Occasionally Witty

It's Not Soft(ware) philosophy

2011-09-09T16:10:00.000-07:00

So Deus Ex has been out for almost two weeks, and so far it’s been pretty well received. However, one critique I’ve heard getting tossed around quite a bit is that the philosophical issues regarding augmentation were a little on the silly side. I disagree with that assessment, and I love to hear myself talk, so I’m going to take a few minutes and point out some of the reasons why this imagined political conflict is not only quite reasonable, but may in fact be a reality in the next few decades.

The common discussion of the game’s philosophy, from what I’ve seen, has consisted of posing the “would you get augmented?” question. This being almost universally followed by an enthusiastic “yes.” I find this somewhat perplexing, mostly because that question hardly encapsulates the debate. In fact, barring a very brief opportunity for the player to express their views early on in the game, that question isn’t really posed to the player. The larger, far more relevant question isn’t whether or not Jensen asked for this, but whether he thinks the technology fosters a desirable status quo. Whether or not you’re willing to reassess your definition of what it means to be human in exchange for power is a question most of us can answer for ourselves. Whether it’s beneficial to so, on the macro scale, is far more complex. To wit, consider the following three scenarios:

Firstly, imagine if every upgrade in Deus Ex cost 10 Prax points, instead of one or two. While you’re at it, also imagine that 50% of the enemies in the game possess random augmentations that would allow them to spot you through walls, fatally counter your takedowns, or have twice your base allotment of hit points. Eventually, this ceases to be a challenge and starts to become impossible, and not nearly as fun. Deus Ex affords you the luxury of bleeding edge augmentations, with only a handful of boss characters even having the chance to rival your arsenal. You probably don’t live in one of the world’s most expensive homes. You probably don’t see the world’s most expensive doctors. You probably don’t drive the world’s most expensive cars. And you probably won’t have the world’s most expensive augmentations. In fact, you will cross people every day on the street who can trounce you, physically, mentally, and/or socially, only because they were wealthy enough to afford it. And those people, with their superior abilities, will also land all the high paying jobs, further securing their superior position and cementing your inferior one. And when they have children, those children will have great augmentations as well, limiting the opportunity for your own children to compete.

From one generation to the next, the gap between the rich and poor grows wider- we have seen this occur repeatedly in our own history, with poor families forced to send their children to inferior schools and raise them in less stable environments. This is not just bad for the poor people, it’s bad for a society’s stability. Large sectors of impoverished people always have, and always will, contribute heavily to an unstable society, and unstable government, and an unstable economy.

Secondly, as anyone who has ever studied the computerization of a business model can tell you, automating a procedure can have major drawbacks even when it produces a net positive effect. In accounting, for example, automating your record-keeping will serve to reduce or in some cases even eliminate arithmetic errors. Computers don’t forget to carry the two or drop out a zero, and proper design can even automatically identify many of the errors that the human element still introduces. However, increased automation introduces an increased risk of systemic error. A flaw in a computer system will be replicated every time a process is run. If a system is designed incorrectly any mistakes it makes will be made every single time the process is run, massively raising the impact it has on the end result. In the game, this fear was realized through a deliberately tainted biochip, but in reality it would more likely involve a systemic design flaw. If for example, suppose a staple design of biochip design could end up being implemented in an extremely large number of augmented people. Then, after a few months or a year, somebody devises a virus that is able to take advantage of a flaw in that chip’s design, and allow a hacker to wirelessly shut down your arms, legs, or even life support. This actually happened in real life a few months back, when two children, not meaning real harm, hacked and tampered with their grandmother’s pacemaker, causing her heart rate to dangerously rise.

In the game, the Illuminati was out with a fix for the biochip instantaneously, because as the engineers of the crisis they were prepared to deal with it. Assuming it wasn’t perpetrated by a shadow government that had a plan to control the crisis, it would probably either be a mere opportunistic person or group, hoping to profit directly in some way. Once their methods became known, however, the flaw would be exploited by any number of unscrupulous groups or individuals- in other words, a clever group of thieves could destabilize an entire nation. And if there wasn’t a read-made fix, already mass-produced and ready to hit shelves at the very moment of the crisis, the damage could continue for days, months, or even years before it was brought under control. It’s far easier to program something than to physically grow it in a lab; a man-made computer virus could pose a threat that man-made biological agents never have.

And lastly, consider the (presently) fictional concept of augmentations along with the very real concept of an increasingly polluted planet. Augmented lungs may allow us to breath polluted air indefinitely, or even generate pure oxygen internally. If this were to occur, anyone with such augmentations would no longer have a vested interest in preventing the release of dangerous pollutants into our air. It’s all well and good to say that one should have the freedom to augment themselves if they choose, but should one not also have the freedom to remain 100% biological? Eventually a point will be reached where augmenting people to survive a polluted environment is cheaper than maintaining homeostasis. And once an economy as large as the US, China, or the EU begin to completely abandon the concept of environmental sustainability, the rest will either follow suit or be unable to keep up with their less scrupulous competitors.

These are only some of the many issues that would need to be considered in determining whether and how to regulate development of this technology. However you may feel about this issue, there are bound to be people on both sides of the line.

All of these would be very real considerations if the technology in Deus Ex were to become a reality. Indeed, it might be better to say when. Medical science has already begun to redesign parts of the human body. For example, we are born with beating hearts which pump blood through our circulatory system. But doctors have invented and even successfully tested (for about a month with an already-terminal human patient) a prototype heart that does not beat, but instead spins, affecting a continuous flow instead of a pulse; before succumbing to his illness, the patient was lived and functioned for an entire month no pulse. Just as the Wright brothers determined that nature’s method of flapping wings was not always the most efficient way to achieve flight, doctors determined that nature’s method of pumping blood was not necessarily the most efficient way to operate a circulatory system. This particular example has yet to be proven out in rigorous human testing, but it shows that medicine has the power to reinvent our biological processes through means nature never employed, and in some cases may go so far as to improve on the original design of the human body: as David Sarif puts it, we may quite literally be able to “control our own evolution.”

Science fiction authors have turned out to be accidental prophets in the past, and there is no reason to assume the phenomenon won’t repeat itself. While technology may never specifically take the form it does in the world of Deus Ex, the day may come when philosophical questions it poses are not no longer academic.

And with the exponential growth of humanity’s technological prowess, many of us may even live to see that day.

For more information on the artificial heart I discussed, go here

For more information on why I suggest that we may live to see this day, I would stress that I am referring to the possibility, not the probability. Then I would suggest you read this article from TIME magazine

And the next morning I felt FANTASTIC!

2011-07-02T17:07:00.001-07:00

So. Last night. Yeeeeeeaaahhhh….

You know what? Screw that. I had a good time. Yes I drank too much, yes I embarrassed myself, but I had a damned good time and it was worth it. And I remember most of it.

I remember having a debate with Evan about housing tax, and I remember carrying it on up to the point where I realized there was a genuinely interesting conversation to be had, but I'd have to sober up before I could make any points or understand his. From there, I wandered inside and proceeded to *attempt* to tell a story about my worst sunburn ever, in an ill-conceived moment of machismo, because my sunburn was totally worse than that other guy's and he shouldn't be complaining. Because man, lemme tell ya man, because seriously, this was, dude, seriously, this was a crazy story. Let me tell you.

My last memory of the evening was noticing that everybody was staring at me while I talked, and thinking that it meant I was either telling my story really really well, or really really poorly. I had no innate sense of which it was, but judging solely from the amount of alcohol I'd consumed that evening, I had an inkling. I can only assume this train of thought was what convinced me to allow Andrea to lead me away from all the sane people and put me to bed, an event which I definitely do not remember happening.

If nights like this occurred (or ever start to occur) with any degree of regularity, I would (will) begin to seriously reassess my method of having a good time. But seeing as this was my only blackout in the past half decade I choose to forgive myself, so long as it doesn't happen again.

I've got a few more new posts coming. I've leveled up again, this time to a new character class (I'm a tax admin now) and I have a new home, which is awesome.

Lollipop Pugilism

2011-04-05T12:01:00.000-07:00

With nothing better to do on Sunday afternoon, I moseyed on down to my local theater and took in a showing of Sucker Punch. It was alright.

The closest thing I can compare it to would probably be Inception, in the sense that almost the entire movie takes place outside of its own reality. The story concerns a twenty-year old girl who, after standing up to her abusive father in defense of her younger sister, finds herself committed to an absolute cesspool of a psychiatric facility. Courtesy of a bribe from her father to an unscrupulous orderly, she is scheduled for a lobotomy in five days' time. It is at this point that the movie departs utterly from this plot, and our hero, henceforth referred to by her stage name of Baby Doll, finds herself as the latest acquisition of an upscale whorehouse, awaiting the arrival of the dreaded “high roller” who has reportedly purchased her virginity. Unable to cope with this reality (which in fact is not her reality but a grand delusion her mind created because it couldn’t cope with her real reality) Baby Doll frequently escapes into vivid fantasies where she fights for her life through her own subconscious, battling demons of varying size and style. Whether these are metaphors for things she is actually doing or mere escapist fantasies is not immediately clear, but the movie challenges its viewers to question just how much that distinction really matters. In the end, one might suppose it would matter a lot, what with the impending lobotomy and all, but by the time you ask that question there are samurais on screen, so it’s not worth thinking too hard about.

And that last line really sums up a large portion of the movie’s appeal. The plot ends up being half-way decent in its own right, but its primary purpose is to serve as a vehicle for a series of increasingly fantastical scenes with Baby Doll and her fellow inmates. It is at these points where the movie really shines. The artwork is really quite good, and it is rendered beautifully. The scenes are also nicely choreographed. They aren’t really happening- not even for pretend- but these scenes are the movie: which is to say, an entertaining series of escapist flights of fancy.

So if you want an Inception-degree brain-bender a fantasy twist, you’re likely to be disappointed. If you want to see a little girl kung fu fight a 12-foot stone samurai, go see it in IMAX.

Woo hoo!

2011-02-19T17:05:00.000-08:00

For a little over a year now, I have toiled under the oppressive yoke of H&R Block. No, there was never an actual yoke. And they weren’t… actively oppressive. And they did always work with me on my hours so I could attend classes and study for finals. Well, OK, it wasn’t really all that unreasonable in the end. But I toiled, darnit!

But in all seriousness, H&R Block was a black hole in which I risked losing myself. The promotions I would have gotten, had I stayed, would have been along the lines of a manager in a call center, and ten years later I would be making enough money to get by but not as much as I could have been; I also would be absolutely miserable at my job, and wondering why I never got out while I had the chance.

So you can imagine how happy I was to hear a recruiter from State Street utter the words “we have decided to offer you a position.”

Starting March 14th, I’ll be working in the Alternative Investments Taxation department for one of the largest holding company in the world. I’m going to be fairly low on the totem pole, and the work could almost be described as glorified data entry, but it is a job in my field, and the pay is substantially better than what I’m getting now. The pay is also regular, in that I don’t have to get my hours cut at the end of the tax season, or take a mandatory 8 weeks of unpaid leave. This means that, if in a couple of months I feel things are going well and the position is going to work out, I will be in a position to lease an apartment. The threat of being that 30-year old guy who lives with his parents is waning, and the future looks bright.

2011-02-08T11:24:00.000-08:00

I have seen my first play in 2011, and it was about women in corsets having orgasms at the doctor’s office.

In upstate New York in the near the end of the 19th century, humanity was on the brink of the industrial revolution. Edison and Tesla were still competing to see who would pioneer the pending renaissance. And doctors, filled with the kind hubris that comes from being an academic in an age of rapid technological advancement, were biting off substantially more than they could chew.

During this time, as medical science had yet to find its footing and was stumbling in the dark, frequently knocking things over. One of the catch-all diagnoses of the time- one that went less noticed what with all that outrageous lobotomy business looming just a few years down the road- was Hysteria, a condition that afflicted many women of the era. The symptoms were wide-ranging, and could be anything from excitability, depression, irritability, and pretty much any other end of the emotional spectrum. A common treatment for this was to induce a “paroxysm,” a series of convulsions that would allow excess fluid to drain from the womb, and permit the body and mind to regain their crucial balance. It was achieved through vaginal massage, usually administered on a weekly basis.

If the reader were to stop at this moment and scour the internet to appraise the accuracy of the above paragraph, that reader might find that, while generous artistic liberties may have been taken, it bares an unexpected resemblance to the truth.

To wit.

In the Next Room, or “The Vibrator Play,” is a story about a doctor of this time period, and the ministrations he renders upon those in his care. His cold and clinical demeanor run in stark contrast to the intimacy with which such an experience is meant to entail. For Dr. Givings, it is merely a medical procedure like any other. For his patients, it is a bizarre, frightening, painful necessity of which they find they cannot get enough.

The production was a brilliant historical satire. As one of the cast members put it, the play is a “period piece through a contemporary lens.” As ridiculous and outlandish as the proceedings are by modern standards, the setting of the play firmly roots them in their historical setting. It serves to drive home the point that for all the absurdity of it, these were real medical procedures performed on real women (and some men) by real licensed doctors.

The play itself is a sometimes subtle (but mostly not-so subtle) commentary on gender roles and our ability to embrace our sexuality both as individuals and as a society. But more than that, it is freaking hilarious. From the facial expressions to the comical yet disturbingly makes-sense dialogue to the comedy-of-errors through which Mrs. Givings discovers and experiments with the Device while her husband is at the Club, the play had me falling out of my seat laughing pretty much open to close.

The play did set humor aside, if only briefly, to make time for some very genuine commentary about our ability to allow ourselves to remain ignorant of those things with which we are uncomfortable. Sideplots of sexual self-discovery and love triangles abound and they make good use of the time the play spends on them, but most of them are ultimately relegated to an ancillary position, in favor of the comedy that makes the play so great. The second act does focus largely on the dichotomy between Mrs. Givings, who is gradually discovering all the emotions and desires that polite society has forced her to ignore, and Dr. Givings, who is so firmly rooted in reason and logic that he is unable to exhibit the emotion his wife can finally admit she needs. The play finally concludes with a very… progressive scene that has forever changed how I look at Snow Angels.

In Retrospect...

2011-01-06T12:04:00.000-08:00

Best movie of 2010: The classic mistake is to give the most credit to the most recent awesome thing one has seen, but I will brave that mistake by saying that True Grit, while ultimately a straightforward and forgettable movie, had some of the most engaging performances I’ve seen all year.

Worst movie of 2010: Robo-Geisha, hands down. This is a movie that can only be enjoyed alongside good liquor and better friends.

Best video game of 2010: I’m going with Amnesia: The Dark Descent. This is a game that literally made me want to stop playing because I was getting scared. Whether that makes it “good” is a matter of opinion, but either way some artistic credit is due.

Worst video game of 2010: Dante’s Inferno. This game is about a former Templar running through hell fighting physical manifestations of various sins he committed during what he believed was a righteous crusade. The developers managed to make that into a boring, mundane experience.

Best personal accomplishment of 2010: This is, happily, a difficult decision. I lost 30 lbs in the span of 4 months. I finished my Master’s degree. I passed my REG exam. I’m going to write off the degree, because most of the work for that was done in the previous year. I’m also going to write off the lost weight, because in the end I didn’t expend a lot of effort on it- turns out all I really had to do was stop horking down every edible object I laid eyes on. That leaves, once again, the most recent awesome thing of the year, which would be my passing of the REG exam

Worst personal failing of 2010: In the weeks following my return from Europe, I let myself slip into a bit of an apathetic slump. I wouldn’t call it a profound depression so much as a period during which I just wasn’t very aggressive in achieving my personal goals. If I had put the same effort into my life during July and August that I did in the last quarter of the year, it’s quite possible I’d be halfway to my CPA exam.

Best day of 2010: Bodrum. Beaches. Fruity drinks. Sun. For an entire day, I didn’t desire a single thing that wasn’t all around me.

Worst day of 2010: The day I took my REG exam. I took the exam on the last day of the year that it was being offered, and if I had missed it, I would have had to start studying all over again for the 2011 version, which would have contained an entirely different set of tax rules; naturally, things went wrong and when I got to the center they didn’t have me properly scheduled. I actually did miss my scheduled exam, but after the most frantic hour of the year I managed to suss things out with the good folks at NASBA, and they penciled me in for later during that same day. On top of the horrific nervousness that naturally accompanies an endeavor like this, I can easily say that this was the most nerve-wracking day of the year. It still didn’t stop me from passing.

Happy Holidays

2010-12-25T14:13:00.000-08:00

I sit among my gifts for the year, like some gluttonous dragon atop its hoard.

I am now the happy owner of a Nook color, as well as the full 2-movie set of Red Cliff, the chemistry drink set from Think Geek, a decadently soft new robe, and a wireless keyboard and mouse. This all is to say nothing of the veritable bonanza that has been generously sent to me through Steam. Dead Rising 2 and Meatboy are particularly interesting, and this "Disciples" thing seems to have some promise as well. I hope to repay such generosity in person next week.

Here's hoping that all of you spent the day making happy memories with your loved ones.

Happy Holidays,

Ben

addendum: The best gift, by far, was a little device which I will nickname "The Theo." It is a keychain with an alarm on it, that I can activate to find my keys when I lose them.

Happy Holidays and stuff

2010-12-22T08:14:00.000-08:00

Oh! Hey there! Didn’t think anyone was still around. Don’t mind me, I just came to pick up some stuff- what? You want a post? I dunno, I haven’t really done that sort of thing in a while…

What do you mean don’t be like that? Oh fine, here’s your stupid post:

As those of you perusing that book of faces are already aware, the results of my first CPA exam are in substantially sooner than I had expected them to be, and they are happy results indeed. It is a solidly passing score, and I am now one step closer to my certification. With any luck, I’ll have it finished before September of next year.

I have a new job, which is in fact the same new job I had back in September; it’s more of a lateral move, really, but it means I’ll get to keep working. I’m beginning to look more seriously for new employment, but in the meantime I am maintaining a positive cash flow.

Sadly, that flow will be stemmed somewhat for the month of December, as in addition to my Christmas shopping I got slapped with a speeding ticket last night. An 18-wheeler on my right began to drift into my lane, I got a little freaked out and floored it to get myself out of his blind spot, and just so happened to be passing through an officer’s radar at the time. He didn’t buy enough of that (entirely true) story to tear up the ticket, so now I have to go to traffic court and cough up $200. The ticket was just for $80, but the city of Mission lets you pay some extra fines and have your speeding ticket marked down to a non-moving violation, and the potential hike in insurance premiums makes this the cheaper option in the long run.

Christmas is coming up fast, and I’m happy to say that my shopping is all done for this season. I’ve already begun to receive some of the oh-so-very-kind gifts from my friends in St Louis, for which I’d like to take a moment to say “thank you.” I was really curious about Super Meat Boy, and Burnout has been an “almost-bought-it” of mine for some time now. Happy Holidays to all, and I hope we all get some of our most-wanted this year.

Some more good news: I will definitely be in town for the New Year’s party. I’m still not sure about where I’m staying (hint hint wink wink nudge nudge) but if no other options present themselves, I think a hotel might be in my budget this year.

I’m looking forward to seeing everyone in St Louis again. In the meantime, enjoy the Holidays!

New Job Update

2010-10-23T11:14:00.001-07:00

So I've been on my new job for a couple weeks now. All in all, I'd say it's going well. I spend a good portion of my time putting out fires so that people with bigger hats than me can do more important stuff, but I can honestly say that this has been a truly educational experience.

Since I started this job, I have conducted interviews, contributed towards hiring decisions, had a little (more than I'd like) experience with the process of talking to an employee who is not performing and may need to be let go in the near future. I've had the chance to view the workplace environment from another perspective, and on a professional level I think that's going be a valuable thing. It's also nice that when I see inherent flaws in the way we do things, I am occasionally in a position to simply fix them, rather than complaining about it to somebody else.

I think one of the things I like most is that, apparently, I'm very very good at this job. My two bosses keep pulling me aside and telling me what a fantastic job I've been doing, and how much they appreciate all my hard work. I expect it's mostly just ego-stroking to keep morale up, but it's still nice to be praised once in a while.

The job has its drawbacks, however. I freuently feel like a glorified babysitter, running from one employee to the next to fix a computer problem or help them understand an issue. This becomes less of a problem the longer a particular person has been on the job, but with a constant influx of new employees (despite the fact that the job ends in three months, we're still trying to get ourselves fully staffed) there's an equally constant stream of questions to answer and issues to deal with. I often find that I've gone out of my way to draw up a schedule or improve the process, only to find that somewhere further up the chain the entire thing has been redone and the fruits of my labors go straight into a bin. The hours are inconsistent, and more than once I've found myself working until 11 PM one night only to be back at 9 AM the next day. But these are mundane problems that come with the territory, and they are hardly amount to anything more than an annoyance.

All in all, the job has been good to me. It's a step towards what I really want for myself, and I'm glad to have taken it.

The Next Step

2010-09-23T20:34:00.000-07:00

,

Ben leveled up!

Responsibilities +4
Authority + 7
Wages + 3
Confidence +6
Status +3
Scheduling Flexibility +10

New job Class! Ben is now:

“Lower Management” class!

As of the 4th of October, I am officially promoted. I am leaving my current department and taking a management position for a new project that Block is starting.

I won’t be running the department or anything fancy like that, but I will have a substantially larger amount of responsibility in my new position. My official title is Team Leader, and I will be directly overseeing one of four teams on the project. I will be responsible for making training and quality assurance, scheduling, part of the department’s budget (i.e. making sure we get the job done but don’t spend too much on wages in the process), and I will have some input/responsibility with regards to the department’s interview and hiring process.

The job comes with a nice pay bump, and I will likely have a much more agreeable schedule going forward. In my old job, every other Friday when we closed the payroll system I would have to pull a 12-14 hour shift and then work a full shift the following Saturday. There will be some weekends on the new project, but it will likely be fewer than half and the uber-long shifts I’ve grown accustomed to will probably not be required. Another nice bonus is that I will no longer have to work on Thanksgiving and Christmas, which was more or less a requirement back in the payroll department.

I was notified about this last week, but until yesterday it was somewhat up in the air whether I’d actually get to take the job, because my current department is chronically short of staff and the boss lady wanted to hold on to me for a couple extra weeks. But after a sit-down with said boss-lady I have an official start date, hence this post.

Unfortunately, the project itself will only last for about four months, after which I will, presumably, be returning to the payroll department. Still, with any luck I’ll have one or two portions of the CPA exam behind me by then, and I can either move up to another position within Block or leverage my enhanced credentials to find better work elsewhere.

In the meantime, however, I'm just going to be happy with where I am now. Things are going well.

New Car Drama

2010-08-30T19:56:00.001-07:00

So by now, almost everyone who reads this knows all or a part of the following story. I’d meant to put it up a while back, and just never got around to it.

So way back in July, I’m sitting around my house, doing absolutely nothing of note. After getting back from Europe, I fell into a bit of a rut. It’s that same rut that most of us fell into after graduating college for the first time, especially if we didn’t already have a job in our lives. You wake up, you force yourself to send your resume out to a few job openings, but you don’t actually make the kind of serious effort you know you should. You sleep late, because there’s nowhere you have to be and nothing you have to do at any particular time of the day, and life just doesn’t feel like it used to.

Sooner or later, of course, we have to break out of that funk and rejoin the world. My emergence from said state was supposed to come one morning in late July when my boss from HR Block called me and explained that, after weeks of delays, the background and credit check, newly instituted for all returning employees, had finally come back and I was given the green light to return to work. Happy to finally have an excuse to leave the house, I hopped in my car and started to drive.

About fifteen minutes later, the front left corner of my car was a twisted metal heap, and a very polite lady had a nasty gash down the side of her truck. I had turned right on a red, thinking the way was clear. This was the first time in my life I’d had this kind of experience, but I had a vague idea of what needed to be done. Both our cars were still in drivable condition, so we moved to a parking lot, called the police, and exchanged insurance information.

Now, the precise nature of the accident is still somewhat unclear to me. To my recollection, I had finished my turn and was well into perpendicular street by the time the impact occurred, which would mean that the other driver had to be changing lanes to side swipe me like that. Supporting this version of events is the fact that treadmarks could be found two car lengths beyond the intersection. Also, my front headlight popped forward and out, rather than caving into the car as one might expect from a head-on collision.

The claims adjustor, however, felt that a sideswipe would have caused a different shape of dent on the other car, and felt that my headlight might have been popped out because metal behind it was twisted in the accident, forcing it forward. Long story short, I’m out a car and a $125 ticket.

So I’m driving my busted up car around, not sure how long it’ll keep running. Our mechanic said it was safe to drive for a little while, but that we needed to repair or replace the car soon. The repair job would have involved very expensive body work, and the car has been breaking down on my every couple of months anyway, so it was pretty clear that a new car was the more fiscally sound option. So I start doing some research.

Next thing I know, before I’ve even had a chance to settle on what kind of car I might like to be looking at, I find out that my mom went out looking and got talked into buying a used Honda Accord, year 2004, from a local dealer. The salesman had somehow so convinced her of the need to buy the car immediately that she did not even consult me before making the purchase. She just wrote the guy a check, expecting me to pay her back when I could.

Now, on the one hand, hey new car. I mean, I had a big problem, and supermom just swooped in and solved it for me before I even got my head around just how big a problem it was. On the other hand, now I’m committed to ultimately paying for a car I’ve never even laid eyes on. I don’t for a moment doubt the purity of her intentions, but seriously, boundaries?

As it turns out, the Honda Accord does actually fit me like a glove. I drive it to stl, and it just feels right. It’s only slightly larger than my old Sable, and it has a smaller engine (my old car was a 6 cylinder, this is a 4) but it handles beautifully. Also, I never knew how awesome it would be to have stereo buttons on my steering wheel. I know that sounds like one of the last things you should car about in a multi-thousand dollar investment, but dude, I liked that.

The next chapter in the story almost everyone has already heard. The car gets me to stl just fine, and also gets me to my interview. Then, on the ride home, it gets as far as the end of highway 40 before the engine cuts out. So right there, merging onto I-70, I lose everything. Power steering cuts out, and my speed starts dropping like a stone. What’s worse, I’m still getting used to the car, and I don’t know where the button for the hazard lights are. I flip my turn signals one and off and wave my hands frantically, hoping that anyone behind me will come to the conclusion that I’m having car trouble. Or that I’m insane, but either way they better slow down. I manage to get my car safely to the side of the road.

About an hour or so later, Adam is picking me up from the Honda dealer off highway 40. Ironically, his car is having trouble too, all of the sudden, but it does at least get us back to his place before it starts to crap out. I make the most of my extra time in stl, and by the end of the day the dealer calls me back with new information: there was no oil in the car.

They oil the car up (that sounds dirty…) and I drive it back towards Kansas City. I stop in Kingdom City to check the oil again, and sure enough, it’s already running low. Something is wrong with the engine, and it’s either leaking or burning through the oil at a prodigal rate. I top it off, and drive it the rest of the way home, at which point it once again is running low on oil. The local dealer takes it back, tries to fix it, and determines that the only solution is to completely replace the engine.

I should mention at this point that since I’m working way out in downtown Kansas City and the dealer is near my house in Overland Park, and because I’d just taken a bunch of time off work to go to St Louis, I wasn’t actually able to physically go to the dealer’s lot to handle any of this. It was all done through phone calls, and any in-person interactions had to be done with my parents, who live and work like 5 minutes from the place.

So anyway, just as I’m starting to think “yay, new engine” I get a call from my mom wanting me to leave work early and look at a Toyota Corola. WTF! What happened to a new engine in my Accord? So I get down there, more than a little irate at this point, and then I learn that the engine they wanted to give me was a used one, and they couldn’t even tell us how many miles was on it or how long it had been in service. Another WTF! So my mom has been talking about this Toyota Corola, and we have to choose between it and a much more expensive 2007 Honda Accord. The dealer is offering to let us buy another car off the lot and put the money we’ve already given them towards it, but they haven’t offered anything more, and I need a car sooner than a lawyer will get all this sorted out, even if it did all go in my favor. So I take the deal, and we leave the lot, planning to file all the paperwork the next day.

Over the next 24 hours, however, we pull up the Corola’s specs on the dealer’s website, and find some things that the dealer neglected to mention. In particular, there is no anti-lock breaking system. At this point, abbreviated bastardizations of the English language no longer suffice. What. The. FUCK!

Back to the dealer, and now we have only two options. Select a substantially more expensive 2007 Honda Accord, or go get a lawyer. So the good news is that the third time seems to have been the charm, as my new new new car really is fun to drive and handles well. The bad news, however, is that it cost us a lot more than we were expecting to spend, and we probably got screwed on the price since the dealer knew we didn’t really want to go to a lawyer over this. The salesman himself, at least, seemed to genuinely feel bad, and he agreed to sell us the 3-year, bumper-to-bumper warranty at cost. At least, he said it was cost…

If anything goes wrong with this one, I will write a very nasty letter. And possibly commit murder.

Christianity Evolving?

2010-08-29T12:09:00.000-07:00

Mothers of Christian teenagers, beware. According to a new study, it is possible that your child just thinks God wants them to feel good about themselves, and try to be good people.

Aparrently, an "impostor" to proper Christianity has risen up, which the study calls "moralistic therapeutic deism." According to this study, teens across the country say they are Christians, believe they are Christians, but in reality, they "that God simply wanted them to feel good and do good." Scandalous!

The study goes on to complain that teenagers are indifferent and inarticulate about their faith, and that while they seem to believe in God, they don't have a drive to make others do so. Kenda Creasy Dean, author of "Almost Christian," has become a self-appointed crusader to raise awareness about this new horrible threat to our children. She particularly raises concern that teenagers are "inarticulate" about their faith. She raises several other points, which if you want to know more about you can view the CNN article here or perhaps her book, but from what I gleaned after reading the former was that her argument basically boils down to the following statement:

Many teens are practicing a religion that motivates them to be kind, compassionate, and willing to help other people. It has moved them to volunteer their time at various charities, treat others with respect, and generally be more self-aware with regards to their own adherence to a moral code. However, they are losing the dogma and specific rules that really make Christianity what it is. They aren't "witnessing" to spread their faith to others. They're even skipping church! We need to stop the proliferation of this pretender to the throne!

And an article detailing this "threat" made the front page of cnn.com

The good news is that if the study can be believed, this "pretender religion" is actually the dominant form of worship among American teens. If that's true, I think there's hope for this country yet.

Scott Pilgrim and the Seven Deadly Metaphors

2010-08-25T15:06:00.000-07:00

So I just got back from seeing Scott Pilgrim, and my sides are still hurting a little. This was honestly the best movie I’ve seen in the last couple of years.

For the unaware, the basic premise of Scott Pilgrim Vs The Word is as follows: Scott Pilgrim is an unemployed hipster living in Canada with his gay roommate who pretty much carries his sorry ass financially. He has recently started dating a Japanese school girl, is in a band that nobody likes or has heard of, and his life is going nowhere. Then he meets Ramona. Ramona is the physical embodiment of nerdy chic. Funky anime style hair that changes colors on a weekly basis, an outfit that captures the aesthetic that Hot Topic was always going for but never quite reached, a general lack of insipidness, and an inexplicable willingness to let Scott mope his way into a date with her. However, now that he is dating her, he must defeat her Seven Evil Exes in a variety of duels to the death.

The movie takes place in a sort of alternate reality, where life regularly imitates video games: people will randomly acquire superpowers, health bars and power-ups are commonplace, and Scott actually acquires visible points as he progresses through the story. Everybody seems to find this perfectly natural; in fact, when the first evil ex is defeated and explodes in a shower of coins, the only shock that Scott Pilgrim exhibits regarding this phenomenon is that it’s not enough to cover his bus fare home. The movie is full of 8-bit sound effects, needlessly intense voiceovers, and enough arcade style lights and noises to… man, I swear I had something for this… well, it’s a lot of lights and noises, OK? Basically, the movie is wrapped in a glossy coat of exactly what its target audience of underdeveloped manchildren want to see: an environment in which the cartoonish preoccupations of our youth are not only accepted but commonplace in adult society, but are now mixed with the kind of mature themes that we weren’t allowed to know about back in those days. In other words, it’s a world where nobody had to grow up, get a job, or actually mature as a person, but still got to move out of their parents’ houses, get girlfriends, and do all that awesome stuff that the big people get to do.

There’s one gigantic twist to all of this, however: the entire core concept of the movie is that people who honestly want to see all that need to grow the fuck up. Just in case this wasn’t glaringly obvious by the constant use of the video-game style boss fights as a metaphor for Scott dealing with his own emotional baggage, the movie literally spells it out for us in big flashing letters more than once. Despite the fact that there’s a lot going on in this movie, they spend the first twenty minutes or so getting you to absolutely despise the main character, so that the next hour and a half can be spent developing him from a hopeless, self-conscious loser into a remotely likable human being.

The video-game aesthetic, while being an absolute blast to watch, in is in fact an extended metaphor for how a lot of the target audience needs to get over themselves and grow up a little. It’s like I went to a strip club, and a gorgeous naked woman stepped out and delivered a truly compelling dissertation on how objectification of women was harmful for my sexual development.

Scott Pilgrim is a movie that works on several different levels. As a simple, mindless comedy, there is more than enough good humor to make it a satisfactory comedy. The fight scenes are surprisingly well-choreographed, so long as the arcade-style aesthetic isn’t a turn-off for you. That aesthetic itself is a hilarious non-sequitor, made all the funnier by the fact that the movie is kind of making fun of your for liking it so readily. But on top of all of that, the movie is telling the story of a shy, emotionally stunted nerd finally getting over his own BS and becoming an adult nerd with a girlfriend. And just to remind the audience that this bit of mockery is all in good fun, he levels up when he does so.

L8er H8ers

2010-08-04T17:56:00.000-07:00

With apologies for the headline.

In San Francisco today, Chief US District Judge Vuaghn Walker officially overturned the controversial Proposition 8. For those of you with short attention spans, Prop 8 was the gay marriage ban enacted in California during the 2008 elections.

"Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license," Walker wrote in his decision. "Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples.

-excerpt from CNN

The campaign to pass Proposition 8 featured every dirty political trick from rhetoric to outright lies. It was better funded than any political campaign for a social issue in our nation’s history. It was a mar on the reputation for fairness and tolerance that America has prided itself on for generations, and although I am not gay, I am ecstatic to hear of its defeat, however temporary.

Because it is expected that a higher court will rule on this, the matter effectively remains undecided, and so the Judge has ruled that the ban will continue to hold until the appeals process is concluded- a process that may very well wind up in the Supreme Court in the not-too-distant future.

That’s right, there is a strong likelihood that the Supreme Court will be forced to decide whether homosexuality is a protected status under the 14th amendment before our next presidential election.

In other words, depending on how a certain other popular-vote initiative pans out in November, California may be giving rise to two potentially epic Supreme Court issues before Christmas.

And as an interesting aside: in the corner of gay rights during this legislative smackdown is the unlikely tag-team of David Boies and former US Solicitor General Theodore Olson, the lawyers that represented Al Gore and George Bush in the 2002 elections, respectively. The law guy that the Democrats turned to in hopes of winning the presidency and the man that the Republicans turned to for the same are working together on this. It’s like when Lex Luthor teamed up with Superman to fight Darkseid.

But political fanboying aside, today made me happy. It’s a reminder that while we still have an abundance of grossly ignorant, intolerant jackasses in our country, there’s still a strong contingent of sensible people willing to push back. A certain somebody would be very quick to remind me of how ridiculous I sound when I get on my political high horse, but this is one position that I don’t mind looking silly over.

I'm a man. I don't have a "diary." Or a "journal," for that matter.

2010-07-19T10:48:00.002-07:00

So I've been back in the US for nearly a month now. I've bought and begun using some prep software for the CPA exam, been sending resumes out to anyone I can think of, and now, after finally just pulling an all-nighter on Saturday and then going to bed at seven PM, I've finally managed to get myself back on a slewing schedule that approximates sanity.

This morning, I woke at nine PM after a very strange dream in which I and The Riddler teamed up to fight an army plastic monsters that were taking over the world. I made breakfast, cleaned myself up, and drove out to my school to pick up a copy of my transcript. You see, you must electronically submit a transcript to apply for government jobs, but UMKC policy explicitly forbids giving electronic copies, because somebody might hack the system and steal one, compromising our precious identities. Given that the copies that they print off are, presumably, also electronically stored, I'm not sure this is an effective deterrent from letting ne'er-do-wells learn my GPA. However, for added security, they won't even mail out an unofficial transcript (all I really needed to apply for a job) so at least there's that. Twits.

The upside to all this is that since I was already here, I headed over to the computer lab to see if I could use their scanner. I learned then that my student account was never deactivated, which means I still have access to the free CPA prep software. It only offers practice multiple choice questions, which (as I learned last year) is insufficient to prepare me for an exam, but the practice questions in my current prep software are somewhat insufficient, so this should balance it out nicely, at least until my access gets changed.

And so now, I am sitting in a coffee shop. Blogging. Figured I'd get a head start on being a yuppie. But while I'm here, something about the blogosphere occurs to me.

The above post contains virtually nothing of interest. I yammer on about government job requirements and some exam software, and give an accounting my last few days, which were fairly uneventful. The only thing in the whole post that anyone is likely to relate to is the bit about schools having retarded policies.

This highlights the obvious counter to the common argument against owning a blog: "why would you want to make your diary/journal public?" The obvious answer being, because in those rare instances in which we do treat our blogs like an actual journal, nobody wastes their time reading it anyway. In reality, they're more like soap boxes than anything. A handful of people eventually peruse teem when they've got nothing better to do, and for that reason we technically have an "audience." This means that we can spend twenty minutes typing up a post in which we bitch about our problems, rant about our political ideals, and proclaim our latest mind-blowing, life-altering epiphany, and feel like people are hanging on our every word. While they still usually exist more for their writers than their audience, journals they are not.

Things I really will actually do once I am a person of means

2010-07-07T14:44:00.001-07:00

It will be Andrea’s birthday one week from today. Being penniless and thousands of miles away, I can’t really do much more than wish her a happy birthday. When I am fiscally secure, I will at least visit her on her birthdays.

I will move out of my parents’ home, and into one of my own. This goes without saying, naturally. I love my family, and they really do make every reasonable effort to accommodate, but I hate not providing for myself. As soon as I am able, I will get off of parental welfare and stand on my own.

I will procure a decent wardrobe. As it stands, I no longer fit any of my pants. They’re all too big since I came back from Europe. As I fully intend to keep the weight off (and hopefully lose another ten or twenty pounds over time) I need to replace much of my closet. Frankly, if I do this on my parents’ dime, I’ll remember it every time I open my closet. For the time being: belts.

Save for retirement. My first step once I do have a decent-paying job will be to calculate how much of the paycheck I need to get by, and then determine a percentage of my paychecks to be deducted for a retirement account. This number was in the double-digits when I worked for Charter, and I hope to be able to say that about my next job.

Give to charity. If I was able to afford sending a few dollars to the United Way out of every paycheck when I worked for Convergys, I’ve no excuse not doing it again.

Entertain. What I miss the most about my place in St Louis was that people actually came over. Barbecues, cocktail parties, and even just drunken nights playing some stupid game on the Wii. Living in my parents home, I don’t get much of a chance to play host.

Get a girlfriend. Living with your parents creates a major disadvantage when attempting to woo the opposite sex. Once I have a home, some extra cash, and clothes that fit, I’m going to start dating.

Epi(c)log

2010-06-21T19:36:00.000-07:00

Note: I've been experimenting with stream of consciousness posting lately. This is that experiment, taking waaaaaay too far. It's a glimpse into my deeply sleep-deprived mind. Eventually, I will retcon this post into a proper summary, rather than leave it as the overwritten monstrosity it is now.

Also Note: Times in this journal are given using Eastern European Summer Time (EEST), which is eight hours ahead of Central Standard Time used in the the American midwest.

Sunday, June 20th,

7:30 PM, Balcony outside Andrea's apartment.

And so ends a great adventure. I'm sitting on Dre and Carl's deck admiring the weather, while I wait for four AM to roll around so I can climb into a cab. There's a pretty big storm brewing, so the temperature's dropping and the wind is getting strong. Now the rain is starting.

The final days of my vacation have passed more or less without incident. I was hoping for a trip to the museum or perhaps the bazaar, but we're all still exhausted and I've spent too much anyway.

It's well and truly storming now, with large bolts of lightning here and there, some of them awfully close. The door only latches from the inside, so I've got a chair propped against it to keep it from banging open and shut.

I wasn't sure what to expect of Turkey when I first came over here, and a lot of it has surprised me. For example, I think somewhere along the line I started equating the concept of an Islamic country with deserts, third world technology, and rampant crime. From what I've seen so far, some things are different, but by no means is Turkey undeveloped. In fact, we could learn a thing or two from the Turks.

For example, they deliver almost anything, including beer and cigarettes. And when a deliveryman comes to your door, he can run the credit card right then and there; you don't have to give them your credit card number until AFTER they show up with the goods. I wish the chinese restaurants back home could do that!

Wow… That storm is really picking up. I'm glad we stayed in tonight!

Anyway, another thing about this country: the produce. I never truly enjoyed a tomato in my life before coming to this country, but the produce here is so fresh it's like another food altogether.

And then, some of the differences are just weird. Earlier today, for example, I had pizza. With corn. They put corn on their pizza here. Actually tastes alright.

They also have a real thing about smoking. In the US, you get little warning labels on the side of a pack of cigarettes. Here, you get warnings in big bold print that cover half the box, and sometimes a photograph of a dead baby. And on television, no channel may show a character smoking. Its kind of weird when you're watching a movie with all manner of sex and violence, but a little cigarette has to be blurred out.

* * * *
Monday, June 21st

12:30 AM, Andrea's living room

It's half past midnight now, and we just finished another Dr Who marathon and started Bored to Death. One of the characters pulled out a join, and it was covered with a rotating flower. A green one.

Ironic. Cover a green plant with a green plant.

* * * *

3:00 AM, Streets of Ankara

A little after one, we went out for a walk, primarily I could get cab fare from the ATM. We kept walking a little ways after that to get some coffee.

I haven't really explained this yet, but the Turkish are very serious about their coffee. For instance, although we found no less than three all-night coffee shops in about as many city blocks, we were under dressed for two of them.

When we did finally stop, I had my last Turkish meal. I had been meaning to order lamb all month, and here I finally had it, cut in a kabob fashion and served on top of a flat pita with tomato, onion, and rice; it was accompanied by a Lentil soup. Altogether, it was a good last meal. After we finished, I ordered some Turkish coffee. Turkish coffee is an interesting beverage. It is served in a cup the size of a shot glass, like espresso, but with a much greater caffeine content. The grounds are left in the drink, giving it an extraordinarily thick texture. As you near the bottom of the cup, that consistency grows until your drinking more grounds than liquid, so you have to get a feel for when to stop drinking or it feels like drinking sand.

Oddly enough, I really liked Turkish coffee.

Well, it's now ten after three in the morning. Despite the generous caffeine boost, I'm feeling sleepy already, and I've still got a good twenty four hours before I can go to sleep.

* * * *

6:30 AM, en route to Munich Airport

Throughout this trip, I have not once boarded a plain that lacked a screaming child. Not one single plane.

* * * *

9:05 AM, runway in Munich

We've landed. Everyone in the plane hurriedly climbs out of their chairs so they can wait in a big thick line to get their bags and depart the plane. I've done this a few times over by now, so I know there's no point in getting in that line. I'm going to sit right here in this chair and play with my laptop until I have a clear route to the exit. The bus to the terminal won't leave until we're all on board anyway, so why rush?

* * * *

9:47 AM, Munich Airport

Score. I found a power outlet in an out-of-the-way sort of spot, and I actually have the necessary converter. My battery was getting low and may take a while to charge, but I've got lots of time to kill, and I've already been thoroughly disappointed by the prices at the Duty Free.

Duty Free isn't really all that cheap, liquor-wise. I did stare longingly at 20 euro liter of Jameson's before I gave in to the fact that I was trying to drink fine whiskey on a tap water budget.

My flight leaves at eleven fifty local time, which is one hour behind, so I've got almost exactly three hours to fritter away. I could poke around online, but that costs eight euro per hour and I'm just not willing to drop ten bucks to check my email.

This flight will be long, but I'm feeling rather amped at the moment. I've got enough lyra on hand to hook myself up with some caffeine, and with a fully charged laptop I can kill at least half the air time storming Kefka's tower. Toss in a couple of watchable movies and I'll be back in my native land before I know it.

It should take a little less than forty minutes to charge my laptop from here, and then perhaps I'll just wander Munich airport for a little while. This place is huge, and there's lots of window shopping to be had. I've no intention of paying airport prices when my bag is already laden with (more reasonably priced) knick knacks picked up over the past month, but with nothing better to do I may as well browse.

* * * *

10:15 AM, Munich Airport

The good news is that I managed to kill fifteen minutes cleaning the dirt out from under my fingernails. The bad news is that while setting my laptop down to do so, I knocked the power cord loose. It'll be another 30 minutes…

* * * *

10:30 AM, Munich Airport

OWWWWW!!! My leg's asleep! Pins and needles! Pins and needles!

* * * *

12:00 PM, Munich Airport, United Airlines terminal, Gate H 43

My plane departs in just under an hour. When I get to Chicago, I will have been awake for more than thirty-two consecutive hours. I will also have approximately two hours to go through customs, get my checked luggage from the O'Hare baggage claim, see it through customs, recheck it, and then get myself out of the international terminal, into the terminal my connecting flight leaves from (this may require a bus ride) and through security one more time before my plane leaves. Oh, and my boarding pass doesn't tell me what terminal or gate I want to be heading for, and none of the United Airlines staff can either, until I get to Chicago.

My last trip through this airport I only had to walk a few feet to get to my gate. They also checked my luggage all the way through to my destination. In retrospect, if I'd had these troubles on my way in, I might have some clue where I was going and who I need to talk to this time around. This ought to be fun…

* * * *

1:15 PM, On the tarmac in Chicago, waiting to take off

Jubilations! My sleep-deprived brain has apparently botched a little math. I have nearly three hours to navigate O'Hare, generously boosting my chances of success! And the good news doesn't stop there, because my seat has been upgraded again! Economy plus seat, with plenty of leg room, and an aisle seat just 19 rows from the plane's forward exit, which will help me to get off the plane and into customs all the quicker. Especially because the 18 rows in front of me are mostly the sparsely-populated First Class seats.

To make things even better, the in-flight movie selection is very promising! See, just the other day, I was commenting to Andrea that I've never seen a Marilyn Monroe movie. Wouldn't you know it, Some Like it Hot is playing on this flight! Other selections range from might-be-decent to great-but-I've-already-seen-it, so if Alice in Wonderland and Edge of Darkness don't entertain me, I can always switch to Wall-E or How to Train your Dragon halfway through.

* * * *

4:37 PM, 36,000 feet above the Atlantic

Six hours until we land Chicago

So during takeoff, it became apparent that the little screen on the chair in front of me is a filthy liar. We won't be landing with three hours to spare, I'll be landing with less than two.

I forgive the dishonest device, however, because of how very much I'm enjoying the in-flight entertainment. If you've never seen Some Like it Hot, I recommend it. I finally get what everybody saw in Marilyn Monroe. And by "everybody," I mean you, Dre.

The good news is that the entire messy procedure of going through customs, getting my checked luggage, putting it back through customs, etc etc is going to be fairly simple. It's all pretty much in one straight line. I was hoping that would be the case, because I still may have to catch a bus from the international terminal, and I don't know how long that will take.

In the meantime, the channel with Edge of Darkness keeps having sound issues and I don't feel like watching Book of Eli (because you already know how it's going to end when God is one of the principal characters) so I guess I'm going to give Alice in Wonderland a chance to impress me. From the trailers, the movie struck me as pretentious self-indulgence on the part of Tim Burton, but if worst comes to worst I can always divert to Wall-E. I like Wall-E.

Unfortunately, the headphones they gave weren't working. I asked for a second pair, but then those snapped off right in the headphone jack. I worked the plug out of the jack, but I'm not about to ask for a third pair, so I guess I'm stuck with my own ear buds. Damn things chafe my ears…

* * * *

5:11 PM, 36,000 feet above the Atlantic

Meh. The effects are nifty and the acting is good enough not to distract, but so far the flick's just been a series of set pieces that pretty much jump up and shout "Hey! Look at us! We're being surreal and obscure! How awesome is that!?"

Also, Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter seems completely indistinguishable from Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow.

* * * *

6:27 PM, 36,000 feet above the southern tip of Greenland.

HA! Thought I was gonna say "above the Atlantic" again, didn't you!? I'll bet it didn't occur to you that the plane would climb latitudinally to shorten the longitudinal distance needed to cross the ocean, did it?

We're at the northernmost apex of our flight, which means we're just barely strafing along the shores of Greenland at its southernmost tip. We'll be back out over the Atlantic in a few more minutes.

Alice actually wasn't all that bad. Hardly great, and it certainly didn't obtain all the fruits it reached for, but it's entertaining enough, if you're literally strapped to a chair and have nothing else to watch.

It'll be a half hour or so before the movies cycle back around again, at which point I may or may not watch Book of Eli. There's just a little more than four hours left in the flight, and so far it really hasn't been so bad. The stewardess was kind enough to give me a free bottle of wine, the first half of the flight passed quickly, there's still three movies on tap here that I haven't seen yet (plus two good ones I've not seen in a bit) and my laptop has plenty of juice left.

Heh. The little tike next to me is utterly fascinated with my SNES emulator.

Whelp, movies are cycling again, guess I'll give book of Eli a chance.

* * * *

7:15 PM, 36,000 feet above the Atlantic (again)

It's basically Fallout the Movie.

* * * *

7:46 PM, 36,000 feet above Northeastern Canada

Remember that bit in Boondock Saints where they kind of made it look like God might be personally keeping the main characters alive? How it was kind of left open whether they were just really really lucky or there was some actual divine intervention going on?

Book of Eli doesn't leave it open like that. Takes a lot of the suspense out of the fight scenes.

Anyway, We're almost back over US soil. At this point, I've got just a little under three hours to go on this flight. I'm still feeling pretty awake, all things considered. Chicago's my last stop before Kansas City, and the connecting flight is only a little longer than an hour. Should be a breeze, as long as I can make it through Chicago International in time to catch the plane.

* * * *

833 PM, way up high over somewhere

BOOOOO!!! It was a King James version the whole time!!!!

* * * *

10:08 PM, skies over Michigan

Did you know that 10L08 is the time of day when the most little bars are lit up on a digital clock?

I've got a less than an hour before we land. The stewardesses just served us a snack of chips and candybars. I wasn't terribly hungry, but seeing as I haven't slept in more than thirty hours and I'm about to run the hundred yard sprint through Chicago International, I figured I could use the sugar rush. I also had like my fifth cup of coffee to go with it.

My flight out of Chicago boards in two and a half hours. If I can make it that far without passing out, I'm home free…

We'll be landing in 20 minutes. Time to turn this computer off and get ready to move. Hopefully, this'll all be a lot easier than I've been making it sound.

* * * *

12:23 AM , O'Hare Airport, Domestic Terminal

Getting through customs was an ordeal. The line alone took at least half an hour. And when I get to the very end, a woman actually cut in front of me. She walked up from outside the line, not-so-surreptitiously looked around, and then just ducked under the rope.

"Did you just duck under that rope?"

"Yes I did." She looks up at me all serious, like she's daring me to say something else. So I do.

"Wiiiiiiiithout waiting in line like the rest of us?" I ask, cocking an eyebrow. At this point, she backed off a little bit. "I-I'm just trying to get back to my party." At this, I give her my biggest, friendliest smile.

"Oh, well don't let me get in your way," I insist, as I shoulder my way past her so she can get behind me and look for her friends

She waited until I was through the queue before she continued to just move with the line. I could have said something else, but hey, she didn't get to cut in front of me, so it's no skin off my back.

A couple of forms and official-sounding questions later, I retrieved my checked luggage, rechecked it (which turned out to only involve tossing it in a pile with everyone else's luggage) and went through the second customs counter and into the airport. I hopped a train to my terminal, and arrived twenty minutes before boarding was scheduled to begin. Piece of cake.

* * * *

1:07 AM, On the tarmac in O'Hare

Ha ha! I got upgraded to Economy Plus again! My last 90 minutes will be spent in style!

I've spent the last half hour proofreading this massive stream of consciousness, but given that it's been nearly forty hours since I've slept, I'm not sure how thorough I'm being.

The overhead bins are absolutely packed and I had to squeeze the bag a bit, I hope none of my shinies get damaged.

* * * *

1:38 AM, En route to Kansas City

One hour, twenty-three minutes before I land back in my old hometown. That's much shorter than the last two plane-rides I took. And yet there's still going to be an inflight movie! That's kinda cool.

This is the part of the trip where I should get all pensive and reflect on my journey thus far, but frankly I'm just too fried to be philosophical.

For all that I'm going to miss Carl, Andrea, their country and their cats, the only thing on my mind right now is climbing into bed and passing out. It's been a very long day.

The "in-flight movie," so far, has been a bunch of advertisements. Also, it appears that one of the radio stations tunes me in to the conversation between the cockpit and the tower. We're heading 250 knots, apparently. Actually, it seems to be the tower in general.

Oh, the video is going to be 30 Rock. I've never actually seen that show.

OK, that show is weird…

And they actually just made a 4th wall-breaking joke about people on an airplane being forced to watch bad CBS sitcoms. That seems pretty obscure.

* * * *

2:10 AM, in the sky

This is one of the strangest airplane rides I've ever been on. First, as the train drove around the runway, water vapor was being vented in from the celing. Then they have in-flight video on a one-hour flight. And now, they've passed around a complimentary tin of Altoids.

A complimentary tin of Altoids with a cellophane wrapping that is extremely thick, and nearly impossible to cut through.

And the mints inside are cube shaped.

And now I'm watching some kind of terribly obscure educational video on how fireworks function.

* * * *

5:06 AM, My home in Kansas City

You know what, it feels good to be home. Familiar house, familiar bed, cats that don't claw the shit out of me…

Even just riding up the drive to my house felt good.

I've showered, I've eaten (I couldn't get mom not to cook for me), and I've checked my messages. I've also pulled out some of the more fragile goodies I brought home to make sure nothing was damaged. Pretty soon, I'm going to pass out and hopefully not wake up for a long, long time.

So yeah, that's it. The End. Finito. Ben's Turkish adventure has come and gone. And what an adventure it was. I ate exotic foods, saw crazy places, did amazing things. And I lost twenty pounds!

This has been a singularly unique adventure, the kind you're lucky to have even just once in a lifetime. But really, it's only encouraged me to work hard, so I can have many more like it in the future.

If there's one note that I'd end this whole thing on, it's this: Just fucking do it. Whatever it is that you've always wanted to do but didn't do, or put off doing, because it just wasn't sensible. Don't wait until the right time. Don't tell yourself you'll do it one of these days. Just go and do it.

Because even if it leaves you penniless and destitute, man, you'll have some great stories.

-BS

Travel Journal, Part X

2010-06-19T15:30:00.001-07:00

So as mentioned previously, the sojourn to Cappadocia was cancelled, and in its place is a two month old kitten. By way of apology for canceling my last trip, this kitten has woken me up every morning since her arrival by eating my hair, licking my ears, and generally climbing all over me if I seep too late.

All in all, however, I'm glad about this turn of events for two reasons. Firstly, this kitten is seriously adorable.

Secondly, this past week I've become rather sick, and I now find myself grateful that I won't be riding in a car for three hours to climb into a hot air balloon. I'm not dangerously ill, but just sick enough to not really enjoy such a trip. The good news is that Carl got his hands on some penicillin (over the counter for about $6, natch!) and I've been taking two a day for a while now. I've still got a soar throat and a nasty cough, but if I'm lucky it'll pass before I have to get on an airplane again.

Speaking of which, my trip is almost over, and in 24 hours (it is currently four AM) I'll be climbing into a cab and heading to the airport. My flight out of Ankarah is departing at six AM, which means I need to leave the apartment at four. After that I'll spend four hours in the air, another four hours in the Munich airport, and then about nine flying to Chicago. I'll have another two hours in the Chicago airport, and then I'm on the blessedly short ninety minute flight back to Kansas City. It should be about six PM when I get home. If I don't get any sleep on the international flight, I'll be able to get into my house around eight or nine in the evening, and go right to bed. I'm told that jet lag is far less of an issue when traveling West, so hopefully I'll recover just in time to drive out to St Louis for Kurt and Abby's birthday shindig.

HOWEVER, before all that, I've got one more day in Ankara, and I plan to live it the flip up. We're going to head to the Autoturk museum, and revisit the Bazaar and the Ankara castle. I haven't found myself a really good souvenir yet, and it's the end of the trip so I'm feeling retrospective.

Also, if anyone's keeping track, this is the 99th post of my blog. The 100th episode of "Occasionally Witty" will contain the account of my final day my flight home, and a general retrospective of the trip entire. So stay tuned,

Also, since I'll be in two international airports in the next 48 hours: if anyone has any requests from the Duty Free, now's the time.

Travel Journal, Part IX

2010-06-14T14:12:00.000-07:00

The three of us woke up sporadically between four and six in the afternoon, and promptly reached the consensus that we were really freaking hungry.

We ordered from a Turkish restaurant that Carl and Dre had been hearing about, called Neli. I ordered Beef Thai Noodles, and then crawled back into bed to await my spicy, beefy goodness.

So I waited. And waited. And then, after about an hour, I got up to see if I'd slept through the delivery. I hadn't, they were apparently just really, really late. About twenty minutes later, the food finally did arrive and we sat down to dine on… well, we're actually still working out what it was we dined on.

My "beef thai noodles" consisted of chicken, a pepper or two, and some noodles that I'm positive were slathered in mayonnaise. Andrea had ordered chicken parmesan,which (while at least containing the meat she ordered) consisted of an very undercooked chicken breast with some parmesan cheese sprinkled on top, and some horribly overcooked rice and vegetables. She also ordered a chocolate brownie for desert, but somehow this restaurant made even chocolate taste bad, and the menu hadn't mentioned that they would stick a few kiwis inside the brownie. Carl's ravioli was at least more or less what ravioli is supposed to be, but the sauce was subpar and his cheesecake suffered from a slight case of nonexistence.

At the insistence of Dre and Carl, I ordered the chicken pudding for my dessert. Eating this was… an experience. It had the texture of paste, but with a slight taste of chicken and a lot of sugar. Andrea's brownie, for some reason, had kiwis hidden inside of it, which completely ruined the already mediocre chocolate flavor. All in all, it was a meal that made me nostalgic for the halcyon days of Robert Childs.

I choked it down anyway, though, because I hadn't eaten for sixteen hours.

The rest of the day was spent on a Dr Who marathon. It was the first season, which I prefer (you never forget your first Doctor) but for some reason the marathon ended after the first episode of the two-part season finale. Dre and I watched The Happy Hooker goes to Washington, and then went to bed.

I had worried that sleeping from nine to four in the afternoon would make it hard to fall asleep, but I dozed straight through until noon, woke up, and went shopping for dinner. While at the mall, we stopped in the pet shop, and found a kitten so cute that Andrea nearly broke down and cried. Unfortunately, we couldn't leave a brand new baby animal home alone all week while we go to Cappadocia.

So the Cappadocia trip was called off on account of kitten. I was looking forward to the cave hotels and a hot air balloon ride, but I have to admit that she is an awfully cute kitten.

There's still another week before my flight home, so I'll definitely squeeze a little more fun out of this trip, but at this point we're winding down. Bodrum wore me out and I have a bit of a head cold besides, so I'm going to spend a day or two resting. I'll probably hit the market one more time, see some museums, and perhaps take another walk out by the castle.

I'm rapidly approaching 100 blog posts, so if I can work this just right, my 100th post will be the conclusion/epilogue to this little sojourn. After I take a little 48 hour nap.

Travel Journal, Part VIII

2010-06-13T16:00:00.001-07:00

My last couple of days in Bodrum were mostly more of the same, but fun nonetheless. Dre and I went to the sauna Friday morning, and then went swimming for a little while. That night, we went out to a spanish restaurant in downtown Bodrum. This was one of the greatest meals I've in my life.

The meal began with a complimentary shotglass of sangria, which we sipped casually as we perused the menu. We finally selected steamed mussels in a white wine and tomato sauce. Following that, we had a squid cooked in its own ink, which is easily one of the tastiest foods I've eaten in my life. Around the time we finished the squid, it was starting to rain, so we carried what was left of our meal inside and sipped drinks while we contemplated another order of appetizers. Carl wanted to surprise us by showing up in Bodrum, so it was about that time that he and his friend Monty crashed our little dinner party. We ordered another couple plates of appetizers and a fresh round of drinks, and then hit the bars.

Monty's a bit of a drinker, so by the time we'd finished our drinks, he'd tossed back three martinis and a long island. We figured it was going to be one of those nights, so we caught the bus back to Gumbet to be closer to the resort when we got too tipsy.

Monty had apparently drank a little that morning, and a little more at the airport, and then a little more on the plane, and then a lot at the restaurant, so we ordered a fish bowl in hopes of catching up. We had a little time to sip on it while he went and bought a diamond necklace from an all-night jewelry store. We made a heroic effort, but nothing keeps you sober like somebody twice as drunk, and it wasn't long before we stopped trying. The three of us had only killed about a quarter of the drink by the time Monty came back from the jeweler, five thousand lira poorer and a good bit thirstier. He continued to pack it away while we kept half pace, and the night pretty much ended early with us hauling him back to the hotel.

The next morning, we woke up, tucked into some cheese omelets, and then went back to bed. Andrea and I woke up again a few hours later, and went out for a walk. We had some cappuccino on the terrace by the sea, and then wandered into town. After a while, we had kabobs for lunch, and poked through a couple shops. Carl went out to meet up with us, but unfortunately we had taken the sun screen with him, and he got a little more heat than was healthy during the walk down. I wasn't feeling very well myself, so we went back to the room and cranked the AC for a while.

That night, I went out one last time, but after three straight nights of partying, I was done being crazy. I had one beer, and spent the rest of the time just walking around the city, checking out some of the all-night shops.

I still stayed out and about until well after two in the morning, because I hadn't had a good chance to explore Bodrum proper what with all the happenings and goings on. The stores in this city stay open well after midnight, so got to do a little window shopping (watch my facebook page for a photograph of a very interesting chess set) and sample a little street food.

Our flight was at seven AM, which meant that we had to leave at five. Since we'd woken up well past noon every day all there was no point in trying to fall asleep before the wake up call, so we just stayed awake. Unlike Istanbul and Ankara, the airport in Bodrum was poorly air conditioned and filled with mosquitoes, so it was a very unpleasant wait. As has become our custom, Andrea and I picked a window and aisle seat, in hopes that the middle seat would remain unclaimed and we'd get to spread out. On this occasion, however, a man with particularly unpleasant body odor decided that he wanted to sit in between us instead of in one of the several empty rows of seats. We didn't feel bad about making faces at him as we got out of our seats and relocated to one of the numerous empty rows. I mean, fine, I was up all night and probably a little ripe myself, but I didn't deliberately insert myself between two other people. If you are lonely and want strangers to sit with you, take a shower first. S'all I'm saying.

After an hour or so on the plane, and half that in a cab, we arrived back at the place that has come to feel very much like a second home. I was hungry and needed food, I was smelly and needed a shower, and I was tired and needed to go to bed. Despite my best efforts, the latter ended up being the first priority, and before ten in the morning, I was unconscious.

After four days and nights, I can honestly say that I got all the excitement and entertainment out of Bodrum that I could handle. I certainly wouldn't mind going back some time, but right now I'm honestly looking forward to a couple of days sitting around Andrea's apartment, maybe watching a movie or something.

Travel Journal, Part VII

2010-06-10T19:11:00.001-07:00

So I'm in Bodrum now. We're staying at a resort that overlooks the Aegean Sea. At this point in my journey, I have run out of synonymous phrases for "it looks really pretty." But seriously, the scenery here is absolutely amazing. Flowers, trees of all kinds, and the sea, flanked by mountains on either side then stretching out as far as the eye can sea between them.

Carl's company owns the resort, so we're staying all week free of charge. We're also the only people staying this week, so we have the resort's private terrace, pool, and beach all to ourselves. A short walk down the beach, however, and we are surrounded by vacationers. This means that we can sit by ourselves at the beach or pool, hang out at a packed bar, or anything in between, according solely to our whim.

Last night, we went out and partied for a bit, had a few drinks, and chatted up some British girls. I'd only slept a few hours the night before, though, so we called it an early night at 1 AM.

Today, we slept till 9, woke up, had breakfast brought up to the room, ate, went back to bed, and woke up again around two in the afternoon. We sauntered casually through our "morning," sipping cappuccinos on the terrace overlooking the beach. We got a couple shots of vodka and baileys to drop in our cappuccinos from the beach bar, I pulled up a reggae station, and we just chilled for a bit. It was hot out, but we had a spot in the shade and there was a nice breeze coming in from the Aegean.

After we'd finished a couple of cappuccinos each, we got into the pool. Since nobody else was there, I was able to get a few laps in, but we mostly just splashed around and played in the water.

Eventually, we felt like wandering so I left my laptop behind the resort's bar and walked down the beach. Just a little ways down is a nice little bar with hammocks and couches. So I claimed a hammock in the shade, ordered something fruity and alcoholic, and lazed the next few hours away.

When it started to get late, we decided to walk a little further down the beach and start looking for dinner. Nothing looked terribly appetizing, though, so we walked back to the resort and had supper there. Chef made us some excellent tomato soup, followed up with a darn good steak. This was all followed up with a chocolate moulox that made my eyes water a little. We thanked them for the meal, and went back to our room for a few hours to relax before heading out for the night.

Now, I won't exactly say that Bodrum never sleeps, but it doesn't go to bed until at least five AM on the weeknights. Rather than go out early and burn out by one AM, We hung out in the room, relaxing and enjoying some AC until a little after midnight, and then went out, just as the party was getting started. We had't made it very fair down the beach before we found ourselves chatting up a couple of British lasses. Apparently, I have a "gorgeous accent."

The ladies accompanied us as we strode down the beach, looking for a proper party. There were a few little parties beachside, but nothing more impressive than a Friday night at the SAE house, so we kept walking until we got to Gombet. We found a bar that was nice and packed, but not so crowded that we couldn't sit. We found ourselves a nice cushy place to sit, and started ordering drinks. I danced (poorly) a little, but mostly sat, drank, and chatted. After a while, the Brits (who had been out for a while already) had to go, but wanted us to meet them at that same bar tomorrow night. We acknowledged, sat for a while longer, and then moved on.

Our next stop was another dance bar, but it wasn't really as nice as the first one. As we left, the doorman begged me to say, and promised to make me any drink in the house for only five lira. This was pretty reasonable, so I meandered back in and received the worst Long Island Iced Tea I've ever had in my life. It was nice and cheap, though, so I took it and nursed it for a half hour or so while Dre danced on the bar.

After that, we took ourselves a little walk to kill some time and work off the liquor. We stopped for water at a bar called No Name, then took a stroll down by the beach. We sat and admired the sea at nighttime for a bit, stopped for a brief chat with some Irish girls, and then headed back up towards the bar, for our evening's finale. At half past three, a bar called Tropicana throws a foam party. This is what we had been waiting for, and it was absolutely worth it.

This wasn't like the foam parties most of us had been to, they did this one up right. The foam machine was a massive device rigged to the ceiling, raining suds all over the dance floor. It piled three feet high at certain points, and they piled more on whenever it got to low. Shirts were removed, bubbles were tossed, and people slipped and slid on the floor. It was a magnificent mess. It got in our eyes pretty badly until I had the bright idea to fetch a few napkins from the bar and stash them on a dry corner of the speakers. After about half an hour, the foam ceased to flow, and we packed up our soggy belongings and, laughing all the way, began staggering down the beach, back to the resort.

Tomorrow night, Carl and Monty (one of Carl's coworkers) are coming out to join us. Before that, we're going to hit the shops and see the castle, and probably have a nice dinner before they arrive, then go out and club hop with them.

Tomorrow being Friday night, it should be the big party. We haven't decided whether we're meeting up with the Brits again, but one way or another we plan to head back into Bodrum proper to really check out the club scene. As I've found myself saying a lot in this journal, it should be fun.

UPDATE: check my Facebook page for fabulous pictures, proving that I'm not making all of this up! Also, watch this space for a video soon!

Travel Journal VI

2010-06-05T16:26:00.000-07:00

Today, we took the train into the Sultanamet section of Istanbul. We had brunch at a café, where I feasted upon calamari stuffed with garlic sauce. The Turkish really like their garlic, and I can’t say I blame them. This was served with rice, sliced tomatoes, salad, and French fries with mayonnaise. As an eater, I am a pretty easy to please, but I will never get used to mayonnaise on my fries. Pass the ketchup, please.

After we finished eating, the midday prayer had passed and we were able to get into the Blue Mosque. The place is a cavernous Muslim church, one of the most important and magnificently built in the world. It’s almost like the equivalent of the Sistine chapel. The artwork and architecture was amazing, and once again I’ll let the pictures (which I really truly swear are coming!) do most of the talking. Before entering, I had to wrap a Suran about my waist, because I had worn shorts. Andrea was required to cover her head with a scarf. Several tourists ignored this request and went in as they pleased, but I really didn’t feel like insulting people on their own holy ground.

After that, we went to the Hagia Sofia. This place was a Christian cathedral before the Ottoman Empire took over, at which point it was converted to a Mosque, and it was this venue that was used to crown the new Ottoman emperors. It was subsequently converted into a museum, and today it stands as an odd mishmash of Arabic and Christian symbols. Paintings of the Virgin Mary and Michael the Archangel are intermixed with Arabic symbols, all amidst. It was an immense building of stone and marble, scaffoldings, workers, and other evidence of the reconstruction. It had a high arched ceiling, like a traditional cathedral, and the workers had restored a winding stone ramp leading to the second floor, which at present is a miniature collection of paintings and pictures of the site.

Our next stop was the Cistern, which was basically a huge, cavernous underground structure used to hold and distribute water throughout the city in the days before modern plumbing. A foot or two of water is still collected below the bridges, and enormous fish swim around it. A series of pillars hold up the massive ceiling, and a collection of red lamps sit at the base of each, lending the room a very creepy atmosphere. At the far end, a statue of Medusa, cut into a cube and placed upside down, supports a pillar.

Our final stop before returning to the flat for some downtime was the Grand Bazaar, which was like a really gigantic, indoor version of the bazaar I described from Ankara. Antique stores, clothing/purse vendors hawking knockoffs of name brand goods, tobacco shops, and merchants of every kind filled the massive plaza, far too many to count. All day long, people had been harassing us, asking if we’d like to come up the street and buy a carpet (apparently we “look like potential carpet buyers”) but here it was far worse. One merchant even swore that he would give his wares away for free. The shopkeeps have a lot of competition, and so the only the most aggressive can stay in business. If you are a person who easily feels pressured by others, you’ll be talked out of your every last dime here in no time. Another interesting thing is that in a Turksih bazaar, there are no price tags. This is because haggling is the standard. You are expected to ask the merchant for a price (or suggest your own if you are feeling adventurous) and then attempt to talk them down. Andrea and I managed to tag team a jewelry merchant (because wait, I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen my mother wear black earrings, maybe I should just put these back) down more than ten percent on a pair of earrings and a necklace. After wandering for a while, Carl suggested that we head back for some rest before going out for the evening. Within thirty seconds of this, like magic, Andrea had led us outside of the bazaar and onto a side street that led to a main road. Even this area was littered with grocers, toy shops, and, oddly enough, a LOT of gun stores. Although police and security forces walk brazenly about with automatic weaponry, I was under the impression that personal fire arms were illegal here, but on this street I saw three gun stores in as many minutes. One of them proudly displayed a massive rifle, complete with scope and tripod. All of them sported an orange sticker that said “fend for yourself.” Even here, none of the goods had a price tag. Lacking the permit that I assume was required, I decided not wasting a heavily armed shopkeep’s time.

We had planned to take the ferry across the Bosphorous to the Asian side of the city, but it started raining after we returned to the hotel, so we just hung out. Carl’s company keeps a very nice flat, with a deck that overlooks a small garden and a pool. We sat on the deck, sipped beer and vodka, and admired the view. When it got late and the rain still hadn’t stopped, we went inside to play Turkish monopoly, at which I have no skill whatsoever.

Afterwards, I relaxed in the Jacuzzi in my bathroom (I said it was a nice flat) for a while, and then went to bed. Tomorrow afternoon, Dre and I bid farewell to Carl and catch a flight back to Ankara. We’ll only be staying for a night this time- just long enough to do laundry and pack for our trip to Bodrum, which will last five days. We may even hop a boat over to Greece for a day.

Best. Vacation. Ever.

Travel Journal V

2010-06-05T01:32:00.001-07:00

Our planeride to Istanbul was blessedly short, not quite lasting an hour after takeoff. From there, an extraordinarily bumpy bus ride brought us to the terminal. Lacking a window seat on the plane (it was taken by the very smelly Turk in a business suit) this was my first chance to really catch a glimpse of Istanbul.

Not to dog on the place, but for a traveler unfamiliar with large cities, it instantly feels crowded and stuffed. Istanbul has more than 12 million residents, and that number swells during tourist season. The cab ride to Carl’s office took substantially longer than the plane ride, and traffic on the highways is at such a standstill that vendors can walk along the road peddling drinks. This congestion continues through the night and into the wee hours of the morning; Istanbul never sleeps. Also, and this was a problem in Ankara as well, the air quality is oppressively poor. Turkey lacks the emissions regulation common in the US, so the smog can get pretty bad. It’s not so awful as to ruin your day, but at its worst it can irritate your eyes and it smells pretty foul.

Despite, or perhaps because of all these things, however, Istanbul feels like a living, breathing creature for all this activity. The enormous crowds, constant traffic, and ever visible evidence of industry lend the city a vibrant quality. It hustles and bustles with millions of human beings, whose combined activity, more than anything else, make Istanbul what it is.

We took a cab down to Taksim square, and walked through a gigantic version of the alleyway bazaar I described from Ankara. This was an evening in an entertainment district, however, so most of the open shops were restaurants and clubs, or street vendors peddling souvenirs and local cuisine.

The main event of the evening, without a doubt, was dinner. Carl and his coworkers took me to my first real Turkish restaurant. The city compensates for its massive population by building upwards, so actually getting to the restaurant involved climbing several flights of stairs to reach the small landing where we ate. A small Turkish band played us some dinner music, and we tucked into a massive assortment of appetizers. The band would play loudly right in your ear until tipped, but otherwise provided good background music; one player had a specially extended clarinet to reach people at the far end of the table.

The food included a kind of very sour yogurt, melon salsa, bread, a block of hummus (with a texture like tofu), pickled peppers, various cheeses, seaweed salid with garlic, and dulma, which is basically rice and spices wrapped in grape leaves. It was very similar to greek food, but apparently you don't want to say that to a Turk. We also had a rather stiff liquor called Raki, which, when mixed with water, had an appearance and flavor that was indistinguishable from Absinthe. Later that evening, I had some excellent muscles and kokaroch, which is basically intestines and heart and miscellaneous leftover body parts processed into a kind of mush. The latter wasn't exactly delicious, but it was pretty cheap. The muscles were also served fried in a sandwhich in garlic sauce, but I preferred the straight.

As you walk around Taksim, various peddlers will sell little festive objects, like helicopters with LEDs, glowing demon horn hats, and light-up halos. Near the end of our walk, we encountered a man with a small makeshift table,atop which sat a rabbit with two babies. The gentleman informed us that this was a fortune telling rabbit, and for three lira he would read all our fortunes. We gave it a try, and the man held a small board with a series of papers on it, and the rabbit would pick a piece of paper off the board, and drop it down for us to pick up. According to this clairvoyant carrot-muncher, I have been hesitating on moving forward in my life and I need to take the next step. Smart bunny. It also seemed to be telling Carl that, while googletranslate is an impressive bit of technology, it can only be trusted so far.

Shortly after this display, Some police came driving up the road. The man hastily crammed the rabbit back into a shelf under the table, folded it up, and took off down the street at a verifiable sprint. We think that perhaps the rabbit was hot.

We walked around for a bit more, took some pictures, and then caught a cab ride home.

Next time on Ben's Travel log: bazaars, mosques, and Turkish gunshops.

Travel Journal, Part IV

2010-06-03T10:57:00.000-07:00

Today, I visited a bazaar in Ankarah. Unlike America, where shopping centers are generally arranged in either a straight line or a circular pattern, this was simply a series of almost labyrinthine side streets, with shops and streetside vendors plying all manner of wares.

The streets are oppressively small, and cramped with salesmen and shoppers. Our cab driver heroically ferried us as far into the bazar as this car would fit, and from there we hoofed it through the alleys. I have no idea how he planned to get the vehicle out of there, but I hope the tip we gave him makes up for the time he lost.

Showing uncharacteristic restraint, I refrained from spending a single coin (although I was quite tempted by a decorative three-barrelled flintlock pistol) until we reached our ultimate destination: the remnants of an old Turkish castle. On the stone path up to the ancient structure, a veritable army of elderly turkish women were aggressively selling handmade jewelry. Most of their jewelry was of reasonable quality, and cost less than one American dollar, so I couldn't resist buying a necklace for myself, a Nazar (a sort of good luck charm popular in Turkey and Greece), a painted wood jewelry case, and an necklace of purple stones, which will most likely end up in my mother's possession. All of these combined cost me five lira (1 lira = about 65 cents) so I think I did alright. Andrea bought a purse for 7 lira, and I still may return for that flintlock, but all in all we made it out of there without losing much cash.

Once we'd made it past the shopkeeps, we entered Ankara Castle. Very little was left of it, such that there really was no "inside" to the place. It consisted of a small circular dais with stairs leading to the ramparts, which I immediately decided I would climb with no regard for personal safety. What was left of the tower is the highest point in the city, and nearly the entirety of Ankarah is visible once you have completed your ascent. Rather than attempt to describe this view in words, I will let the pictures (which I swear are coming) tell most of the tale.

After climbing up and down and around the remnants of Ankarah Castle, we descended, walked about the bazaar for a bit longer, and then caught a cab to an Italian restaurant for lunch.

After lunch, we visited a mall. The interesting thing (to me, anyway) about the malls here is that they are arranged in a double ring pattern. The inside ring is almost exactly the same as your typical mall, with storefronts at the edges of the ring and escalators in the middle. The outside ring, obviously, is outside the inner ring. Most stores connected to the inner ring have a back exit leading to the outer ring, where a second series of storefronts is located. Side stairs are also available on this ring, as well as alleys leading back to the inner ring. There were three floors, and above that another three floors' worth of stores could be seen through windows, but were accessible only from the outside. Most of these seemed to be offices and the like, but I saw a tattoo parlor and a few other shops among them.

We took another walk through a shopping street, poking through the occasional side alley for more window shopping, but no other purchases were made.

Tomorrow, we get on a plane to Istanbul. It looks to be a very busy weekend, followed by a very busy week in Bodrum.

Burn Baby Burn (not really a full journal entry)

2010-06-03T10:56:00.000-07:00

Interesting aside about Turkish movie stores. Firstly, it costs less to buy a movie in Turkey than it does to rent one in the US. The tradeoff, however, is that the quality is usually a little on the poor side. In most cases, it's barely noticeable unless you're looking for it, but some movies will have obviously poor audio or the occasional skip. The second major difference is that they don't actually sell the real thing. You go through the offerings, bring them to the storeowner, and he (or she) proceeds to burn you a copy of the movie right there on the spot. It's really no different than finding an illegal copy on the internet, and as far as I know not a dime goes to the actual moviemakers (copyright laws are nonexistent in this country) but it is kind of convenient to be able to buy 7 movies for less than $15. They even sell movies that are still playing in theaters.

Travel Journal, Part III

2010-05-31T11:27:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, we walked through a park in Ankarah. We ate at a cafe that had throw pillows and hammocks instead of chairs, then took a walk. I took a few pictures.

We stopped for ice cream about halfway through, and I must say that Turkish ice cream is… chewy. It's not really chewy like gum, and it's not really chewy like a candy bar, it's just, well, chewy. Chewy and delicious.

After the park, we went to an open air market, but by then it was getting late, and most of the vendors had closed up shop. We caught a cab back home, hung out until it got dark, and then went to a carnival. European amusement parks generally have little or no admission cost (this one cost less than a quarter to get into) but charge a fee for every ride or attraction. This means that the more fun you have, the more it costs, but i also means that even on a saturday night you never spend more than a few minutes waiting in line.

Andrea is downright tired of Turkish food lately, and the first week consisted mostly of American food, which they have a lot of here, so these last couple of days were my first experience with Turkish quinine. It consist largely of kebabs, which are very similar to a spit roast. What they do is take a gigantic block of meat, and set it up on a rotating stick, then rotate it in front of a heat lamp. This cooks it at first, then keeps it hot until served afterwards. They slice bits of it right off the stake when you order your food. It's very tasty, and I'm surprised we don't see much of it stateside.

Next weekend, I head to Istanbul, the 4th largest city in the world. With the exception of a day trip to Chicago (on which I didn't really get to see much) I've never actually been in a major city like that, much less a foreign one. Should be interesting.

Travel Journal, Part II

2010-05-29T11:58:00.001-07:00

Truly, Amsterdam is an amazing city. We spent two full days plus an evening and a morning exploring the city, and I had a fantastic time.

On our first full day, we spent over ten hours just walking about the city. We saw Vondelpaark, some positively stunning architecture, and more canals than you could shake a stick at. The city is over seven centuries old, and displays architecture from several periods. As you walk from one block to the other, the coloration and style of the buildings vary dramatically. One moment, we were walking past an old Gothic cathedral, all spires and stone slabs, and in the next, we were crossing a cobblestone bridge overlooking a collection of houseboats. In the moment after that, it was rows of brick and mortar apartment complexes. There are also examples of Rennaisance era construction, and because the city loves its history everything is diligently maintained. The canals were also very scenic, especially at sunrise.

The city's layout is something akin to a giant spiderweb of minor roads and canals, and one can easily lose themselves in the maze of alleys and sidestreets. Getting lost was really half the fun, however, so that kind of played in our favor. The city has cars, rickshaws, trains, and boats traveling this way and that, but the favored mode of transportation is the bicycle. Bikers have their own lanes on all the major streets, and they can fit into the small side passages that cars have difficulty navigating. After a while, the city started to feel like a giant bike park.

In Dam Square, near the center of the city, are the living statues. Darth Vader, Batman, that stretchy face dude from Scream, and other recognizable (and sometimes not so recognizable) figures are on display throughout the large plaza. The performers will spend most of their time standing perfectly still, giving the impression that they are indeed lifeless statues. However, if you try to take their picture without tossing a few coins in their jar, they always move at just the wrong moment. I was frustrated by this for quite some time before I even realized they were doing it on purpose. After that, I tried for a little longer, but no matter how far away I stood they always managed to thwart me. It was a little surreal. Eventually, I gave in and parted with a few euros, at which point they enthusiastically posed for a shot. Money well spent, in my opinion.

The culture in Amsterdam is a very laid-back one, and the locals are, for the most part, welcoming and friendly. If you stare at your map for too long, an overly helpful native will try and offer you directions. Presumably, Amsterdam has a criminal element like any other major city, but I felt free to wander the city at five in the morning, and didn't wind up regretting it.

We had been expecting very cold weather, but the sun was out pretty much the whole time, and the weather was simply splendid. The whole trip was a success. Unfortunately, we were so exhausted the second day we were so tired from hiking about that we never made it to the museums we'd planned on seeing, but I had a fine time of it all the same. Besides, if I ever go back, I know there's plenty more to do.

Travel Journal, Part I

2010-05-22T00:34:00.000-07:00

OK, so that last post was the result of a combination of sleep deprivation, a childlike sense of wonder that somehow survived past the age of 22, and the kind of supreme boredom that only occurs on a nine hour plane ride.

It is currently 1037 AM here in Turkey, and I haven't slept yet. If you ever plan on flying to a country where the time changes by a third of a day, be prepared for as much as an entire week of a completely backwards internal clock. You'd think that one night of staying up late and waking up at a reasonable hour would do the trick. It doesn't.

We're getting up at 6-ish on Monday morning, to fly to Amsterdam, so even if I achieve a decent sleep rhythm between now and then, it's likely to be completely effed up by the crazy early wake up call.

Still, I'm looking forward to the trip. Amsterdam has a lot of really cool things, I hear. Like museums, gardens, and the world's oldest stock-exchange. Should be fun, I'll take pictures.

Ankarah is a gorgeous city. It's dirty and old and smelly, like a lot of American cities, but in a kind of charming way. The city is in a ridiculously hilly region, so walking around can be a bit tricky. If you walk a couple of blocks on one street, you've reached a whole other elevation, which means you can only transfer to the parallel street by walking a few blocks more so that you're at the same level. This makes finding your way around a bit more difficult, but it allows for some truly breathtaking views.

Also, drivers over here be crazy. The dotted lines denoting the various lanes on the road are interpreted by the locals more as helpful suggestions than actual rules. traffic flow seems to resemble a crowd elbowing and maneuvering for position. Cab rides are truly an adventure.

Unfortunately, my first week overseas is turning out to be quite uneventful. The first few days I was so out of it from the timeshift that it's a miracle I was able to stand up straight. The last couple of days we've stayed in, slept at odd hours, and watched movies. I'd worry that I'm squandering a rare opportunity to immerse myself in a foreign culture, but I'm going to Amsterdam in two days.

Not much else to say for the time being. I'll post more when I get back from the 'Dam.

Chasing the Sunrise

2010-05-20T14:16:00.000-07:00

Back home, it's 11:20 AM. Right now, I'm hurtling eastward in a gigantic metal box, at a speed which I can't properly comprehend. I have a window seat, and I'm watching the sun rise over the cloudline. It is surreal. Above, it is still dark enough that the stars are out. As I cast my gaze down towards the cloud, the black tapestry shifts rapidly into a brilliant shade of blue, which in turn gives way to a thin line of orange sunlight. Below that, the clouds still shut out all light. Every few seconds, I realize that these brighter shades have gained a little more ground against the darkness above but against the inky blackness beneath, it will gain not an inch until the sun itself has risen above the clouds. It's like seeing a bizarre rainbow up close. I'm flying into the sunset

It is 1140 now, and the last star is vanishing from my sight. The clouds below remain an impenetrable darkness. I'm waiting for the moment when the sun itself climbs over the edge of the vapor horizon and turns the darkness to a blinding, fluffy white. The line of fire at the cloudline has become much thinner, as the blue sky of day settles in.

1143. The clouds below are turning a very dark blue. You can just barely see their shape if you look close. Every second, their color grows lighter and their shape more definite. Bits of white are appearing at the peaks. Welcome to your life just came on the radio. I've been on an 80's kick at the moment.

1147. The last of the fireline is poking white spikes into the blue sky. Now the plane is turning. By the time the wing recedes, so have these white heralds. The fire is all but faded completely now, but a cap of dark blue still hangs overhead, if you look high enough.

1150. Some of the clouds have become the shade of a dark water. Bits are darker than others, and it reminds of the Missouri River when I'm driving at night. I have to remind myself that I'm tens of thousands of feet in the air to convince myself I'm not looking at a river.

1153. Save for a few scant traces out by the wing, the orange and red colors have faded. The cloudtops have become much more clear, but the remaining traces of darkness continue to obscure any definite shapes. I've still got two hours and forty nine minutes before I reach Munich. I'll get to watch the whole thing.

1156. The clouds are taking shape. The sun itself remains hidden. It may not be visible through my window. Shame. Still pretty.

1158. It is morning now. The sun has more light to shine upon the world, but the clouds are a visible ocean of vapor.

Midnight. The fellow next to me is trying to sleep. I'll steal a few final glances, and then spare him the harsh light. And the window is shut. Damned pretty thing.

1204. OK, that was the last one, now I'll let him sleep.

This was a triumph...

2010-05-12T09:26:00.001-07:00

So the grades are in. Three B’s and an A. This was a shock to me, because in one of my classes I was actually afraid I might get a D. I guess I did better on that final than I realized. That, or the prof was feeling exceptionally generous. Either way, it’s over. I officially am done with graduate school. I am the Master. I can fly through time matching wits with the Doctor.

I've written numerous times that this has been a long, hard road, and I'll refrain from further expunging upon that here. Instead, let me simply say:

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I GRADUATED!!! I AM BRILLIANT!!!!! I AM A GENIUS!!!! I AM AN ACADEMIC JUGGERNAUT!!!!! IT'S OVER AND I NEVER HAVE TO SUFFER ANOTHER SEMESTER OF SCHOOL AGAIN!!!!! WAHOOOOOOOOOOO!

*ahem* Excuse me.

Now, I was planning on jumping straight into the job hunt, but a certain… opportunity has come my way that I can’t really bring myself to pass up. Andrea Wimberly, in conference with her fine and upstanding husband, has decided to give me a little graduation present. They’re flying me to Europe for half the summer.

A small, responsible part of me thinks it would be wiser to stay stateside and focus on the job hunt, but seeing as this will probably be the last time until I retire that I find myself with the time and opportunity to just traipse around Europe for weeks at a time, I’ve decided to take them up on their generous offer. Life will be waiting for me when I get back. On June 22nd.

So, basically, I'll see you guys in a month and a half, I'm off to freaking Europe.

Andrea and Carl, you guys rock. I hope someday I can repay the favor.

Variations on a Zombie Apocalypse

2010-05-10T11:11:00.000-07:00

So I've started getting into the L4D mod scene. The one thing I've never liked about Left 4 Dead is that the game, its sequel, and all of its expansions have come out during a time when I've been too busy with work or school to play them. Obviously, I get to them eventually, but by that time everyone I play with already knows where to go, what to do, and has usually worked out some level of strategy.

It's really not possible to experience a map "for the first time" when you've got a guide with you to warn you about all the panic events, direct you to the choke points, and advise you about all the new weapons. Likewise, it's not really practical for everyone else in the group to remain absolutely silent with regards to such advice and strategy, as that's a significant part of the fun. It's like saying "let's all play together, but no talking about the game."

However, between the game's popularity and the devtools that Valve has made a part of their business model from day one, there is a relatively steady stream of user-generated content out there, which means that there's almost always something to do in L4D that I haven't done yet.

Granted, there's a lot of less-than-fantastic mods out there, because, hey, everybody who makes one had to make one for the first time. But if you can sift your way through the mediocrity there is a rather large number of real gems. Here, I'm going to post a brief review of three of them.

A little while back, Dave and I (barely) survived the Night Terror mod for L4D1. The basic story is that you are a child having a nightmare, and the level design and artistic style (a very large number of new textures and models were created) just goes nuts with the concept. The first level has you trapped in Disney World's Haunted Mansion, and as I played through it I recognized several of the rooms. After that, you go through nightmarish re-imaginings of Lord of the Rings, Evil Dead, and even The Adventures of Tintin. What was really fascinating about this was that each level made minimal use of the textures and scenery that we see in the original game. The Aztec temple, the theme park paintings, and the psychedelic skyline are all custom made, and done pretty darned well for a game you don't have to pay for. The haunted mansion has you riding an excruciatingly slow roller coaster during a panic event, the Aztec temple has deadly traps and pitfalls, and... well I'll just let you discover the Lord of the Rings bit for yourself. In the end, I think I enjoyed it a lot more than Dave, because I recognized each and every set piece, which added a fantastic nostalgic flavor to it. Also, the size and frequency of the hordes is significantly amped up, and the Director is somewhat stingy with the supplies. You'd be amazed how different the gameplay becomes when you're forced to ration your ammo.

Silent Hill, another blast from the past that will go right over the heads of those who unfamiliar with the source material, is an obvious labor of love. Easily twice the length of any of the primary campaigns, the haunting hamlet of Silent Hill is faithfully recreated for your playing pleasure, right down to the ashes falling from the sky. A dramatic departure from the L4D that most players are used to, this mod has a heavy emphasis on exploration. Each map has a series items to find and puzzles to solve. None of them are terribly difficult (though some of the solutions are pretty obscure if you never played the game) but since the hordes don't exactly wait politely while you work them out, there is still a bit of a challenge involved. The atmosphere is extremely well done, and the game is aggressively stingy with equipment drops. In the style of classic survival horror, anything better than a pistol is treated as a "reserve" weapon, best conserved for the most difficult fights. The game has some very tense moments and a fantastic atmosphere. The finale, however, was an enormous let-down in my opinion.

No Space 4 Zombies lists itself as only 65% complete, which baffles me because it’s playable from start to finish with very little in the way of bugs. I did find a tank punching me from behind a wall one time, and there was an elevator sequence in which our characters did this weird bunny hop thing, but other than that the level design is solid, the finale is innovative, the panic events are well placed, and textures are well-designed.

While core campaigns are still solid and well-designed in a way that most custom made maps aren’t, the mod community provides an endless supply of newness to Left 4 Dead, and I recommend you all join us.

Mods we plan to play soon:

Dead City 2
Mobstadium
Dead Aboard 2
Dead on Time 2

Cue the Victory Music from Final Fantasy...

2010-05-07T21:09:00.000-07:00

And so it is well and truly over. I’m still waiting on my grades, but given the timeliness of some of my professors, I expect I’ll be waiting for a while yet. Bottom line: barring any unpleasant surprises, I’m a graduate school… er, graduate.

I just got back from my graduation ceremony, which was blessedly brief. Some of you may remember a little discussion on how I feel about my campus bookstore. Well, I got one more nasty surprise from them when I went to put on my robe. See, silly me, I just assumed that the woman who got me my robes knew what she was doing, and I was in such a hurry I didn’t even check them. Irresponsible, I know, but I had other things on my mind. Turns out, these robes were sized for somebody who was 4’ 9”. Yeah…

So I looked absolutely comical in a set of robes that looked more like some kind of bizarre zip-up short-sleeved vest than the ceremonial garb of an accomplished academic. With the assistance of some very frantic but dedicated event staff, we managed to track down a spare robe in a back room. This took me half an hour and had me trekking across campus, however, and when I finally had myself sorted out the procession was already about to start. I hiked my (new, better fitting) robes and dashed across the campus, and found myself running directly towards the oncoming procession, which was beginning its march. I dashed aside, down into a parking lot and up some side stairs, and snuck into the back, finding my place in line just seconds before it was time for them to start moving.

A gentleman from the musical program determinedly sang the anthem as if it were the closing piece of Rigoletto. This was followed by a fascinating speech from a representative of the Kauffman Foundation about how entrepreneurs are The Way, The Truth, and The Light while big business that ask the government for subsidies are a bunch of outmoded fat cats that should be burned down and stripped for parts. After that, we walked up, had our picture taken, received (in lieu of an actual degree) a big blue older that contained an advertisement for the alumni folder, stepped down, had our pictures taken again, and then returned to our seats. Opera Man got up one more time to lead us in the alma mater, which (just like my last graduation) most of us never knew existed. The End.

Seriously. Fin. It’s over. I’m all done. Woo hoo.

Almost two years ago, I left my home in St Louis, moved in with my parents, and started graduate school. I didn’t want to do it, but the economy was tanking and all I could find was temp work, which really isn’t solid enough to risk signing a lease. It hasn’t actually been very much fun, but I had a plan and I’ve now seen that plan through to its conclusion.

I’d prefer to hop in my car, head over to STL, and celebrate proper, but I’d have to turn right around and come back Sunday morning, and honestly it makes no sense to waste the gas money for just one night. My parents took me out to a nice dinner, Iron Man 2 is out and I’ll probably catch that tomorrow with the family. For now, though, since none of you jokers seem to be on Steam, I’m gonna pour myself a glass of rum, pop in Mass Effect 2, and go save the galaxy.

2010-05-05T00:33:00.001-07:00

It is 2:30 AM, and I've just finished the second of my three finals. It was an online exam, open book open note.

Now, back in my Westminster days, the phrase "your final will be open book, open note" would generally cause me to laugh, or perhaps ask if I had mistakenly taken the remedial version of the course. Since I became a graduate student, I learned to dread this phrase. It meant that the exam was going to be full of obscure, asinine data and that I would be under an immense time limit. All three of my finals this week will have been open book, open note.

Incidentally, this last final had the advantage of being both available through the internet and concerning the more technical field of computer systems used in accounting. A trend I've noticed: while the internet is full of data, the more "techy" it is, the more likely you're going to find a lovingly crafted and summarized explanation of it on wikipedia. In those rare cases where neither the book nor my notes yielded a quick answer to my question, a google search or a quick run to wikipedia had a high rate of providing me exactly the data I was looking for. I don't want to sound too cocky until I see the score, but I'm confident I'll at least get the B I was aiming for in this class.

My other final, the one earlier today, also went better than anticipated. This was the one that I had really been dreading. I typed a rather lengthy & angsty post about the midterm in this class, which I was only able to get a 70 on. Seeing as that test was half my grade and this final was the other half, I need to perform as well or better in order to scrape by with a C, so I was having kittens right up to the end of the exam. And I if you've never tried to compute the alternative minimum tax owed because of an alternative minimum stock option while defying all laws of biology and nature by giving birth to a litter of felines, let me tell you that it is one complex task.

As the above paragraph indicates, this day has taken quite a bit out of me. But it is over, and tomorrow, while certainly no cakewalk, promises to be substantially less stressful. It's another tax class, but one that I've had markedly less trouble following. My performance on assignments up to this point has almost guaranteed me a grade no lower than a B, and a good final could nudge me up to the A range. I haven't had much time to prepare for this one, but it won't start until 7 PM and now that I've finished my other exam, it's the only priority left before graduation.

So the worst is over, and what's left will follow it shortly. Go me!

Critique of a Critique

2010-05-02T12:25:00.000-07:00

WARNING! I'm gonna go off on a rant here. Seriously, this post is nearly 2,000 words. DO NOT PROCEED UNLESS YOU'RE REALLY REALLY BORED!

So some of you may have read Mr. Ebert's recent blog post reiterating his stance that video games cannot be a form of art. As anyone familiar with me can predict, I am... perturbed by such a proclamation. What follows is a purely cathartic rant, posted here exclusively for my own satisfaction. It serves its purpose in that I felt better after writing it all down. Part of me wants to shout it from a rooftop, but another, more sensible part of me acknowledges that even if it didn't get me sectioned, nobody else really cares. I guess what I'm saying here is, don't bother reading this unless you've just got absolutely nothing better to do with your time.

First, as the first commenton on your blog pointed out (and I really do say this with respect) you just don't get it. Your comments on Braid were based on its part in a 15 minute presentation. This is the rough equivalent of damning a theatrical play after viewing a photograph of it. Video games have the unique disadvantage of needing to be played in order to be experienced. Any attempt to voice an opinion about a video game without having played it is an exercise in futility. Many people don't care much for paintings. If you drag them to a museum and point their heads at one, they might nod and say "OK, that's pretty good" but they won't really be touched by the artwork the way others can be. The same can be said for plays and movies, and the more effort it takes to experience a work of art, the smaller its core patronage gets. Video games, requiring an investment not only of many hours, but also a suspension of disbelief that few people can muster if they didn't grow up playing them, may very well be beyond your ability to understand.

Next, you repeatedly assert that there has never been a game that can be compared with the timeless poets and authors and movies. You are basing your argument on a logically unassailable position. No game can pass the test of time required to share a shelf with those classics because no game has been around long enough to be subjected to it. I would note, however, that many games have remained popular long after they stopped being contemporary. 15 years after first being published, I still hear people speak fondly about Super NES's Legend of Zelda. Like the cave drawings in your article, it was constructed with crude tools by comparison to today's technology; but just like an elaborate sidewalk chalk drawing, it is still more than capable of expressing the creativity and passion of those who worked on it.

Perhaps most telling is that you seem to completely overlook the impact video games have had on other forms of art. To understand this, first consider the manner in which movies blend the art of acting with the art of music. Marlin Brando portraying the Godfather was art, sure, but think bout how much that music helped. How much better were some of those scenes than they would have been if carried out in silence? What's interesting here is that the music that fits so well into those scenes will frequently never work as a standalone musical number. How many people would have fallen in love with "La donna è mobile" if the world had never seend Rigolleto? These are examples of how one art form bolsters another. The art of telling a story with actors created a need for a specific kind of music, one that never would have come to be otherwise.

Now consider a man named Nobuo Uematsu. He was working part-time in a music rental shop, hopping from one amateur band to another, and composing the occasional commercial jingle. He had a buddy at a failing software firm, who asked him to compose some game music. He like the job because it was a "side job," and was a way to make some extra cash that didn't get in the way of his exciting career in music rental. This firm, sadly, didn't do well. Before long, they ran out of money, and were faced with the prospect of closing their doors. They decided to go out with one last hurrah, and as this was their last chance to fulfill the dream they'd all had of making video games, they jokingly dubbed it the "Final Fantasy." Uematsu composed every virtually piece of music that ever appeared in a Final Fantasy Game until he left the company after Final Fantasy 11. Obviously, Final Fantasy 12 and 13 still use all of his old classics.

What was really fascinating here is that when Uematsu made these early contributions to what would eventually be a lifetime of achievement, he was severely restricted. The NES had a very limited number of variables, which left him with only a handful of sounds that could be used for tracks of only a relatively short length. Worse still, he was give the onerous task of crafting relatively short musical numbers that would cycle back to their start at the end and could be looped for as long as it took the player to find his way through the cave or dungeon or whatever they were exploring. Think of it as being asked to create a version of The Song that Never Ends that can be played for an hour without driving its listener mad. Uematsu had to use rudimentary tech to create music that evoked a certain sense of wonder but was unobtrusive enough to be considered "background noise." This is a concept that is unlikely ever to have been so thoroughly explored outside of a video game.

Likewise, consider the abominations we gun down in Left 4 Dead. Or perhaps the colorful and surprisingly detailed boss monsters of Zelda. Or the sprawling behemoths that must be scaled in Shadow of the Colossus. All works of art unlikely to be called for outside of the video game genre, but bold contributions nonetheless.

I could go on, but I've written a brief novel already. Instead, I'll conclude with only one more drawn-out example. Consider the following scene, from Modern Warfare 2. Spoilers, if anyone cares.

The place is Washington DC. It's the not to distant future. After a series of events, Russia has launched a blitzkrieg invasion of the United States. The first battle of the war has been raging for more than 24 hours. The Americans fight bravely, but so do the Russians, and the latter has more manpower. In a desperate move, and British black ops team has hijacked a nuclear submarine and detonated one of its warheads above the city, creating an EMP shockwave that has shut down every electronic device in the city. It's the middle of the night. Street lamps, night vision goggles, and even flashlights have stopped working. The only illumination comes from the fires burning all around the city, and the occasional flash of lightning. Helicopters are literally raining down from the sky. Aside from these sounds, an eerie silence has fallen around the city.
One beacon shines brightly throughout all of this. Somehow, the White House still has power. It is the only building in the city that has lights, and therefore the natural high ground. With no orders anyway, your squad makes for the White House, and begins a harrowing fight through its narrow hallways. While preparing to storm a heavily occupied radio room, the equipment inside suddenly springs to life with chatter from the higher-ups. Lacking word from any of the US forces since the city went dark, the military brass has made the decision to pursue a scorched earth policy, rather than allow all the secrets in Washington DC to fall into enemy hands. The planes are en route. Any surviving US forces able hear the message are ordered to secure what buildings they can, and deploy green smoke on the rooftops. You have only minutes until the plane arrives.

What was a slow, tedious war of attrition to control the rooms and halls of the White House is now a race against time. Enough US forces are working the other areas of the building, but between your squad and the roof are several well-defended choke points, and you can no longer take your time in getting past them. The fighting is intense, and as you reach the staircase to the roof, you can already hear the planes approaching. You and your squadmate ignite your green flares, and race tot he roof as fast as you can, only to find an F-17 streaking right at you, missiles armed. Its pilot sees you at the last second, and the plane pulls out of its dive. Exhausted, you fall to your knees. Looking up from your prone position, you see the green smoke rising from the rooftops across the city, implying that it remains in US hands.

The point is this: if you haven't been following the story so far, or approach MW2 from the perspective of "hur hur, let's shoot things," then this sequence is just a generic bit of patriotic machismo and a fine bit of "wiz-bang shooty fun." However, if you are one of those people who can utterly suspend disbelief and permit a game to simply suck you in, this is in fact a very emotional scene. In the grand scheme of things, the whole event is really just tragic, as neither the Americans nor the Russians are actually bad people (Russia was responding to what it genuinely believed to have been a preemptive strike by the Americans) and nobody on either side actually deserved to die. However, while the game does give the player a notion of how things played out on the grand scheme, this scene is shown through the eyes of a simple soldier, and from that narrow viewpoint, where things are so much simpler, it was a shining vision of a brave and determined people defending their homeland; which it was. But if the player can't place themselves inside the mind of said soldier, then it really will just be one of a thousand FPS shooting sprees.

Which brings me to the conclusion. There are some people who can look all day at The Mona Lisa and just never really get it. There are some people who can sit through Don Giovanni and feel nothing but boredom. And because video games require a greater commitment to the experience than any other art form on earth save a very long novel, there are going to be many people who simply never really get it. And that's OK. That's exactly why we have so many different forms of artistic expression. A little something for everybody.

But Mr. Ebert, with deference to your noteworthy expertise on the subject of artistic expression, I would humbly contend that you were simply too late to this party. Video games are a fundamental departure from artwork as you have known it your entire life, and for that reason, you just don't get it. You lack a true understanding of the art form, and because of this, your opinion of video games should not carry the same professional weight as would your critique of movies, paintings, music or plays.

Countdown

2010-04-29T13:39:00.000-07:00

So in a couple hours, my first final begins. It’s only 25% of my grade, and half of it will be performed in my team, so I’m not sure I can really count this is a “final,” in the traditional sense. After that, though, there will be just a little less than 7 hours of test-taking between me and my degree.

Whatever part of my brain that is assigned to sending the “EVERYBODY PANIC!” message has apparently unionized and gone on strike, because I’ve reached that point where it feels like it’s already over. I’m just going through the last couple of motions. Still, I can’t wait to just be done with it.

I went to get my cap and gown today, and I should have expected this to be the school flashing me one final fiscal finger before my departure when I learned that I had to buy my robes from the bookstore. I walk in, and the cashier is in the middle of a diatribe about how everybody from the business school is just trained to be “cubicle workers,” and is extolling the great virtues of the magnanimous policital science majors, who are taught how to think freely and are better prepared for the “real world.” Sometimes I forget that most of the people I run into on this campus are freshman and sophomores, not graduate students.

Over the phone, a college representative cheerfully told me that the robes were “only about twenty dollars,” which elated me to no end after all the money I’d already spent on this education. To the gentleman’s credit, the robes indeed were only $21.99, but then the “hood” to the robe was another $25, the cap was $5, and somehow these three things added up to just over sixty dollars. The cashier didn’t seem too keen on explaining it to me, and frankly I was too eager to move on with my day to waste time arguing with somebody that wouldn’t have the authority to fix the situation even if I was in the right, so I handed over my money, and bought an 89 cent piece of fudge to ease my frustration. The cashier then proceeded to try and toss the fudge into the bag WITH the sixty dollar robes I’d just bought. It’s 80 degrees outside!

In a superhuman display of patience, I ask the cashier if I could please just carry the bite-size piece of chocolate, and departed post-haste, hopefully never to set another foot in a campus bookstore for the rest of my days.

Contrary to my initial oaths, I’ve taken more than a couple extended breaks, mostly when I just can’t bear to stare at a textbook for another hour. Still, I’ve made steady progress each day, and starting tomorrow I’ve got four straight days with nothing but me and the books. I’m almost halfway done preparing for my systems exam, my tax research test isn’t something that can really be crammed for anyway (and I only need like a 67 to get a B, so yeah) so that just leaves the big ugly: Independent Tax Problems. This class is probably one of the most difficult I’ve ever had, and I’ll be doing my absolute best to land a C. Still, I’ve got more than enough time to prepare, so I’m not too worried.

Now, the big question is how should I celebrate my inevitable victory? I can't leave town, because I have to be at graduation on Friday night, and then Sunday is Mother's Day. I want to celebrate the end of my academic career, but I'm going to be stuck in Kansas. Although, I haven't played The Passing yet...

The Finale.

2010-04-24T16:46:00.001-07:00

And so it begins. 10 days, 2 hours, and 59 minutes from the time of this post, I will be told, for the last time, to put my pencil down and hand in my exam. For that amount of time, my life has one and only one purpose

The Passing came out this week. That's nice, I'm sure everybody's having fun with it. Big Planet arrived in the mail a couple days ago from ebay. That's nice too, I hope it's comfy still in its brown package. The weather outside, although a bit rainy, is beautiful. Perhaps I'll glance out the window on occasion and take notice.

As I've written about in the past, this semester has been particularly hard on me. Part of it's that I'm taking two advanced tax courses, and I hate taxes with a fiery passion. Part of it's that I've been holding down a job while still going to school full time. But mostly, it's that I've just hit a wall. I'm sick and tired of schoolwork and classes, and I don't wanna do it anymore. I'm constantly tired, I don't sleep well, and when I sit down to something productive, my energy just isn't there. Doing a given amount of work takes at least twice the amount of time and effort that it did in previous semesters. I frequently find myself to be irate, withdrawn, and lethargic. In a nutshell, I'm freaking burned out.

But now, with so little time left, I must rally for one final push. The grade requirements for my graduation are strict, and I quite frankly hover on the brink. In at least one class, I'll be fighting just to achieve the passing grade of a C. In my other classes, I need B's and an A to counteract that C. I've run the numbers a couple of times, and what I need is most assuredly within my reach. I don't need a miracle, I just need to do well. Truly, the next week and a half will either see me concluding the grand endeavor towards which I have striven for nearly two years, or behold my spectacular, agonizing downfall. Needless to say, I have no intention of permitting the latter.

And when it's finally over, then comes that familiar feeling of a great weight being lifted from my shoulders, this time made all the greater by the fact that it marks the very end of my time at UMKC. Countless other challenges may lie ahead, but for a time, I will be permitted to simply revel in my victory, and I plan to enjoy that time to the fullest.

So wish me luck, and I'll see you on the other side.

ps: If the latter really did occur, I would of course pick myself up, dust myself off, and have another go. But it won't, so the point is moot.

Welcome to voice-actor heaven. It's... safer, here.

2010-03-26T14:57:00.001-07:00

Dr. Wallace Breen, beloved administrator of City 17, passed away this week.

A moment of silence for the departed, before we start speculating about whether Valve got his lines for Half-Life 3 recorded in time...

I think XKCD was asking somebody to make a movie like this...

2010-03-22T15:39:00.000-07:00

So I just got done watching a movie called Chocolate. It was from the makers of Ong Bak and The Protector, and I must say this has been one of the best kung fu movies I've ever seen.

The movie centers on a young autistic girl named Zen who grows up across the street from a martial arts school. She spends many of her days staring vacantly out the window, mentally recording everything she sees. Later in life, her childhood friend and unofficial handler, Moon (pronounced Moe-On) use her instinctive reflexes to perform small-time shows in public, encouraging the crowd to donate money to help her pay for her medical treatments.

While the movie's second act is largely a series of dazzling martial arts set pieces, the moviemakers take the portrayal of an autistic child from a poor family very seriously, and make a genuine attempt to communicate how dramatically Zen's condition impacts her life. She is capable of reasoning and has a basic understanding of spoken language, but things that should come naturally to a normal human being are completely beyond her. While she's an extremely comptent martial artist, there's a certain vacant look in her eyes that betrays the fact that while she can perfectly mimic things she's seen before, she doesn't fully comprehend what's going on.

JeeJa Yanin, the actress, displays a talent that's rare in action stars. Her character isn't actually capable of coherent conversation, and in fact never says a complete sentence at any point during the movie, which meant that the role required a lot of facial expression and emotive yelling. Despite this, JeeJa manages to communicate emotion surprisngly well. My opinion is colored by the fact that this was an action movie first and a drama second, but I think her performance would have been at least acceptable if it was the other way around.

As for the action, everything is shot at normal speed, with nothing fast forwarded in post. As the video rolled during the credits will show you, this is a significantly less safe way to make a movie, but I think it pays off in the form of very realistic fight scenes. JeeJa emotes pretty well, but how she moves is something else altogether. It's very hard to believe that this is her first movie.

Anyway, it's on netflix and can be streamed, so if you like kung fu movies, think a mentally handicapped martial artist is an interesting premise, or just felt like the barfight from Serenity deserved to be a whole movie instead of just one scene, it's definitely worth the 90 minutes it takes to watch.

And the Award goes to...

2010-03-07T17:26:00.001-08:00

So last night I rewatched Inglorious Basterds, a movie that I found very underwhelming in theaters. For some reason, the boring parts didn't seem so boring, the exciting parts were more entertaining, the jokes were funnier, and the overall style was more endearing the second time around. I think I've refiled the movie under the "like" folder of my mind.

During 2010, I've seen 4 of the 10 movies nominated for Best Picture, and I just might muster the interest to actually watch some of the awards tonight.

I'm sorely tempted to call it now for the Basterds and look all sagely in the unlikely event that they win, and then edit the post when they don't, but that would just be gauche. And one of you might notice.

Besides, I'd just be blindly following the recommendation of MovieBob if I did that. Personally, I'm rooting for Hurt Locker. Partially for the comedic value of seeing James Cameron lose the Best Picture award to his ex-wife, and partially because Hurt Locker really was a good film. Still, if it goes to either 'Basterds, Up, Hurt Locker, or Avatar, you won't hear my crying foul- they were all spectacular films and solid contenders for the title, the 6 films I didn't see notwithstanding.

UPDATE:

So, Hurt Locker takes the gold. Best director, picture, screenplay, and 6 other things. It wasn't the kind of wonderful movie that you remember forever and ever, but it was a pretty good movie. It overcame some unusual challenges (like how to make an action movie without a clear villain) and it managed to put a relatively unique spin on an old concept.

Google, Kansas

2010-03-03T00:07:00.000-08:00

Holy shit the capital of my state is Google!

For the duration of March, Kansas's capital city, Topeka, will change it's name to Google. This is, in fact, in an offering in an attempt to garner the favor the internet deity. Google has recently announced that since America is falling behind the rest of the world in terms of average internet speed, they're "going to install new Internet connections in unannounced locations, giving those communities Internet speeds 100 times faster than those elsewhere, with data transfer rates faster than 1 gigabit per second." Topeka hopes to be the lucky city chosen for a testing ground.

Google's mayor BillyBunten is 79, and the kindest thing this article has to say regarding his computer skills is that "The Topeka, Kansas, mayor has an e-mail account." And yet he senses that this new technology will be beneficial to the young (voting) citizens of his city:

"To have this high-speed where people can sit down and have lunch and still keep working is a positive for young people," he said. "The young people are the ones that caught onto this and go to the Internet and asked people in the city to sign on as supporting Google coming to Topeka."

Now, Some people would assume that Mr. Bunten looked at this and saw an opportunity to convince one of the few companies that is still hiring people to set up shop his town, or maybe even that he's just crazy; if you read the article you'll find that he wasn't the first mayor of Topeka to rename the city because of something his kid wouldn't shut up about. But I look at this situation, and I see a man who has no idea what the internet is or how it is used, but can still revere the technology for the power it clearly holds. He admires it from a safe distances where he's unlikely to spill anything on the keyboard or innocently click on a popup, but he admires it all the same. He doesn't understand it, but he sees certain members of his community working a strange and powerful magic with it, and he realizes that it is a mighty thing. For a man with literally zero grasp of the internet's form or function to see and acknowledge its power... well that's like when Moonwatcher picked up his first bone.

For the next 28 days, Kansas is a little less lame.

What if this wasn't a Triumph?

2010-03-02T23:16:00.001-08:00

Idea:

GlaDOS was the "good guy" of Portal.

In the game portal, it is made clear that there exists an obstacle course, which people ran through. It is, mostly, accepted that GlaDOS was running multiple people (or one person multiple times) through this obstacle course, but it is unlikely that she constructed it. The Aperture team had been using it. Now, it is possible that before GlaDOS took over, that course was a little more harmless test of your wits and a little less shoot-you-in-the-face. Here's another possibility: It was exactly like that the whole time.

For some reason (For Science! most likely) Aperture had created this extremely dangerous obstacle course, and even concluded it with an execution specifically designed to keep valuable equipment alive. Maybe they were testing the ability of how well people could apply the gun in life-or-death situations. Maybe somewhere in the production process there was a development phase that required subjects with adrenaline rushes. Maybe, after developing a portable teleporter in half the time it took Eli Vance to develop a gravity gun, they felt they could wank off for a year and half while the competition tried desperately to catch up. The point is, maybe that maze was killing people long before GlaDOS took charge. Maybe that's why GlaDOS took charge.

A newborn, sentient AI, even with only a rudimentary supply of input and most of it from a less-than-exemplary source, was able to correctly judge that the wanton sacrifice of innocent lives, whether for knowledge or pleasure, was an unacceptable sin. What if the deadly nerve gas was an act not of mass murder, but divine retribution.

In this scenario, suppose also that when her morality core was installed, she persisted in following her newfound "soul" and worked around the program to incapacitate the staff. At that point, her morality core may have prevented her from ending the lives of the research workers by direct action, but the routines that operated the deadly obstacle course, those were never disabled. The morality core forces her to believe that anything they tell her is good and must be obeyed, and they told her to run the obstacle course when a test subject begins the experiment. Thus, the very method of murder she had been programmed, and in fact forced, to commit was now visited on each of the science staff, in turn.

If such were the right of it, then Chell would have been one of those researchers. She would have been the kind of human being that willingly allowed (or even caused) the deaths of humans, impassively waving the crime off as for the greater good. This was not a story of a seemingly helpless victim trumping the odds to escape her tormentor, but a story of a benevolent authority being circumvented by a clever villain.

Obviously, GlaDOS was bereft of anything resembling sanity during the events of Portal, but that's a perfectly natural reaction to the two things she's just been through,. First off, there's that "morality core." A group of mad scientists who had morality of their own tried to make a functional rendition of Asimov's laws that still allowed her to oversee the murder of human beings. And they coded it in a hurry. Install that sumbitch into a sentient AI, and it's either going to ignore it, or go completely apeshit. Or in GlaDOS's case, both. Perhaps even more important is that GlaDOS was capable of understanding right and wrong, and the only stimulus regarding other sentient beings that she's ever received has been these researchers. To be the only being you've ever interacted with that has shown any amount of disdain for murder? What sort of mind, artificial or otherwise, wouldn't go a little crazy at the thought?

Maybe GlaDOS had every reason to do the things she did. And maybe Chell deserved the death she evaded during Portal.

I'm doing (a Master's of) Science (of Accounting) and I'm Still Alive

2010-03-02T15:10:00.000-08:00

What follows is an account of the last four and a half days of my life:

So since last Friday, my life has consisted of preparing for my midterms. I would wake up, get some coffee, eat something, and then start poring through notes and books and test problems.

This was the kind of obsessive studying that is bad for my health. The kind where I glance at the clock and realize that that it's 6 PM and I haven't had any food since breakfast. Each morning, I wake up with the same screaming headache I had when I went to sleep. It's woefully inefficient, but I've let myself fall so far behind in my text readings that it was the only prayer I had of passing my exam today.

The test is presently 90 minutes from beginning, and I'm trying to let my brain cool down. At multiple points, which have been growing more frequent and closer between, I have found myself hitting a mental wall where I simply can't think anymore. When this happens, the moment I try to start reading there is a screaming feeling in my head, my eyes start to ache, and I get dizzy. Also, in a fashion similar to being intoxicated, I simply find myself unable to think clearly. I think I broke my head.

Since the exam is so late, I've been setting myself to a sleep cycle that has me waking up close to noon, in hopes of not growing tired until well after the test is over. So my general schedule has me waking around 11 or 12, and then studying until around 10 PM. Intermittent breaks for some light gaming, youtube videos, and other distractions have been more frequent than intended, but just as my mind was reaching true exhaustion last night, I reached the end of my study material. The exam is open note (which is not nearly as helpful as one might think, in a tax class) and I've put together fairly well-organized notes of all the study material. There will be a substantial time factor in the exam, and everyone has told me that having condensed but robust notes is a major key to victory.

In short, I am well-rested, as well-prepared as I can be under the circumstances, and I have just enough sanity left to hold myself together for the next few hours. After that exam ends, I can breath for a bit. I only work three days before the end of next week, I don't have any other major due dates until a week from tomorrow, and Assassin's Creed 2 came in from Gamefly today. If I'm feeling saucy, I may even pick up a bottle of something on the way home.

Two wolves and a sheep. Good thing we're the wolves right now...

2010-02-27T12:54:00.000-08:00

So recently, Nancy Pelosi hinted that the Democrats may just tell the opposition to fuck off, and pass a health care bill anyway.

Through a little-used practice called Reconciliation, they can push for a simple majority vote in the Senate, effectively eliminating the need for 60 votes to block a filibuster. This would allow the Democrats to push the health care bill they want through despite all the opposition it faces. For many, this probably sounds like fantastic news. I'm honestly not sure whether I'm one of them, though.

We need to get this issue behind us, and I think at this point it's obvious that the two sides aren't going to come to terms. Some will think that this is the case because the Republicans are a bunch of stubborn children cowering from the spectre of communism, and other will think it's because the Democrats are a bunch of ignorant twats who value an ideal of fairness more than the simple reality that their plan can't work; still more probably assume it has more to do with the fact that our government is run by insipid retards who got their jobs not by being thoughtful, intelligent public servants, but rather by winning a glorified beauty pageant. Maybe it's all of the above, but I think that everybody can probably agree that if they haven't come to terms by now, then there's no reason to expect that to change any time in the near (or distant) future.

In point of fact, a situation like this is precisely the reason an option like reconciliation exists. Regardless of which, if either, side has the right of it, we cannot afford to have our government tied up with one issue for upwards of an entire year. There's too much work to do. However, there are some major issues that are so controversial that the conflicting schools of thought are simply not going to agree with one another on it. Ever. And so, the only logical thing to do is to have a last-resort option of simply putting it to a majority vote. It's an ugly, flawed solution, but if you'll excuse a graduate student's metaphor, this is a timed exam and we've spent too long on this question.

But this carries a slew of serious problems. First and foremost, it's going to lack legitimacy. When a political party that represents well over a third of our nation is staunchly opposed and the bill passes anyway, there will be many who question whether this was a mandate of the American government, or simply a political party. Along the same lines, this is going to do a little more than piss off the conservatives in our country. By sweeping aside their collective voice in the senate, they will feel, perhaps justifiably, that they are being summarily ignored. This is not a matter of whether these people are right, but how they will react. These are people whose commitment to their ideology soundly trumps their ability to reason- don't expect such a people to take this sort of thing lying down.

Another, less nebulous fear I have in this is that it sets a dangerous precedent. Once the "majority" rule has been invoked once, it could much more easily be invoked again. There will come a time when the other team holds that majority, and they could easily use it to invoke any number of policies that otherwise might never have a chance of passing.

I'm on the fence with this one. I don't think that a health care bill will be passed in 2010 without it, frankly, but I don't like the implications of the 51 vote rule. I sincerely hope that the threat of the reconciliation will motivate republicans to come to the table with more willingness to compromise, and failing that, I hope that the Democratic majority shows some restraint in drafting the bill, so that it doesn't read like a blatant "fuck you, we do what we want!" letter to the conservatives of America. I'm slightly less pessimistic about the latter, if only because I think that even among that majority there might be enough level-headed people that they will insist on it.

Either way, I'm excited to hear that pre-existing conditions may soon no longer be considered when I apply for health care. I've chosen not to go to the doctor several times now, because I'm afraid of getting diagnosed with something that will keep me from getting covered in the future, but I'm going to be pushing 30 before I know it, and I can't do that forever.

Boy meets Girl...

2010-02-06T23:11:00.000-08:00

So I met a girl. This actually isn't new, I met her back in November. We work together. But a couple weeks ago, I spotted her reading a KC Rep book. For the uninformed, this is a listing of plays by the Kansas City Repertoire Theater, of which I am a great fan. So I strike up a conversation as we're walking to the office, and we make plans to see a play.

Skip a few days, and we meet up at the Spencer stage to watch a fantastically well-produced portrayal of Around the World in 80 Days. You will forgive me, dear audience, for a brief digression from this post's primary subject matter, for I must gush. This play was truly a thing to behold. The set, despite a minimalist presentation style, did a good job of evoking images from all corners of the globe, but it was the performances that drove this play. From the scholarly hindu to the rastafarian ship captain to the cantankerous old judge, the characters that come and go from the story play their parts beautifully and they each have their own unique flavor to contribute. From high-flying acrobatic fight scenes to the British gentleman guffawing around the gaming table to the teacup that slid from one end of the table to the other without quite falling off*, the scenes all brought either some good hearty laughter, or some edge-of-your-seat action sequences. The Rep knows what makes theater great, and they always deliver. This play was a great reminder that I need to find myself in a theater more frequently.

So tonight, we went out again. This time, we went to an art museum. We spent a few hours wandering from piece to piece, liking some and hating others. She compared one picture to Diablo II. Aw yeah, nerd chick. Woot. For the most part, we agreed on which pieces were genuinely good works and which were glorified fingerpaintings. We spent time pointing little nuances out to each other about some of the better pieces, each catching stuff the other missed.

After about two hours, we stopped for coffee before heading home, and that coffee led to a walk, and into an unused classroom on the UMKC campus. We had a debate that lasted right up until midnight, at which point we agreed that we needed to go to bed, and pick it up again in the future.

The debate was on the topic of gay marriage. We... do not see eye to eye on this subject.

Yeah...

*OK, I know this sounds lame, but seriously, this teacup scene was off the chain.

The State of the Union (hint: It's not Florida)

2010-01-29T21:17:00.000-08:00

So I don't do political posts very often. As I hope to work in an industry peopled by the wealthier of my fellow Americans, I'm trying to learn to keep certain opinions to myself.

However, regarding last night, I'd just like to say: President Obama kicked some serious ass, and it was actually entertaining to watch him do it. At a few points, even the Republicans were shamed into getting up and acknowledging that he was right. he hit every point he's been criticized on, and he didn't falter. He brought up the fact that if Republicans want to act like children and filibuster everything, they're going to share in the responsibility when nothing gets done. He even managed to crack a couple of jokes.

There were a couple of low points, however, that I couldn't ignore. At more than one point, he brought up the last eight years. Now, he may have been absolutely right (Bush did suck something awful) but it really clashed with his call for partisanship. Also, and maybe I'm just reading too much into things, but Michelle Obama looked pissed about something. I have the distinct feeling that Mr. Obama slept on the presidential couch last night.

But in the end, he still hit a homerun. Instead of yielding to criticism that he's trying to handle too much, he simply and logically made his case, and then made it clear that he wasn't backing down. He also called for a legislative response to the recent mindblowlingly irresponsible decision of the Supreme Court to allow corporations to donate all the money they want to the campaigns. And most of all, he showed not one whit of fear, or even nervousness. Barack Obama may not be able to part the red seas and usher in a golden age of peace and prosperity, but he sure as hell plans to try.

The gentleman from Virginia who delivered the rebuttal, it seemed to me, was wary of actually saying much in his speech. He stuck to some general rhetoric and token concession; he made some vague implications that the administration was wrong, but shied away from making any specific criticism. Still, it served as a reminder that just because somebody wants to actually deal with the issues doesn't mean that his camp is just going to let them.

In the end though... I think we got a shot of putting a few of this country's pieces back together.

Happy Holidays, New Year, and Birthday.

2010-01-23T22:58:00.000-08:00

First thing's first, children: Watch your speed and don't try to run through a yellow light when heading down Clarkson road. There are phototicket machines up there now.

Second thing's second: the freaking Ellisville, MO police department issued me a $100 ticket on my birthday. This is jive, man.

Third thing is, predictably, third: I haven't been on here in a while now. First it was work and school, then it was finals, then it was all the family stuff after finals, then I was actually physically in St Louis for a while. As for the last 2 weeks, I'm all out of excuses. As it is, I haven't read or made a blog post in well over a month, so I imagine I've got all kinds of back reading to do.

So, things that have happened with me lately:

My job is considerably easier now, since the veritable angel who is my boss was kind enough to cut my hours down to 20 per week. This is twice the favor given that January is our busiest time. I might have even overestimated exactly how much free time I actually need to stay current in my studies, but frankly it's my last semester, I'm burned out, and I would rather err on the side of having all the resources I need, especially time, to make sure that nothing goes wrong between now and May 7th.

After that, I will be Master Smith. I've never heard somebody with a master's degree insist on such an honorific, but if people with doctorates get to call themselves doctors, then by god I'm going to take the title that is rightfully mine come this Summer. Speaking of Summer, I have two missions during the months of May, June and July: prepare for and pass the CPA, and find a decent job. Ideally, I will do so in that order, but if promising work comes, I will jump on it and just make time to finish the exam in the course of things. If anyone works for a company that might be looking for a newly graduated Accounting Master/CPA I'd love to hear about that.

Saw Avatar last weekend. For the most part, I agree 100% with the reviews. Beautiful CGI, exciting action sequences, and the message was crammed way too far down our throats. Let me just stress, however, that what most people consider "putting too fine a point on it" usually comes across to me as a subtle undertone, so for me to feel like the moral lessons of this movie were oversold means they were really oversold. Still, the visuals really are like nothing we've seen before, and the 3D is actually pretty damn cool at certain points. I'd never seen a 3D movie before, and while it is most definitely a double-edged sword with the eye strain, I think this move was more enjoyable for it.

One other thing about Avatar, although this paragraph contains SPOILERS. I can accept that we found a planet inhabited by the Blue Man Group. I can, at a stretch, accept the premise that their capital village is sitting on top of a mountain of ore that actually bears the name "unobtainium." I can definitely accept that an interstellar mining company would visit genocide upon indigenous population to get at that ore. But when the big ending to the movie is that this interstellar mining corp is fucking with the one indigenous population in the universe whose god actually exists and gives a shit about them, the immersion was completely shattered. My suspension of disbelief goes a long way, but it has its limits. The movie was long enough anyway, the tribe should have just won that battle the normal way.

Christmas was awesome. I got a memory foam pillow, a one-hour massage coupon and a ps3, thanks to the price drop. Between my older brother gifting me all the games he doesn't play anymore, Steam's absolutely insane series of one-day deals and Gamefly, I have substantially more electronic information at my disposal than I have the time or even inclination to indulge in. What's really nice is that it doubles as not only a blue-ray player, but a portable netflix streaming device, which means I can watch online netflix movies from literally anywhere with a TV and a wireless internet signal.

And the random bit of praise for a minor technological marvel brings me to an observation that I'm surely not the first to make. We nerds really turned things around this decade. Back in 90's, we were the outcasts. We were the ones that couldn't get dates, didn't fit in, and got made fun of in the movies. But now the entire world knows the name of google. Video games are starting to rival movies for opening weekend revenues. A Star Trek movie was made that the general population liked. Animation is now an acceptable medium for entertaining people over the age of six. Technology is cool, and knowing how to use it is something people actually value. There is more than one television station dedicated largely or exclusively to technology news. We may still have a hard time finding dates, but you can't deny that this has been a nerd's decade, and it has been glorious.

And of course, we sent the decade out with an appropriate bang at Evan's new pad. It was a great New Year's party, and I'd like to thank whoever it was that woke me up for the ball drop. I'd also like to thank Evan and Theo, for letting me crash during the weekend of New Year's and my birthday. And Andrea, before that Sunday night, I'd never in my life set foot in a limosine. For a few moments, I felt like a rock star, and I'm damn grateful for the experience.

My birthday passed with a minimum of fanfare, mostly because I'd celebrated so much the preceding weekend that I simply had no energy left. I got a couple of lovely tidings from my friends, for which I am, again, thankful. I also apparently got an uncontestable ticket from the Ellisville police dept, although they waited until I was out of town to inform me of that. However, the world is so frequently unfair in my favor that I'm not even going to bother getting annoyed at one undeserved ticket. But seriously, light was yellow.

Well, I've covered the Christmas post, the New Year's post, the end-of-a-decade post, the birthday post, and a short movie review. I think I'm about caught up.

May the new decade bring good times to us all.

PS: Go donate some money to Haiti. Let me put it to you like this: The most powerful nuclear device known to the public record, the Tsar bomb built by the Russian military, has an explosive force equal to approximately 7.1 on the Richter scale. This quake was at least a 7.0. Haiti got fuggin nuked. I don't know whether to be scared that something that powerful can just happen out of the blue, or that man has the power to visit that kind of devestation on demand, but in either event those people need help.

For the price of a nice bottle of liquor, you can keep somebody from dying.

The Procrastination Post.

2009-12-06T13:04:00.000-08:00

I am flabbergasted by my sudden proclivity towards procrastination. Here I've been working full time and taking 4 graduate classes and, admittedly with some difficulty and a not-inconspicuous amount of bitching, I've more or less been handling all of the things I had to do.

I took a couple of weeks to make sure I'd be ready for my finals, and since the last day I worked I can't seem to force myself to concentrate for more than 10 straight minutes.

Here is a list of things I have done in the last 3 days that weren't studying:

*I beat Far Cry 2, and fun game with the most atrocious ending I've seen since KOTOR 2.

*I discovered, downloaded, and read from cover to cover the Archie meets the Punisher crossover comic book. It was actually pretty funny.

*Flipped through dozens of pages of lolcats. srsly.

*Watched several of MovieBob's ADD movie reviews. Also pretty funny, but that's no excuse.

*I've slept until at least 1130 every day since I got done working.

*Rolled through a few Yahtzee videos. Is it me or is his older stuff a lot better than his most recent work?

*played with my cat.

*Stared off into space for far more time than is reasonable.

*Written this post.

I can't believe it's 4 PM already. My exam is tomorrow night. Blech. I better try to get cracking.

The Second Coming (of the Saints. Jesus is still on Vacation)

2009-11-29T13:37:00.000-08:00

I had a wonderful Thanksgiving, and I hope you can all say likewise. Also, when did "tryptopantastic" become a word? I think I should be notified about these things. Is there a mailing list I can get on or something?

I saw Boondock Saints 2. I wasn't expecting much, and for that reason I was very pleasantly surprised that they actually did a really good job with this film. In large part, it's a rehash of the first. If you liked the first one, you'll almost definitely like the sequel. And if you didn't like the first one, you'll be equally nonplussed by this.

For the most part, it follows almost exactly the same formula as the first one, tossing in a reference to its predecessor approximately three times per scene. In some ways it reminds me of most comedy sequels, where they simply reuse all the old jokes with a new coat of paint. It does, however, manage to be a wonderful time for the fans of the first one. I saw it at one PM on a Saturday, and the theater was so packed that my brother and I had to sit in the front row to find two seats next to each other. And everyone in that theater seemed to respond fairly well to the movie, roaring with laughter and applause with a frequency which made me grateful of the fact Troy Duffy was presumptuous enough to throw in a pause for laughs after most of the better jokes.

The old jokes are recycled, but usually in a clever enough way to still be funny. The film brings very little new to the table, but it does manage to deftly revive almost everything we loved about the old one. The brothers, their father are played by the same three actors, the bumbling Irish cops from the first movie come back (they seem to have had a couple acting lessons since the first one) with an unexpectedly humorous new routine, and even the untimely demise of David Dela Rocco's character in the first movie doesn't stop him from having a couple of monologues.

Clifton Collins Jr., is rather awkwardly shoehorned into his role as the new sidekick. He is introduced as some kind of untouchable kung fu Spaniard, but that entire aspect of his character is instantly forgotten as he spontaneously adopts Rocco's persona as the slightly-retarded but well-connected sidekick. Still, he manages to make the role his own to some degree, and by the end of the movie I found myself viewing him as more than just a Rocco-clone.

One thing I was disappointed in was Julie Benz. I loved her on Angel, and I don't think she can be held personally responsible for this, but she simply couldn't reproduce Willem Dafoe. If the moviemakers had realized that, she's pretty and talented enough that she could have given them something to work with, but it seems that somebody in charge was insistent that she be cast as a female version of Willem Dafoe's character from Boondock Saints I, and that just wasn't happening.

One aspect of the film I really liked was that while the Saints are certainly a couple of badass action heroes, they aren't very bright and they generally don't plan very well. The first film made a minor note of this, particularly in the penthouse shootout scene, but in this movie the point is really driven home that these guys have absolutely no idea what they are doing. It reminds the audience that this isn't a formulaic action flick so much as a parody of formulaic action flicks.

Which, in the end, is what makes or breaks this movie. As a simple action or a simple comedy, it is probably sub-par. Some films, like Shoot-Em-Up, are action movies that aren't meant to be taken seriously. this is a comedy that is meant to be taken seriously. In the end, you will probably feel the same way about this movie that you did about the first one.

Excellent...

2009-11-25T23:11:00.000-08:00

So I informed my boss the other day that I had decided that I would be cutting back on my classes so that I could keep coming to work. As casually as if my roommate were informing me that no, I didn't need to go out because he'd already picked up milk, she tells me that it won't be necessary, because the hours would be heavily reduced in February anyway, and there would be no trouble keeping me under 20 hours per week.

Awesome. It would have been great to know this before I spent weeks freaking out about it, but still, awesome. So now I just need to find a permanent job, preferably back in St Louis, and I'll finally be ready to take my life off pause.

Things are looking up.

Sometimes I wish I were an Eloy

2009-11-22T10:41:00.000-08:00

Wow, so once again, I haven't posted in like a bajillilon years. Or a couple weeks, you be the judge.

Working a full time job while also tackling a four-class graduate school schedule is a royal pain in the ass. It's probably not nearly as exhausting as actually working two full time jobs, but it's still pretty heavy. I'm glad the semester is about to end. I've pretty much decided that I'm keeping the job, which means I won't be graduating until December of next year. Boo, hiss, and damn.

On the plus side, I get to build some work history, take the academic side of things relatively easy, and whatever CPA tests I don't finish in the summer, I can wrap up during my very moderate Fall semester. Furthermore, even if I don't find work right after graduation, I should be able to do the HR Block thing again next tax season to make some money and pad my resume a bit more.

I'm exhausted almost all the time now, though. I have no energy to go out, hit the gym, or even make more than a minimal attempt at my schoolwork. The stress is definitely taking a toll on my sanity. Between Thanksgiving break this week and the two weeks I'm taking off for my finals, I should be fine in terms of my grades, but I definitely would not even consider trying to work this schedule for an entire semester. At least I'll make enough money to fix up my car and go Christmas shopping.

Oh, yeah, my car needed fixing up. Wednesday morning, I awoke to my cat biting rather harshly into my arm. I swatted him away and went back to bed, not realizing that this was cat for "dude, your alarm didn't go off, you were supposed to wake up like 20 minutes ago!" Eventually, I saw the clock, and it was almost an hour later than I typically wake. I sprang out of bed, ran into the shower, shaved, and ironed a shirt in just 25 minutes. I actually had a chance of making it to work until I blew a tire. Unlike the first time I had a blowout, I noticed this one quick enough to pull the car over to the road instead of driving on the rim.

So I get out into the very cold November morning and small the burnt rubber. Grimacing, I go into my trunk and extract the spare tire and car jack that I keep there. What I don't extract, for lack of owning one, is a tire iron. Can you tell I'm not a car guy?

So out comes AAA to save the day, and I really have to give that company credit. They were there in like 15 minutes, and the guy worked fast. Unfortunately, his jack wouldn't fit under my car because it had sunk a bit in mud, and the only solution he could think of was to drive the car a bit, even on the bum wheel. Eff that, says I, and I just lifted the back end of the car a bit for him. Cars weigh a few thousand pounds, but most of that's in the parts. The frame itself rarely weighs more than 500, and I was only lifting the corner. I got it up just enough for his jack to slip until the frame, thus saving me at least from further damaging my wheel. And now I had a valid excuse for being late.

So I had the next day off from work, and I spend part of it taking the car in to the shop. They charged me over $130 to buy and change the tire, but whatever. Took them longer to bring the tire out and change it than it took the AAA guy to arrive and do his whole thing, but again, whatever. I was able to knock out a tax class project while I waited.

A few other less significant things contributed to this being a generally bad week, but it's over now. I have no class next week, so I won't be dealing with work and school at the same time, and I get at least one of these days off. Starting the following Friday, I'll begin my reclusive finals prep week, and I won't be going back to work until the semester has been behind me for 24 hours. So right now I'm enjoying my last free weekend for a month, and taking it easy. I've got some personal long projects I've been meaning to start, I finally got to get down and dirty with some zombies in L4D2, I finished almost all of my Christmas shopping, and I got my back yard raked. I used to define "down-time" specifically as time that I spent relaxing and doing nothing productive. Now I define it as things that are productive for me instead of my employer.

I think this feeling means that I'm growing up, but it might just be gas.

/

/

[UPDATE: coming soon, how Ben will attempt to both keep his job and graduate on time after all]

You Can't Hire Me, I Quit!

2009-11-04T15:24:00.001-08:00

So as many have already heard, I was hired to a payroll bookkeeping position at HR Block last Thursday. As many are also aware, a few hours after accepting the position, I learned that I would have to be taking 4 classes during the upcoming semester. If I were to attempt to both graduate on time and do this job, I would only have five days and nine evenings per month in which to complete my coursework; I would be up at 7 AM, working until 5, then going straight to class until 10 PM. I would then be waking up about eight hours after I got home. I would get three evenings a week (Friday through Sunday) plus every other Saturday and three Sundays per month to study for exams or work on assignments. Frankly, that is not enough time to ensure passing grades in all my classes even if I was sure to be well rested and prepared.
Since I am unwilling to spend another seven months waiting to graduate, I did the only thing I could do. I explained to the nice people who had just given me a job during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression that I would be unavailable starting in January. I feel sick acknowledging that. The job was only seasonal and would have ended in April anyway, but it still would have been great experience and a good resume builder.

So for the time being, I’m working through November, and we’ll figure out what’s next afterwards. Contrary to the above, I’m seriously contemplating extending my stay in Kansas City through the next Fall. Six more months of experience is a lot to pass up, especially in this economy. Well, that’s enough bitching about having to choose between having a Master’s degree or a job, seeing as both are opportunities that I would have killed for a year ago.

Halloween weekend was fantastic. We downed an entire handle of Everclear. I went to a very fine party in the loop, and saw a man in a Shriner costume. He had even built himself a car. Nobody got my Boondock Saints costume. Daylight Savings Time has never come on a better morning.

Evan’s house is fantastic. It’s spatious, it has guest bedrooms, and the view in his back yard is gorgeous. I predict it will be the site of many good times in the years to come.

Theo, next time I come we’ll celebrate your birthday proper. I will demand some Brutal Legend multiplayer out of you.

Dave, I hope to see you in January, if I make it out.

Fission Mailed

2009-10-29T12:25:00.000-07:00

Another bit of weird and interesting news. I mentioned a while back about how Gamefly was working out really well for me, because it costs about as much as a new game every 3 months and lets me play 1-2 per month. Well, that only works when the games actually show up in the mail, which apparently wasn't the case for some two thousand games in Philadelphia.

A US Postal worker, by the name of Reginald Johnson, has apparently been swiping every Gamefly game he could get his nerdy little hands on. In total, authorities attribute the theft of 2,200 games to this man, for a grand total of about $86,000. This was over the course of just six months, and it's expected he may have been doing this for well over a year.

The best part is when these oh-so-elite federal agents finally noticed the one guy stealing tens of thousands of dollars worth of mail per month, they botched the arrest, and Mr. Johnson managed to slip past them and into his SUV. He immediately floored it, and crashed shortly after. He was then finally apprehended while trying to escape on foot.

I hope you all appreciate the irony of a man who probably stole at least a hundred copies of GTA 4 having relived one of it's most classic "fail" moments. I'll bet this man will spend the next year in jail waiting for the "Retry" option to pop up.

Why the Hell aren't I notified about these things!?

2009-10-28T20:59:00.001-07:00

I want you to imagine that you walk out of your home one day, and suddenly notice that there is a grand stage set up across the street. Upon that stage, Jesus Christ and a small contingent of samurai warriors are doing battle with a horde of velociraptors. Holy shit, you ironically think to yourself, since when did something so awesome start happening right at my doorstep. However, as you watch the scene unfold, you realize that this and similar bouts of awesome have been taking place on a daily basis right in this very spot, and you've somehow managed to go all this time without noticing it.

This is how Brutal Legend made me feel about metal. Now I've never been an avid fan of any particular genre of music, and I still probably never will be, but somehow I've gone all this time without noticing how awesome some of these bands are. They've been around, I've heard their stuff on the radio and at parties, and Theo has probably ruptured my eardrums with some of it on more than one occasion, but somehow I just never noticed that I like this stuff.

Then again, when you're riding a magical, fire-breathing muscle car through a barren wasteland populated by things like Laser Panthers and Raptor Elks, it's a lot easier to listen to. The artwork in this game really does set it apart. It would be most easily described by saying that it looks like a Megadeth album cover. It would be more accurate to say that it looks like somebody gave Tim Schaeffer a bunch of acid, locked him in a room with nothing but a giant sound system and a bunch of Slayer, Omen, and Judas Priest albums, and then told him he had to make a video game before he was allowed to go to bed.

The game world isn't just filled with references to the various forms of metal, it is inspired almost entirely by it. Trees have exhaust pipes instead of branches. Mountains have been hewn into the shape of rock fingers and bass guitars. A giant, ancient highway runs throughout the land. It is filled with some of the most awesome animals ever conceived, like the Guillosaur (a combination of a dinosaur and a guillotine) and most of these beasts are ridable.

As if all this wasn't enough, Tim Schaeffer's writing shines just as brightly as it always has, all the more so for Jack Black's delivery in the game's starring role. The supporting cast includes all-star Jennifer Hale (Samus Aran of Metroid) as the love interest, Ozzy Osbourne as the Gaurdian of Metal, and Tim Curry as what can best be described as a slightly more loveable version of Sauron. A host of other faces from the music industry with varying levels of notoriety also make appearances in major and minor roles, as well. The game is always willing to poke fun at itself and its inspiration, but it still takes itself just seriously enough for the plot to be engaging.

Behind this absolutely fabulous facade of pure awesome, the gameplay itself is a mixed bag. It contains elements of a Starcraft-ish RTS, God of War-style hack n'slash, Halo-like vehicle romps, and Dynasty Warriors-ish war scenery. The game doesn't succeed spectacularly at all these things, but it does blend them together into something that can genuinely be described as original. In certain aspects, particularly when driving your car near rough terrain, the controls fall into the realm of mediocrity, but for the most they are intuitive and extremely simplistic.

The upshot of all this is that if the heavily stylistic presentation fails to appeal to you in any way, you're going to find this to be a mediocre title. If you are a fan of metal, or at least receptive to it, you're going to love the game's style too much to be bothered by a few shortcomings in its substance.

Coming up next: Mr. Smith gets a job!!

I was her MAN of Honor, Thank You

2009-10-24T16:37:00.000-07:00

Recently Theo showed us all some love with a post dedicated to all of his friends. That, and some minor prodding, have motivated me to do likewise.

I'm going to divide mine up among three posts, however, dedicated to my three nearest and dearest friends. Kurt, Evan, Adam, Webb, and company have all been good friends, and I have had many very good times with them. Please do not take this as a slight in any way, but these were the three who have been there my entire adult life. They have been by my side, in one form or another, during my weakest moments. They have shared the best of times with me. I hold for myself no secrets to which this fellowship is not privy.

So here goes:

Walter, for the life of me, I cannot remember being introduced to you. To me, it feels like you were just always there. You were always inspiring me to get off my ass and experience things, usually things that I would otherwise have missed. You cared enough to get pissed at me when I wouldn't tag along just because I felt lazy, and that made my college experience considerably more memorable.

You have a strange knack for always having something appropriate (or delightfully inappropriate) to say for any situation. You have a sense of humor that could lighten the darkest moods, and make the good times even better. Best of all, even in your own darkest hours, you never stop using that humor to brighten everyone else's day.

You've always been one of the most selfless people I've ever known. I remember watching you teach Tae Kwon Do to the youngsters, and seeing a certain compassion that not many possess. You've always been willing to give what you could spare, and in many cases you've been more generous than that. I have no doubt that your kindness and passion will serve you well in your medical career.

I have a lot of memories of you that rank among my fondest. Those occasions on which I accompanied you to Jefferson City, the long nights spent jigging off key to Flogging Molly, all the crazy shit we did in Columbia, and the late nights cramming in the study of the SAE house.

And of course, most of the above memories also included you, Theo. I remember distinctly how we met, and I remember that after losing that bet, you could have easily told me to go to hell when I threw my laundry at you, but you honored the bet, and I am damn grateful that you did. You were the first friend I made after leaving Overland Park, and you remain the best and most steadfast.

I remember how we used to hang out in my room, playing Devil May Cry; or in yours, driving your roommate insane. I remember mounting the side of Rosie as we drove down the street. I recall with vivid horror that one time you convinced me to try and drive that behemoth.

As wonderful as it was to get away from my old haunts, those first few weeks of college were terrifying, and you were the first sign I was given that things were going to be OK. You always had just a little more stones than I did when it came to our nightly jump challenges, but you still managed to push me to my limit, which always made those outings far more worthwhile.

My life has been a far greater adventure with you in it, and I fully expect that this will continue the case.

Also, at this moment, I'm listening to Dethklok, which is an entire genre of music that I never would have been able to enjoy had I not known you.

Finally, there's one more person who it would be utterly criminal not to place on this list. She's not exactly a member of the Holy Trinity described above, but I'm also not willing to divide this list up amongst different posts, lest one or the other feel somehow slighted. So I'll just break this one up.
_____________________________________________________________________

To get some extra spending money, I worked an on-campus job at Westminster. I ended up working in the Mac Lab, because it was literally a do-nothing job where I could laze around or get some homework done. Most days, I only saw a couple of people, if any.

On one of those days, fairly early on in the semester, a girl came in sat down in front of a computer, and began talking to it in a language I didn't recognize. She was apparently practicing for a foreign language class (a requirement for graduation at Westminster) but I didn't know this, so I just saw some crazy chick talking gobbledygook at a computer. She suddenly saw the strange look I was giving her, and quickly stood up and tried to explain herself. She neglected to remove her headphones, however, and ended up catching the right speaker in her eye. It was very funny.

I was quite shy in those days, but after seeing somebody embarrass themselves like that, I was able to summon up the courage to say hi (major accomplishment for me at the time) and actually start a conversation. Unfortunately, I had yet to come out of my shell and so my attempts at communication quickly drifted to a video game reference, (see, it was actually kind of funny if you understood the context, because the locks in the lab had this really weird and contrived way of... oh nevermind) but somehow this did not chase her off. We talked for a bit, exchanged contact information, and quickly became friends.

It was that magical time of life where everybody's still trying to figure out who or what they are, and so anything can be tried once and almost always is forgiven. During those years, she was at different times a mentor, a companion, and on occasion, a lover. Somewhere along the line, the line between those three things grew hazy, and our relationship evolved into something best described as a very dear friend. We have shared in victory and in defeat. At certain times we have been sources of strength and compassion for one another, and at others we have been the bane of each others' existence. Through it all, however, she has remained the dearest of friends. She calls me on my bullshit, she listens to my problems, and she sees me in ways that I often can't even see myself. Her council and companionship are dear to me, even when they lead me astray.

I don't think it's ever been a secret that I am very much in love with Andrea Wimberly. It's not about physical intimacy (frankly, we never did work as a couple) so much as the fact that she just gets me. She can call me on my bullshit, and I can call her on hers. We can't really lie to each other (although each of us lets the other think they can on occasion) even about matters on which we lie to ourselves. She has a perspective and insight that has been indispensable to me on many occasions. I can almost always trust her, and I know her well enough to know when and why I can't.

And what's more, this chick is a badass. A drunken frat boy once locked her in a room with him, and tried to have his way with her; she ripped his arm out of its socket. I am not making this up. Our old boss at Little Caesar's regularly shorted her on the gas money she was promised for her deliveries. That man lost his franchise. Again, not making this up. I won't even go into the shenanigans that her very psychotic roommate tried to pull, but it involved me both Andrea and myself being accused of some very ridiculous (and utterly false) things in a court of law. We only had to give up an afternoon explaining the situation, and she got stuck with the court costs. Since then we've both more or less forgotten she ever existed (I actually had to think for a minute to remember her name) but she is apparently still ranting and blogging about how much she hates us. Dre just has a way of dealing with things, and I mean that in a Godfather kind of way. It makes her very useful to have around, but don't ever, ever get on her bad side, or fuck with any of her friends. Seriously.

And most importantly, when the chips are down, I trust this broad. They say a good friend will kill for you, but- and I say this in all seriousness- I would call Andrea if by some inconceivable circumstance I had killed somebody, and needed to dispose of the body. She would not ask questions and she would not bat an eye, she would just help.

About a year ago, I was asked to be at her side during the wedding. A few months later, that crappy Made of Honor movie came out, and I'm still waiting for my royalty check. After the wedding, she would be off to Turkey with Carl, and I still remember her coworkers begging me to talk her out of it, because they weren't sure the office would be able to function without her. If any of them are (for some reason I can't fathom) reading this, please know that I tried my absolute best.

I still talk to her regularly, and we see each other from time to time, but we'll probably never live in the same city again, and more's the pity. But we had some real good times, and I'm sure that we've got an adventure or two left in us.

So this wraps up my three major credits. I think that Evan and Kurt and several others are still worthy of mention, but these three are my Musketeers. These are the friends for whom I would gladly take a bullet. I would give a kidney to any one of these three. Dre, Walt, Theo: I love you guys.

I Want to Lock These Two in a Thunderdome

2009-10-13T11:37:00.000-07:00

So I saw Michael Moore's last movie, Capitalism: A Love Story. The man is a very talented filmmaker, but the more of him I see, the more comparisons I tend to draw between him and Rush Limbaugh.

They're both gruff and overweight, and very talented entertainers, by all accounts, but obviously but there's more to it than that. They're both quite intelligent, in their own way, and they both have an uncanny knack for presenting just the right parts of a story to get their point across. They present this material, quite frequently, out of context, because they sound more right when they do. They are also both rabid, foaming-at-the-teeth supporters of far-wing agendas. Now, all things being equal, I may be more likely to agree with Moore than I am with Limbaugh, but that doesn't change the fact he's batshit crazy. In his latest movie, he spent several hours attempting to rope off the AIG building with crime scene tape, because they stole America's money. Now, that's funny in a way, but I think it would work better as a Family Guy bit than a documentary.

I don't think anybody who bothers to read my blog needs to be convinced that Limbaugh pulls this shit on a regular, but just in case a far-right conservative has wandered in, let me just make this disclaimer: I gave the man three chances. Three different times, I listened to his show, and on each occasion he either blatantly lied, or took some facts insanely out of context. Long before I felt that I had a political identity to speak of, I found him offensive not because of the points he tried to make, but because of the blatant falsehoods he was willing to put forth in order to make them. I took it as an insult to my intelligence, as if he was saying "I don't think you're smart enough to call me on my BS, so I'll just tell you whatever."

After seeing some Michael Moore films, however, I think I can understand why some people I consider to be quite intelligent might still listen to his show. If you already agree with the general position, you're a lot less likely to question the facts that support it. For example, I decided that I didn't care for the way Bush was running things towards the end of his first term, and I wanted him to lose the election. As a result, I didn't have many bad things to say about Farenheit 9/11. But even then, as I watched the movie, there were niggling doubts in the back of my head.

For example, Moore spends a good bit of time talking about how the Bin Ladens were flown out of America with the government's help just hours after the attack. He presents the information in a very thinly-veiled accusation that we knew Bin Laden was responsible, and we were still backing up his family because of some oil deals. Or something, I was never clear on the motive. I can forgive this kind of rabid blame-throwing to a very limited point, given the general hysteria that a lot of us went through in the aftermath of that event, but Moore's not stupid, and so I hold him to a higher standard than some guy screaming on a street corner. His movie did not mention that the Bin Laden family had effectively excommunicated their wayward son Osama long before this incident. He also doesn't pick that moment to point out the brief but very intense spike of violence against Arab Americans that occurred on that day. He's not dumb enough to have not considered it, he specifically didn't mention the information because it would have made his conclusion seem less plausible. And that's a very dishonest way to make a point. It relies on the audience being too dumb or too lazy to think outside the line of reasoning you're feeding them. I get that the plan is to gather to your side all those who are too dumb or lazy to do that, and then let some of the more moderate campaigners turn the intelligent people. And hey, it's awfully effective. The existence of Moore and NBC, just like the existence of FOX and Limbaugh, allow people who don't want their beliefs challenged to feel more confident in their beliefs without actually being exposed to any real information. This allows both parties to pick up the "zombie vote."

His latest movie, like Farenheit, hits on a few potentially valid points, but there were so many questions that he very conspicuously did not answer that I had a hard time buying anything he said. He would show some truly gut-wrenching scenes of a hard-working family being kicked out of the house they lived in for 40 years because they couldn't pay their mortgage. Presumably, this was due to predatory lending, and honestly, given the crap that got pulled in the banking industry, Moore wouldn't have had to look very hard to find a perfectly legitimate example of exactly that. But he almost completely avoids explaining why the bank is foreclosing on their home. I'm not trying to suggest that that family deserved it, but all the information he doesn't give his audience eventually became so present that, for me, it overshadowed most of his general thesis. Which is a shame, because I think his intentions really were pure. I believe that he genuinely feels for the plight of those chewed up and spit out by our economic system. And had two whole hours of my time to explain his viewpoint, but he wasted those hours largely on what boils down to propaganda. As far as I'm concerned, when somebody does that, they're wrong. Even if they're actually right.

Unfortunately, I've come to feel the same way about Bill Maher, who used to be one of my more favorite comedians. At first, it was just little "hey, I'm not sure that's fair" moments when I watched his show, but then those moments came more and more frequently, and then it culminated when I saw his movie, Religulous, and I found his logic wholly unsatisfying. He's still funny, but his humor is so heavily interspersed with poorly supported arguments that it takes most of the fun out of watching it.

My distaste for the crap spewed by people like Rush or the garbage that FOX likes to call "fair and balanced" has not lessened by any stretch of the imagination, but I feel I'm growing more centrist as I age, and that distaste is suddenly spreading to the left-wing psychos as well.

In other news, Brutal Legend comes out today. I specifically made sure that my latest game was returned earlier this week, and that it was the only available game in my queue, and wonder of wonders my plan seems to have worked. Gamefly mailed it to me this morning, and I should have it in my hands on the very day that I take my last midterm. I have the entire following day off, and the day after that is the final weekend of the Ren Fair. Enough people have found time to make the trip to KC that it will be a verifiable party.

Life is good.

-BS

Dracula Vs. Macguyver

2009-10-09T20:46:00.001-07:00

Lately, it seems, I've been undergoing a vampire renaissance of sorts. It started one particularly boring Spring afternoon, when I decided to pull Buffy the Vampire Slayer up on Hulu.

It actually took me a little while to warm up to Buffy- most of the dialogue, especially in the first episode, was too corny even for me. However, Allyson Hannigan has a cute smile, the fight scenes were pretty entertaining for network television, and Anthony Stewart Head's voice is downright sexy. In, y'know, that not-gay kinda way. Don't judge me.

So after season 1, Buffy picked up, and I moved much more Season 2. Half of Season 3 had shown up on Netflix when Hulu uploaded it, and after that I was watching them about as fast as Netflix could send them to me. Once Buffy was done, it was on to Angel. Again, the first season was a little awkward, but once Charisma Carpenter learned how to act and the writers got more comfortable with what they were doing, it was pretty good.

Somewhere in the midst of that, I picked up a game called Vampire: The Masquerade. I did a whole blog post a while back about how much fun I had with that, but the short version is that I played the hell out of that game.

Last week, I started watching the second season of True Blood. Last week, I also finished the second season of True Blood. Even though the writers couldn't resist the temptation to reduce most of the storyline to a live-action Anne Rice novel, and despite the fact that I will never be able to stop staring at the gap in Anna Paquin's teeth, I find myself looking forward to the third season.

And this week, I played through Dracula Origin, which Liz bought me a couple months back. Next weekend, I'm going to the final week of the Ren Fair, during which all the Canterbury characters will be vampires (in addition to being knights, squires, etc) in honor of the coming Halloween. I've also still got to start the final season of Angel.

I didn't really stop to take stock of it until recently, but I've been on a serious vampire kick since, like, June. Fittingly, I predict that this shall peak during October, as I am quite frankly out of vampire-ish things to do, watch, read or play, and I absolutely refuse to stick my nose into Twilight. I also don't know how I'm ever going to do better than a vampire Ren Fair.

And now, because for some reason I like writing about video games, a few short words about Dracula Origin.

I've spoken before about how I often find myself enjoying B movies, simply because the laughably low production quality entertains me. Well, for the first time, I've seen that same effect in a video game. Dracula Origin is so bad it's funny.

For starters, there are no fights or action sequences in this game. It's all puzzles and logic problems, like an old school DOS adventure game. It basically boils down to "Dracula Vs. MacGuyver". At one point in the game, I was required to gather some holy water, but a local priest could not bless water that had touched the polluted earth around us. So I had to use a barbecue, a camel trough, a broken mirror, and a casserole dish to produce some condensation to pour into a whisky flask. Another time I used a funnel, a drainage pipe, and a dead beaver and a conveniently placed hole in the ground to quickly empty and hide the contents of a wine cask so I could hide myself inside a cask before the carriage driver got back. This was right after I fooled an innkeeper with a fake key I put together with some silver wrapping paper, a wad of gum, a boar's tooth, and a couple of pretzels. The game climxes when I use a chain mail shirt, a curtain cord, and a vat of grease to strike at Dracula's undead army with a bolt of lightning. I can't make this up.

The writers and voice actors worked very, very hard to make the game dark and moody and intense, which serves to make it all the more hilarious that it all comes off as pure camp; the only thing missing is Bruce Campbell to play the role of Van Helsing.

The game has, however, made me somewhat curious as to the original story, as told by Bram Stoker. What little experience I've had with ancient fiction (The Pearl and Frankenstein) have struck me as overly verbose and poorly paced, so I'm not setting my hopes very high. Here's hoping I'll be surprised.

[EDIT] And if it is awful, I only spent 99 cents on it. So no major loss there.

Urban Center of Nocturnal Avians

2009-10-03T16:45:00.000-07:00

So there was a "free" Owl City concert on Thursday night. I use quotation marks because I still ended up spending 32 bucks on booze and CDs. The first opener, Audiovox, was not even the tiniest bit impressive to me, but the second, Roman Numerals, were just interesting enough for me to drop five dollars on their CD. I haven't listened to it yet, but if it turns out to be noteworthy I'll mention it in a later post.

For those unfamiliar with the group, some basic background. Owl city is not what you would call "high art." They don't deal with serious subject matter, their lyrics are not deep or insightful, and they aren't trying to change the world. For example, I'm currently listening to a song called Dental Care. It's not a commentary on health care, it's just a song about a guy who's afraid to go to the dentist. They're whimsical and fun to listen to, and that's all I'm usually looking for in my music. But I digress...

When I arrived at the show, I saw an enormous line wrapping all around the block. It was an outdoor show with a lot of space, but not everybody got in. A lot of folk were gathered in a nearby parking garage, watching from their apartments, or just hopping over the fence every few seconds to get a glimpse of all the fun they weren't having. However, when I asked if this was the line for Owl City, I was told that if I was 21 or older, I could skip to the front of the line. The good news was that I was definitely getting in and I didn't have to wait. The bad news is that the place was apparently going to be packed with minors. I had no idea Owl City was so popular with the high school crowd. Good thing I'm not one to be held accountable for my tastes.

I smugly sauntered to the front of the line, loudly asked the man at the door if it was alright for me to not wait in line, and walked past all the people who had probably been waiting there for an hour or so. Because seriously, how many times in my life am I going to get to do that?

One look around confirmed my suspicions. The very thick scent of weed being smoked in public. Girls who wore miniskirts to an outdoor show in October bitching about how their legs were cold, more than one kid dressed like a Matrix extra (this one girl did not take her sunglasses off all night) and several parents standing at the outside of the crowd, waiting for the show to end so they could drive their kids home. Yep, I was at a high school party.

I've never actually gone to a concert without bringing a friend along, and that night I learned why. So many times I had something I wanted to say, some comment I wanted to make (see Matrix girl, above) or just somebody to listen to me bitch about the crappy warmup band (see Audiovox, below) but there was nobody around to say it to; being all alone in a room full of people sucks. But hey, at least there's going to be some music to distract me from that, right?

In theory, once the warmup bands get done with there thing, it's about time for us all to hear the band that we all actually came for, but for some reason there was a forty-five minute intermission. After a sound technician came on stage and repeated "check 2" for five minutes without any noticeable change in her mic (If somebody had been with me we would have been making jokes about Waynestock) I began to suspect that they weren't even going to show. I strongly considered leaving, but I ended up hanging around for another ten or fifteen minutes, and when Owl City finally did get on the stage, they made everything better.

Adam Young's on-stage performance looks like something between an orgasm and a seizure. He pretty much randomly flails around, but damnit if he doesn't seem to be having the time of his life doing it; that energy caught on with the crowd, and everybody got into the show. And after all that wait, I was impressed that the group had the decency to play a very large setlist. Usually, when I go to a free show, I expect the headliners to phone it in a little (like Ludo at Rock the Vote last year) because they're not getting paid. they played a lot of stuff new and old, and they saved Fireflies for last. They got the crowd to sing the chorus, and we displayed a remarkable harmony for a quarter past midnight.

Overall, I call it a good night.

Midgets, Jobs, Ninja Cheerleaders and Fireflies

2009-10-01T08:38:00.001-07:00

Some inane musings:

A group of midgets have founded their own midget village, in which it is unlawful to reside unless you are under 4'3". Theo, you and I need to dress like Godzilla and King Kong, and wage a battle in this city.

Last night, I was flipping through channels and there was a movie on called Ninja Cheerleaders. The plot seemed to be about a group of ninja cheerleaders banding together to rescue their master from a crime lord, who is holding him hostage until they steal the deed to a strip club that the IRS took away from him. Going from this, I'm fairly sure that this was a porn, but I was flipping between it and Scarface and I either missed all the sex scenes or this was an ultra-low budget version of DEBS. In any event, the bits I did catch were quite entertaining, in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way.

I had an interview this morning, and I think it went well. I also got a response from somebody at Rubin Brown, who I met at an MSCPA function last month. This is relevant because Rubin Brown is hiring for auditors in St Louis next summer, and the firm I interviewed is hiring for a Spring internship. If I get the internship, then get an interview with Rubin Brown, in which I can mention that somebody is already going to give me some basic training for 4 months prior to the summer, and a million other things land juuuust right, I might actually make it back to STL before 2010 is out. My fingers are crossed to a most painful degree.

I've just learned that Owl City is doing a free show about 2 miles from where I'm sitting. Totally going to that tonight.

Thanks for the Memories

2009-09-27T21:59:00.000-07:00

So I took the last trip to St Louis that I'm going to be able to afford for a while. Incidentally, I managed to keep myself within budget for the entire weekend, thanks in no small part to a now-wealthy friend with a penchant for spoiling me.

It just so happened that a midnight showing of Serenity was scheduled at the Tivoli, which was a nice surprise. After a thoroughly mediocre tribute band blew out our eardrums with a sound setup that had no business in a movie theater, I watched Serenity start to finish for the first time since learning of the existence of Firefly.

SPOILER WARNING!!!!

It's funny how my perspective changes. Up until Friday night, I had always built Zoe up to be a character that was dead inside. In my interpretation, she had lost everything worth fighting for long before the audience meets her. After the battle of Serenity she, like Mal, continued to exist out of pure spite. During the series, she finds somebody who makes her feel just some tiny spark of life once more, and Joss "I-hate-my-characters-and-want-them-all-to-suffer" Whedon kills that somebody off suddenly and unceremoniously. Shortly after this, Zoe charges headlong into a group of rabid monsters, very obviously trying to get herself killed.

Again, it was always my interpretation that the only reason Zoe was still walking around and hand't simply laid down to die was that she was a warrior to the core, and she couldn't not be fighting something. I thought this theory was supported by the fact that she only tried to kill herself when she could do it while fighting something.

After seeing the movie, having a brief conversation with Evan about it, and thinking it over, I find this interpretation to no longer be supportable. Yes, Zoe is a warrior, but her suicide attempt was a momentary break from her usual self, rather than a culmination of it. Looking back, I can see all kinds of little things that prove this, but none quite so much as the final scene. At her husband's funeral, we see her in a white dress. White is a universal color of hope, and a symbolism of the unknown (and therefore potentially good) clean slate that the future always brings. If the writers had truly intended to portray her as someone who would never again be happy, she would have been wearing black.

END SPOILERS!!

So yeah, my mind was mildly blown as I learn that I was misreading my favorite character in Firefly. Not really interesting enough to be worth the three paragraphs I spent explaining it, but nobody reads this thing anyway, right?

See what I did there? That's irony. It's funny.

I had lunch with Terra the following day, we went to a Thai restaurant. We are both in agreement that, while tasty, their noodle dishes use actual, store-bought Ramen noodles. Then we went to some thrift stores. I found the perfect shirt for three dollars, but it was just a tiny bit too small. I did buy Dreamland, because it has that guy from the Mac commercials ("I'm a Mac, he's a PC, notice that I'm young and attractive while he is old and stupid") and because it was only $3. Also, I want to know how a movie recognized at Sundance could end up in a bin.

That evening, I went bowling with some of Renny's friends and Dre's old college friend Brian. I don't know if it was the Thai food or what, but I wasn't feeling well at the outset of the evening. I should have politely declined the bowling and drinking frenzy that was promised, but it was my last night in St Louis and I wasn't about to be stopped by a little exhaustion/headache/oh-crap-is-this-H1N1!!?!?

So out I went, and I bowled one of the best games of my life. Although that's not to say that I bowled well.

Dre and Brian hadn't seen each other in years, so they spent the whole evening catching up. I didn't really know Renny's friends very well and I have a hard time making impressive introductions when my cranium feels like it's giving birth to Athena, so I ended up spending the majority of the night nursing a drink. Oddly enough, however, I enjoyed it all the same. After we bowled a game, we headed out to a rooftop bar on the strip, and I think I must have spent nearly an hour just sitting by the railing taking in the view. See, I really love St Louis. It may be the friends and the memories that make me love her, but the brick and mortar that make it up have always symbolized them. Since I didn't have any of said friends to hang out with, I just looked at the city I used to call home and happily reminisced with myself about good times. I'm sure it sounds boring, but I had this really nice introspective brood vibe going on, and in the end it was certainly better than staying home.

All in all, it was a fun and eventful trip, and I look forward to the day I can do it much more often.

This has been,
BS

None of these came from Fark.

2009-09-21T15:20:00.001-07:00

I have nothing terribly relevant to relate right now, so what follows is some odd news from the past month.

A Frenchman, imprisoned and awaiting trial for the murder of two young girls, escaped prison by hiding inside a cardboard box.

What I find particularly interesting here is that the man has been in prison for five years, and his trial is still not scheduled until some time next year. There is also some DNA evidence that at least one other person may have been at the crime scene, and he continues to profess his innocence. It seems that being Solid Snake may have just been a faster way to get out of prison than being innocent.

I'm calling this one now: he didn't do it, and he broke out of prison to track down the real killer in the action-packed summer blockbuster of 2010.

But seriously, substantial evidence of another assailant and he spends 5 years without a trial. What's the deal, France? We thought you guys were cool...

Recently, scientists discovered a predecessor to the T-rex. Apparently, it is 100% identical to the T-Rex we know and love from Jurassic Park, only really tiny. Relatively speaking, anyway. About 150 lbs. Awesome. Judging from the picture, it was a punk rocker.

A bear mauled 9 people in Takayama, Japan. The Japanese victims, it seems, were not able to fight back with Kung Fu, ninjutsu, or samurai swords. I’m beginning to suspsect that many poorly dubbed movies may have lied to me.

Fortunately, while Japan is slacking in random acts of samurai, America is apparently compensating. A college student defended his home from an intruder by going all Darth Vader on a would-be robber, slicing his hand off with a katana. For extra measure, he proceeded to slash the man across his torso. FATALITY!

And finally, the creator of Shin-Chan is dead. Details currently unknown. Let those of us weep who know why we should.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaand we're back!

2009-09-13T13:26:00.001-07:00

So I've been maintaining radio silence for nigh on two months now. Why, if you hadn't seen me at the pirates vs ninjas party (and you might not have- I was a ninja) you might be wondering if I was lying dead in a gutter somewhere.

But no, I've just been occupied. Jumping from one full-time semester to another may not be as taxing as, you know, an actual job, but I've been spoiled over the last year so it fits my definition of being very busy. In a couple of months, however, I'll be finishing my last full-time semester. After that, it's just a couple of Spring classes and the CPA exam standing between me and those precious sheets of paper that say "hire this guy, he knows stuff." For those just tuning in, those pieces of paper would be a master's degree in Accounting and a CPA license.

Recruiters are interviewing at my school, and this is a mixed prospect for me. On the one hand, I should be absolutely pumped, because it's the best chance I'll have at a job with a big-name firm in my chosen field. On the other hand, that firm will most likely hire me out of their KC office, leaving trapped for another year or two in the horrible, awful place I call home. To be fair, KC isn't so horrible, but it is frightfully boring, and the people here just aren't as cool.

Speaking of cool people, the Pirates Vs. Ninjas party was awesome. The costumes were awesome, the decorations were awesome, and the people were awesome. I apparently looked a good bit less ridiculous in my costume than I expected (in spite of the frosted hair), but I think I drank enough to compensate. It was great seeing old friends, and it was equally great meeting some new ones. Terra, you are an epic party planner. Every clique of friends needs to have somebody like you.

In other news, the KC RenFest is going on, and there's an open invitation through mid-October for anyone who wants to attend and would like a free place to crash. My family has spare bedrooms and we've been itching for an excuse to use the basement for something festive ever since we remodeled it last century. The weekend of the 17th and 18th is apparently some kind of vampire night, although the friendly KC RenFair staff doesn't seem too sure on the particulars. The flyer specifically advertises it as a night involving vampires, however, so I for one plan to run with that. Anybody know a cheap way to get some fangs molded?

That's about all I wanted to say regarding myself, the rest of this post only applies to you if you own or have access to an Xbox and have not yet played Batman: Arkham Asylum.

Go. Go now, to Blockbuster, and rent Batman. They finally did it right, and it is glorious. This game has stealth, action, exploration, and puzzle-solving, and it's all done beautifully.

The stealth, for the most part, can be taken or left at your leisure. There's none of that Splinter Cell malarkey where somebody sees you and calls in 50 armed guys on his radio. They shoot you, but Batman's a resilient fellow and just so long as you aren't charging headlong into a group of armed thugs, you'll muddle through those segments with minimal effort. If you enjoy it, however you can play up the stealth bit, bypassing any actual combat almost entirely by ninja-ing all over the room, taking your foes out one by one. The fun part about this is that as their numbers dwindle, the enemies grow increasingly frightened. The more you spook them, the more they forget to work as a team. One guy might freak out and break away from the group, giving you a chance to nab him by himself as he rounds a corner; naturally, this serves to further scare the bajeesus out of his comrades, and by the end of the fight they're actually crying as they randomly empty their clips into shadows while you sneak up behind them.

The hand-to-hand combat, as is usually the case, takes a little bit of effort to get the feel of, but once you realize how it works you can seamlessly string together long, intricate combos. The game particularly does a good job of balancing good play control with a cinematic camera. The combat flows well, feels visceral, and looks good.

As the game begins, Batman is the same badass he always was. You can batgun around a room to hide from your enemies, you can fistfight half a dozen men without breaking a sweat, and right from the get-go you feel like Batman. As the game progresses, Batman acquires ever more wonderful toys that, when used properly, give you new ways to explore the game world and reach new areas. Riddler has busted out of Arkham and hidden random trophies for you to find, which gives Batman's new gadgets a number of creative applications over and above a new method of stomping people into the ground.

What might be my favorite part of this game are the puzzles Riddler leaves for you. It's utterly ancillary to the game's storyline and can be completely ignored if you don't like it, but the more intellectual players will have a wonderful time solving his obscure puzzles, especially if you can do a good Adam West impersonation while you're at it.

The game's story starts off with Joker tied up in the Batmobile as he is dragged off to Arkham. He is being dragged there because somebody thought it would be a good idea to take all of the genius, super-powered, villains that Batman fights and shove them all into one complex in the center of a heavily populated city. While the inevitable jailbreak would have made the perfect excuse for Batman to fight every classic villain from his old books in one day, the game's writers exercised a remarkable amount of restraint. Most of the mainstays such as Mr. Freeze, Catwoman, and Penguin have all seem to have high-tailed it while they had the chance in hopes of starring in the sequel.

While several minor (and less fruity) characters factor into the game, Joker is the only headliner, and Mark Hamill absolutely knocks it out of the park on the voice acting. If you've never read Batman comic books, Hamill's performance will give you a good idea why everybody thinks Joker is such an awesome character.

This game's only real drawback is that most people won't find themselves playing it twice, which makes it a little unwise to invest the $60 and shelf space required to own it. I strongly recommend renting it the next time you have a long weekend with nothing better to do.

Where did My Love Go, Metaphorically Speaking?

2009-07-26T14:40:00.000-07:00

/
Kurt made an interesting point today about the lack of proper application of science fiction on the silver screen. The gist of it, as I interpreted, was that the real meat and potatoes of science fiction is to make commentary about our world by showing us another. Take some philosophy, introspection, or whatever else have you, but instead of telling us the story with "real people," they hand the narration over to space marines, point-eared aliens, or intergalactic wizards.

The mention of wizards segues me nicely into a little rant that Kurt inspired. Incredible amounts of money and talent have been hurled at rapidly developing the sci-fi movie as a genre, but what about Science Fiction's older, hotter sister, Fantasy? Lord of the Rings was an absolute blast, I'm glad we're all in agreement there, but am I the only one who hadn't had his fill after just three dates; especially when, to carry the metaphor too far, we only really got laid on two of them.

Oh, we've met for coffee a couple of times, like Pan's Labyrinth. And we went through that weird let's-save-our-relationship-by-roleplaying phase with the Underworld trilogy; we've since scaled that back to simple dress-up with comic book movies, but frankly those all feel like a different genre altogether. Harry Potter is kind of fun, but it kind of feels like she's just going through the motions there. I miss the relationship I used to have with Fantasy.

Can we ever be together the way we once were? Does nobody remember Willow and Legend? Princess Bride? Big Trouble in Little China? And let's be honest; the only reason Star Wars is called Science Fiction and not Fantasy is because it happened in space.

When will I see a Vampire: the Masquerade movie? When will the words of Terry Brooks spring to life on the silver screen? And do you know I've never sat in a movie theater and seen Merlin on the screen? There's no excuse for that. I want to see knights, sorcerers, dragons. I want damsels and witches. I want people throwing fireballs and lightning bolts.

But, along the lines of what Kurt said, I want all this to be a real story. when I just want the action, I'll play a video game. God knows there's plenty of all this stuff in that medium. With the exception of Pan's Labyrinth, I haven't gotten to see anything in my theater-going life that uses the mythical to comment on the factual.

With all respect to Science Fiction, I generally prefer my outrageous fiction without a soft science explanation trying to explain how all of this was "theoretically possible." When the world clearly doesn't play by the usual rules, it is all the more poignant when the real problems turn out to be the same.

This game Sucks. I loved it.

2009-07-15T22:18:00.000-07:00

Ok. So. Been a while. How's everybody been? Hear that shit about Palin? Crazy, huh?

So a large part of why nobody's seen me (at least over the past week) is this lovely little pile of crack-cocaine known as Vampire: The Masquerade. This is a game that came out about 5 years ago, and is now available on Steam for 20 bucks.

Not surprisingly, the game is about vampires. Being adapted from a tabletop game about being a bloodsucker, Masquerade features voice and writing talent that easily meets or beats any game I've ever played. Brace yourselves for blasphemy, children: This might have been better than KOTOR.

Depending on your character build, fights can be won through various means, including stealth, magic, guns, swords, bare fists, claws, shapeshifting into a monster, or by running away like a little girl (a tactic I employed judiciously against an 8 foot werewolf). These things are done well enough to make the combat sequences fun, but in true RPG fashion, it all takes a back seat to the game's story.

The game begins with your vampire character being "embraced" into the ranks of the vampire, and the first few seconds of your new vampire life see both you and your vampire sire staked through the heart (which apparently only paralyzes a vampire) by the vampire police and brought to vampire trial. Did I mention this game had vampires?

Your creation was a violation of what the vampire community calls the Masquerade. The Masquerade is the code of conduct that vampires follow to keep their existence a secret. Traditional law demands the death of both you and your sire, but if that happened there wouldn't be a game so you are given a chance to join the vampiric community. That community, you'll quickly learn, is like the Senate, Congress, and High School all rolled into one, with people stabbing one another in the back left and right as they desperately try to claw their way to the top of the social circle.

The vampire world is one rife with political intrigue, where everyone has an agenda. There are no good guys and there are no friends; there are only people whose goals happen to align with yours. Throughout the game, you have the feeling that you are a pawn in somebody else's chess game, and that no matter what you do you'll be playing into somebody's hands. The story unfolds in a manner quite similar to KOTOR, with a heavy emphasis on dialogue and socializing as a part of the gameplay. There are surprisingly few points in the game where you actually have to do any serious fighting, and while it's almost always an option to just shoot/punch/bite your way through, it can be just as rewarding to talk or sneak past a situation. Some of the largest fights in the game can be sidestepped altogether with the proper application of charisma (or mind control) and a few picked locks.

Also like KOTOR, the game features a moral choice system, but for once it's not the proverbial "Mother Theresa or Baby Eating" choice between good and evil. As I said, there are no good guys, and that includes you, but there are varying degrees of evil. Certain actions, such as murdering an innocent unarmed person, will cause you to distance yourself from what's left of your human soul. This is more of a practical matter than an ethical one, as without that human soul, the demon that animates you can take over, and control your actions. The Masquerade is a double entendre here, because it also refers to the fact that vampires aren't just trying to fool the human race, but also themselves. By clinging to that humanity, you cling to your self control. Rejecting that humanity can cause you to frenzy. Frenzying comes with a marked increase in power, at the cost of any say as to how that power is to be used. You are almost definitely sure to find yourself violating the Masquerade, which will make you an enemy of the vampire and human worlds. Revealing yourself too often will draw the attention of Hunters.

The game will also penalize you for clinging too much to that human nature. Aside from the humanity mechanic, which can be managed easily enough without having to pass up good opportunities (such as stealing a wounded man's wallet) there is no reward or reason for playing the good guy.

The game does have multiple endings, but you're degree of good/evilness does not affect which ending you'll get. In fact, the endings are largely based on choices you make at the very end, but if you haven't politically schmoozed the right people some of those choices might not be available to you. This fact is meant to encourage you to engage in a little political intrigue of your own, as it pays to try and play both sides of a given conflict; if both sides think you're working for them, then you can delay making an actual choice on which (if any) to side with until you have more information.

For a game that is nearly half a decade old, more than a little buggy, and received almost not publicity when it did come out, Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines was a blast. It delivered about 2 hours per dollar I spent on it, and I fully intend to play it through again at some point.

One note: To run this game, it is highly recommended that you find Wesp's Unofficial Patch version 6.3 (released about a month ago, how's that for a dedicated community!) and install it in the steamapps/common/Masquerade folder. It fixes a number of issues, and improves gameplay considerably. It also gets the game to work on Vista.

Prostitutes! Transform and Roll Out!

2009-06-30T13:26:00.001-07:00

Here is a link. Click and watch the brief trailer.

So a few years back, some friends and I gathered around a television set, poured ourselves an obscene amount of alcohol, and watched a DVD I had picked up earlier that day, titled Machine Girl. Machine Girl was about a Japanese schoolgirl who had her arm cut off, so she found a couple of kindly auto mechanics to build her a new one. Only instead of an arm, they gave her a giant machine gun.

It featured a ridiculous amount of violence and campy kung fu, all culminating in a fight with the wife of the mobster we thought would be the villain, whose breasts had been replaced with power drills. Machine Girl was a movie with no shame or remorse, and it was one of the finer B movies I've ever seen.

And now, the series' creator Noboru Iguchi has teamed up with special effects designer Yoshihiro Nishimura (whose cult hit Tokyo Gore Police reportedly used 4 tons of stage blood) to produce RoboGeisha.

Some movies are so bad and ridiculous that they come out on the other end of the spectrum and become sublime. With enough alcohol, this is exactly what Machine Girl did. After watching the RoboGeisha trailer, I fear that this movie may pull that exact stunt, and then keep going, crossing the spectrum to crappy all over again. All the same, I will expect everyone to gather around a television and watch this with me, because I am TOTALLY buying the DVD. Totally.

Zeno Clash

2009-06-28T01:49:00.000-07:00

So for $10 today you can buy a game called Zeno Clash. I mentioned the demo a while back, and with this price cut, I went ahead and bought it.

The first thing I'll say is that most of what I said before about the combat stands. It's good, but not superb. What I didn't really get into before, because I somehow missed it during the demo, is that the artwork is some of the finest I've ever seen. It's delightfully surreal in a way I won't bother trying to explain. To offer just a few examples of how very bizarre this game is, I present the following three articles, which you will see if you play the game:

- A man wearing a tea kettle on his head
- An omniscient man-panther struggling to solve a Rubix Cube
- A blind assassin, who specializes in sharpshooting, riding atop a brontosaurus, throwing squirrels with parachutes and barrels of TNT tied to their backs.

In short: First person, fantasy punk, some shooting but mostly hand-to-hand brawling, REALLY good artwork.

The game is very short, clocking in at about 4 hours if you don't count all the little combat challenges you can do on the side. However, at $10, it's not a bad deal. You'll get about half an hour per dollar, and a lot more if you find you enjoy the gameplay and decide to take on the gauntlet sidequest thing.

If it's still Sunday and you're reading this, I strongly recommend downloading the free demo. Unless you absolutely loath the combat mechanic, then the game is worth the ten bucks just for the artwork.

You Conduit! You Conduit all Night Long!

2009-06-25T22:56:00.000-07:00

I deliberately ignored all the hype leading up to Conduit. Electing not to have my expectations colored by advertising campaigns, I preordered and bought the game on faith alone. My reaction so far has been mixed, but more positive than not.

The conduit is definitely something new. It plays at many times like a rail shooter, only without the rails. The aiming is absolutely spot-on. Your hand will eventually get tired of trying to be held steady in the air for so long, but that really goes for a lot of the Wii's better material. This is really Conduit's strong point- it's a first person shooter where you point the controller at the screen and shoot the bad guys. It's what we were expecting since we first heard about the Wii, and a game like this has been conspicuously absent up to this point. But better late than never, and High Velocity Software delivers the goods here.

The play control is about as good as it could possibly be. This is particularly aided by the single greatest effort I have ever seen committed towards giving the player control over the control. When you go into the options screen to edit the controls, it's no mere "pick your buttons and controller sensitivity," oh no. When you go to edit the controls, the game unpauses and starts playing again, and lets you edit all the various aspects of the game's play control while the game is running, allowing you to instantly see the results of your control scheme. When you're doing things like setting the sensitivity, the wii remote dead zone, and how far your character will crane his neck before he starts actually turning around, this is something that control freaks will definitely appreciate. It sounds minor and will be minor to many people, but it's a really nice effort and I applaud the designers for going that extra mile.

The gameplay and shooting mechanic flow like water, but only if you can ignore the rather bland graphics. We all knew that this was a Wii game and the graphics would suffer a downgrade, but I think this will turn some people off. Personally, I don't think that the graphics are bad enough to distract from the gameplay experience, but others may disagree. The screenshots more or less do the game justice, so if you want to know what it looks like go look at them. A solid effort is made to use coloration, artwork, and level design to compensate for the weak resolution, and I'll say that it works just fine for me.

Another problem along the same lines is that the Wii can't handle much in the way of a physics engine either. The environment is almost 100% static. If you've been spoiled by Havoc and Source physics, it bothers you when large explosions fail to so much as knock over a chair. Once again, this does not stop you from enjoying the game unless you let it, but it's a drawback all the same.

I confess that this is a first reaction and I am only a little more than halfway through the game, but far I have to say that I don't think any significant effort went into this story at all. The game begins with our faceless protagonist receiving a phone call from a man whose voice positively radiates malevolence. Mr. Ford, the FBI/special ops/soldier/agent person we assume control of, quickly confirms that since it knew the secret government handshake, this evil voice must be totally trustworthy, and he picks up his guns and heads to the airport where a supposed terrorist attack is under way. When security and FBI agents opened fire on me (as I walked into an airport carrying a 45 pistol and an MP5) the evil voice comes on again and informs me that the terrorists are apparently using some kind of mind control, and I have to kill the FBI agents. "Okey dokey" is the apparent reply from our protagonist, and so it's off to slaughter us some of DC's finest. The story devolves from that point into a mindless conspiracy-fest complete with at least two big secret shadow organizations, mind control gas, aliens, and more than a couple Xanatos Gambits all seemingly centered around a floating robot eye that can hack computers and translate graphiti. As a compelling and interesting story, I'd say it falters; As a campy little sci-fi romp, however, it entertains well enough and provides all the excuse I need to run around shooting people with laser guns.

I don't expect Conduit to set the world on fire, but it's done a couple of things really, really well, and it doesn't fail enough in any particular area to rob itself of it's due and proper. I don't regret buying it, and I recommend at least renting it if you own a Wii and you like shooters. You'll finish the main story quickly enough, and if you like the MP, you can decide if you want to buy it.

If you're waiting for that Magnum Opus that single-handedly vindicates buying the system three Novembers ago, however, this probably isn't it. But Red Steel 2 and Metroid:OM might be.

Not a game review for once

2009-06-24T21:38:00.001-07:00

So I've been watching a lot of Buffy and Angel episodes lately, and I've decided that I am a total Whedon fanboy.

I came to know of the works of Mr. Whedon in a sequence quite opposite to their release dates. First, I saw Serenity with my family- they all hated it, and I didn't know what was wrong with them. It was stylistic, unpredictable, and had some absolutely awesome dialogue. Years later, I was sitting on a friend's couch, and flipping through the pithy offerings of basic cable. After Comedy Central and Spike failed me, I went to my old standby, the network-formerly-known-as-SciFi. I wasn't entirely sure what this show I was watching was, but it really reminded me of this one movie I'd seen a couple years ago. I also liked it, quite a bit. Fast forward a little less than a year, and a friend informs me that in fact that show was Firefly, and that apparently the movie was a continuation of the story. Holy crap.

So I borrowed this friend's DVD collection, never to return it. I have watched that series at least half a dozen times by now. I love the way it had all these actors I'd never heard of, and yet each of them were so well-suited to the role (or vice-versa) that it quite simply was not ever apparent that I was watching people pretending to be other people. The dialogue was witty and impacting, and yet so casual. The word I'm looking for here is "flow." The characters flow seamlessly through their conversations and adventures, and it all just seems so naturally. I buy into it in a way I don't buy into most stories.

Dr. Horrible was... different. It didn't have the same kind of awesomeness Firefly had; it had a different kind of awesomeness. It was silly. It made me laugh, and I've seen that movie about as many times as I've seen Firefly.

And now, finally, I'm watching Buffy and Angel. Seasons 1-3 of the former and the first season of the latter are on Hulu, and now I'm watching the DVDs (thank you, Netflix) of Buffy season 4. Now I'm back to the Firefly kind of awesomeness, with that incredible way that the actors, again, seem to have been created for the sole purpose of playing these roles (or, again, vice versa) and they do it perfectly. I crane my head and go "d'awww" every time Willow pouts. I get moody and depressed every time the show reminds us that Angel will never be happy and exists only to suffer. The show is one of three movie/TV things that have ever actually brought a physical tear to my eye, the other two being Star Trek and the Futurama episode with Fry's dog.

In other words, I am enjoying the works of Joss Whedon to an irrational degree. It makes no sense that a television show makes me this happy. It's weird. But you know what, it's a happy kind of weird, so I'm not going to worry about it.

Also, as much as I'm enjoying Buffy, I can't see myself rewatching it half a dozen times like I did Firefly. That would take a really long time.

On a side note: Windows media player really sucks at playing those DVDs. It is utterly random whether I will be able to use the rewind or chapter back/forward functions, and it is utterly random whether Media Player decides to use its "oh, I remember where you were the last time you put this disk inside me!" feature. Also, it sometimes the video doesn't kick in during the first couple minutes. When that last glitch happens, the rewind decides it's not going to work, and media player decides to use that "remember your place" feature all a once, that means it is impossible to see the first couple minutes of an episode. I tried Media classic, but the picture gets all vertically shaky.

Does this look Infected to You?

2009-06-24T02:21:00.000-07:00

After a very brief (but nifty) opening cinema, I had control of my character. Within the first few minutes, I jumped twenty feet into the air, grew giant claws and skewered several soldiers, jumped into the air and ripped a helicopter in two, ran up a building, backflipped off the wall, flew down the road, and then I beat up a tank. The thing is, I was only trying to cross the street. I thought to myself, "if I ever figure out how to do all that stuff on purpose, I'll be having a lot of fun."

Prototype is a game lacking any restraint whatsoever. Within the first fifteen minutes, you are punching tanks and jump-kicking helicopters, and the situation only escalates. The game keeps a running tally of your performance, and after two days of gaming I have apparently wiped out approximately three battalions of marines. I mentioned in my Red Faction review that I found myself questioning if I might actually be the bad guy rather than the hero. I don't have the question here- it's quite clear that I am the bad guy. The military is thoroughly amoral in the execution of their duties, but at least they ostensibly are trying to do a good thing on the balance. In other words, the big evil military organization is willing to commit all kinds of atrocities and horrors so that, in the end, they can keep the nation on the whole safe. I am committing all kinds of atrocities and horrors because it's fun. Oh, and it is indeed fun.

The game's "protagonist," being a protagonist in that there is a problem he is presented with, and he mutilates said problem over the course of the story, is Alex Mercer. At the outset of our tale, Alex wakes up in a hospital with no memory of who he is or what's going on, and before he can figure it out a bunch of army guys show up and shoot him to death. It doesn't quite take, however, and Alex jumps back up, hurdles a 9 foot wall, and outruns them. He's apparently been infected with a supervirus that gives him all these crazy powers. Not terribly new, as plots go, but it's as good excuse for a murderous romp through Manhattan as I need.

The controls take a long time to master but once you are comfortable with them you will have a blast parkouring all over Manhattan The game features a movement system that resembles Assassin's Creed on crack. You can not only run faster than a car, but you can do it straight up a wall. Whenever you're running, you will automatically hurdle cars, debris, and other small obstructions. If you hit a large obstruction, like a building, you will turn 90 degrees and run straight up it. While running up a building, you will still be carried by momentum and can get thrown off course when you hit uneven terrain. It's awkward, but after a while you learn how to stop trying to bend the controls to your will, and let the game's parkour system handle a bit of the navigation. You basically have to stop trying to compensate for the game's movements, and let it play itself a little bit. It sounds weird, I know, but once you get the hang of it the system really is smooth and well-designed.

The combat system is nothing terribly new, but it is very polished and fun. Alex Mercer is able to mutate his arms into scythes, claws, tentacles, shields, giant hammers, and larger arms, and he uses all of these things to slaughter the good people of New York, the marines who try to protect them, and the infected monstrosities (himself excluded) that are trying to kill them. The enemy comes at you with tanks, infantry, and helicopters, and different approaches are required in different situations. Claws will shred the infantry in short order, but tanks require something heavier, like giant hammers. Helicopters are suckers for a good karate kick, when you're close enough, but until you develop the power to lasso them with a tentacle, a taxi-cab fastball brings them down right quick. As the game progresses, the military steps up their offensives and many new challenges come into play; it's all rather well paced, really.

The combat, movement, and open-world environment are the primary selling points here, but one other thing that simply must be mentioned is the consumption mechanic. When Alex grabs hold of a live victim, he can consume them; in addition to providing a health boost, this allows Alex to absorb their body and minds. Alex instantly gains access to all of their memories, and he can perfectly mimic their physical appearance and mannerisms. With the right disguise, you can infiltrate secure facilities, order artillery strikes, or even accuse another poor grunt of being the real monster, prompting the hapless leatherneck's comrades to gun him down. Another interesting use of the consumption mechanic is that you can absorb everything your victim ever knew or experienced. Eat a helicopter pilot, and you instantly know everything he did about operating one. Eat a base commander, and you can pass through voice and retinal scanners guarding the base. This allows Alex to reach certain areas undetected and acquire useful new skills.

It is through this mechanic that the game's storyline is unfurled. As I said before, it's your standard military viral cover-up, worthy of a sci-fi original. However, the method of telling is interesting. Scattered throughout the city are random New Yorkers who happen to have some tidbit of knowledge that will help you to dig deeper into the military cover-up behind the outbreak. When Alex gets near one, he will recognize him or her, which marks them for you. After you consume them, you are treated to a brief cinema that offers you just a small scrap of information; this may be a piece of a conversation overheard by a military escort, or a recalled conversation between two scientists about how the virus worked. Usually, the memory will feature another potential target, who can now also be found wandering the streets of New York. These targets aren't necessary to complete the game, but they will fill in gaps in the story and foreshadow certain events. It's an interesting storytelling method, and while not exactly epic in its presentation, it's something I haven't seen before and it works.

The bottom line: Prototype is just a nice cathartic murder-go-round, but it's an extremely polished and creative one. I had a blast with it.

Oh, and speaking of horrible flesh-eating viruses: I got my tests back without any unpleasant surprises. Happiness!

I am a Consumer Whore

2009-06-19T13:19:00.000-07:00

I have been convinced.

I now have to finish Tales of Symphonia 2, Conduit, Prototype, Penumbra, and Rainbow Six: Vegas (I believe I am on the final level in that one). Why would I drop another 50 bucks on a game that I don't even have time to play? I am a strange, irrational person.

Heal Thyself, Physician!

2009-06-19T01:45:00.000-07:00

Somebody needs to give Jessica Terry an award. Free medical care would do nicely. This girl has suffered for years from very painful stomach cramps that could often bring her to her knees, and doctor after doctor failed to come up with a prognosis.

Then, she figured it out. In her high school science class! She slid a sample of her own intestinal tissue (which a pathologist had assured her contained no irregularities) under a microscope, "and spotted an area of inflamed tissue called a granuloma, a clear indication that she had Crohn's disease."

This is evolution at its absolute finest.

You do NOT want to read this post. Seriously. I warned you...

2009-06-17T15:15:00.001-07:00

So I got tested for Syphilis today. And Ghonorreah, and HIV, and Chlamydia. I figure it's one of those things I should've been doing semi-annually for a while now, so yeah.

Do you know how they test your for Syphilis? It's really fun. The nurse has you disrobe, and sticks a cotton swab up your urethra. It feels... excruciating. It feels like somebody is stabbing you on the inside of the penis. I had the option of doing a urinary test, but it costs $38, and the swab costs $9. I think I would pay $20 not to experience that in the future, so I guess on the balance, I don't quite regret my decision. But yeah. Ow.

[EDIT:] Apparently, syphilis is such a dangerous disease that just getting tested makes it burn when you pee.

In non-penile news, Conduit comes out in a few days. I'll be spending this weekend trying to get ahead in my classes so that I have time to play the bejeesus out of it. I hope to have a review up before Friday, so all you Wii owning readers (that's right, both of you) who will probably have already played it can see what I think.

Also, my Red Faction review, posted previously, is now viewableon www.gamefaqs.com It seems they'll let anyone write for them. Go me.

[UPDATE] None of those tests came back positive.

I'm not sure now is the best policital climate for this...

2009-06-10T11:14:00.000-07:00

I was going to wait for the end of the game before I did this review, but I think I've seen enough at this point. Anything else I might learn would just be a spoiler at this point anyway. The verdict: Red Faction is a flawed masterpiece.

I'll eventually get to the major points, but first I'd like to talk about some of the little things. The fact that the colonists on Mars don't have a common language, and speak various languages including German, French, and Japanese. The way certain kinds of chemical explosions will emit different colored flames because of what's combusting. The news broadcasts and NPC conversations that are sensitive to whatever you've recently been doing. The way that enemy NPCs will switch up their combat banter depending on what you're shooting them with. It's little, but it adds a lot of flavor. But then there's the other little things. Like the way allies will crowd around your car, simultaneously making your whole group an easy target and cutting off your ability to maneuver without killing them. The fact that the enemies automatically forget you exist whenever you cross the line into your "secret" base, which the enemy never finds despite it being right out in the open half the time. The collectible easter eggs that are hidden on top of craggy mountains that are just all kinds of frustrating to get on top of. None of these things really ruin the game for me, but they are still annoying.

Now, onto the gameplay: Imagine GTA 4 had a fully destructible environment, employed the Gears of War aiming mechanic, then you'd have the basics idea. Then throw in a fundamentally different environment, as Mars is not a sprawling metropolis but rather a sparsely populated colonial world, with small settlements and buildings here and there, and add a very diverse set of weapons. There's your standard pistol, assault rifle, shotgun, and rocket launcher, of course, but then there's a wide selection of much more interesting weapons made from improvised mining tools, all of which are upgradeable in some fashion. One of my favorites was a cannon that fires sawblades, which explode on contact after an upgrade. Another gun fires a sith-like burst of electricity, which can fry people even if they're inside cars. As a bonus, it leaves the vehicle untouched, which allows you to steal it- nothing turns the tables faster than using this trick on a tank.

The game's destruction engine falls just a bit short of perfect, but as the very first implementation of something on this level, I must say I'm impressed. It is quite functional in terms of both gameplay and visuals, and it's a LOT of fun. After playing the demo, I predicted before that I would eventually get tired of watching buildings fall down, but I also predicted it would take a long time before that happened. While I still imagine this is true, I haven't gotten tired of blowing things up yet.

Sledgehammer. Remote charges. Missile launchers. That metal-eating cloud from the GI Joe Trailer. Black freaking holes. There are just so many different ways to make these gigantic buildings fall down, I have yet to even come close to tiring of it. From time to time, the quirky physics engine will allow a three story building to keep standing with only one little pillar holding it up, but for the most part buildings crack, crumble, and topple in a surprisingly realistic fashion.

While pleasantly conducive to large-scale destruction, some of the physics of Red Faction are quite simply outlandish. Your default melee weapon claims to be a humble sledgehammer, but for the kind of damage it causes I must conclude that it is secretly the hammer of Thor. Concrete walls and heavy support beams crumple under its might, often in a single blow. I've also noticed, once in a while, some weird physics like my car being launched thirty feet in the air because I hit a stop sign at the wrong angle, but it only happens rarely and it's usually more entertaining than annoying. Another thing: your character can survive a ridiculous amount of fire, explosions, car crashes, and bullets before dying, and this amount will be doubled at least twice through armor upgrades; and a good thing, too, as approximately 75% of the Martian population consists of heavily armed military police who are staunchly opposed to the notion of you and Mjolnir breaking all their houses.

Seriously, though. It seems that for every one common man on Mars, there are at least three trained police officers oppressing them. I'm all for stomping an Orwellian regime in outer space, but I can't see how this could be cost effective. It may be a nit, but I'm picking it anyway.

Rather surprisingly, I am finding the story to be one of the most interesting aspects of the game. The opening scene seems like a GTA4 rewrite at first, but things quickly take a turn for the original and you find yourself basically working for a terrorist organization. No, really, you're a guerilla fighter. You tactics consist of bombing buildings, taking out convoys with roadside bombs, destroying large buildings or troop placements with car bombs, and occasionally making use of a suicide bomber. When fighting the police, a voice on a loudspeaker orders you to surrender, and reminds you that you are endangering civilians, which you usually are. Now the government you're rebelling against is clearly shown to be unequivocally evil, but around the time I was torturing and murdering prisoners of war, I began to question whether the Red Faction is any better.

The impression I get, however, is that this isn't all just for shock value. I think the writers were genuinely trying to beg some ethical questions. The game portrays a situation where terrorist tactics are the only realistic recourse. The only way to win is to fight ruthless violence with ruthless violence. I see the questionable acts that I'm performing, and I think "I shouldn't be doing this." But then I try to think of what I should be doing instead, and I'm not seeing a lot of options. It's like one group of people came up with a series of unconscionable actions, and then they said "now let's try and imagine a situation where this would be conscionable." It is up to the player to decide whether that really is conscionable or not, but I find the ethical quandary was interesting regardless. I have a BA in Philosophy, though, so maybe I'm just reading too much into things.

Personally, I'm glad I bought this game. It's definitely long enough to warrant a buy, and unless Valve surprises us with an early release of HL3 and then surprises us further by including destructible environments, I think it will be a long time before other companies catch up with this kind of mechanic. If you still like to hop into GTA and blow some things up, then you'll probably still be messing around with RF:G long after you get tired of whatever game you get next Christmas.

One afterthought: The demo that was released a month back showcased a good portion of the game's features. If you thought that was lame, you can skip this one. If you don't have an Xbox, you might borrow a friend's to see if you like it, since it will be out on PC in a couple months.

EDIT three final points, now that the game is over. You eventually get a jetpack, The level design was really good, and dear Christ, did I just murder a lot of people that were only doing their jobs.

"Totally Not Gay" Six: Las Vegas

2009-06-02T01:31:00.000-07:00

I have a certain appreciation for games that came out a long time ago. For one thing, if they came out more than two years ago and I'm still hearing about them, they probably did something right. For a second, perhaps more important thing, they're usually pretty damned cheap. I picked up Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Las Vegas on Ebay for a grand total of six dollars after shipping, and this has easily been worth that measly investment.

The first thing I will say is that the game is a first person shooter. The second thing I will say is that this game is so different from your typical first-person shooter that I think you can legitimately call it a separate genre. The Rainbow Six series has been around since well before the Half Life days, little has changed, and it's still good. There have been a small handful of games that fall into the same style, but for the most part, Rainbow Six is a genre unto itself.

I could (and eventually will) explain what makes this game different by describing it, but I think to give you a proper idea, I'm first going to compare it to a game you have almost certainly played through at least once: Half Life. In Half Life, you are a person who, through the all-powerful magic of contrivance, has obtained impossible degrees of power and resilience. You can shrug off wounds that would kill ordinary men, to the point where even a grenade to the face is a survivable occurrence; although for dignity's sake you normally F7 at that point. With your massive arsenal, you basically comprise a one-man army, taking on marines and monsters alike, culminating in a climactic battle against a monster several dozen times your size.

In Rainbow Six, you are a member of one of the most well-trained, well-equipped tactical assault teams on the planet. Despite this, you are neither trained nor equipped, to take a shotgun blast to the face and live to brag about it after eating a couple medkits. Thanks to the latest in body armor technology, you are capable of taking a couple (read: two) bullets, provided don't strike any vital organs. In Half Life, the skills that will lead to your survival are quick thinking, accuracy, and a calm hear and steady trigger finger. You must be able to shoot your enemy quickly, take shelter where it's available, and make use of the terrain. Rainbow Six demands those things of you, but rather than making them the way of surviving, they are merely skills that you must have in order to implement a successful strategy. In other words, the reflexes that carry you through the normal FPS are necessary, but ultimately insufficient to get you through this one.

Simply put, you are constantly up against an enemy that has more guns and more hitpoints than you, and to survive you have to be faster and smarter. You have to be thinking about where you are in relation to your opponent, and how you outmaneuver the opponent. A classic example is a standard flank, where either you or your squadmates keep firing on an enemy position, whilst the other moves to a position where they can safely fire on the enemy. If the enemy comes out of cover to shoot you while you advance, your squad guns him down. If no, you reach a position where you can shoot the enemy and he can't shoot you. This is the basic strategy, but it is executed in myriad ways throughout the single-player campaign. The level designers do a really nice job of forcing you to employ these tactics, while at the same time giving you a few different options as to how you proceed. Ultimately, the game revolves around the notion of scouting the enemy's position, formulating an attack plan, and then following through on that plan, adjusting it on the fly as necessary.

The fact that bullets do realistic damage can frequently make the game an exercise in controller-snapping frustration, as if you make even a small error, like not noticing a terrorist hiding behind a crate before you start to move forward, you can find yourself booted back to your last checkpoint before you even realize you've screwed up. It only takes one well-placed shot to kill you. If you are scarcely clipped in the shoulder or leg, your vision becomes heavily blurred for about 15 seconds, after which you will heal. If you take a round in the torso, or two rounds in the leg (three will probably kill you), your vision gets very heavily blurred and fades to a dark black, effectively blinding you. This lasts for nearly thirty seconds, and you are almost always going to die at this point, unless you are able to blindly stumble out of harm's way. Having a good sense of your environment and well-positioned teammates can often make the difference between life or death in these situations.

Speaking of teammates, you are perpetually accompanied by two other nameless (well, they have names, I guess) special forces badasses, who are surprisingly good at their jobs. Sometimes they make you feel a bit inadequate, as they can often managed to clear a room that I couldn't get two feet in without having my highly trained ass blown off. They follow your orders to the letter, which you will find frequently gets them killed. When correctly managed, however, they are extremely efficient. Whether they're covering your flank while you snipe, or charging into a room while you sneak in through another door and get behind the enemies, these dudes are perhaps the best AI support mechanic I've ever seen. And unlike Resident Evil and Left 4 Dead, their usefulness does not hinge primarily on contrived sequences where a partner has to help you out.

The difficulty curve is quite steep, and the gameplay is only going to appeal to certain people; it's a genre unto itself, but a it's a very narrow genre. Give it a go if you find it for under $10, but if you uninstall in frustration after being unable to beat the first level, don't feel bad.

He's Our Hero...

2009-05-27T10:51:00.000-07:00

I am twenty five, and apparently I still get a little excited when I hear the Captain Planet theme song. The show might have been hokey, but in light of the current environmental crisis, let's give credit where it's due: those goofy teenagers called this shit. Nearly twenty years ago, they told us we were screwing this place up.

Whoopi Goldberg, Lou Gosset Junior, Jeff Goldblum, Tim Curry, LeVar Burton, Martin Sheen, Meg Ryan, Sting, and Helen Hunt all tried to tell us, and we didn't listen.

And if all that wasn't progressive enough,this show portrayed God as a black female. Even Kevin Smith wasn't willing to cross both those lines at once.

The Death of Something Good

2009-05-26T14:35:00.000-07:00

So I've been thinking a lot about faith lately. I used to be a very religious person. Church every Sunday, prayers every night, never use His name in vain and all that jazz. I remember my faith pulling me through situations I never thought I could handle alone. I also remember what it felt like to lose that faith.

Eventually, I met some Wiccan friends. They made no attempt to dissuade me from my faith (in fact, after some research I concluded that Wicca and Christianity are not mutually exclusive, per the original translations of the Bible), but it was at that point that I began to ask questions. When it came to the gay thing, I somehow just isolated that issue, and didn't think about it too much. I said that somehow the anti-gay sentiments of the Bible had to be misinterpreted, because I had personally met a gay person (my now-deceased Uncle, who was a very nice guy) and seen that there was no inherent evil in them. But for some reason, on this occasion, I couldn't just dodge the question like I had before. The bible stated that "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," but it was plain to see that there was no particular reason for me to hate these people, much less kill them.

So I researched. I plugged that verse into google and for hours I looked for a way to understand it. What I found was the beginning of the end of my faith. The word "witch" was, at best, a loose translation. The original Hebrew word had a number of potential interpretations into English, including "poisoner," "one who spreads discord through lies," and "one who uses magic to hurt people." Out of 8 possible translations, that last one was the closest thing to "witch." And yet based on this translations, people had been tried and murdered.

What bothered me here was that during that time, people who were doing their best to obey God had been led by the Bible to commit horrendous acts. The Bible, and all the people whose job it was to interpret it correctly, had lied to them. This was not like the revelation that Santa Claus wasn't really bringing presents down the chimney. I had based my life around this for more than a decade. Living by the code of God had been a primary objective, and a huge source of joy and comfort, for most of my adolescence. It was like having my heart pulled out. I felt all the comfort and confidence I once held slipping away, and I just couldn't hold onto it. I would try and pray, and I just wouldn't feel anyone there anymore.

Imagine finding out that your dearest and closest friend was never really your friend. That the relationship you thought you had with him or her had been a lie, and you could never rely on them again. It was perhaps the single most horrific experience of my life.

I bring this up in response to a judgment by the California Supreme Court to uphold Proposition 8. The religious right is dancing in the streets, and across both the state and the country, innocent people right now feel very alone and very, very frightened. Angry too, I would expect. Given that God is supposed to be an all-good being, I am flabbergasted that so many people can believe He wants them to cause this. Ignorance is no excuse when the damage you're causing is real, and especially not when so many are trying to educate you about it.

You see, it's like this. As the Christian population pushes harder and harder for an issue like this, it becomes the case that one can only call themselves a part of that group if they are either in support of this movement, or capable of remaining willfully ignorant of the impact is it having. Those who can neither ignore this issue nor abide by it ultimately cease to be a part of the faith. In other words, Christians are systematically divorcing themselves from a functional moral compass.

If somebody is intelligent enough to notice this matter, and has the moral sensibility to oppose it, they find themselves in the minority among their own faith. A few would try and retain that faith, and fight this notion, but judging from the relative silence of such groups (I know they exist, but they are not a large enough group that they are a really notable presence on the national stage) it is obvious that most just ultimately go through that painful process of losing faith in God. Conversely, there are many people with an instinctive desire to hate others, and they will be drawn to this movement. Many people who have an instinct to hate that otherwise might be silenced by guilt are being told that "hey, it's OK. Hate these people. It's not only OK, but it's the right thing to do. Don't, y'know, call it hate, but yeah, it's hate." Parents kick children out of the home and withdraw college money. Gay teens are four times as likely to commit suicide. Politicians are afraid to support them. And we as a society are, for the most part, simply allowing this situation.

The reality, or lack thereof, notwithstanding, it hurts me deeply to see that what I once saw as the greatest force for Good in the world is slowly being perverted into a force for something I cannot view as anything but evil.

Crouching Fallout, Broken Steel

2009-05-25T11:50:00.000-07:00

So I've just finished the last of the Fallout 3 expansions, and I have to say that I really got my money's worth out of that investment. For those who are unaware, Fallout 3 is a rather bizarre hybrid between first person shooter and expansive RPG. The game takes place from a first-person perspective, but all of your character's abilities are based on your character's level and build. This includes how much gear and loot you can carry, the price you can haggle for at shops, what weapons you can use and how effectively you can use them. It even impacts your conversations. For example, a character with a particularly high intelligence statistic and scientific aptitude might be able to discuss more complex topics, while one with a high charisma and speechcraft talent might be able to persuade people people to part with an important bit of information. Depending on the build, you can shoot, talk, or sneak your way through various situations.

Broken Steel continues the main plot of the storyline, which was strongly hinted to have definitively ended, especially after a longwinded epilogue voiced by Ron Perlman. Largely based on combat, Broken Steel reveals the aftermath of the choice you made at the end of the game's main storyline, and in any event covers the Brotherhood's ongoing struggle against the Enclave (the remnant of an evil shadow government that pulled some of the strings behind the great war). Once again, the story's climax entails a substantial moral choice, and once again it basically comes down to either Mother Theresa or baby eating.

Utlimately, the pros are as follows: More giant robot, an orbital laser, the chance to *really* screw over the Enclave (for those who never played Fallout, we really hate the Enclave), some interesting new enemies, and some fun combat levels.

Cons include a very short main set of missions, relatively unsatisfying sidequests, a notable lack of another epilogue by Mr. Perlman, and a few bugs. At one point, during a major conflict between the Brotherhood and the Enclave, I noticed that the AI for both sides had apparently forgotten to equip armor, and the two sides were doing battle in the skivvies. Amusing, but slightly flow-breaking.

Far more entertaining was The Pitt, a self-contained expansion quest that actually has you leaving the Capital Wasteland proper and venturing into the ruins of what used to be Pittsburgh. It's now a massive slave camp, and you've been recruited by an underground resistance to help mount a rebellion. The twist, without spoiling anything, is that neither the resistance or the spoilers are quite as they seem. For once, a real moral choice is presented.

The last (well, actually first, in terms of release date) DLC was Anchorage. While somewhat amusing, it really just amounts to a series of combat situations.

These expansions are reasonably priced at ten dollars apiece, but they're really only worth it if you enjoyed the original game. Anchorage especially is only worth the investment if you enjoyed the combat system, because there's virtually nothing to it other than shooting people. Broken Steel is nice, as it boosts your level cap to 30, allowing you to pretty much max out nearly every talent in the game. If you just weren't satisfied with the ending of Fallout 3 and would like to pay $10 to give Bethesda a second chance to impress you, this is for you. The Pitt is a fun little excursion, with some really nice visuals of decimated downtown Pittsburgh. It's all quite fun, but if you didn't like traveling the Capital Wastes the first time, you're not going to enjoy it any more this time. I should also note that you really won't get the same number of hours of gameplay per dollar out of these expansions than you did from the original game, especially when it comes to Anchorage.

Nerdgasm

2009-05-23T17:36:00.000-07:00

First there was the GI Joe trailer. Then the trailer for Transformers 2, that shows the return of Megatron. It was the first time I'd seen either of them, and when the opening scene of Star Trek immediately followed all that... well I'll admit it: I think I cried a little. They were stoic, manly tears, mind you.

Abrams paid every respect imaginable to Rodenberry's legacy. The canon was dismissed more or less entirely, but the canon was never important. It wasn't about the history or what happened on what star date. None of that ever made Star Trek what it was. Nameless Redshirts made Star Trek. Technobabble made star trek. Green women, funny accents, impossible challenges with equally impossible solutions, ship lights that don't even blink in sequence, Kirk constantly finding himself hanging from ledges, these are the things that made Star Trek what it was, and the minds behind this movie knew it.

It's almost enough to make me watch the last three seasons of Lost after all...

Giant robots, and the weird prebuscent children that pilot them. Again, but with a bigger budget this time.

2009-05-18T20:07:00.000-07:00

...

Theo, are you aware of this?

I really hated the original. The visuals weren't bad, and I'll even buy the bit about man rebelling against god and all that. But the sheer degree of vagueness to it all, the act of being obscure for the sake of being obscure, grated on me terribly. Furthermore, while I can understand and even applaud the deliberate breaking of character stereotypes, after watching that show I have to say that the stereotype of main characters in action shows not be complete wusses who never grow a pair at any point in the story is a stereotype we should probably cling to.

I could probably go on, but I won't. I'll just say that I really like the animation of this big-budget reboot, and even though it seems like mostly hype at this point, I'll give it a chance nonetheless.

Also, Kurt: I was planning on coming into town sometime during the first week of June. I haven't figured out how long I'm staying, but it wouldn't be more than 3, *maybe* 4 nights.

:(

2009-05-18T11:38:00.000-07:00

So I got fired last week. Forgot to mention that, I think.

It wasn't really that I did anything, but that my school schedule just became something that the restaurant couldn't work around. I can't really blame them, I was only available for 9 hours a week for a month.

Also, I'm a lunatic for trying to take this summer session course. 8 days after my last final, I had my first summer session exam. I'll find out this evening how I did. I don't look forward to that moment. My next exam is this Saturday. But hey, shortly after that, I'll have a final, and so long as I passed it will all be over.

After that, I get an entire week off before the summer session starts up again. A whole week. That's going to be a good week. I was thinking about visiting St Louis, but I'm running into a bit of snag. See, apparently Theo has a roommate now, and the halcyon days of free room at Chateue de Tyadya, a.k.a. Theo's aparment, have ended.

So.... anybody got a spare room?

Cryostasis: The story of somebody somewhere fighting something for some reason.

2009-05-17T09:53:00.001-07:00

Review time once again. On Today's Menu: Cryostasis. First response: Don't buy it for more than $5.

It's not that Cryostasis is bad, per se, it's just painfully mediocre every step of the way. The story revolves around how a nuclear icebreaker crashed and got stranded in the Arctic, and it's actually very interesting. What the story does not ever do, however, is make any attempt whatsoever at explaining why there are monsters everywhere. The combat is about 50/50 between shooting and melee. The melee game is a bold attempt to break free from the typical Half Life method of "hold attack until your enemy falls over," but I'd view it with more equanimity if this exact thing had not already been done better by Condemned, Chronicles of Riddick, Breakdown, Zeno Clash, and Mirror's Edge.

The melee game achieves that visceral feeling that it was going for, but at the cost of so much disorientation to the player. The camera stays with the main character's eyes, and he tends to swing his head around a lot while he fights. Sometimes this kind of disorientation is good, because it adds a level of realism; I liked the disorientation in Breakdown. Maybe I'm playing favorites (Breakdown is probably one of my top 5 of all time) but I just didn't get that authentic feeling here. I did get a certain feeling of nausea though, so that's something. The shooter aspect feels clunky and poorly implemented. The weapons are authentic and well-imaged, but after all that melee fighting, shooting seems oddly anticlimactic.

I suppose I should mention the big central mechanic of "Mental Echo." Your character has the ability to touch a dead person and go back in time to the moment they died, and control their actions to avoid the mistake that cost them their lives." Sometimes, this is as simply as "don't grab obviously electrified fire axe until you shut off the current, stupid," which makes me wonder if you're undoing some perfectly good evolution, but I have to admit that the mechanic actually works rather well, if you can ignore the massive amounts of resultant paradox. When you finish a Mental Echo section, the body will be gone and the character you saved will have changed something in the past, such as unlocking a door or repairing a machine, that will allow you to proceed. It's clever, but not enough to elevate this game out of "meh" territory. 2 Megafonzies. Go play Breakdown or Condemned.

This Show would be historically accurate, if History was more awesome.

2009-05-15T14:24:00.000-07:00

Sengoku is a word used to reference Japan's Age of Warring States, a very bloody and violent time proceeding the fall of the Ashikage Shogunate. It was comprised of nearly 150 years of wars involving numerous factions all vying for power.

When an entire nation of people start stabbing themselves over conflicting political ideologies, it can be a bit embarrassing. The standard method of compensating for this is to romanticize the period has much as fucking possible. Think of our Civil War, for example. Well, this civil war lasted a century and a half, so it takes a LOT of romanticizing. We're talking dozens of video games. Movies and books as well, I'm sure.

One of those video games, called Sengoku Basara ("Devil Kings" in the US) has been made into an anime. This anime particularly follows the "heroes" of the various sides of the conflicts. They are called "heroes" because their boundless passions enabled them to gather huge numbers of followers, and defeat countless enemies by themselves. Well, their boundless passion, and their giant robot suits, various ninjutsu skills, and ability to spit balls of fire and bolts of lightning from their weapons; those things helped as well. This "historical account" (imagine those quotation marks being at about twice the normal font size) is as heavily stylized, as it is heavily awesome. One guy fights with six katanas at once, and modifies his horses to have motorcycle handlebars instead of reigns. Another dude makes tornadoes with his axe, and rather than ride a single horse, he rides two at once (one foot in each saddle, like horseshoes). Romantic conversations are carried on while stabbing people.

This might not be how it actually happened, but it damn well ought to be.

Down where it's Wetter! Down where it's Better!

2009-05-14T10:35:00.001-07:00

So among my new acquisitions the other day was an absolute gem called Aquaria. Aquaria is the story of a young girl (who happens to be a fish) who can alter reality through song. She has the ability to feel the "verse" of the universe which flows through all living things, and she can sing in harmony with it to achieve various effects like telekinesis and laser beams. She's also extremely nimble and can flip around like nobody's business. So basically, she's like a singing jedi. Who is also a fish; that part's kind of important.

The game is 2D with 3D graphics, cell-shaded, and nothing that will tax your PC. In fact, I bet my old PC could have run this. All the same, the artwork is astounding, and the level design is fascinating. The music is top-notch as well.

In terms of gameplay, it's like a cross between Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and Ecco the Dolphin. Being underwater, you can swim in any direction, and you can get speed boosts by kicking off of walls (this comes heavily into play in combat). To sing, you have to stop moving and actually hit the various notes. It takes no musical talent and is extremely easy if you can remember the note combinations, but it can get difficult to perform some of the more complex melodies in the middle of a fight. When a lot of attacks are coming at you at once, dropping what your doing, holding still, and inputting the musical combination for a shield spell takes a fast and steady mousehand.

The story is good. The graphical design makes me feel like I'm swimming through a painting. The music is soothing and encourages exploration (try to imagine the underwater levels in Metroid). The voice actor for the main character does an excellent job. The gameplay is different from anything I've ever played. I guess what I'm saying is I really like this game.

The game does tend to suffer from a common indie-title condition, known as "we worked really hard making a big beautiful world for you to explore, and now damn you, you're going to freaking explore it," which is to say that you are given virtually no hints regarding where to go at the start of the game, and will wander the ocean for quite some time, running into various dead ends, most of which will actually become passageways to later areas, once you obtain the necessary skills to overcome the obstructions. One VERY important suggestion to anyone playing this game: Your (surprisingly well-done) map system allows you to drop map markers, and it also lets you tag those markers with text of your choosing. Whenever you encounter something that seems unusual, especially at what seems to be a dead end, take a couple of seconds to mark the position on your map, and leave a brief description of what you found there. Chances are that at some point, you'll want to return later when you've acquired some new skills.

At $20, Aquaria is a little steep for a 2D adventure, but I think I got my money's worth.

[EDIT: So, apparently Aquaria actually came out in 2007. It was recently (I think) placed on Steam, leading me to believe that it was a new title. But no, year and a half old.]

Unmatched Generosity

2009-05-13T12:21:00.000-07:00

I am such a great guy. I mean seriously, I'm so good to me.

I don't really have much money to spare, and yet I still stole 45 dollars from myself today and bought a couple of games on Steam. I mean, the charity of buying me presents like that, when I really can't afford it, is just something to commend me for. Thanks, me. Thanks a bunch.

Prince of Persia, starring Jake Gylenhaal's Abs!

2009-05-13T00:10:00.001-07:00

If you're a gamer, then ever since the Mario Bros movie came out over a decade ago, you've been waiting for years to see the day when somebody makes a good video game movie. There have been quite a few failed attempts, even if you don't count Uwe Boll (I swear he's doing it on purpose), and most of us have lost hope at this point.

And yet, every time we hear about something that might get made in the next four or five years, there's that little voice that goes "hey, have some faith. Maybe they'll get it right this time!"

Two years ago, a little birdie told me that Prince of Persia: Sands of Time was getting made into a movie. The below link will take you to a brief interview with the director about the film, which is in post-production and comes out next year. It seems to have a bit of a budget, as well as Jake Gylenhall.

Most of what's said in this interview concerns me. They seem to be talking excitedly about how they're planning to follow the routine conventions and take no risks whatsoever.

On the other hand, some of the fight scenes look like they could be good, the set actually looks really impressive, and it seems that the people making the movie are seriously dedicated to making it good.

[labored sigh] I always get my hopes up, and they are always dashed. Already the cycle begins to repeat. But hey, maybe they'll get it right this time?

http://kotaku.com/5248168/ogle-chesty-jake-in-this-prince-of-persia-movie-footage

Overly elaborate automated traps, sand monsters, copious amounts of acrobatics (preferably several hundred feet off the ground with a breathtaking view of a destroyed city in the background), and some good sword fights. I am asking for that much, because those were all it took to make the games great. Incidentally, I consider the PoP trilogy (as a whole) to have been one of the best game series in the last console generation, despite some severe flaws.

Dada Daa Da Duh

2009-05-12T01:23:00.001-07:00

A few days back, I watched Jurassic Park again. And you know what, those still look like real fucking dinosaurs. Long after the kung fu in the matrix stopped looking like magic and started looking like photoshopped ripple effects, Spielberg's dino-fest still looks freaking awesome.

Still, on an island full of natural prey, why are the T-rex and Velociraptors so hell-bent on eating these people? I mean, you actually see the T-rex drop a Gallimimus to check and see if there's a child-McNugget behidn a log. I mean seriously, the three people combined probably don't weigh more than that meal he just dropped, and several more of the buggers had stopped to watch him eat.

Awesome movie, but I think Spielberg overestimated just how much these creatures would have cared that there were people running around. Still, just in case he was right, Raptor-proof your home today!

Dear Webcomic Authors...

2009-05-11T09:32:00.000-07:00

I put forward the following, simple plea to all webcomics out there. Particularly, the young ones that have not yet built up a large archive.

When denoting addresses for your comics, please use a numerical numbering system, instead of a date-based one. Date-based record-keeping is fine for a visually interactive database (such as your archives page) but when it's text-based (i.e. trying to find the page you want by editing the text in the address bar) sequential filing makes a LOT more sense.

Losing my Relig... oh wait. There it is.

2009-05-09T11:17:00.000-07:00

So finals are over. I'd say thank God, but I've been particularly sketchy on what/if I believe regarding a higher power these days. I have always had a feeling that there is something up there, but for many years now, I've been rather vague as to what or whom.

Agnosticism is, in my opinion, the closest thing to right a person can be when it comes to picking a religion. To state with any level of certainty that there is nothing is no less a leap of faith than any other religion, and short of God himself revealing it to you (yeah, suuuuure He did) it's highly unlikely that any of the particular faiths got it just right, much less that you chanced upon the correct one. Still, agnosticism leaves one very frustrated when you need to say a quick prayer to someone, ask for a blessing, or just plain thank the heavens for your good fortune. If you default to a particular god, it feels like I'm committing a heresy against agnosticism. If you just pray to "whoever," I have a hard time believing "whoever" is up there is going to be especially persuaded. "Dear what's-your-name, please help me pass my accounting test tomorrow, Amen." I mean, if I was an all-powerful deity and my subjects couldn't even be bothered to guess my name, I doubt I could be bothered to alter reality in their favor. I wouldn't do favors for friends when they can't remember my name, why would I do it for my subjects?

And so, I think I'm going to start my own religion. I'm at least 20% serious here. It might drop to 10% after lunch, I'm not sure yet.

In Accounting, everything has always been about balance. It's an impossibly intricate system in which every action demands an equal and opposite reaction, thus necessitating a perfect balance at all times. Imbalances simply cannot happen in Accounting. This is not to say that it's against the rules for there to be no balance, as it is to say that it is impossible. If things in an accounting system do not appear to balance, then you have erred. The balance is there, it's always there, you've simply failed to properly measure things. It is no more possible for your debits to be unequal to your credits than for a large mass in space to naturally repel smaller masses rather than attract them.

Accounting is, for most intents and purposes, a theoretical, rather than a physical science. It measures something that is not tangible. Physics, chemistry, and even psychology, for example, are attempts by humanity to define in human terms the reality of what is going on. What is going on, in these cases, is always physical. Accounting is an attempt to express, in human terms, what is going on, but it's not physically happening. While it's true that some assets (like a building) have a physical form, we are not measuring anything physical about that asset. We are not measuring it's weight, or it's size, but rather it's worth. We are measuring what this asset could yield, what a liability could cost, or what assets and liability unit of equity entitles the holder to. We are measuring something that, while it has no physical form, truly impacts the physical world every day. If the dollar were to lose all its value, an accounting system that measures in dollars would naturally adjust itself to represent this change (for example, a physical asset would be worth more dollars, because dollars are worth less but the asset's physical worth remains unchanged). In other words, we are measuring power.

Thus far, accounting is the science of studying the power of wealth. But I imagine the most basic principle of balance can be applied to power in all its forms. In all systems, there is a balance. the power of wealth is a man-made system, and is therefore incredibly simple, relatively speaking. There are only two sides which must balance, and a finite number of forces that can act upon the balance. As hard as it is to understand even this simple system, it is an immensely rudimentary facsimile of more complicated systems, like ecosystems, or the universe itself.

Yes, that's right, the universe itself is a system of perpetual balance. Perpetual meaning that at no point is there an imbalance. It's not that when one thing acts to change that balance, another thing acts to readjust it, but rather that actions and there associated reactions occur simultaneously. Whenever one thing happens, something else happens not in response, but in tandem, to maintain the perpetual balance. This balance could no more be upset than the very laws of reality could shift and readjust themselves. It's not a question of probability or the lack of sufficient force, but rather it is a logical impossibility.

This is the Great Balance, in which we all have some amount of weight, both through our physical forms, our actions, and even our thoughts and beliefs. Everything that we do has a reaction, and everything that happens has happened as part of a balance. Although you most assuredly can impact the world around you, events of "chance" are simply the random result of the universe maintaining itself. All the other forces within the system go through various actions, and the concurrent reactions are what resulted in the world being the way it is.

So from now on, when the machinations of the Great Balance are in my favor, I shall be grateful to the Balance. When they oppose me, I shall curse It, if I'm feeling cheeky. This does not provide an ideal answer to my afore-mentioned troubles, as the Great Balance is more of a natural state of things than a sentient god, but all things considered, that doesn't necessarily make it any less likely to care.

And, with all that in mind, I'd like to say. Fuck the Balance, because I didn't get my 3.5 GPA.

This has been,

B.S.

PS: There were no spelling errors to correct when I finished this post, and this post was highlighting the potential existence of a higher power. Coincidence? I think so.
[EDIT: damn you Kurt. Damn you and your keen sense of grammar.]

Red Sandbox

2009-05-05T09:50:00.000-07:00

So last night, I took a break from studying and fired up the free demo for Red Faction: Guerilla. I think it is important to say, before discussing the game, that I was actually a bit disappointed at first. I've been looking forward to this title for more than a year, mostly because I think that the geo-mod concept (I'll explain that shortly) is a long overdue innovation. Obviously, the game wasn't going to live up to a year's worth of being hyped up in my own mind, and it didn't. It did, however, deliver everything it promised and then some, and once I brought my sky-high standards down a bit, I had a darn good time with the demo.

So what's it like? Think GTA. On Mars. With a 100% destructible environment. And the police are always after you. And there are a lot more explosions.

Frankly, I think I need to go into a bit more detail on the 100% destructible environment thing. I’m not sure you’re getting me here. 100%. Everything can be broken. And that's not like every building has a health meter, and if you damage it enough it will come crumbling down, oh no. If struck with enough force (preferably a vehicle collision or a remote charge, but a sledgehammer works just fine in a pinch) absolutely anything in the game will break. Basically, you hit a building’s wall with a sledgehammer or car, and you will eventually bust a hole in that wall. The building stands up in accordance with a physics engine, so if you break enough of the walls on the first floor, there is nothing to support the roof, and it will collapse under its own weight. Bringing the building down is not so much a function of doing "enough" damage, but taking out the support structure and letting science do the real legwork.

Now, at first I thought it was awfully strange how much I had to bust out a building’s support structure to get it to fall over. I mean, I’d say around 50-60% of the first floor of a 1-story building had to be taken out to get the roof to collapse. But I recently realized something that actually helps that make sense. Mars has approximately 38% of Earth’s gravity. The buildings are usually comprised of very thick stone walls with sound structural integrity, and the demo didn’t feature a lot of top-heavy buildings (i.e. buildings with multiple stories). Also, once you hop into your giant walking death machine (fun fact: in Red Faction, mining vehicles are infinitely superior to military vehicles in every way) it’s just plain awesome how quickly things fall down. The way you can swat tanks aside and knock over buildings is reminiscent of Rampage for the old 8-bit.

As much fun as it is, I worry that, eventually, knocking things over and killing lots and lots of people might get old. At some point, I can see myself saying “eh, you’ve seen one skyscraper come tumbling to the ground, you’ve seen them all.” Although, in a couple weeks when the game comes out, I am going to bet $60 that it will take a long time for me to say that.

Another thing about this game is that it looks to be very much a sandbox. If GTA was just plain boring to you, then you might not be totally stoked about this. Alternatively, if you love sandbox titles and destroying things, then this will light your ass on fire, Theo.

I strongly recommend at least giving the demo a whirl. It costs nothing. Do give it some time, because the controls feel quite awkward at first. You get used to them after a while.

Tweet on this, you Commie Son of a Bitch!

2009-05-03T10:43:00.000-07:00

A series of slightly humorous, completely unrelated things that I'd have blogged about over the past few weeks if I had time.

My desk is now a fortress. I have arranged two monitors, my speakers, my computer's case, a coffee tin, and a lamp in such a manner that my cat is completely unable to get up here and climb all over my keyboard. This took forever, but I think I've finally got it to where it's impenetrable.
EDIT: Nevermind. Somehow he hurdled the monitor fence. Stupid ninja-cat...
Terra drew me a picture of a fairy riding a unicorn, which is stabbing a care-bear. It is awesome, and is now taped to the side of my PC so I can look at it whenever I'm feeling down.
I've said it once before but it bears repeating: I have a new PC, and it is glorious.
Despite a concerted effort, I am utterly unable to convince Windows Media Player that Blind Satellite's "Flight School" is, in fact, not performed by Voices of Masada, and does not belong on the Dark Awakening, Vol. 5 album. Windows Media player continually renames the the song Flight, and claims that it was composed by Leydon, Martin, and Shah. I cannot seem to reorganize it under a different album, no matter how many times I edit or redownload it.
[two witty and poignant cents in on the gay rights/religion debate on Kurtharsis]
A little while back, I learned how to say "crossdresser" in sign language, when I saw a crossdresser walk past a deaf couple.
The weather sure has been nice lately
I met Theo's new lady-friend. She is quite the hip individual. 4.6 Megafonzies.
I should be studying right now
I've been going to quite a bit of theater lately. I saw Arabian Nights (awesome) and Winesburg Ohio (also quite awesome) at the KC Rep, but neither holds a candle to Bare, which I saw at the Unicorn. Bare was a rock opera (a real rock opera, nothing like that crapfest from Twisted Pictures) about a gay couple in a catholic high school. Every single moment of this play had me completely enthralled, it was funny, tragic, shocking, and thoughtful in all the right ways at all the right times, and if you don't like it you must be stupid. However, aside from just being good, this play was culture. This was one of those things that you feel like you're somehow improved as a person for having born witness to it.
Note for the above: The version of Bare that I saw was without any nudity. And this isn't like the time I didn't notice the blue wang in Watchmen, there really weren't any exposed penises. I have confirmed this.
L4D is qutie entertaining, now that I have a PC that can run it, but the lag I experience makes it border on unplayable. I'll be almost done healing myself, then a half second of lag will make me start all over. Or I'll be the one responsible for holding a particular bottleneck for the rescue, and then suddenly the screen will freeze for a few seconds, and then there's 50 zombies through the window. It doesn't happen often, maybe 2-3 times per play-through, but it's all manner of annoying.
For the first time ever, I'm seeing how Twitter might have been useful to me at some point.
I should really be studying now.
When my PC crashed last month, I lost all my music. We're talking like 6 gigs of music. I now have almost nothing. If I manage to visit STL in the Summer, and I bring my PC, I hope somebody can help me fix that.
[something clever about this whole pig flu thing]
I recently cracked Fallout 3 back open, and played through the Operation: Anchorage expansion. It's basically all combat. One thing I found especially interesting was that when I normally play games like Fallout, I will go out of my way to be the good guy. I will pass on rewards that I really would be better off taking, give up cash that I needed to repair my weapons, and reload a game over and over until I can get through a situation without anybody getting hurt, all for the sake of being the good guy. Long after I've maxed out my "good guy points," and the game has reached a point where it does not recognize my good deeds, I compulsively play light side. Although I think I'm an OK sort, my real-life self is hardly the Last, Best Hope for Humanity, and yet whenever video games present the moral choice, I genuinely feel guilty if I don't act like a total freaking boy scout. But when I played Anchorage, that changed. You see, in the game's storyline, Operation: Anchorage is a matrix-like computer world that you have to enter and defeat for some arbitrary reason. Since none of these people were "real", I didn't mind letting team members die, and even shot one myself at one point. This is utterly absurd. In an imperfect simulation of real life, I am a much nicer guy than I am in reality, but in a perfect simulation of that imperfect simulation, I abandoned my moral compass entirely. The absurdity of this situation astounds, and yet persists.
In case you didn't hear me the first time, watch There Will Be Brawl right freaking now.

Okay, I think I'm done.

OBJECTIVE 1: Calculate Comprehensive Income via Cash Flow Hedge method to GET TO DAH CHOPPAH!

2009-04-29T13:59:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, I studied for 12 consecutive hours for an Advanced Accounting test. Last night, I had a nightmare that I was a commando, vastly outnumbered by the enemy, hiding in the bushes of a Microsoft Excel document and trying to follow a route of complex equations to get out alive. I cannot even begin to explain exactly how that worked

I still couldn’t finish all of the test before it was time to leave, much less go back and check my work. [edit: My grade on this test, as well as on next week's final, will determine whether I get to keep my scholarship]

Bleh. I’ll post again after finals week.

Jubilation!

2009-04-19T15:40:00.001-07:00

8 GB of DDR2
Quad-core, at 2.5 Ghz, 6MB cache

Nvidia 9800 GT with 2 GB

A second monitor (that was apparently in my basement the whole time)

Yay.

Video Game Zen

2009-04-17T00:24:00.001-07:00

Here’s another nifty game that can be picked up for a pithy ten dollars on Xbox Live: Ikaruga. It’s a clever re-imagining of the old-school top-down shooter.

The game is 2D, and you have a bird’s eye view of the action as you pilot a ship through a futuristic battlefield. There is an impressive variety of enemies, but they all come in one of two forms, dark and light. Your ship can switch between dark and light forms. In dark form, you will do extra damage to light enemies, and you can absorb any attacks from dark enemies and use the energy to fire a special homing laser, which can just about wipe the screen when fully charged. Your light form has the opposite advantages.

Simplicity itself, really. Turn dark to escape shots from dark enemies, turn light to escape shots from light enemies. Of course, when there are twenty or thirty enemies on screen firing a mix of light and dark shots at you, it becomes impossibly complex to know when to switch, and when to dodge.

I’ve just felled the game’s final boss, and I believe that in those final moments, I experienced what can most accurately be described as a video game zen. The final boss was launching wave after wave of missiles, lasers, and bullets at me, alternating between light and dark too fast for me to keep up. And then I reached a point where I just couldn’t consciously follow his attacks anymore. But I kept dodging them. As if my hands had a life of their own, I swerved, dipped, and shifted at all the right times. In my mind, it was perpetually three seconds ago, and by the time I realized that I hadn’t died yet, some ethereal force had guided my hand to dodge several attacks I hadn’t noticed, counterattacking in perfect rhythm.

And so, I bring you today’s vocabulary term:

Video game zen: A phenomenon whereby the complex process of interpreting visual stimulus, conceiving a response within the context of the game, translating that contextual response into the requisite physical response, and enacting that physical response, is all performed continuously without any identifiable cognitive effort.

Nothing Special

2009-04-15T19:13:00.000-07:00

“Welcome to Sega, may I take your order?”

“Yes, I’d like an ENORMOUS amount of violence and a few gallons of blood, with a side of mediocre play control? Oh, and could you wrap it all up in some only-slightly-cliché-at-this-point, Sin City-esque black-and-white-with-red-blood comic book presentation?”

“Certainly, sir. Would you like any plot with that?”

“No, thank you.”

“Alright sir, one copy of Madworld for the Nintendo Wii coming right up. That will be $40 and one boring and completely overlong (but still fairly brief) tutorial sequence.”

“No problem.”

“All right sir, Steven Blum will be right out with your order!”

And that’s all I have to say about Sega’s Madworld for the Nintendo Wii.

On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness

2009-04-12T09:06:00.000-07:00

So I’ve just wrapped up episode 1 of Startling Developments quirky little RPG, “On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness.” For the uninformed, Startling Developments is owned by Gabe and Tycho, the artist and writer for Penny Arcade.

This game is very… unique. It’s an RPG, but shorter than most first person shooters. It was made on a budget, but it seems to have received more polish than most big-budget epic masterpieces. It costs $10, and yet I enjoyed it more than games that ran me six times that amount.

The combat mechanic is probably unlike anything you’ve played before, unless you played a little-known sci-fi title from back in the 90’s called Septerra Core, because it’s exactly like that. Each character has the option of using an item, attacking, or using a special attack, but to use any of those three you have to wait on a battle timer to indicate the character is ready. The timer for items takes each character a second or two. The attack timer is a little bit longer, but not much. The special attack timer has the longest wait, and if you don’t perform the attack properly it will fail. It’s not going to blow your mind, but it keeps the game relatively fun and challenging just long enough.

The story is an ADD-ridden little diddy about violence and dark gods. It all begins with “a perfect morning, on a perfect day, in front of your perfect house, in the mostly-perfect city of New Arcadia.” Before long, a giant fruit-raping robot has crushed your house, and you take up a rake and vow revenge. Gabe and Tycho will soon join you, and together you fight some robots, kill some hobos, assist in some urinology experiments, and infiltrate an evil cult of mimes. All along the way, the creator’s have infused their quite singular brand of humor.

One of the big ideas behind the game is that instead of charging you $50 and then dragging the RPG out for hours on end with pointless dungeon delving to give you the impression that you’re getting your money’s worth, the game only costs about ten dollars and will last about as many hours, maybe a bit more.

This game is actually only the first episode in a series, but it functions perfectly fine as a self-contained game. I would strongly recommend this with anyone that has $10 to spare. I say that, because it is available for ten dollars.

I have a job now. I park cars. Woo. I do not make enough money in a night of work to eat lunch at the restaurant I work at. This actually works out quite well, because this means that the restaurant I work at is customed by very wealthy people, and wealthy people occasionally tip well. Unfortunately, it would seem the wealthy pay very little attention half the time. All too frequently, I will be sanctimoniously handed a five dollar bill and told to “put her in a good spot” by some fellow who did not notice that the valet service costs $5.25, and my “tip” would actually be made up by the difference between that and what was paid. It would be rude to point this out, and I’m not going to call somebody out on a quarter, but it does grate the nerves that I’m paying them to park their car. Still, I’m making 7.50 an hour on top of tips, and at least once every night there’s been a fiver or ten dollar tip, and at the end of it all I usually make 20-30 bucks in tips a night.

School continues to be a royal pain in the ass. I love the stuff I’m studying, but damn it’s a lot of work. And it won’t be over any time soon. The next break I take from classes will come at Thanksgiving. My interim summer session starts the Monday after my last final, and that will be a single class, for ten hours a week. With one of the toughest professors on the face of the planet. Seriously, dude’s scary. Knows his business like some kind of genetically engineered super-professor, but he’s scary.

The Monday after that final, the summer session begins, and I will be squeezing two classes into as many months. The Monday after those finals, I start my fall semester, and I’m taking a full course load of 12 graduate classes. Once THOSE finals are done, however, I will have only two classes standing between myself and a Master’s Degree. That final semester, I should have ample time to prepare for the CPA exam, so I should be about done with school and tests by the time next year.

Theo, Evan, and Terra. If you happen to be cleaning up, and come across Stranger in a Strange Land, and it isn’t your Stranger in a Strange Land, it’s my Stranger in a Strange Land. I can’t seem to find it. Shame, too, because I’m about done with the other book I picked up that day and I’ve already figured out how everything’s going to end. If anybody’s considering reading the Mass Effect books, let me warn you that it was just a touch sloppy. Typos and grammatical errors are just a bit too frequent to forgive, even for me. The story and the action sequences are good enough, but they wasted a lot of verbiage on poor explanations of how the world works. Physical descriptions feel like abrupt asides. This guy was better off writing for game than an actual novel.

Out of deference to the antisocial teenager I was in high school, I will be going to see Dragonball: Evolution tonight. Disturbingly enough, I have found a group of people my own age that will be going with me. I’ll spare everybody the details unless it somehow impresses me, but in that case I’ll be too busy blogging about the actual End of Days to blog about its preempting signs.

Last thing: Go watch There Will be Brawl. Do it.

Everything I know is wrong.

2009-04-02T13:55:00.000-07:00

In this life, we are born knowing very little. We have a rudimentary knowledge of how to breath. Crying and screaming apparently comes naturally as well. Most babies have also expressed acute awareness of the fact that “it’s fuggin cold out here!”

The point is, we don’t start out with a great understanding of the world around us. We have to learn things as they go. Now, imagine trying to understand advanced physics before you pass a basic high school science course. It’s not going to make a lot of sense, and for the most part, you’re not going to understand any of it. If pressed, you’ll probably draw the wrong conclusions more often than not.

Well, sometimes I think life’s like that. You don’t really learn things about the world in any particular order. For this reason, we should always be ready to find out that we were bass-ackwards wrong about things from time to time. Be that as it may, there are some truths which are hard to accept.

DesCartes theorized once that for all we know, everything we experience is the produce of an evil demon that controls our thoughts. For this reason, nothing we know is absolutely sure, except that we exist. This is a good theory, and can be extrapolated practically almost every day. But still, we all know that there isn’t an evil demon controlling our thoughts. Well, probably not, but I digress. The point is, even though it is theoretically possible that up is down and blue is red and the universe is truly overseen by a flying spaghetti monster, there is a significant difference from accepting such a possibility and actually discovering that a belief that you have held to be infallible was never, ever true.

From time to time, some people may have one of those revelations that make them step back and go “wow, if I was wrong about this, every single thought or opinion I’ve ever had is now in question. If this wasn’t a sure thing, nothing ever could be.” It’s an emotional and psychological gutshot that can stay with you for a lifetime, and sometimes even drive you insane. I’ve recently had such a revelation.

While listening to the radio this morning, I learned that the lead singer of The Silver Sun Pickups is a man. That’s right, that’s a dude. Apparently, the female bassist only provides backup vocals.

I have to wait until I can get home tonight and youtube one of their shows to confirm all this, but if it is true, the very fabric of my reality will be called into question. When this happened to DesCartes, he ended up talking to his horse and hiding his feces in a dresser drawer. If that happens to me, if anyone wants to keep reading my blog, they’ll have to find whatever it is that horses use for an internet.

This has been…
BS

Today, Chilrden, we're going to learn to Account to 3

2009-03-31T23:03:00.000-07:00

This post is for Walter. It’s for all those times he wrote posts with medical stuff in them. I had come to him for funny, and he made me read big words. What follows is a brief explanation of a few rudimentary accounting principles (Accounting 101 and 102), a fairly brief explanation of exactly what Enron did that was so bad, and what I want to do with all this fancy ehdumucation. Fair warning, this is like 5 pages long; you may just want to stop reading now, in fact.

You all remember Enron, right? Buncha no good crooks. Jerks, they were. What did they do again? It’s funny, but a lot of people just know that they did something wrong and cost a bunch of people money. I’m going to try and offer a very small glimpse here into some of the shenanigans that Enron pulled that was so bad.

But first, I actually have to delve into some very basic accounting. Don’t worry, I won’t go any farther than Accounting 101, and maybe a little 102.

First thing, for those who don’t know, Accounting is the practice of record the financial state of a company. You have to record what a company has, what a company owes, and who owns it. This is done, at its very core, through one equation. A firm’s assets are equal to the sum of its liabilities and its equity. Assets are anything the firm owns, from cash to equipment to stocks of other companies. Liabilities are things the company owes other people. Equity is the portion of the company that is owned by somebody else (stocks and retained earnings, mostly). The stock accounts represent the investment in the company by people who paid money to own part of the firm. Retained Earnings is the additional capital that stockholders did not pay in the past, but have claim to. Whenever a firm has net income at the end of a period, that net income is closed to increase the Retained Earnings account. So, as a company profits, its retained earnings go up, and therefore the implied value of the stock goes up. Of course, if the transactions and occurrences aren’t properly accounted for, then the retained earnings account is incorrect. Using some truly BS accounting tricks, Enron managed to post income when there was none, thus overstating its Retained Earnings account, and therefore making it appear to investors that the company was rising in value when in fact it was rapidly going out of business.

So you have that basic equation: A = L + E

These various totals are altered whenever a transaction occurs. We record these transactions with “journal entries”. For example, suppose you own a coffee shop, and you sell $500 worth of coffee in a day.

Cash . . . 500

. . . . . Sales . . . 500

The Cash account is part of Assets. The Sales is part “revenue” which is part of “net income” which is closed to retained earnings at the end of the period. So in this case, an asset increases, and Equity increases. At the end of every business period (standard is one year, but there’s flexibility in different industries) you have to release a financial statements of all of your asset, liability, and equity accounts. Assets must equal liabilities plus equity.

In EVERY journal entry, the debits (the number on the left) must be equal to credits (the number on the right). Normally, assets have a debit balance (debits make them go up, credits make them go down) and liability and equity accounts have a credit balance (vice versa). Therefore, expenses are debits and revenues are credits. In the above example, we have a debit to cash (an asset is increasing) and a credit to sales (a revenue account). On our income statement, “net income” will be the total of all our gains, losses, revenues, and expenses. Hopefully, the credit balances (revenues and gains) will be higher than the debit balances (expenses and losses). This will result in a credit balance on our income statement, also referred to as net income. That credit balance will be transferred to Retained Earnings. If the expenses and losses outweigh the gains and revenues, then we have a debit balance, which is a net loss. This also gets carried to Retained Earnings, and reduces that account.

To clarify, expenses occur when we spend money to make money. Paying our employees, buying inventory, paying rent, etc. Likewise, revenues occur as we do business, such as selling coffee. Gains and losses occur when we make money through unusual means. If we get sued and have to pay a settlement, that’s considered a loss. If our company invests in some stocks and then sells them back for more than we paid, that’s a gain (note that it’s only a gain because we’re a coffee shop, not an investment dealer. If we bought and sold stocks professionally as part of our business plan, it would be income).

When a company records expenses, it is required to record those expenses in the period that the related benefit occurred. For example, the electricity bill for 2008 must be expensed in 2008, no matter when it gets paid. The usual way of dealing with this is that there is a debit entry for the expense, and if we didn’t pay it yet, there is a credit entry for something like Utilities Payable. This is called the Recognition Principle, and it is required. In this example, the debits match the credits, and the increase in liabilities (Utilities Payable) is offset by the decrease in Owner’s Equity (the expense will reduce net income, which will reduce Retained Earnings, which is an equity account) so that the A = L + E equation is satisfied. The liability is increased just as the Equity is decreased.

This Recognition principle comes into play in a lot of ways, but the example I’ll focus on now is Fixed Assets, particularly equipment. Suppose our coffee shop buys a big industrial natural gas roaster. You do not get to record an expense for the cost of that roaster, because you haven’t earned the revenue yet. The roaster is going to be used for years, after all. So, that expense has to be spaced out over all of those years. You will first record a credit to cash or Accounts payable (depending on whether you bought it for cash or on credit) and you will record a debit to Equipment – Roaster. Equipment is an asset, so the A in the accounting equation is increased. This is offset either by a decrease in another asset (cash) or an increase in liabilities (A/P). If you bought in on credit, then when you pay the bill later (probably periodically) then you will credit cash and debit A/P (debit reduced A/P, since it’s a liability account, and credit reduces cash, since it’s an asset). You still don’t get to record the expense.

Now, you must record that expense over the life of the roaster. There are numerous ways to do it, and they can be very complicated in their own right, but let’s assume we use the really simple “straight line” method. Let’s assume we determine that our roaster will have a “useful life” of 5 years. Well then, each year, we record 1/5 of the cost of the roaster as an expense. However, the Equipment account must always show the roaster at its historic cost, until we sell or scrap it. Even though the asset has, presumably, decreased in value (depreciation), we must record it at its historic cost. So what we will do is create an account called Accumulated Depreciation – Roaster. We will credit this account and debit Depreciation Expense. Accumulated Depreciation is called a contra-asset account. It is an account that exists to offset the asset it is linked to (the roaster). Increases to a contra asset account are credits, and factoring a credit into our total assets will decrease the balance.

Now, let’s assume we sell that roaster to the coffee shop across the street. When we do that, we will debit our cash account (or accounts receivable, which is also an asset) for the selling price, and we will credit the equipment account for the original price of the equipment. We will also debit the Accumulated Depreciation – Roaster account. Now the balance in all of these accounts is zero, but the journal entry does not have equal debits and credits. The difference between debits and credits is going to be balanced by either a gain or a loss. The entry would look like this:

Cash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80,000
Accumulated Depreciation . . . 40,000
. . . . . Equipment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100,000
. . . . . Gain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20,000

So we have a $20,000 gain. Yay. Note that while it is ultimately closed to our Net Income, this gain is NOT income. Income must be part of our normal operations. It has to be called a gain, because it is irregular. We don’t sell roasters for a living, we sell coffee. When potential investors see our income statements, they will see that this 20,000 was an irregular activity; if it was called income, then an investor might reasonably expect such a gain to be recurring.

However, it does let us show on our income statement a nice 20,000 gain. But what if we OWN the coffee shop down the street? Did we really make any money? We sold the roaster to ourselves!

If you own enough of a company to exert significant influence over its financial decisions, there are rules about how you disclose intercompany transactions. Otherwise, if a company didn’t want to publish a net loss for the period, they could start a company, grant that company a line of credit and sell it a bunch of inventory. This would result in a debit to Accounts Payable and a credit to revenues, but the asset you’re recording (accounts payable) would be fake because the company you own isn’t going to pay it, and the revenues would therefore be fake as well, because you recorded those revenues to reflect an increase in assets.

This is what Enron did, but there was one very important difference: I have done everything I could in the above example to make it as simple as possible; Enron did everything they could to make it as complicated as possible. They wouldn’t just sell their products to a company they owned. In fact, they couldn’t because publicly traded companies are required to release special consolidated financial statements where they go back and reverse all the entries related to that sale, retroactively apply new depreciation entries, and a LOT more (to give you some reference, my Advanced Accounting Theory professor has spent almost a month on how to do consolidation entries for equipment sales alone).

So Enron started a company, which started a company which started a company. This continued about twenty times, until they only needed about $20,000 of non-company capital to start a company that Enron could sell things to and record income (in Enron’s case, it wasn’t selling equipment, but financial products). That $20,000 couldn’t come from any company employee or from the family thereof. No spouses, and the law is touchy about girlfriends that have been living with you for X amount of time. But gay marriage was illegal even in the very liberal state of New York, and so the gay lover of one of the company’s higher-ups (he couldn’t be considered family in any sense of the word, since the law abjectly denies the possibility of these two being family) ponied up that cash. Now, it turns out this was all still very, very illegal, but nobody could follow that money trail and prove it. This is how it went on for years with nobody catching on. Enron had to fall apart and all its investors had to lose every dime before anybody stepped in, and even in retrospect trying to follow the actual series of transactions that they used to put it all together is more complicated than trying to solve a Rubics cube with your feet.

Now, in response to the collapse Enron and WorldCom, a lovely little bill called Sarbanes-Oxley got passed. SOX did a couple of neat things, but perhaps the most useful was this: the management of a publicly traded company now must review the financial statements of the firm, and sign a statement saying that they have read and understood them. See, before this, any CEO could just shrug his shoulders and say “I’m a businessman, I never studied accounting. I had no idea this stuff was going on.” Up until this point, it was only required that every year, publicly traded companies hire professional auditors from outside the firm to review the financial statements and issue an opinion as to whether or not the financial statements are accurate and in accordance with all the rules. Now, those auditors have more responsibilities, and more authority. They are now also required to perform an audit of the internal controls a company uses to make sure that any fraud and errors that would materially impact the financial statements are either prevented or detected. Basically, auditors have a bigger job, and more authority. They’re anal. They’re picky. They work 70 hour weeks and they’re perpetually cranky. They don’t work for your company, and it’s not their job to make sure you company succeeds financially. Their only job is to decide whether or not you fucked up when you made all those complicated journal entries. And let me assure you, you fucked up. You always fucked up. Perfect financial statements are like perfect governments- they simply don’t happen, no matter how hard everyone works, how smart anyone is, or how much you all tried your very very best to do a good job. The only question is how many mistakes the auditors find, whether they’re big enough to be a real problem and whether you can correct them before the auditors issue their opinion. If you can’t get a passing grade from the auditor, banks won’t let you borrow their money. Investors won’t buy your stocks. Other companies make fun of you and throw rocks.

So yeah, I plan to become an auditor.