Games, rants, and randomosity

Parenting done right and other things

2012-02-11T19:46:00.000-08:00

Before I talk about anything else I have to share a video I found. Now, it's becoming rather popular online right now and most of you non-existant readers have probably already seen it but in case you haven't, watch this video:

That man is what all parents should be! I am sickened by how much children think they must be given and how they demand to get everything they want and give/do nothing in return to earn it. I had chores growing up. And like this girl, if I didn't do them, I was grounded. And you know what, I am glad I had them! I was able to move out at 18 and I knew how to do my own laundry, clean an entire house, cook any meal I wanted to eat and take care of myself in any way. I have always paid my own car bills and never had a cell phone until I was 22 and bought one. Because of all this, I was not caught off-guard by the "real world" and bills and how things actually work outside of high school. My mother raised me to be self-reliant, responsible, respectful and made me into (at least I'd like to think) a good person. It is refreshing to see other parents doing the same and what's ever better is the overwhelming amount of response videos made to that video. Normally you would expect other ungrateful petty children complaining about what an evil dad he is and how he had no right to do that to "her" laptop but surprisingly, every response video I saw was A. from a child under the age of 18 and B. in full support of the father and his lesson to his daughter. That is great! It gives me hope for this next generation.

But, onto a new topic. Did you all know they are making a sequel to Roger Rabbit? Now hold! Don't get excited. I was excited too but then heard a few things about it that I think you all will agree are very disappointing. First off, Eddie Valiant will not be in the film. This makes no sense as he was the perfect counter-part to Roger's over-the-top-ness. It would take a scripting miracle to create another character that meshes as well without seeming like a rip-off. And, possibly even more disappointing is the fact that the toons in the sequel will be computer-animated. This is beyond sad! The best part of the movie was seeing the 2D hand-drawn cartoons side-by-side with real actual people. That's what made the movie great! The fact that it's now a Disney movie so it wouldn't have Hanna Barbara or Warner Brothers' characters is a downer but I can live with that. But having the cartoons not be cartoons at all, but instead computer-generated 3D models next to a rip-off Eddie Valiant? That sounds in absolutely no way appealing! I am all for a sequel to that movie. I think everyone has wanted that since the start of the credits the first time they saw it. Yet if this is all they are going to give us, I'd rather just have nothing.

And speaking of disappointments, I am no longer shopping with or in any way giving money to Barnes & Nobles. I not too long ago purchased some books on their website. I was given a giftcard as a gift and used it to purchase a few books in various series that I was missing. One of the books never arrived. I waited about a month from my order date just to make sure it wasn't slow shipping. After this I contacted the seller (it was a used book sold through B&N, not a new book sold by them) and after a week I never heard back from them so I contacted B&N customer service. I never got a response to my email but instead received a survey to rate the quality of my customer service. I told them they should maybe provide the service before sending the survey because currently my satisfaction level was nonexistant. This time I received a response from a human (or at least a more human macro) so I re-explained my predicament. They said to wait a week and if it still didn't show up to take further action with them. I waited the extra week and contacted them again. They told me to try contacting the seller. I reminded them that I tried that before even contacting Customer Support (I say reminded because that was in both descriptions of my problem.) They said that shipping was possibly slow and that it could sometimes take up to 18 business days to receive my book. I told them that with the additional wait I was already up over a month. I got no immediate response to this but two days later received another email from them again telling me to try contacting the seller. Now, all along the way I had simply asked them to refund my money for that book or even just give me store credit so I could buy a different copy from someone else. I didn't want a refund on the whole order as my other books came in fine. I was not being rude or unreasonable. However, after clearly being jerked around at this point I let them have it. I told them how horrible their service was and that if they really were going through this much effort just to rob me of my $5 then they could just keep it and that I would cut up my membership card to their discount club and make all my further book purchases from other shops. Also, when my book gets released, I will not take part in their local author book signings. I told them I look forward to seeing their company's name on the ever-growing list of people put out of business by internet rivals. Not surprisingly, I got no response to that. Now, at this point I thought perhaps I was being childish but when I mentioned this online I found that many other people (including a few friends of mine) have had incredibly similar experiences with their customer service. So now I do genuinely hope they go the same way as Gateway or Dell for their customer support. Gateway died or was bought-out (I don't know or care which) and Dell had to make a major company reform to avoid doing the same because of their horrible customer service. And companies like Sony and Microsoft do amazingly well despite making horrible shoddy products simply because they have friendly customer support and reasonable warranties/return and refund policies. And if you're confused by that last bit, think of how many times your 360 red-ringed. If you weren't dumb enough to open it to try and fix it yourself then I'm sure you sent it in to Microsoft at absolutely no cost and they replaced it for you. They did that for me 3 times. And each time included a free month of Xbox Live to make up for the lost time. And Sony was just as good about fixing PS2 consoles when the lasers started to go bad from using them as DVD players. And both companies have acknowledged and replaced faulty power cords. And because they were nice to us customers after selling us such obviously rushed and poorly made hardware, we continued buying it and supporting them. Barnes & Nobles, however, sells books, which can now be bought in used bookstores for pennies or in digital form on your PC, iPod or Digital book reader (as long as it isn't the Nook) and offers no support and it will be a wonderful bit of karma when they go under.

The only company I think should go under more would be GameStop. But, since this is the internet, you probably already have many reasons of your own for wanting them to fail and if you don't know mine then you clearly don't read my blogs because I've mentioned it many times before.

So yeah, that's everything. My little nephew is sleeping on my couch so I have to be quiet and might just crash early tonight. I have to do so with no music tonight so I can hear if he wakes up and had to leave the hall light on so he can see his way around if he wakes up before me. I have a feeling this will be a long night...

What I said I wouldn't do

2012-02-08T18:15:00.000-08:00

I know I don't complain about work much on this blog. I mean, it is what made my previous blog popular (and by that I mean I had over 50 views per post instead of 50 views total!) but in reality, I stopped doing it simply because being arrested isn't fun. And after that being arrested thing it was suggested that I remove the offending blog and any other ones that could offend other people in the future. That is why the post count on my previous blog went from 567 to 139 overnight. Yeah, apparently I'm an offensive ass!

And speaking of which, I am going to complain about work now. First off, I don't make nearly enough. Now granted, everyone in the world except Bill Gates and Ron Jeremy (because looking how he does he should be paying them. Ya know, like every other guy that looks like him has to) but I really don't. The average rate of pay locally for someone doing simply data processing is $2/hr more than I currently make. Now, factor in that I do many, many things above and beyond simple data processing (up to and including actual programming and database administration) and I should be making up to triple what I currently am. But that's not my main complaint. Not at the moment. No, my main complaint is someone I work closely with. This particular individual is so unpleasant that I would rather be raped by the bear with syphilis than spend any more time talking to this person. Every word out of their mouth is a complaint (yes, I see the irony here too so shut up!) and even when they are clearly and undeniably wrong, this person will never EVER admit guilt. Again, the pot/kettle thing is not lost on me, but if you want to hear about irony go have Alanis sing you a song, this is my blog so I'm going to make my own point! And in all fairness, even my coworkers agree that this person is more unpleasant than me and those of you that have worked with me (considering I've have 37 jobs to date, that should be pretty much everybody) know that I don't hide how much of an obnoxious person I am while at work so to be viewed as more annoying than me to other people, you really have to suck at life. And yeah, this person does! And the worst part is that this person believes they are the only one that does any real work and feels the rest of us should do more and take the pressure off them. The other day (and believe it or not this next statement is actually free of any hyperbulous statements (I made up a word!)) this person was already at work at 8:00 when I arrived and by 10:00 I had loaded 6 files into our system, answered 3 trouble tickets, helped show someone how to run the morning reports and had answered and filed 17 emails about various exceptions from the previous days' data loads. In those two hours the almighty infallible coworker had taken two smoke breaks, printing out a report showing how they were more hardworking than the rest of us, complained loudly and openly about said report and talked with a different coworker for 28 minutes (I did time it, that isn't a made up or exaggerated number) about the outcome of the Superbowl. Not only should this person shut up about working harder than the rest of us because they also get paid more (far more, in my case) than the rest of us but also because a lot of the time this person is too busy bitching about the work they supposedly do that they don't actually do any!

Well then, now that I have gotten that out of my system; I bought a Neo Geo Pocket Color recently in the original box and it comes with Sonic Pocket Adventure. Nothing else really to say there, I just like to brag!

But, I will mention one more thing that isn't just about me before I go. Due to a coworker (a much less annoying one) I found a TV show that is absolutely hysterical! It is called 2 Broke Girls. The premise is two broke girls who like in NYC and work in a crappy diner. It's full of sarcasm and dirty humor and a horse! Plus, both girls are kinda hot. I know, not everyone would agree with me on the more sarcastic non-blonde character being hot but I've never been interested in the stick-figure blondes that guys seem to dig nowadays. But that's not the point, the point is it's a funny show and all of you (you know, the non-existent people that actually read this) should go watch it just like I'm about to!

Yup, there you go. That's my blog for today. And you should be happy you got it because I attended a webinar today (and will again the next two days) so I'm pretty sick of computer screens at the current moment (because apparently the screen I stared at for the webinar is worse than the screen I stare at in my cubicle all day...) Also, I just used the word webinar multiple times and really kind of want to punch myself in the face.

*EDIT* I just realized this is my 100th post! Yay for me! To celebrate, I will give an autographed picture to one lucky fan! Just mail a printed picture of me along with a self-addressed envelope to my personal address and within 6-8 weeks your picture will arrive to you with my signature on it! And unlike most presidents, actors and sports players, I won't use an autopen or have a secretary sign it for me! It's because I love you! :)

How to get fired so you can play more Borderlands

2012-02-06T18:48:00.000-08:00

I don't want to get fired. Therefore, I am going to be vague and cryptic. However, I discovered today that if I did want to be fired, I could do so easily simply by saying the stupid and inappropriate things that pop into my head. For example: A person I work with pointed out that a female coworker in the building has a last name that is also the title of a candy and I immediately thought to myself Yes, but I bet she's much more fun to eat! Things like that are bad to say at work. Also, a different female coworker was talking with another employee talking about whether or not she should take a day off and the other employee said "Totally take it off!" to which I thought about adding I agree, totally take it off! And when she asked why I thought she should take the day off I would respond with What? I never said anything about missing work.

Now I'd like to think I'm witty and naturally comedic but I'm pretty sure I'm actually just a dirty-minded deviant. Either way, it is a little funny, admit it. Maybe sometime before I die I'll find a girlfriend that lasts longer than a few months and she will be the target of all my perversity. Until then though, you all must suffer! Bwa ha ha ha!

Anywho... I started playing Borderlands recently on my 360. It came out a while ago and I remember thinking it looked like a cool game but for some reason I never got around to picking it up. Now, I so very much regret that! This game is amazing! This is one of the first ones I've played in a while that I know for certain I will play to completion at least once. Probably more. It is an RPG-Shooter. Like a cross between Fallout 3, World of Warcraft and Crackdown. Speaking of Crackdown, it uses the same graphics as that. That 3D cell-shading look but it actually works in this game. The plot is not horrific and actually has a lot of humorous lines in it to keep you both interested and entertained. And once you get the DLC the game seems to get even funnier (and harder.) Most of the achievements seem to be singleplayer based which is good because I hate online multiplayer in games.

Let me sidetrack myself for a second: I don't hate online multiplayer, I just hate having to play it for achievements because I hate the people that play most games online. I refuse to play any shooters online anymore because of how D-Baggy people have become in the online gaming community. To me, multiplayer is having friends over, cramming onto the couch and passing around a controller or two while eating brownies.

But back to Borderlands. There's a great variety of weapons and even though each main character gets bonuses to certain weapons over others, if you decide halfway through you'd rather use sub machine guns and rocket launchers than snipers and revolvers, you can certainly just equip different weapons and keep on playing.

Occasionally you'll find vehicles to ride around in and kill people with. It's fun!

Actually, there's only one not fun thing about this game. In the DLC (which I highly recommend you get, despite what I'm about to say) they seemed to put a grind achievement in each DLC pack. The one in the Zombie land place just has you finish the brain quests where you have to headshot about 500 zombies to collect and turn in their brains. It's a pain, but it is doable. But in the robot revolution one you have to collect various rare collectibles that the robots occasionally drop after being killed. I say occasionally but they actually drop rarely and they don't appear in your inventory nor do they count toward a quest so these items will just magically invisibly exist on your person and you will have no clue if you've found enough until you see that achievement pop in the corner of the screen. It takes a nightmarishly long amount of time to do and it is not fun! The game overall, however, is very fun so I suggest you all buy it. Just skip those achievements.

Yup, another day another blog. And this one is now at its conclusion. I'm a pervert and Borderlands is awesome! Also, my snake hasn't eaten in a little over two weeks and it's starting to worry me so I'm going to go stuff a warmed mouse fetus down her throat. Wish me luck!

Dana White sucks at life

2012-01-30T17:01:00.000-08:00

Ok, for those of you that don't know, I'm a nerd. However, I enjoy non-nerdy things. Most relevant to this blog being UFC. I love watching UFC matches. I saw a guy take a roundhouse kick to the jaw and drop unconscious. That's epic! How do you not enjoy that? However, it has come to my attention that I have to stop watching anything with teh UFC brand on it. Firstly because the owner of the UFC supports SOPA. Now, how someone who hires fighters that became famous on YouTube can support a bill that would effectively shut down sites like YouTube is beyond me, but he does anyways. But see, Dana White is not your regular kind of douchebag, no sir, he is a much bigger-than-average tool. After openly supporting this bill and getting his website hacked and shut down by Anonymous, Dana went on to say "Fine, good. Hack me all you want. Hack me again tonight!" Well, they did. So, in retaliation to a second attack he went on TV and threatened to beat the crap out of all the nerds. He then said that these hackers were basically terrorists and (oh, this is the good part) then he compared his site being hacked to the September 11th attack. Now, I know that basically all muscle-bound gorillas like this jackass are self-important vain peacocks who love to show off and boast and compare penis sizes and hate gay people and watch the jersey shore and partake in other such tool activities, but thinking that your website being down for a couple hours is comparable to the loss of a national icon and several thousands of lives is really just above and beyond. Well, in summation, I will not be watching the UFC, playing any new UFC video games that come out or even watching fight videos online that are sanctioned by the UFC. I suggest you all boycott this moron as well but since no one reads this anyways, that plea might be falling on deaf ears.

Speaking of being deaf, I love music! And, a musical artist I enjoy very much (DeStorm) is part of the DigiTour which is going to be in NYC on March 23rd. I plan on going. It's him and a bunch of other musical artists who are YouTube stars. I haven't heard of most of them except one other one called The Key of Awesome. Really though, it's only $20 a ticket and I'd pay that to see DeStorm, especially if I get a road trip out of the deal. Now my first thought was to get my little brother and sister to go with me as I think the 3 of us would have a good time checking out NYC and then hitting the show, but assuming they can't or don't want to go, I'll be asking all my friends. Anyone who's up for a small road trip and a wicked show, hit me up and we'll start planning! Come on, no one has ever had a bad story out of going to a concert! Especially not one for a rapper in NYC. Well, ok, maybe a couple people have, but that's just because they weren't with me!

God exists in Kentucky and Indonesia

2012-01-26T17:43:00.000-08:00

Yup, time to pick on religious people again. And really, it's not that I want to, it's that they are pretty much forcing me to.

Now, I'm going to play word association with you. I'm going to say a word and you should then respond with the first word that pops into your head. Ready? Kentucky!

Well, was your word Incest, Redneck, Hillbilly, Bumpkin, Inbred, Farmer, Overalls, Southern, White-Trash, Racist, Stupid, Toothless, Donkey, Cow-Farm, Country or Rebel Flag? If it was, congratulations, you win! You see, aside from already inspiring those thoughts in people, Kentucky wanted to solidify them by making a 6.4 percent cut to education in the state. Isn't that great? What is the minimum passing grade in Kentucky at this point? 14% GPA?

But you see, that's not the best part. At the same time, with the same budget that just made that cut as well as a 2.2% cut to the police force, a $43 million tax break was given to the founders of a new amusement park. What is it you ask? Six Flags: Kentucky where you can ride the Twister (not the same ride as in the other Six Flags, but instead a ride where you get strapped into a mobile home which is then lifted up and launched by an actual tornado) and Superman: Ride of Aluminum? Where they perform live donkey shows every hour and give discount prices to anyone with more than two teeth? Nope, they are creating Ark Encounters. And that's not ark as in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the-, that's Ark as in 300 cubits by 50 cubits by 30 cubits. Yup, a christian amusement park. Now, apparently this is somehow different from Jim Bakker's Heritage USA. If only Sam Kinison were alive to call these morons out on their shit too...

Oh, and did I mention that on top of that tax break, the state is spending another $11 million to revitalize the highway surrounding the amusement park? Yup, they are. But then again, with an amusement park offering a life-size ark as long as two football fields, who wouldn't build up their roads? Although actually, if it were going to be "life-sized" it would have to be almost double that length. The "actual" ark would have been just over 500 ft long, 80 feet wide and over 50 feet high. Well, were it a real ship, it would have been that big anyways. Now, I was going to link to the website for this ridiculous park, but I don't want to boost their web-popularity by making their crap easily accessible. IF you want to find it, I'm sure you can, but I'm not gonna help you!

And, since we're on the God subject, Guess what country forces you to believe in him? Indonesia! If you guessed incorrectly, you are kind of dumb because it's right in the title of the blog. If you guessed America however, I'll give you partial credit because you're kind of correct. But yeah, in Indonesia you can be imprisoned for being an Atheist. In fact, recently, a man found this out after being served 5 years in jail for posting "God does not exist" on his Facebook page. I no longer feel as bitter for being arrested over a blog. I was only in jail for 3 hours. This man has to go to an Indonesian prison for 5 years, that has got to suck! In fact, over there, Atheists are held in the same regard as rapists (that has actually been proven in carious polls) and are often threatened incredibly violently by the general public as the are considered a form of terrorist and a general threat to humanity. Although this man was arrested, the people that attacked him after he made his post (and yes, people did attack him) were not arrested. In fact, some leaders over there actually encourage violence toward Atheists and it was said in statements made by the police that the safest place for this man at the moment was, in fact, in police custody.

While this country may not have all the freedoms it once did, and certainly not as many as it claims to have, I am still glad it has far more than most other countries and that I am free to proudly say I am an Atheist. Yes, proudly. I see nothing wrong with believing in nothing because nothing has been explained or proven to me in a way that makes me believe it. Yes, I have heard the argument that "faith" means you accept thing without proof, but I did that as a child with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. And it turns out, they aren't real either. Religions have great morals and good stories, but are incredibly lax on historical accuracies or anything that resembles fact. They are not lax on extremist followers however and I really like to avoid extreme anything. I don't even like people that use the word extreme too often.

But speaking of that word, my latest gas bill was just that. I know that was about as abrupt as a transition can be but hey, what can you do? This is a blog, now a Dickens novel. If you want good writing, go read my Tiministry Story. No, sorry, I'm not that conceited, for good writing, go read anything by Dean Koontz. But back to my gas bill: it was astronomical! Just shy of 200 freaking dollars! I didn't think anyone but one of my rather adventurous exes could screw me that hard! I was so happy about how well I had budgeted this month, especially with earning a lot of overtime, and that bill just threw all that right out the window. And I'm sad too because I was planning on finally buying a PVR on making my game review videos in the tradition of Yahtzee, the Angry Video Game Nerd, my friend Sindra and many other folks all over the internet. But, alas, 'tis apparently not to be. At least not just yet...

But, that's all my griping for now. Go do whatever it is you were going to do before you started reading this (although, lets face it, to all 3 people who may have actually read this, if you did read this, you were already pretty much out of things to do.) Thanks for reading and even though Blogger/Google make it damn near impossible to do so, please feel free to leave a comment on this blog. Hell, if you're really bored, go comment on my other ones too. I promise, if you do I will love you forever!

Anonymous

2012-01-24T17:19:00.000-08:00

If you don't know what's going on in the digital world nowadays, let me break it down:

Two bills (SOPA and PIPA) were proposed and they would give media companies the power to sue or shutdown any sites they thought were infringing on their copyrights, as well as any sites that linked to or provided support for those sites. Video hosting sites, social media sites, search engines and file sharing sites would all be targeted with this movement. One such site, MegaUploads, was brought down. Granted, it did host a lot of pirated media, but it also had honest customers and hosted legal videos and files that people just wanted to share. Shutting down the entire site, before these bills were even passed, is assanine. Also, the owners of the site will go to trial and argue their case, and if they win, their site and files will be reinstated. Until then, however, their site is down and they are losing revenue and sponsorship. Even if they are cleared of charges or agree to appease the media giants by removed copyrighted material, they still will have suffered a loss for their downtime and that will not be compensated back to them.

Anonymous is a group of hackers who target people they feel are harming the general public. In the past they have attacked Sony for the way they were abusing their customers and sharing/selling personal information to advertisers and other companies. They were responsible for the severe outages and large amounts of downtime Sony suffered last year which did lead to Sony apologizing to its customers, giving all of them a free month membership to their online service and several free games to apologize for their ways and for the downtime they were unable to prevent. Anonymous also brought down the website of the bank that dropped the account of the Wikileaks founder after he released information about the US government that they did not want released to the general public.

Well, most recently, in retaliation for the offense against MegaUpload and in protest against SOPA and PIPA, Anonymous brought down a whole list of sites belonging to both the government itself and the media companies that support the bills in question.

Now, I am active on various forums and websites and I try to keep up on most digital news as I am rather internet-dependant. My job relies on the internet, and I am an avid collector of video games, a good portion of which I play online. Plus, the entire nerdy online culture is part of who I am. I have always been a computer nerd. So when I heard about this 'hacktivist' group Anonymous, I was intrigued. They are almost a modern day Robin Hood. Yes, what they are doing is technically wrong, but they are doing it for good reasons. They want to protect the American public from the people and companies that are trying to wrong us. The Boston Tea Party was technically wrong. Hell, the entire Revolution from Europe and the fleeing to the Americas was wrong. And killing all the natives and seizing the land was certainly wrong. But without those wrongs, we wouldn't have the country and the supposed freedoms we have today. And without Anonymous and people protesting against this bill and what it will do to our freedoms and our ability to share knowledge and ideals, we won't have those freedoms tomorrow.

I know I sound like a broken record, so this is the last time I'll mention SOPA, PIPA, MegaUpload or this particular Anonymous attack, but if you want to know more about any of this, I urge you to get on Google and start searching and start reading. Read all about the bills and what they will do. Read about Anon and what they have done and what they stand for. Read about everything you can while you still can and be glad that your information hasn't been taken away from you yet.

And assuming Blogspot is still here, I'll post a few stories I've been working on recently in the next few days. And, I think I am finally gonna finish chapter 5 of the Tiministry sequel for the 3 fans of that story that I have.

Dead puppies!

2012-01-21T15:33:00.000-08:00

I was riding around in a car with a friend today and we passed a house that had a sign that said "Puppies for Sale. Not open on Sundays." My friend pointed this out and without any hesitation I responded: "They murder all the puppies on Sunday morning." Now I know that is morbid, but I bet you are all laughing right now at how ludicrous that premise is. And that is my sense of humor. I am actually quite proud that I was able to come up with that retort almost instantly and deliver it with a straight face. And illicit quite a laugh from a friend who was otherwise distressed about several larger life-crisis. But yeah, I just wanted to share my joke. I'm not really trying to justify or explain my sense of humor because at this point, if you don't get it, you shouldn't be reading my blog.

Anyway, this is what I wanted to talk about today: Words. People who get offended by words are stupid! Do me a favor, think of the most hateful, evil offensive word you can think of. Ok, now, you've got a word? And? Is it hurting you? Say it aloud. Don't worry, you can go into the other room or just whisper it so no one hears you. So have you said it? And, what now? Did time come to a halt? Did the world burst into flames around you? No! The reason nothing bad happened is because it's just a word! A word can not hurt a person! Somehow, even though we were all told as children the rhyme about sticks and stones, we somehow forgot that words don't actually hurt. People always get up in arms about words that are used as labels that can degrade people like Maggot with an F or the Jigger with an N or Hunt with a C. Or words like Hike with a Dy or Retard (adjective: To slow or hinder. i.e. I through gravel down the retard the pace of the barefooted racers.) used as a noun or Fidget with an M even... But these are just words! No one was ever literally hurt by hearing or being called one of those words. If you experienced pain or discomfort from those words, then you are overly sensitive and also quite unintelligent. You need to grow up and learn that a word can not cause pain because it does not exist. A word is not a tangible thing. It is simply a random series of audible syllables that we agree represents one specific thought or object. So right off the bat, anyone claims any word is hurtful is really just stupid.

Now, as for some of the specific words: I won't use the actual word because I'd prefer not get arrested for another blog but you'll know which one I mean. The first is a word that mostly women disagree to. It's on the above list. What is your issue with this word? Not only is it just a word, but it isn't even really derogitory. Hell, in Europe it's a normal part of the language! Next is the word that black people especially hate, suppossedly. First off, if you all hate that word and want us to stop saying it, you should all probably stop saying it first. That 'do as I say, not as I do' crap really never gets anyone's point across. It's like the boyscouts and the catholic church boy being against gays yet they both have documented record of having their higher official being guilty of homosexual pedophilia. But back to the jiggers... This word is usually used now not to insult an entire race of people, but just the ones who insist on proving certain stereotypes by living in a 'thug' manner. The baggy clothes, the disregard for authority, the constant breaking of laws. Drug use, casual group sex, excessive drinking, lots of graffitti and petty theft. Those are things that will cause people to look down on you. I'm not saying the entire race acts that way, that would be ignorant. I am saying that race should get mad at those individuals for perpetuating a negative stereotype and the word associated with it instead of the 'evil white devil.'

There's more examples but I have to leave to help a friend in a minute and I think you all see my point. Words are just words, if you let them offend you, you are just empowering the person using them. The word itself holds no power, it's the intent of the user that can be offensive and even then, only if you let it.

Oh, one more thing before I go: I have a new pet named Charlie. He's a dead frozen mouse that lives in my freezer. Boy I bet you'd all wish I'd elaborate on that, huh?!

SOPA and you... well, actually; SOPA and Me!

2012-01-19T19:14:00.001-08:00

It seems like the only thing anyone is talking about onlinenowadays is the SOPA and PIPA bills. Now, I understand why they are talkingabout it; these bills will completely destroy the internet. However, even Ihave grown sick of hearing about it and I hate these bills more adamantly thanI hate Jack Thompson. So I think that instead of talking about them, I’ll justtell you all a bit about myself. However, in order to still convey a messageabout SOPA and PIPA, I will censor the blog to make it acceptable to these newbills. It will probably be the only post of my blog that I wouldn’t have toremove if these passed.

So, me… Well, I’m a nerd. You all probably know that by now.But not just a nerd, I am very much a nerd. Like, I would put the guys from[SOPA] to shame with just how nerdy I can be. I love video games and own justunder a thousand individual games for 32 different systems. I have spent thelast 23 years of my life collecting them. My favorite have always been the[SOPA] series for as long as I can remember although I believe the first game Iever played, and certainly the first one I ever beat was [SOPA] for the [SOPA].I even have 5 different video game characters tattooed on my arm. [SOPA],[SOPA], [SOPA], a [SOPA] which is the little enemy from the [SOPA] games andfinally [SOPA] which is a character from the [SOPA] series. Also, [SOPA] and[SOPA] are in the [SOPA] games- well, [SOPA] wasn’t in the third one but mightbe released as DLC later on. Hopefully [SOPA] from the [SOPA] comics will bereleased at the same time!

But aside from video games, I also love reading. My favoriteauthors are [SOPA], [SOPA], [SOPA], [SOPA] and [SOPA]. I actually am trying myhand at writing as well (and not just blogs, I’m working on compiling a book ofshort stories.) Kind of a mix of the style of [SOPA] with the dark feel of anyof [SOPA]’s stories and the twists that [SOPA] is quite famous for.

I’m also a big outdoorsy kind of person. I love hanging outin the woods or at the waterfall near my mom’s house. I absolutely love animalsand actually plan to get myself another car soon and 90% of my motivation to dothat is because I really want to volunteer down at the local animal shelter onweekends. I have several pets of my own. My dogs are Eddie and Jake (whounfortunately share the names of the main characters of that horrendous [SOPA]series of books written by that hack [SOPA.) However, Jake came with his namewhen he was adopted and Eddie is actually named after [SOPA] from the band[SOPA] because he is my absolute favorite guitarist and is just overall abrilliant musician. Ed is a husky who lives with my mom and Jake stays with mylittle brother because I am not allowed to have dogs where I live and don’thave enough of a yard to keep them happy anyways. I am not withoutcompanionship though because I have my bird, Ringo (who is not named after[SOPA] from [SOPA]) and Shiro, my snake (her name means white in Japanese and Iknew before even buying her that I was going to get an albino snake and nameher that.)

What else can I say? Well, I live in Albion. I’m a countryboy all the way. I hate big cities, large crowds, busy multi-lane streets andhaving neighbors. I have the greatest mom in the world and two awesome siblings(each with an even more awesome kid.) My father is a useless pile of crap, butit’s ok because he’s currently in prison for being a drug-addled loser and if I’mlucky he’ll finally do the world a favor and kill himself so I never have todeal with him again anyways. Although, as much grief as the whole broken-homething used to cause me, I actually grew up pretty well in spite of it. We werepoor, sure. I didn’t always get the newest or most expensive things, but I wasalways happy anyways and looking back, I can help but realize how amazing mymother was to raise of three of us kids by herself. So really, I don’t complainmuch about my family.

Actually, despite how often I rant, I don’t honestly havemany complaints about anything. I am generally happy with life. I exaggerateand complain for the sake of humor (because if I learned anything fromcomedians like [SOPA], [SOPA] or the deceased [SOPA], [SOPA] and [SOPA]; it’sthat complaining can be amusing if done right) but really my life if prettygood. I sometimes do get a little depressed about being alone, especiallybecause I once had an amazing girl and pushed her away for completely non-existentreasons, but really, it’s something I’ll live through and I still hold out hopethat someday I’ll find someone just as good and be just as happy again. I likewhere I live, I make a good amount of money and my job isn’t horrible. I ridemy bike a lot (when it isn’t snowing) which I enjoy and I always have an amplesupply of loud music. Yup, life is good!

And yeah, that’s me. Despite my nerdiness and hyperbolousranting, I am an active outdoorsy optimist who loves animals, his family andlife in general. Oh, and one more thing before I go: SOPA is horseshit!

Another Day, Another Dollar, Another bunch of games...

2012-01-10T18:31:00.000-08:00

And once again I am procrastinating at writing the next Tiministry chapter. But hey, I have a good reason: The next chapter is boring! If I stick to my outline (which I'm using now because it's what actual responsible authors do) then I have a little bit of filler between the previous chapter and the next interesting one. Luckily, this should be the only boring one in the story! I've got a lot of good action and plot goings on in my story and not a lot of room for boredom (don't worry, I'm not neglecting character development, I'm just tying it in with the story so it flows better) so if I can force myself to write this chapter, the rest should be easier to write... or type, as the case is.

But at any rate, that's not what I was going to blog about. If it was, I would have just written the fool thing and been done with it. Nope, I'm here to talk about video games! Shocker, yeah, I know. But I've actually gotten a good stack of cheap games recently (I really need to stay away from Ebay if I ever want to save up money) and I figured I'd let you all hear about a few of them.

So the first (and only one I actually got from Ebay) is a game called Brink. Now, from the trailers and dev videos I saw of this game it looked like it would be similar to Mirror's Edge but the parkour elements would be more natural and the game would flow better. I will say, overall, I was very excited for this game when it was in development. But somehow, it fell off my radar and sat on my want list entirely forgotten. However, I saw a copy on Ebay going for only 6 cents with free shipping and only a day left so I upped the bidding a bit and after a failed last minute snipe attempt from someone I ended up picking it up for I believe 3 bucks. New condition with no scratches or anything. Even had the ad inserts in the case still so from a collector's standpoint I was already satisfied with my purchase. Sadly, that's where the satisfaction ends. You see, much like my purchase of Shadowrun a few years ago for 2 dollars (the crappy new version, not the original SNES game) I was more happy to own a new game for cheap that I was to play the game.

Brink is an arena shooter like Quake or Unreal but has missions you have to complete during your shootout. Now, granted, I didn't play online yet (because no one would probably be on even if I did and I usually don't play any game online unless I know at least one other player IRL) so that might add some extra tactical play to it, but so far this seems just not fun. You can either stand and shoot away at your enemies or you can complete the various missions. But I've played other arena shooters with better controls and graphics, and other story-based shooters with better story-lines and missions to them. So really, this is just a bunch of second rate copies of elements from other games crammed together uncomfortably in one game that really makes the worst of the best of other games. And the parkour aspect they were showing off in the dev videos is actually non-existent in the game.Yeah, if you are running toward an obstacle and it isn't too close to a wall or ceiling you will automatically jump over it, but it just happens entirely automatically and really doesn't even seem to be something special. Granted, the extra button pushes in Mirror's Edge sometimes broke your flow, but at least you knew you were doing something. Games like Infamous or Prototype can let you automatically pull of parkour vaults and flips because it's a third person view, not first person, so you can actually see your character pulling off the wicked moves and they took time to animate it well so it's quite a spectacle. In Brink you don't see the action or feel like you were part of it so it really just doesn't feel like it's there. Overall, I just don't feel the game is very good. A sub-par shooter at best. If I ever get the equipment and my friend who would be my co-host, I actually have a Game review vlog in the works (similar to Angry Video Game Nerd, Zero Punctuation or Keep Playing) and I'll probably do this game on there at some point because it would be much easier to show what I'm talking about.

So until then, onto the next game: Disney Universe. It's a kids' game. Think Kingdom Hearts meets the Lego games. Except, the Lego games usually have some difficult challenges and puzzles so I guess think Kingdom Hearts meets... umm... Mario's Early Years: Fun with Numbers. Yeah, it's a really simplistic game. It's fun in a way and you can grind out all the achievements in the game very easily (probably in a single day if you were dedicated enough.) But it looked like it was going to be more than what it is. Yeah, I knew it was gonna be geared toward kids, but I thought it would have a little more challenge than it does. It is a solid game though. No major glitches, nothing too majorly irritating about it, it's just easy. So pick it up used after the price drops and it'll be fun for a playthrough and great fun if you have kids who want to see all the different Disney Characters in the game.

Ok, last one. And this one isn't on 360. Actually, this one's free! Now, I heard about this game because it sparked a little bit of controversy. And actually, it's apparently the fruit of much labor and several years of sitting on-hold and being at various points in production. The game is a dating sim from Japan (because every game in Japan has to be about Mech-suits, Chibi little creatures or sex. It's a law over there.) but with a twist. The main antagonist and all the characters he can eventually romance are handicapped in one way or another. And there's the controversy. Now me, once I saw controversy and that a game was getting negative attention, I did what I always so and got myself a copy. Luckily, the programming team who made this is giving it away for free on their website. Unlike my original black-label copy of San Andreas or Rapelay (a dating sim where your goal is to rape the characters instead of seduce them) I actually for some reason decided to give this game a go. -Side note, I did download Rapelay only because I didn't know if they'd ban it and if so, I wanted to make sure I had a copy first. I have not played it and have no intention of doing so. It's not even installed, I just have the installer file. Same for San Andreas. I find the GTA series a bit boring and they seem to be striving to stir of crap with those games, I just wanted to get a copy of the original uncensored version of the game before they became impossible to find. And actually, I ended up paying $40 for the damn game because it wasn't until stores started recalling and destroying copies of the game that I decided to try and get my hands on it.- Anywho, back to this other game. It's called Katawa Shoujo. I don't know what that means... I probably could check, but if you haven't read my blogs before then I'll let you in on a secret, I'm lazy! I google stuff all day at work and I often have to research various things for the stories I write so my characters can actually sound knowledgeable about things they are supposed to know about. I like to make my stories sound real and believable. (By the way, I'm probably on a couple watch lists after googling various nerve-constricting poisons, bomb ingredients, car alarm override devices and various firearms for different stories I am writing or have written.) But since I do all that googling when I have to, I'm not doing any of it now. You should Google it instead, and since Googling those words will most likely bring you to the website of the game itself, you might as well download it while you're there.

And now that I'm done with all that, the game itself: It's actually interesting. Unlike a lot of dating sims (and yeah, I've played a few because I wanted to see what the heck the big deal was. And I still don't get it. They're like those stupid Twilight books. It's a bunch of forced and cheesy flirting and awkward filler conversation and ends with your standard hentai pictures with the naughty bits artfully covered or sometimes just shamelessly pixelated out because although the Japanese seem to think about nothing except sex, they refuse to let people see it and censor every cartoon, movie, comic and anything else that has a nipple or phallus in it) this one actually has some good character building and plot to it. You basically spend most of the time just reading your way through a story, pausing a few times at key conversations to choose from various options which will most likely set you down different paths and decide your fate and which of the various girls you will end up with. Now I love anything with a good story. Books, movies, cartoons, video games, anything... I've been known to watch entire seasons of a cartoon show just because it actually has a decent plot and I have three bookshelves full of books that show how addicted I am to a good story. And this game does seem to offer one. I'm not too far into yet (I don't think, unless things take a quick unexpected turn and my character suddenly mounts the female I've been unwillingly paired with (I would have chosen the deaf one had this been real life- but that's a different blog entirely) which doesn't seem likely) and so far it's been nice to see the character development of both the main character (the one you play as) and the various NPCs you encounter. And all the controversy about this game is the whole handicapped thing. But really, they should be loving this game. This game shows that they can be regular sexual beings like the rest of us and that they have the same turmoil when it comes to relationships and life in general. And actually, this game actually dives into some of the difficulties they face with mundane tasks and basic social interactions that can be awkward, not because of their handicap, but because of everyone's reaction to it, be it voluntary or not. Honestly, I think this game shouldn't be scorned but should be praised for the help it might be providing to the handicapped people who want to feel a bit more like equals in society. Plus, the game was built by volunteers who just really wanted to see this project through and is now being given away for free so no one is exploiting them or making money off them, someone simply wanted to tell a story.

But my game reviews seem to have turned into a bit of a speech. I really need to stop that... So I'll step down from my soapbox now and watch a few reruns of Tosh.0 before bed. Peace out all!

Getting serious again

2012-01-02T18:46:00.000-08:00

Well, I'll start with a quick thing that's more light...

Next time you drive down the road, look for a house with no frontward facing door. It sounds weird, but when you see one (and it seems to be semi common so I'm confident you will) it will look strange to you and then you'll spend forever noticing every time you drive by a house with no door on the front of it. Seriously, it's stupid and random and of completely no consequence to anything at all but if you find a house with no door on the front of it (the side facing the road) it looks incredibly odd.

But yeah, on to a real topic now.

I'm actually at a bit of an impass and just figured that I'd turn to the one place that never lets me down for advice. Surprisingly, I meant the internet. And for the record, if any of my readers (all none of you) were ever going to take the time to comment on one of my blogs: I suggest this one.

You see, I have no idea where I'm going in life. I know where I'd like to end up, but I see no reasonable way to get there. I don't care about being rich or famous. I don't need a mansion or a Ferrari and I'll certainly survive without dating a model. I just want to be comfortable and happy. And that's the bit I'm having trouble with.

I know what makes me happy. Video games make me happy. Everything about them. I love collecting them, I love playing them (although I'm often crap at it) and I love just talking about them. The problem is, there are only a few ways to make any real money with them. In fact, I can only think of 4. You can own a store that sells them, you can play-test them for the companies that make them, you can enter tournaments and play them competitively or you can program them. Well play-testing them is something I would be naturally good at. I wouldn't even have to be skilled at the game, I'd just have to play and explore every small little recess of the game to make sure it is bug free (or as bug free as games get nowadays.) However, this is one of the most competitive fields to get into because almost every guy would love to get paid to play video games. I can't do video game tournaments, because while I love playing, like I mentioned before, I'm not always good at games. Especially not the ones that are played in tournaments. I generally dislike first-person shooters, for example, and Call of Duty and Halo are some of the biggest money makers as far as tourney payouts. Plus, I don't play competitively, I play games because I enjoy them and find them fun. So that leaves me with running a game store or programming.

Well programming is an issue too. I have absolutely no interest in it. None. That's the entire reason I stopped going to classes and dropped out of college. I don't care to do it. It's not that I can't; I am fully capable of becoming a programmer. I have a good memory for numbers, I'm a very quick learner on a computer, I retain things I'm taught usually after being shown only once. I just hate doing it. I hate cubicles and office buildings. I hate dressing up for work. I hate people that wear ties. I don't mind working and I don't mind spending a lot of time at a job to make money, but I really don't like doing something I hate just to get that money. Right now I work in IS (well, actually, I would be a real IS employee if they had the time/resources to properly train me on the particular programming languages they use where I work. Currently I actually work as a data processor and occassionally get asked to do basic computer maintenance or troubleshooting when someone has an issue with their monitor or a formula they wrote incorrectly in Excel) and while I enjoy the people I work with, I have no interest in the job itself. I couldn't possibly care less about the company overall. It is exactly the kind of job I was going to college to work at and it is exactly the kind of job I dropped out of college to avoid. It pays ok, not great, not even as much as I should be making in the field, but I'm not complaining because I still pay all my bills, put money in savings and still have some left over to waste on video games, junk food and whatever else suits my fancy.

So to my currently employers or HR workers; I certainly don't want to lose my job, but please know that it isn't the career field I see myself in in twenty years.

So really, I guess that means that if I'm going to be happy and have enough money to afford the modest life I'm hoping for, I need to have a game store. Honestly, I don't even neccessarily need to own one, just run one. Granted, I'd prefer have my own store because I'd like to be able to name the store, arrange it as I see fit and abolish anything that even resembles a dress code, but I don't care to do the financials or the bookkeeping. But even if I had the capital to launch a small business, there is no place near me I could realistically open a store and expect to make money. The two local college towns both have established used game stores as well as the corporate and crappy Game Stop which wouldn't compete with a proper used game store, but does hold a lot of the family and uneducated parent market. So I would need to relocate to open my store and be able to have it survive. And honestly, I talk about leaving New York all the time.

But there lies my next problem. I can't move away. I mean, practically, I can. I have no significant other and no irreplacable career to hold me here. (Again, I do like my job, but $11 an hour is not really something people are fighting for. There are people making more than that on unemployment right now.) But with my niece and nephew being so young and my brother, sister and mother all being here, I don't want to leave. Yes, I do sometimes get bored with seeing the same places and the same people and I certainlly am sick of snow, but if I think of all the things that have happened in my family just in the last year, I would have been heart-broken to have been too far away to be a part of it. My mother's wedding and my little brother having his beautiful little girl. Plus Tosh-man is my little buddy and I absolutely love watching him whenever I can. I even got him into video games one of the last times he was over. I've had very few people in my life that I have cared for and loved that have loved me back, and even a few of those I have driven away (sorry Amy.) So for my family, I just can't leave.

So this is my dilemma, I guess. I can't be happy at work if I stay here and I can't be happy at home if I have to call some place else my home. I may eventually be able to afford to get my own house here and settle down and possibly even find a girl to finally be able to start a family of my own and have my own wonderful kid(s) to play with (it will happen sooner if I ever get a raise!) but I won't ever be truly happy at work unless Jay gives up his store and I can steal the demographic from him in Brockport. And if I move and finally get my own store (which has been a dream of mine for quite a while) I will be truly happy and actually excited to go to work every day knowing I am doing something I love and can actually give my customers a good honest experience, but I will miss seeing my family and that almost doesn't seem worth it.

I guess I'm just looking for feedback. To all of you not reading this (because writing is another thing I enjoy doing that I know will never bring me money or fame, especially because I can't even get ten subscribers to a blog I have posted fairly regularly in for over a year) please leave a comment. I'd love to hear anything anyone has to say. Hell, if you have no advice at all and think I'm being a complete woman and should just sack up, go ahead and say that. I'm just looking for some outside perspective.

Also, I know it's a little late, but Happy New Years! I hope it's started out well for everyone and I hope it gets perpetually better!

A whole lot of nothing at all

2011-12-29T20:27:00.000-08:00

I have a bit of advice for you all... Don't fart in a library! The chairs are plastic and no one is talking so it will echo and become the audible equivelant of a sonic boom. I was just thinking of something that happened in high school and was reminded of that.

And that is an apt start to this blog because the whole rest of it is random and has no connection to the preceeding or following subject. Just a bit of verbal diarhea. And you may not think it's verbal, because I'm typing it, but I usually narrate these aloud to myself as I type them. If I don't I tend to think faster than I type and miss typing entire words or sentences.

Has anyone noticed how insanely different people can become a mere ten years after high school? People that were complete asses can become awesome, people that you got along with the best become horrible strangers you avoid at all costs and everyone you knew got entirely fat! Well, maybe not everyone, but it seems the majority of my graduation class ate the following year's graduating class... Seriously, it's scary. It's like The Blob from X-Men is having a family reunion.

And in what is probably the only sensible transition in this blog, that brings me to my next point: Dennis Miller is awesome! That may not seem to be connected but you see, he is the king of pop-culture references. In his stand-up he is constantly referencing all sorts of movie stars, politicians, musical artists, famous atheletes, historical events, greek mythology, whatever... I love that humor style because I am notorious for referencing things often; usually obscure things that confound most people. For example, today at work I know for a fact (because I wrote them down after doing them, knowing I would later write this blog. I didn't reference them just to add to this list though, my brain just naturally tied these things into conversations.) that I referenced Andrew Dice Clay, Sam Kinison, Yakov Smirnoff, Disney's Fantasia, Monty Python and the Holy Grail and the movie A Christmas Story on three seperate occassions. And this is not at all unusual for me. The only strange part about that list is that it isn't much longer and that those are all fairly well-known things. I've also memorably referenced Thundercats, Gumby, The IT Crowd, Rocko's Modern Life, the band Moxy Fruvous, Jeffrey Deaver's Lincoln Rhyme series of books and the show Heroes. I say those are all memorable because I remember that no one understood the reference at the time... I either need to spend more time with people that are as well-versed as I or I really need to stop paying attention to trivial things and tying them into conversations... Yeah, no real point to this whole over-sized paragraph...

I hate when movies based on books are different than the book itself. Like in the movie Lord of the Rings, they left out entire chapters with the part about the tree almost eating the hobbits and then the man who talks with animals rescuing them and eventually giving them a horse. They cut all that bit right out of the movie. It seemed odd to me. In Harry Potter they got rid of the ghosts and changed a lot of how important Ron's family is to the story. Also a major and strange change. But the biggest and most vast difference between a movie and book that I've ever seen/read is the Bourne Identity. There is absolutely NO similarities between the two! *SPOILER ALERT* Not even the character's name is the same because at the end of the book you find out Jason Bourne is actually a dead man killed by the main character (who up until the end assumed his name) who is actually named David Webb. Treadstone is a small 5-man operation, not a conglomerate that hires and trains assassins regularly. Marie is a Canadian consolate, not a Mini-driving englishwoman. Absolutely nothing is the same. They really are two entirely different stories. I mean, the movie is a good story, but for all it's similarities to the book you could have just called it Horton Hears a Who because it has equally as much in common with that book.

And hey, the game Skyrim reminds me that I hate scaling enemies in games! (Yeah, it's time for the nerdy part of the blog now.) In RPG's, the enemies should simply be harder to kill in the higher level areas so that people can try and walk straight to the endgame area, but they will be killed very quickly. They did this in Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy, World of Warcraft and countless other RPG's yet some of them still insist on having every enemy you meet's stats scale in level with your character so that every enemy encounter is a challenge. It's a bloody pain in the ass! I like a challenge to my games, but after progressing so far into a game and developing a good set of gear and skills, I like being able to find a low level enemy and decimate him while simultaneously focusing on a bit of animation in the background. I hate that I have to constantly be alert and be fulling stocked on potions because at any given moment, any enemy could come up and kill me because they are all at my level no matter what I do. Luckily, I was able to remedy this slightly. I got a bootlegged PC version from someone (Hey, I already gave Bethesda my money when I bought the 360 version and if I could hack that without getting banned from Live and having my achievements blocked, I would) and in that version you can access the developer's console and enter commands to enable god mode, instantly raise all your skills to the max, unlock all higher-level perks and spawn any weapon or armor that you like. So now I can be at level 1 and yet have more equipment to work with than Ron Jeremy (Oh, an obscure reference and a double entendre... Damn I'm good!)

Speaking of things I hate about video games... Marvel vs Capcom 3 is making me remember why I hate fast technical fighting games... They get freaking impossible after a while! Every enemy you face starts pulling off 13-hit combos and then calling in the alternate character for an assist and you end up with two of your three character team dead before the counter gets down to 90... It's infuriating! Now, I'm not going to have a bout of nerd-rage and throw my tv through the window and stick my remote up my own arse or anything (yeah, how many of you got that reference? I don't know who I'm talking to because no one reads these, but even if you did, you probably wouldn't get that one... It's a viral video from a few years ago of a kid flipping out after his mom cancelled his WoW account) but I find that even on the easiest setting, I just plain suck at fighting games. Fast-paced ones like this anyways. I mean, all fighting games are usually fast-paced, but playing something like Mortal Kombat or Killer Instinct and then trying to move up to Guilty Gear or Marvel vs Capcom is like driving a Ford Taurus and then getting behind the wheel of a Lamborgini Mercialago. Except it's nothing like that because unlike driving a Ford Taurus, playing Killer Instinct is actually fun. And I'm sure I misspelled the name of that second car but like most typos in my blog, I'm too lazy to look it up and too much of an ass to really care.

So I don't really know how to close a blog like this so I'll leave you with these song lyrics:

"And though he tries with all his heart, my horse couldn't catch a shopping cart;
some days I hate to go to work!"

So... yeah...

This is the new Shit

2011-12-26T20:12:00.000-08:00

^One of my favorite Manson songs.

But yeah, just wanted to write a quick little thingy to let you all know about the new games I've been playing because for once I am actually playing things that are actually fairly new!

As I mentioned in the last blog, I got my hands on Rocksmith finally. One thing I'm going to say is that all that playing of Rock Band and Guitar Hero actually did help somewhat prepare me for playing an actual guitar. Mostly with pull-offs and hammer-ons. Don't get me wrong, on a scale of 1 to 10 my guitar playing skills are still at "absolute suck!" (which is somewhere around -3 on the aforementioned scale) but my brother, who is also playing the game (or at least has in the past few days) is probably at a -3.5 so I was slightly better prepared. So yay for that! But as for the game itself. It is less of a game and more of just an instructional program. That does not mean it isn't fun or entertaining however. It is both of those things. A lot of the music on there is quite good (Boston, Nirvana, Queens of the Stone Age, Deep Purple, The Animals and Three Days Grace are a few of the bands on there) and it is engaging enough to keep you wanting to play more. Which is good because I never had the motivation to learn my guitar before although I did have the desire. Now I'm all set! Plus, this game is way cheaper than guitar lessons so for poor/cheap people, it's the way to go!

Another game I just acquired and have already spent several hours playing is Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3. This series has always been a weird one for me because it has the same effect as Guilty Gear on me. I actually find it very fun, which usually is not the case for me with Japanese-style button-mash fighting games. Usually fast-paced fighters like this are played by either learning all the technical and complicated moves and combos or by (and this is the method I've been successfully using so far) pressing lots of buttons and hoping for the best. I still haven't figured out how to change characters without you current one dying yet (you have a party of three fighters instead of using one at a time) and I am still clueless as far as what you press to block or counter enemy attacks (something I really need to find out) but have done rather well in the game so far anyways.

It has a lineup of 50 characters (2 of which were additional characters that had to be downloaded from Xbox Live) which consists of 25 from each franchise. Sadly, Megaman and Gambit are not yet present in this game. I actually find that strange since both of those characters were in MvC 1 and 2. But, I'm sure (or at least I'm hoping) that those characters will be available as DLC later on. Also not present are War-Machine, Daredevil, Elektra, The Human Torch, The Thing, Silver Surfer, Blackheart, Anyone from Spider-Man except for the web-slinger himself (I'm really hoping for Carnage to finally make an appearance), Cyclops, Iceman, Nightcrawler, Rogue, The Punisher, Any of the characters from the Breath of Fire series, B.B. Hood, Proto Man (or any of the badies from the Mega Man series) or any characters from Monster Hunter or Rival Schools.

Now, I know that is a long list of absent characters but that just means we have a lot to hope for as far as DLC and like I said before, the game does has 50 playable characters so it doesn't disappoint. My current team is Felicia, Firebrand and Dante from Darkstalkers, Ghosts'n Goblins and Devil May Cry, respectively. They did also throw in a lot of characters that haven't been in any games in the series yet so it's fun to play with all the new fighters. They've also added some new modes and online play. And the game is only $40 new so really, it's a steal and I suggest you all go buy it!

Lastly, and then I'm off to bed; Skyrim. I haven't gotten too far into the game yet but already I can tell that I am going to get sucked into this one. It is a massive open-world RPG like the last Elder Scrolls game. But that's about where the similarities end. They have changed the skills so that they level based on how often you use them instead of having a class or specialization system. Which is grand because now someone can become a jack-of-all-trades or simply play halfway through the game and then completely change the main skillset of their character just by putting on new equipment without having to restart the game. The graphics are better, the NPC's are less annoying and don't all seem to be voiced by the same person. Also, unlike a lock of RPG's nowadays, this one doesn't have a good/evil system that I've noticed so you can play the way that benefits your character the most instead of worrying about not offending any NPC's. Also, now, if I find myself in a room with no NPC watching me, I can simply steal everything in the room and walk away with absolutely no retribution. And my character is quite the klepto, let me tell you...

But yeah, there you go. 3 awesome new games that are out now, fairly new, and quite amazing. And hey, you can get all 3 for under $200. Yeah, so that isn't really a selling point...

I'm Dreaming of a Green Christmas!

2011-12-25T20:11:00.000-08:00

Ha! No snow!

Sorry, so many people have been hoping for snow for some ungodly reason because they think they can't have Christmas without it. Well, lucky for me, this year we did! And it was a very good Christmas too!

On Christmas Eve we went to see the family out in Rochester where we had a good dinner, my Uncle gave me a huge new tank for Shiro so now she isn't cramped in the tiny little 10-Gallon she started off in, my Aunt forgot the music sheets so we didn't have to sing that horrible 12 days of misery song and then my Uncle got my nephew Tosh to be scared of Santa Claus. All-in-all, it was a very good time!

Then today (A.K.A. Christmas) I woke up at Mom's house (as always) and we all opened presents. I got two of the games I was hoping for (Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and Rocksmith) as well as some new shirts, gift certificates to The Crooked Door and Wal-Mart and I got some beef jerky. I didn't get my traditional Andes candies, so I think I may have to just buy them on my own tomorrow. So shortly after presents I came back to my apartment and proceeded to play Rocksmith.

Hey look, there's a game review in my Christmas blog! This game is nucking futs! First off, the fact that the video game understands and responds to what you're doing on an actual guitar is pretty damn cool, but it really is a guitar trainer more than it is a game. It has a variety of songs that you can learn to play, some technique training to help develop your skills and encouraging you to experiment and make up your own riffs and solos and also some mini games that help build your ability to quickly strum, change frets and pull of various note or chord strums. Overall it is a great tool to get a completely inexperienced person into playing the guitar. It is also quite challenging! But even my little brother, who I played the game with earlier, says this is one game he would not get bored with playing and that is saying something because he really isn't huge on video games.

But yeah, back to Christmas... I went to my brother's house and saw my pretty little niece. Me and him played Rocksmith, watched Our Idiot Brother and ate the dinner he made (which was quite good kid, thanks!) And now I'm home, about to go to sleep. Tomorrow I'm playing Rocksmith some more, hitting up Wally-World for groceries, Skyrim (and possibly Sonic Generations) and some points for my xbox and then my brother is coming over again so he can take advantage of my having an Xbox some more and play Rocksmith.

Yeah, so good times! It was a great Christmas. Hopefully all of you reading this had an equally good one or even a better one! And if not, click on the following 3 links, each is a Christmas song by a different YouTube artist I like and try to promote when I can because I think unsigned talent should be recognized! And hey, even if your Christmas was awesome, you should still click the links. And here theyare: (Just realized, I don't need to link them, I can embed them right in my blog... yay!)

DeStorm - Carol of the Bells:

Charlie Parra Del Riego - Santa Claus is Coming to Town:

Eric Calderone - Christmas Metal Medley:

So yeah, there you go! Merry Christmas! I love you all and hopefully your year ends great and the next one starts off even greater!

Christmas again

2011-12-19T18:28:00.000-08:00

First off: It looks like Western New York, or at least my area of it, will be getting a green Christmas. To this I say; Hells yeah! I hate snow and can gladly go the rest of the winter/my life without it!

Today, someone said something annoying to me. (Great segway, no?!) They said after I said something they clearly disagreed with 'Oh, you're one of them' insinuating that I am of a certain type of people. No, I am not! I despise that phrase! I am not one of anything. I am me. Go ahead, try to group me in with somebody. I'm a big socialite and thrive on being the center of attention so that kind of throws your geeky/nerdy/recluse image away. I love the outdoors and animals so I'm not the pale/borderline-albino/goth you may think I am. I am a huge fan of Eminem, Blue October, Toby Keith, The Faint and Vanessa Carlton so I'm not your average metal-head/rocker. I love my family and would do anything for them and frequently do nice things for people, asking nothing in return so I'm not even the self-absorbed ass I appear to be. I am not any stereotype. I'm just me. I have my own individual set of morals and opinions and sometimes even contradict myself just because it's how I personally am wired.

Now that I got that out of the way, staying true to my gamer-ness (I'm not entirely one of those either. I hate Mountain Dew, the Halo and Call of Duty series of games, GameStop and I usually spend most of my summers outside. I would in the winter too if it weren't for that damned snow six months out of the year in New York.) I had a mini-shopping spree on ebay recently and for under 50 bucks I got over 20 different games. I got every Pokemon game released for GBA, Complete copies of Shadowgate and Roadblasters for the NES as well as cartridge-only copies of The Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy and Spiritual Warfare (You probable haven't heard of those two because they are unlicensed releases and are not actual affiliated with Nintendo in any way. They were made in much smaller numbers and are much harder to find.) I also got a few Playstation games, and a game each for Dreamcast, Game Boy, Game Boy Color and the TurboGrafx 16. I actually only bring that up to say I am sad at the small slip downward the value of complete games has taken this month. I almost got a CIB copy of Perfect Dark, Gex and Xtreme-G for the Nintendo 64 (each went for under 6 dollars, including shipping) and saw the entire Castlevania trilogy for NES sell CIB for under $45. Now, don't worry, my 23 years of collecting classic and rare video games is not for naught. This is just because it is the Christmas season, everyone wants money for gifts and no one has money to spend. Everyone is selling everything cheap right now. There is usually about 2 arcade machines posted each week on Craigslist in my area. Within the last 2 days I've seen 7 of them, most for under 300. By the way, the Roadblasters machine currently listed at $325 or the Street Fighters machine going for $200 would be great additions to my living room if anyone out there wanted to do some last minute shopping! wink wink, nudge nudge, say-no-more say-no-more, know-what-I-mean...

Speaking of shopping (and this brings me to the title) what is wrong with people? I'm gonna rant about Christmas again. And before you get worried, I'm not defending Christians again, I can only do that at most once a year or my head will explode. In fact, the crap they pull on holidays is ridiculous. Ask the figure-head of any church congregation and he will tell you that their highest turnout is at Christmas and/or Easter. So, the hypocrites only show up on holidays when they are socially obligated and usually have that and the next day off anyways. A true faithful devotee would show up unfailingly at least once a week and would not wait for the passing of a holiday to guilt them into going. I'm an Atheist but at least I'm a loyal atheist and never slack in my disbelieving of all things spiritual or super-natural.

But I'm off-topic again. Why do people want to spend so much money and why do all gifts have to be equal? I'll elaborate: Put yourself in this situation. You just bought a $60 Christmas present for your sister but had only spent $20 on your brother. Well, you got them both something they had told you they wanted and you know they will both be happy with the results. But do you stop shopping and that point and call it a good day? I'm willing to bet you don't! You go and spend another $40 on your brother to make it even don't you? Except now you see that your brother is getting multiple gifts and your sister is only getting one so you buy her two more small thing and him one more small thing to make them even in quantity and price, huh? Don't feel bad, most people do that. For some dumb reason we seem to think everyone needs to get the same amount of stuff and the same dollar amount has to be spent on it. Nevermind the fact that initially you had good intentions in buying them both what they wanted and had successfully done so. I think that's all dumb. Mothers that break themselves to make sure each child gets $80 worth of presents are ridiculous! Except, nowadays it's more like $300, or, infuriatingly, $600. $80 was the closest to the figure when I was growing up and yes, my mother was guilty of this, as am I most years. This year I finally realized it was dumb. I spent around 40 on my brother, maybe 35 on my sister and only 20 on my mother. It isn't because I love my sister or mother any less. Anyone who knows me knows I love my family more than anything. I simply got them what they wanted and then stopped shopping for them. It is your intentions that people appreciate, not the amount you spend. Sure, I'd love the new Xbox 360 slim with the 250gb Hard drive or a new gaming rig and high speed router so I can play WoW on high detail settings and still not get graphical lag, but really, if I get a good picture of Dust, Erica and Aubrey to put on my wall, a card that Tosh drew/wrote for me and some time to chill with my family ,that's better than any crap someone could get me at the store. And I genuinely mean that! For my birthday this year from my immediate family I got very few gifts but they all came over for dinner and cooked some good food for me and we all hung out and it was one of the better birthdays I've had in a while. I wish more people realized that holidays are supposed to be like that and not the high-stress, media-fueled buying frenzies they've all become. But hey, if shopping and getting expensive things is all that matters to you, well, then you go enjoy that. I'm looking forward to seeing my family for Christmas. Well, and the no snow thing, I'm looking forward to that too!

But hey, however you enjoy it, it is Christmas (or will be in 6 days) so may you all have a good one! And if I don't see you, a happy new years too! (That's a holiday I hate but I'll save that for a different blog.)

Just some random whateverness

2011-12-16T15:08:00.000-08:00

Yup, no real point, I just like to read myself talk...

First off, Jimmy Fallon (who is usually not funny or interesting in any way) actually did something pretty awesome. He did an impersonation of Jim Morrison of The Doors. Not only did he do that, but he did it very well. And, to make it better, the song he sang while impersonating him was the theme song to Reading Rainbow. It is quite epic really. Now, it's really hard to find on the internet because apparently the world is supposed to think it never happened but I have a copy of the video on my computer, so that means it can be found and downloaded if you try hard enough. And trust me, it is worth trying hard enough. I'll even help out; the episode it was in aired on 11/11/11.

Ok, next subject. Community. It's a show about a bunch of people in a community college. It is hysterical! I have never literally laughed out loud and any show that I can remember, ever! I am not usually a laughing out loud kind of person but I find myself doing it often with this show and I recommend you all watch it. It appeals to almost every type of humor so regardless of who you are, if you like things that are in any way funny, you should find yourself loving this show.

And speaking of laughing out loud, and funny things, Louis CK has a new special called Live at the Beacon Theater. It's not on DVD because he does not like how over-priced DVD's are and instead you can go to his site and download a digital copy for $5. Yes, because it's so easy to get already in a digital format, it's astoundingly easy to find a bootleg copy. It isn't even bootlegged really, it's a legally downloaded copy that was purchased by one person and you are simply making a copy of their file onto your computer. You could probably argue it isn't illegal. But really, in all the effort that would take, just give him the $5 to download it. He's an amazing comic, he's both brilliant and funny and he certainly deserves the $5.

Well, since this blog had no point, it'll also be semi-short. One last thing and then you can get back to shopping on ebay or looking up stupid videos on ebaumsworld or downloading porn from almost every single other site... Someone on Craigslist is selling a Roadblasters arcade machine. Roadblasters is a really cool game I used to play all the time on my NES as a kid. I'm talking back when I lived in Rochester (so around 20 years ago.) I've never seen an arcade version of this game until now and am kind of excited about it. The only downside: I do not have the $350 he wants for the machine. If it's in 100% working condition then it would be worth that much, at least, but I just don't have it and can't even juggle things around to get it because of the money I spent Christmas shopping. If it were maybe a month or so later, sure, I could swing it, but now, it just won't happen. That makes me sad. I really do want it.

But yeah, that's it really. A show and comic to watch, a video that will be hard to find but worth it when you do, and an arcade machine I sadly won't own. :(

It's all about the Game Reviews, Baby!

2011-12-11T18:56:00.000-08:00

Say that in the rythym of All about the Benjamins. That's how I heard it in my head. :D

Anywho, I have tossing around an idea lately of something I want to try. I think I'm going to try and start my own series of online videos. Game-review style stuff, but of course with small skits and my own sarcastic, obnoxious and most of the time innappropriate humor thrown in. I'm also most likely gonna get the old duo back together and try to get Silent Tim in on the videos as well because our dynamic always seemed to work and even if he didn't talk on screen, I think that would make it better. Look at Jay and Silent Bob or Phineas and Ferb or Penn and Teller. Over-talkative loudmouth and silent partner works. And hell, we are even acting when we do it. I'm naturally an obnoxious attention-whore and he's an introvert to the extreme so we can do it better than those other guys!

But seriously, it could be a thing. I mean, the Angry Video Game Nerd, Yahtzee and the rest of the people on The Escapist, Keep Playing, Kotaku and G4 TV (when it came out); videos based on games and the gaming culture appeal to people. And my sense of humor is generally appreciated (in small doses by people not dating me) so who knows, we could be huge. I mean, not as big as any of the previously mentioned people (except maybe Keep Playing over on PowetTV. Seriously, I only know what it is because I'm friends with one of the hosts) but really I'd just be doing it for fun. Any fanbase I develop would just be a cool bonus.

I've got literally about 1,000 games and no real social life to speak of so it would be a good way to fill time and actually I used to sit around with a few friends and we made a habit of playing random games and either talking about how awesome they were or tearing on them completely and it was always fun, so it'll be an easy thing to fall into. I'm gonna completely ad-lib it too. None of it will be scripted or rehearsed (except for any stupid intro skits or whatnot. I'll have to throw in stuff like that on occassion) but the actual playing of the game and the commentary will all be on the fly. The only downside is I'll have to get a few things to make it all happen.

First, I'll need a PVR. For those that don't know, it's like a DVR for your TV except it records any input you hook up to it and is HD capable so anything from the ColecoVision up to my PS3 can be recorded on this device which makes getting gameplay videos easy. Then I'll also need a good PC-ready video camera with either a good directional mic or just a seperate boom-mic. And last, software to put together the commentary audio with the gameplay video that will also let me do editing of all the audio/video I record. So yeah, I'll have to dump a couple hundred into this project but to me it'll be worth it. Games are something I love and enjoy and I'll get to share that with everyone else via YouTube.

So yeah, that'll happen... Don't know when yet. I still gotta get the previously mentioned stuff and Tim still needs to get a car and a different house with one less psychotic girlfriend living in it, so we'll see what happens.

Oh, one more important thing and this is even more huge. Today I sang Good Riddance on Rock Band. I do that often. It's a great song and I can easily hit the range and tone of most Green Day songs, but today I played on expert. I can now proudly say (and I even took a picture) that I am number freaking 1 on the leaderboard for that song! Number 1! That means that of every person that has sang that song on that game, I am the best! That's fucking amazing! I try not to swear too much on here but I have to hear because it really is Fucking amazing! Being the absolute best on a game is a huge deal for me. Yeah, fine, I'm a nerd or whatever but hey, right now, I'm a proud and happy nerd so how d'you like dem apples?

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

2011-12-11T06:22:00.000-08:00

Ok, since it is the holiday season I'm going to do something nice and completely unexpected; I'm going to defend Christians.

Now, I know that sounds crazy coming from me, so brace yourself for this: I'll defend anyone if they are in the right, and believe it or not, Christians are. No, I didn't convert, I still think they're wrong about the all-seeing deity and the afterlife stuff, but there is one thing that they are currently getting a lot of crap about that they are not at all wrong about.

That, of course is Christmas. A lot of Atheists and other non-Christians are crusading to "Take Christ out of Christmas" and they are just being stupid and making the rest of us look bad. They claim that freedom from religion means they should be able to have Christmas without all the religious relation in it. That is ignorant and stupid. Christians invented Christmas! It is their holiday to celebrate the birth of their savior. Yes, like most winter holidays celebrated by various religions, it does closely coincide with the winter solstice which historically predates most organized religions, but if that's the point you want to make, fine, go celebrate the solstice. Pray to the many gos of the realm, as well as the spirits of the animate organisms around you. Do not decorate, do not give or receive gifts and do not take the day off of work.

Because that's the real problem here. The Wiccans, Buddhists, Atheists and the rest of the lot that are complaining here all still want to have their tree and their decorations and their gift exchanges and the day off of work, but none of them want to acknowledge God. You can't have it both ways! If you don't want The crosses and the carols with religious overtones and the deformed visage of the patron saint of the working girl, then you can't have the rest of it either! But much like you want to be free from the Christians and not have to have them telling you about their lord or how you will go to hell for not believing, likewise do they not want you trying to desecrate their religion by removing Christ from it. You are being just as stubborn, close-minded and foolish as you accuse them of being when you say stuff like that.

I celebrate am an Atheist and I do celebrate Christmas. I buy gifts for all my family, I eat lots of cookies and fudge, I get those horrendous carols stuck in my head and I certainly take the day off of work. I do that because I was raised in a household where people believed in that faith and that holiday and I respect them enough not to deny them their holiday. And likewise, they respect me enough to never condemn me or exclude me for not believing. Granted, I don't know why the birth of Jesus has become a horribly commercial holiday geared to make people shop like they otherwise never would and is represented by the patron saint of prostitutes (Saint Nicholaus, look it up!) but I don't think that is Christianity's fault, I think that blame falls to Capitalism which is an entirely different blog.

Really, I just wanted to take this time to tell the non-Christians to stop being hypocrits and to tell the Christians they are as free to practice what they want and not be persecuted as I expect to be. Hopefully everyone can learn to just respect everyone else and leave religion out of human interactions. It is a personal choice that should influence only your life and should not create a barrier between you and everyone else. Most religions do say something along the lines of "love thy neighbor" or "Do no harm" (Christianity and Wicca, respectively) so maybe all of the 'faithful' should start trying to actually follow the religions they claim and be more loving of other people.

That's all from me. I love you all regardless of religion, but instead for the person you are. Peace out and Merry Christmas!

Blog: Now with Video!

2011-12-08T03:56:00.000-08:00

Don't worry they aren't videos of me. I have nothing interesting to show you. Well, actually, I do have a video of the first time my little girl ate a mouse (she's a snake.) I also have a video of the time I was twirling a flaming staff. *Sidenote: Twirl has got to be the gayest verb in the English language. Take someone as masculine as the Boondock Saints. Remember the scene where they are suspended from the ceiling by the rope they got tangled in, each brother dual wielding semi-automatic pistols and they twirl around shooting everyone in the room while themselves remaining untouched? See? The minute I used the word twirling it just threw off the whole thing.

Anywho... back to the OT (original Topic for those of you not familiar with online forums) or some semblance of it; I think that there is no god. Most people that know me are not surprised by this. I am openly an atheist. I think that we each are given one life so we should all make the most of it. And since I do not believe in an afterlife, the only way I think a life can truly matter after it has ended is for that person to create something lasting that will affect people even after that person is gone. And I think most people would like to create something lasting in their lives. To know that you have a legacy. That's why I write. Granted, these blogs will never make me famous, not unless I become a serial killer and someone compiles them all to show how my mind worked and to try and decipher patterns in my erratic rambling blogs that should have given clues to my murderous psychosis. But I plan to eventually publish a book of my own writing. Someone with my name on it. That way, people can read stories and be entertained and find enjoyment from something I created completely in my own mind. Without me, those stories would not exist and the joy people found reading them would never have existed. I love 3 things in the world (friends, pets and family excluded) and they are Music, Video Games and Stories (A.K.A. Books.) However, I have no musical talent and while I would love to create a video game, I usually lose patience shortly after each untertaking of doing so. Writing stories though, that is something I enjoy doing and am rather good at (or at least people keep telling me I am.) And who knows, maybe one day someone will decide to take my stories and make them into a movie, or even better, a video game. Granted, getting a movie out of it would probably bring me more money and fame. Everyone knows that stupid Stephanie Meyers' name and her stories aren't even good! I'd rather have mine made into a game though. I love video games and that way I could see one of my own creation without having to actually do the coding myself.

But I'm way off-topic again. Believe it or not, I actually started this blog simply because I've found found talented musicians online that I wanted to share with my loyal readers (of which I have possibly 2.) These are all independant artists; I promise you haven't heard them on the radio or seen them on MTV (Not that MTV has anything to do with music anymore anyways) but in my oppinion, you certainly should have. And that, my friends, is why I'm featuring them here! I'll even embed the videos (if I can get it to work) so you can view each video without leaving the blog. You don't have to thank me, just admitted my unfailing awesomeness is enough for me. :)

Anywho, here they are. The first is a rapper named DeStorm. He doesn't just rap though, he is also a rather good singer. Each week he'll make a new video, usually in response to a "challenge" someone has presented him in the comments left on his previous week's email. He also sometimes will sing a medley of theme songs from classic cartoons (and might I say those are very nostalgic and entertaining) but this particular video is just a rap song he wrote. I found it to be a very good song and that's saying something because more often than not, I'd prefer not listen to rap.

Ok, hopefully that actually embedded the video and didn't just leave a bunch of garbled code in the middle of my blog. If it did, then just go to YouTube and look for DeStorm on youtube. The song is called Finally Free and it's currently the featured video on his channel.

Next up is a guitarist called Eric Calderone. He is a completely epic guitar player and it amazes me that he is easily as good as people like Buckethead, Slash or even Tom Morello and that asian guy from DragonForce and yet nobody knows who he is. Well, that's not true. I think he has 100,000 subscribers on YouTube so apparently a lot of people know who he is. But I'm gonna do my part to make sure even more people know about him. He does a lot of amazing things and I encourage you all to check out any of his videos (and if you go to his website you can download a lot of his mp3s for free.) Below is a video of him doing Kiss From a Rose in his awesome metal guitar style.

I really hope this is working or my blog will look rather dumb...

Last one. A DJ by the name of DJ Lobsterdust creates some mashups. And by some, I mean on his webpage he has at least 4 full pages of mashups he's done that you can listen to and download for free. My favorite is a mashup of Fatboy Slim's Praise You and Jefferson Airplane's Somebody to Love but actually, that's not the one I'm going to post. This one is also entertaining and I got my sister to enjoy it quite a bit. It's a mash up of Led Zeppelin, Katy Pery and some Hip Hop group that I don't know or care to know the name of. It actually turns out pretty good however. But hey, don't take my word for it, video down below! (hopefully)

So there you go. Hopefully the embedding worked, but if not, here's the list of the songs you need to Google.

Eric Calderone - Kiss from a Rose meets Metal
DJ Lobsterdust - Whole Lotta Extra Dougie
DeStorm - Finally Free

They call me a Working Man! And that's what I am!

2011-12-07T17:56:00.000-08:00

Actually, I wasn't just quoting Rush, I actually had a work-related anecdote. However, I got distracted by my 360. I can say this about work though: it's a frigid wasteland! Either the heater is on strike or someone in upper-management is allergic to warmth! I might need to start wearing a full carhart to work and a nice big woolen cap with earflaps. And maybe some skiing gloves too. Granted, that'll be awkward to work and type in, but at least I won't be frozen by the end of my shift.

That's really not the topic here though, there's just no good Rush songs about the new Xbox Update. Xbox updated their dashboard on the 360 to have all sorts of feature integration. For one, all the menus are fully controllable by the Kinect. So you no longer have a very limited Kinect interface, which is good. However, the one feature I was hoping they'd bring back was the ability to filter all new downloadable addons to only show games you own. They didn't bring that back yet... so that's not good. They are adding Youtube and Hulu integration though. And Facebook is already on there. So those are great things too. Hell, if they put blogger on there I won't even need to get on my computer unless I'm bootle- I mean... legally acquiring music to put on my iPod.

While I have your attention, I have two almost-announcements. The first, I might be putting up a web-comic! A long time ago (when I was in college and still worked at Wal-Mart) I wrote a webcomic with my friend whom I'll call Maxximo. It was mostly about video games and two guys (Maxximo and myself) that worked at a game store. So, fast-forward to now, a person I met on Facebook is a fellow nerd and can draw pretty well so she might be illustrating the comic and I might finally be actually putting it up on the internet where people can actually see it! So that's exciting. I guess I might have to actually write more strips for it then. The game continuation will be a bit weird because a lot of games/systems have come out in the last 5 years, but hey, it'll be fun!

And for announcement number 2, I might be the singer in a rock band! Actually, I think I mentioned that at some point, but I can't remember because I have the memory span of a mentally-retarded goldfish. But yeah, a good friend of mine is dating the bass player in a rock band and while we all know the bass player is the most unimportant member of the band (I say that mostly because I know there's a good chance she'll show him this blog) there still is a chance he can get me in the band. He heard me singing while playing Rock Band and wanted me to audition as the singer for his band because their current singer sounds something like a cross between a cat being slowly raped and a pig squealing while being swallowed by an anaconda. Now, improving on her singing is easier than the girls in Brockport but I still want to actually sound good so I am excited but also a bit nervous. A few people have told me I sing well but I never thought so. But hey, who knows, I could be the next Dave Grohl... Well, except for the fact that he doesn't just sing for one band, he also plays various instruments in like 7 other bands and writes songs for all of them because he is, in fact, God.

But yeah, I guess that's it really. I might be a webcomic creator and a rock singer. And Dave Grohl is God. Now you know! And knowing is half the battle!

We don't need no water, let the motherfuc-

2011-12-06T17:44:00.000-08:00

Didn't feel it would be appropriate to swear in the title of the blog itself.

So today's lesson class involves a fire. A house in Tennessee was on fire. The firefighters did not put the fire out but they were nearby in case any surrounding houses caught fire. I don't have a link to the story, but trust me, it's a big issue right now so Google it and you'll find it readily.

A lot of people are saying horrible horrible things about those firefighters, but let me give you some details and thoughts on this. First off, in the area that this house was located in, the firefighters are not supported by a tax but instead by a annual $75 fee. $75 is not a lot for an entire year. Seriously, that's just over $6 a month. I spent double that on lunch today! The owners of this house apparently thought that fee was not worth paying so they did not pay it. Now, I know several firefighters and know that they work hard and most of them have woke up in the middle of the night or left during very important events in their lives just because they had a call to answer and wanted to do their duty. So if these men and women ask you for $75 dollars a year to support them, you just go ahead and give it to them. But these people didn't see it that way and did not pay the fee. They most likely thought that the chances of their house catching on fire were low and didn't see the harm in not paying.

Well, sadly for them, the chances of their house catching on fire may not have been high but it happened all the same. The residents of this house know why they didn't get the help of the firefighters and even if you read the stories about it online you will notice that not once do they blame the firefighters. Whenever they are quoted they simply say it's sad that they lost their home and they wish they would have been able to save more of their possessions before it all burned to the ground. The media does not see the logic though and they attack these firefighters. Now, already you may be getting emotional and feeling angry toward these men and women too but I ask that you separate yourself from the event and look at the facts. These people get paid for a service they provide. I assume you all have jobs so I ask, would you perform the services you perform at work for free? Will a mechanic fix your car for free simply because it broke down at huge convenience to you? Will a grocery clerk give you your food for free simply because you are hungry and cannot afford it? Do you get free flights to other states from major airlines when you have sick relatives dying far away? No you do not. All of those things are major inconveniences but you know that it is unreasonable for someone else to pick up the cost and cater to your needs simply because you are going through an unfortunate circumstance. This is the same thing.

I do feel bad for the family who's house burned down. It is a tragedy and is very sad. I have a friend who lost his house and everything in a fire when he was a small child and I wrote a fictional story based on that sort of thing. It is horrible. We all agree. But that does not mean the firefighters are in any way responsible for ending this tragedy at cost to themselves. They already risk their lives to save the people that pay the fees so I don't think any of us could rightfully ask them to do the same for someone who can't be bothered to give them $75 a year to support what they do.

And people are attacking them saying they were there on the scene anyways but didn't help. That's like pouring salt in the wound. Nope, wrong again! That's them doing their job. It was a major fire and was a threat to the houses around it, the owners of which did pay the annual fee providing them the assistance of the fire department in such a crisis. They were there to prevent those homes from catching fire or burning down.

So really, the fire department did what they were supposed to and not any more or any less. I'm sure the people who ignored the fee knew what the consequences could be and they were willing to take that risk. It turns out it didn't work in their favor. Now they know. But the fire department is not in the wrong. If you disagree, well, you have the right to but I would like to know what LOGIC you have to stand behind. Emotions, sure, but facts or logic; no, I'm sorry, but you have none.

P.S. I don't know why I've become so serious/political as of late with these blogs... However, people seem to read these ones far more than my stories, rants or video game reviews so maybe I'll stick to doing these for now. After all, I am an attention whore! :D

P.P.S. If you read this far down, go ahead and take the extra minute to leave a comment. I really am an attention whore and I love the feedback. And heck, if you do have some logic or facts, or think I was incorrect in something, let me know. I accept opposing view points if there is some validity to them.

A new age...

2011-12-05T18:38:00.000-08:00

How many of you remember high school? I don't mean the nostalgic view of high school that we all have looking back many years later, I mean actual memories of how it actually was. It sucked, right?

When I was in high school I remember being picked on a lot. In fact, at one point a kid who was in the group counseling session that I was in went around the school telling all my classmates that my father was an incarcerated druggie who was never around and that I was a wuss and sometimes cried about it. It was at that point I stopped trusting counselors actually. But back to the point, I was teased and bullies incessantly. However, as much as it sucked, at 2:30 the day ended and I got to go home and then the shit was done. I got to play with my dogs in the woods, bike over to Tyler or Kyle's house, walk up to Birch's and buy large amounts of candy with my allowance or just sit around and play video games.

But it's not like that for kids anymore. For several reasons. For one, kids suck nowadays. Granted, that kid who told everyone about me in school was a jackass, but most kids were basically good at the time. Even a lot of the bullies weren't completely heartless. One time a kid tripped me in front of the whole class as I walked by his desk. Well, being the headstrong moron that I am, I kicked out at the leg of his desk knocking it, and him, over onto the floor, causing him to be laughed at just as much as me. Angry, the teacher banished us to the bus later that day while the rest of our class went on a field trip. So we got to see them having fun outside of the bus while we sat on the bus by ourselves. These really are all true stories, by the way. Those of you that went to school with me might even know who I'm talking about here, but after the lawsuit, I try not to use names anymore. Anyways, by the time the rest of the class got back on the bus, me and that kid had talked and were actually cool with each other from then on. So even though he was a bully and a jerk, he turned out to be cool.

But kids aren't like that anymore. They are absolutely heartless. They have no care or respect for anything or anyone. If you don't believe me, go to a mall and watch the children screaming and swearing and physically attacking their parents just because they can't have the $200 toy they want. I have seen kids purposely knock over things in stores, trying to break them, just because their parent wouldn't buy them a $60 video game. I don't recall my mother EVER buying me a $60 video game when I was a kid because she couldn't afford it. And you know what, I didn't pout and throw fits, I understood the situation and got a job to buy them myself. And don't any of you defend those little bastards by saying they can't get a job, I worked on a farm with my friend Tyler and some *possibly* illegal immigrants who didn't seem to know english and we picked potatoes on the weekends for $5 an hour. It was a long, crappy job, I hated every second of it, but I did it, I earned my own money and I got to spend it on whatever I want. And when I got my own stuff with my own money, I took damned good care of it! Kids nowadays will walk around with over a thousand dollars of electronics in their backpack (laptop, Nintendo DS, iPod, Droid phone, etc...) and will throw the bag around as if filled with hacky sacks. And when all their stuff breaks, they just demand that their parents buy them replacements. And what's even worse is that these crappy irresponsible parents go along with it and buy it for them!

But now we're off topic again. Kids suck. Got it, next point...

You can't leave school anymore. I mean, kids physically leave the school, but unlike when we were kids, the bullies and people you hated at school can now bother you all day long on Facebook or Twitter or Google Plus or whatever else you use for social media. Now, if something embarrassing happens to you in front of your class, you don't just turn red, run off crying and forget about it by the time the weekend ends and the next week begins. Now it gets posted to Facebook and Youtube because every kid around you has a digital camera and camcorder built into their phone. Now instead of being called names just in class, you get every horrible thing anyone says about you posted to your wall on Facebook and now you have to look at it constantly and all your friends will see it to. And yes, these are just words and us adults know that words are useless and don't hurt anyone, but as a kid or teenager, I bet you had one nickname that you loathed being called. I bet there was one thing that people could say that would instantly break your heart and reduce you to tears. Imagine having that posted on a website where every friend you have, and I mean that literally, will see it even before you get the chance to delete it from your page.

So now, imagine you are that kid again. Imagine hearing those horrible things about yourself all the time with no real escape. Imagine knowing that every single one of your friends has seen and heard those things and even though they are your friends, they probably laughed when they first read it. Being a kid, you probably don't want to talk to your parents, and no other adult can help because kids are no longer controlled by adults anymore thanks to a hundred laws making them immune to all punishments including even a spanking if the child decides to report it. So where do you turn? What refuge do you have left? If you are popular, or a jock then maybe you can throw a party or play sports to get your mind of things. But what about he nerds like me? How do they cope with the pressure?

In case you aren't local or somehow just missed the news and don't know where I'm going with this, a girl in a nearby town was killed by bullies. She in fact, killed herself, but it was because of bullies like this that she did it. And even after she had killed herself and the news had been spread, some of the people that harassed her even had the ruthlessness to continue to go on the internet and post horrible things about her. Luckily, the adults working at Facebook and Twitter deleted the hate-filled accounts and posts that were tarnishing this poor girl's name and destroying what precious memories and thoughts her family had of her at the moment. Sadly, however, it is most likely these bullies won't be punished. One can only hope that when they become adults, they grow out of this horrendous evil phase they are in now and they realize what they've done and that they cost the world a life simply because they thought it was fun to be mean.

It's horrible what some kids get away with now and it's a devastating loss that some people suffer because of it. I know this turned into a public service announcement but maybe people need it. Out of respect for the family, I won't mention the name of the poor girl but if any of you have kids, talk to them. Make sure they have someone to help them if they are a victim like she was. And if your kid is one of the bullies making another child's life a literal hell, you had better do everything in your power to break them of that habit. I don't care if you are afraid you might humble them and make them mad at you. Kids are supposed to be mad at that parents. Besides, just be glad you have kids to be mad at you. At least one family doesn't anymore.

And to that family and that girl, it's horrible that this is the only way she could find it, but at least now she has the peace she deserves and I hope and pray that I am wrong about the existence of Heaven and that she is there now.

Tiministry: 2econd Generation - Chapter 4

2011-11-30T03:51:00.000-08:00

It had been almost a month since the day Tosh and Anthony started working on their plan to escape and they had accomplished much since then. Each night, when their master had left, they had spent most of the night without sleep. They instead scoured the corners of the shop for any spare scraps of material that would not be missed and they stowed them away inside their own beds. After a while they felt exhausted every day and their beds became piles of broken metal and wood and leather and bone but still they diligently continued toward their goal. Finally when they gathered what they needed they started to create their escape. They created their weapons.

Anthony crafted a long rod of steel and at the end of it a block of metal that was nearly a foot in every dimension and entirely solid except for a singular hole left tunneled through the center of it. He wedged the rod into the hole that was just barely large enough to allow it through and then he hammered the end to flatten it across the face of the metal block, insuring that they would not separate. He surrounded the rod with splinters of wood he had gathered and wrapped the entirety of the rod and makeshift handle with leather scraps. Now when the weapon struck something, the shock of the blow would vibrate and the wood would shift slightly under the leather, absorbing enough of the shock as to save his hands from mistakenly dropping his mighty hammer.

Tosh, however, knew he had not the size or strength for a large forceful weapon and so he created two small weapons that would instead compliment his smaller size. He created a pair of knives that differed in use but matched in materials and intention; these blades would help him escape and fight for his freedom and for a new life for his brother and himself. The first was a sharp curved blade only six inches long but nearly a quarter-inch thick and almost 3 inches wide. He meticulously sharpened the end that would serve as the blade but left the rest of the edge of the blade dull and flat. The large openings in the part that would be the handle and carved a chunk of bone in two equal but opposite pieces that would surround the opening on either side of the blade and he lashed them to the metal. He created a set of small metal spikes and hammered them through the soft metal before it had fully hardened so that the handle now had severely sharp spikes as well as a fatally sharp blade and could be damaging in either a slicing swipe or an impaling strike.

The other blade he made was less intricate but equally deadly. He crafted the blade and handle of this knife from one solid piece of molten metal and he spent weeks carefully refining the shape so that the handle fit perfectly in his hand only. The solid mass of it was a bit cumbersome but this led only to a higher effectiveness as even if this blade were to dull, a thrust from such a heavy blade would pierce skin as easily as even the sharpest razor-edged blade. The unsharpened side of the blade had a hooked design that would catch and tear the flesh as the blade was pulled from anyone it impaled; insuring that the damage it did was both gruesome and permanent if not fatal.

That day was the longest day they could remember; working all day under the pretense of normalcy, all the while aching for the shop to close so that they could finally make their escape from this shop, this town and this life. As the day was finally coming to an end a commotion rose outside the shop. It sounded as if a crowd was getting violent. Tosh started toward the door to see what exactly was going on and just before reaching the door he was met with a smack to the back of the head. “Get back behind the counter boy!” Terhil commanded. “I will figure out what the noise is about, you will do your damn job!” He then stormed out the door.

“We might not have to wait for the shop to close brother!” Tosh said with visible excitement. “Grab the weapons and I’ll get the gold from behind the counter.” Tosh threw the coins in a small sack as tied it to his belt as Anthony returned from their room with the weapons they made themselves. “We may not be able to use this gold anywhere, but if he take it he can’t use it either and that’s good enough.” They head toward the door. “Get ready to run. Hopefully they will all be paying attention to whatever is going on and we can get a good head start before they start to chase.” They open the door and everything changes.

Anthony let his curiosity get the better of him and glanced in the direction of the crowd instead of immediately running and through the crowd he could just make out what looked like two humans in the middle of the crowd. Tosh started to run without looking but Anthony caught him after only a step and pointed to the crowd. “There are humans over there!”

Tosh stopped with those words. “There can’t be! We’re the only ones.” He said in disbelief but looked at the crowd and saw what his brother did. Suddenly their escape lost all thought and they instead rushed toward the group to discover if it was truly humans they saw in the middle of the growing angry mob.

“We just came to do honest business with you all, we have gold. What is the problem?” Colin asked innocently.

“You humans are the problem!” Someone in the crowd shouted. “We don’t need your business!” another proprieter yelled. A rock came souring from the hand of one of the angry townsfolk and hit Keara in the back of the head.

Terhil, being the man that provided and repaired most of the weapons, had the respect of most of the townsfolk and everyone focused on him when he joined the mob. “You two are not welcome here and you best leave the town now if you plan to live. Nothing here is for sale to your kind and we don’t want whatever gold you may have.”

As Colin started to put the gold in his fist back into his pocket, a large man grabbed his hand. “He might not want your gold but I’ll take it from you.” The man said with a grin. “Consider it a leniency tax.”

Colin felt Keara put her hand on his shoulder and he quickly put his other hand over the large man’s and yanked him down hard. Keara simultaneous used Colin’s shoulder as support and, using her hand on him for support, brought both feet off the ground, over Colin’s head, and into the face of his would-be attacker. The crowd tensed visibly at this attack and Colin and Keara got ready for a fight.

“Well we will all just show you how we deal with humans then.” Terhil said with a wicked smile and started to pull a short sword from his belt. He suddenly felt a blow to the back of his knee and stumbled forward, dropping the blade to the ground. Colin reached forward and retrieved it while he and Keara saw what caused the aggressor to stumble.

“You’ll have to show us too” Tosh said from behind Terhil. He had his knives sheathed on his belt but they were clearly visible and easily accessible. Anthony held his large hammer in a way that was not aggressive but made it obvious he could very easily deliver a deadly blow if anyone were foolish enough to attack him.

Their confidence faltered, however, as soon as they actually saw the other humans. For the first time in their life they were not alone. They both silently marveled and as they hesitated, the rest of the crowd did not; they pushed the twins forward toward the blacksmith’s boys and closed the circle back off around them. Terhil regained his feet with a nasty sneer. “This is the thanks I get for protected you two? This is how you repay my kindness?! Then you two will die with these other human scum!” Terhil drew a knife from an unseen place behind his back and started to thrust it forward toward Tosh. Tosh shied away from the blow but was still expecting to take a painful stab from the knife and after a moment was surprised that he instead felt nothing. He looked up to see a stunned Terhil, with arm extended, holding the knife in what is now a pierced hand. Keara had swiftly pulled the spiked knife from Tosh’s side and deftly drove it through Terhil’s hand before he could stab Tosh. He suddenly dropped the knife and screamed in agony. He jerked his hand away out of reflex, tearing his flesh further, and shouted a mostly incoherent phrase. One portion of it was painfully clear, however: “Kill them!”

Anthony quickly hefted the hammer off his shoulder and swung it hard at the group of people in front of him. One was able to get out of the way but it crushed the chest cavity of one man who then collapsed into a third. A man came from the side to attach Anthony while he was busy maneuvering his hammer but Colin came up from behind Anthony and without any weapon and his disposal simply caught the man mid-attack and delivered a hard punch to his throat. The man crumpled to the ground gagging for breath through a crushed wind-pipe.

A very large man came up to attack Tosh and as the man grabbed for him, Tosh took his larger blade and stabbed it into the man’s arm. The man winced with pain but grasped Tosh around the throat and lifted him off the ground, choking him. Keara, still holding his spiked knife ducked under the man’s arm and put herself between the large man and Tosh. She stood with and uppercut and delivered the force of the blow and the spikes on the knife’s handle into the man’s jaw. His skull rattled from the blow and he dropped Tosh as blood started to leak from his perforated jaw. Tosh, seeing opportunity grabbed hold of the blade still stuck in the man’s arm and pulled with all his might, tearing a canyon out of the man’s entire upper arm. A combination of excruciating pain and a large amount of blood lost finally drove the over-sized man to the ground. “Boys, this is fun, but maybe we should just get out of here!” Keara shouted and vaulted over the collapsed man. Tosh, Colin and Anthony did not hesitate in following her and they quickly started down the road, away from the crowd that was none too eager to follow after the display of gore that just took place.

As they neared Terhil’s shop the door burst open and he came into the street carrying two long katanas. “You two think you can just get away with what you did to me? And you mean to steal my weapons and my gold?! You will all die in the street like the worthless beasts you are!” the man threatened angrily.

Tosh rushed him and stabbed at his heart with the blade he still held but Terhil, being ready for the attack, deflected the knife with one sword and sliced Tosh’s cheek with the other. Colin stepped forward to help in the attack but Anthony moved in front of him and both twins then got the impression that the boys needed to face this man alone. Anthony swung the large hammer at Terhil’s head and he quickly ducked under it and then kicked Anthony hard before he could regain his balance and the momentum of the swing and the kick caused him to stumble to the ground.

“We’ll do this together brother” Tosh said a determined look in his blood-spattered face and Anthony nodded as he rose from the ground. Tosh swung the hammer up over his head this time and then brought it back down to deliver a crushing blow to Terhil’s skull. Instead of trying to dance out of the way again, Terhil brought up his two swords to catch the hammer and meant to kick out again to knock Anthony away from his weapon but as he started to attack, Tosh rose from his crouching position on the ground and drove his blade into the groin of the man who had for so long been his captor. Terhil immediately screamed out in pain and dropped to the ground releasing both his blades. Tosh put his blade back in the sheath at his belt and handed the katanas to the twins. “You’re probably better off with weapons” he said to them. He then held his hand out to Keara. “I am going to need my knife back now.” Keara hesitated as if torn on whether she wanted to give up such a nice blade but then handed it back to Tosh who put it back on his belt, opposite the other blade, where it belonged.

The group then ran out of town. They no longer had much to fear here, but also had no desire to stay any longer. When they were a good distance from the town and had taken refuge in a group of trees, they finally stopped to introduce themselves. “I’m Tosh and this is Anthony. Tosh said pointed to his brother in turn.

“Your brother right?” Colin asked. Before waiting for an answer he added “That’s Keara and I’m Colin.”

Anthony answered Colin’s question: “We can’t say for certain that we are actually brothers. We never met our parents or any other humans. We were taken as children by Terhil as a group of the townsfolk robbed and killed our entire village, or so we’re told. He also told us every other human was dead and that we were the last two alive.”

“It’s good to know we aren’t alone” Tosh added “especially now that we can even carry on the species.”

Keara looked at him with a challenging grin and responded “I think you’d better not try unless you want to end up like your friend back in town there. This actually is my brother, twin brother actually, and we come from one of several human villages. There are at least 30 in our village so I assure you, the human race is populating fine without your help.”

Tosh seemed to have missed her response to his proposition and instead seemed in awe of her last statement. “There are really that many humans where you came from?” He then turned to Anthony and with the look of a child who found joy under a tree on Christmas morning he said “We’re not alone anymore.”

I know... I lied!

2011-11-15T18:49:00.000-08:00

I said my next post would be chapter 4 of the 2econd Generation. I lied... that will be coming soon but I felt the urge to talk so here I am, talking to my only friend... my laptop.

First off, I found a new show recently called Grimm. It gives a new strange twist on some of the classic Grimm tales and so far is rather interesting. Seeing how they carry out the story and what they do with the rest of the season will be interesting. However, I think it’s one show that probably shouldn’t go beyond 1 season because if it does it’ll just be adding unnecessary twists to the story and just diluting the initial draw the show had. Hopefully they have the story they want to tell and tell it all in one season making the show good and compelling and giving it a definitive end. Think of how much better Heroes would stand in your mind if the first season stood as the only season. Then it would have gone down as one of the greatest shows ever to hit television instead of the horrible mockery of itself it became in the later seasons.

Next up, a book. I finished a book today. A novel I was only about halfway into actually so it was a good 3 hours of reading but it was incredibly worth it. I love reading (and obviously writing) and do it often and sometimes I come across a book that reminds me what it is that really draws me in to stories. And it’s just that – the stories. I want a book that can draw me in entirely and captivate me and make me part of the story. I want to be so entwined with what I’m reading that I lose track of what I’m doing and until I turn the final page I can see the characters and almost feel what happens to them every step of the way. Today I finished such a book. The Bad Place by, of course, Dean Koontz. This book is amazing! The characters, the story, the unexpected developments. You will be enthralled and you will root for the good characters, hate the bad ones and become more entranced by it every time you find another development in the plot. Some things will make you happy as though something amazing just happened to you, while others will break your heart. It’s a book like all books should be and honestly, if you somehow don’t find an experience like that from this book you are an illiterate or just a dumbass. If you enjoy words at all, you will love the way they are arranged to form the story that is The Bad Place.

Last subject…

I love video games. I’ve been playing them more the past few days and realized that I really enjoy them. I know you may think that was kind of obvious, but it occurred to me very recently how important to me they are. Everything about them just amazes me. I love the music in the games, the stories of them, the characters, the graphics (even the old out-dated ones.) I like the social aspect video games carry. I don’t mean Call of Duty where you play online against a bunch of under-parented adolescents swearing just for the sake of vulgarity, I mean having a bunch of good friends over and taking turns playing games all while laughing and joking and enjoying each others’ presence through the medium of the game. Two of the friends I miss hanging with most are Maxx and Sindra (not their real names… still don’t want to get arrested again so I take less chances) because at least once a week we would go to a used game store, spend twenty bucks on a handful of random games none of us have ever played just because the title sounded cool or the picture on the box was interesting and then we’d stay at my house for hours playing them and either loving them and getting the highest score we could, or learning quickly how horrible they were and then playing them in spite of it, all the while mocking how horrible they were. I never had so much fun. And even now that I rarely actually spend any time with the few friends I have left, and almost never have people to play video games with, I can still recapture some of how happy I was then just by playing my old games again. They truly just make me feel incredibly happy. I saw on a website once in a random forum people talking about how they get almost a spiritual feeling of euphoria at certain types of music. And some people blessed and/or cursed with synesthesia can associate colors and emotions with certain sounds or words. That is the connection I have with video games. Everything about them just affects my mood. Most people loathe talking to me about them for I will prattle on endlessly, and people get annoyed asking for my birthday wish list because it is usually exclusively a list of games I don’t yet have, but to me, they are a large and important part of my life. I have played and enjoyed them for most of my life and can also connect them with a large number of happy memories from various times in my life, even a few times where there was quite a bit of memorial unhappiness where one of my few refuges was my video games. So while I may now sound obsessed with them, and a few of you might be reaching for the phonebook and the number for Belleview, just remember that everyone has one thing in their life that makes them happy. That one thing that even in their worst mood will calm them and just make them feel better about anything and everything that might be going on. Whether it is model trains, music, painting, writing, dedication to ones’ job or community or county or religion, everyone has something that makes them who they are. Mine might be a newer medium of such obsession than all of those, but it is equally as important to me as those things are to the people that love them and it makes me who I am.

Of course none of that matters to almost anyone that would read this, but on the amazingly miniscule chance that someone of the female persuasion (hopefully the gothic-garbed, petite and red-headed persuasion as well) finds this I say “Hey, wanna play a game?”

A blog about nothing

2011-11-10T18:43:00.000-08:00

So, my little brother kept telling me about this movie called Our Idiot Brother. He said it was great! Now, it stars Paul Rudd, who is usually quite good, so I wanted to see it anyways, but my brother can usually pick out some good movies (Even if the ending is depressing as hell! - Alpha Dog.) I finally got to watch that movie today (Our Idiot Brother, not Alpha Dog) and it was quite good. And not only is it a good movie but the whole time I related so well with the main character. Not necessarily his habits or ways, but the fact that he was probably better off not being around other people. In the end he was right about most of what he did/said and helped people, but through most of the movie he just didn't really fit in. I feel like that constantly! The last time I actually fit in with a group of people was the last time I saw the Batavia Crew (Jayson, Kristi, Matt, Mass, Ruth, Rob, Burt and Brenna.) Of course, the last time I saw all them I was going through a very shitty breakup, and by going through, I mean it happened earlier that day so I was kind of a mess and probably acted like a major jackass the entire time so I doubt many of them would hang out with me again if given the opportunity. Plus I think a few of them live out of state now anyways, so there goes that. But really, they were the last people I fit in with. I'm too nerdy to talk to most people. The things that interest me are stupid to most people, plus I talk too much and tend to be a know-it-all. I don't try to be a jerk, I just am curious about everything and want to know everything I can and when I know something I tell people or if I think I can help someone do something better or tell them something they didn't know or correct something they were saying or doing, I do. But again, I just come off as a jackass. But now I'm way off-topic. My depressed jackassedness aside, Our Idiot Brother is a great movie!

Also, sports are dumb! Well, not sports, just the people that play them professionally. I don't care how hard people say they work, they get millions of dollars to play a game I played in high school. Sure, Tom Brady was great when he through that super-long pass and it hit Marsha in the nose. And yeah, Dan Marino was great in Ace Ventura. And I hear Michael Vick is gonna make a guest appearance on the next season of The Pit Boss. But really, do these people need to buy 4 Ferrarris just because they play football better than me? Who the hell cares? And seriously, and I'm being completely honest here, it is ridiculous that people can justify spending over $1,000 to go to a superbowl, during a recession, when they have friends that will probably actually play football with them for free! For free and it'll be more fun! Why would anyone want to watch football when you can play it for free? I know, people might immediately try to turn this around on me and say why would I play video games when I can do that stuff for free? Because I can't! I don't play sports games. I play racing games and RPG's mostly. If me and my friends could take classic muscle cars or european supercars out for a spin and race each other in real life, I'd literally throw my games away in favor of doing that. But that's not a realistic possibility. And as far as the RPG's, well, I don't live in a world where dragons and magic and fairies are real things. I can't survive underwater indefinitely without coming up for air, I can't learn to fly on a griphon and I'll never get the opportunity to fight a legion of the undead. So yeah, those are out too. And now we've come full circle because those few statements probably help illustrate my point of being the outcast nerd from what I said before.

Yeah, I think I'm just gonna say goodnight to Shiro and hit the hay. Peace out all!

P.S. Don't worry, my next blog will be the 4th chapter to the 2econd Generation.

A letter to Her

2011-11-08T15:30:00.000-08:00

I dreamt of you last night. I saw you smile at me one more time.
When I woke I almost called; but then remembered the truth.
It broke my heart all over again, realizing once more that you are gone.
I think of you almost every day and always I regret the past.
I wonder if you even remember me or if you even care.
I know it's too late and that you're gone for good but part of me still hopes I'll see you again one day.
You may have dismissed me entirely, and you have every right, but I'll never forget you.
I love you.

Tiministry: 2econd Generation - Chapter 3

2011-11-07T18:46:00.000-08:00

3

The twins headed in the direction they thought the nearest human settlement to be. They were raised to adapt to their surroundings and to live off the land so they suffered no loss by being without a tribe or home and were not outside of their element simply because they were lost. Nothing about the lands through which they wandered was welcoming, however. During the day Colin and Keara faced only the humanoid and crossbreed inhabitants of Earth. These beings have only existed since the world was reformed by the invasion of evil itself. The oldest of these races are actually only half-breeds (humans corrupting and mutated into an alternate race by the poisonous evil that was forced into their body.) These races started to resent and hate humans for their purity and because they existed not of evil design but of nature.

The threat these beings posed paled in comparison to the demonic creatures that stalked the night. Though the embodiment of evil was crushed by the four heroes, the creatures it unleashed upon the world remain. At night the demons that are unaccustomed to the light of the sun are free to roam the lands and hunt. There are hounds and beasts and ravenous insects that resemble nothing that god or nature would produce.

Tonight, however, the twins were most unfortunate; they would face both of these enemies.

“This looks like as good a place as any for us to sleep” Keara said aloud as she squatted down and inspected the land around her.

“Well then, let’s stay here tonight.” Colin replied. He shrugged his pack off his shoulders and started to look toward the small bit of woods edging on the area they were going to camp in. “I’ll look around for some small pieces of wood for a fire.

Keara, took initiative as well and started gathering larger sized rocks to encircle so that they could create a fire without fear of it spreading through the nearby grasses or weeds while they slept. After a while she had cleared the brush from inside the circle and had created a ring of large stones about 4 feet in diameter with a small mound of extra stones off to one side. She looked toward the woods, surprised that Colin had not yet come back with wood for the fire.

Colin walked through the tree line and was surprised at how quickly the trees became more dense and how suddenly this small wooded area became a dense tangle of trees and brush. He stood for a moment, not moving at all, and listening to the surrounding forest. The area was very still and he heard no noises to indicate nearby life. No distant sounds of fires or brush being crunched underfoot or a rock shifting or rolling under the misstep of some creature. It seemed completely silent and free of threats.

He broke his silent stance and walked around slowly looking for hard thick pieces of wood that would burn slowly and produce a bright hot flame that would last throughout the night. When he had a good large bundle he slowly wandered back toward camp.

“Have trouble finding firewood in that forest there?” Keara asked mockingly.

“Not a bit” he replied and shrugged one should to send the top piece of wood flying in her direction. She caught it midair and dropped it into the circle of stones. “I noticed it was incredibly quiet though. Couldn’t see or hear a single thing moving around.”

“Hmm” she replies with apparent disinterest. She started to arrange some of the wood in the circle and after expertly scraping two stones together a fire crept to life among the small twigs and brush she had arranged under the larger pieces of wood.

Without another spoken word between them they both laid down atop the sleeping rolls they took from the old man’s hut and closed their eyes. Colin reached above his head to the stack of logs and grabbed one about two inches thick and almost three feet long and placed it in the fire to help stoke the flames a little more. They both lay there in the ambient glow of the flames and waited for morning; or at least it appeared that way from the woods.

“Well, what else are we waiting for? There they are, let’s get them!” The leader of the red men said to his cohorts. “There are four of us and we have the two hounds, what are you men scared of?” He demanded after seeing their hesitation.

“Are you sure they’re asleep?” One of them asked in reply.

“Why would it matter? They are only humans and we have them outnumbered. Now let’s get them and throw them in that fire before I throw you in it!” With that threat he stepped forward toward his timid minion who then leapt forward toward the unsuspecting victims. The other two men followed the impromptu lead, each with a demonic hound on the end of a thick leather lead.

As soon as he crept close enough to be within striking range, the timid bandit raised his thick club over his head, ready to bring it crashing down on Colin’s waiting skull and has shocked as Colin suddenly grabbed the flaming stick protruding from the fire beside him and drive the pointed burning end of it into the man’s upper thigh. His surprise and awe at what happened and how quickly it transpired distracted him momentarily from the effect of the events that just took places but the pain quickly overcame his amazement and suddenly his dropped his club and howled out in blind agony. As if his cry were a signal of war, the other three men charged forward and the two that were escorting the dogs released their leads in order to free their hands and fill them with the weapons they carried. The dogs arrived first and one leapt at Colin’s face while the other charged his legs. Colin grappled with the airborne dog and turned quickly to allow the dogs momentum to carry him into the awaiting flames. The hound landed in the fire and its oily black fur erupted in flame, created a dreadful thick smoke. The dog’s head banged against a rock on the other side of the fire circle and a garbled howl of pain escaped its throat for only a moment before Keara picked up one of the rocks pile beside the fire and dropped it heavily on the beast’s skull, crushing it and silencing the hellish cry.

Colin was still freeing himself from the jaws of the large hound that had attacked his legs when the three men came within melee range and one was about to swing a short sword at his neck when Keara dove through the dancing flames of the fire with her hands grasping another large rock in front of her. She landed in a roll and as she continued her movement she brought the rock down hard on the side of the man’s knee, instantly causing him to falter. As he did she reversed her movement and brought the heavy stone upward into his jaw, sending it back with a horrific crunch that surely indicated both it, and his neck, were now broken in several places.

Colin threw himself to the ground with the dog still clutching one leg hungrily and he retrieved the bandit’s sword and drove it through the flanks of the ravenous hound. He then stood free of the creature’s grasp and whilst wincing through the pain in his leg he hurled the sword at the larger of the two remaining men. That man saw the projectile coming and knocked it aside with the large halberd he held. He then swung the bladed end of it at Keara who ducked under the swing only to be caught off-guard by the oncoming blow of the club held by the other man. He landed the strike hard on her shoulder and that threw her off her balance and drove her to the ground. He raised his club above his head to get a full downward swing with it but she grabbed the back of his leg and pulled him downward and as he started to stumbled she pushed herself up with her uninjured arm and drove her skull hard into the one area guaranteed to drop any man to his knees. As he collapsed, reeling in pain from the blow, Keara saw the incoming swing of the halberd and rolled away from it just as the blade went soaring past her and into the gut of the man she had just crippled.

The leader started to pull his blade from his fallen comrade but Colin surprised him with a hard shove that caused his to lose his grip on his halberd and trip sideways, stumbling to one knee. Colin kicked out and snapped the long wooden handle from the metal tip of the halberd creating a makeshift staff and as the attacked started to stand he spun his body around and landed a full roundhouse swing to the side of the man’s head with the staff, instantly knocking him unconscious. Colin grabbed Keara’s hand and helped her to her feet and then started to study the staff he held.

“Well that was fun” she sarcastically stated. “We need to find a better place to camp. We’ve been attacked almost every night since leaving the village by either wild redmen or hungry beasts. If they’re going to start working together like this, we need good rest and more supplies.”

Colin noticed a large splintered crack on the end that he had struck the man with while examining the staff. He threw it in the fire with displeasure. “And better weapons” he added.

“Well, they came from those woods. Should we go and see where they came from?” She asked him although she already knew how he would respond.

“Yeah, I got more than enough sleep already. Besides, who needs a fire and a bedroll when we can go stalking toward who-knows-what in a dark forest that may lead to many even more unfriendly creatures?”

“Good” she replied, “I’m glad you see it my way.” She hoisted her pack containing a few bits of food and a trinket or two that could be used for bartering and then kicked her bedroll onto the still blazing meat of the hellhound in the circle of stones. “See if they have anything useful on them.”

Colin quickly searched the four men and after pocketing the small amount of gold coins they each carried he shouldered his own pack and turned toward the forest. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and it’ll be a peaceful bunch of humans with an abundance of food, riches and naked women.”

She smacked him on the backside of the head and let that suffice as a reply as she started off toward the woods. He grinned and followed her into the trees, knowing that while that is certainly not what they would find in this forest, they were sure to at least come across something interesting.

My not so inner nerd

2011-11-03T18:56:00.000-07:00

Just a few bits of nerdom for you all:

First off: I found a website that sells what is now probably my new favorite bit o' software. For a while now I've been trying to find a decent way to inventory my game collection. Not an easy task with over a thousand games (Yeah, I know I bring that up a lot, but it's one of my only bragging points so deal with it!) Also, it would be great to come up with a convenient way to keep a wish list. I've tried Excel but it takes too much manual data manipulation and Access is barely better, plus, to be honest, I hate Access! Everyone I work with can vouch for that.

Well this site ( http://www.collectorz.com/game/ ) has a program that lets you add your entire collection and a wishlist and it stores it all in a very informative database. What's more, it will populate the boxart, release date, publisher and developer credits and even give you the option to view the manual there in the browser f the program. It lets you sort your list by any number of criteria and provides statistics on it so you know which system you have the most games from. You can also print or email your lists right from the program and for a nextra $10 you can download a portable app (ipod or droid) that can sync up with your computer allowing you to carry around your collection and wishlist database so you can stop yourself from accidentally buying a game you already have at a yard sale or passing up something you wanted at Game Craze. It's $40 (30 for the program and 10 for the app) but honestly that is well worth it. Not only does having those lists make my life a bit easier as far as telling people what games I want at holidays, but if my stuff was ever stolen (aside from going on a homicidal rampage fueled by the loss of the one good thing from my childhood I've held onto into my adult life) I could easily provide a list of what was taken so that it could be tracked down more easily. This program even gives you the opportunity to track your systems and save the serial numbers as well as providing a note column for games so you can describe anything special about them like whether or not is a CIB (Complete in Box) copy or in the case of my Silk Worm cartridge, if it is a promotional or test release of the game.

But enough about that. On to more nerdy things. I am reading some of the books in the Xanth series. Well, actually I'm only reading one book at the moment. Reading multiple ones simultaneously just sounds silly. I keep thinking I'm going to get bored of the series as the premise doesn't change too much from story to story but the chacters remain interesting (as the books never focus on the same characters for more than 3 novels) and the puns are always a good laugh. I was amazed to find online that the Xanth series has well over 30 novels now (actually I think it's over 40 but I'm too lazy to Google it) which is far more than the Discworld series or even the Magic the Gathering novels. So, for any fantasy geeks who want a really good read, go pick up A Spell for Chameleon which is the first in the Xanth series by Piers Anthony and enjoy.

One last thing, then I'll shut up. I just watched the latest episode of The Big Bang Theory which I have watched religiously since the show first aired and am I the only one just hoping Amy bags Sheldon simply because the reaction will be hysterical? I hope not.

Ok, one other last thing, then I'll shut up. It's my birthday tomorrow. I'm not usually a big fan of my birthday but if anyone felt so inclined, I accept gifts in the form of video games, Microsoft points and, of course, cash. Also, if someone wanted to grab me the aforementioned Game Collector program from the site linked above, I would be grateful.

This is me shutting up.

Happy Halloween... for most of us.

2011-10-31T17:38:00.000-07:00

Today is Halloween! The best holiday of the year! Much better than the holiday only my friends, family and I celebrate on friday. And this year was also Toshman's first time Trick or Treating. But first... Food!

At work today we had a food day. For those of you that don't work in an office setting, a food day is when a bunch of people in the office all bring in food and then spend the day pigging out and complaining about how they shouldn't eat this food because of their diet, even though they themselves brought in a plate of chocolate fudge covered brownies. Well, I can safely say that I consumed more cocoa plants today than the entire prison population. (That was a reference toward cocaine in case you didn't get it. And if the reason you didn't make that connection is because you know that chocolate comes from the cocoa plant and cocaine comes from the coca plant, well then stop being so smart!) The whole thing was mostly deserts except for the breakfast pizza (eww!), sloppy joes (meh...) and chili (fusc yeah!) I ate a lot of the chili. I also ate well over 20 cookies, at least 4 brownies, handfulls of candy and after all that, I'm currently finishing the last two and a half slices of leftover white pizza I had in my fridge from the other night. I really should weigh 500 pounds.

Ok, back to Toshman's Halloween adventures. First off, he did pretty well. After the first few houses he was saying Trick or Treat and Thank You without prompting and was excited as hell to go to each new house and get candy. When we got to dustin's house though Dust had a full body purple suit that covered his face and Tosh did not like that at all. But he kind of got over it at the prospect of candy and we moved on. More houses, more candy and in my biased opinion, Tosh was the cutest kid I saw all night, by far. Well, being as it was Halloween, I convinced my family to bring Toshman over to the Condoluchi's house. For those of you not living in Albion, they are a family hat obsesses over Halloween (in a good way) and goes absolutely crazy with the decorations. They were also giving out handfulls of candy and Hot Wheels cars to the kids, so you get quite the reward for making it up to the house. That's the fun part. There is a huge cemetery built over the entire yard that you have to walk through to get to the house, and when you get right up to the candy bucket, a guy crawls out of a coffin and tries to steal your candy. Well, being only 3, this guy scared the hell out of Tosh. Tosh hid behind and clutched onto Nick Condoluchi, a man he doesn't even know, just because that's who happened to be closest to him at the moment. At one point he even threw his brand new Hot Wheels car at the guy to try and thwart him before hauling ass away from him. Luckily, I picked his car back up for him and by the time we got to the car, he was ok again. And then afterward he kept denying being scared. Only 3 and already he's trying to be macho, how funny!

Speaking of funny, here's something that isn't: Someone was murdered in Albion yesterday. A mid-forties woman was shopping at Wal-Mart and after leaving the store a 24-year-old man (and that's using the term incredibly loosely) affronted her at her car and tried to steal it from her. She tried to resist him so he pulled a knife and stabbed her repeatedly in the back. He then ran away to be later caught by the police and border patrol. The woman was rushed to the nearest hospital but was pronounced DOA. But did I mention border patrol? I did? And why is that you ask? Well simple; the murdering bastard is an illegal immigrant from Honduras. Now first off, I think we should put him to death. He confessed to the crime and was caught on tape as the woman was parked right under a street light and Wal-Mart's surveilence cameras. There is no reason he should but put on death row or given any kind of lengthy trial. We have a confession to the cops and video evidence. Guilty, done. And I really don't think Death Row is a good option. That takes forever and he shouldn't get warm meals or cable while awaiting a sterilized needle. No last meal, no bed or blankets, no TV, no phone call, nothing! He should sit in an empty, soundless, lonely cement cell until we fill a used needle full of whatever poison we can find and then take him out, stick it in his arm, and pump him full of death. And if there is any justice it will be slow-acting and there will be agony. There's no reason he should have a peaceful and painless death; his victim didn't. She was an innocent woman just leaving a store. Most likely going home with candy for Halloween and he ended her life over a car! Not even his car! He ended her life because she wouldn't let him rob her! And let me get to the other issue now, he's not even an American citizen! Last time I checked, a non-citizen killing random American citizens is a terrorist! So let's execute this shithead and be done with it! And (if there is such a thing) god help me, if he gets deported and his crime goes unanswered then I will lose ALL faith in this country and its laws and I will start looking into a different governemtn to live under. He broke into our country and killed one of our people, if we don't kill him cruely and swiftly then we are a bunch of pushover and pussies and we don't deserve the rights we claim to have. Are we truly a free country of opportunity and justice if we let a murderer take away a woman's life just because she was leaving a store? She never met this man in her life and has never done him a single wrong yet he decided in his mind and heart that he had the authority to destroy her. Does that sound right to you? I hope a fellow inmate at the jail, or one of the jail guards, or someone nearby as he walks into court or the judge or anyone else he encounters feels the way I do and executes him the way he did her. This is infuriating and the only reason it bothers me so much is because I know that woman won't be properly avenged. Our justice system fails constantly and I fear it will now, but I sincerely hope I'm wrong with every ounce of my pathetic excuse for a soul. And to that poor woman and her family, I hope that my community and it's people can do you right by giving you justice and ending this man's life so that you can rest better and we can all be a little safer.

That's it. Anything else I say won't matter.

Good night.

More of me being a nerd...

2011-10-30T20:01:00.000-07:00

So after buying Dragon Age 2 I decided I was going to play through the first Dragon Age game and wrap it up by exploring the other story-line possibilities and unlock each ending. I got through most of the DLC and did start a new story with the intention of playing through once more but then said to hell with it and put in Dragon Age 2 today.

Holy God do I regret waiting to play this game! It is far better than the first! For one, no more silent protagonist. Your character speaks, often. You still have many options in every conversation and be a pacifist, violent bastard, a complete smart-ass or a horny pervert depending on the person you are talking to and your standing with them. It's great fun! Also, because I bought all the DLC for this game, I started off pretty early with some wicked gear that is making the killing much easier so I can not worry so much about not dying and just focus on the story in the game.

The voice acting is quite well done and the characters all interact well. The side characters in your party all converse with each other more now too so you get to overhear lots of fun things whilst on your travels. Also, Felicia Day is the voice of one of the characters and while I have no clue who that is, I am now attracted to her, or at least her voice. Is that weird? Actually, her voice reminds me of a girl I used to know. Actually, I also used to be attracted to that girl... Hmmm... Oh, wait, I just googled Felicia Day. She's a redhead. Well, that settles it; I love her!

Speaking of DLC, I have finally filled my hard drive on my 360. It's one of the 120gb ones even so that was no easy task. Because of this, I now have to finally upgrade to the newer 360s. This is a good idea anyways as the processor is faster and quieter and the hardware is overall better built and more reliable. However, this sucks because I can't use my faceplate anymore and because a lot of my DLC is expired. I can't redownload it onto a new console so when I transfer to the new one, I lose those games. Undertow, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, That Doritos game with the Dinosaur, that one game that I think Hyundai made as a marketing thing... None of those are available anymore even if you downloaded them before so unless the system comes with a transfer cable, I lose the ability to play them on my new console. That kinda sucks. But I gain a system that won't sound like a hydro-electric turbine grinding away in my living room and an extra 130gb of storage space so I guess it might be an ok trade-off. Besides, UMK3 is now available in a Mortal Kombat pack which also includes the first two games, and the other games I'll just have to learn to live without. That or just go up to my gameroom and play them (which is where the old console will migrate to after I put the new one in my living room.)

But, the main point of this was to say Dragon Age 2 rocks! I'm not even worried about getting Skyrim or Ultimate MvC 3 or even Skyward Sword right now because I intend to play through every second of this game. Probably twice. I am still excited about Rocksmith though. Since Friday seems like it might actually be good this year (although it SEEMS like it'll be good every year, until the actual day and then everything goes to crap) maybe I'll get a copy and won't have to go buy it.

At any rate, it's bedtime. Goodnight all and seriously, go play Dragon Age 2!

Pinball Wizard

2011-10-27T16:53:00.000-07:00

Actually, this is about my arcade machine, not a pinball machine or The Who. However, the only references I could think of with the word arcade in them is Arcade Fire, a crappy indie pop band and Nick Arcade, an old game show from Nickelodeon that no one remembers.

But, today I was snooping around inside my arcade machine trying to see what work I needed to do to make it really pristine and see if I can flip it and make some money on it. I already replaced the missing lock on the coin door and the broken hinge on the rear panel so now it actually seals up like it should. Well, while I was in there I noticed that this game has a JAMMA board. (Japan Arcade Machine Manufacturers' Association - That's an acronym!) The cool thing about that is that most newer arcade cabinets are fitted with this and they are actually swappable. That means I can take out the Black Tiger board that is in my machine and switch it out for Gauntlet: Dark Legacy or the original Simpsons Arcade Game. Or, what's even cooler is that for a couple hundred bucks I can get a 1,940 in 1 multicade JAMMA board with a built hit hard drive and emulator that allows you to pick and play any of nearl 2,000 games. Each is set up to work with a standard arcade layout and are all set up for Coin-Op play or Free Play modes. Granted, to do that I would need to take the current single stick and button off my machine and get a dual-player 6-button/joystick layout but having that board in there and having that many games in my one cabinet would jack the price way up. The speakers still work great and the cabinet itself is still in fine condition. I do need to figure out why one of the quarter mechs isn't registering. It has the Black Tiger Marquee which I would leave as that is one of the many games emulated on that multi-cade board and the only other real work I might do to it would be to swap out the old analog monitor (with Game Over burned into it) for a new digital display if I can find one that will fit and hook up without too much wire conversion. Well, that and I may need to add another power supply as the multi-cade board is pretty power intensive. But still, a 2-player machine with almost 2,000 games on it will fetch me probably close to a grand if not more, so even after all the work I put into it, it'll still turn me a profit. And, more importantly, it'll fun as hell until I sell it!

I found a new project and I am so excited! Now I just need to find some cash... I wonder where I gotta go to sell my plasma?

Tiministry: 2econd Generation - Chapter 2

2011-10-25T11:39:00.000-07:00

Told you I'd put up the second chapter. Here it is!

2

Tosh woke when the first rays of sunlight came through the slatted window opening. After only a moment of half-asleep grogginess he quickly realized that the master would be here soon and he had failed to wake on time and open the shop.

“Brother, wake u-“ he started as he fumbled out of bed, nearly tripping as he got tangled in his blanket. He was going to shout to wake his brother again but then saw an empty bed where his brother sleeps. He opened the door to the main area of the shop and saw the ovens and forges already blazing and realized his brother had prepared the shop for the day in his absence. The ashes from the day before had already been cleared and fresh coal had been set out for the day. Clearly his brother had worked hard to get this all done without him.

“Why didn’t you wake me Anthony?” He asked while moving a small pile of swords from the shelf he left them on late last night to the weapon rack where they can be properly displayed.

“After last night, I knew you mustn’t have slept well.” Anthony responded.

No, no I didn’t, Tosh thought to himself. The master had beat him harshly for nicking a sword that was supposed to be sold. Tosh knew Anthony would take the beating instead to cover for him, as he had many times before, as he was much larger and tougher than he, but he couldn’t let his brother continue to save him from his punishments and so he spent most of the night repairing that blade as well as most of the other repair orders to appease the old man. He did so with a very sore body but he knew that getting the jobs completed early would make extra money for the master and that would hopefully prevent a second beating today.

Terhil, the old man, was a vicious intolerant master. He reminded Tosh and Anthony very often that the other humans all were dead and that they were the only two remaining. He had bought them from and executioner who was going to kill them simply for being human. In exchange for saving them he expected eternal and unquestioning obedience and he delighted in telling them that they had nowhere else to go and that since they would never know the touch of a female human, they would surely die alone and with them, the entire human race would become extinct. As vile a man as he was, he protected them from the wrath of the town by putting them to work and making them useful. He pushed them hard and trained them without patience but they had learned their craft under his guidance and became masters in their own right. They were amazingly apt at repairing and creating blades. Anthony, having his larger stature, was very skilled at wielding a large mace or hammer and Tosh, having ran the store and the counter in his master’s absence, had learned to barter incredibly well and could smooth-talk any client, even in a city of various beings that despised humans like him.

When Terhil arrived and unlocked the door, the boys had already gotten the first few orders displayed where the owners could pick up the item readily and other customers could clearly see the quality work being produced here. Anthony was tending to the grindstone, sharpening a custom-ordered twin-bladed sword while Tosh was arranging the counter area.

“Get away from my counter you little kiss-ass! You had better have mended that blade you dropped yesterday.” Terhil said with disgust. He hated these humans more than most of the inhabitants of the town but he kept them as they were useful at what he taught them and he didn’t have to pay them.

“I did.” Tosh replied and handed him the sword.

Terhil scrutinized every inch of the blade and when he could find no flaw in it, he swung hard and smacked Tosh in the face with the flat part of the blade. The few early customers that had wandered into the store sniggered at the abuse of the human and Anthony tensed as Tosh shot him a glance to warn him off any harsh actions against their master. Anthony was loyal to a fault but was never as clever as his brother and he was prone to actions without the proper consideration. He would readily attack the master but with customers in the store and Tosh already on the floor and with blurred vision in his one eye, the boys would not win that fight and would most likely be put to death.

As with most days, Tosh and Anthony spent the rest of the working silently and obediently, trying to stay out of the way of Terhil. Luckily there were no dropped items or angry customers so they escaped without further beatings and were even granted ten minutes each as a break to choke down food near the middle of the day. At the end of the day, as Terhil closed the shop and locked it from the outside, it was all they could do to keep from collapsing before he was outside the shop.

“One day he’ll forget to lock that door” Anthony said staring off at nothing in particular.

“It wouldn’t matter.” Tosh said depressingly. “He doesn’t pay us, so we’d have no money for food or a place to stay. And we’re the only two humans left so if we went into the wilderness, we’d be alone. And while you can most likely survive, I doubt I’d be so lucky.”

“You know I’ll protect you.” Anthony was always protective of his little brother. “And besides, there might be more humans. Terhil’s never left this damn town, he doesn’t know what’s outside its walls.”

“Well, even if it does kill us, it’s probably better than staying here.” Tosh thought silently for a moment. “You know what? We’re going to get out of here.”

“How?” Anthony asked. He wasn’t as much concerned about what might come next, simply hoping to properly prepare himself for it. He knew his little brother was smarter than he and he would trust and follow him anywhere.

“Grab some of the scrap metal from the corner, just some small pieces tonight. No more than ten of them. I have an idea!” and with that Tosh jumped up with a new burst of energy and a new glimmer of hope in his eyes.

Tiministry: 2econd Generation - Chapter 1

2011-10-25T11:37:00.000-07:00

I'm home sick today, which is not fun. Luckily, my boss and coworkers are awesome and were ok letting me go home early. So, in between my being sick and pathetic, I've been working on my sequel to the Tiministry story I wrote a few years ago. And yes, I'm aware of how overdone and unoriginal and just plain lame it is to use a 2 instead of an 'S' in the subtitle for this story, but I don't care. Anywho, I'm putting the first chapter here and I'll make another post in a few minutes with the second chapter. Read it and let me know what you think!

1

He stood in the rain and he waited. Holding his breath he didn’t move. Not even when the crash of thunder echoed off the landscape around him did he flinch. He was perfectly still. Rain trickled down his hair and body. It soaked into every fiber of his clothing but he did not get a chill. He trained for this; he waited for this moment.

She crouched in the rain, like an animal waiting to pounce. The night was perfectly dark but she knew her prey was near. She crouched and she waited. Any moment now.

A bolt of lightning sliced through the sky. For two whole seconds the night sky was transformed by the current tracing a jagged rift through its center. For two seconds the sky became as bright as it would were the sun still there. In those two seconds he saw 17 people around him. He saw each of their faces and knew where they stood. He sized them up and knew the distance from himself to each one of them. In two seconds she saw every rock that stood above the ground, every low-hanging branch, every tree stump or fallen limb.

Ever the pacifist, Colin studied his enemy. He learned their strengths and weaknesses and would only enter a fight if needed, and when it was needed, he was cool and calm and calculated and knew exactly how to win.

She was his opposite. Keara was the aggressor in every encounter. Whilst he viewed the people around him and prepared to fight them, she studied every place she may need to step, every stick she could use as a weapon. He thought only of his opponents to ready himself to face them – she thought only of herself and knew she was ready to face anyone. They were perfect opposites but both perfect warriors. Either of them would be unstoppable. Tonight though, only one would be allowed to win, so tonight one of them would have to falter. They each knew it and they refused to be the one to fall.

Once the thunder ceased and the world around them was silent again, they sprung into action. Colin, true to his pacifist nature stood and waited for the first one to get to him, knowing it would be the man behind and to the left of him. As he got close enough and raised his fist to attack Colin from behind, Colin casually but forcefully grabbed the man’s fist while dodging slightly to his right and pulled him forward, using his own momentum against him and drawing him hard to the ground. That was the first one to hit the ground.

Keara bolted from her spot the moment she knew everyone around her began to attack. She ran barefoot, being sure to step only on the large rocks she saw in the light – they would be protruding higher and would not be slick or cause her to lose her balance at a crucial moment. When she heard someone behind her she quickly ran toward the nearest branch. She leapt and grabbed the branch as the man closed in and as she swung up, parallel with the ground, she released the branch with one hand, flipped herself over and came back down from the peak of her swing with her legs facing forward and caught the man with the full force of both legs right in the chest. She quickly climbed up onto the branch and perched herself, ready to spring on the next victim.

Colin heard two more approaching him, one from in front of him and one from his right side. The girl in front of him closed in before the one to his right and she was wielding a good sized rock in her fist when she swung. Colin artfully ducked under her swing, grabbed the woman around her midsection and with a display of brute strength he hoisted her and tossed her to his right. There was a loud thud as she struck the other oncoming attacker and they both collapsed to the ground.

Keara heard someone running quickly toward her and would most likely have passed below her if she hadn’t dislodged a long dead branch from the tree and then dropped, hanging from the lower branch again, with the branch held by the backs of her knees. The man approached quickly and was completely blind to the dead limb as he clotheslined himself on it and dropped to the ground sputtering and choking.

5 were now out of the way.

The lightning illuminated the sky once again and Colin quickly looked around to see that 3 of the other fighters had hit the ground and were gone. There were only ten people left and he could easily dispatch 8 of them.

Two were fighting nearby so he slowly got behind one of them and as the man furthest from him swung, Colin grabbed the man and thrust him forward. The man who had just thrown the punch lost his balance as the other man collided with him and fell to the ground. Colin’s ragdoll opponent managed to keep his feet and turned quickly to face Colin. He swung hard at Colin and hit him hard in the chest. Colin stumbled back one step and then grabbed his attacker’s fist. The man started to swing with his other fist but Colin got very low and charged forward. When his head was between the man’s knees he stood up and flung the man over his back.

A larger man quickly kicked Keara in the back and she stumbled forward. She would have fallen but she still held the large branch and stuck the end of it into the ground for support and caught herself mid-fall. Before he could attack her again she brought up her left leg and kicked him squarely between the legs bringing him almost instantly to his knees. She quickly got up and swung the branch at his head and right as it was about to connect a woman vaulted him from behind and kicked Keara, knocking her back. The man fell forward due to both the pain of the first blow and being pushed down as the second fighter hand-planted over him. Keara recovered from her stumble but had dropped the branch and now stood to fight this woman. Keara tried to kick the woman in the head with a high roundhouse kick but the woman brought up a quick defensive block. The woman leapt forward and brought her knee into Keara’s stomach. Keara doubled over and the woman dropped her elbow forcefully on Keara’s spine. Pain shot through her back and she almost fell. She grabbed the woman’s knees and pulled her legs forward. Her footing was not as calculated as Keara’s and she lost traction in the mud and fell on her back.

Colin watched as one more opponent was taken out and counted four people other than himself still standing.

The five remaining fighters were all quite skilled; that is why they were all here. Only one of them was to be victorious though, so the others must fall. One of the two remaining adversaries grappled with Colin and occupied him while the other man and woman attacked Keara. With a jump and a quick upward kick to the jaw, Keara brought the man to his knees before he could even take an aggressive move toward her. She spun and put all her momentum into a roundhouse kick to the side of his head knocking him onto his side with a humiliating thud. Keara then focused her attention on her female adversary.

The man Colin now fought was not a big man or a particularly strong man, but he was quick. Colin could move and react quickly, but not nearly as quick as the man he now faced who didn’t hit him with force but did manage to land several series of quick nimble hits that were starting to wear Colin down. Colin threw a weak punch to distract the man and as he quickly dodged under it Colin swept his foot behind the man’s and pulled him off his feet. He fell backward but caught himself with one hand and as Colin lifted his foot and stomped at his ankle the man back flipped using only his one hand and landed and landed in a crouch just out of Colin’s reach. Colin may not have been the quickest fighter but he was battle-wary and had learned to fight from several excellent teachers and he knew what his opponent was about to do. He took an exaggerated lumbering step forward as if he were going to charge using only brute strength and played to his opponents obvious strength. The crouched man leapt in an attempt to grapple Colin and sway his balance but Colin was expecting this. After a step forward he planted his back foot and when the man leapt toward him, he was ready for it. He caught him in mid air and swung around, dropping to the ground and landing on top of the man, crushing him to the ground. Colin turned to see Keara fighting a woman and a man creeping toward her from behind in the dark. He rolled off his opponent, quickly grabbing a nearby rock and yelled for Keara to duck as he quickly rose from his roll and pitched the rock toward her.

She was mid-swing at her foe when she heard the warning from Colin and dropped to her knees quickly as a good-sized rock soared just over her head and collided with the face of her would-be assailant creating a sickening crunch as it, at the very least, broke his nose. While the other fighter lost her focus at the distraction, Keara rose with an upper-cut to the woman’s jaw and with that final blow the woman fell and almost instantly a series of fires lit around the clearing they stood in and illuminated the scene.

“You cheated!” the woman screamed at Keara as the village elders gathered the contestants together.

“It’s not my fault you lost sight of your fight. You should be aware of everything around you but also watch your opponent at all times.” She responded calmly.

“That man cheated, not her!” Colin interrupted, pointing to the man still lying on the ground, holding his face in his hands. “He was done once he hit the ground but he was coming from behind her to cheat.”

“All of you be quiet. You are warriors, not children. You” the old man started while pointing at the bleeding man on the ground “were acting outside of the rules by trying to interfere with the battle after falling in battle. However, you also had fallen” He said after turning his attention to Colin. “and therefore were also outside of the rules of the fight when you intervened with his attack.”

“So they cheated, I’m still in the fight” the woman started to whine.

“Silence!” the old man said with clear agitation in his voice. “You are eighteen years old and your whining does not become you. They did act outside the rules but Keara did not and when you fell it was because you did not stay focused on your opponent. That is no one’s fault but yours and Keara is the winner of this battle.”

An older woman approached Keara with a stoic but proud look on her face. “You should hold the title of champion with pride Keara. You are a granddaughter of one of the four heroes that saved our race and our planet. They were heroes and they gave their lives in the ultimate battle to save the world from the evil that had settled upon its surface. We train and become strong to honor them and to be prepared in case we, also, are ever called upon to be heroes in a time of dire need.”

“If they were such great heroes, why aren’t they still protecting us?”

“Keara, you should know the legend. They defeated hordes of demons and every race of creature to now walk the earth once the Armageddon destroyed the world they knew. They struggled to the very tower of the evil that had destroyed the world and they defeated him, giving their own lives to save the remaining humans and the other inhabitants of the world.”

“They could defeat everything they encountered but couldn’t defeat that one evil being? And if they killed him, how did not at least one of them live?”

“You’ve seen the monument outside our village. You know where the four heroes lie. Why do you question their legend? And hopefully the time for needing heroes has passed.”

“So then why have the challenge? Why crown a champion or even tell us of our heroic descendants if we’ll never again need heroes?”

“Though we don’t foresee it happening, we never know what evil will threaten our very lives. While the humans are slowly rebuilding their species, there are now many other inhabitants of this world, many of them disliking us for ruling the world exclusively for so long. That is why we now live in this village and not in one of the cities that have sprung up around the world. Now stop troubling yourself with what has happened and what has yet to be. Go back to your home and worry only of the present and your own future. You should celebrate, you trained hard to become the champion you proved yourself to be today.”

Although the village was having a large gathering that night to celebrate the champion, Colin and Keara went straight back to their hut. Neither of them wanted attention or praise. Neither of them wanted a title. They simply wanted to prove to themselves that they were stronger than any adversaries and so far, they were.

“You didn’t need to drop out of the fight.” Keara said casually as she readied herself to sleep.

“You wouldn’t have won if I hadn’t. Even if you took them down, you couldn’t beat me.” Colin replied with a casual tone. Had he been facing toward Keara she would have seen the grin on his face.

“You’re just lucky you didn’t have to be proved wrong about that today.” She said with a grin of her own as she crawled into bed. She knew he was at least her equal and that she may have lost to him. She also knew that right now she was incredibly sore and now that the fight was over, she took down her mental block on her pain and welcomed the soothing sleep ahead. “Sleep well” she started “tomorrow we’ll have to start training even harder now that we’re champions.”

“You’re a champion now,” Colin replied “You have to start training harder.”

“Then don’t sleep well!” she retorted and closed her eyes. He mumbled a reply that she didn’t hear and soon they were both asleep.

Keara and Colin both woke without a sound as they heard muffled voices outside their hut.

“…Champion or not… let’s see how she’ll do without… fire…”

Only parts of the conversation were audible but both of them knew nothing good was about to happen.

The door slowly opened and two figures crept into the house. Colin and Keara both quietly lay awake, waiting for the right moment to strike. Keara had slipped her hand under her pillow where she kept a throwing knife and Colin tightly gripped the right side of his mattress. One of the figures whispered something to the other and then they both lit the torches they had been carrying and that’s when the twins sprang into action.

Keara quickly sat up and flung the blade at the illuminated face before her, filleting the cheek of her would-be attacker while Colin slipped off the left side of his mattress and used his weight and momentum to pull up the mattress and hurl it at the other attacker, knocking him to the ground. There was a loud scream as the attacker under the mattress caught fire from his mishandled torch and soon the flames spread to the mattress.

Keara sprung from her bed and vaulted the flaming mattress, tackling the other attacker in the doorway as she was trying to escape. The torch from her hand rolled harmlessly into the grass. Colin quickly followed through the doorway as the flames started to engulf the building. The growing flames produced light enough to see the face of the attacker and Keara soon recognized Alice, the girl who had accused her of cheating in the tournament earlier that day. She looked up at Colin who also recognized her and they both quickly realized that the other attacker was most likely the male villager who had cheated. Colin turned to go back in the house to try and retrieve him when the flames surged hotter and bigger and completely engulfed the building.

Soon the flames had alerted and awakened the entire villagers and the elders arrived to see Keara still on top of her attacker. As they pulled her off Alice started screaming “She attacked me! They killed Johnathan and tried to kill me!”

“Liar!” Keara cried in vain as the elders turned scornful looks at her. She could see the distrust in their eyes. The elder from earlier quickly pulled her aside and Colin as well.

“You two must leave. I believe that the girl is lying and I believe in the two of you, but the town has grown jealous of the bond you two share for some time now and this will not end in your favor even if you are truly innocent. Take what you need from my hut and leave this village tonight. There is rumor of another human settlement far to the north. That tribe never had a kinship with this one and may not welcome you but if you are unseen you might be able to gather the other supplies you need there. Stay away from large cities. I wish I had time to explain further but there are many other races of creature in this world and they don’t all like humans. Go now while I try to calm the villagers.”

The twins hesitated only for a moment and turn and ran. By the time the first villager yelled ‘murderers’ they had already filled two packs at the elder’s hut and were outside the edge of the village.

“Is this that harder training you were talking about?” Colin asked in humor as Keara and he fled the village.

“I don’t know about that but at least we don’t have to hear Alice anymore.”

“That’s true.” Colin pondered for a moment before adding “I like this already.”

Time to gripe and I do it well!

2011-10-24T18:20:00.000-07:00

So it has come to my attention today that a law is being proposed that will make having copyrighted material in a public video will now be a punishable felony offense. A felony! I know, for a fact, that a person I went to school with (who I'm not naming only because I don't want to get arrested again, even if it is to defend my morals and beliefs of freedom of speech and expression as well as a firm belief in the Right-to-Know when it comes to pedophiles) molested a young boy but because he was also underage at the time he was not tried or punished and was not made to register as a sex offender. Other pedophiles often get out after a short matter of years for good-behavior. So raping kids is mildly acceptable but if your favorite Metallica song is playing in the background of your latest vlog installment on YouTube, you're going to prison!

Pardon my language but what the Fuck is wrong with this country? I don't want to live anywhere else but I'm really starting to not want to live here either. Even though prostitution is a victimless crime that is funding the entire state of Nevada to the point where they don't need a sales tax, we won't legalize it. Even though legalizing marijuana would allow us to make tax income off of it, take lots of finances and power away from gangs including the currently unstoppable Mexican cartels and would also serve many positive medical purposes, we won't do that either. Even though lethal injection is cheaper and entirely deserved by many convicted murderers and rapists, we give them life sentences. Even though they are equal citizens and human beings much like women or black people in previous equal rights movements, we refuse to allow gay people equal rights (although my home state finally came around on that one.) All of that stuff stays illegal and/or frowned upon in most places but the movement to censor speech and expression is fine if it happen to contain a clip of copy written material.

And don't confuse this, this is not about piracy. Selling a bootlegged movie or a downloaded CD is still illegal now, and should be. I've even bootlegged movies before, but in all fairness, I did so while they were between being aired in theaters and being released on DVD. Green Lantern was a good example. I missed it in theaters so I downloaded it prior to its DVD release. When it then came out on DVD, I bought it. By the way, now that I own a physical copy, having a digital copy is not illegal. So it's not even an issue, though my timing was off.

But I'm getting off topic. This isn't about piracy. This will make it possible to arrest people using protected material in public videos like those on YouTube. Now, as much as I hate to do this, and trust me, I REALLY hate to do this, but I'm going to defend Justin Beiber. I hate Justin Beiber as an artist and while I don't know him, he seems like a douche and I hate him as a person too. However, in the beginning of his "career" he was sampling other peoples' music and making his own videos and posting them online. Well, now he gets to go to prison get raped by a large black man who will probably be singing Baby. People trying to become professional skaters who put together video clips of their best tricks and accomplishments and put an underground punk song in over the audio from the various clips will now be tried as a felon according to this law. If you even post a video of your friends and you dancing in your room to your favorite song or getting a great pool shot while out a bar and Kid Rock's All Summer Long can be heard in the background, you go to prison. Not jail, no, prison! You are tried as a felon and serve real time! And music isn't the only protected material. People on sites like PowettTV or even the Angry Video Game Nerd who do video game reviews are using footage and music from that game and I'm willing to bet they never asked permission from Activision, Midway or Sega prior to doing so, meaning they too would be felons. So no more underground rap stars like T.I. getting a start off samples and internet videos. (Even Eminem started that way. The song Hellbound off his self-published Off the Wall album samples music and voice-acting from the Soul Calibur video Game) No more video game reviews from people that aren't paid by the same game companies they review. And Mike Relm will now be out of a job because you can't remix movie trailers or Old Spice commercials any more without written consent.

If this passes, it will kill the career of all the aforementioned online video producers as well as many many others. It will land innocent teenagers in jail just because they didn't realize the song in the background of the video they took at their graduation party was playing audibly in the video. In fact, I couldn't even put my mother's wedding videos on YouTube for all my relatives to see because the music playing in the background is copyright protected. This is one of the most unreasonable laws I can't think of, even more so than the other ones I mentioned earlier and if this passes it will be a huge blow to free speech, free expression and just freedom in general. In China they also censor all online videos and websites and even block certain video games from being played. Way to try to be more communist America! If only Occupy Wall Street could be more like the protests going on in other countries; you know, the ones that actually accomplish something!

But, I guess that's it for now. I'll post again soon with the first two chapters of the sequel to my Tiministry story. My most popular story only because I had four guaranteed readers when I wrote it. (The other three members of the Tiministry and my girlfriend at the time, who was amazing and would have done anything to please me, even read my crap writing.) Until then, I'm going to keep listening to Dennis Miller because he is one of the few people that makes a great deal more obscure references than I do. I mean more obscure as in the reference things that are far lesser known and also that he does it much more often and something goes so far as to sub-reference a second thing all in one long drawn out run-on metaphor. It's really quite admirable.
But yeah, that's it. S.978 is the bill by the way. Go rebel against it in any and every way you can or the terrorists win!

New, Old and Funny as Hell!

2011-10-20T18:48:00.000-07:00

Just how funny is hell exactly? I mean, in Little Nicky it seems like a nifty place and there are many humorous aspects, yet in Dante's Divine Comedy, Hell comes off as a pretty miserable place indeed. Unbaptized babies and people being constantly metamorhphasized and a giant named Nimrod. Well, he's cool but the rest sounds bad.

Anywho... that's not the point! I am so in love with Sexy Nerd Girl. No, that's not the point either. Just a shout out to a funny (and hot red-headed) nerdy girl on YouTube.

Ok, and now the point:

I bought Dragon Age II recently. It's been a while since I last played the first one and sadly there's even been some DLC for it I hadn't yet downloaded or beaten. So, in a severe act of self-control I decided to replay through the first game and then play all the DLC to completion before jumping into the second game. The benefit of this is that after I am done, I can't export that character and carry his storyline and the choices I made in that playthrough into the lore of the second game. Also, this gives me a chance to snag the acheivements I missed before and gives me time to save enough Microsoft points to get all the DLC for the second game. Of course, hard to save points when Rock Band keeps putting out more good songs each week. Although I don't care much about Coldplay, they have a couple good songs which were just put out as well as The Party Song by Blink 182 a week ago and a bunch of Breaking Benjamin either this coming Tuesday or the one after.

Ok, I'll be less nerdy now. I just watched Cop Out. Now, I know, Kevin Smith movies aren't usually less nerdy than video games, but this one has Bruce Willis in it, so it's automatically awesome. This movie has actually been out for a while, but for some reason I hadn't ever gotten around to seeing it. I'm regretting than now because it was quite funny. Sean William Scott (American Pie and Bulletproof Monk) had a minor role in it and Tracy Morgan (Stuff with a black guy that isn't Samuel L Jackson or Morgan Freeman) acted opposite Willis. Actually, speaking of Sean William Scott, American Pie is making a fourth movie (I know there's been more than four already but this is the fourth following the original cast and storyline.) And this one is actually bringing back the entire original cast, even Oz who was only in the first one, as well as Kevin, Finch, Stiffler, his mom, and even the asian guy who brought you all the acronym MILF. I'm excited. But yeah, Cop Out was good. So if you are like I was three hours ago and haven't seen it yet, now's the time, go pick up the DVD somewhere and watch it!

Oh, one more thing. (I still can't say that without thinking of Grandpa from the Jackie Chan cartoon.) Weird Al put out a new CD recently and no one told me! It's called Alpocalypse and as usual, it's funny! Unfortunately, the songs are mostly parodies of rap songs which mean they are, in fact, rap songs. I don't like rap, but Weird Al is surprisingly good at it and he parodies the stuff that's relevant and since rap has someout taken over the music industry, that's where he has to go to keep an audience.

But yeah, long story short, Dragon Age is still the shit! So is Weird Al and Kevin Smith! That was bad grammar! I use too many exclamation points! American Pie is finally coming back with a good movie! I'm going to bed!

Goodnight!

Getting real for a second...

2011-10-13T04:35:00.001-07:00

You know what I hate? Rape. Now I know that sounds stupid, because there aren’t many people out there going “boy, I really love rape!” but there isn’t a good way to segway into that topic and it’s what I’m gonna talk about… So there it is.

First off, I want to say that rapists should just be killed. I don’t mean this stupid death row program we have now, I mean killed. Right in the court room if you have to. Once they guilty bastard is proven guilty we should simply remove the horrible monstrous filth that is his life from this planet. As the system stands now, when a rapist is found guilty, he is thrown in jail where the taxpayers (including the person(s) he raped) have to pay for his housing, meals and entertainment during the duration of his sentence. And he will eventually be released because the death penalty is not often given to rapists.

This is ridiculous! They are almost worse than murderers. When you murder someone, at least they are dead afterward and don’t have to suffer. If you rape someone, they carry that around forever! I know, for a fact, that at least 4 of my exes were raped or sexually abused as well as an unsettling large amount of my female friends. Some of them had small benders of random casual sex because they no longer thought they were worth anything to a man. Some completely changed their personality because of it. Some refuse to let themselves be touched by a man now because they are embarrassed by or don’t want to associate it with what happened to them in the past. And what’s worse; I don’t think a single one of them pressed charges or had the person arrested.

I know that it is actually a common practice for women to not mention a rape or to pursue legal action against the rapist. And there are countless reasons for this. Some girls are embarrassed by what happened to them, some think they deserved it and some just think it is so unheard of that everyone might think something is wrong with them afterwards.

Let me just say, it sadly is not uncommon at all. Like I said, more than half of them women I have had relationships with have been raped or abused. It’s horrible to have to say that and I hate that that is a real statistic, at least in my life, but it seems to happen a lot. A lot of girls suffer through this pain, and I know most of the ones I dated don’t tell their friends or family about this. Even the ones that it happened to prior to my dating them were hesitant to tell me while we were together, maybe thinking I wouldn’t accept them afterward. I of course did not hold this against them or look at them any differently. It is not their fault that this happened to them and there is no way they were asking for it. No girl ever asks for that. Even if the girl does habitually partake in casual sex or even group sex, that does not mean she should be subjected to unwanted sex, no, not unwanted sex, rape. I will not downplay it. Even if the girl is working as a prostitute, if she says no, then anything that happens against her will afterward is rape. I don’t know what the hell goes wrong in a man’s brain to make him think this is ok.

It scares the hell out of me that my nieces Keara or Aubrey will have to grow up and this will be a real threat to them. What scares me worse is that if this does happen, which I don’t want to honestly consider, they might be one of the scared or embarrassed women and won’t even want to tell anyone. Like I said, my exes (three of them anyways) know the names of the people that did this to them but refused to call the police or do anything to bring this person to justice. They simply suffered through the pain by themselves in whatever they chose. And while their coping methods might not have been the best, I can’t say I would have handled it any better, and I won’t pretend I can fully understand what they went through. I just wish none of them would have had to. Even a girl that I completely hate (and there are a few) doesn’t deserve something like that. Luckily, they have at least trusted me enough to tell me what happened to them and I tried my best to tell them it wasn’t their fault. And if anyone reading this has suffered similarly, it wasn’t your fault either. I will never reveal or even hint toward which of my friends or exes have had this happen to them because that is entirely their life and their business and I’m only using the numbers to make a point. But if anyone reading this has gone through something horrible like rape, you aren’t alone, unfortunately, not even close. I’m sure you unknowingly have a friend or even relative who has gone through it or is going through it and if you open yourself up and tell people what happened, you might be surprised at how willing people are to listen to or help you.

And let me just repeat for any of the girls I know who went through this, and any girl anywhere who’s went through this; it is NOT your fault! It does happen often but it is not normal. Don’t be embarrassed, don’t feel dirty and certainly don’t feel at fault. No real man would love you any less because of it and no true friend would think less of you or refuse to talk to you. It sucks and I’m sure it hurts and is the most difficult thing to have to try and deal with, but people will help you if you let them.

Sunday, F'ing Sunday!

2011-10-09T18:47:00.000-07:00

So, I had an interesting day. (I really have to stop starting blogs with the words 'So' or 'Yeah'.)

First off, out of the blue, an old friend I had it out with a while back contacted me. We caught up, settled our differences and starting talking again. Actually, let me ellaborate. We didn't settle our diferences, we simply let them dissappear. You see, with a friend you've had for a long time, and I don't mean for a couple years, I mean someone that is in almost every good story you had; Someone who actually knows your entire extended family, someone who names the name of your pets and also why you named them that, with someone like that, no matter how long you were mad at each other or how long you were talking, you can let any problem simply disolve away if you both decide to. And today, we did. We caught up quickly and then just hung out, like we never missed a beat. We went right back to bickering and picking on one another and it just felt normal. I met my friend's niece (who is practically my niece) and had great dinner with a family I got to reconnect with. In return, I had to clean out a small inflatable kiddie-pool that is actually a minion of death and had claimed the lives of two fully grown (and now even more fully bloated) squirrels as well as a fledgling bird. I met with my friends new significant other who also happened to be an old coworker of mine from a job I had almost 6 years ago and the world got just a little bit smaller.

So after our catching up and the birthday party for the gorgeous little girl (who's mother does not understand why thin white fabric dresses should not be warn in sunlight without under layers) we went to see my ex-bosses band perform at a local bar. I would tell you the name of the band but I honestly don't remember what it was. The band was surprisingly good. And let me say that again; the BAND was surprisingly good. The singer was crap! In fact, that's far too weak a statement. If the earth were too explode, bursting into an unimaginable amount of tiny particles of it's former self and everything on it and those particles flew off in every direction of the universe, the small particle of dog poop that happened to have fermented in a shallow puddle that hit the sun and turned into a tiny poof of noxious gas and poo-vapor, this singer would be less important than that theoretical poo-vapor. The band was good though. They did covers, but not at all the ones you'd expect. Manson's The Beautiful People, Drowning Pool's Bodies, Black Sabbath's Black Sabbath (name of the song and artist, in case you were deaf dumb and blind and also live under a rock) as well as some tunes by Skynyrd, Tool and Shinedown were all played. Luckily, around the end of the year, this band is ditching it's current crap excuse for a singer and adopting a new one as well as a new name. I personally think they should call the band The Middle-Age Lesbians because that really just sounds like a kick-ass name for a band. But, when that band reforms without its shittiest member, I'll see them again and let you all know how it is.

And now to my final bit of news, I finally got around to watching Fast Five today. Let me just say, god damn that was a good movie! What The Expendables did for classic action films, Fast Five did for the current generation of action films. This movie was amazing! The fight scene between Vin Deisel and Dwayne Johnson was epic, and the scene where the lined up the four police interceptors and got ready to run the qurter mile made me tingle in all the right places, wink wink nudge nudge say no more, know what I mean? Watching movies like this really makes me miss driving. And I don't mean the minivans I've had recently because it keeps my insurance premiums down, I mean my little '89 Beretta. 2 doors, 4 cylinders, dual 12" subs and the ability to break 120 mph and get completely airborne at that speed. I may have blown out the shocks and struts on that jump, but I still remember the feeling of literally making that car fly and it was completely worth the repair bill. I'm gonna get another Beretta one of these days. My dream car is still a '53 Corvette and I'm also quite partial to the '61 Lincoln Continental, but man I loved sitting behind the wheel of my Beretta. It was one of the only cars I didn't mind sitting low to the ground in. And it just hugged the corners. I could take a corner on a dirt road at 45 and still not slide into the ditch (most of the time.)

But, now that I've reminisced and recomended a movie and done the opposite of recomend a shitty singer, I'm gonna go to sleep. Because, regardless of whether or not my day was a rather good one, I have to wake up early and go to work tomorrow...

Goodnight all, and remember:

Haters don't really hate you, they hate themselves because you're a reflection of who they wish they were.

Ranting for no reason...

2011-10-07T18:52:00.000-07:00

I promise, I'll actually mention video games this time! But first...

Google is selling it's soul! Actually, it's selling my information and search history, but either way, that's messed up! See, Halloween is coming. And being as how that is the most important holiday of the year, I was online looking at getting white-out lenses. At work I'm gonna wear my "normal" clothes on Halloween so since I'll already be freaking everyone out, I might as well make my irises dissappear and really mess with their heads. And later today, I was looking to see if anything funny was uploaded on Ebaums and wouldn't you know there just happens to be an ad on the top of the page for cosmetic lenses, including several various white-out lenses. Now, I was tempted to search for something really weird, but I don't really want to see an ad for a donkey show anyways...

But hey, Google can do whatever they want, they own half the damn world anyways.

Speaking of YouTube (which is owned by Google) does anyone else get pissed off that the page will load every ad on the top, bottom and sides of the page before loading the main video. And god help you if more than one of those ads has video in it. Those videos will load and stream just fine, but the two 6 minute Philip DeFranco show you're trying to watch will be buffering for 9 and two thirds years. It's bad enough that half the videos will actually load and play a commercial before letting you actually watch the video.

Ok, video games now! A new X-Men game is being made. And this one is a step closer to the game I really want! In this one you get to choose one of three characters, and you can choose which power they will have. And throughout the game you can choose whether to be a good mutant or an evil one. And you'll eventually be aligned with the one side (Xavier) or the other (Magneto) which is nifty. I am actually looking forward to this game. Actually, I'm looking for the next game down the line when they make a full open-world X-Men game where you get a character builder like Activision makes for the Tony Hawk or Rock Band games and you can choose from a huge variety of powers. And then you wander around the open world and meet other mutants, but none of them are in the school for mutants or working under Magneto's command. You just meet random mutants and either choose to have them join you or tell them to go screw. So as you progress, the natural relationships between the characters in the Marvel universe will unravel as they will. If you have Rogue with you, Gambit will want to join you. If you have Cyclops with you, Wolverine will probably kill you. Etc... Etc... That way you can choose any collection of mutants you want, regardless of the alignment they usually have, and each time you play will be a different experience. Almost like Marvel Ultimate Alliance as far as the party options, but I want my opponents to not just be the villians, but also the usual heroes who hate the villian I alligned myself with will also act against me. That would be way more fun!

But hey, no game companies listen to me! Do you know how many times I've requested that Harmonix put In the Air Tonight in Rock Band? But no, I keep getting crap every week! Next week it's 3 songs I don't know by Blink 182 and a song I could care less about by the Clash... and soon, it's Coldplay! Yeah, aren't you excited? I want to boot up Rock Band just so I can rock out to... Coldplay. Could be worse, could be Stevie Wonder! Oh wait, that's the week after Coldplay.

Ok, on to my next random topic.

What is with the stigma around death? Not other people dying, that sucks, but if you die, why would you care? I once hear someone say, "I don't want to die because then I won't exist and I don't want to not exist." First off, that just sounds stupid. Second, if you don't exist, then you don't know you don't exist so it can't very well bother you, can it? The Easter Bunny doesn't exist, do you think he's annoyed about it? No! Because he doesn't exist, retard! And I know sometimes people are scared to die because they will miss someone who's still alive. The thing is, once you die, you won't miss them anymore. The ability to miss someone goes away when your brain stops, which is one of the symptoms of death. So, that's dumb too. Now, a couple people are scared about what's going to happen after they die. There are basically 3 schools of thought on the subject. No matter which one you follow, there's no reason to worry about it. Either you A. Think there is a blissful afterlife. If so, why is that something to worry about? It's Heaven, it's Nirvana, it's Paradiso! I mean, the people that believe that also believe in Hell, but not a single person who believes in Hell thinks he's going there. Have you ever met a Muslim, Jew, Christian, or whatever that will openly say "Yeah, I've led a bad life though and I don't think I'm gonna ask for forgiveness because I don't feel like it. I'm sure to go to hell." No one ever says that. They all know they are going to Heaven. Nothing to fear there.

Now, thought B. Reincarnation. People think they will die and then be reborn into a new life to live again and experience even more of what mortal existence has to offer. For the same reason I mentioned above, these people don't expect to be reborn as a starving Ethiopean. They all expect that they will come back as a fancy European prince and will live out the movie Arthur having everything they ever want and a pleasant but snarky maid to make sure they are always happy. Well, I saw that movie, and I thought it was great. Why would anyone fear that?

Onto thought C. My personal train of thought on the subject. Death. Just plain Death. You die and cease to be. No afterlife, no more thoughts, no heaven or hell, no coming back as a prince or leper or anything. You just die. You no longer feel pain or happiness. No joy. No Sorrow. No anything. You can not see, hear, taste, smell or touch anything. You are dead. There is nothing to fear because you will no longer be able to fear anything. You wouldn't even be you, you just won't even be.

Besides, fearing death is dumb. It's the one single thing that every single person in this entire world will certainly experience, not matter what. You will die, I will die, every person any of us has ever known or loved will also die. It's just going to happen and even if you don't accept it, it will accept you.

And on that bombshell, we end this blog.

A Simple Concept

2011-10-02T10:37:00.000-07:00

I've been watching the show Pawn Stars and on every single episode, almost everyone that tries to sell something to the shop does the same stupid thing. Apparently simple logic escapes every person that enters a pawn shop. They will come in with whatever item they have, not even really knowing what it's worth, and the owner of the shop will get it appraised by an expert in the field. The expert will tell them the item in question is worth, say, $10,000. The shop owner will thank the expert and then ask the customer how much they want to get for the item. Without fail, each person will say "$10,000." What stupid circle of hell must they all have crawled out of? If the item is worth $10,000, then the owner will hopefully be able to sell it for $9,000 - $9,500 depending on how good a salesman he is. That means, of course, that he wants to make a profit, and therefore will not buy the item for it's value. If it is worth $10,000, in order for him to make a profit and keep his business open, he needs to buy the item for $5,000-$7,500 depending on how big the item is and if it needs any work or repairs.

It's the same concept as the idiots that came into Gamestop. They would see a used copy of the game they want to trade in on the shelf for $50 and would assume that they could trade theirs in for $50. Well of course not you moron! No business stays in business by breaking even. It costs money to keep the shop open, to run the registers, to print price tags, to pay the employees, etc... If the store bought the game for any more than $20, they'd lose money on it, even with the $50 price tag.

I don't know why this is such a foreign concept to people. Do you buy a used car for $10,000, fix it up, repaint it, re-upholster it and then resell it for $10,000? No!

I plan to open a game store. I have a Silk Worm test cartridge for NES that is a one of a kind item and I own the only one. I value it at about $2,000. So that will be the market price of the item. Now if I tried to sell it today, to a collector, I'd be lucky to get $900 for it. That person would want to resell it so they would not pay market value. However, once I have my store, that bad boy will be on the shelf with a $1,800 price tag and won't walk out the door for any less. Selling things in a store is the only way you can expect to get market price, because then you are working in a market environment. Otherwise, you're just having a private sale and you either take what you can get, or you go home with your stupid pride and let the item rot in your closet because you don't well enough how buying and selling works.

A Work Blog

2011-09-30T17:41:00.000-07:00

So I believe it's been a while since I blogged about work. I used to do it every day, sometimes multiple times a day. But that's because I worked for one of the worst places in the world... Wal-Mart! But let me not get ahead of myself.

See, let me first explain what makes a job worth keeping. Obviously wages, but I don't mean that, because every idiot knows lots of money is good. I mean the little things that can make a job worth staying at even if the money isn't great. There are a few jobs out there like that, believe it or not.

Actually, my current job is sometimes like that. For example, several times a week, my department will usually collectively get lunch either ordered in or we will go out to a local restaurant to eat. It's nice to be in a small department and be able to all do things together and get a chance to just joke and mess around while eating and not always be professional and focused only on work. Actually, many times we find our department manager paying for everyone else's lunches, much to our detest. I mean, we appreciate it quite a bit, and thank him profusely, but at this point he's bought us all so many lunches that if we wanted to repay him we'd have to buy him a new car. Also, just another small little thing that is of no real consequence but does lighten the day is the white-board in our department. No, white-boards in general aren't fun, but on a usually daily basis we will write a small computer-related quote in the corner of the board. Humorous in nature, of course. So we often have things like "You think your lag is bad? It took Jesus 3 days to respawn!" or "Microsoft bought out Hoover vacuum cleaners, once they get done working it over they'll finally have a product that doesn't suck."

Actuall though, my best example of a good job was Qualicoat. Anyone looking for a job, I suggest you look their. Michael Ponterelli is the best boss I've ever had and actually just a rather nice man, in general. But the good thing about working there is that I was part of a team. When there was an office meeting, I got invited. And if I had input for the meeting, everyone would actually listen to it. I had my own business cards, my own phone extension, I got to use the company car, went on sales calls and customer visits and was even the rep that certain clients dealt with exclusively. The money maybe could have been a little better, but I never really cared because I loved my job and the company itself. Because of how well I was treated at that job, I actually cared about the business itself. I would actually find myself while just driving around living my daily life outside of work looking around at businesses to see if any of them might be potential clients. And at work I always worked as hard as I could because I sincerely wanted the company to do well.

Now, the exact opposite could be said about some other jobs... say... Wal-Mart! Now I know I haven't talked about Wal-Mart in a while, so I figured why not bring it back. Of course, anyone I mention by name, will most likely be a fake name, because although most anyone I worked with is probably now gone and I no longer talk to a single person that worked there with me, I don't want to go to jail again... It's not fun there and I still haven't gotten back the .22 that was confiscated from my house.

Anywho... at Wal-Mart, nobody was part of a team. You were a peon. You did not matter. You worked like a mindless drone in your department and did whatever the manager nearest to you told you what to do. And when the next manager came around and told you to do something that completely conflicted with your last manager's orders, you did it anyways and just accepted the scolding that would come later. You then went to the next department and finished any work the employees there neglected to do. You did not point out that the employees assigned to that department though. Etc...

Sounds like fun right? I bet you're thinking to yourself "Boy, I would certainly be motivated to be at my absolute best on that job!" But wait, there's more! On top of the aforementioned plan for your day, you also had the joy of making minimum wage and the knowledge that you would never be considered for a promotion or a raise. Also, any interaction you had with the customers was pointless. If you interacted well with them and they appreciated your help, some of them would go so far as to fill out a comendation form to let management know how well you served them. I personally know that five such cards will filled out on my behalf from various customers who very much appreciated my help. I never heard a single word of praise for those. I never was given a merit raise or even a stupid piece of paper saying "good job!" with my name printed underneath and an ink stamped signature on the bottom. If this customer did not like me or what I had to say, then I was wrong. Even if I told them they could not return a product they bought, opened, used for 3 months, broke and lost the receipt to because it was against policy, they could call for a manager and after complaining enough the manager would simply over-ride what I said, making me look like an ass and showing the customer that I am stupid and that our company policies are not at all rules and are, at best, mild suggestions. The best is the customers who stole things. Even if I saw them do it and could report to management where they were concealing the stolen goods, I was told to do nothing because I did not have the authority to stop them and would be fired and possibly sued or arrested if I tried to detain them or retreive the stolen goods. Again, motivates you to work hard and try your best, huh?

But don't get me wrong, that wasn't the only shitty job I've had. I've had many other jobs that were ruled but corporate men in suits that never thought of anyone outside of their own comfy offices and cared less for their disposable employees than they did for a used kleenex. GameStop and Kodak both come to mind. Gamestop is a specialty store. That means they specialize in a certain type of product (video games) that they sell exclusively. However, they do not screen their employees for knowledge of that product, nor do they train employees on the products or on good methods to sell them. In fact, the company itself does not care about the products they sell. And I have an example to back that claim up. While working there, a man came in with a bag of Gameboy, Gameboy Color and Gameboy Advance games and accesories he wanted to trade in. We didn't take Gameboy or Gameboy Color games but the customer did not want them back, so even though I was interested in them, according to company policy, I was to throw these products away. The Gameboy Advance games he traded in were in immaculate condition and were even complete with box and instructions. As a video game collector, I was excited that someone would trade in something in such good condition. Unfortunately, turning in a complete mint condition game does not get you any more money than a scratched disc with no case or instructions and a name drawn on the face of the disc with Sharpee. So after ripping off the customer for his Advance games, I was told to throw away the box and instructions and just put the games on the shelf. Not only did we not give the customer extra value for the box and instructions, but we then passed on that non-bargain by selling the games without those things, even though we had them! I am sad to say the store manager forced me to throw out the boxes and instructions and there was nothing I could do. But I did take the Gameboy and Gameboy Color games home with me and still have them all very happily on my shelf.

I was also gonna take some time here to mention how horrible a job Taco Bell was... I even had a few scribled notes for talking points I was going to write about. However, thinking of Taco Bell just reminds me of the incredibly gorgeous puerto rican girl that I worked with who I had a very obvious crush on. Also, I'm listening to a very funny Dennis Miller stand-up show and it's distracting me slightly from my anti-Taco Bell rant. So, I guess for now I'll just end with that.

Qualicoat is the greatest place to work! Taco Bell, GameStop and Wal-Mart are not! And puerto ricans are sexy (at least the one I know is!)

That's it, good night!

Unproductive? I call it Awesomeday! Also, new music!

2011-09-25T18:50:00.000-07:00

So today I did nothing of any real consequence. I did however find lots of virtual stimulation (not the sexual kind, you perverts!) and psuedo-satisfaction, so yay is me!

First off, I went the whole day without actually getting dressed. I did, at one point put on pants, but that's only because I have to go outside to get to the basement, which I have to do to do laundry, which I have to do so that I will have pants to wear to work tomorrow, which I have to do because otherwise my sheer sexyness will distract all my female coworkers, and possibly one or two of the male ones... Ok, I'll stop here... it's getting weird.

So right off the bat, it's a day without pants. Who doesn't love that?!

Secondly, I watched the movie Limitless again. It's a great movei still. I thought maybe it would have become less of one, but it did not and I am quite glad. Well, to be honest, I didn't at all think it's greatness would depreciate but it sounded better than just saying 'hey, I liked this movie last time so I watched it again.' I also watched Bad Teacher, which I haven't yet seen, and it was pretty good too. Now amazing, but I rarely see amazing comedies anymore so that's to be expected. I saw Friends with Benefits a little while ago though and that was much better than I expected.

But, the other things I "accomplished" today were mostly video game related. I gold-starred and almost got a 100% score on the song It Hurts by Angels and Airwaves on Rock Band 3, I played WoW for a bit and level up some of my lowbee toons, I played Crystalis for NES and beat the whole game in under 2 hours, I downloaded a rom hacking utility called Lunar Magic and made my own version of Super Mario World. Well, I started making my own; I only remade the first 5 levels and then got distracted and did other stuff instead. I played Angry Birds on my Ipod for a bit. And I made myself sound like a completely nerdy loser in my blog while talking about video games. See, the funny thing is most people would certainly agree with that statement, however most people (and by most, I mean all) don't even read this blog, and even if they did they'd probably skip the nerdy video game related paragraphs so no one will read that and therefore can't agree with it. Mwa ha ha!

I also saw a video on YouTube today in which Sexy Nerd Girl (that's her self appointed title) compared Schroedinger's Cat to her possibly expired bottle of personal lubricant. It was odd to say the least.

Well, let me now put something on here to actually entertain people instead of just saying non-consequential crap to people that couldn't possibly care less... New music time! Here's some stuff you should be listening to! Granted, I shouldn't tell people what to do, so instead, I shall rephrase. Here's some stuff I suggest you listen to because I personally find that it satisfies my ear-holes in ways you've only fathomed in your most moist of dreams and it pales your current favorite selection of music in such a way that just by comparing those songs to these ones, the artist that sings them will most likely commit suicide. So really, my suggestion will save the life of the sub-par musical artists you currently listen to! Check that out! I'm a humanitarian. :)

Anywho... Here's the songs:

Puddle of Mudd - Everybody Wants You. Yup, it's a cover. Surprised? You shouldn't be! I love 'em, and so do you, admit it!

Egypt Central - Kick Ass. Most people haven't even heard of this band unless they have that music choice channel that Time Warner provides. But this is a damn good song and really, a pretty good band so once you find and enjoy this song, go check out the rest of their stuff.

John Oszajca - I Hate You (My Friend). I heard this in a movie. Even though it was recently, I can't recall which movie it was. It's a very good song though. And I'm glad this blog is the typed variety and not a vlog (which I'm thinking about doing) because I am quite sure I would massacre that name in horrible horrible ways!

Jake Shimabukuro - While My Guitar Gently Weeps. First off, I love almost every version of this song I've heard, except the Beatles' version. I just don't like the Beatles. Frampton did this live and it was amazing! This guy here though does a really good instrumental version... And he plays it on one of those small hawiian guitars! Yes, I know what they're called, but I'm not sure I can spell that word properly and I'm far too lazy to Google it right now.

Also, if any of you want some good softer music. Folksy kinda stuff, try Tinted Image or The Civil Wars. The first is a blues band that I saw at the Jazz Fest in Rochester when they opened for SmashMouth, the other is a band an ex of mine got me into. Both are good!

Well, I guess that's it for this blog. I hope you all had a lazy day of video games, movies and junk food just like me! If not, haha suckers! :)

Pet peeves

2011-09-22T19:01:00.000-07:00

Yep, this rant is all about pet peeves. Except, for me, a pet peeve is not something that just mildy sets me at ill-ease, my pet peeves drive me to borderline physcotic breakdowns and usually I can get over only by picturing Megan Fox in and on that Corvette concept from the second Transformers movie... That can usually make anything better. But, as most everyone has a few things they would classify as pet peeves, I figured I'd share mine. If any of you also hate these things, or have some or your own, go ahead and mention them below. In fact, if anyone is reading this at all, type anything at all in the comment box down below just so I know people are actually reading my blog!

The first is something that almost everyone does, and that's part of why it bothers me. It drives me crazy that so many people are so often wrong, especially because I know, for a fact, that they are wrong. I hate when people interchange the word acronym for the word initials. An acronym is a set of initial that can be pronounced as a word. Laser, Madd, WoW, Scuba, Aids - All acronyms. FBI, NYPD, CBS, CSI - All Initials. Do you pronounce NYPD as "nipped" and FBI as "feebee"? No you don't! You pronounce each letter and call that show that now stars Morpheus "See Es I" because it isn't an acronym, just a set of initials. You know what else isn't an acronym? F.U.! I'm just saying...

Next up... this is a computer related one, but as you are reading this on a computer (most likely) this may be relevant. Anyone that saves any kind of computerized document without returning the cursor to the beginning of the document, you suck! It takes two damn seconds to hit CTRL+Home and saves me from having to open a word document in the middle of the third paragraph on page 15 or an Excel Spreadsheet in cell AD24. Next time someone does this, I might just have to put my pocket knife in their gut because I'm too lazy to put it all the way back in my pocket where it belongs. Same thing, really. Put the cursor where it belongs, at the top of the document, or else you getting stabbed is really due to the precident you set for me. So it'll be your fault! Yeah, how about that!?

Ok, before I find myself in another lawsuit... I'll move along...

Cashiers that can't count or think. Now, I know most people over the age of 20 realize how pathetic it is that a cashier has to look at a screen to know how much change to give after being handed a five for a bill of $4.82 but that's not my complaint here. What I really hate is when my total is $12.36 and I hand the cashier a twenty and then also three singles. I do this so I can get a ten back. But occassionally I get the retarded cashiers who must have only gotten their job because the company they work for needs to fill their law-mandated quota of the mentally challenged and when I hand them a twenty and a few ones they set the ones back down on the counter and then proceed to make change for the twenty and hand back more ones as well as the ones I already handed them. They seem to think that out of sheer boredom I just handed them all the contents of my wallet even though it was far more than needed to cover my purchase. Stupid rat bastards! Use a bit of brainpower. I'm going to master origami so that the next time I am handed a large wad of small bills instead of the one larger one that I wanted, I'm going to fold a nice, strong, long swatch of paper that I can loop around their neck and choke them to death, thus doing the entire world a favor.

Nextly, and this rises bove the level of pet peeve, and may even be a bit more political than I'd usually get, but I hate homophobes! Seriously, there is no point! If you hate gay people, you are just stupid. That is it. There is no excuse, there is no other reasoning, you are just stupid. A person, by themselves, being gay, does not affect anyone other than themselves. Hating them simply for that one trait which, in fact, has no impact on you or anyone except for that person, is just ridiculous, unreasonable and an act of sheer stupidity. That's as stupid as racism, sexism or anything else of that nature. If two males want to have sex with one another in their own home, great! If two females want to get married in a service that they paid for just like anyone else would, I support it! There is no reason why they should be treated any different from anyone else. Just stop being stupid fucks and get over whatever dumb irrartional issue you have with people who are in no way different than you.

Another big one, and this one isn't even a huge deal and I'm not even sure why it bothers me, but damn it if it doesn't drive me fucking insane! I absolutely go out of my skull when people leave time on the microwave! If you pull something out of the microwave with only a few seconds left because for some reason you just couldn't wait for those last three seconds, then hit the reset button. If you don't, I will have to bash your skull in with the damn microwave. I don't know why, but if you leave that time there, that is the trigger for me to kill you. Cause and effect, now you know the cause, so to avoid the effect, just don't fucking do it! Thank you!

Ok, one more, then I'll shut up. For any family members that may be reading this, stop now! You've been warned.

This is probably the most annoying, or at least the worst one for me right now due to my current being single situation. I hate when you find someone who is really good in bed. I mean, they like the same positions as you, the have the same rythym, they move in all the right ways, they like the same kink and fetishes as you, and they can get you off as easily as you can get them off. It's just amazing sex! Now that's not the part I hate. The part I dislike is when you find that person, only to later have the relationship go sour. Now you are single, you are getting no sex, and all you want is that really good sex you were having. It really really sucks! This has happened a few times to me in life, and I despise it! It makes not having sex way worse! If the last person you were with was completely miserable in bed, you wouldn't be so upset that you weren't still having it, but if they were great and you were having a really good time, it makes you miss it that much more. Especially because most breakups never have a real fore-warning. So you never really can know ahead of time. If you could, you would make sure the last time you had sex with that person was great! Take full advantage of the fact that your bodies are in sync and the sex is amazing and just have a day long session of insane lovemaking. Do every crazy thing you both like, have constant orgasms and try every little toy, fetish, position and every single little thing the two of you have even though of trying. I know I can very safely say there are a few things with a few different people that I am quite disappointed I never got to try. I also know that had I known the last time I had sex with that girl was going to be the last time I had sex with her, I would have done it much better!

So there ya go, a bunch of shit that I don't like. Also, let this stand to say that if any of you plan to have sex with me, if it turns out to be really good, make sure you warn me before we stop having sex so that I know when to pull out all the stops and be a complete freak. One of these days I'll find one more really fun girl and try those few things I still want to try.

A real rant

2011-09-18T19:25:00.000-07:00

So today out of extreme boredom I read through some of my old MySpace blogs. And before I get into that, let me address the extreme boredom:

I hate living alone! Seriously, I cannot function by myself. I just need someone around. Preferably a girl that I can be intimate with, but at the very least, a friend. I'm sick of actually looking forward to the work week just to give me something to do. I spent all day today watching movies and playing video games, which is usually something that would give me joy, but when that's my only option for htings to do, I hate it! I have almost no friends and, as usual, no girl wants anything to do with me. I am just really sick of this constantly being alone thing.

Anyways, my old blogs were great! I used to work and Wal-Mart and would have very long-winded blogs that were basically just a lengthy attack on my place of employment and the horrible excuses for humans that I was forced to call my co-workers. And people loved them! I usually got 50-100 views per blog and at least 5 comments (that not a very high percentage of comment to view ratio, but still, way better than I get on here.) So after reading some of those, now I'm in the mood to write another rant. I haven't done this in a while, so hopefully I can remember how. ;)

Friends with benefits. Why is this not a more common practice? Seriously? Instead of trying to meet new people or risk having sex with a drunken stranger after a night at the bar, why not find a trusted friend who you know is free of STD's, will not lie about being on the pill, and won't try to post pictures of your exploits on the internet? It seems that everyone wins in that situation. Granted, sex creates endorphins in the brain that create the feeling of "love" so people might start to associate those feelings with the person they are repetitiously creating them with, but if you can control the urge to get attached, friends with benefits seems like a great thing. Now if only I wasn't so ugly, I could convince a girl of that.

And speaking of friends with benefitsm that's a great movie! Mila Kunis (who is quite attractive) and Justin Timberlake (who I hate as a musician but can actually be a good actor) are the stars and you get to see both of their asses naked in the movie. I have no interest in the posterior of Timberlake, but I was happy with Mila Kunis, I must say. Actually, I watched The Proposal today where Sandra Bullock is mostly naked, covered only by her own hands, and she's quite attractive too! This may all be due to the lack of sex due to the lack of the aforementioned friends with benefits arrangement, or better yet, a girlfriend.

And now, in the true spirit of nostalgic ranty blogs, I will mention work. No proper nouns though because I have learned from my MySpace blogs. I want to avoid being fired or arrested. I now work as the one thing I never really wanted to be. I mean, I went to school for it, but that's when I realized I actually had no interest in it. I am a computer programmer. Well, I was hired because I could be one. Most of the time I'm actually just doing data entry. Either way, it's about as intellectually stimulating as trying to put together a two-piece jigsaw puzzle. My co-workers aren't the worst people in the world. Sometimes they can be... let's say interesting, but I've had much worse. It's just the job itself that I want to change. Ideally I'd like to be working in a non-corporate used video game store. I don't even need to own it, just working in (preferably as a manager) one would be more than enough for me. Gamestop was always great, but the corporate procedures and the dicks I worked with made it unpleasant and eventually I was laid off. The best work environment I've had though was Qualicoat. Yeah, I just broke my proper noun rule twice, but oh well... I guess I'm a liar! So sue me! *Not really... I'm really sick of that court stuff. Don't sue me. Instead, just get the hell over it!*

At Qualicoat I worked in the front office with all the other parts of the management team. Everyone knew everyone's name and we all talked and joked and often went out to lunch together. Even the owner of the business knew the name of every single employee both in the office and out in the plant. I got to sit in on all the meeting and when I had an idea or suggestion, people actually listened to it and it really made me feel good. I don't think anything matters at a job more than feeling as though your contributions are actually noticed and valued. I made less there than I do not and yet, if I had transportation, I would go back to that job over the one I have now just to be part of that team and get the satisfaction of that job again.

Wow... maybe I am getting rusty at this rant thing. That was just positive. That doesn't belong in my blog at all!

I have an idea (yeah, non-subtle subject changes are kinda my thing.) People need to create a meeting place for nerds. Like you can go to a bar and meet all sorts of douche-bag tool guys with popped collars and gel-slicked hair styles and slutty girls who even if they weren't drunk would sleep with most anyone they meet (except me, of course) all the while listening to horrible club music. That's all well and good, but I want to meet someone I could stand to be around for more than a minute and not want to wrap a plastic bag around their head and laugh like a child as they slowly use up all the oxygen and kill off the only two functioning cells in their brains and colapse to the floor in a pile of wasted flesh and Abercrombie clothing. A place for people that are intelligent and interesting. Actually, I want to find a place where I can meet a girl who dresses gothy, plays video games, doesn't smoke, drink or do drugs, listens to all sorts of music, likes action and horror movies, has a child-like innocence, and has a very friendly and adorable demeanor. However, I've only met one such girl in my life, and somehow actually got her to date me but then dumped her because I'm apparently mentally retarded and also a masochist... But without getting into that... Why does no such place exist? I mean yeah, you can go to a library or museum or whatnot to find a more intellectual crowd, but I want something that, much like a bar, has the obvious aura of a breeding ground, yet is not depraved of all logic and intelligence. A singles mingle for people with an IQ at least double their shoe size. If such a place is out there somewhere, please make me aware of it!

Ok... my train of thought just got derailed again... Umm... ... Yeah, I really don't know. I was hoping this compulsive typing would spark something to get my brain going again but apparently it's dead for the night. Oh well, Shiro's light is off, the door is locked, and I've got Stitch and a large knife on either side of me (to snuggle with in lieu of a female and to repel intruders with respectively) in bed so I guess I'll just go to sleep.

It's been fun, keep it real!

Weddings and Birthdays

2011-09-02T17:44:00.000-07:00

Lately my mother got married. It was cool and whatnot but one thing I always notice about weddings is the music. People use the same songs at every wedding and really, they need something more original. For example, God Bless the Broken Road by Rascal Flatts... The last three weddings I went to all had this song as one of the main songs played. It's an ok song and all, but not that good. Now me, at my wedding (assuming I ever find some girl who's actually willing to marry me... which is a long shot, I assure you) I'll play stuff like When It's Love by Van Halen, Don't Wanna Miss a Thing by Aerosmith and The Adventure by Angels and Airwaves. How many weddings can you recall with those songs played? The Aerosmith song, maybe, but I doubt you've heard the other two last time you saw your friends or family walk down the aisle.

But, onto other things that don't involve my mother or weddings... My birthday! Well, I guess in a roundabout way that involves my mother, as I wouldn't have a birthday without her. Other than that though, new topic!

I don't like my birthday, most anyone that knows me knows that. Everything I attempt to do on or for my birthday usually turns to crap so now I try to just avoid doing anything special on or for my birthday. However, being a gamer, my birthday does happen to fall near the beginning of the fall lineup of video games and that's just awesome! This year, there are three in particular that I am quite excited for: Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.

The first one (UMvC3) is an awesome fighting game with a lineup of Marvel Comics' best superheroes and villians and Capcom's most famous video game characters. Two of the characters are tattooed on my arm, in fact (Mega Man and Felicia.) Also in the game's lineup are Firebrand from an old favorite NES game (Gargoyle's Quest), Wolverine, Ghost Rider, Dante (from Devil May Cry) and a lot of other fighters. Marvel vs. Capcom 3 came out a while ago and originally there were plans to release additional characters as DLC in regular intervals. However, the tradgedy in Japan kind of ruined those plans and the people behind this game instead decided to release a second version of the game with 12 additional characters and reimagined versions of the stages in the game. As a rule I usually don't like fast-paced Japanese-style fighters but this game franchise has always been an exception to that rule. The new "Ultimate" version of this game comes out with a $40 pricepoint and only a week and a half after my birthday. So yay!

Next up, Skyrim. The Elder Scrolls games have been very good since as long as I can remember. Daggerfall was an earlier one, and was pretty much just a medievil version of Doom. Since then the game has been evolving and the latest one, Oblivion, was an amazing RPG released as one of the first RPGs on the xbox 360 and I played it quite a lot. My only real complaint about the game is that the enemies in the game level up as you do, so no matter where you go, the enemies are just as tough as you. I prefer games where enemies progress with the different areas, so moving to higher level areas that don't need to be explored until later in the game will present you with much tougher enemies and going back to the starting area will present you with baddies you can pretty much kill by breathing hard. I don't know whether or not that was changed in the new game, but I know that even if they hadn't, it would certainly not stop me from loving this game as much, or more, than Oblivion.

Lastly, Skyward Sword. I always get excited about a new Zelda game. Even that bastardized Windwaker game that introduced the stupid cartoon Link character that is going to kill this franchise was an exciting moment for me. The Zelda series is my favorite series by far and the new one looks quite interesting. No more toon Link or childish graphics, just a real Zelda game. I still have yet to play one that's as good as Link to the Past, but this one could be pretty close.

So, assuming I get gift certificates for my birthday, those games will all be mine and as soon as I play them, I'll blog once again to let you know they are as good as I knew they would be. As for the wedding music, well I'm pretty sure it will be a long time before I blog about my wedding let alone what music I played at it.

Let's start a riot!

2011-08-09T17:39:00.000-07:00

Ok, so if any of you have watched any world news in the past year you may have noticed a lot of countries having riots. Granted, the country isn't sanctioning this, in fact, usually the political leaders fight back against the rioters, but they happen nonetheless. The most recent being the one in London which, unlike the other recent riots, actually is not being carried out by people fighting for freedom and a rigtheous cause, but just a bunch of thugs, looters and pyromaniacs.

Some people are asking if a riot like this could ever happen in the USA. You people are silly. I'm not saying it's because our country is better than other countries and is above this type of thing, quite the contrary. Hell, every time the Lakers play basketball half of California is messed up by riots (that's an exaggeration.) But I seriously do not think this would ever happen in the US.

First of all, we have a very large military and police force. So does China, and you may notice they haven't had an riots either. Rioting in a place where the police force is very limited or in a place where it is unarmed and mostly pacifistic is much easier than trying to face down an armed police and military squad, especially with constant cries of police brutality arrising all the time whenever a minority is arrested for carrying twenty pounds of dope in his car (again, an exaggeration. I do that, but please don't let it distract from my point.) Our police force would be very quick to shut down any riot as it was starting before it had the chance to get out of hand. We are not reserved against using tazers, rubber bullets or high-pressure water hoses. We wouldn't wait for escalation, we would use those things and stop the riot on the face of the problem before it could spread.

Secondly, some of those countries are rioting in hopes of acheiving freedom from a tyrannical government. While maybe people would claim it is the same here, those people are stupid and truly have no idea what it means to not be free. The fact that I can write a blog like this and make fun of citizens and the military and the government is proof of that. Granted, a blog once got me unjustly arrested, but that's another story. Truly, we have many freedoms in this country and while taxes may be higher than we like, and marijuana and prostitution may still be illegal for no apparent reason and the government does have more involvement with the church than it should, overall, it is a good government and they probably help more than they hinder and overall the people who live in this country are happy to do so, or at least they should be.

So, we would be facing a tough opponent and we have no real moral grounds to riot. Two great reasons why it won't happen. Would you like a third? You would? Well goodie!

You see, the biggest reason why it wouldn't happen here is because americans are lazy! I was even too lazy to capitalize the word americans. Twice! Yeah, we have hippies who hold signs and activists would picket things and PETA idiots who abuse other people are throw paint on them and religious zealots who kill doctors because they claim they're 'murderers' (also another blog...) but would any of those people have the conviction to riot against the government for a month? Maybe two months? How about if the government and the powers of the country shut off mobile phone access and internet so we couldn't communicate with one another? It happened in other riots. What about if they turned off electrical power in the sectors used by the rioters as bases or camps? It would be very easy to do - a flip of a switch. What about if the plumbing was turned off in the same way? Again, one or two valves closed is all it would take. So now you can't talk to one another, can't communicate your message to anyone else or ask for support. You have no lights to see and you become buried in waste. Would you still fight? Would you still stand for your cause? You might outwardly say 'of course!' but think to yourself, would you really? Do you really have that conviction? And what if the riot ends in favor of the government? Are you prepared to face a very large jail sentence to account for all the injuries and death and distruction? Are you prepared to have everything you own destroyed in the riot or taken away by police afterward? Is your cause so important that you would sacrifice everything? The heroic people in the other countries thought so and did so. Many of them died to help prove their point and free their people.

I'm not saying I'm any different. While I think those people are amazing and what they did is important and awe-inspiring, I can't say I'd be willing to do the same. I think I'd most likely hide in my house and fight off any rioters from destroying or stealing my posessions than fight unarmed and exhausted against a military power that would most likely overcome me instantly. I'm sorry that those are truths about our country, but they are. Our country used to stand up to countries that were superior and used to hold it's beliefs and morals above all else. The individuals would hold the interests of the many above themselves, but now that we have become a super-power, we have become comfortable and we have become lazy.

Really, I love this country, and I love that we are able to be comfortable and lazy. I don't want to put it down at all because I'd rather live here than anywhere else (except maybe the Moon. I read an article a while ago that some astronauts volunteered to take a one-way trip to the moon to try and colonize it. I would do that.) Really, the purpose of this is not to put us down, I just want to quell the fears of people in a rational way and explain that those riots won't happen here. If they do, they won't last long. And if the rioters come near my house, yours truly will not go out to join them. Sorry, but I like being lazy and comfortable. And now, I'm gonna go play my Gamecube. And I did capitalize that!

New School Lacking...

2011-07-20T16:59:00.000-07:00

I have decided I finally realize what new games lack. They lack social fun.

My favorite memories of playing games are from my second semester of college; playing random old genesis games with Brenna and Massimo. We would go out, buy random games just because they're cheap or because the title sounds cool, bring them back to my place and one of us would play while the other two either teased them relentlessly whenever they lost or tearing on the game if it wasn't good. It was fun and awesome and was what made games great!

Nowadays, you can't even talk to your friends while playing a game because you'll miss some elaborate scenematic or voice-over. You have to concentrate on your playing as there are at least ten different buttons you will have to push. And your friends most likely won't even come to your house to play a game anymore because you lose all your progress and unlocked features if you play on someone else's console. All your DLC, save files, acheivements, etc... are tied to your gamertag and console serial number. You can't just grab the cartridge and take it to a friend's house to play on their console.

If I were to try the same experience with Brenna and Mass with modern games we'd be playing online. We'd be feverishly pushing buttons and trying to taunt each other over horrible wireless headsets that have crackly sound and mics that only sometimes pick up your voice. Nothing like Devilish or Dragon's Fury or Vectorman. Now those were great games to play with friends. And sure, you can play the Wii and get up and dance around like morons trying to get an unresponsive controller to register your movements but is that the same as playing Goldeneye and laughing heartily after headshotting your friend for the third time in a row.

Once they can recreate Laser Blast and make a game you can literally beat with your eyes closed, I will sing the praises of modern gaming, but until then, even with as much as I love Rock Band, modern games will only be second to my love of real games. And Zelda: A Link to the Past will remain the best game ever made regardless of what other crap Nintendo puts out with a Triforce on the cover.

Free Stuff!

2011-06-06T18:56:00.000-07:00

A few thoughts... I might cut corners and make this post quick because I've started my actual writing again and I'm almost done with the first chapter of the sequel to my Tiministry story. However, I felt my unloyal readers deserved a quick blog.

First off, go to this site:
http://www.explodingrabbit.com/games/super-mario-bros-crossover

Cool huh? For those of you that for some reason didn't click the link, someone took the original Super Mario Brothers game and hacked it to allow you to play the game as Mario, Link, Simon Belmont, Samus and various other characters. It's kind of awesome, and by kind of, I mean insanely. If you have a little bit of time; give that link a chance.

Next on my list of awesome for the day, a game is being developed called Project Zomboid. Ready for another link?
http://projectzomboid.com/blog/

It's a 2D low-bit game where you have to live as long as possible during the Zombie Apocalypse. Note I didn't say survive it, I just said live as long as possible. In this game, you will die, you simply try to make it as long as possible before you die. Your wife will get sick, the power will go out, you will run out of food, ammo, medical supplies... You will go through hell and it'll be fun! And the best part, it's a free game*!

Wait, is that an asterix up there? Ok, I'll explain. See, this game is free but only after you buy one of their other games. Not a bad deal though. They can be purchased for 5 bucks or less, and they give you free updates forever on Project Zomboid so when they add more to the game, or fix a few bugs, or whatever, you get kept up to date and it won't cost you a dime. Well worth the five bucks! I've spent more than that on games that weren't half as good as this game promises to be. It's gotten pretty good reviews by some well-known people in the gaming community too so although I don't have it yet, I'd be willing to risk my gamer reputation on this game being a sure-thing.

And for my last bit of awesome news... Playstation is giving away free shit! Because they've been hacked and have given away a lot of our secure information unwillingly, they are paying us all back with a free month of Playstation Plus (the equivillent of Xbox Live Gold) as well as two free games for your PS3 and two more free games for your PSP. I got Little Big Planet and Wipeout HD for the PS3 and ModNation Racers and some other game for my PSP and it didn't cost me a cent. How cool is that? As long as you had a Playstation Network account before 4/20 (how funny that they picked that date) even if it wasn't a Plus account, you are elligible for the free downloads.

So, in summation, go play SMB with Simon, go download the coolest Zombie game ever and go get free stuff from Playstation, thanks to Anonymous. Pretty good time to be a gamer, no?

Games, Art and Grant Money

2011-05-27T14:45:00.000-07:00

I was going to write a completely different blog today but saw a news clip that irked me.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e80_1305997846

At one point in there a man says that if video games are going to get federal funding, then ping pong players should get grant money too.

Let me try to clarify this: The money is not going to the people playing the game, it's going to the creators of the game. So you'd actually give the money, in your example, to the guy who invented and crafted the ping pong table.

Second, people immediately assume the money is going to the development of Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto. No! The money would go to indie developers who have an original artistic idea and want to create something but do not have the resources. Without such companies, we would never have gotten games like Little Big Planet, Katamari Damacy, Psychonauts, Braid, World of Goo and even Guitar Hero which originally came from a small company called Harmonix.

So now that we understand where the money is going, let's understand why. Writers of books are artists, correct? People who create original stories and fantasy worlds and lives and characters and map out a fate for them and then help a reader experience the lives of those characters. Yep, I'd say that's an artist. How about a painter or sculptor? Someone who creates an original work of art using shapes and colors and accents in a way that people have not seen before. Creating something wonderful and fascinating and new that draws us in and creates in us a feeling of awe. Certainly artists. How about musicians? Not idiots like Britney Spears, I mean someone like Bach or Mozart or Beethoven. Someone who creates a masterpiece of sound. An arrangement so wonderful you can't help but enjoy it and be drawn in by it. Your mood and even your world outlook are changed and brightened by it. Yeah, that was created by an artist too.

So music, pictures and stories. Well, if you've ever played any RPG you've seen an original story. Zelda: A Link to the Past, Final Fantasy X, Chronotrigger, Earthbound, Last Odyssey, Pokemon... These are all original stories with original characters and the whole story and the fate of the role you play in the game was created, scripted and written by someone. How about the visuals? Ever seen the amazing water effects in games like Bloodwake? How about the beautiful backgrounds in games like Oblivion or the realistic textures of stuff like Gran Turismo 5? Someone created that. And the music: There is an orchestra traveling the country playing nothing but video game music because twenty years ago songs were written for games like Zelda, Mario, Sonic and Castlevania and still today people want to hear it. And the orchestrated version of Bloody Tears is absolutely amazing! How about the theme for Halo? How about the fact that Eminem used the music from Soul Calibur in the background to a rap from his first album (The song is called Hellbound, look it up.) The people who create that music, those visuals, those stories; they are artists. As much so, or possibly even more so than the people who write or draw or sing for a living. I certainly prefer the stories in my video games to that crap Stephanie Meyers is churning out and I'll listen to the hundreds of songs I downloaded from OC Remix before I'll listen to another retarded rap song by T.I. or T-Pain or T-Bag or whatever other stupid rapper got famous off of YouTube. (As of right now, T-Bag is not a rapper. God I hope that remains true in the future, although we've got one names Florida so who knows...)

Video Games are art and the people who create them should get money, just like the government gives grants to the art programs in many schools and the students who major in them. So don't pretend like this is unheard of. You already give money to these people. At least now you get a decent game because of it instead of yet another unneeded installment of Halo, Gears of War or Call of Duty.

Beyond Good and Evil... speaking of which, she might be the devil.

2011-05-23T15:02:00.000-07:00

Now that I once again have internet, I downloaded Beyond Good and Evil on the 360. It's actually a damn good game. I missed it on the Gamecube (which, by the way, I am missing my video cord and memory card so now I can't play Twilight Princess. It's really pissing me off because that's the one Zelda game I have yet to beat.) But actually, this blog was actually gonna be about music...

Wow, I just said actually twice there...

Today I was thinking about the CD I wanted to blast in my stereo late last night but couldn't because my roommate said it was late and had already yelled at me for being too loud with Rock Band (blasphemy if you ask me.) And that CD is actually what I'd consider a perfect album. Every song on that CD is good and you can listen to the whole thing, beginning to end without any unpleasant music. So, as a service to my loyal readers (of which I actually have none) I am providing you all a list of ten such albums. If you disagree as to whether or not the albums are as good as I say, well, then you simply have bad musical taste.

Anywho... Here's the list:

3 Doors Down - The Better Life
Notable singles: Kryptonite, Loser, Duck and Run, Be Like That, Down Poison

Godsmack - Godsmack
Notable singles: Moon Baby, Whatever, Keep Away, Time Bomb, Bad Religion, Voodoo

Limp Bizkit - Chocolate Starfish and the Hotdog Flavored Water
Notable singles: My Generation, My Way, Rollin' (both versions), Getcha Groove On, Take a Look Around

Blink 182 - Enema of the State
Notable singles: Don't Leave Me, Aliens Exist, What's My Age Again?, Adam's Song, All the Small Things

Insane Clown Posse - Great Milenko
Notable singles: Hokus Pokus, Piggy Pie, How Many Times, Halls of Illusion, Under the Moon, What is a Juggalo, Boogie Woogie Wu, The Neden Game, Down with the Clown

Aerosmith - Pump
Notable singles: Love in an Elevator, Janie's Got a Gun, The Other Side

Van Halen - 1984
Notable singles: Jump, Panama, Top Jimmy, Drop Dead Legs, Hot for Teacher, I'll Wait

Disturbed - The Sickness
Notable singles: Voices, The Game, Stupify, Down with the Sickness, Violence Fetish, Conflict, Shout 2000, Meaning of Life, Dropping Plates, God of the Mind

System of a Down - Mesmerize
Notable singles: B.Y.O.B., Violent Pornography, Radio Video, Sad Statue, Old School Hollywood, Lost in Hollywood

Mindless Self Indulgence - You'll Rebel to Anything
Notable singles: Shut Me Up, Stupid MF, Tom Sawyer, Bullshit, 2 Hookers and an 8-Ball

And now that I've enlightened you with amazingness in the form of music, I have to complain about someone. All details except the really specific annoying ones are made up to prevent me from getting arrested again! This guy I once worked with was stupid. He was also annoying. He chewed gum with his mouth open and sometimes when we wasn't chanting inhale/exhale in his head to keep himself conscious, he would click his tongue. He lacked the basic self-control of a kindergardener. Also, one time I filled out a form that required various numbers. I wrote a five in one of the columns. He came over and questioned what number I wrote. I said it was a five. He said "Oh, I thought it was an 'S' or maybe a five but it could also have been a backwards two." So in the column that requires only number he thought I may have written an "S" or a backwards two. Clearly he thought that I was as retarded as him which is silly because I use words with more than 3 syllables and even tie my own shoes each morning before I leave the house.

So yeah, I just wanted to share the misery that is the knowledge of his existence with you all.

To remedy your new sadness, go listen to a few of those CD's. Actually, listen to all of them. Start with S.O.A.D. or M.S.I. and save Van Halen, Disturbed and I.C.P. for last. Always save the best for last.

PS3... Better late than never!

2011-05-15T09:40:00.000-07:00

Now, I know everyone is hating Sony right now for their fued with Anonymous and how it led to their Network servers going down for a couple weeks and everyone's personal information (including mine) being leaked and accessible by an indefinite amount of hackers who make up that group. But really, do you think that matters? These are the same hackers that crashed VISA for a day because they renounced the founder of WikiLeaks and froze his accounts. If Anon wants your info, trust me, they'll have it. They have shown they can bring down some of the biggest corporations in the country, they could destroy your little personal firewall like it was wet paper. They're most likely capable of creating a Fire Sale scenario like in the fourth Die Hard movie. But actually, I don't care about any of that anyways...

The last week I've been without internet at my house. Surprisingly, I didn't yet hang myself. I haven't had access to Xbox Live, Facebook, iTunes or anything else that involves going online however. So, aside from reading a few back Dean Koontz novels and watching Gilmore Girls (shut up! It's a good damn show! It got the star from Heroes his start! So if you liked Heroes, you have to at least appreciate Gilmore Girls. And actually, Alexis Bledel didn't have a career before that either so there goes Sin City and those stupid Traveling Pants movies.) I've been playing a lot of offline video games. Played through a few of the XBLA games I downloaded but never got into, hooked up my 64 and realized I suck at Mario Kart but I still own at Gauntlet Legends and, I finally gave my PS3 a fair try. I played all four of the games I currently own for it. I know, that's not a lot, but I will only get console exclusive games becuase anything that's multi-platform I'm getting for 360 so I can get more acheivements and let's face it, the console exclusives for PS3 kinda suck. I don't care about shooters so Killzone is out and I was never one for Tomb Raider so I'm not too entirely concerned about the newer version that doesn't have a female lead (for you dense people, I mean Uncharted.) The ones I currently have are Motorstorm, Folklore, Infamous and Katamari Forever. Now, If Square becomes retarded and decides to not launch Kingdom Hearts 3 as a multi-platform launch, you can bet your ass my 360 will have a good coat of dust on it, however, until then (assuming that even happens. At this rate, Sony will be lucky to get the game considering how crappy they've been doing in sales.) there just aren't a lot of appealing games. But, like I said, I overcame all those thoughts and did give it a fair shot and played the games I have for it. And I must say (even though it pains me to do so) it really is a fine system. The graphics are quite nice. I've disputed that point with people for a while because without an HDtv and the HDMI cable, you won't notice the difference and that still remains true. However, I do have those things now and can tell the difference and the games look good. Graphics don't make the game however. Final Fantasy X-2 had good graphics too and that was a flaming pile of dog excrement. The games I played though were all also quite challenging. That's not as much a reflection of the system as the game designers, but as they are all console specific to the PS3, you need this system to play them. Folklore is an RPG set in a Dick Tracy-era Europe. I know that's an odd refernce but I don't know the actual time frame and I used to love Dick Tracy so that's the way I'm gonna describe it. Don't like it? Go ignore someone else's blog then! You play as one of two characters that aren't incredibly annoying (a nice change from most RPG's) and along the way you can collect little monsters to battle for you. I say can but you really kind of have to because without them, you are a defenseless human being who apparently took a defensive martial arts class with Richard Simmons. After gaining these little critters to help you in the realm of the dead, you defeat other critters and do things to power up your own critters. Think of a gothic take on Pokemon. Overall, it's pretty fun and the story isn't necessarily the most riveting in the world, but I will say in my first sitting I spent over two hours in front of the game before I looked at a clock so it's not terrible either.

Motorstorm you should know about if you've ever seen a PS3. I'm pretty sure it was one of the launch titles and they now currently have 3 of them for the PS3 and at least one for the attrocity that the PSP has become. It's a very fast paced off-road racing game in which you can pilot one of various classes of vehicles around some really cool off-road courses each which obstacles and various paths. The paths all are more or less beneficial to certain vehicles too so you need to learn the layout of the tracks and figure out which best suits your vehicle giving this game a decent skill aspect to keep it interesting. The soundtrack is quite good too containing mostly 90's nu-rock. So overall, it's fun and challenging with great graphics and a great soundtrack. This is the kind of racing game I'd usually kill for. If only it was on the 360...

The Katamari game is similar to the rest of them so it isn't worth mentioning too much. It's fun, addicting and was developed by people who had apparently smoked the remains of Jerry Garcia.

This brings me lastly to Infamous. When Prototype came out (a game I am very fond of) for the 360, Playstation responded with Infamous. A character that gained unnatural super powers after a government backed freak accident and you now can use him to be either good or evil using your powers in mostly destructive (which ultimately brings to question how "good" you truly are) ways. It's a bit harder than Prototype but doesn't have as much cool parkour style stuff. I remember launch day for Prototype I got it home, put the promotional action figure on my shelf to collect dust (and value) and popped in my game and one of the first scenes has you running, jumping and flipping across the tops of cars in a traffic-jammed street. You then run up walls and the sides of buildings, flipkick off of them and at one point I vaulted a car, kicked off a truck only to flip over and land in a run going vertically along a building. I kicked off of that only to be tackled out of the air by a big beastly bad guy who very promptly pounded on me and I must say that was one of the coolest things I've ever experienced via video game. While I certainly can't recreate that moment in Infamous, it is pretty good and I'm not disappointed at owning it.

So overall, even for all the crap I give PS3, it really is a good system. There's still some more games I intend to get (like LittleBig Planet, God of War, Gran Turismo 5 and the sequel to Full Auto which was the best of all 360's launch titles and is still in my top five favorite racing games.)

Luckily though, my internet shall be back soon and there's a whole pack of Foo Fighters songs that need my attention on Rock Band. Plus a song by Run DMC and FINALLY Walk by Pantera!

Peace out and Rock on peeps!

Zelda, of course!

2011-05-04T19:44:00.000-07:00

I know, not really surprising I am going to talk about Zelda, but first, a few other things...

First, it's almost Mother's Day. So, for those of you on Facebook (which is pretty much all of my non-readers because it's all of pretty much everybody that's on Facebook) switch your profile picture to one of your mother. All the cool kids are doing it!

Next, not really news or anything but I hooked up my Nintendo 64 to my nice big screen HD beauty that is now sitting in my room and let me tell you; Gauntlet Legends looks SWEET on a big screen! My next games to play are Star Fox, Perfect Dark and, of course, Ocarina of Time. Actually, I wanted to hook up my Gamecube as well and get some Twilight Princess action going but I need A. another power strip, B. more space on my entertainment center and C. another Gamecube memory card because mine appears to have been lost in one of my many many moves/breakups to occur over the last few years.

Speaking of Zelda... [this is where I make a non-subtle segway to my main topic]
There is a trailer for the Skyward Sword which is the next entry to the Zelda series and while it's yet another game featuring brighter colorful shininess as opposed to the darker style Zelda like that of Twilight Princess (which I think is better for a 3D zelda game) at least it doesn't have the stupid cartoon kid link in it. But my actual point is that when you watch the trailer in reverse (something not many people would normally do) the music from the trailer makes a completely different song appear. I won't tell you what song, I'll just link to the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZwbchA4Hw4&feature=iv&annotation_id=annotation_703846

Well, it's a short one this time, but that video should have kept you busy. Also, this picture!

Goodnight All! Unless you read this not at night... in which case... umm, Hi!

Gotta Catch 'Em All

2011-04-14T11:25:00.000-07:00

I've been playing a few new games lately and figured I'd write a bit about them to my non-existant blog readers.

Firstly: Test Drive Unlimited 2. Now, the first one was easily my favorite racing game. Had a great car list, fun exploration mode and a great mix of race and challenge types so that it didn't get monotonous. Also, it's the first MMOR game. Massively Multiplayer Online Racing. The second one has kept the online play and the various races and has added another island to make it an even larger game! Plus, it added a class of off-road vehicles so you can do dirt races. There begins my qualm with this game, however. The car list in the second installment of this game is quite lacking. There isn't a single Lambo in the entire game. In fact, looking at the list, I think there are about the same number of cars as there were in the first game, possible less. That boggles my mind! They've had years to work on this second game and they managed to double the size of the map. You'd think they would have been able to get a few more cars in the game. Not to mention, they took away motorcycles. Granted, the control of bikes in the first game was horrible, so we didn't lose much, but instead of taking them out they could have fixed their buggy handling. Plus, no Lamborginis, are you kidding? I can't think of many racing games that don't have Lambos in them. Not many at all! I mean, I'm not even the biggest fan of them, I personally think they are overly flashy and overpriced but I have come to expect them in a racing game. However, there is a Hummer H3... ... Of all the offroad vehicles in the world, an H3 is what you'll go with? If you want to use a hummer, use the real one. Although honestly, for off-road, wouldn't an old Eagle (The early 80's wagon body style) or a Jeep work? Or hell, go crazy and get a Bowler Wildcat in the game. Those are probably the most amazing offroad vehicles I've ever seen (If you are unfamiliar with that make and model, it's an independently made off-road vehicle from Europe. Watch a few seasons of Top Gear. They mention them on there at least once. In fact, just watch that show anyways; it's awesome! And I mean the real one, not the crappy American version.)

Anyways... I'm just comparing crap cars to good ones now so I think I've gotten my point across. The game is good, possibly better than the original, as long as you don't look at the car list. Especially the classic cars. I know most people stop using the lower class cars once they unlock the real speed demons in the A and S class but there are barely any "C" class cars in this game. *For some reason they don't use the same car class system as every other racing game I've ever played (G-A and then S. G being the slowest, S being the fastest.) They have C for the classic cars (Classes G-E) B for off-road vehicles, and then several number variances of the A and S class for all the Asphault cars (apparently classic cars can't drive on asphault.)

Next game now. Pokemon Black/White.

I got Pokemon Black, but like most Pokemon games, they come in pairs and it doesn't matter which you get. I am actually quite happy with this game. It is a reboot of the series so far. It is actually much like playing Blue or Red for the first time. They created a bunch of new pokemon (as they always do) but this time, they give you exclusively the new pokemon until you've progressed quite far into the game/story so that like playing the old ones, you never know what types the pokemon you fight are or what a trainer or gym leader will be using. I haven't gotten too far yet but I'm to understand there are also a wide variety of new moves too so that, also, will keep you guessing and make this more of a new experience. It's a good way to introduce someone to the game if they were either too young to play any of the series up to now, or they just somehow managed to avoid playing a single one of these games (like my roommate, for example.)

I have to move onto something else now though. I once knew a guy who told me his favorite band and it just blew my mind. Think of your favorite band. The one that you prefer above all other musical groups or artists. The one you enjoy listening to the most. Now think of why you like them the best. Their distinctive sound, the impressive vocals. Now, imagine that your favorite band was bland, at best, and sounded like, at the very least, five other bands that were popular at the same time. That's the case with this guy because his favorite band is Fall Out Boy. Now, don't get me wrong, I like Fall Out Boy. I really do. But to say they're your favorite? The do not have any distinctive sound and certainly are not good enough to be anyone's favorite.

Think of all the bands/music you've heard over the radio. Disturbed, Godsmack, Korn, Trapt, Saliva, Van Halen, Nickelback, Aerosmith, AC/DC, Eminem, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Run DMC, Evanesence, Lacuna Coil, MC Lars, Bloodhound Gang, Toby Keith, Charlie Daniels, Steve Miller, Green Day, The Beatles, Tool, Rob Zombie: I could go on for a while. You know what all of those have in common? If I played a song by any of them, you could very quickly tell that it was that band because they all have a sound that makes them distinctive. You know what band doesn't have that? Fall Out Boy. I can't be bothered to name them, because I don't care enough, but there are several Punk/Emo bands that came out around the same time that sound just like them. And no, I'm not putting down that genre of music. I like many Emo bands (Good Charlotte, Simple Plan, All-American Rejects, Bowling for Soup, Hawthorne Heights, Sum 41, Avril Lavigne, etc.) I just don't think that particular band is original or destinctive enough to warrant being someone's favorite band. Maybe I'm just being a music snob but I know that if you hear either of my favorite bands, you will know right away who they are. No band has the vocal sound or the drum bass beats of Disturbed and there isn't a guitarist alive who can outplay Eddie VH or any singer with the stage presence of David Lee Roth.

But, that's it for now really. I'm gonna go eat some ramen and watch a movie. I've decided on either Never Back Down or Hitman. Decisions, decisions...

The rebirth of Dreamcast and the Death of Guitar Hero.

2011-02-10T09:26:00.000-08:00

It's true, Guitar Hero is dead! Activision announced it is stopped all work on the current Guitar Hero project for 2011 and that no future entries for the series will be created. It's shutting down the part of it's facilities devoted to that game and even laying off or transferring 500 employees. The say a lot of it has to do with the market for such games disappearing. I, however, don't think that's the case. I just think they didn't evolve with the market. When it came out, Guitar Hero was god because it was the only one of it's kind. But once Rock Band came out with a bigger setlist and full band support, Guitar Hero took a huge blow. They added the other instruments and even eventually made their game setlist *partially* exportable (although it's a joke because you only get some of the setlist and only for a few of the games, whereas Rock Band can support nearly every on-disc song and also can carry the DLC over to future titles.) Also, Rock Band realized that this game would sell better if it helped transition gamers into the world of real instruments and so it introduced pro mode. You can get a full midi drum kit or an actual Stratocaster stringed guitar (each for about $250-$300) and learn to play the actual songs with the game. You can then turn off the game and hook the guitar to an amp or the drum kit to the midi controller and rock out in real life with out the help of your 360. That's pretty bad-ass and significantly cheaper than lessons. So, while Guitar Hero was fun (especially the Van Halen and Aerosmith versions) I can't say I'm too surprised or sad to see them go and I really look forward to it if it means that Rock Band can start adding Aerosmith, Van Halen and Metallica to their already enormous list of songs. Van Halen would be especially fun now that Rock Band has added the Keyboard.

And now for some positive news; Sega Dreamcast isn't dead! It seems that Sega has been tracking the second-hand sales of one of their most under-rated systems and seen that there is still a large following for the system. This inspired them to release a Dreamcast Collection for the 360 and PS3. Now, if you are like me, you probably thought of the Genesis Collection they released a year or two ago with 70+ games on it and starting drooling at the thought of playing all your favorite Dreamcast games on a similar compilation of awesomeness. Well, with all good news comes some bad news... This collection is crap. It has only 4 games; Sonic Adventure, Crazy Taxi, Space Channel 5: Part 2 and Sega Bass Pro. No Power Stone, No Soulcalibur, No Shenmue, No Jet Grind Radio. Not only that, but Sonic Adventure was already released as an XBLA game and I believe Crazy Taxi is already slated to hit PSN soon. Meaning the only 2 worthwhile games from this collection are already available without buying it. I sincerely hope they add many more games to that list or else they scrap this project entirely because as it stands, this sounds like a bad joke and won't make much money from the Dreamcast fans they are supposedly targeting.

So, in other words, keep ignoring Guitar Hero, it actual will go away and keep buying the Dreamcast games on Ebay because Sega clearly won't be releasing the good ones any time soon.

P.S. My next blog will be on a non-video game subject so I wanted to sate your geek-hunger with this one. You're welcome!

P.P.S. I don't know who that last comment was to because no one reads these anyways...

Kinect-ed

2011-01-05T18:01:00.000-08:00

Before I get into the obvious... I finally got my PS3. It's not bad. It's not as amazing as people seem to think they are, but it isn't horrendous either. The only games I have so far are Infamous, Motorstorm, Katamari Forever and Folklore. I'm only get exclusive titles for the PS3 because all multi-platform games will be bought on my 360 so I can earn my ass more acheivements. :) I'm loving playing Katamari though.

Now, onto the real news... The coolest and creepiest thing to ever happen to video games... Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... Kinect! I can wave at my Xbox, tell it what I want it to do, and it will do it. It will recognize my face and instantly know who I am and log me in to my profile. It can see my whole room and detect movements and sounds. Creepy... Kupo.

I think it's an amazing advancement in gaming and to be honest, I haven't even tried the games yet, I just played around in the menu and stood in amazement as I talked to my xbox and felt like the star of any futuristic movie as I moved my hand in the air to slide the images on my High-Def big screen to one side. It's friggin' sweet!

One thing though; If I eventually find a girl dumb enough to date a nerd like me again, and I get lucky enough that she'll sleep with me, is my Xbox going to watch me have sex? More importantly, is that a turn on?

I'm going to contemplate that some more, but if anyone reads this, leave your thoughts in a comment. I promise, the comment box doesn't bite, you really can write stuff down there!

One more thing that was in the news today. Cityville just surpassed Farmville as the most played social game. What's sad is that so many people play these Facebook games. What's more sad is that Cityville has more registered users than World of Warcraft. What's even more sad than that is that after reading that article I tried Cityville. It's basically Sim City but it's a bit more interactive as you get to collect rent from the people living in the houses and you have to restock the stores you construct. I still think Planet that Have Many Creatures is the best Facebook game out there, but Cityville isn't horrible. More players than WoW though? That's just not right...

WoW... Imagine if they could get the Kinect set up on that! World of Warcraft without a mouse or keyboard... Now that would be cool!

Songs of the week

2010-12-21T16:36:00.000-08:00

Maybe you are like me, maybe not, but if you are; I'm here to help!

You see, I have a lot of MP3s, a bunch of CDs and no interest in the radio as most of the music on it is crap. So it isn't often I find any new bands or new music. When I do, I am always very excited about it. So I figured I'd share of my finds with you guys (assuming anyone reads this, which I still doubt they will.) And hey, maybe one or two of my nonexistant readers will give a few of these songs a listen and broaden their own musical horizons.

Also, if any of you have any underground or underappreciated bands/songs that you enjoy, feel free to post them in a comment and maybe I can find some more good music! Just don't post a bunch of pop bands you hear on the radio daily... Chances are I've heard it and hated it already. I'm looking for music that isn't mainstream. Most of the mainstream stuff that's worth listening to is already on my hard drive.

Anywho, here's 5 songs you may not have heard but certainly should!

The first is a song called Down and Out by a band called Tantric. Much like Apocalyptica, Bond and Nothin' but Stringz; this band uses classical instruments to make awesome rock music! This song especially is 99% rock and another 5.3% awesome. That may sound like it adds up to 104.3%... well, it does! It's just that awesome!

Nextly we have a cover song. I know that I obsess over cover songs, but this one is damn good and worth the attention. An epic guitarist covers a song famously performed by another epic guitarist. Carlos Santana performing Dance the Night Away by Van Halen. Carlos Santana rarely sings in his songs, so this one is sung by Pat Monahan. I'm sure you recognize that name too. If not, get out more, seriously!

And now for a taste of Ireland, Devil's Dance Floor by Flogging Molly. Part punk, part Irish jig, how could you go wrong?

While I'm talking about punk music... Billy Talent is someone I've enjoyed for a bit, but recently I found a newer song I love a big ol' bunch! The song is called Rusted From the Rain. I don't really need to say a lot about it, just that it is incredible. That should be enough for you.

This last one is for the season and it's another cover! Weezer put out a Christmas album a while ago and on it is their version of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing. It's quite good and it's a nice change from the pathetic carols we've heard way too many times in our lives.

So there you go! Five new songs to rock your world. Also, I should mention the band Mumford and Sons. They are bringing back the Folk genre and recently did a tour that sold out every show. They sold out the entire tour! That's amazing for any band! The Cave and Little Lion Man are the two songs by them that get the most radio play, but their other stuff is good too so go grab that album while you're at iTunes trying to find the other music I mentioned.

And like I said, feel free to comment with any music gems you may know about. I'm always looking for something new that sounds good.

Justificating Myself

2010-12-15T17:30:00.000-08:00

Well, I always claim to have an uber-collection and be an authority on games (well, I never necessarily said those particular things because that's a bit cocky... even for me) so I figured I might as well give you guys a better idea of why. And I say you guys because I just realized this site lets you veiw the demographical information of your blog and I have on average 50 views a month with a few of my blogs getting 10 views a blog! That's still nothing compared to my old Myspace blogs, the ones from my Wal-Mart days used to get upward of 100 views per post and there were many times where I broke 1,000 views a month. However, 10 views a blog is 10 views more than I thought I was getting so hey, thanks for reading! Now if only you could get your friends to read it, and they could get their friends and it would be like a pyramid scheme of blogviews for me!

Anywho, my WoW subscription ran out so I was bored earlier and was randomly watching videos on YouTube. It's amazing how you can search for one video and then watch a recommended video and then watch a recommended video from that video and so on and eventually you're watching some wierd strange video you never would have thought to find on your own... Well I, through that process, found some guy who calls himself the Video Game Prophet and a video of him showing off his Gameboy collection. Usually I would bring positive attention to fellow gamers/collectors and I don't usually rag on people who don't deserve it (I know that's a huge lie, just roll with it) but this guy fully deserves it! His "collection" was about 10 games between both the Gameboy and Gameboy Color with his amusingly empty shelf of games for other systems behind it. If I were to make a similar video showing each game I owned for GB/GBC and giving a brief synapsis of each game, it would take nearly 20 times as long and in the background of my video you'd see 2 bookshelves over filled with games in the background as well as an arcade machine, stacks of system boxes and a large overflowing box of controllers, accesories and duplicate games that I haven't gotten around to listing on Craigslist yet.

But... in the spirit of his video, I am going to list here all my Gameboy and Gameboy Color games as well as a small description for those of you who care. Yeah, so maybe I am petty, cocky and downright rude... I'll accept that. However, no one can deny that my collection is pretty damned good and the "Video Game Prophet" needs to relinquish his self-appointed title to someone more deserving. Not myself, I'm more of a Guru or Archivist than Prophet, but certainly not him.

Anyways, here's the list: Enjoy!

Gameboy:
R-Type - This is a space shooter. Pretty basic concept. What makes this game nifty if that I have the completer game (Game, Instructions and Box.) Not only that, but this isn't the US version of the game, it's a German one. And no, this has nothing to do with my ex who had a very strong connection with Germany. This is simply me buying an import game off someone online who was selling it dirt cheap.

Super RC Pro-Am - This game is also complete. It's a racing game. It isn't like most racing games where as long as you are holding the left or right button your car will turn. Once you hit that button, your wheel turns. Until you hit a button in the opposite direction, your wheel stays turned. It's harder than a standard racing game and honestly, that's what makes it fun. I remember my dad buying me a copy of this game for NES from a yard sale for like $0.50 and I loved playing it, still do!

Pokemon Red/Blue - I have both of them, I just don't see the purpose of listing them individually. They're the same game except for the fact that a few pokemon can be caught in one game where a select few are other pokemon can be caught in their place in the other game. So you need both cartridges to collect them all. These really are great RPG's though. Contrary to how annoying the characters, TV show, card game and annoying fan merchandise have become, the Pokemon video games were good games and I will stand by that opinion.

Final Fantasy Legend I, II and III - Yup, I have all three. And for the second and third I have the instruction book to go with them. I actually got these as a present from the girl I dated in college. She was one of the few people who would get me video games for the holiday and she actually supported my gaming addiction. But before I get all sentimental about how I miss and love my first real girlfriend, I have a fairly decent collection of Final Fantasy games and unlike half of the newer ones, these games are pretty good!

Tetris Plus: This is an amazing game! It's tetris, which is an immediate good thing, but it also has an extra puzzle challenge. There's a man in a safari hat walking back and forth on top of your tetronimos (bet you didn't know they were called that, did you?) and there's a spiky ceiling that lowers itself as time goes on. You have to clear lines to get him safely to the floor of the level, but when you build up your tetris pile, he will climb to the top of any pieces you place on him, bringing himself closer to his own impending death. Also, I have the instructions to this game too.

Uno - Yup, the card game.

Nobunaga's Ambition - Ok, for the reason I mentioned earlier about how long it would take, I'm not gonna include a description with each game. I'll mention important ones when I get to them though.

Tom & Jerry Frantic Antics
Arcade Classics 4: Defender/Joust
Frogger
Game & Watch Gallery 2
Gauntlet 2
Super Mario Land

Castlevania Legends - A female gamer friend of mine who I've mentioned several times in my blog before (Sindra) is a big Castlevania collector (and also quite attractive) so when I saw this game, I ought it mostly just to try and one up her collection with my own. Unfortunately, she still has a complete version of my favorite CV game (Simon's Quest for the NES) so I think she's still beating me.

Contra: The Alien Wars
Mega Man 2
Donkey Kong Land
Great Greed

Pokemon Trading Card Game - Unlike the actual trading card game, the video game version of the card game is fun and I personally recommend it to anyone who enjoys TCG's or video games. And frankly, if you don't enjoy at least one of those two things, why the hell are you reading this blog?

Urban Strike
Bomberman GB

Daedalian Opus - I have no idea how to properly pronounce that either. In fact, I haven't even played this game yet. It's one of the very few games in my collection I can say that about. I found it at Game Players Unlimited in Batavia for really cheap and so I grabbed it but still haven't gotten around to playing it yet.

Tetris - A must in every Gameboy collection. Even the false prophet had this game in his miniscule excuse for a collection.

Kid Dracula - Another Castlevania game bought out of competetive spite. It's a good game too though, so my antogonistic purchase was not a waste.

Super Mario Land 2
Shadowgate Classic

Castlevania Adventure - That covers all the CV games for Gameboy.

Game & Watch Gallery

So that's just the original Gameboy. Which, by the way, I have two of the old brick style gameboys. Both have the battery covers and both work. That's just how I roll!

GBC:

Turok 3 - Yet another game that I have a complete copy of.

Pokemon Yellow - It's actually the same game as Red/Blue except your starting pokemon is Pikachu instead of the option between Bulbasaur, Squirtle and Charmander. Other than that, it's the same fun game. I have the instructions for this. Actually, I have the player's guide too. For this one as well as the one for Blue and Red and Silver and Gold. Which reminds me...

Pokemon Silver/Gold - I've got them both. These were the next evolution in Pokemon. Unlike Yellow, these were new games from Blue and Red. They introduced 100 new pokemon, a day and night sequence, color and a few other nifty gameplay mechanics to the game. These were just as great as the originals. Actually, this game series, much like Castlevania and Sonic the Hedgehog, is pretty much always good as long as you avoid all the 3D incarnations of it.

Pokemon Pinball - I actually had no interest in getting this game originally, but along with a few of the original gameboy games mentioned above, I got this free. A guy came into Gamestop while I worked there wanting to trade in his Gameboy Advance and all the games he had for it to get credit toward buying a DSi. Well, at that point we didn't accept original gameboy games or color games. So he got credit for the advance games and system but had a stack of leftover games that we couldn't accept in for trade and he could no longer play (as the DSi is not backward compatible with anything but the DS.) He asked me if I wanted them and I, being a gamer (and a sane person for that matter, they were free!) said yes. I have the instructions too!

The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Time/Seasons - I have both of these games and the instructions to go with them and I must admit these are both damn good zelda games. They have different story lines from the more mainstream games and had the help of Capcom in producing them (which still leaves me hoping Capcom will put Link in as a playable character when Marvel vs. Capcom 3 comes out.) Also, just a side note here: There are a few games that should be on this list, but like many other games, some of my Gameboy games came up missing after the several breakups and many moves I've had over the past 5 or 6 years. Two of the casualties I can think of right now are F1 Race and Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. So don't count these in my collection (for right now) but just know that I had them at one point and will buy new copies when I get the chance.

Zelda DX - This is actually the Link's Awakening game I just mentioned in that little comment above but revamped for Gameboy Color. By revamped I mean they changed almost nothing except added color. I think they may have added a dungeon too, that you can only access if you play the game on a gameboy color which is actually annoying because I prefer to play my old gameboy games on my Super Gameboy. My TV screen is MUCH bigger than my Gameboy screen.

Super Mario Brothers Deluxe
Bomberman Max: Blue Champion

Dukes of Hazzard: Racing for Home - Another free game. There's no way I would have spent money on this.

Harvest Moon GBC - Unlike some other games, I actually got this one as a consulation prize for one of my breakups. One of my exes decided to just up and leave and go do the whore thing and when she did, she left her stuff behind including a bunch of her video games. This is one of them and now it's mine. P.S. Strippers don't have souls!

Dragon Warrior I & II - Ah, one of my absolute favorite RPG's made portable. Now I can grind forever to buy the good armor while in the car!

So there you go! 44 games between the two systems. Well, I've got 2 of the bricks and 2 gameboy colors (One purple and one teal) so for me I guess it's four systems. Much better than the Prophet!

Well, thanks for indulging me while I flaunted my peni--- collection size in typical male way. You may now go back to your lives. And to the ten people who will apparently open this page (1 of which may actually read all the way to this point on the page) I say thank you. I also say, leave a damn comment!

Movies for the Masses

2010-12-14T16:31:00.000-08:00

I'm a guy. I'm sure you knew that. As such, I like action movies. Real action movies. Ones where there are more fight scenes than plot and at the end, every girl is either siding with the enemy, and therefore dead, or about to sleep with the good guy.

Well, these are the top ten best action movies! Why am I posting this list? I don't know. Maybe I like making lists. Maybe I want your feedback on my taste in movies. Maybe I'm just really bored an just got done watching Universal Soldier and it made me think about my favorite action movies and I decided to write this blog to share them with you while waiting for my pizza to be delivered so I can eat it while watching a fresh bootleg of Tangled (Don't bitch at me about bootlegs, I only do it to make sure I like the movie. Afterward, I delete the bootleg and buy the DVD. Anyone who had seen my two full bookcases of DVD's knows that.)

So it was probably that last choice. Anwho... Here are the movies in no particular order.

Mr. Nice Guy: While Jackie Chan has lots of great movies, this is my favorite. It is almost nonstop action from the beginning until the end credits, and then during the end credits you get bloopers, so it's riveting all the way! He will always be one of my favorite action stars because he A. Does all his own stunts, B. Does some insane crazy stunts and C. can turn damn near anything into a weapon! I do think Tony Jaa is probably going to turn out to be better than Chan as he definitely has the potential. His stunts are even more insane and his fight scenes more incredible, but his hasn't quite had the movie to showcase them yet. So for now, I love Chan and I love Mr. Nice Guy!

Con Air: Nicholas Cage can do no wrong. Well, not as far as I've seen anyways. People say "Well what about National Treasure?" It's a good movie, that's what! "What about Ghostrider?" Are you kidding? It was a Marvel comic book movie and had an undead cowboy riding a flaming horse in one part, how could you go wrong? But this isn't about that, this is about Con Air. This whole damn movie is amazing! Aside from Cage, it also has John Malkovich, Steve Buscemi and that big black guy who's in a lot of movies but I can't remember his name and yes I know that's bad grammar. The plot is simple, man goes to prison for defending himself and his wife after some drunken idiots start shit with him at a bar after he returns home as a vet. Other convicts hijack the ride home and he has to survive and help the few innocent passangers while trying to put away the bad guys and still get home to see his daughter on her birthday. The only bad part of this movie is that they manage to destroy two Corvettes in it... That's just wrong!

Leathal Weapon 2: I know Mel Gibson is a Jesus Freak Psycho Anti-Semite, but before he was that, he was a kick-ass action star with great movies! Braveheart, Mad Max and of course, Leathal Weapon! Any of them are good, but the second one remains my favorite. Joe Pesci (or however you spell it... I'm too lazy to tab over to IMDB right now) makes his appearance in this one, Mel Gibson's on-screen gorgeous foreign girlfriends shows her boobs in this one, and people get blowed up a lot. That's really just about all you need from an action movie.

Demolition Man: Now most people know Wesley Snipes as Blade, or as the guy who just went to jail for 3 years for not paying taxes... and most people know Denis Leary as the guy with the show about firemen... and most people know Stalone as an old actor who probably should have retired a while ago (in other people's opinions, not mine.) Well, before all that, they were all in an amazingly good movie called Demolition Man! Sandra Bullock and Rob Schneider are in it too, but who cares. Actually, Schneider is in a few other old action flicks too... weird! Anywho... Snipes kills lots of people, Stalone tries to stop him, Leary is comic relief but in a bad-ass way, not in a sidekick way. It's just damned good, go watch it!

300: This made Gerrard Butler famous and rightfully so. He's a good actor and this was a damn good movie! You've all probably seen it or else are retarded so I don't think I need to say a lot more here.

The Transporter: One name - Jason Stathom. If you've seen his movies you'd know he's about as bad-ass as a white guy can get. He's been in a crap-load of action movies but this series (well, the first two anyways) are probably some of the better of them. The doorbell scene is just awesome! If you don't know what I'm talking about, crawl out from under that damn rock and watch these movies! Not just the Transporter ones, all the ones on this list!

Escape from New York: Snake Blitzkin is god! Kurt Russel is the star in these movies about a hard-ass criminal enlisted by the government to break into Long Island (in the future long island is seperated from the rest of New York State and turned into a giant maximum security prison.) He goes there, he beats the crap out of some guys. He does so with a grudge. I enjoy it and eat popcorn. It's a good time really.

Kiss of the Dragon: This is one man (well, one more man if you count Tony Jaa and Jason Statham who were already mentioned) who could give Jackie Chan a run for his money. Not only does he beat up a bunch of people with one hand behind his back literally in Leathal Weapon 4 and face off against Stathom in The One but he also saves a hooker's daughter in Kiss of the Dragon. He's kinda like Superman, except he kills people, and he's asain, and the shit he pulls in Unleashed... Well not even Superman (or a good superhero for that matter) could do that shit.

Die Hard: It's Christmas time now so I have to mention the best Xmas movie of all time! Bruce Willis is the shit! Not his character, or even this movie, just Bruce Willis. He's freaking awesome! But in this movie he's an equally awesome John McLain and when the Voice of God A.K.A. Marvin the Paranoid Android A.K.A. The Catapillar A.K.A. Professor Snape (it's sad that it took that long for people to know who I meant) takes over his ex-wife's business' Christmas party, he takes on him and his entire gang of euro-crap and saves the day! Yippie-Kai-Ay Mother Fucker!

The Expendables: Here it is! The King of Action Movies! I know I've mentioned it before, but I'm doing it again and honestly, I'll probably mention it many more times because it's just that good! Take half the actors mentioned above (Jet Li, Jason Stathom, Sylvester Stalone, Bruce Willis) and add a few more (The Governator, Mickey Rourke, Dolf Lungren, Stone Cold) and put in barely any plot to make room for more fight scenes and you will get the greatest thing to ever happen to action movies since someone put together the words action and movies... I've already seen it 23 times and I don't have the DVD yet. When I get it for Christmas, and I had better get it for Christmas, you can bet your ass I'll watch it a few hundred more times... And that's just that day!

Anyways... Those are my top ten. If you disagree, well, you're wrong.

Also, while I'm here, for those of you with kids; here's a list of animated movies you shouldn't let them watch.

Heavy Metal: It's full of sex, drugs and rock and roll. Really, it is! And it has voice overs from a bunch of famous actors from the 80's. It's great for people of my generation or the one before it... Kids these days wouldn't get it.

Cowboy Bebop - Knocking on Heaven's Door: This movie takes place right before the last two episodes of the show Cowboy Bebop and is great! It's one of the only anime shows I find myself really enjoying. If you ever wanted to get into anime, get into Cowboy Bebop. You'll thank me!

Final Fantasy VII - Advent Children: Unlike the first Final Fantasy movie, this one wasn't crap! And for gamers like me, it was amazing! Other people found it amazing too, but I'm not sure how because the story line made no sense if you haven't played the game. Also, there's a scene where you hear the victory theme from the game and if you don't laugh until you pee on yourself... well, then you've succesfully made me feel stupid.

Ok, that's it, I'm done. Pizza should be here soon and I have to watch a bootleg now. Peace out!

And if you took the time to read all the way down to this point, take another 10 seconds and leave a comment please!

P.S. This pizza smells amazing! Better than sex! Well, I'm sure it's not better than sex, but I haven't had that option available to me for a while now... so I'll just enjoy this pizza.

Cruisin' Hawaii!

2010-12-13T17:00:00.000-08:00

No, they aren't making another title in the Cruisin' series of games... Although this is just as good.

Test Drive Unlimited 2.

For those of you who don't know, I secretly love racing games! Music/Rythym games are the ones I'm best at and RPG's are the ones I play most frequently but I do have a little love affair on the side whenever a new racing games falls into my path.

I loved the first Test Drive Unlimited. Open world, lots of cars, good variety of races (some of which were hard as all hell!) good multi-player and it was the first non-RPG to do the MMO thing... Well, with the second game, they are keeping all the good and then expanding on it!

They are adding a day/night cycle and realistic weather. Not only are they adding weather, they are making it affect your handling! Driving in snow will make you slide off the road (well, it would if they had snow in Hawaii. They don't though, so it's just rain.) Speaking of handling, they are making a stronger physics engine and giving each car it's own individual handling so that they all feel more like the actual cars they represent and will be distinct in handling. So a 2010 Corvette C6 will not only go much faster than a crappy little '03 PT Cruiser, but it will also corner differently.

The last game gave you the option to go offroad, usually to find nothing helpful and end up smashing into trees and getting stuck on a steep slope and having to reset your car. Well, now you have offroad vehicles. While I doubt I'll see my favorite off-road vehicles present (The '03 Bowler Wildcat 200 and the '05 Jeep Rescue) I still am looking forward to see the mechanics of that. They are also adding cosmetic quality to the cars. You can now apply vinyls and decals and do color changing of the trim in your car, like in every other racing game out there, but you will also suffer cosmetic damage when you crash or go off-roading. You will also get your car dirty when driving on the shoulder or in the wilderness and will see it become clean in the rain, so that is all exciting too!

In the multiplayer department, your friends who are playing the game, if bored, can now ride shotgun in your car, regardless of what you are doing and can even pull up the map on their screen and play navigator to help you focus entirely on the road while racing and focus entirely on not hitting trees when spelunking in your Maserati like a fool.

They did take out the bikes, but they intend to release them after the game comes out. They did this not to annoy, but rather to help the players. In the last game the bikes were very difficult to handle and they didn't want us to have to put up with that again so they are working on the physics and controls for those as well and releasing bikes as an addon later.

Speaking of addons, the last game had several car packs, which led to some cool cars being added as an afterthought. Well now, they already plan to do that with this game, but unlike many companies and developers, Atari plans to listen to the people playing their games and will use gamer input to decide which cars to release in DLC packs. So if I convince enough of you readers (all zero of you) to post on the Atari forum, I might actually see the Wildcat as a car in Test Drive Unlimited 2. More importantly, I can hopefully get the Corvette Speedster, the Ford GT90 concept, Vauxhall VX220 Turbo, '06 Carver One and an '83 Eagle Medallion in the game too. Yes, I know I have odd taste in vehicles. Hell, I drive a mini-van... on purpose!

Overall, this game is gonna be insanely good! Even more so than the last one and if you like racing games at all, I'd suggest buying it. If you don't like racing games, well, you can always buy a copy and give it to me. It would save me the money, but since I'll buy it opening day, don't bother, just give me the cash instead.

In other news... Merry Christmas!

Aetheist Blessings for the Winter Season

2010-12-02T17:53:00.000-08:00

As the holidays draw near, I am once again surrounding by the various religions that drive them. While I have nothing against religion per say, I do hate when it is forced upon me. I think religion provides a great sense of comfort in people in giving them hope for life beyond the mortality of their bodies. It also instills in them a good set of morals and helps show them the proper way to interact with others. And barring the extremists that are responsible for most terrorist groups and wars, most religious people are friendly and accepting of others.

However, people seem to dislike Aetheists. They say that aetheists are ungodly, which is obvious, and also evil, which is preposterous. I still agree with the morals that most religions preach, I just disagree with the afterlife, pre-determined fate and the supreme diety. And I am not alone!

If you want to condemn aetheism, fine, but realize that the following people are also aetheists:

Douglas Adams (Author)
Woody Allen (Actor)
Isaac Asimov (Author)
Kevin Bacon (Actor)
Bjork (Musician)
James Cameron (Director)
George Carlin (Comedian)
Adam Carolla (Comedian)
Asia Carrera (Pornstar)
Danny Elfman (Musician)
Stieg Larsson (Writer)
Bruce Lee (Actor/Martial Artist)
Seth MacFarlane (Cartoonist)
Randy Newman (Musician)
Penn & Teller (Magicians)
Terry Pratchett (Author)
Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter)
Keanu Reeves (The One)
Adam Savage (Mythbuster)
Joseph Stalin (Political Leader)
Wayne Static (Musician)
Kurt Vonnegut (Author)
Gene Wilder (Actor)
Will Wright (Maxis Creator)
Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook Creator)

So there ya go! I'm sure there's hundreds of others, in fact I know there are, but that's a big ol' bunch of famous people that, like me, know there is no god. And on behalf of all of them, I want to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy Chanukah!

Forever

2010-11-30T16:50:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I wrote a new story. Have you ever noticed how many of these blogs I start with the word OK? Hmm... wierd. Anywho...

I am going to preface this story: I am not going to kill myself. I am often lonely, as are most single people, but I am not depressed (not anymore so than other people anyways) nor am I suicidal. I have days where stress overwhelms me, and I am occassionally in bad moods, that just makes me normal. People seem to take my writing out of context and believe me to either be clinically depressed or completely demonic. I do not need to be on death watch, nor am I the anti-christ. My writing style is a bit dark, sure, but it is fiction all the same. Please just enjoy the story for the sake of storytelling. That being said; I give you: Forever.

He sits behind the wheel of his parked car. The parking lot is mostly full of cars but they are all empty and dark. He is fairly certain he is alone, although he is beyond the point of caring who might bear witness to his deeds. He pulls a gun from the center console and with a tear in his eye he slowly lifts it to his chin.

Like a man in contemplation using early meditative techniques, the gun becomes a focus object and the rest of the world melts away. He becomes unaware of the world as he internally visits the many tragedies that have befallen him. He ponders every bad decision and horrible consequence to his many mistakes. As he is almost at the greatest depth of his sorrow he nearly twitches and pulls the trigger in response to hearing a startling rap on the passenger window.

She gets in the car and sits next to him. She doesn’t speak right away. She looks around the car trying not to meet his eyes while searching for the words she wants to say. She knows that when she does look at him she’ll see the pain in his eyes and she never liked seeing the hurt in them. His eyes turned a deep rich blue when he was angry, but when he was sad their color was even more breathtaking. In those moments, though, the beauty of them was lost. Looking into his eyes revealed the horrible hurt that was circling around within him. He seemed to be filled with more pain than one person could bear and staring into those eyes too long made her feel as though she were taking that pain upon herself.

He finally opens his mouth to speak and says only “I…” before sobbing and then pushing the gun harder into his chin. She sees his finger start to pull the trigger slightly and she quickly hugs him and places her head on top of his. She is scared, but she knows deep down that he’d never pull the trigger knowing the bullet would hit her after it hit him. He loved her too much to ever hurt her again and she knew that. She misses him almost as much as he misses her. She found someone knew and was happy, but a part of her always remembers him and always longs to see how wonderful her life would have been with him.

He left her in a moment of stupidity. He was so full of pride for getting such a beautiful and charming girl to fall in love with him that he thought he might be capable of finding an even better woman that would love him just as much. Of course, he soon learned that there was no woman out there that would treat him better or love him more than her. He had his heart and spirit broken multiple times and when he finally realizes who it was that always loved him and treated him better than he deserved, he came back only to find she had moved on and started a life with someone else. He lowered the gun slightly and lifted his head. She lifted her head as well and their eyes met. Both of them crying with eyes full of tears, they stared into each others’ eyes and instantly they both saw the compassion they once saw. He, for a moment felt like she still loved him and that everything might be ok. She too, felt like she was once again back in love with him and felt the joy she always felt around him. Except for now, he was always such a jovial soul with a wonderful demeanor and sense of humor.

Without speaking a word they continued to stare at each other and the world melted away from them. It was short lived, however, because the world came rushing back as the door behind him quickly swung open. He turned to see what was happening and before he could even realize it, a policeman had seized the gun from his hand. The officer pulled him forcefully from the car and threw him to the ground. Orderlies and other policemen ran over and restrained him on a stretcher. The people were yelling back and forth and multiple times mentioned bringing him into the ward for the mentally deranged and suicidal. Amy climbed out of her side of the car and just stared toward the commotion, not knowing what to do. She continued to stand there in almost a state of shock as they wheeled him into the hospital he had parked outside and was startled when her current husband ran over and put his hand on her shoulder.

“I thought they’d never get here!” he said as she slowly came to the realization he was talking to her. “I called them as soon as we got here and I saw that he had a gun.”

She looked at him with surprise and disgust and backed away from him. “You called them?”

“Well, of course. What’s wrong?” He started toward her again.

“Don’t!” She yelled and backed away again. “Don’t touch me! Get away from me!”

“What is your problem? You in love with that psycho again? Is that it?” He shouted back in frustration and anger.

“Just get away from me! Go home! I don’t want to deal with you. I can’t believe you.”

He returned the disgusted look she was giving him and opened his mouth to say something but then through his hands up in frustration and just walked away from her. She just stood in silence as he got into their car, slammed the door shut and drove away.

She knew that argument wasn’t done. She didn’t care right now. She slowly walked inside the hospital.

She asked the receptionist where he was being treated and started off to his room. The police stationed outside his room at first weren’t going to let her in, claiming it was for her own safety, but the doctor informed them and her as he came out of the room that he was just sedated and was currently unconscious. She slowly entered the room and immediately felt horrible when she saw him lying on the bed. She quickly looked away as her eyes started to water. She started talking to him; not saying anything of significance, just talking to block the emotions that were threatening to overtake her sanity.

“Are you sure she won’t cause trouble doctor?” The policeman outside the door asked as he looked in through the door’s window and saw her nervously pacing the room and randomly opening cabinets and drawers.

“She’s just upset over what she saw. She isn’t displaying any violent behavior, and there’s no reason to think she will. Besides, he’s sedated so he can’t say or do anything to excite her. There’s nothing to worry about. Let her have a moment to talk to the man before he gets treated and then thrown in prison or the psych ward downtown.” The doctor replied with sympathy.

“I just…” she started to spout off another unimportant thought when finally she decided on what she was going to do. She’d been walking back and forth for what felt like an eternity in this room and had finally decided how to make all this pain go away.

“I loved you. I still love you. I can’t keep living without you; I can’t go back to him. I need you! You can’t go to prison; I can’t stand the thought of being without you!” She whispered so as not to alert the doctor and the officer she passed on the way in.

She slowly walked over toward the door. Quickly she propped the chair in the room under the handle and then pushed a movable cart in front of it and then pushed down the lock on the wheel to help brace the chair and keep the door closed. She walked back over to the bed.

“I won’t be without you again.” She said, finally looking at his face. New thoughts and emotions tried to fill her mind but she was so focused now, she had lost all reason and comprehension. “Never again.” She bent down and kissed him on the forehead. As her lips touched his skin, she slipped out the scalpel she had found in a drawer and dug it deep into the skin off his wrist. She drew it down the length of his forearm, instantly causing a torrent of blood to gush from his arm. As the device beside the bed started to beep and she heard pounding outside the locked door. She looked up with tears in her eyes. She saw the people in the hallway and knew they would get into the room soon, but they wouldn’t keep her from him.

“I love him and now I’ll get to be with him forever!” and with that final word she created a rift in her own arm to match the one in his. She quickly became lightheaded and fell on to the hospital bed. She turned her head and saw that his had rolled to one side and was now facing right toward hers. She smiled and closed her eyes, happy to be so close to him knowing that they’d be together forever.

Arcades and you...

2010-11-21T06:14:00.000-08:00

Arcades and me, actually. I bought an arcade machine! I've wanted one since I was a kid, as I think most gamers have, and now I finally have one!

But onto the game itself; It's Black Tiger which is the American arcade port of Black Dragon. The American version is easier in that enemies take less hits to kill and deal slightly less damage. That's a pretty scary thought because I am already dying after bout 3 hits and still haven't made it past the second level.

It's your standard action platformer, much like Rygar, Ghosts and Ghouls, Demon Crest, Castlevania, Astyanax or any other countless titles from the 2D era of gaming. As you kill creatures they drop money which you use to buy upgrades from the dwarves you occasionally find (if you're lucky.) The thing is, the game is timed, even the shop only gives you ten seconds to buy your upgrades, so you don't have time to mess around. You find what you need, when you can, you kill everything as quick as possible, and you keep going forward. The music isn't obtrusive, but doesn't particularly stand out either, and the graphics are pretty much what you'd expect from that time in gaming, so it doesn't particularly stand out, yet it isn't a bad game either. The difficulty does give it more replay value though because after trying and failing, it really makes you want to play it again! I'm just glad I have the keys so I can recover all my quarters...

Yes, there is a way to turn on freeplay and turn down the difficulty according to the instructions. No, I don't know how to do it.

But on to other things: I am now finally playing Assassin's Creed. I know that I'm kind of late to the game, what with the third one just being released, but it's better late than never, right? Besides, if you think that is bad; I just recently got my first copy of Halo 3 and still haven't even beaten Halo 2 on the original XBox yet.

But if any of you are like me and still haven't tried Assassin's creed yet, go ahead and pick it up. It's pretty good! Much like my arcade game, I'm not sure this sticks out any more or less than the other action genre games of the current generation (I.E. God of War, Prince of Persia, Devil May Cry, etc...) but it is quick fun regardless. It takes place in the Renessaince (which I'm pretty sure I just spelled wrong) time period and is set over in Europe, which is an uncommon setting for a game, so at least it has that going for it. The story line is a bit weird, because you aren't actually the person you mostly play as, you are some modern day theif who is in the bloodline of this ancient assassin and you are accessing his blood memories to play as his distant grandfather. So, it's odd, but original.

The gameplay is good and the controls aren't bad. I do sometimes find the climbing to be annoying because he doesn't always like to climb even when handholds are above him because they aren't Directly above him, and also he tends to climb up onto ledges and then immediately jump off the other side if you are holding up for just a split second too long. The camera can sometimes be a pain but that's true of pretty much every game I've ever played so it's hardly worth mentioning. The button scheme and controls are pretty good and the gameplay usually flows quite nicely. Overall, I'd say it's probably a good solid 8 out of 10. Like I said, it is roughly a generic action game but with decent voice acting and story line and an original setting and plot. You could just as easily pick up Wet for half the price, but this will probably be a little more fun. Plus this is open world and has side quests, which the aforementioned major action series do not have yet, so it earns some kudos there.

Also, before I go, I saw the newest Harry Potter. It's pretty good. This one does spend a lot of time setting up the story for the last movie, so expect a lot of dialog and not nearly as much action as the trailer leads you to believe is in it. However, it has, I believe, the largest amount of characters in it and ties in most of the people Harry and the gang has encountered to this final piece of the story. Luckily, I have until January to read the books and get the whole story before I see it. Although honestly, so far I've seen each movie before reading the corresponding book, and while the books do contain a lot that was left off the big screen, I still think each one has been quite good. So who knows, maybe I'll catch Deathly Hollows: Part II without reading the book as well.

Anywho, that's all I got... Peace out!

Gamestop, Children and Golden Axe.

2010-11-07T06:17:00.000-08:00

First off, not sure if I told you all or not yet (and by you all I mean myself because no one reads this blog) but Rock Band 3 is as awesome as expected! I have only one complaint: They haven't updated the old DLC to work with the new pro modes or the keyboard yet. That blows! I want to play the keyboard parts on my songs from Boston, The Who, Kansas, Freezepop, etc... Everything else about it however, is great! They even have acheivements to go with the DLC for people who export songs from their old games and download lots of songs. I'm in love!

Ok, on to the rants...

Gamestop sucks! You all know this. Everyone else knows this. Everyone working there knows this. But we all keep shopping there because we are all mildly retarded and because unfortunately, most people have no other option as far as used game stores. I got a gift certificate for that store for my birthday and so I went inside to get a few games, used up that gift card and then go back to avoiding it at all costs. I went to the budget used games for 360 and found 6 games that were cheap that looked decent. It gived me some new stuff to play, they were all very cheap and it fills out the collection. Speaking of my collection, I am a game collector. Now a casual player who will play a game to completion once and then turn around and trade it in. I keep my games. I keep them in damn good condition too. I hate that I have to scour through the shelves and racks and Gamestop to find the few titles that have been traded in with cases and instructions still intact and in decent condition. But I did. So I bring them up to the counter to checkout and the retarded looking kid who apparently replaced me at that chain (yes, it's the Brockport chain, the one I used to manage) comes to check me out. He carries on a conversation with the other employee while checking me out and is basically ignoring me. When he goes to get the games from the drawers behind the register he pulls out a few used copies of some of the games I selected that were already boxed up and ready to go and swaps those for the cases I had selected instead of just inserting a disc into my cases. This would be fine, as it saves time, but I later discovered that the Prince of Persia game that he pulled out of there has no instructions and that one of the tabs that holds the case closed is broken off. So now the bottom half of the case never fully closes and I don't have the instructions for that game even though I went through and specifically picked out a case that included them. This pisses me off! This stupid store could at least pretend to care about the state of the product it sells! If you are going to accept trade-ins on games that have several scratches, no instructions, no case and someone's name written on the label of the disc in permanent marker, fine, it's your store. But don't pawn that crap off on me! If I take the time to find the cases that are intact and open each one to assure myself that the instruictions are also in pristine condition, you had damned well better find me a disc that is also in good condition and put it inside of my pre-selected case instead of giving me some crap-condition version you had pre-set in a drawer just because it saves you a whole 20 seconds of effort while you are at work. I hate you, I hate your store and I can't wait until digital downloads force you idiots out of business!

Digital downloads won't affect places like Game Craze of Game Player's Unlimited because they cater to collectors. They stock old games from classic systems, offer more for your trade-ins if they are CIB (Complete in Box,) would never throw away any instructions or boxes that you trade in with your games and reject anything being traded in that is in very poor physical condition. Go ahead, try trading in a disc with no case at Jay's store in Brockport, especially one that you Sharpie'd your name onto. It's ok, I'll wait, go do it. Oh what, he turned you down and made a rude comment to you? Good! That's how game stores are supposed to operate! They should be run by gamers, not by some removed corporate headquarters that looks at numbers, not games or the subculture that has a true interest in them. I want a guy behind the counter wearing a mario T-shirt, playing his Gameboy. I want someone that will give me his opinion of each game I look at or ask for and will tell me I'm stupid if I say I want to buy a Madden game. Those are the people I trust to sell me games because they are the people that, like me, play the games they are selling!

But enough about that...

Kids these days... Have you ever noticed how like 1 in 3 kids nowadays apparently has ADD? And no, I don't mean Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. I don't think kids these days are smart enough to play that. I mean Attention Defecit Disorder. It's a load of crap! When I was a kid, if you couldn't sit still or pay attention, it wasn't because you had a mental disorder or because you needed medication, it was because you were a pain in the ass. And teachers, parents and older students would all yell at you until you stopped fidgeting and talking and actually forced yourself to focus. Back then you just had to use willpower to make youself do what you had to do instead of making a hundred excuses as to why you can't. Of course, back then, teachers were allowed to yell at students and tell them they were wrong when they were. Nowadays, they have a low fail-rate so that they can pass as many kids as possible and teachers are no longer allowed to reprimand students. They have to rely entirely on positive reinforcement. That's ridiculous! The student who got awarded for doing his homework and being attentive might benefit from that idea, but the three kids in the back of the room ignoring the teacher and their work and talking about how they want to bang the hot girl in the corner certainly won't. They could care less if the teacher gives them an Attendance Award or not. However, if the teacher was allowed to yell at them to stop talking or send them to the principle to have them suspended for being disruptive; well then they've have to take their classes after school and would be forced to sit in a room silently and do all the work the neglected without the benefit of that hot girl to look at and being seated too far apart from one another to be able to talk or share notes. That might get the message across. Back then, parents also used to back the teachers, so if your teacher did force you to stay after, you would get chewed out by your parents when you did finally get home and there's a good chance you weren't hanging out with friends or watching TV or playing video games that night. You got the message real quick that you needed to straighten up or else you wouldn't be having much fun. Now, parents are ignorant of their children and will yell at any teacher or authority figure that tells them how obnoxious or stupid thei child is. They won't spank or scold their kids, they won't ground them or take toys or privelages away. They'll put them in a "naughty spot" if they bother to do anything. And kids these days know that their parents won't take control and do anything about their behavior so they walk all over them and everyone else they meet. My senior year there were young kids just coming into middle school that started riding my bus and they would mouth off to me and the other older kids. I was 6 greades ahead of them and 5 years older, not to mention quite bigger and they were mouthing off to me. When I was a kid, I respected my elders, even if they didn't deserve it, because they were my elders and also, because they were bigger than me. But now, kids have it in their mind that anyone that does something they don't like can be brought to the police, even their parents, for abuse or harrasment. It;s stupid that our legal system allows this, but it does.

There are just so many things wrong with society and the governement and the world in general. I don't want to think about it all, it makes me not want to have kids. It's not because I don't think I'd be a good father, I know I would. My niece and nephews love me and I raise them like I was raised. I am great when they're being good, but I will yell at them or spank them if they are bad and I have no problem taking away toys or TV or video games when they are being bratty or fighting over them. But you know what? They still love me! It's ok to reprimand kids, it's ok to be dominant, YOU're the one raising THEM. YOU are supposed to be in control. They should know that you are. That way, they will listen. No, I know I'll raise my kid just fine, it's all the other kids and all the other parents that I'm worried about. I will teach my kid to respect older kids and all adults. I will teach my child to pay attention in class, to use manners in public and to act in a socially acceptable way. However, the other kids will still act like the little bastards you often see when you go to a toy store or the mall. I don't want those idiots and assholes impeding my child's ability to get ahead in life and I don't want teachers to be forced to allow those idiots to disrupt class and keep my child from learning. I'm not saying my kid wouldn't do anything wrong, it certainly would. But I would expect the teacher to call him on his shit and I would punish him afterward, fully backing the teacher. The problem is, they can't do that anymore. Society has made it almost impossible to raise a polite intelligent child anymore and it's sad.

On to other things, before I get really annoyed.

One of the games I recently bought was Golden Axe: Beast Rider for the 360. It's not bad considering it only cost me like eight bucks. But I have a few qualms. The first doesn't affect the game at all, it's just ridiculous. The character runs while holding their sword in one hand. It looks awkward and dumb. Like I said, no effect from it, it just looks stupid and that bugs me. The gameplay actually isn't bad and the game seems pretty decent. You have to play for a while before you would ever get an acheivement. But that's ok, challenge makes the acheivements mean more. I never care about getting the "5 Star a song on Easy" acheivements in Rock Band, but Gold Starring a song on Expert? Hell yeah, I'm proud of those ones! The graphics in Golden Axe are pretty cool too. And they brought back most of the old characters, enemies and mounts, so it's really pretty cool. I've got 5 other games to play and reveiw. As soon as I do, it'll be here, but until then; Pick up Golden Axe, don't pick it up from Gamestop, beat your damn kids because they probably deserve it, and buy Rock Band 3! Bon Jovi's Greatest Hits are downloadable for it on Tuesday, and even though he is from New Jersey, you gotta admit he's talented.

Irritants

2010-11-01T04:39:00.000-07:00

The cleaning lady where I work has been vacuuming for an hour now and I swear to god, I am going to go insane! All I wanted to do was listen to Rover's Morning Glory and now I missed what was sounding like an interesting news story. Plus the noise of that vacuum is really getting on my nerves. It was a long weekend with little time for relaxing or sleeping and I am not in the mood for anything that pisses me off to exist right now.

In other news; Why is prostitution illegal but pornography is ok? I'm not allowed to pay someone to have sex with me, but I can pay them to have sex with someone else in front of a camera? That seems a bit odd. Especially because in Nevada, where it is legal, Bordellos create a large amount of income for the state. It just seems stupid that such a blatant hypocrisy exists in our law system. Then again, I am not allowed to get my seized gun back from the Sheriff's office until my order of protection is lifted, yet I am not stopped from buying a new one. So as long as I don't shoot anyone with the gun I previously owned, it's apparently ok. I thought only the Bible contradicted itself this much, but apparently the separation of church and state didn't work very well and our "Democracy" has adopted a lot of the Bible's ability to change the rules as it goes along.

Also, one more bit of annoyance for the day, The BSA (Boy Scouts of America) currently has all their manuals, badges and uniforms manufactured in China. The Girl Scouts are currently looking to outsource their uniforms as well. Hardly the BSA when the A doesn't actually apply. I officially will not buy anymore Girl Scout cookies.

Ok, gonna get back to my crappy day now. Peace out!