree with him. Most of the time, his rants usually turn into putting down religion.

From what I saw in the trailer, and what I know of Bill Maher, I can say that this is really over the top. By that I don't mean that he's pushing the envelope, I mean he's making himself look rediculous (zing!). The trailer depicts religious people as lunatics and idiots and downright backward people who can justify cruelty in the name of their faith. One guy insinuates that he's ready to throw down if Maher insults his religion. Or, that's what we're lead to believe. What that said to me was that this guy is feels insulted by Maher insulting his beliefs, and if willing to put Maher in his place. I dunno, sounds pretty human to me.

Maher always blames religion for damn near everything. He always nit-picks little instances from here and there and blows them up into big deals. Kinda like how Southern Baptists do (Ohhhhhh!). And that right there is my point. He pisses all over people for believing what he percieves as lunacy, mainly because he feels that they push their religion on others and society. But what's his response? To push his opposing views on society in such a way as to make people feel stupid if they don't agree with him. He makes a movie showing how dumb radical religious people are, when he himself is a radical Athiest.

I'm not sure who authorized him to do this, but they must be desperate for something to put on the screen. All it is is the rants of one nut case about other nut cases. He focuses on religion so much that he thinks that it's a huge problem, when in fact religion has little to no effect on the average person's daily life at all. Hey, if you follow dogs around all day, you'd think tht there was a huge dog poop problem. This guy really needs to look at the bigger picture.

BTW, is it jsut me or does Bill Maher bear a striking resemblance to Bill O'Reilly. In fact, that two behave the same way about their extreme views. Interesting, I call shenanigans.



June-13-2008

It's so hard to think of something solid to say about MGS4. What I can say for sure is that it's occupying a lot of my time, and in a very good way. I find myself saying that I'll save and quit after the next level, but never do until I realize what time it is.

Gameplay wise, oh man, it's awesome. One of the biggest and most impressive additions to the series is the Octocamo. In the last game, to blend in with your surroundings, you had to go into a menu system and change your camoflauge every time the sceenery changed. And even then, you weren't totally hidden. Enemy soldiers could usually spot you pretty easily if you were too close or moved even a little. But this new Octocamo system is just insane. Basically, the suit mimics the pattern and texture of any surface that you touch, provided that you remain still. However, even after you move, the suit will retain the effects. What I thought was really funny is that if you want the suit to return to default black, you just shake the controller like an Etcha-Sketch. This suit is so damn handy, and it really helps you to blend in. At one spot, I saw two soldiers comming, so I laid down on the sidewalk and the suit mimiced the color and texture. One guy actually walked right up to me and didn't know that I was there untill he tripped over my arm. That's rediculously good, because in other games, something like that never would have happened. They'd have spotted me no problem.

Story-wise, the game is just an absolute information overload. I want so badly to catch everything the first time, but there's just no way. Hideo Kojima said that all the plot holes will be filled-in in this game, and I don't doubt it considering how much info is getting covered.

A gameplay element that I really like is the ability to play for a team. Rebel troops are scattered throughout the game, and if you help them win a battle, they'll cover you, and help to forge you a path through all the soldiers.

I could go on and on, but I'll save it for later. The game rules, and that's that.



June-12-2008

I wanted to do a bigger update than this, but my free time is a tad bit occupied at the moment. Though I told everyone I wouldn't, fate just so happened to allow me to attend the midnight sale of Metal Gear Solid 4 last night. It was pretty cool, and not nearly as crowded as I had expected, but there was still a decent turn-out. I'd say there were about 20 people there.

They let us into the store (EB Games) at 10pm so that we could all pay for our copies in advance, that way when the clock struck midnight, they could just hand them out nice and efficient like. A girl that worked there was dressed up like Meryl Silverburg from MGS, and the manager was a combination of MGS1,3,and 4 snake. He was wearing MGS1 clothes, with an MGS3 eyepath, and his hair was grey and he had a mustach like MGS4 Snake. lol. I went and got some dinner and then came back seeing as I didn't feel like browsing games I didn't want for 2 hours. When I came back, one of the employees that I knew from playing Inidital D had shown up and was being the MC of the event. He decided to do some trivia and give out prizes. I, or course, instantly volunteered to be first. He asked me to name all 4 aliases of Gray Fox. I was hesitant to answer because I didn't know how specific he wanted me to be, but I got it right with Gray Fox, Frank Jeager, Null, and Cyborg Ninja. My prize was an oversized display box for MGS4, which I think will be a nice piece of rare display memorabillia. I got asked a 2nd question later, but got it wrong (arg!). He asked me what year MGS was released for the PC. I said 2001, but it was 2000. Oh well, plot is more my thing anyway. So midnight rolled around and they played the MGS theme, and everyone got their copies. I, of course, got the super special edition copy with goodies.

I'd love to talk about the game right now but work calls. Stay tuned!



June-03-2008

Well that was a big fat build-up to nothing. Basically they're giving me another chance to pass my PT test. Yay, 3 more months of tension and insecurity. Arg. Sometimes I jsut wish they'd kick me out and be done with it.



I'm going to be leaving here pretty soon to find out my fate concerning my Air Force career. I'm very nervous. Though I should be expecting the worst, I find it conforting to think that there's a posibility that it won't be as bad as I think. But this idea just reminded me of a line from "Alice's Resturaunt". "Now friends, there was only one or two things that Obie coulda done at the police station, and the first was he could have given us a medal for being so brave and honest on the telephone, which wasn't very likely, and we didn't expect it, and the other thing was he could have bawled us out and told us never to be see driving garbage around the vicinity again, which is what we expected, but when we got to the police officer's station there was a third possibility that we hadn't even counted upon, and we was both immediately arrested."

THat's kidna how I feel right now. I'm not expected to be let off, but there are ways, in my mind, that i can be while still fullfilling my superior's desire to punish me for being fat. There's a worse option that will be a major loss in my mind and will very much satisfy my superior's desires for punish me for being fat. But I can't help but shake the thought that there's a third option that's escaping my attention, that is far worse than anything I had thought of already.

For those of you dying to hear the news, all 3 of you, please be patient. The story is long and I need time to organize it to make sense. I probably won't have time today to post the news until I get home from work tonight. So please wait until then.



May-29-2008

So a while back a web comic came to my attention, which is written by an Air Force officer called "Air Force Blues." Now I'm all for someone making a comic about the Air Force, but it's just not what it should be. First off, I have yet to read a decent curse word. Second, It focuses on Officers. Who gives a shit about officers? Not me. Officers just make life difficult for everyone, and they get all the attention anyway. All the movies (except one, Jarhead, the greatest military movie ever made) focuses on Officers. I read that the creator of the comic is a Staff Sergeant, which I find hard to believe considering how much Enlisted people are villified int eh comic. Yes, he's pointing out the flaws of the officers for looking down on the enlisted people, but it doesn't balance right. I get what he's doing, but his direction is very off. My biggest complaint is that when i read his strips, i get the feeling that he's walking on eggshells not to piss anyone off. I know for a fact that one can easily get in trouble for "misrepresenting" the Air Force. A guy I used to work with made a very popular music video in his dorm room, and becuase he had an Air Force flag in the background, he got in major trouble, and the video was banned from all servers. Gay. But c'mon man, kissing ass may keep you your job, but you'll look back and see yourself as a sell-out to people who ended up betraying you. This is one more reason why i need to break into the comic business. If only my financial future had a shred of certainty at this point.

I've had big news, not good news, but big news, but I'm waiting to share it. Next week I'll enlighten all 3 of you as to what's going on, as I'll finally get some solid answers about my situation.

In lighter news, I beat Grand Theft Auto 4. The ending was what I expected, but it still was very emotional. I think it's sad that GTA always get such a negative view from the general public, when in fact it's often the best story telling you can find in video games, this one espeially.



May-26-2008

Follow-up update. I got in my car to go see some friends, and as I was driving, the new song from The Cure came on the radio. Hell, maybe they will headline Lalapalooza. Also, I got to rethinking, and they should do a Marvel Vs. DC game if anything. Or, if it's too far fetched to have the two companies going up against each other like that, then they should do Guilty Gear Vs. DC. Guilty Gear is a great fighting game franchise that has a good cult following. It's not super popular, but it's a great place to start. THe only downside that I see to that is that Guilty Gear is very weapons based, and msot big DC heros do really use melee weapons. That is to say that they mostly just brawl with bad guys. I dunno. I'm feeling lost in my own head. -------
So so so. Many years ago, a video game came out that revolutionized 2D fighting games (arguably), called X-Men vs. Street Fighter. This later evolved into the last big game of the series, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, which many consider the last great 2D fighting game (I disagree, but I can see why some would think that). The game was an arcade smash hit. It focused on huge combos and was fairly easy to pick-up and play. I heard many stories about people crowding around the arcade machine just to watch someone do big flashy combo moves.

With the success of these Company Vs Company games, many others came into being, one such being my personal favorite, Capcom Vs. SNK 2. I even heard about a Namco Vs. Capcom game, which is funny to me considering all Namco fighters are 3D. Well, I heard about the latest collboration, and thought it was dumb. Then I saw the video for it, and still thought it was dumb.

Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe is the Hail Mary attempt by both companies to tap into a "new" audience. This is the total opposite end of the spectrum of Marvel Vs. Capcom were it 1993. The main Marvel (X-Men, Spider-man) competator has always been DC (Batman, Superman), so it seems only natural that DC would want to make a competing fighter (6 years later). And back when Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat were big, everyone (me especially) wanted to see a game feturing the two head-to-head. But the problem with that is that Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter controls are completely different. For someone like me who's spent all of 3 hours playing Mortal Kombat games in my whole life, I wouldn't know where to begin with a game like that. But like I said, 15 years ago this woulda been a big deal. Now, it's just sad.

DC has been in big trouble ever since Marvel started making movies, and their response, Superman Returns, was pathetic. Batman Begins however, was freaking fantastic, so there's where they need to focus. DC has never had a good video game, and teaming up with Midway for a Mortal Kombat collaborative game is like The Cure headlining Lalapalooza. Who cares? Nobody who matters.

The video I saw was Batman Fighting Sub-Zero. The game looked, LOOKED, good. But the knowledge that the controls are gonna be ancient, and the fact that the characters are people that nobody cares about anymore, make it seem like a joke. But hey, i hop ei'm wrong. I hope this game ushers in a new era for both companies. Maybe we'll finally see a Mortal Kombat game that doesn't suck. Maybe DC will finally be cool again. I doubt it, but there's a chance I suppose.

What would hav emade far more sense to me would be DC vs. Tekken. If you're gonna team up with another company to help boost your popularity, don't do it with a dead franchise that can't even cover the cost of the production of it's own crappy games. Even though I hate Tekken, it's still popular. That woulda been the better way to go.



May-19-2008

"This is why we can't have nice things" Part 2. Today I got a hankerin for some Taco Bell, and decided to go to the new TacoBell/KFC down the street. The last few times I've gone there, the drive thru people messed up my order, so I decided to go inside to see if it would solve the problem. It did, and my order was fine, but that's not the point of this story.

After I placed my order, there was a father and daughter behind me who went next. The daughter looked about 11, but was wearing a High Scool jacket, so she was probably 13 or 14. The father was a stocky, balding guy with a bluetooth earpiece, which speaks volumes about his personality (those indicate that you're a dick, especially when you wear it ALL THE TIME). As soon as the daughter started placing her order, I knew it was gonna be trouble. No this, extra that, upsidedown bun, spin it in the air, 5 specks of pepper, etc... It was clearly too much for the cashier to grab on teh first pass, so she asked for the girl to repeat it. The father stepped in and bedgrudingly repeated it for her, and then placed his stupidly complicated order. It got so rediculous that the manager had to come over and show the chashier how to make so many adjustments to the order.

I have to interrupt the story here. What the hell is wrong with just getting something the way it's made? Here's my order, "I'll have a number 7, to go." TADA! Everyone's on the same page, and the chances of a mishap are about .01%. A friend of mine used to manage a Taco Bell, and he told me all about how the people making the food get into a groove, they just make the same things over and over and don't even have to think about it. But then, somebody will come in and make a weird order, and futz the whole rhythm up. That's when things get screwed-up. At work, when I get lunch for everyone, I have two rules: No drinks (they're a pain to carry and we have a snack bar with soda anyway), and no special orders. The only, ONLY time I made an exception to that rule was that one guy was deathly allergic to onions, which is more than an acceptable reason for a special order. But if ti's jsut your preference, jsut pick the closest thing to what you like and order that. Or, better yet, stay the hell home and make it yourself.

So, like the dick this guy is, he starts reading over his reciept like a hawk, and won't even let his daughter get her drink untill he's verified his KFC credentials are in order. He stands at the pick-up counter watching them make his food, and starts making a stink to his daughter about how the girl just put gravy on his mashed potatoes. Meanwhile I'm sitting at a table, patiently awating my order, because I'm awesome like that, and standing there waiting for it just makes it seem to take forever. I actually considered asking this guy to wait until i get my order before he pisses off the staff.

Finally, after quite a while, my order comes up. As soon as the girl puts my food on the coutner the guy starts making a fuss, and I have to reach around him to get my food. "As you can see, I clearly ordered mashed potatoes with no gravy, but I saw her put gravy on my mashed potatoes," he said. "Oh okay," said the girl, "I'll make sure she gets you plain mashed potatoes." Here's the zinger, "Well yeah, I mean I ordered it like that, but I guess she's just stupid." Welp, enjoy your spit potatoes and loogie slaw, you friggin' retard. What kind of upbringing did this asshole have to make him think that he can just insult people like that and get away with it? People make mistakes, especially when they're working in a hot ass kitchen for 12 hours a day, and somebody hands them a mile-long order for ONE meal. Thankfully the daughter looked mortified at the whole thing, so hopefully she won't grow up to be an equally pompus douche.

Honestly, if I were the manager, I'd give the guy his money back and tell him to leave. He'd throw a fit, then I'd get in trouble and maybe even fired, but I wouldn't have any regrets. The phrase "the customer is always right" is an idea that needs to die, or be changed. Guys like that thrive on that phrase whenever he wants to ruin someone's miserable, minimum-wage day. The customer should always been respected, no question, but abuse is abuse, and it can't be tollerated on either side of the spectrum. Blatently insulting someone like that for an honest mistake is unacceptable in any setting, and the staff not doing anything about it just leaves this guy open to do it again. I hope his dumbass bluetooth earpiece shorts out his brain and paralyzes him.



May-17-2008

Ninja Warrior post time. G4 has been doing a Ninja Warrior marathon all day, and it's gotten me thinking about the subject once again. It's really is the most difficult physical competition I've ever seen. Some may say that the Olympics holds that title, but I say it doesn't since Olympic gold medalists have showed up to Ninja Warrior and never succeeded. That's not to say that they didn't do well, but The onyl two guys who ever finsihed the entire course were both fishermen, so what's that tell you?

The women's competition though has had the same champion 3 times in a row, Ayako Miyake. She's an acrobat, and kicks ass every time she competes. What's funny though is that she never appears to be the physically superior type. In fact when i saw her for the first time, I thought she looked like she had a horrible krack problem. But damn can she perform. Her streak was broken in the last competition, she lost her balance on a beam and fell intot he water. The shock and dismay of the audience was incredible, nobody thought she'd fall, she never had before.

G4 has really been pushing the latest competition all week. The last two competitions (2 a year), G4 has held a contest to let viewers submit tapes of themselves doing athletic stuff, and then other viewers vote for who they want to see compete at the next Ninja Warrior. Lat time they sent two guys over, and both of them were really cool, really likeable guys. However the entire competition was a bust, and both of them fell where somethng like 80% of all the other competators fell. The obstacle that kept knocking everyone out was deemed BS by everyone. Basically you had to run up to a trampoline, jumps, and land inside two vertical walls and hold yourself up. Only a handful of guys made it through and they didn't get much farther after that. One guy I was suprised ot see go down was Paul Terek. He's a huge (by japanese standards) guy who's competed in the olympics. His first Ninja Warrior appearance (video here) was incredible, and I really thought he had the build to conquer that obstacle.

This year apparently, one of the guys who won the G4 competiton did really well, though I haven't heard if he won, but I doubt he did. Winning Ninja Warrior is like... next to impossible. Consider that out of over 2,000 attempts, only 2 men have ever won. I can't wait to see the new one. If you have G4, it's on at 8pm this Sunday. If you don't have G4, you can chekc out lots of clips and highlights on youtube or google videos.





May-12-2008

It's not often that I can look at a game and really feel moved. Moreso, it's not often that I can look at a game and feel much of anything. There are so many games, in fact, 98% of games, are just a tweak of another game. We see the same thing over and over with one or two noticable differences here and there. Games like Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, Metal Gear Solid, and even Gran Turismo are perfect examples of truely original games. What makes these games and games of the same calibur so special is that they didn't jsut break new ground. They reinvented the ground, and then broke it. No half-assing, no short cuts, no sacrificing, the original idea is what made it to the final product, which is a very difficult tack to pull-off. For these reasons, I was thrilled when i first read about "Mirror's Edge."

"Mirror's Edge" takes place (as I red it) in a post-modern city run by a corrupt, tyranical government. Resistance groups have formed, but with all communications monitored, there's only one way to get messages between groups, foot messengers. However, the government knows about these messengers, and takes every opporunity to intercept them. As one of these messengers, you have to bolt across the city, evading police, and covering ground as fast and effiently as possible. Weapons weigh you down, so if you encounter police, you have to make due with what you have right there, be it your fists, or their guns.

Just on paper, this already sounds like a great idea. Then, once I saw the video for it, I got really excited. As a day-dreamers of high rank, I know exactly the thought process that went into conceiving this game. Were I a game designer, I probably wouldn't have done it any differently. The premis is basic, and the method is straight forard. the challenge lies in how fast you can make your decisions. When you see the way this girl runs, you can see taht there's no time to stop and think, go back, and follow a good route. You have to come up with your route on the fly, and take each obstacle as it comes to you. This is the reason why I continue to play games, for when thigns like this come out. Love it!

Making a case for my SNESp is without question, the hardest part of this whole project. Large sheets of plastic aren't as readily available as one would think, and are hard to cut right once you get them. Arg!



May-07-2008

I love it when things I do have results that matter. You may recall last month i psoted about the horrible comic section in The Albuquerque Journal. At the same time, I had written a letter to the editor expressing my opinion on the matter. Today i picked up the paper and, holy freaking crap, there's a new section to the page. In a black box there's two comic strips, one old and one new, with the caption "Think you know funny?" Now, every month, they're going to have two comic strips compete, and whichever gets the most votes takes over the spot. AWESOME! They even started off with one of my most hated cartoons, Gasoline Alley, which is competing with oen called Pickles. It's a fairly standard comic with fairly standard jokes, but next to Gasoline Alley it's a friggin' laugh riot. Next month they're doing Hi And Lois vs. Get Fuzzy. That's a trickier one. Hi And Lois isn't nearly as funny as it once was, but it's not bad. But I do predict that Get Fuzzy is gonna win, that comic is pretty good.

A comic that comes through for me every day though is F Minus. It's kinda like Bound and Gagged, being a one-panel/wide-strip comic. The art is very smooth and well done, and the jokes are all very original. Today's had a guy at his office dressed in a Sombrero and Poncho saying "Cinco means Five?" Now THAT'S Funny! For your enjoyment, here's a link to the comics.com F Minus page. You can use the callendar below to go through the previous comics, 4/29 is my favorite so far.

In other dumb news that's gonna make me sound like a Gathy Griffin weirdo, what's the freakin' deal with this Miley Cyrus picture? Oh dear God, you can see her back! My innocence has been stolen from me! When I saw the pciture, I saw a girl covering herself up with a sheet, and her bare upper-back exposed in a "not even that attractive" pose. Whoopdeedamndoo. But people are arguing that she's only 15, and because there's no bra strap that she might be topless, and it implies that she's naked under the sheets. Well, then go turn yourselves in, because you're the sick fucks thinking about a 15 year old girl naked under silk sheets. Of course she's not naked, this has been disputed before. If the girl being photographed is under-age, the she must be covered-up within the limits that the law prescribes for public exposure. I gaurantee she was wearing a front-covering tie-top and jeans. In fact, if you look closely at the picture, it looks like her hair is just barely covering a black neck strap. People need to get a friggin' grip.

This whole thing reminded of a Dave Chappelle act I once saw, where he talked about a similar topic, citing the R. Kelly case where Kelly was accused of peeing on a 15 year old girl. People said that not only was she under-age, but she was too young to make a logical decission as to whether or not to participate in being peed on. Chappelle acknowledged that kids below the age of 18 may have less capable decission making skills, but that those skills don't really improve much past 18. He also argued that when he was 15, he wouldn't have to stop and think about how he felt toward somebody peeing on him. What this means is that Miley Cyrus may only be 15, but if she was in-fact told to be naked, then she'd have the mental capabilities and legal backing to say "No," and leave, and nobody would think less of her for it.

The other issue that I have to point out the dumbness of is MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) protesting "Grand Theft Auto IV" (and trying to get the rating raised to AO, Adult's Only, which would result in major retailers pulling it off the shelves) because you can drive drunk in the game. I'd like to point out the major qualifier "CAN". The game has been occupying the better part of my free time lately, and I recently came across the scenario in question. I took a girl out for a date, and decided to go to a night club. When it came time to take her home, my character was completely hammered drunk (it was automatic, I didn't choose to drink). The character was standing on the sidewalk with his date, stumbling around. The visuals were all distorted, and it was very hard to control him. Now, here's the important part. It seemed like I had no choice but to drive her home, but when I approached my car, a suggestion block came up (common tutorial function of the game) and said, "If you feel that you're too dunk to drive, consider taking a cab home." So I hailed a cab, we got in, I told the driver to drop off my date at her house, and off we went. Now, what, may I ask, was irresponsible about that setup? Not a damn thing. The game ADVISES you to take a cab instead of driving drunk. If anything, it's a passive Public Service Announcement. As the cab was driving them home, you're vision gets more and more skewed, to the point where every light makes a streak across the screen, and objects and people start to fade in and out of view. Meanwhile your heart is pounding, and you can feel it in the controller. I was actually extremely impressed with the whole mechanics of it. There's no WAY I could have driven a car in that state, and when you drive poorly, your date gets scared and it hurts your relationship with her. Since we took a cab, when we got back to her house, I opted to say goodnight and leave(a gentleman must control his urges when under the influence, and over it). This resulted in a relationship boost, and she was happy to go out on another date. So MADD, stop ruining everyone's fun, and go be bitter somewhere else.

Things like this are always a tragic issue when these games come out. I say tragic because it's such a waste of time, and the people making the accusations don't know what the hell they're talking about. I read a news article the other day about Jack Thompson (an infamous lawyer who sues game makers over content, who everyone hates, including the state of Florida, who's DA has been trying to get him disbarred) wrote a letter to the mother of the president of Take-Two, the company that published GTA4. In the letter he compares her son to Hitler, and the game buyers to the Hitler Youth. Who's really fucked up here? The kid playing a game where he kills people, or a grown man harrassing an elderly woman? It's alwasy the smallest mouths that have the biggest voices. Why should anyone give a shit about this guy?

The game itself contains a conversation that is clearly a metaphore for the controversey that has always surrounded GTA games. The main character and one of his employers are having a discussion about their decissions to make a living off of crime. They compare the lifestyle to a game, and the employers finishes by saying "You can chose the game, but when you do, you have to play by the rules." I think that's a powerful statement, and not because it backs-up the argument that nobody is forced to play these games. What I like is the "play by the rules" aspect. In GTA, the rules say that you have to commit crimes to advance. If you don't want to follow that rule, then you can't play. If you can't play, then you return the game, and buy one with rules that you can follow. It's just that easy.



May-04-2008

If i were to give today's post a title, it would be "This is why we can't have nice things." This is a phrase often used in the Air Force as a joke in response to someone doing something irresponsible. For example, somebody is having a hard time loosening a bolt with a socket wrench. So they get a breaker bar,a dn put so much tourque ont eh wrench that it breaks and the guts of it go everywhere. A nearby person would say "This is why we can't have nice things." The point being that the stupidity and irresponsibility of a few results in the powers that be not trusting anyone with better equipment.

This morning I woke up fairly early for me, and headed out to go see Iron Man, which I have been very much looking forward to. As I'm driving down my street, i go around a curve, and I see a young woman, about my age, running barefoot. Because my car is so low to teh ground it took me a few seconds to see that she was signalling me to stop. I slowed down a bit, becuase nobody tells this guy what to do, and there I saw, about 50 ayrds ahead, a retarted redheaded 2 year old standing in the street, looking at me like I was Teletubbies (the look of a brainwashed kid raised by TV, that is, aka "Duhhh"). Way to go, Mom. Freak out on me because your dumb-ass kid born from your dumb-ass loins escaped and is not trying to get hit by cars.

This incident reminded me of one of the greatest stand-up acts I've ever heard in my life, by Doug Stanhope. Unfortunately, I've had no luck ever finding the exact performance I heard, which was quite different from what you find on YouTube. But oen of his major points was that it's fine if you ahve kids, but your kids should not effect other people. One of the thigns he said was "I shouldn't ahve to drive 15mph past a school because fathead can't be trusted to look both ways before he crosses the street." By teh same token, George Carlin once said "The kid who swallows too many marbles doesn't grow up to have kids of his own." Are these outlandish remarks? Some may say so, but everyone sitting there lsitening thought they were pretty good statements.

So then, I get to the theatre, a little heated up by the previous incident. i went over it in my head again and again, thinking about how maybe I should have fakey swerved toward the kid to freak out both the mother and the kid into being more responsible. Hitting the kid would have been passive eugenics. I can't remember a time in my life when I didn't know that the street ws off-limits. To this day, standing in the street feels very weird to me, it's an off-limits zone in my head. Anyway, I got to the theatre. As I'm looking for a parking space, yet another kid runs out in front of me. Do these retard morons not at least hear my engine? I guess they're idiot brains can only think "Iron Man!" Behind him was a gaggle-fuck of about 5 more kids and one father figure. It took the kid about 5 seconds on his own to think "oh crap, I don't think i'm supposed to be in the middle of the parking lot lane", turn around and see me waiting begrudgingly for him to MOVE! So I go park and walk to the ticket window, which is outside. When i'm about 10 feet from getting in line, 2 of the 6 kid parade ran in front of me. When i get aggitated my reaction is to just zone out and ignore everything before i lose my freaking mind and ruin everyone's day. So i jsut let the retard brigade go ahead of me, so that way by the time i get into the theatre, they should be seated and i'll know where not to sit.

I get into the theatre and it's not nearly as crowded as I thought it'd be. My highly strategic focused mind made what i determined to be a potentiall bad decission, but tried my luck, by sitting ont he right side in the back. The reason this is potentially bad is becuse the only door into the theatre is right behind me, and so anyone comming in late will be prone to sitting right in front of me. Liek clockwork, an 8 foot tall mexican kid sits rigth in front of me, but decided to move after a few sconds. Crisis averted, it's late enough in the movie to not worry about it anymore, let's enjoy the show.

A few rows up from me is another damn 2 year old (i'm surrounded by pre-schoolers today). This kids pays attention only durring big explodies, and the rest of the time tells his mother about how there's metal molding on the wall. Then, also durring calm moments, the retard brigade would be blabbering up a storm down front. But I'll get into the ADD ridden populace in a minute.

About an hour into the movie, a see something white around the corner from the wall I'm up against. What emerged was the most godawefully fat wreck of a woman I've seen in a long time. WHen I say "fat bitch", i don't mean woman with a weight problem, I mean, this woman was a fuckign bitch (which i'm about to discuss), who cleans her plate, eats the plate, and the silverware, and the centerpiece, tablecloth, table, and resturaunt. Guess where she sat! She and her two mal-nourished kids sat right in front of me. The also malnourished father, handed them their drinks and snacks and then sat in a different row (the American Family). Now to make matters worse, this lady was mexican, which means that she smelled like cheese and was rude as shit. When she wasn't talking on ehr cell phone or smacking down ring-dings, she was either breathing like a buffalo or telling her kids to shut up. She didn't even give the kids a chance to say soemthing, just "Mom..." "Shut-up!". "Mom, my foots caught in a beare trap." "Shut-up!" I got up and moved to the opposite side of the theatre, where somebody shit their pants and tried to cover it up with a urinal cake, at least that's my theory.

So the big showdown is over, and it's time for the movie to come to a close. Already, people are getting up and leaving. Yes, surely you, in the Led Zepplin t-shirt and "Fuck You" hat, can't spare two minutes, lest your busy Sunday schedule be thrown out-of whack. The dredits start to role, and people hit the exit like Godzilla jsut stomped through the theatre roof. Why the fuck even bother going to the movies if you're that desperate to leave? Me and the upper 1% stuck around until it was clear that there was no post-credit treats.

I walked back ot my car, and as I got in and got ready to start the car, I saw teh same two ticket line representatives running wildly toward their father's penis-envy compensation truck, with delux oversized golden testicles included (that's not a joke, he really had a golden scrotum hanging off of the trailer hitch). The kids were yelling "I am Iron Man!" There were soon followed by 4 more retards, with no adult in sight, and without delay, one of them got hurt and started screaming and crying, with the rest standing around, mystified. THe father finally shows up with a 1 year old in tow, and asks "Bob, why is your brother crying?" Bob, the predicted future janitor, reveals something about a fight. The father then divies up everyone around the truck, curses at all the kids in a way that at 4 years old, would ahve me me run for my life, certain that my gaurdian was going to kill me, and drove-off, nuts-a-swinging. And so, another planned day of fun, ruined for the children, by the children, because of children posing as adults. This is why we can't have nice things.

In highschool we red the book "Brave New World," which explores Aldous Huxley's vision of the future, as a world where no parents exists, children are grown in test-tubes, and Eugenics is the key to utopian society. We, as readers, are supposed ot be horrified by this, and think (we must never let this happen!" Why not? People bread for a purpose? Everyone whrere they're happiest? Everyone's needs met before they even become needs? This is a bad thing?

Whenever I watch Nazi documentaries, dealing in Eugenics, it's always portrayed as this horrible thing. What I noticed though is that the biggest opponents of eugenics are people who are pro-life. But wait a minute? Eugenics is about the creation of people, not the destruction of them (that is if you don't count killing the disabled, which is an extremist action in my opinion). If, by catholic standards, life begins at conception, then Eugenics follows the rules. Not only is it creating life, it's creating good life. A person who will live in good health, with proper care and education. To say that Eugenics is preventing people from being born is just plain wrong, it's giving an identity to a person who doesn't exist, and never will. So how do you deny the right to life of someone who doesn't exist?

Certianly I see the value of horrible experiences. Afterall, if people didnt have loved-ones killed by drunk drivers, we wouldn't have MADD (that's a bad thing right?). All i'm saying is that we need to take action as a society against people breeding without the means to support the results. We're losing resources, and gaining problems. The alternative is complete destruciton of the human race, which I can onyl see as a good thing from the universal perspective.

oh yeah, Iron Man was good, but the theatre experience was terrible. I can't wait till it comes out on Beta Max... Paramount.



May-03-2008

Ya know, I'm a bit miffed right now. Here's why:

When I go to resturaunts, I try very hard to be as nice as possible to the staff. I keep my orders simple, talk to them with extreme politeness, never complain about anything, NEVER send my food back, and I tip quite generously. I do this because of two things, first, because I know they're job is exhausting and frustrating. And second, because I don't want my food, or myself, to get fucked with. So i play by the rules, and in return, i get treated well. Except tonight.

This waitress that I had tonight at Denny's is fairly new, I was there on her first night a couple months ago. I've never had her for a server, just being seated and maybe a drink refill on ocassion. I usually have the same waitress, who has never even tried to mess with me (at least I haven't caught her), and I always tip her about 30%, as if to say "good job, I'd like the same experience next time". And our little dance continues whenever I go in there.

In my days, I've talked to many people about the trials of retail, and by association, food service. When i tlak to former waiters and waitresses, they all share one common things when they talk about messing with lousy customers. They all told me that they liked to hover near the customer, and right as they take a big bite of food, they go over and ask them how everything is. The result is a garbled responses as they try to chew and gulp down the food really fast. This is the tactic that may waitress used on me, three times tonight. Surely I deserve better.

What really bugs me about this is how my regualr waitress is involved. When they're not busy, all the waitresses are usually in the corner gossiping up a storm. Amid that gossip is sure to be plenty of talk about certain customers. I'd like to think that my regualr waitress has at least once mentioned that I'm an easy going customer, and that I tip well. but it seems that that message never got across to this waitress, which tells me that there's a possibility that my generosity is either unwelcome, or not enough. So, my reaction was this, I tipped a whopping 40%. The reason for this is to see what this waitress will do the next time I go in there. She'll either a) see that i'm a good tipper,a dn stop messing with me, or b) think that i don't know when I'm getting messed with, and she'll still get a good tip. Next time, we'll see which happens, and that will determine my next course of action. To be continued...

In portable game news, I got my SNES side working again. I think I just gave it too much voltage. When it failed, i was giving it 6 volts (which is the standard operation voltage of the screen, but 1v higher than the standard for the console). Today, I rigged up the system using 5v, and everything still worked, including the screen. So tomorrow I'm gonna go to Radio Shack and get some rechargable AA's with a slightly lower voltage, which will add up to just under 5v. The TV screen assembly has a built-in battery charge function. So what I'm gonna do is see if I can get it to charge the batteries with only 5v going into it. If so, then that makes this project that much cooler.

One modificationt aht I'm invesitgating is replacing the lighting ont eh screen. It currently uses a Cathode Tube to light up teh screen,w hcih works fine, btu according to benheck.com, sucks a lot of power. They're solution is to repalce the tube with a white LED. The problem is that I don't know what the hell the voltage or Amps for this tube are. On the multimeter the volts I got off of it have gone as high as 80v. I doubt that's the real number, i think my reading is tainted by an unseen factor, my instincts tell me it's a capacitor. I wouldn't mind leaving the CRT in there, but if it means logner battery life, then I'd be willing to go through the effort of putting in an LED.
B

May-02-2008

Arg. Well, things started out great with the SNESp project, but just took a sour turn. I got the TV screen in the mail and got it all hooked up. Then, i hooked up 4 AA battery pack to both teh screen and the console and got it working great. I even managed to go a few laps on F-Zero. So everything was working as it would in it's final form, and basically this was one huge victory. That is untill I shifted somet hings around and bloop, the SNES took a shit. The NES side still works fine, but the SNES had nothing. Hmmmmm... So I shot some wires, and found that one wire between the boards broke. Ah, i love when problems are so easily solved. So I fixed the wire, and it shot good (shooting a wire means that I checked it with a multimeter to make sure that it had continuity). Turned on the SNES side, nothing. ARG! So now I'm stuck, again. I noticed a capacitor looked like it had fried. I'm not sure hwo it happened, but it certainly can't hurt to change it. This whoel thing is probably gonna end up being a huge problem, because the NES side still works. So right there I can rule out any power supply issues, which means it won't be an easy fix. Stuff liek this is very reminiscent of my job. You troubleshoot the hell out of a weird problem, find soemthing that has to be the problem, fix it, and the problem is still there. If I fried the board then I'm out $60. It seems like the console runs off of the 6v supply okay, but i think that in the interest of avoiding another problem downt he road, I'm gonna ahve to invest is some stuff that will control the power properly, rather than just letting it run wild like it is now.

On game review notes, i got a plus and a minus. I bought Grand Theft Auto 4, and as I expected, it's not nearly as good as the reviews say that it is. I actually find it to be very difficult to control. The camera is HORRIBLE. You'll take a turn and the camera won't turn with you, so you'll be driving down the street at 100mph with a lovely sideview of your car. I've actually turned the car 180 degrees and the camera still hadn't moved. The cars handle lousy too. Try and do a regular turn and you damn near have to come to a stop to avoid understeer. Tap the e-brake and the car goes spinning. Not impressed.

On the plus side, I finally got the demo for Dark Sector. This game has been the root of some review controversy. It seems that players and reviewers don't see eye-to-eye on it, so much so that G4 even broadcast a viewer rebuttale to their official review of the game, which was mediocre. I played the demo today, and I gotta say, I've played way worse games. Since it's a demo, I didn't really get any story, not that I care, but I did get to see the basics of the gameplay. Your two main modes of combat are guns, and a glaive which acts like a boomerang. What I really liked is that there's no switching between the two, they're both available at all times. You have a gun in your left hand, and the glaive in the right. The glaive's response time is a bit slow, so if you need to act fast, you can just start shooting. When you see an opening for the glaive, it's no trouble at all to throw it and get the final blow. Eventually you can even control the glaive mid-air in slow motion, which is great for precision hits. I do believe that this game will be part of my collection soon.

Something else that I have to throw out there is my disgust toward my long-time favorite comic, Penny-Arcade. I wish that I could put my finger on exactly what's bothering me about it, but it's hard to explain. I first noticed it with a comic depicting a game journalist being burned at the stake. In order to get this comic, you had to read a bunch of articles that the writers linked to on the posting section of the page. Huh? April 30th's comic/post is what's really got me losing faith int eh comic. It's the day after the release of the biggest game this year, I went in expecting a witty comentary on a lousy aspect of the game, which I named several of above. Instead, I read a comic about how people use lunch as the currency of favors, and in the posts section, an incoherent ramble about something to do with GTA4. What? That's a little bit extremely backward if you ask me.

My displeasure with this display prompted me to write an e-mail, asking the head writer, for the 3rd time, why he's ruining the comic. I pointed out that the time was ripe for a GTA4 comic, and that even I, a lowly peon, had all kinds of comic worthy material to offer on the subject, and even suggested that perhaps I'd do just that. So, i did, I sat down and made a 3-panel comic about the crappy camera in GTA4. Had I access to art supplies and a scanner, it'd be here on this page right now. I've actually been considering making a regular video-game based comic for this page, and the recent sucking of what is agruably the #1 web-comic has been giving me no shortage of motivation to do so.
B

April-28-2008

It works! Evil Laugh! I spent the weekend trying to finish my SNES cartridge slot extension, and just this morning had success!



After putting the extension together, i had mixed results. FIrst, nothing would happen. I multi-metered all the contacts and found two shorts, both resulting from previous wiring on the circuit board I was using. So I dremeled the shorts away, but then had mixed results. Sometimes the games would start, but shortly after, they'd freeze. After some wire wigling, I determined the problem to be on the male end of the extension (the part that plugs into the main board). I left it for the night, and came back to it this morning to have another look. There, in the sunlight, I saw 3 tiny stray wire strands, positioned just right to make shorts if moved even a little. Snip snip, off they went, and on went the games, freeze free. I wiggled and bent and waved things around with no freezing. Woohoo!


The entire unit put together, with the SNES cartridge doing a headstand. For anyone who cares, the room where I take all these pics is where I keep all of my video games and also where I test my mods, so don't think that I regularly watch TV on the floor, lol.


That's StarFox plugged into these extension, which is plugged into the board. The silver port on top is the one that I posted about having such a nightmarish time removing last week.


StarFox in my hand, StarFox on the TV, mmmboy. That's quite an achievement to have StarFox working, and here's why:

"Say Blank-Disk, why is StarFox such an important game to have run properly on a modified Super Nintendo?" I'm glad you asked that little Billy, here's why:


You see, on the average SNES cart, the contacts that are inserted into the cartridge slot come in a single row.


But here on the StarFox cart, there are 3 rows of pins, with a total of 16 more contacts than the average SNES cartridge. This is because StarFox is oen fo the most advanced games made for the SNES, and has the SuperFX chip, which makes use of these extra contacts. All Super Nintendo's came ready to use these extra contacts, but rarely used them. Only games like StarFox, or the Super Gameboy adapter needed them. So when StarFox works on your modified SNES, it means that you covered all your bases, and that you rule... Like me!



April-25-2008

Riddle me this, or explain it tome. I've been seeing these weird anti-smoking commercials lately, and seem to be made by people who are high on something rediculous. In oen commercial, a kid starts smoking, and his two friends turn into a deer-boy, and lion-boy, and the lion boy starts chasing the deer-boy. In teh otehr commercial, a kid starts smoking, and his friend's arms turn into sausage links.

I don't want to be the type of dense retard that would say, "are they saying that if you smoke your friends will turn into mutants and processed foods?" But, are they saying that if you smoke that your friends will turn into mutants and processed foods? My sense-o-meter has no reading. What's funny though is that I have mroe respect for these stupid commercials than the ones made by truth.com, who could all get hit by a bus driven by a smoker and I'd laugh my ass off. So far the only two anti-smoking adds that I support are from abovetheinfluence.com and the "My Anti-drug" campeign. Otherwise it's jsut a bunch of know-it-all college kids who think that people are just so stupid that they don't realize that smoking is bad for them. If you've been alive at any time durring the last 35 years, you know that smoking is bad for you. South Park had the best take on the whole issue, in that without tobacco companies our economy would be in the shitter, and it's the choice of individuals whether or not to smoke,a nd as Americans they have the right to chose. Nobody is shoving cigarettes in people mouths, so these college kids need to shut the hell up.



April-26-2008

Today my housing complex had a scheduled 6 hour power-outage. Judging from all the activity outside, it was so that the city could setup something on the powerlines nearby. So I decided to go to the movies.

I went and saw "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," which is the documentary from Ben Stein. I was actually suprised by the premise of the movie, as I was expecting something much more student based. Instead, it's focus was on teachers and scientists and the downright vicious battle in the academic world right now concerning Evolution Vs. Creationism. Howeever, as the movie points out, those two words are not the right words to use. Instead the argument should be called "Darwinism Vs. Intelligent Design," whcih is actually very different from the previous words used.

Darwinism, as described by the movie, is the explaination of how a single cell was the foundation of all life. While Intelligent Design is the explaination of how all living things came to be what they are. Sounds like the same thing, doesn't it? Well, the movie goes on to explain why Darwinism is ALSO a poor choice of words. Darwin's theories of evolution begin with a single cell, but never explains how that cell came to be, and Darwin addmitted that he had no solid info to explain the origin of that cell. All scientists, no matter what theory they follow, agree that a single cell can split, and grow, and become a full-blown organism, like a human or an animal or a plant, making the "One cell made all things" theory something not too far fetched to label as fact. So really, the argument is about how that cell was created. In this case, nobody has any proof at all.

After this agrument gets presented in this manner to each side's main supporters, suddenly the Intelligent Design people seem to have a major upper-hand. The movie explains that for the Evolutionist theory to be correct, meaning that the cell was created by coicidence, that it would be as likely as getting the jackpot on 250 slot machines in a row, with one pull each. That's because there are about 250 components that MUST be present in order for a cell to form. Plus, we're talking on a molecular scale here, so all 250 of those compents had to come together, at the same place, at the same time, in the correct order, for the cell to form. Boy, that's almost impossible if you ask me.

The main point behind this movie is that teachers get fired all the time for even mentioning Intelligent Design, especially at science-based colleges. SO this movie presents the evidence that the ID people have been pushing, but on a grand scale, so as to kick-start more rational debates, rather than one-sided bashing. Evolution supporters get so viscious when it comes to defending their theories that they actually look more like Zealots than the Christians they slander. The movie takes kind of a dumb spin later on, suggesting a link between Darwinism and Naziism, which I understood, but don't think that it was a good choice to keep the argument balanced. It's like convincing a thief to stop stealing, but then telling him he's a peice of shit no matter what.





April-25-2008

Today's update cames int eh form of a link toa post I made on the Benheck.com forums. I had a ton of fun making it, so i hope you enjoy it.
Click Here



April-24-2008

The Do's and Don't's of cartridge slot removal.

After a lot of thinking and planning about how I want to arrange my SNES/NES portable, I decided that a good course of action would be to make a cartidge slot adapter, so that I could leave the SNES board intact, while experimenting with slot locations. The idea is to remove the SNES cartirdge slot from a failed FC Twin project, attatch wires to the pins, and then attatch a game cartridge PCB (circuit board) to those wires, so I'd basically be plugging-in a slot extension. What resulted was a very hard lesson in proper, and improper proceedures for this project.

The first step was getting the baord ready for desoldering.
Don't: I started by unscrewing the slot assembly from the board, and wiggling it around to losen the pins a bit.
Do: Around the assembly is 3 metal covers, held on with only bent tabs. Though a tight fit, try and undo the four tabs on the bottom, and remove the middle, biggest cover (I'll explain why in a second).

Next I had to remove find a way to desolder all of the pins, one-by-one, so that by the time I reached the other end, each pin would be disconnected, and the assembly would be seperated from the board.
Don't: I started by using my soldering pencil on the underside of the board, and as the solder heated up, I'd push the pins until the ends were flush with the bottom of the board. The pins are loose enough in the assembly that they can be moved with little coaxing.
Do: Turn the baord over, and DEsolder from the underside. It's best to have a solder sucker handy, to remove the heated solder, so that the solder is not in your way later. Repeate this process until you've removed as much solder as possible. It is tedious, but it's safest. For even better results, get some wax style Flux and apply it to each solder joint, this helps spread the heat even faster, and more thouroughly.

Now that the pins are most of the way free, there's jsut the matter of severing the connecting to the board.
Don't: I decided to use the sharp end of my soldering pencil to push the pins all the way through the holes in the board. It seemed to work at first, but later I discovered that the solder joints ont he other side of the baord hadn't melted, and I was basically ripping the contacts out with rings of the PCB still attatched. This was especially true when i couldn't see what was holding the board on still, and physically ripped the assembly from the board
Do: Now that you've got a minimal amount of solder present, go through each horizontal row, and heat up any stuck pins, and try to wiggle them free. I say to go by horizontal rows, because that way, when you finsih one side, it'll be much easier to loosen the other row. If this doesn't work you may want to resort to the "push-through" method int he don't section, but with your metal cover off, there's little to no danger of bending the pins out of shape.

If you've done the Do's, the assembly should come off with little effort. Replace the metal cover if you want (i recommend it). If you opted to do the "push-through" methode, there's a technique to moving the pins back into place:

You'll notice on the top side of the assembly that the pins that were pushed-through seem to be moved toward the center of the slot. That's okay, all you need to do is move the pin back toward the outside edge of the slot using your finger, a flat-head screwdriver, or stick a piece of thin cardboard in the slot to simulate a game cartidge being present. By doing this, you are lining up the two tiny tabs on each side of the top of the pin to set down into the plastic retaining tabs. Then, using a pair of needle-nose pliers, grab the bottom end of the pin, and GENTLEY pull down on the pin untill the top end of the pin is in line with the rest of the pins. NEVER, EVER push down on the pin from the top!

What happened to me: I pushed all of the pins through, and because the metal cover was still on, many of the pins snagged on it, and bent backwards, mainly the 16 pins on the outside of the partitions. On top of that, I had PCB bits stuck to every pin, and couldn't remove the damaged pins. So, I heated up each pin, and used a solder sucker to remove all the excess solder and PCB rings. After that, i removed the metal cover, and pulled out all the bent pins. I then attempted to re-seat all the pins that weren't bent, which is when I learned that pushing down ont eh pins is a bad idea. When I did this, it bent up the pins, which have to be pre-bent at very specific angles, otherwise they won't contact the cartridge. So every single pint hat looked a little off had ot come out. I then meticulously re-bent every pin back into shape. I'd hold one good pin in my fingers, and then place a bad pin right nex to it and look at them fromt he side. I'd bend the bad pin with needle-nose pliers until it's angles matched the good pin. I had to do this with at least 20 pins, which isn't the majority, but still a lot. I put the pins back in, and carefully pulled them into poistion. The pins in the 4 outermost corners were the most difficult, and even though I said not to, I did have to apply a little pressure to the tops of the pins just to get them far enough through that I could grab them from the bottom. My assembly is back together now, and is as good as it's ever gonna get. I applied just a little super glue to keep the pins in place durring future adventures. I think that after I get the planned extension mod finished, I'm going to seal it all together with silicon RTV.

THe plus side to all of this is that this whole catastrophy was with a $10 FC Twin that I bought pre-broken, which I think is far better than having the same issue with the $60 Retro DUo console that it's going to be attatched to.



April-21-2008

This first paragraph has nothing to do with my intention for posting today, it's meerly an observation. Today at Denny's a group came in and sat down at the booth across from me. They were loud and talking like a bunch of hicks, and were all wearing similar shirts, so they musta been a team or something. The main mouth belonged to a guy with thick red hair and a thick red mustach, acting like he's really cool for being at Denny's at midnight on a Sunday (like me!). The waiter came over, and he looked like he was about 19, and was probably attending the college across the street. The red haired guy asked him forcefully, "You from here, in New Mexico that is?" The kid says, "Yeah." "You from here in Albuquerque?" The kid says, "Well I was born in Alamagordo, but I grew up in Socorro." "Oh," the guy says, "I'm here from Iowa." The kid says, "....... Can I take your order?" My point is that everybody thinks that locals in far away places are always impressed by outsiders. Maybe an outsider from a place that matters, but certainly not Iowa.

My main reason for posting is my latest interest, which is turning game consoles into portables, like a gameboy. This was inspired by reading Ben Heckendorn's Site. I went out this weekend looking for something to portablize. I found a used FC Twin console for $10 with a sticker saying "As Is" on it. An FC Twin is a knock-off console that can play both Super Nintendo and regular Nintendo games. I decided that it was worth it and bought it. The guy at the store said that the reason it was so cheap (they nornally sell for $60) was that the sound didn't work. So I decided that I'd first try to fix the sound, and then go from there. Well, long story short, after tons of desoldering, soldering, forum research, and aching finger tips, I pretty much ruined the damn thing. But, on the plus side, I know what I did wrong, why the sound wasn't working (at least I think I do), and most importantly, what NOT to do next time. I think that $10 was worth it to screw up the first time, so that next time, my $60 will be worth it. Plus now i got lots of extra parts.



April-19-2008

I decided not too long ago that I'd keep my movie reviews down to certain significant works. Today i came across one such movie, that achieves new greatness in perpetuating the stereotype of crappy comic book movies. It's my great displeasure to review "Alien Vs. Predator: Requiem." Requiem is int he title because it's a small but complicated word that sounds neat.

I should start by saying that the first AVP movie was lousy, but not so lousy that I felt the need to bash it. It actually had an interesting explaination behind the fighting, and even had a neat twist where the Predator teamed up with a human. So even though it had a corny story, cliche human-based plot, and really corny hollywood special effects, it's premise was good enough to keep me watching, and the final boss fight wasn't too shabby either.

This one though, oh God, I had to turn on the lights to keep from falling asleep. A Predator ship orbitting Earth after recovering the body of the first movie's predator, crashes when an alien/predator hybrid pops out of the chest of the dead predator and kills everyone on board. An elite Predator is sent to Earth to do damage control, and destroy all the evidence. But the aliens escaped and are laying tumy-eggs left and right. So now the Predator has to run around killing off all the aliens.

In the Human plot, which dominated the movie to the point of retardation, we have a guy who jsut got out of prison, his brother who gets picked on by bullies, a woman just returning from Iraq, and a Sherriff investigating all the chaos. The brother's story is so stupid it's rediculous. THe Prison brother is named Dallas like every other comic book hero, and we never find out why he was in prison or why he's a combat expert. The Sherriff is a retarded Mexican with a retarted perm, who shoulda got killed first. The worst one though was the woman, and I'll explain why in a minute. Eventually all of these characters get together and try to fight their way through the city, to a supposed Air lift point that they hear about on the radio. They confiscate a National Guard APC (Armored Personel Carrier), which the Army woman drives. Here's where her story begins to go awry. First off, we never see her rank, which makes sense because she's wearing her uniform completely wrong, you'd think one person in the production crew would know how a military uniform is supposed to look. I actually went back to see if I could get any indication of her rank, and there is none. She is wearing neither enlisted nor officer rank, so they fucked up. We're led to believe that she knows how to drive an APC, so that must have been her job (which she calls a "tank" in the movie, fuckup #2). Later, she gets to weild a machine gun of some sort, i couldn't tell, and is a crack shot (assuming APC drivers get extensive gun training, maybe, so I can't say it's a fuck-up).

Eventually she gets the feeling that the radio message they got was a trick, and the group splits up. One group is going to the fishy airlift spot, and the other goes to the hospital to steal the helicopter. Without missing a beat, this woman goes from APC driver, to infantry, to helicopter pilot. To be a pilot, one must be an officer, and to be an APC driver, one must be enlisted, and to be in the military, you have to know how to wear your uniform. We're going round in circles! On top of all of that, if she were a pilot of any kind, or even flight crew, she'd probably be wearing a Flight Suit, and not BDU's, fuck-ups #3 and #4.

Meanwhile, in the center of town, a group has amassed, waiting for the Airlift. Just then, an F-22 Raptor drops a nuclear Bomb on the town. If you don't see what's wrong with that last sentence, call your local cable provider and ask for the military channel today! Military fuck-ups #5 and #6, and maybe even up to #10. How the hell does a multi-million dollar production fuck-up these tiny details? This kind of information is just a wikipedia search away. It's like making a movie about a Cow, and saying "do cows lay eggs?" "I'm not sure, ah fuck it, just throw a black and white spotted cow egg in there." GOD!

Overall the movie was boring a hell. The actually predator and Alien footage was so dark and up-close that it was impossible to know what the hell was going on. And you never do get a good look at the Predator-Alien hybrid. LAME!

This is the kind of stuff that makes me want to burst into the Hollywood business. THe new Street Fighter movie, Twisted Metal, predator, I got great ideas for all of them. I heard that the director of the new Street Fighter movie actually offered Jean Claude Van Damme the role of Guile, which he played int he first movie. Van Damme, who hasn't been in even a B-movie in ten years, turned it down! What does THAT tell you?! He said that he wanted to be more careful about chosing roles at this point, and felt that any more connection to the last Street Fighter movie would hurt his image. On top of that, the director of the new movie is renowned for making horrible movies, and especially horrible video game movies. So Van Damme's decision to stay away was undeniably smart. This movie is supposed to follow CHun-Li's story, which is good, but not what I want to see. I'd much rather see a movie based around Ryu going through the Street Fighter tournament, uninterrupted!

In every tourament based fighting movie except Rocky, the final fight is always interrupted by an exploding laboratory, or a sinking island, or an errupting volcanor, or a crumbling castle! I want to see the tournament from beginning to end, that way a winner can be declared fairly. The only, ONLY acceptable interruption in a Street Fighter movie, would be the actuall ending to Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo. When Ryu is fighting M. Bison,a nd is about to land the final blow, Akuma steps in, obliterates Bison, and fights Ryu, as he has proven himself a worthy opponent. I'd pay $50 to see that movie, I don't care who wins, as long as it's a legit fight with no interruptions. Then the sequel can be about Ryu trying to control the Dark Hadou, and facing Akuma for the fight to end all fights. That's my Street Fighter. For more Street Fighter info go to The Fighter's Generation, which is an awesome site with info on damn near every fighting game and character ever.



April-15-2008

I recently picked-up a collection of Dr. Katz DVDs, which I have been enjoying nightly. If you don't remember, the premis of the show is that comedians go see Dr. Katz, who's a psycologist, and basically tranlate their stand-up acts into a therapy session. Today I saw one with Mark Schiff, who I've never heard of before. Durring the show, he makes a joke about going to the doctor, and sitting on what he calls, "the deli paper", and that sometimes he'll put a pickle right beside him. This was in 1997.

One of Jerry Seinfeld's more famous acts, called "I'm telling you for the alst time", was recorded on Broadway in 1998. The same exact joke appears on the CD, except Seinfeld calls in "butcher paper". Now, the way msot comedians work is that they'll tour the country for a couple years, and then take a collection of the best material they've used over that time, and use it all in one performance that gets recorded for an album. Since I've never heard of Mark Schiff, I'm left to assume that he's purely a stand-up comic, and since he was on Dr. Katz, he had enough fame to warrent his appearance on the show, so he at least had one album out. In 1998 Jerry Seinfeld was occupied with his sitcom, and probably had little or no time at all to spend doing a big tour.

The two jokes are so similar, even in wording and inflection, that it's very apparent that one of these comics ripped-off the joke from the other. At a first thought, one would assume that Seinfeld, being the major comedic force that he is, was the creator of the joke. However, knowing that Schiff's joke appeared on Dr. Katz oen year earlier, and making it more likely that his album had been released prior to that, meaning that schiff may have been able to write the joke up to 3 years prior to Seinfeld's act, makes me believe that Seinfeld ripped off the joke from the lesser known comedian, Mark Schiff. Conspiracy? I doubt it, but it'd be nice if I were the first person to notice something for once.

In mediocre news, I picked-up a DualSchock 3 controller for the PS3. Wow, what a non-essential accessory. I don't regret buying it, as I've needed a new controller for a while. Instead, my... malcontent (?) lies with the fact that I've been saying since I bought my PS3 that I didn't miss the rumble feature at all.

Just to explain what the hell I'm talking about, I'll sum up the whole situation, both for me and for the video game market. When the PS2 was released, it came with the Dualshock 2 controller, which had force feedback (or "rumble", where if in a game you crash a car, shoot a gun, or get hit, the controller shakes with the aide of two motors with offset weights attatched), and became a standard, built-in feature for all console controllers since. Well, when Sony released the PS3, there was engineering and legal disputes over having the new controller feature both motion sensivity AND rumble. It was thought that a rumble feature would disrupt the motion sensors, and also, Sony had a legal falling-out with the patent-holder of the rumble technology. So the end result was to take out the rumble feature on the new controllers, and change the controller name to Sixaxis, reffering to the six axiis of motion detection. Many Players were very upset about this, as they felt that having their controller vibrate when they crashed their car into a wall at 300mph made the experience more realistic. As you can see from that last statement, I've always found rumble to be nothing more than a novelty. I didn't mind having it, but I didn't need it. That is, until I played Final Fantasy 12, which had so much overuse of the rumble feature that after a few hours of gameplay, if elt like I had just weedwacked my entire lawn. My hands were tingling and partially numb from the endless shaking in my hands. From then on, I found myself not troubled at all by the lack of rumble in PS3 controllers. Honestly, the whole rumble feautre, which started with the Nintendo 64 in 1997, was a neat idea at first, but grew old very fast. Having the controller jolt when you shot your gun in Goldeneye 007 was really cool, but again, it was a novelty, or a gimmick. It should have died there and left Goldeneye being even more well-thought-of than it already is. BTW, in case you're wondering, Dualshock, Dualshock 2, and Dualshock 3 controllers have no difference in rumble technology, just which system each comes with. Actually, if you want to get technical, the first Dualshock controller was actually battery powered, and sold seperatly from the system. Later on, when consoles were sold with the PS1, the batteries were removed and the controller ran on the console's power, making it the first controller to be able to rumble without any outside hardware (other consoles sold rumble packs seperately).

Somehow, i fell for the hype, and bought a Dualshock 3, which still has Sixaxis, and expected something great. What I got was the same thing I had each previous time. I drove my car off of a cliff, and the controller shook. woo. What really get sme about this whole situation is that people seem to want two things when it comes to handheld electronics advancement: lighter, and more powerful. Well, the Dualshock 3 is neither. The addition of two weighted motors makes the controller considerably heavier, and drains the battery faster. It's a step backwards if you ask me. Still I knew both of these things long before I bought it, and yet, I bought one at the first opportunity. How do I explain this paradox? I'll do so with a quote by Tycho from one of my favorite Penny-Arcade comics, "I am a consumer whore."



April-13-2008

Lately there's been a song on the radio a lot by the Hives. Mid song the singer says, "They say that the definition of madness is doing the same thing and expecting a different result." That quote doesn't quite set right with me. I do the same thing, play video games, and expect the same result that I used to get, but can't seem to achieve it. So am I expecting a different result, or am I expecting the reemergence of an old one?

The highly unsteady state of my military career is much like the metaphorical elephant in the room. When my career wasn't in jeopardy, I was able to enjoy things like video games and movies. But that damn elephant is blocking my view, chewing too loudly, and asking a lot of dumb questions.

This whole thing is like a tight-rope walk. My re-enlistment was my unbrella, but they took that away. If I lose my balance, they won't let me recover. There's someone at the end of the rope with a set of shears, and in my mind, he does have a face. He's waiting for one mistake, one little fault so that he can cut the rope. The thing is, I'm not far from the end. So what I'm left with is a dilema of choices, and each one will have a profoundly different impact on the outcome, not just of my career, but of my life. My mind says that I should fall on purpose, and hope that a net is under neath, because finishing on their terms is like selling out my soul. The smart thing to do is do my damndest to keep my balance and finish, with the reward being a safe descent to the ground. But the third option is not so much a choice, as it seems to be an inevitable outcome. That is that I will lose my balance, and as I dangle, clinging to the rope, they'll cut it, and leave the presence of the safety net up to chance.

Basically, I've been hearing two different likelihoods for what will happen when I get kicked out, from equally reliable sources. One side says that I'll get an honorable discharge, and be sent on my way with the chance for medical benefits. The other side says that I'll get a dishonorable discharge, not retain any benefits, and go into financial ruin when the government reclaims the money that they gave me when I enlisted. See, that's the elephant on my couch. I hate the Air Force.



April-10-2008

Today I dabbled in the Miata forums a little, and i was quickly reminded why I kinda eased-off of forums in general. Mostly because it's the same damn questions over and over.

For instance, in the Miata forums it's always, "What kind of oil should I use?" "What tires are best?" "New owner, with a question." New owner questions are usually about what thing is best for the car. The answers to these are almsot always "do a search" or "that's really a matter of opinion, I personally..." The worst though is the Power Mods section, which is just thousands of topics all asking the same thing, "What's the best way to add hp to my car?" The responses are usually long and vague or "Turbo". Nobody ever asks interesting questions like, "where's a good road to drive?" or "Who's tried this part?" What i think the whole thing really needs is more guys giving the results of experimentations with their cars.

Then there's the PlayStation forums, which is more of the same except about PlayStations. "Should I buy a PS3?" "What games are best for PS3?" "What color PSP should I buy?" The answers to all of these questions are "Get what you WANT!" What really irks me though is that most people are so dumb rude to each other. The response "do a search" is not only annoying, but is like trying to eleminate an ant colony by stepping on one ant now and then; people will always ask repeat questions. But the worst is when somebody reds something and posts a link, and it's never the first time somebody posts about it, so every douche bag chimes in "OLD NEWS!!! We all knew that already for like, years!" Well ex-friggin-scuse me.

THough I complain about these things, I always try to be helpful and answer the repeats and dumb questions, because the person asking them doesn't think that they're dumb or repeats. I try not to be a jerk to anyone, though I have had my arguments in the past. WHen I was still part of the SHO Forums I got into a bad situation that got the moderators involved. I explained my case and ended up winning, but the point is that people always gotta start shit on these things and it sucks all the fun out of it.

There's movements happening now to end things like this. Also, I read in a magazine today that the slandering going on in Call Of Duty 4 (which I play regularly) is getting out of control, and I totally agree. It's not just guys saying "Shit! I'm dead! That jerk sniped me!" It's more like, "These dumb fucking niggers are a bunch of newbs." What really gets me is that the guys who say "nigger" the most are white kids, who think that saying "nigger" makes them edgy and cool. Finding someone online that actually uses the voice chat feature responsibly is a breath of french air, that's rare at best. I've had two memorable occasions, one in COD4 and one in Burnout Paradise, where I was able to carry on intelligent and helpful dialogue with other players. Those occasions were memorable, ebcaue it made things move like clockwork, and everybody ended up having a good time. I'm not gonna sit here and make believe that I use squeaky clean dialogue at all times, but there's a difference between swearing and slandering.



April-07-2008

I feel like craaaaaaaaaap. I'm considering just going straight to bed. The last few work days have been horrible. I recently started going back to PT, and man does it blow. Actually, it's not too bad, it's the after effects that blow.

After two and a half months of no PT, I'm quite weak by comparrisonto how I was before hand. I notice it in my arms the most. I have to strain now to do what once was very basic stuff, like moving shelves at work. Not that it was ever easy, but now i feel that sharp tinge of atrophy in my arms. My running has been okay, though exhausting.

Today when i went to PT they tried to get me to test, which I've only told them about a thousand times that i can't yet. Seriously, this is just more affirmation that they don't give two shits about me until their paperwork has my name on it.

After work tonight I felt like such garbage that I went to a resturaunt to get some real food. While I was waiting for my food, a guy walked by and incoherently asked me a question. I had my glasses off and when I looke dup at him I saw that he was a wacked-out veteran of some sort. He kept calling me "Air Force". A word to the wise, or not so wise, don't call someone in uniform by their service branch as if it's their name. It's really insulting. His question was "Are you stationed here?" I interpereted it as "Are you an engineer?" What a dick. I say that because his intentions toward me didn't seem friendly, they seemed uptightly hostile. My bet is that he's one of the protestors that stand outside the base gate on Fridays and wave around signs about the war and what not. He can kiss my ass.

Speaking of engineers, I read an interesting study recently. Apparently, engineers have a tendency to join terrorist groups. It seems that most of the top dogs in Al-Queda all have engineering backgrounds. A psychoanalyst said that it's probably because engineers naturally think about puzzles and problems differently from the average person. They look for weaknesses in a plan, and come up with a more efficient solution. So being part of a poor militant group with limited resources makes for an ideal setup for a person who focuses on efficiency. This interests me of course, because I ahve such a strong engineering background. Not that terrorism interests me, but I can see the appeal were i a radical Islamic nut-case.



April-06-2008

I was jsut cruising around the PlayStation Forums, and an interesting topic came up that inspired a rant. User names. People have some dumb-ass, names. I mean, there's dumb names, unoriginal names, and then there's dumb-ass names. Note the pause between dumb and ass.

My name on the PlayStation Network is, not suprisingly, Blank-Disk. I've been Blank-Disk for almost 10 years, and I love my name. It has a very personal meaning to me, but also multiple external meanings. When I see my name, it's not just an alias, it's an identity, a net identity. Today, perhaps it seems lame to kids, but the cyber-punk mentality that ruled my world when I created it says that it's awesome.

Now let me ask you something. Do you think the person who's name is Abs0420 could say the same thing about their name? No. How about sq87? raybut? Mahrkagir? These are actual names I pulled from PSN, people actually decided to label themselves with these names. There was even a Turdstik for god's sakes. These are not names to be proud of.

There's a guy on my friend's list named shinnersvr6. Don't get me wrong, he's a cool guy, which is why I added him, but that name makes no sense. You couldn't even draw a false conclusion about the person behind that name. Now, my other friend, Gonzo, calls himself GONZO1985. Anyone who's ever known a kid named Gonzalez would know that that names belongs to someone named Gonzalez who was born in 1985. Not a deep name, but certainly not a secret alias, or non-sensical garbage by any means. My point there is that originality isn't what makes a good name, it's just the intentions expressed by that name. What does that name say about you? My friend chose a very direct, open-ended name, it shows that who he is on teh net or in real life is the same person. I'd like to think that my name shows a sense of humor, while trying to be serious at the same time. Two words starting with capital letters, separated by a dash, and are actually words usuable together in a sentence, makes it seem official. It lets people know that this is not just some name I pulled out of my butt, it's my internet name where ever I go. But not jsut on teh net, in any video game too, my name is always at least Disk, and on arcade machines, DSK. I love my name.


April-03-2008

Today's topic is one of great importance to me, and that is newspaper comics, the horrible state of. The last two days I've picked up a copy of the local newspaper, The Albuquerque Journal, which I've read many times in the past. The only part of any newspaper that I really care about is the comics section, so that's what I focus on. Newspaper comics have always been important to me, I once aspired to become a newspaper quality cartoonist.

Newspaper comics are hard to write, because the newspaper is seen as the most basic form of mass media that we have, fit for anyone to read, and so a newspaper cartoonist has to keep their work very clean. That's hard to do, but some artists pull it off very well, and others, drop to their knees and buckle under the pressure. My perfect example of this is the travesty of a comic strip, Marvin. I've always thought it was stupid, and the last two days sealed the deal. THe running theme of the last two strips is that a girl at Marvin's pre-school is related to pop sensation Mona Arizona (an obvious play on Hanna Montana). Yesterday, at hearing this news, Marvin says to the girl, and this is the punchline, "I take back all the bad things I've ever said about you." As you can imagine, I was blue in the face laughing at that zinger. Today, Marvin asked the girl if she could arrange for him to meet Mona Arizona, to which the girl replied, "You have to tell the whole class that we're in love," with hearts around her. Marvin does an anime fall-over to illustrate disbelief. What 6 year old writes this garbage? That's not even funny, not even when i was a little kid, new to every joke imaginable, I wouldn't have, nor did I laugh at "jokes" like that. That's Popeye calibur humor, which i never found even slightly enterntaining.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the strip F Minus had a wrothy submission to the collection. It depicted two men stranded on a desert island (a classic comic setup), battered and bruised with coconuts all around them. The only text is one man saying "Okay Okay, no more food fights." THAT'S the quality of humor that people expect out of a newspaper comic. Clean as a whistle, but not resorting to bargain bin comedy like Marvin. The cartoonist actually had to think beyond the formula to arrive at that joke, and it's to be commended.

This newspaper's comic section is a mix of A+ and D- strips. The crapier ones are Gasoline Alley which just plain doesn't make sense to anyone but the writer, and Girls and Sports which is just one big RadioShack commercial without the advertising, leaving only dumbass sports fanatics to say "I'd rather watch Football then do the dishes." Curbing the retardation factor on the comics page are Zits and Retail both of which relay modern exerpiences that young people can identify with, while making relevent satire of those situations.

What really gets me, not only in regards to this paper, but many others I've seen, is the lack of good classics, and the presense of bad ones. Dennis the Menace is about as funny as a kid actually shooting at you with a slingshot, and has no place in modern society. Peanuts is still around everywhere, and to my knowledge is the only 100% rerun newspaper comic out there (no pun intended). But the real mystery to me, is the horrific lack of Garfield. I can't find Garfield freakin' anywhere! That's comic section blasphemy! TO me, Garfield was the comic of Generation X. The Baby Boomer's had Peanuts, and GenX had Garfield. He represented hedonism, and made laziness and rebellion feel acceptable, which was just what GenX wanted. Dammit, I want my Garfield back.

This is yet one more things that makes me want to get back into cartooning. If the Albuquerque Journal finds the crap it runs to be acceptable, then I could mail them my used toilet paper and take Marvin's slot. Then i'd finally be getting paid to be a bullshit artist. Wakka Wakka! Ba-zing!



March-31-2008

I was playing Call of Duty 4 today, and something happened to me that hasn't happened since high school school. I was ostricized for my poor playing skills. What happened was, an entire clan of players came into a game I was already in, and I ended up getting paired with them (we were playing Team Deathmatch, so 2 teams battle it out). Before the game even started, the clan leader offered to let me use their clan tag, and I told him "No Thanks, I don't do clans." But before i could say anything, the other members were screaming "No! Don't let him in!" I guess they wanted to feel exclusive.

We started a round, and I ended up not doing too great. I think I felt a little under pressure because i was an outsider who already had my teammates showing mixed feelings toward me. After that round, they really laid into me, saying that I suck a lot of dick and that they couldn't believe they offered me a spot. I gave no response to this because I didn't want to argue with morons. I actually had a ton of things to say, but chose not to. Honestly, it was just a bad round.

So we started another round, with them still blazing away with gay jokes and telling me to get off the server. This round, I scored way better, just 6 kills under the leader, but still they flamed me. I figured that if that wasn't good enough, then I'd give them something to bitch about, as is my nature. The next round I didn't fire a single shot, I just ran into enemy territory and got killed, giving the opposing team all the more points. After that they'd had enough, and decided to leave on their own. The leader stayed behind to talk mroe trash, to which I finally responded, "If you all hadn't been such a bunch of dicks, i actually would have tried to help you out." Of course he didn't care and just kept blabbering about dicks.

What really gets me is that these sounded like fairly mature (in the age sense) guys, being complete childish assholes. This is the same kind of response I'd get in high school when I played sports. I'd always try my best untill i started getting trash talked, and then I'd just shut down. I wouldn't say a word, and I'd just stand there and do nothing. It's in my nature where if I think someone is bitching about nothing, I'll give them something worth bitching about. I know I'm not a great player, but really, neither were they. Like I said, in the round were I had my usual results, they really weren't that far ahead of me. When i say Gonzo play on my setup a couple weeks ago, I couldn't believe what I was seing. He truely is a mater of that game, and his numbers beat the shit out of these losers. In fact, Gonzo is so good that when we (meaning our friends and us) play, we often joke about how he's too good for us, his score is always double the 2nd place score. And he's the only guy I know that can completely exhaust every bullet he has and STILL not die. It's almost like he's psychic when he plays, he knows exactly where the next guy is going to be. So as far as I'm concerned, you can't bitch about a bad teammate unless your numbers are ungodly high.

That being said, let me flip right around and say that I feel like the victor by way of life. If you are so involved in a dumb-ass game that you form a clan, and hone your skills to the point whre you never lose, you need a fucking life. My lack of skill in that game just goes to show me that I have other, more important things that I focus on in my daily life. If your free time, and skill sharpening practices are all spent on a game, then you're a loser. I play games for fun, and my main competition is myself. Yes, i'll get addicted to games and scream at the TV and throw controllers, but that's only about 20% of my free time. As much as I talk about games, I usually don't even turn on any games durring the work week, and play only on the weekends, and even then, only for a few hours a day. I know this topic has been exausted by every semi-intelligent person on the net, but really, it's out of hand. In fact, there's actually organizations trying to stop this kind of behavior. I won't lose any sleep over this at all, I just thought I'd complain about what a bunch of idiots I get associated with.



March-30-2008

I just finished watching Justice League: The New Frontier. That's how to make an animated superhero movie. At least one that goes straight to DVD. It's surprisingly violent, in a way that you wouldn't see in a Marvel movie. Stan Lee is very vocal about his stance that "Super heros don't kill people, they save people." I read that this movie is based on a comic series, which makes sense because I feel that a lot is missing from it. but the core of the story is there, and done very well. My only complaint is batman's voice, which sounds terrible.

Even better than the movie though, was a sneek peek at a new Batman movie comming out. It's called Batman Gotham Knight, and is done by anime teams. It's int he style of The Animatrix in that it has 6 short stories, each done by a different director and team. Several of the Animatrix directors are participating in this one as well. The one I'm really looking forward to is the film with the character Deadshot. That one is done by the same peoiple who did Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, and looks incredible. The voice of Batman is going to be the same guy who did it in the animated series, so that'll be awesome. I dare to predict that this will be the ebst comic based DVD yet.



March-26-2008

Today I watched A Fistful of Dollars. I've been wanting to see it for a while now. In Metal Gear Solid 3, both it and the sequel For a Few Dollars More are brought up in conversation. Of course anything recommended by an MGS game must be good. Well this was quite good, of course, and I'm going to watch the sequel next. I've also determined from seeing this movie that Big Boss, and by default Solid Snake, were based on this character. Mostly for looks and voice. The Snakes don't make jokey comments much, but they are weapon savy lone-wolf types. It's from this that I've determined that if they do make a Metal Gear Solid movie, as there have been rumors of, then Clint Eastwood is destined to play Big Boss.

The next movie is The Mist which is a Stephen King based movie. This was my kind of movie right from the beginning. Natural disaster, followed by survival horror. Thomas Jane plays the lead character (he was in the recent Punisher movie, which i thought was great, though he won't retain the role in the next film, boo) who's house get's damaged in a storm. All the power and cell signals are out, so he and his son go to the local grocery store to buy supplies. When they get there, a man comes running into the store with a bloody face and tells everyone to stay inside and lock the doors. A mist covers the area, and monsters dwell within it. This setup is classic, and is right up my alley. Soon, things turn all Lord of The Flies when a religious fanatic gets most of the people convinced that it's the apocalypse. I hated this woman from the start, and spent most of the movie wishing somebody would break her neck or something. Jane and Pals decide to ditch the loonies and get out, knowing that going into the mist means certain doom.

Right from the get go, this movie reminded me very much of Silent Hill, the game that is. Though i guess Silent Hill was probably inspired by this story as the book was written in 1980. The first enemy you fight int he misty SIlent Hill game is a flying monster thing that bursts through a storefront window. Guess what happens in the movie, and the monsters look almost identical. So I say that the two were very interlinked. I must also add that although the Silent Hill movie determines the mist to be ash from the underground fires, it's never verified in the game.

The ending of The Mist is very screwed up. So screwed up, in fact, that I went online to see how the book ended. I've been told repeatedly that Stephen King can't end books to save his life. In the book, the characters who get out of the store drive off into the mist, and we're left wondering what will become of them. In the movie, we find out what happens to them, and it's screwed up. Stephen King publicly stated that he loves the new ending, and as I understand it, the ending was written by the same guy who wrote for The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption both of which had cut-short book endings.

My hit count tracking has yeilded some lousy numbers. Really lousy. But I still appreciate what little support the site gets.

Btw, I think I'm done with the military. That's a painful thing to say, but I think that I need to make that notion public. I went back to work briefly today just to get some medical paperwork taken care of, and instantly remembered why I avoid my bosses. I'm torn in my thinking. Is it really as bad as I think it is, or am I just convincing myself that it is. I noticed in life that when people are considering quitting, they start listing every reason why they need to leave on a regular basis. I've been doing the same thing, but it's actually not unusual. Getting kicked out will be a major financial strain. I predict that I'll go into 5 figure debt because of it. I get so many contradicting pieces of info that it's hard to know who's right, and thus I don't know who to trust, or what will happen to me. What I do know is that I'm getting getting screwed by the book. Nobody is sticking their neck out for me, despite what they say. I hear the phrase "i gotta cover my ass" on a daily basis. What about my ass? Like I said above, I keep convincing myself that I need to leave. But it's hard to say that with confidence when I have nowhere to go. I would sit here and lsit all the reasons, but I don't want to get wrapped up in it all right now. But I will say this, getting out of a system of definite rank is what I look the most forwward to. It's all good when it works in your favor, but when you need help, nobody is high ranking enough to do anything, beaue a guy one rank higher is holding them back. My ass.



March-25-2008

Post added later on: Okay, two more movies to report on (I'm just knockin' em out). First is Rendition. This movie was very good, but like many movies I've been watching lately, too long. It deals with the toture issue, and whether or not it's worth using to gain information. One character sums it up by using an Arab saying, "Beat your wife every day, even if you don't know why, she does." Pig-headed, yes, interesting thought, yes. The movie has a dumb underlying message about irony i guess, because the chief torturer's daughter is dating a terrorist. I must say that I'm really sick of irony. Not just because it's over-used, but because Futurama pointed out that the concept is often mislabeled and misused. Irony, in it's literal sense, is a use of words expresing something other than their literal intention. But, situationally, it is as the song suggests. Still, it's overused. I preffer contrast.

Next up is The Invincible Iron Man which was a straight to DVD animated movie from a couple years back. Ug. Well, not Ug, but ug. There's something to be said for Iron Man, he's awesome. Tony Stark is a raving douche bag, but in a way that doesn't make you want to hate him. I think it's because he actually worked his ass off to get where he is, so his douche baggery is slightly justified. This movie tells the story of Iron Man's origin, which the writers admit in the Making-Of featurette isn't really on-target with the original story. I should hope not, otherwise Iron Man's original fans are idiots. The plot behind every Iron Man origin variation is that he's injured in an enemy attack, and has to build a pace-maker to keep his heart from stopping. While in enemy captivity, they force him to build some kind of fantastic weapon, and instead he builds the Iron Man suit to escape. Who captures him and why is the major variable. I believe in the upcomming movie it's going to be Arab terrorists. In this movie though, it's the Jade Dragon clan, who blame Tony for resurrecting Mandarin. Okay, but I think it's a dumb enemy. The writers said they wanted an opposite to Iron Man, but I'd have rather seen a contrastingly stronger technological enemy (see, contrast). So Tony goes on to "recover numerous shiny objects that when combined create an ultimate power." That quote is from my tech school roommate who was explaining to me his least favorite plot device. The battle suits were cgi, which I think was a good choice, and they all looked and moved fairly well... most of the time. The voice acting was fairly good... fairly, as in not horrible. The hand-drawn animation was god aweful. I mean, wow. Within seconds i thought to myself "This has Korea written all over it." Sure enough, about 30 Kim-Lo's worked on it. I didn't see the familiar name though that's synonymous with crappy Korean animation, but that's a different story. You'd think that Marvel would have some artists on hand who were used to drawing the same thing over and over, but I guess they're too busy drawing for comic books that don't sell. Yes, that's right, comic books are a cult fad, and no industry worker has used the phrase "flying off the shelf" since the 70's, except for The Death of Superman in 1993. That's why all these properties are going into movies, because children can't read any more, and movies make about 100,000x more money than comics.

Anyway. The animation was shamefully edited. Choppy animation is okay if you make it at least mathmatically consistent. Look at anime for god's sakes, it may be mostly still picutres with moving mouths, but at least it doesn't fall out of that loop. This was just plain horrible. I'd have been more impressed if they did it like an animated comic. What really got me is that it looked like the animators really came up with most of the actions themselves. My guess is that they got storyboards to follow and were told to jsut get it close to that. But one drawing for a scene with around 100 frames is not acceptable base material. A Disney animatic story baord will point out every little motion. As much as art needs freedom of expresion, animation has to be tightly controlled or it suffers badly. And speaking of things suffering, there was one element in the movie that made no sense to me at all. At one point, the leading lady turns evil and her clothes get blown off in some supernatural explosion thingy. This is a horrid attempt at two things: 1. getting the 12 year old boys it's marketed to to think that it's hot and sophisticated, and 2. mimic anime, which has naked supernatural chicks all the time. But the problem here is that it's american and marketed to 12 year old boys, so they can't actually show anything. So basically this woman is fighting Iron Man, butt naked for upwards of 5 minutes, and we're bombarded with every trick they can think of to keep you from seeing her bits. Why? If you're going to go through the effort to get a woman's clothes off, why go through substantially more effort to cover it up? In most cartoons and movies, underwear seems to ressit all cloths destroying events, the same should have applied here if the intent was to arouse pre-teen boys. Being edgy would have been better suited to introducing a canonical new suit for Iron Man. God that animation was aweful. Even if I had animated the whole thing by myself, I wouldn't have been happy with it. But this was done by TEAMS of people, who apparently do it for a living. My point is that after the first test footage came back, I woulda hired somebody else. But to me, what I saw was a lot of guys at Marvel trying to edit it so that it looked good, getting sick of all the effort and saying "Ah fuck it, kids will buy it anyway." Well, no, kids don't have money, and stingy geeky adults wouldn't spend the money on it unless they were hideously bored and had $7 to throw away at Wal-Mart while they were buying toilet paper... like me. Stan Lee must be spinning in his grave. Oh wait, Stan Lee is still alive, which is why he should ahve said, "This is aweful, don't we have legions of artists whose job it is to draw pictures of the same characters over and over again? We do? Well then get rid of these Ho-Chi-Mins and lets make a real movie! Excelsior!" That's Stan Lee's battle cry...

In case anyone cares or ws wondering, i had another eye surgery and have been home for the last week, which is why I've been watching to many movies. Surgery sucks. The first time I was nervous, the second time it was fun, and the third time it was boring and tedious. And eye surgery sucks more, both times it felt like my eyelids had sand crammed under them afterward.

I think I'm going to keep track of my hits, which I haven't done since high school. I think at one point I made over 30 hits a day, though i doubt I'm anywhere near that now. We'll see.



Movie Time! First on the movie list is X-Men 3: The Last Stand. This was way better than I thought it would be. The 2nd movie kinda really sucked bad. This one was much more in line with X-Men mentality. What I really liked was how they really eviled-up Dark Phoenix. Her face reminded me of Samara from The Ring. Which leads us to...

Ringu 2! This movie was quite different from it's U.S. remake, but at the same time, shared certain plot points. This one picks up one week after the first. The main character from the first movie and her son have gone missing, and her father has just died at the hands of Sadako (Samara). The end of the first movie had the grandfather watch the video to break the curse on his grandson, and then let Sadako kill him a week later. This, in-turn, would end the string of curses. But, circumstances lead to the creation of a new tape, sort-of, and a new curse, sort-of. One huge scene in this version appeared in the first US version very briefly, but didn't develope into anything. Int he US version, the friend of the first girl to get killed is in a mental hospital, and we see her being escorted through the hospital with a partition next to her so taht she can't see the TV in the activity area. This same scene appears in the japanese sequel, but with huge results. The girl peeks over the partition and sees the TV, which causes the signal to fade, and Sadako's well comes into view. From that, the doctors determine that anyone who survives an encounter with Sadako or the video, retains the energy of the curse, and has to expell the engergy in some way. So, they decide to have the girl focus her energy into a video camera, not knowing about the cursed video. This results in the same video being created in a new, fresh video. So the way to end the curse now is to get all survivors to focus the negative engergy into water (which doesn't lead to new cursed videos, lol). It works, and the curse is broken. Untill, a news reporter is watching a video taped interview of a girl who later gets killed by Sadako. He copies the tape, and attempts to erase the original, which results in the girl on film going into Sadako mode, and a new cursed tape is created. Wicked stuff. It makes me think even mroe about what they're going to do for the new Ring Movie comming out.

The last movie is , which was a highly recognized movie about Hitler's last days. It's terribly long, but good. Had I not already known the story, I'd have found it much more interesting. The Acting, especially the guy that plays Hitler, is freaking fantastic. What I really liked is that so many Hitler based movies are just "Jews this and Jews that." This one only mentions it once, and in a very powerful way. Hitler, when confronted with the reality that he's lost, says that his final attack on the world will be when they learn about what he did to the Jews, which he considered his greatest accomplishment. I think what a lot of people don't know is that the concentration camps weren't discovered, or at least truthfully exposed, untill the very end of the war. People knew that Jews were being mistreated and made to live in ghettos, but they didn't know how horrible things actually were. I'd imagine that a lot of people viewed the treatment of the Jews to be similar to how we treated the Japanese Americans at the time, which was to place them in closed-off camps untill after the war, to prevent any internal terrorism. Though it sucked, it was really just a community where people worked and lived under observation. So I think that's why the truth took so long to be understood. Oh that Hitler.



March-24-2008

Before I get started on movie and game reviews, I want to point out a looming thought I've had about a band. For a while now, I've had an odd interest in the band My Chemical Romance, who I'd long thought to be just a crappy emo band (i hate the word emo and the culture that follows it). But after a few run-ins here and there, I think I might actually like them. I saw their drummer on L.A. Ink when he went to get a tatoo from Kat Von D. She ended up being 3 hours late and he spent the whole time bored out of his mind waiting for her, but was very cool about it. He even passed the time by doing chores around the shop, lol. Well I was just driving home and heard a song from them called "Teenagers", and it was damned good. Contrary to what I expected, it was very upbeat, fast passed, and expertly put together. Something I always judge music by is how diverse the music is, which is hard to describe. Basically if you jsut play a loop over and over, I don't call that good. This song, as with their others (I looked them up on Amazon) have actual stages, build-ups, roll-offs, and all the items needed to make a real song. I must say that this is one of those cases where even if you don't like the music, you can't deny that it's well done.

Now, I saw The Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, against my better judgement. Good Crispy-Kream, don't we have standards to prevent movies like this? It was complete garbage. I suppose that if I were 13 I'd have loved it, but only because I didn't know any better. Jessica Alba gets as naked as a girl can get in a PG-13 movie, and Johnny Storm was about as funny as ever other overconfident douchebag in movie history. Rather than list all the individual problems with this movie, I think I'll just sum it up by saying "Swing and a miss... again." Also, Mr. Fantastic's clothes strech with his limbs, even when out of uniform, NOT POSSIBLE! Also, this was society's chance to see Galactus on the big screen, but instead we get about 3 seconds of what MIGHT be a face shadow, LAME!

I also saw Into The Wild. *sigh* I'm sure that someone, somewhere, really identified with this movie/book/whatever. I found it to be about an hour too long. Apparently every person that came into contact with this kid loved him to death, and regarded him as a superior intellect, and wanted to adopt him (seriously). What I saw was a kid who purposely started trouble with his parents, and took them getting pised at him for it as "They just don't get me!" Right in the beginning his parents ofer to buy him a new car as a graduation gift, and he basically tells them to fuck off because his crappy Datsun runs just fine. Okay, if you don't want a new car, just say "Thanks, but I like my car and want to keep driving it." Don't say, "Why would I need a new car? My car runs fine. What are you trying to do? Buy my love?" Dude, relax. Yes his parents were abusive assholes in a loveless marriage, but they pretty much offer to hand this kid everything he'd need to be a success and happy in life, and he turns them down very ungraciously. As before, the proper resonse would be, "While I appreciate the offers, I'd like to work things out for myself." Instead he donates all of his college money to charity and bums around North America, which he finds to be the perfect life for him. Okay, that's fine. Over and over we're supposed to regard this kid as an enlightened hero, but really I just found him to be a self-important asshole. I know it's a real story, and I know that it's bad luck to speak ill of the dead or whatever, but that's just how I saw it. "Live and let live", not "live and piss on others for not living." Again, too long, I can't care about a spoiled kid turned hippie for 2 1/2 hours.

I picked up Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds last week. It's okay, but not nearly as much fun as HSG4. They came up with a new system for hitting the balls, which is frustrating by comparrison. The old system was way more accurate because you could gauge your swing distange and strength pretty accurately by timing your button presses based on a moving bar gauge. In this one though you actually have to guage it by watching the character's swing. This kinda blows, because you basically have to imagine the parameters and make an educated guess. All too often, i try to make a mid-range shot, and end up falling WAY short because I can't see exactly where the club is in the swing. Doing full swing shots are fairly easy, but any less is a guessing game. They left the old system in the game but reduce your strength if you use it. So you cna hit shorter, but mroe accurate shots. I'd rather hit long, accurate shots like in the last 6 games. Dammit, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, or at least give me the option to use either system punishment free. The best part of the gmae is a online feature for sure. Up to 8 people can play a hole at once (their balls and characters don't interfere with yours). It usually turns into a slaughter. There's always one person who birdie's every hole. One girl actually got a hole-in-one and beat everybody with a -8. That's great and all, but how about us guys who consider Par a great achievment? I think that this game, along with several others, needs a ranked play system where you can play with people of your level. Warhawk had that, and if you ask me, is one of the best online systems available. They really give you the chance to play where you want rather than just hoping to get lucky.

I was absolutely sick of being in my hosue, so I went to Denny's for dinner. I do not recommend Denny's Cheesecake. However, the Carrot Cake, oh baby.

BTW! Speaking of music and things that suck, let's talk bout Radiohead. Radiohead made the news a while back by releasing their new album on the internet totally free. Radiohead makes a good song per album, and I hadn't heard anything from them recently that sounded good, so i didn't get the album. In fact, i heard one of their news songs on the radio last week and actually changed teh channel because I couldn't bear to listen to it any more. If your song is bad enough to snap someone out of a driving trance to turn it off, you need to go back to the drawing board. Well, at-home revolutionaries think that Radiohead is awesome for releasing a free album. Well, my musical hero, Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails) has recently done the same thing. I haven't heard any of what he's released yet (I'm actually waiting to buy my hard-copy, so there's the value of free music for ya right there), but I'm confident that it'll be awesome and I'll love it. I heard of the radio (I freaking love Sirius) that Trent publicly stated that Radiohead is getting too much credit. As I heard it he said, "If you're going to make a strong political statement by releasing a free album, make sure the music on it is worth more than that." lol. Basically he's saying that the albumw as free becausee it sucks. Last night on Adult Swim, in a very un-Adult Swim moment, aired a live studio performance of Radiohead's newest single. it must've beent he same one i heard on the radio, becuase I changed the channel subconciously, AGAIN. I realized what I had done and went back to see if the song really was that bad. Yup, it sure was. It sounded like each member was playing a different song, and the vocals were terrible. Really, Adult Swim? Your stopping my Sunday Night entertainment for this? Really?

Speaking of Adult Swim, who do I have to flog with their own severed limbs to get Xavier: Renegade Angel taken off the air. My GOD, what a retard mess of stoner shit that is. Same with Garth Mehrenghy's Dark Place, which is billed as "unfit for UK television". Yeah, it's unfit for any television. If I were a BBC programming exec, i woulda tossed that out the window too. Then I'da sent the negatives into space, exsposed them to a Super Nova, and then hurled them into the sun. If you find either Xavier or Dark Place not just funny, but entertaining on any level, then you have a serious drug problem, and need to check into rehab immediatly. Though there may not be any hope left for you. That's how bad those two shows really are. God almighty.



March-18-2008

i just wanted to follow-up on my Wipeout posting from yesterday. I did a little research and reding and it turns out that Wipeout Pulse is, in fact, set far into the future from the original games. I actually popped-in my old copy of the first Wipeout, and AG-Systems was one of the sponsors. i went to the Wipeout website and it seems that they made an Auricom ship for future downloads, but it looksnothing like the Arial Tetsuo ship, so Bleh. Also, I found a demo disc of Wipeout 3, and I played both games to see how they compare to the newest installment.

Wipeout 3 was analog capable (it's really difficult to type "Wipeout", I always seem to type it "Wipreout". And the way the game types it is "Wip3out") and that made steering and control fairly easy, but I still found the ship's response time to be quite sluggish. Wipeout 1 though, was a different beast all together. It was totally digital (meaning that steering was based on how long you held the directional button. The longer you hold it, the tighter the turn) which made navigation quite hard. A staple of the series is the need for efficient air-brake use. But the whole system ws a bit too loose. What I found is that the game requires you to over-do everything, whereas newer installments are more tight in their control. If you want to take a tight turn without hitting the wall, your ship has to be almost sideways, like an anti-gravity drift. Seeing how fluid and "realistic" teh physics engine was made me realize though that it's difficulty wasn't from lack of good mechanics, it was that the mechanics were too good. The ships control like a hovership would, and back in 1995, it would have made any 16-bit gamer crap their pants in awe. So my conclusion is that Wipeout was a technologial achievment that was jsut a bit too harsh on the average gamer.



March-17-2008

This just in! Grilled Sirloin Steak CHunky Soup is NOT the same thing as Sirloin Burger Chunky Soup. Grilled Sirloin Steak Chunky Soup should be called "Funky Stuff in a Can." It sucks.

I've been playing "Army of Two" on and off since it came out. It's not a bad game, but it's not great either. Playing Single Player is a rel drag. I'm dying for somebody I know to get it so i can play it Co-op as it's intended to be played. Maybe then I can feel like i'm actually good at it.

Speaking of Ao2, I've been reading Penny-Arcade's impressions of it,a nd I must say that I disagree. In this comic and it's related news post, Tycho says that he thinks the character's sadistic behavior must be left over from a harsher interation of the game. His reasoning for this is that the characters seem to take things seriously from a political stand-point, but treat killing enemies like it's loads of fun. From this, he determines that the two sides of the characters shouldn't be linked in the same game. I completely disagree. The kind of mentality the characters display is pretty realistic as far as I'm concerned. I'm not going to act like my military experience makes me a combat expert, since I've never actually seen real combat. But I will say this: when I was in combat training (which was nerve wracking to say the least) I didn't feel very conflicted when it came time to decide if the guy with the grenade should live or die. That's why I pumped him full of imaginary bullets. When somebody is shooting at you, aka, trying to kill you, and you kill them first, that's a conscience clear victory to me. Though again, maybe I'm wrong, I certainly don't have the experience to back it up.

I think that the penny-arcade mentality is the exact mentality that gets me so pissed off at military-based games and movies. Too often soldiers are portrayed as obedient drones, and their commanders are depicted as all-knowing mission focused super-men. It's just not true. The business and psychological ends of the spectrum are not linked, it's a switch that goes back and forth. There's the side of you that works seriously to complete the mission, and there's the side of you that's just you, voicing your opinion. More often then not, the guys who are on a mission, don't want to be. Where would you rather be, in combat, or watching TV? But the logistical pencil-pushers decide that something needs to happen, and you're tasked to make it happen. You may not, and probably don't like it, but it's your job, you know it's your job, and you do it anyway, bitching the whole way there and back. It's just like any other job at it's core.

In better news, I've decided that Star Fox has one of the best game soundtracks ever. It makes me want to make 8-bit music.

Hot Shots Golf comes out tomorrow for the PS3. I will most deffinetly be picking that up. Hot Shots golf rules.

Since the mid-90's, I've been a huge fan of the Wipeout games. Oddly, I find them almost impossible to play, and thus, rarely buy them. I mainly like thme because it was featured in the movie "Hackers", and had a major influence on my getting into techno, as it, and one of the main characters, was featured in the video for Fluke's "Atom Bomb". Well due to inredible reviews, I picked upt eh lastest installment, "Wipeout Pulse" for the PSP. The girl I love so much from the other games is named Arial Tetsuo (japanese for "Techno Beat") but she's not in this one. I heard that this game takes place at a different time from the others, so that's probably why. her sponsor, Auricom, it's in this game either. Though there is a very similar ship sponsored by AG-Sytems, so I guess that's the substitute. One ship I recognized though was the Piranha ship that was accessed by code in Wipeout XL, which had a permanent gun mount and made winning too easy. This one doesn't have the gun though. The game itself is by FAR superior to the other's I've played. It used to be next to impossible to guide the ships around the track without hitting the walls. In regular races you still get pretty banged up, but in time trial mode it's obvious that there is a fairly simple way to get around the track without accruing any damage. Though the control scheme on the PSP pisses me off to no end. The analogue stick is such a pain in the ass to use that I often switch over to the regular D-pad, but then my accuracy and timing suffer, so I switch back. I think that I need to make a mod for a real, tilt-style analogue stick. So great game, psp analogue stick location sucks.



March-08-2008

I just had the pleasure of watching the documentary "The King of Kong: A Fistfull of Quarters." It's about the Donkey Kong high score, which was set in the early 80's by Billy Mitchell. A couple years ago, a guy from Wasington, named Steve Weibe, managed to beat the high score by a land slide. The movie documents how hard it was for Weibe's high score to be recognized.

I'd like to say fromt he get go, that ever since I first saw Billy Mitchell on TV many years ago, in a show about his high scores (he's had a few, and is credited with playing the only perfect game of Pac-Man ever), I've never liked him. Something about him just always rubbed me the wrong way. He's a moderate success in life, he owns his ouwn restaurant and has his own line of hot sauce. His biggest claim to fame though, is his Donkey Kong high score of 874,300. He holds himself in high regard, and always bosts secret plans to rock the game world.

My first thought, as many of you surely are thinking now, is "who the hell cares?" That's comming from me, a video game addict of a high calibur. I can appreciate a hgih score as much as anyone, and maybe more, but here's where it gets rediculous. There's a group of gamers called "Twin Galaxies" who take this obsession to the point of fanatical school girl obsession. These are the guys that have tracked every Classic Gaming high score since the 80's, and make sure that every submitted high score is legit. These guys worship Billy Mitchell like girls in poodle skirts worshipped Elvis. These guys are the biggest bunch of uber-dorks you've ever seen, and for Billy mitchell to feel superior because of these guys is laughable in any near-normal social reahlm.

So this guy, Steve Weibe, ends up having a huge obsession with Donkey Kong after he gets laid-off from his job, which his family says was his way of distracting himself while he looked for a new job. Steve has a wife, two kids, and is a science teacher. The best way i can describe him is "Joe Everyguy." He's just a guy living his life, taking care of his family, and with those, always trys to do what's right. one day, he decided to try and beat Billy Mitchell's high score for nothing more than the fun/challenge of it. Eventually, he does it, and submits a video tape of him reaching a score of over 1,000,000 points to Twin Galaxies. Twin Galaxies views the tape, and due to the fact that it's the first DK High Score in over 20 years, they decide to see the machine he did it on first hand to make sure it wasn't tampered with. As it turns out, Weibe had been in contact with the arch nemesis of Twin Peaks, who supplied him with a new game baord when his broke. Because of this, Twin peaks denies his claim, siting that the only way they'd approve any high score that he submits is if he came to their own arcade and did it on their machine.

Steve Weibe, who feels very cheated, decides to fly to New Hampshire, and do just that. He shows up at the arcade, unannounced, and beat the high score, again, but this time with about 980,000 points. The people at the arcade are going nuts, and decide he's legit, and submit the score he just made, since it was the only score of his that could be verified. Within 24 hours, Billy Mitchell sends Twin Peaks a video tape of himself getting a score of 1,047,200, which they have no problem accepting and submitting as the high score. How's that for fair play? On top of that, the tape was very suspicious, and the guy who normally evaluates the video tapes doesn't feel it's legit. Still, the owner of Twin Galaxies overrules him and submits the score. Then, just to rub it in his face, Mitchell offers Weibe $10,000 if he can beat that score in 24 hours. Weibe, ever the right-doer, decides that these guys are a bunch of idiots and leaves.

Six Months later, The Guiness book of world records decides that they want to list the top classic video game scores of all time, Donkey Kong being of highest priority. Twin Galaxies is charged with the task of getting these scores,a nd decides to hold a Classic Gaming Tournament in Mitchell's home town, to both get new high scores, and possibly get Mitchell to set some new ones. Upon hearing this news, Weibe decides that Twin Galaxies is now under the Guiness gun and will have to play far, and goes to the Tournament. For the 4-day Tournament, Billy Mitchell is a no-show, and pisses off Twin Glaxies and his best friend. Finally, toward the end, Mitchell shows up with his wife. Weibe, ever the right-doer, says hello to him, and Mitchell says "There's some people I'm to too interest in talking to," and walks away. Mitchell leaves without touching a game, and Weibe is left to continue to try and beat the score. I dont' want to ruin the end, but i'll say this. Justice is served, and not in the way you'd think.

When the movie started to demonized Mitchell, I wondered if it was being biased, but that comment that he made to Weibe just showed what a colossal douche bag he really is. I think what the movie really succeeded in doing was showing who really won, not in the game, but in life. Mitchell may be rich and have the admiration of geeks everywhere, but Weibe has a family who loves him and a character that anyone could love. This movie does great justice to a cause that I've been behind forever. Winning is great, but being a gracious winner is what counts.

March-02-2008

I just finished watching "Beowulf", which was 100% computer animated, and I can't figure out why. Well, that's not entirely true. I'd imagine that they did it to make everything look consistent, that way a big golden dragon wouldn't seem out of place when it's surrounded by cgi people and landscapes. However, this is nothing that they couldn't have done with a little extra effort with real people and landscapes. The movie itself was good, but the cgi factor kinda ruined it for me.

I've said it a million times before and i'll jsut keep on saying it, computer animation in movies is never as good as it's billed. I've had raging arguments about this topic for years, but I'm still unconvinced. The movements are just so unnatural, even with motion capture. Yet the film makers still stand there going, "WOW! Look what we did! You can't even tell the difference!" Bull, I can tell the difference, and it's being able to see that difference that ruins movies for me. To me, making a movie completely cgi is the same as a bilingual people, speaking a non-native language in puplic, just to show everyone that they can. Yes, they can, but are they doing it well? Not as far as I'm concerned.

Speaking of this very same topic, I had a little Star Wars viewing yesterday. I watched Episodes 2 and 3. Beyond how crappy i thought these movies were to begin with, it was made ven worse when I saw them on my TV and not in a theater. First off, Hayden Christiansen is a god aweful, horrid actor, who must have sucked George Lucas's dick to get the role of Darth Vader. But more on topic, the cgi was terrible. They may as well have hung a panting behind the actors, becuase that's what it looked like. When will George Lucas realize that we all know how this stuff is done, and it's not fooling anyone anymore. THey should model movies like "Sin City" and "300", which were filmed almost entirely on green screens,a nd looked great.

But the true gem of the weekend came in the form of "30 Days of Night." Wow, wow, wow. I am very critical of Vampire movies. I feel that most of the time vampires are poorly portrayed, or the movies about them are jsut stupid. I hated "Blade" because, without going into a rant, it was made for Hot Topic dwelling 14 year-olds. "Queen of the Damned" was just plain aweful, though it had a good soundtrack. Oddly though, one of the vampire movies that I did like was "Interview With a Vampire", which is actually a prequel to "Queen of the Damned". But the king of vampire movies for me is, without a doubt, "Vampire Huneter D: Bloodlust". I can't say enough good things about this movie, it's jsut freakin' awesome. However, the new movie, "30 Days of Night" may not trump "Vampire Hunter D", but it comes damn close.

In this movie, a group of vampires plan to go to Alaska durring a 30 day blackout. They find the northern-most town in America, and isolate it, giving them free reign to stay outdoors and survive off of the townspeople. Well, after the initial slaughter, small groups of people manage to hide. The movie then goes into how the people survive, and the tactics they use to do so. Survival movies are my absolute favorite, and this one does quite well. Josh Hartnet is the star, as an asshole town Sheriff. It lends itself to real life scenarios, where the leader is the leader becuase they have the balls to be the leader. People didn't follow him becuase he was the Sheriff, it was because he at least looked like he knew what he was doing.

The vampires were portrayed well too. In most movies vampires just have white faces and fangs, whereas these vampires looked like they actually had a genetic link. The natural vampires and people who became vampires actually look different side by side. Real vampires have very skewed faces, almost alien-like, and have shark like teeth, rather than just two fangs. Turned vampires have the sharp teeth and blackened eyes, but their faces stay mostly the same. What's odd about this is that the vampire leader looked like a turned human, which makes me wonder what kind of back story there is to him. Clearly a non-pure blooded vampire would have to somehow really prove himself to get the naturals to follow him. Another cool, and genuine aspect of the vampries is that they only speak their language, even when talking to the people. THis shows good thought on the writter's part, because when you think about it, vampires have little contact with the outside world. It'd make sense that they'd have trouble picking up new languages when they can't spend much time around them. Overall a great movie,a dn oen I'll be watching several more times.



March-01-2008

Mermaid pointed something out to me today, and I've decided to clarify my first paragraph of my last post. Though I said that this site is not republican, that doesn't mean that it's democrat by default. I hate the republican party because it's run by hillbillies and crooks. Being in the military, I'm about 80% surrounded by republicans, and listening to them talk about anything makes you dumber, if not angry at the level of dumbness. My primary reason for not liking the Conservative, Republican party running our country is that they're trying to turn Iraq into a Liberated, Democracy. That, to me, is admitting that you're wrong, in every aspect of your being. In a perfect world, I suppose that I would be a Democrat, except that most democrats start with good intentions and then sell-out later on. My other problem with democrats is that they preach a lot of good things, but rarely have a good plan to achieve those things.

That's why I tell people that I'm a Jedi. Believe it or not, there is a Jedi political party, in California I believe. I'm in no way a big Star Wars fan, I just think that Jedi's are balanced thinkers. They promote peace, charity, integrity, and civility. So in that aspect, they are democratic. Unlike democrats though, Jedi's are always ready to defend themselves, training in the martial arts and in battle tactics, should the need for fighting be unavoidable. Now, you may say "How can you preach peace, and also war, side by side?" The best response to that is "Freedom Isn't Free." Now sticking to one ideal and following through on it is very admirable. However, if a Jedi were captured, he wouldn't stand idley by and let himself be killed. He'd fight his way out or die trying. You see, dying for a noble cause is honorable. Fighting for a noble cause is smarter than dying for it. Dead soldiers can't fight another day. So a Jedi, I am. I totally did not say that on purpose.

In other news, I just read this and will now post it for your enjoyment:

The Wal-Mart Greeter!

A very loud, unattractive, bitchy woman walked into Wal-Mart with her two kids, yelling obscenities at them all the way through the entrance. The Wal-Mart Greeter said pleasantly "Good morning, and welcome to Wal-Mart. Nice children you have there. Are they twins?"

The ugly woman stopped yelling long enough to say, "Hell no... they ain't twins."

"The oldest one's 9 and the other one's 7. Why the hell would you think they're twins? Are you blind or just stupid?"

"I'm neither blind nor stupid, Ma'am," replied the greeter. "I just couldn't believe someone made love to you twice.

"Have a good day and thank you for shopping at Wal-Mart."



February-28-2008

My God! What happened?! Change, that's what. This ain't no republican website, we evolve. Plus reading light blue letters off of a black background has been annoying to me for about 5 years.

Today I read an interesting post on Penny-Arcade. Apparently in an interview recently, Cliff Bleszinski, lead game designer for Epic Games (Unreal Tournament series, Gears Of War, he's a popualr guy in the game world), made some comments about how the PC is moving away from serious traditional games. Here's an excerpt: "I think people would rather make a game that sells 4.5 million copies than a million and "Gears" is at 4.5 million right now on the 360. I think the PC is just in disarray. What's driving the PC right now is "Sims"-type games and "WoW" and a lot of stuff that's in a web-based interface. You just click on it and play it. That's the direction PC is evolving into. So for me, the PC is kind of the secondary part of what we're doing. It's important for us, but right now making AAA games on consoles is where we're at."

I have to say that I completely agree. Apparently though, many MANY people disagree. As a former PC only gamer, I can, or could, understand where these people are comming from. The PC is extremely open-ended. It can handle any digital info you throw at it, it always has the best hardware first, and can be upgraded at your wallet's convenience. Gaming consoles like the PlayStation and XBOX, however, can't make these same claims beyond hard drive and accessory upgrades. But Penny-Arcade's Tycho makes an interesting argument to the contrary, "Team Fortress provides an excellent example, actually. We started playing TF2 once our shit was out of the way recently, and there was a problem on Gabe's machine where the game won't run fullscreen. Yes, I checked the dropdown. Listen to my story: after updating this, and changing that, and looking up some other shit, and then rebooting, I was able to make it work. Mostly. "This is why I don't play games on here," he suggests lightly. And why should he not say this? How had we been enriched by the act? Not all toil is virtuous. Some toil is just regular old slavery."

While this statement isn't a new gripe, it certainly is relevent. The amount of time I've spent trying to get a game to work properly on my computers over the years was in no way exciting or memorable in a positive way. It was frustrating to sit there and watch Mermaid slave over my computer, fixing everything I ruined, looking for drivers on a low-res safe-mode internet (i'm just giving credit where it's due, lol). But the promise of having the game I was trying to play in top form was very tempting, enough so that I put up with the drudgery of upgrading and updating and reinstalling and tweaking settings and all the other stuff that I wasted my time with.

Now, idon't want to give the impression taht I forsook PC's in favor of consoles, that's far from the truth. I started out with consoles as a kid, and rarely spent time gaming on comptuers, as the only comptuer I had access to was for my mother's business, and thus had little to no games available (plus it was a Mac, which was nearly impossible to get games for). But when I finally got my own comptuer, my PlayStation, which I spent every free moment with to that point, became a display piece, and the PC took over my life. Then, I joined the Air Force, and spent a LONG time in tech school. The first few months were okay, I spent a lot of time reading magazines and watching the community TV. But after I got to Shepperd, the worst hell hole ever, I decided that I needed video games to dull my perception of reality. Since internet wasn't an option, and I desperatly needed a DVD player, the ultimate solution was a PlayStation 2. Since acquiring the PS2, I've made one upgrade to my computer in the last 5 years, and in that time, have bought 2 games for it, both of which never got finished.

The trade-off is that with a PC, you have the best hardware, your software woes are huge. Meanwhile, on a console, you retain the same hardware, but have virtually no software issues at all) You'll never buy a game for a console, and have it not work (unless it's imported or physically damaged). Side by side, the console wins out, because you don't have any problems, just aging hardware. Honestly, I think even that issue is going to fade away soon. When you look at what developers were able to do with a dinosaur of a system like the PS2 (which boardered on obsolete when it came out), the sky's the limit with the newest generation of consoles. I think that in 5 years, when we're going to be ready to swap to the next generation, we're going to see the current consoles doing some amazing things that we didn't think were possible.

When I think about the two sides, i can see each side's arguments, but I still must stick with consoles. As the topic interview stated, PC gaming is turning into an endless sea of one game. When was the last time a PC only game had record breaking sales, and featured a solid story with a beginning and an end? It's been a long time. Most of the big PC games that feature stories are ported from consoles (that's right, i said it). Call of Duty 4, Devil May Cry 4, BioShock, all big games on the PC, all made FOR consoles. Sony tried to blur the line a little by making the PS3 into a console/PC, but it seems that most consumers are content keeping it as a console. I'll finish with Tycho's view on this very topic: It is this generalized potential that Sony has done their best to emulate in their latest console foray. But it's certainly not the only true way to amuse yourself with electronics, and by dismissing the fixed gaming platforms you are actively sabotaging your own happiness.