Now with tasty trans-fats!

Wanna see something really scary?

2012-02-14T03:00:00.002-07:00

When I was a little kid scary movies creeped me out. I remember having a nightmare from an episode of the first season of the X Files called Roland. It was about a mentally handicapped janitor who murdered scientists by locking them in a wind tunnel with a giant fan at one end. I couldn't sleep for nights after I saw that. Though in my defense, it looks like it came out in 1994, so I would have only been about 8 when I saw it. To this day, the X-Files is one of my favorite tv shows, probably because it managed to scare me so much when I was little. But I scared easily back then, even the Twilight Zone movie gave me nightmares.

From the beginning where the two guys are driving and one of them says, "You wanna see something really scary?" and then sticks his head out the window and turns into a werewolf, to William Shatner yelling about something on the wing, that movie gave me bad dreams for weeks.

This face absolutely traumatized young me

Growing up I wasn't a super big fan of scary movies. I remembered how they freaked me out when I was a little kid, but one of the perversities of the human psyche is how much we crave fear and adrenaline. Even though I knew scary movies would make me sleep with the lights on for days afterward, I'd keep going back for more and more. To a little kid, imagination ramps up the scare factor of basically everything to 11. Even games like Super Metroid or Resident Evil left me feeling uneasy. Sometimes I'd listen to regular music while I watched something scary just to lighten the tension.

I know I'm not the only one that this traumatized.

As I got older though, something started to happen. Scary movies just didn't have the same impact anymore. My mom suggested movies that had scared her like Burnt Offerings http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/burnt_offerings/ or Trilogy of Terror http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/trilogy_of_terror/ I watched them both, but wasn't scared anymore, although my mom still had to leave the room sometimes.

Some movies still managed to scare me even as I became a snarky teenager though. The Ring freaked me out even in my high school days, and I know I wasn't the only one. I remember talking with friends in class over just how freaky it ended up being. I mean, everyone remembers this scene http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qllBex2K1yg right? I actually only saw part of The Ring in theaters, I watched it with a friend, and we ended up walking out before the end because it was so scary. When I think about that now, it just makes me smile. The Grudge scared me too, but it was a lot more campy so I just kind of pretended it didn't and acted tough. Movies like the Shining were pretty scary too, though when I was little I watched the made for tv version http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118460/ without Jack Nicholson and didn't end up watching his more iconic version till much later. All I remember from the tv version is that Halloran, the black guy gets killed by a croquet mallet instead of an axe, and that the dead ghost lady in the bathtub freaked me out. I remember my mom called her the "Oatmeal Lady", because the makeup probably made her look like she was wearing a stupid oatmeal costume, and she was trying to help me be less scared. It sure scared me as a little kid, and that's kind of why I don't want to watch it again. I know now I wouldn't see scary monsters, I would just see cheap made for tv props and an Oatmeal Lady.

Nowadays scary movies hardly bother me at all. I don't know if that's because I've lost that childlike quality of imagination that tells you that the movie monster just might be real, or if it's just because I've seen more movies now and I know what to expect, but it's kind of disappointing. I kind of miss that sense of dread I used to get when I watched something scary. Nowadays, I know all the horror cliches and can predict whenever the monster is about to jump out, I kind of miss not knowing. Even movies that are much scarier than anything I ever saw as a child, like The Descent will leave me entertained, but don't leave me sleeping with the lights on anymore.

It's gotten to the point where I'll just laugh at how stupid the movie monster is. Awhile back I saw the movie Insidious. It was pretty good, but it has a main monster that looks like this.

And all I could think of for the whole movie was this

(I love Photoshop)

Instead of feeling dread like I used to, I just kind of giggled about Darth Maul being in the film. I even made fun of my friend Andy when he said that movie was kind of scary, and I asked him if gay Darth Maul was the part that scared him. This seems to happen a lot these days. I had to breathe deeply and mentally restrain myself in the theater when I saw the movie Mirrors, because the monster at the end had me on the verge of bursting out laughing. Literal physical laughter is not the response they were going for I suppose, but I just couldn't help myself. Scary movies just don't scare me anymore.

I don't know if I just don't get scared by movies anymore, or if scary movies just aren't up to snuff these days. The last one I watched was called Don't Be Afraid of the Dark http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1270761/ and holy crap the monsters in that aren't scary at all. Not only are they like 5 inches tall, and super unintimidating, but it's painfully obvious that they're cgi. The physical interaction with the cast is so fake looking that it actually distracts from the movie. It's hard to show an actress freaking out about a monster, when there is literally nothing there and they just add it later with a computer. Not once did it so much as make me nervous. Even Insidious did that with its gay Darth Maul. (There's a scene where he literally dances and sings the song "Tiptoe through the Tulips") At least parts of that movie were scary, even if the whole thing wasn't.

I kinda miss being scared like I was as a little kid. Like I said, there's just something about watching a terrifying movie that satisfies some weird primal aspect of the human brain. Like so many other things I miss about childhood, I miss that thrill. I can only hope that somewhere there's a movie coming out that'll give me that uneasy feeling once again. Here's a hint Hollywood, it wont be a remake.

Worst Selling Novels

2012-01-26T21:03:00.000-07:00

I made this for an internet thread called worst selling novels.

It's not nearly as clever as the guy who did "Who the bell tolls for" by Ernst Hehingday though

Having fun with Racism

2012-01-18T17:06:00.002-07:00

So a couple of days ago one of my friends posted this on Facebook.

I thought it was pretty funny, but was kind of a lazy Photoshop. I mean, Monopoly isn't 8x8 it's 10x10. On the bottom the "Go to Jails" don't even overlap, and half the fun of Monopoly is the special spaces like Free Parking and Chance.

So I thought I'd make my own Photoshop and make it as overtly racist as possible. So over the top that it would still be funny, but no one would take it seriously. These are in no way my own views on race, it's intentionally over the top and offensive in the spirit of the first image. So after a couple of hours this is what I came up with.

http://i1124.photobucket.com/albums/l575/wassperro/Black-Manopoly.jpg (larger image)

It's quick and dirty, and I made some spelling and orientation mistakes but I had fun making it. If I'd thought about it more I would have done things like put all of the player characters in jail and changed the 2 white neighborhood houses to have unaffordable prices, but like I said I did it in a few hours. I love Photoshop, I wish were better with it.

In defense of vehicular manslaughter.

2011-11-10T23:24:00.001-07:00

Do you ever see something that irritates you so much that it turns your mood from happy into an irrational bout of rage? Something that can immediately suck all of the joy out of life, like someone dumps a 10 gallon jug of despair right on your lap, and then something punches you in the soul? Well I do, and it's this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5hGJ0g8OgQ

Words cannot express how much I hate these commercials. Every time one comes on I feel like kicking a kitten. I mean it's not like commercials are supposed to be cinematic masterpieces, but could you put less effort into something? The music is like 7 notes on repeat, the backgrounds are white, and all they do is pass boxes back and forth. There's just so little going on that your attention has nowhere to go but to the shrill harpy with the cheap name tag.

I think I see where they got their inspiration for Flo, maybe that's why I feel like she wants to break my legs.

Maybe it's because I'm not used to ads anymore. I block ads on my internet, and if I do end up watching TV shows I almost always do it online. Whenever I do watch regular TV with my grandma, it never ceases to amaze me how many ads there are. I watch TV to waste time, but here come these ads to interrupt my time wasting by drawing attention to the fact that I'm wasting my time.

I don't know what it is about these Progressive ads that gets me so irate as compared to other ads either. I can watch a billion commercials on how Stevens Henagar college is going to change my life with an advanced degree in giving them money, or how my motorcycle accident lawyer is ready to get me that large cash settlement that society owes me, and not bat an eye. But as soon as these Progressive commercials come on something inside me snaps. If their aim to get me to not buy their product then they have succeeded.

So why does this upset me now? This vapid woman has been inciting rage for years right, so what's different now? This http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYU3eSSdKaQ&feature=relmfu this is what's different now. I didn't think you could have anything more abhorrent than the Progressive Insurance girl, but apparently all it takes is adding invasion of privacy to the mix. It's like taking food away from a starving kid, and then kicking him in the balls for good measure.

This new invasion of privacy device is called Snapshot. You install it on your vehicle and it monitors every usage statistic it can, and reports all that data back to Progressive. They will then be able to see exactly how fast you've gone in the car, how often you accelerate/brake, how quickly you accelerate/brake, how far you go in a day etc. They then give you a discount of up to 30% (Disclaimer: It'll probably be about 2%) for basically selling your information to them.

I'm at a loss for words, I really am. It's like if I had to intentionally install spyware on my computer to get a 2% discount on Ebay. You know the only reason they gather this information is for marketing purposes, it has absolutely nothing to do with you being a safe driver or not. You know how they can tell if you're a safe driver? It's by how many at fault accidents you've had. If you aren't crashing all the time, then it's pretty safe to assume that you aren't a crappy reckless driver. You don't need to know how fast someone took off from a stoplight Sunday at 10:45 AM to measure if they're qualified to drive or not.

But it can't be marketing you say, don't they have a privacy policy? Oh they sure do, here's their privacy policy from their website.

We will share information about you only as permitted by law. We will not share your Nonpublic Personal Information with other companies for their marketing purposes without your consent. There is no need to "opt out" or tell us not to do this.

See, there's no need to worry, see you don't even need to opt out. It says right there. We will not... wait what? "We will not share your NONPUBLIC personal information with other companies." Which means they do share all of your public information with whoever wants to buy it. Well does Snapshot data count as nonpublic? That probably depends on how much the buyer is paying. Think of where people do most of their driving, outside in public. Sounds like information Progressive wouldn't mind sharing to me. So any potential buyer will know exactly how far your daily commute is, and what time you drive, but hey at least Progressive keeps your mother's maiden name a secret. The only upside is that as far as I know, the device does not remotely transmit. Meaning they can theoretically only check the data it gathered when you have an accident, or take your car into a mechanic, or leave it in your driveway. Also, nothing's stopping them from outfitting future iterations of the device with transceivers.

So not only is Progressive running the single most annoying ad campaign ever devised, but they're asking people to spy on themselves. Next thing I know, they're going to end up changing their slogan to "Freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength."

I can only hope that people are smart enough not to willingly install invasion of privacy chips in their vehicle, but I swear if this catches on, I'm going to run that stupid Progressive Insurance girl down with my car. They'll even know how fast I was going when I smash her disgusting face into the asphalt.

He was aiming for you, you aberration!

Notification Daemon

2011-10-07T13:50:00.000-06:00

Dear Sir/Madam

This notice is to inform you that your university password is about to expire.

Password security is no laughing matter. Since January of 2005 our network has suffered [1] intrusion attempts. In the past 12 months, your account has been illicitly accessed [0] times. In order to raise security, your password must be changed in the next 10 days. Failure to change your password in this amount of time will result in a mandatory password prompt appearing the next time you log in.

Failure to change your password in a timely manner could result in the following.

~~No consequence at all because nobody cares about your University account.~~
Dire consequences

In order to ensure that you wont be able to remember your own password the next time you log in, all passwords must contain at least one of the following.

One uppercase letter.
One lowercase letter.
One symbol except for - or / because our IT guys can't figure out how to get those ones to work.
One number between 2 and 6.
One Fibonacci sequence.
One Lolcatz gif sized at 40kb

Should you forget your password at a later date, it will be sent to your email account in plaintext.

Thank you, your new password will be valid for 30 days.

The administration.

Involuntary Facebook Grouping

2011-06-11T19:46:00.004-06:00

It seems that Facebook is changing things all of the time. Most of the time it bothers me at the beginning, but then I get used to it. Some things I still think are really stupid, and sometimes I wonder why they change things for the sake of changing things. It makes me think of something a sociology professor I used to have said. He told me that way back when he was a manager at Albertsons, something that he noticed was that if he left the same deals up all the time then sales would spike, and then eventually drop for the product on sale. However, if he constantly changed the sale price then the product would always be a hot seller. What I thought was interesting, was that he claimed that the price of the object didn't matter so much as a fresh look every two weeks or so. What he would do then, was alternate between pricing something 2 for $1 and 50 cents each. It didn't matter that the prices were the same, just the fact that he rotated the prices every week or so kept sales high on a near constant basis.

Market research probably suggests something similar to Facebook, if they want to stay fresh then they need to shake things up. Some of their changes really bother me however, including one in particular. It's not even that bad, it's akin to when someone starts playing Trailer Town and needs you to help them in their virtual methlab, you just hit block application and move on. What I'm talking about is similar, but it bothers me anyway.

Nowadays, you can add people to your little Facebook group without asking them for their consent or anything, just being their friend is apparently good enough for Facebook to let them put you in whatever group they want. What follows is me logging into Facebook, seeing I have a bunch of notifications, then checking them and seeing that some guy named Jesús Maria De La Cruz wrote on the wall for *Transsexual Pirate Party 2011. Not only do I not know who the hell this De La Cruz guy is, I probably don't know any of the other 50 people that Facebook also saw fit to notify me are going post crazy about Piratefest 2011.

Like I said, it's an easy fix, all you do is click leave group and you're done. It just bothers me that Facebook just shoves me in there in the first place. Instead of asking me if I want to join some pirate group, it just assumes that I would be overjoyed, and all the sudden I'm in a group with my "friend" and his harem of transsexual pirate friends. Or more than likely, it's just him and everyone else on his friends list was just involuntarily added, and are too polite to leave the group.

*It's never really anything as exciting as pirates either :(

Edit: I inspired myself to do a Photoshop. Enjoy.

The Fox News Gambit

2011-05-28T16:11:00.002-06:00

Being a student of history, and with my intention of starting a master's program in American History in the Fall, there are few people I revere more than our Founding Fathers. These men were exceptionally well educated, and remarkable individuals who have made a lasting contribution, not only to this nation, but to the world as a whole. Without their wisdom and foresight, the great experiment in Democracy that is the United States, would have likely crumbled soon after it started. They truly were great men.

They were still men however, and every once in awhile you'll get some self-entitled jerk who spends their whole time ragging on them. They say that Washington never won many battles, that Lincoln was a tyrant, and the hypocritical Jefferson never freed his slaves. Well guess what Mr. negative guy? Washington has won more battles than you, and he only needed to win the last one anyway. Lincoln saved the Union in the midst of the greatest crisis in its history. And Jefferson wrote one of the most influential documents in human history. I guess you're right though, they never had to go through the pressures you did today, Ben Franklin never knew the agony you felt when you waddled your fat ass into the McDonalds during lunch hour, now that was an accomplishment! It's not like Ben Franklin did anything that important with his day, HE had syphillis.

All joking aside, the Founding Fathers were amazing men, but they were still men. They didn't know everything, and they did have their quirks. Now, I don't watch Fox News very often, or any other political media for that matter. But from what I've seen, almost all of the political propaganda in this country, right or left eventually devolves into what I like to call the Fox News Gambit.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/07/02/fox-news-poll-founding-fathers-happy/

Hey, there's a ~~kumqaut~~ cherry tree out there.

The Fox News Gambit goes like this: "Our Founding Fathers would be absolutely disgusted by [current legislation Fox News disagrees with here]" Now it kind of bothers me that anyone can pretend to know what our Founding Fathers would think of any modern day legislation, being that they are dead and all. Inevitably though, the Founding Fathers would be disgusted with what the other party is doing, while your political party is doing all the right things.

It makes me wonder if over in other countries they have their own Fox News Gambit? I can just visualize a giant argument in the House of Lords in England over a piece of legislation that would have the Magna Carta writers rolling in their graves. What, you want to limit certain frequencies of radio traffic near airports, how dare you sir, Henry VIII would be appalled!

What has to be the most inane, nonsensical part of the entire Fox News Gambit, besides pretending you know what they'd say in the first place, is treating the Founding Fathers as one collective entity. Saying, "The Founding Fathers would be appalled." is tantamount to proclaiming, "The London Symphony Orchestra would be appalled." or "The cast of Terminator 2 would be appalled." Not only does the Fox News Gambit assume that you know what legislation men who died 200 years ago would approve or disapprove of, it assumes that any conclusion they reach is unanimous.

I mean really? Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson are two of the most influential men in our nation's history. When they were alive they almost never agreed on a single piece of legislation, and each one thought the other was out to ruin the country. It is nice to hear that after their deaths, they joined up with John Adams and John Hancock in their hatred of Obamacare though. Because if there's one thing about Obamacare, it sure appalls the Founding Fathers, yup each and every one of their ghosts is absolutely livid, even the ones who supported a welfare system like Thomas Paine, yeah he's pissed too.

Then there's the concept that because the Founding Fathers were the best men to run the country in 1776, that they'd still be the best ones to run it now. Remember, their first government failed. The Articles of Confederation were a disaster, and so the Founders came together to "Form a more perfect union." More perfect because the first one didn't work without a strong central government. While Jeffersonian ideals of a farm for ~~white people~~ everyone and small government worked great until the Industrial Revolution, they really wouldn't work in today's environment of nuclear proliferation and corporate oligarchies. Times have changed, there's a reason we can amend the Constitution if the need arises, because the world is constantly changing.

Then there's just the blatant anachronisms attributed to the Founding Fathers. Hey we're a Christian nation, and the Founding Fathers would be shocked to see all of these heathens coming over here and trying to remove our Ten Commandments statues and Under Gods on our Pledge of Allegiance! Never mind that the Pledge of Allegiance was written by a socialist named Francis Bellamy, and the phrase "Under God" was added to it in 1954. Oh and most of the Founding Fathers were Deists, not Christians. Thomas Jefferson thought the concept of miracles in the Bible was a bunch of idle superstition, so he wrote his own version of the Bible, one without all the miracles. The U.S. didn't become a highly religious country until the Second Great Awakening, and even then, part of it was to keep the Jews and Catholics out. In essence, you really just have to read between the lines and you get what the Constitution really says, right Fox News?

I suck at Photoshop.

2011-04-28T02:21:00.000-06:00

Way back in high school I took a class called Tech Lab. Out of all of the classes I've ever taken it's definitely one of my favorites. We built hydrorockets out of 2 liter soda bottles. Raced vehicles powered by mousetraps and turned in all of our projects on ~~Powerpoint~~ Corel Presentations. If we finished a project early we would play massive lan games of Half Life, Warcraft 3, Starcraft, Aliens vs Predator, and Command and Conquer Renegade among other games. We always worked hard, but got to choose our own projects, with each project lasting two weeks or so. For one of them we hooked an Xbox and a Gamecube up to a giant smartboard and played Smash Bros Melee and Halo. Then we made an awesome ~~Powerpoint~~ Corel Presentation about what we learned. Afterward another group tried to do the same thing and got told no, we ruined it for everybody :)

One of the assignments we had was to use ~~Photoshop~~ Corel Photopaint to extract an image of a woman washing clothes behind a clothes line. The goal was to put her into a completely different photo and make it look like she belonged there. Not really a very hard project,as long as you didn't look too close but it was pretty fun nonetheless.

One of the websites I frequent has a segment called Photoshop Phriday where people will take an image, and alter it with Photoshop into something else. These people are amazing with Photoshop, they make my clothesline woman look like something on the walls of a first grade classroom. They do things that are not only absolutely hilarious, but are absolutely seamless. Heres a submission from the food based films theme found here http://www.somethingawful.com/d/photoshop-phriday/food-movie-posters.php

Not only is this amazing on a technical level, but it combines 3 jokes in 1, and is absolutely hilarious. Well I've been reading one called "Games with honest names." that is chock full of material just as awesome as the iScream one. So, just for fun I decided I'd try my hand at one. Here's the original

So I dug out my dusty old Photoshop program and took a shot at it. Here's what I came up with.

Amateur, but I'm pretty impressed with how it turned out. (The brunette with the headscarf is named Alicia, and if used properly she can rush to the end of almost any map and take the objective. Finishing in 1 turn what should take 3-7 turns, hence Alicia Rush) I couldn't find the font online, so I had to make do. If you'll notice there's a really crappy looking C and u in there. This is because these letters aren't present in the word Valkyria Chronicles so after I removed the original lettering, I had to make my own.

Even though I'm not good by any stretch of the imagination, I had a blast toying around with Photoshop and tweaking things, it reminded me of good times in Tech Lab. Even in the time it took me to make this, I learned many new concepts. I was surprised with all of the stuff I remembered from high school. Those lessons in ~~Photoshop~~ Corel Photopaint have apparently still stuck with me. Plus it's fun to just have a skill for the sake of having it. I have to learn so many things for school, it'd be nice to learn something just for myself for once.

One thing I've always wanted to do is get good at Photoshop. Anyone can use the clone/blur tool, crop or adjust contrast, but it takes a lot of talent to make an image so good that it looks like it's never been altered. I don't think I'll ever be that good, but it'd be fun to try. Currently on Amazon they have Photoshop for Dummies for $21.70 + $4.00 shipping. http://www.amazon.com/Photoshop-CS5-All-One-Dummies/dp/0470608218/ref=pd_sim_b_2 Or I could get the Kindle edition for $19.79 and not have to pay shipping. It's 720 pages and has good reviews. I have to say I'm tempted. Has anyone read a for Dummies book before? Are they too picture heavy to the point where it'd be inconvenient to read on a kindle, or are they more textual? How good are they? I assume each one has a different author so results obviously vary, but how are they generally? And yes, I know they're free at the library, but this isn't something I'm mastering overnight. I find it doesn't work well if I request a book like this from the library and already have to return it in 3 weeks, it just gets frustrating. Plus, I checked, and all the Photoshop books already have at least 5 or 6 people queued up, so I wouldn't get it for a couple months there anyway.

Well here's to learning a new skill. This might be too ambitious of an undertaking, and I am terrible at art in general, but its still fun to create things. Are any of you guys Photoshop gurus with tips for a newbie?

I am two tone; red as a newborn, white as a corpse.

2011-04-12T21:17:00.007-06:00

I've been home from my mission now for four years. Just thinking about that makes me feel all old and introspective. In many ways I feel like my life is the same now as it was back then, and in others I feel almost no connection. Some changes are pretty pronounced, like me going from a faithful full time missionary 4 years ago to the more slow to trust agnostic that I am today. Finding out so much of what I'd taught as truth wasn't true at all was pretty hard on me for a while. It'd be interesting if I got in a theological debate with myself from four years ago, I wonder which iteration of me would win? Then again, I guess deep down I never did believe in some of the stories like Noah's Ark or Job even back then. I wont get into why I'm an agnostic these days here, but if anyone's curious feel free to ask.

I like how the crucifix has the rebel alliance logo on it, either that or that's a dove divebombing the ground, either way it's pretty hardcore.

It's interesting when I think back about the person I used to be back in the day versus the person I am now. I remember being bored to tears by history in my elementary and junior high days. I remember in Mr. Thompson (Big Bird) 's class in 8th grade I spent most of the time scrawling messages on the walls and talking to people in other periods. I was more excited reading "Im in 5th period what class r u in?" than I was in listening to the lesson. I spent the rest of the time staring at girls I had a crush on, but was much too afraid to talk to.

Now I'm going to begin work on a Master's Degree in American History and couldn't be more excited. Granted we actually talk about interesting things in class now and don't waste the class doing worksheets on what the state flower is. That kind of stuff is awful, and is why I currently have almost zero interest in Utah History, not because there's not interesting stuff, but because I still have a sour taste in my mouth from seventh grade. (I do still remember what the state dinosaur is though because Allosaurs are awesome, I can guarantee that I would have paid more attention if more of my elementary school classes were about dinosaurs, or at least interesting history like the Spanish Inquisition, Leopold II's murder of 10,000,000 people in the Congo, World War II, Edward Lansdale and the CIA fixing elections in South Vietnam, or things like when Northern agents hijacked a freaking train behind Confederate lines in the Civil War.)

Every day I get older, but I never feel older. I still remember when sixth graders were so big and scary, and when it seemed that adults knew what was going on. Now that I am an adult, I'm surprised at how clueless we really are.

"When I was young it seemed that life was so wonderful, a miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical. And all the birds in the trees, they'd be singing so happily, oh joyfully, oh playfully watching me.

But then they sent me away, to teach me how to be sensible, logical, oh responsible, practical. And then they showed me a world where I could be so dependable, oh clinical, oh intellectual, cynical.

But I suppose things have changed as I've gotten older and older. I have a high school diploma and am weeks away from having two college degrees under my belt and starting to work on a third. I've gone to different states, been to Canada and Mexico, climbed mountains, learned Spanish, had girlfriends,become more disciplined, tolerant, and developed a passion for learning and made good friends, among many other things.

Unfortunately as I've grown older, I've lost that carefree childhood free spirit. My life in the 80's and 90's of constant Nintendo games and Saturday morning cartoons is gone. I'm still happy and optimistic and still play video games and do many of the same things I did as a child, but adulthood brings with it anxieties, and responsibilities, and you can never really truly go back. Somehow going to the store and buying chocolate milk isn't as exciting as opening the fridge when you're five, seeing your siblings haven't drunk all of the chocolate milk and then greedily drinking it all yourself. The mechanics of drinking the milk are the same, but something indefinable is lost with that transition to adulthood.

I remember after getting home from my mission, wanting to get into pharmacy school. I

took the classes that I needed and thought I had things pretty much figured out. Things went great until I started taking higher level math and chemistry classes. That's when I found out I wasn't as smart as I thought I was and the road to pharmacy school was full of hard work and anxiety. Once I decided to switch majors, all of that weight lifted, I stopped going to Microbiology entirely, graduated and changed into a liberal arts program. History is still difficult, and I'm still not as smart as I thought I was, but that pall of inadequacy and anxiety is gone.

In four years, I've changed quite a bit in some areas, and in others I'm the same person I've always been. In some ways ignorance is bliss. I was happy being lds, or a missionary, and I'm still happy I served a mission, but in some ways I'm jaded.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to sound intolerant, I don't care what religion anyone

belongs to, and don't want to lose or offend any friends because I don't believe in Mormonism anymore. Like I said, it's just been 4 years since I got back from Montreal and I'm feeling introspective. I even still went to my singles ward when I lived in Riverton, and ironically I taught Sunday School for 2 years even though I was an agnostic back then too :)

I wonder what the next four years are going to hold? Where will I live? Will I have the job I'm looking for? What's my next transcendental experience on this beautiful Earth? Scuba diving? Skydiving? Hang-gliding? Spelunking? Traveling to near and far off exotic places? Will I be married by then? Whatever life holds, I'm glad to be alive and I'm thankful for all of the opportunities I've had so far. The past four years have been great, and I'm sure the next four will be as well. As much as people complain or doomsay, or whatever, I'm just happy to be alive and to have had the life I've had. Besides rock and roll classics are never wrong, and we're all sticking around till at least the year 2525 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhNM2K8cmU8&feature=related That's the 3rd song reference I've put in here...hooray for music too :) Here's to four more years of happiness and good times. Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever figure out what I'm doing, but I probably wont.

Edit: stupid formatting, it shouldn't break tables and look all crappy if it doesn't in the preview blogger!

The disturbing aftermath of winter.

2011-04-03T14:05:00.003-06:00

You know, I actually like to exercise. It makes me feel better, be more energetic, and healthier. Usually I'll go on spurts of 3 to 5 months of continuous exercise, get in pretty good shape and then stop. After a couple of months of not exercising I lose all of the gains I made before and half turn into a Mr. Plinkett.

That's usually when I break down and start exercising again. Then I remember something, exercising when you haven't done it in a while is absolutely awful. Your muscles get all sore, and after about 10 minutes you feel like the average Golden Corral customer waddling to the buffet line. It's hard at first, and every time I start again I wonder why I stopped in the first place. It drives me crazy. Apparently I'm in a small minority too that when I am horrifically out of shape, it makes my teeth hurt when I run or do anything especially strenuous like jump rope. Apparently my body leeches blood from my gums to try to power my fat gut and my teeth start hurting for a little while. After I get back into decent shape it stops, but it's really pretty annoying.

Well this year I finally figured it out. I hate exercising in the cold. As soon as it gets to November or so, I start skipping days and thinking I'll just go the next day. When that day comes it's still cold and so I skip that day too. It turns into a vicious cycle and I just stop exercising till it warms up again.

Maybe this year I can keep it up and kick the habit. Not likely though. Oh well, at least I have 6 or 7 months to kill all of this extra weight I've gained living at grandma's house. While cookies, ice cream, and breaded porkchops are all tasty, they are also a one way ticket to thunder thighs. Time to start exercising again I guess. If it ever stops snowing that is, come on nature it's April now!

My Top 5 Sci-Fi Tv shows that deserve a rewatch.

2011-02-23T20:35:00.007-07:00

One thing I've noticed about tv shows these days is that many have little to no plot or character development, which is kind of sad when I think about it. One of the advantages tv has over movies is the ability to tell a story in episodes and not be constrained by the 1-3 hour time limit that movies have to abide by. On the other hand, movies generally have a much bigger budget than their tv counterparts so you probably wont be blown away by tv's special effects. Sadly, as is the case with movies, most tv shows are just plain mediocre. They're either not funny or follow inane dumbed down plotlines and just aren't worth watching.

Some shows though, are worth watching and then watching again. Of course with comedies this isn't a problem because the focus is on the jokes not the story, but with other shows like Deep Space 9 or Stargate SG1, while entertaining enough, the narrative isn't quite good enough to make me sit down and watch the whole series. However, the shows in this (spoiler free at least as much as it can be) list are. These are my top 5 favorite science fiction tv shows of all time.

Honorable Mention- Red Dwarf

Why the smeg are there 6 shows on your top 5 list? Because Red Dwarf is just that awesome!

Red Dwarf is a mining ship that has its entire crew wiped out except for Dave Lister, the lowest ranking person on the ship who also happens to be a complete slob, a hologram of Lister's friend Arnold Rimmer, who is completely uptight and self centered, a creature that evolved from Lister's cat, Kryten the robot, and Holley the computer who has a self calculated Iq of 6000 (which he quantifies as "The equivalent of 6000 PE teachers and 12,000 car park attendants").The show is about as low budget as you can get, in any given episode there's usually little more than these 5 cast members milling about deep space passing time by doing things like playing the locker game, where you break into dead crewmates lockers and seeing who gets the best prize, but it manages to be consistently entertaining and is at least worthy of mentioning.

Pros: Really funny, has a good variety of episodes.

Cons: Sometimes the British humor doesn't quite hit the mark.

#5 Futurama

This show never fails to crack me up. It has all the satire of the Simpsons (and most of the writers) but without the limits of the setting of the town of Springfield. On New Years Eve 1999, Phillip Fry is cryogenically frozen and then revived in the year 3000 where he gets a job as a delivery boy. The episodes are full of fantastic one liners like, "I was going to eat that mummy." or Doctor Zoidberg's exclamations of "Hooray." It even has the disembodied head of Richard Nixon serving as president, what's not to love?

Pros: Creative and bizarre plots, Drs. Zoidberg and Farnsworth, Stayed good just as the Simpsons were starting to become unfunny.

Cons: Semi one dimensional characters, Fry is always an idiot, Bender is always a narcissistic kleptomaniac, Lela kicks stuff. Not much of a problem, but more noticeable if you watch a lot of episodes back to back.

#4 Firefly

China and the United States merge together into a one world government and then set out to colonize space. Several planets are colonized, the central ones are the seat of the government while the outliers are all desolate, rustic and hillbilly. The story follows a man named Mal who is an ex soldier turned smuggler, and his crew as they try to eke out a living against an oppressive government. It feels much different than any other Sci fi show, as it is essentially a western set in space. The plot flows quite well, and the characters are charismatic, likeable and surprisingly well developed for how short the show actually ended up lasting.

Pros: Sci Fi without aliens, it actually works really well. The western motif is really cool when you mix it with technology. Serenity, the Firefly movie is good too and can be seen even if you haven't watched the tv show.

Cons: Cancelled before the first season even finished :(

#3 Star Trek TNG

Does this even need an introduction? The Next Generation is simply fantastic. The Ferengi, Cardassians, Bajorans, Brill, Q continuum, and most importantly the Borg all stem from this iteration of Star Trek. I watched this all the time as a little kid and it still is just as amazing as I remember it. Even though combat on the enterprise consists of flicking the lights on and off, and the crew flinging themselves to the ground with each phaser blast, it still manages to be engrossing. (Harry Plinkett is right though, seatbelts would solve half of their problems) The plots of the episodes range from complex and thought provoking like when Picard gets stuck in 3 time periods in All Good Things and everyone thinks he's turned into a senile old man, to intense action like when evolution reverses itself on the ship for some reason and Troi turns into a fish and Worf devolves into the predator, to just plain bizarre, like when Sherlock Holmes' archnemesis Professor Moriarty comes to life on the holodeck and tries to take over the ship. Even the recycled plots are awesome, I can think of at least 7 episodes where someone is mind controlled and tries to destroy the ship, but somehow each manages to stay unique. DS9 and Voyager were both good but not nearly on the same tier. Enterprise... well Enterprise is the only Star Trek series ever to be cancelled and probably killed any chance of more tv Star Trek. Some say the original series is better, but I'll always be a Picard fanboy. THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS!

Pros: Absolutely amazing cast, the borg, interesting storylines, one of the few visions of a technological future where science actually emboldens the human spirit and everything isn't dystopian/perverted/nuked and ruined by technology.

Cons: Counselor Troi is worthless. Why does the ship's guidance counselor hold rank on a military starship? I mean really? Not only that, she's like 4th in command. There's even an episode where she takes command and does a horrible job. It makes as much sense as having Guinan the bartender replacing Worf on the bridge. Plus, the die hard fans are kind of creepy, and except for First Contact the movies aren't that great. (Also, damn you Will Wheaton!)

#2 Battlestar Galactica

Speaking of Kirk versus Picard, how about Picard versus Adama? Now that would be something I'd pay to see. I'm talking about the new Battlestar Galactica not the old one. While I haven't seen the old one, I've heard it isn't quite as good. This one however does a good job of keeping you on the edge of your seat and wanting more, which is pretty uncommon for a tv show. So, humans live on 12 planets named after the 12 Zodiac signs and worship the gods of ancient Greece. They build machines called cylons which turn against them and war erupts. The humans build giant supercarriers called battlestars and are able to force a truce with the cylons. The old battlestars like Galactica intentionally use archaic technology like corded phones and non networked computers to thwart any cylon attempts to take over their ships. The show begins as the cylons break the truce and attack the colonies, and with the revelation that some cylons now look like humans. The humans then embark on a quest to find the mythical 13th colony (No it isn't Serpentarius) while being pursued by the cylons.

I finished watching this series fairly recently and really came to like it. The plot twists are sudden and unexpected, and the characters mostly behave like real people. Too often the status quo in media is suspension of disbelief when people make stupid decisions. In Battlestar Galactica if you're wondering something like, "Why don't they just shoot this guy instead of toying with him like a Bond villain?" Chances are someone will shoot him, or there will be consequences if they don't. Also, the fact that it's almost impossible to tell the difference between humans and cylon agents that look human is reminiscent of The Thing, one of my favorite movies, and really helps to build tension. The whole series is on Netflix Instant so check it out.

Pros: Hot actresses, killer robots, killer robots played by hot actresses. Good soundtrack. Edward James Olmos does a great job at being a badass

Cons: Some of the episodes are pretty cheesy, and most are oversexualized... but then again at least it's oversexualization with hot actresses.

#1 Sliders

A graduate student named Quinn Mallory is able to mathematically determine how to create an Einstein-Rosen bridge, or a wormhole between two worlds. He invites his girlfriend and his professor played by John Rhys-Davies (The dude who played Gimli) over to witness this amazing new technology and passes with them to another dimension. A passing singer is also accidentally pulled into the wormhole with them and also enters this new dimension. Through a freak accident, the device that creates the bridge malfunctions and now creates wormholes to random destinations at different times and intervals. If they miss the wormhole after the timer creates it then they are stuck in that dimension forever. The time before another wormhole is created varies with each jump, so they could be in zombietown for two weeks but only 10 minutes in the paradisaical oasis. They have to find their home dimension in an infinite sea of dimensions, many of which are nearly identical to their own.

The unique thing about Sliders is that the location never changes. The Einstein-Rosen bridges take them to the same physical spot in San Francisco, but each San Francisco is different. In one, pennicillin was never discovered. In another the American colonists lost the war against Great Britain. In others they meet themselves, but the versions of themselves they meet are megalomaniacal killers or whatever. The show is low budget, and somewhat dated (the first season came out in 1995) but it manages to pull off amazing things and doesn't get nearly the credit it deserves for how awesome it is. Of all the shows on this list Sliders is by far the most unknown, but it also happens to be my favorite.

Pros: John Rhys Davies is fantastic as professor Arturo. The idea of parallel earths/alternate histories is really well done. Special effects look campy, but not awful like most cgi from the early 90's

Cons: As the show went on the network decided it wanted more control until eventually Tracy Torme the show's creator decided to leave. They also wanted to fire John Rhys Davies. These "network" overseen episodes are generally lower quality.

The wonders of Dosbox.

2011-01-09T17:58:00.012-07:00

If you're an old codger like I am and grew up in the 80's then you probably remember the exciting world of Dos Shell and Windows 3.1. As someone just learning computers, I was somehow able to master Dos's unfriendly user interface enough to learn how to play games and that Del*.* followed by y is usually a bad thing to press. Of course sometimes I'd get stuck with this

and I am by no means a Dos expert, but I do remember a few shortcuts. The unfortunate thing about modern computers is that they render obsolete games and hardware... well, obsolete. If you wanted to boot up Duke Nukem on your shiny new laptop for nostalgia's sake, you would realize that new versions of Windows have a hard time with all of those high tech 16 colors and Pc Speaker effects, and odds are it just wouldn't work.

As someone who grew up with these games, I find it sad that they are no longer widely accessible unless you happen to still have a 386 in the closet. Fortunately for nostalgic people like me there is DosBox. DosBox, found here http://www.dosbox.com/ is basically a Dos emulator that runs perfectly on modern computers. Using DosBox you can play all of those old Dos games that us 80's kids grew up with. Like Commander Keen. Remember Commander Keen?

Awesome right? Well, because DosBox can look a bit intimidating at first, I'll go through some of its more basic functions and just how to work the thing. So now you've downloaded DosBox from their site. The great thing about old dos games is that most of them are now Abandonware. That means that you can legally download them for free because they are so old. So, just do a google search for some of your old favorites and you should have no problem finding most of them on sites like http://www.abandonia.com Some games are more difficult than others to find, for instance I've never been able to find an old adventure game I played way back called Dare to Dream, but your Hugo's House of Horrors etc should be easy to find.

So after you've downloaded your games, open up DosBox. You should have two windows open up, you only need to worry about one of them and it looks like this.

Z:\> You say! What's a Z drive? I want to go home! Don't panic, Z drive just means that you haven't told DosBox where your C drive is. You see these games are so old that you probably don't want them installing directly to your C:\ on your real computer. They might do weird stuff like try to overwrite your drivers with files like config.sys. Dosbox realizes this, and so what it lets you do is trick Dos into letting any folder you want be your C drive.

So let's say I downloaded my games and stuck them on my desktop in a folder named classics.

DosBox needs to know where the Classics folder on my desktop is before it can play games off of it. So if you right click on your Classics folder and click properties, it will tell the file location.

Now go back to DosBox (Alt tab switches between windows and Alt enter makes it full screen)

Assuming you did the same thing I did you would type as follows

Mount c (This tells DosBox that you are going to tell it where your C drive is, then push space and type the file location.) In my case it's C:\Users\Wassperro\Desktop\Classics now push enter.

Now type C: congratulations. Now DosBox thinks you're in your C:\ drive but you're really somewhere on your desktop. Now all you need to do is go to your game. If Gladiator were in C:\Users\Wassperro\Desktop\Classics\Glad then all I would need to do is type cd glad then type Glad1.exe or Glad1 or whatever and presto, I'm playing Gladiator!

For those who've forgotten Dos commands, here are some of the useful ones I remember

Cd.. Takes you back a folder, i.e from C:\games to C:\

Cd folder [I.e cd games, cd photos etc] Takes you forward a folder from C:\ to C:\games

Dir/p Shows you everything in the folder, pausing on each line

Exit Leaves Dos

Win Enters Windows (We'll go over that in a second)

And DosBox itself has some useful commands, the one I most use is

Cycles 4000 (Or any number) This tells DosBox how fast to let your computer be. Some games use your processor speed to do things. Playing on a modern computer can make these things instantaneous when they used to take several minutes on a 486. By typing cycles and then a number, you trick Dos into thinking you're only playing on a computer of that speed. That means you can still avoid the witch on King's Quest 1 like you could in the 80's and not get instantly murdered as soon as you enter the screen.

So that's DosBox, for most things it's really pretty simple once you get used to it, and it does even more.

Along with Old Dos games, we people with old computers probably had old Windows games. These 16 bit games will not run on a modern 64 bit operating system, and because they aren't Dos games you can't run them in DosBox either. "BUT I WANT TO PLAY CIVILIZATION II AGAIN!" you whine. Well never fear, you can install Windows 3.1 in DosBox and it can play all of your ancient games.

The steps are pretty much the same. Find a copy of Windows 3.1 on the internet. Unzip or unrar it. Stick it somewhere where you can find it. Mount that folder in DosBox and run the Windows 3.1 install. It's that simple. When it asks you to insert disc 2, just change the 1 in the filename to a 2 and so on. Exit Dosbox after you're done, and then simply type Win to go into Windows 3.1 and enjoy your awesome games like Castle of the Winds.

Note: Don't ever do something stupid like Mount C C:\ and then run DosBox from your real C:\ these programs are ancient and if they have actual access to your real C:\ who knows what they'll do. If you put Windows 3.1 in your real Windows folder and then install it there... Well, that'd actually be pretty funny, I'm sure none of us would mind replacing Windows 7 with 3,1 would we? I mean c'mon, it has Paintbrush, and may even have internet capability in some deep dark corner of the OS... maybe.

Note 2: Dos will shorten folder names. So if you have problems getting into program files it's probably because Dos changed its name to progra~1 or something similar. Dir/p will tell you what Dos renamed it to.

The GRE aka apparently I need remedial math.

2010-12-07T17:25:00.003-07:00

Anyone who is thinking of going to graduate school will at one point probably have to take some kind of entrance exam. If you're going into Business, Medicine, Law or Pharmacy then you get your own little test to take, but for the rest of us there's the GRE.

It costs $160 and consists of three different sections. For whatever bizarre reason scores are given from 200 to 800, with 200 being zero correct and 800 being totally correct. There's a writing section with 2 parts, a quantitative (i.e. math) section, and a verbal section. Unfortunately for those good at I.Q. tests there aren't any questions devoted to logic, pattern recognition or spatial perception, so if it's been awhile since you've cracked open a math book or yon dictionary of antiquated verbage you're going to be in trouble.

You start out with two writing prompts. You have 45 minutes to write on a topic they give you on something broad like "All womyn are created equal." or something similar. Then they give you 30 minutes to dissect an argument and point out its weaknesses and fallacies. These are similar to, "Rap music, is awful and I think people who listen to it are also awful criminals and probably Mexican. Everyone knows Jazz fusion makes people smarter." So you write on the virtues of Jazz fusion among Mexicans or whatever for 30 minutes.

The test takes absolutely forever, but unlike many standardized tests you have enough time to answer every question or at least shoot off a quick prayer to the random number god before the test ends. All the math is mental which means I was absolutely terrible at it. I remember quadratics and simple algebra, but there wasn't really much of that at all. Instead I found out that I remember almost nothing about fraction variables with exponents. They didn't even have any of the "Two trains heading for Moscow at different speeds", or "Jimmy, Timmy and Sally all piss in the pool at different rates at what point does their collective filth overwhelm the chlorine" kind of questions.

The test is supposed to adapt to your answers, so if you miss one it gives you an easier question, but if you get it right it supposedly gets harder. What this means is that if you get the first 10 questions all right you'll be in such a high number bracket you can miss the rest and still score higher than 90% of the people who take the test even though they answered twice as many questions as you did correctly.

The verbal part is full of obscure words and analogies. Questions look like

Describe the relationship What is the antonym?

Fangoriously:Slime Ameliorate

A. Riven: Parsimonius Expectorate

B. Specious: Spacious Inculcate

C: Heterodox: Syncretic Allay

D: Devoured:Monster Parsimony

E:Vituperate: Convoke Principal Skinner's ineptitude

I hate these kinds of questions. And there's always around 5 answers with 2 being right but one is "more right" than the other so you better pick that one. Then there's some reading comprehension ones, but those are fairly simple if you left yourself some time.

There's an experimental section too, but it tells you it's experimental and your score doesn't count, and I wasn't about to do another section after I'd been sitting there for 3 hours so I skipped it.

Overall I got over 100 points higher than average on the verbal section and almost 100 points lower on the quantitative. Obviously the computer can't grade your writing sample so it takes awhile to find out your score, but I think I did fine. Apparently most testers almost always get higher on the Quantitative than the Verbal section, whoops. At least I picked a major where I don't need a lot of mental math. It probably doesn't help that I spent my math study time playing Heroes 3 either.

This was a triumph, I'm making a note here, huge success!

2010-10-01T15:07:00.002-06:00

When it comes to music it seems that the overwhelming majority of it qualifies as merely palatable. I can turn the radio on to whatever station and the odds are that the song currently playing is just ok, not good, not bad, but if I change the station it'll be that Shane Company guy again so I sit through it. Usually with radio music there's nothing special about the song. You'll just forget how it goes as soon as it's over. If it's not an average song then a lot of the times it's downright terrible and I change to something else. But, if I take my mp3 player then I run into the problem of listening to songs that I already know really well and not finding new stuff.

While there are a lot of good songs it seems that they are either overplayed or overshadowed by other songs/bands that are decidedly crappier. For instance, I don't like Muse all that much, but their songs sure seem to be on a lot. I know there are people that like them, but to me they're just ok and taking airtime away from better artists.

I remember the days of walking into Media Play and Sam Goody and buying a new cd. Generally you'd heard the band on the radio so you knew at least one of the songs was good. The other 9-15 songs however you were just buying on faith. A terrible album had 2 or 3 good songs, and an average album had about 4 or 5. The hope was you would buy an amazing album, one of the rare gems that was completely full of good songs. Inevitably I'd buy the crap album and get stuck listening to track 6 on repeat because everything else was terrible, but dammit track 6 was awesome!

I'm always excited when I can find a new group that I like, I've heard my favorite songs so many times that they start to lose their appeal, so while I still get my rock face on listening to Sammy Hagar not driving 55, or listening to some sweet solo from Ozzy or the Chili Peppers sometimes I get sick of hearing the same old stuff. Skid Row did other songs that weren't 18 and Life, or Youth Gone Wild, but you'd never know it from listening to the radio. I guess it goes back to the old mentality of finding your favorite songs on the cd and ignoring the rest, but sometimes the ignored songs are just as good.

A few months back I discovered an internet musician with some really good songs named Jonathon Coulton. I really liked his music, but kind of forgot about it for awhile. Recently I beat the game Portal, which was also really fun, and when I got to the end there's a song called Still Alive that plays. I liked this song a lot, and discovered that it was actually written by Jonathon Coulton. I started listening to his stuff again and I really like it. The guy quit his job as a programmer and started writing/singing music full time. Most of his songs are about really geeky things like robot overlords and are downright hilarious.

Here's a sample of some of his songs,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4Wy7gRGgeA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqOVYpkZ0qs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zidiWe9yq88

And his website, http://www.jonathancoulton.com/

Check this guy out if you're looking for good music you haven't heard before. This is how the guy makes his living, so I figured I'd throw up a few links. If any of you have suggestions for awesome bands let me know. I always like checking new bands out just on the off chance that I'll like their music.

Feels like the First Time.

2010-09-08T19:35:00.007-06:00

It's!... the second update of 2010!

(because I am on top of things and totally didn't forget about my blog then pretended I did forget, because I was too lazy to write when I did remember.)

Sometimes I'll get nostalgic and go back to something that I absolutely loved in my childhood. Most of the time I'll find it either much easier than I did when I was little, or that it's just not as good as I thought it was back in the day. Occasionally I'll finally understand something that went way over my head back in the day,

For instance, this is Link's Awakening, it's a game I played and beat countless times on that little monochrome brick Gameboy I had. It's probably my favorite Zelda game because of the memories, and it's also the only Zelda game with goombas, chain chomps, kirbys, and that cactus from SMB2. The guy in the screenshot is named Richard, all throughout my childhood I wondered why his house was full of frogs, only recently did it dawn on me. Richard says adieu instead of goodbye... and, his house is full of frogs because... He's French! Bwahahahaha! Nintendo just dissed the French with a stereotype; man that cracks me up, things like that went way over my head when I was little. More often though, what happens is you do something for the first time, something awesome and fantastic that you love , but it somehow loses its magic after that.

My favorite book series is the Belgariad, those 5 books are better than any other novel I've ever read bar none, but that's the thing. I've read them now, I already know what happens, if I read it again I'm not going to enjoy it as much. The only thing I can do is read something else, something new. But when I do it's never as good as the Belgariad was the first time I read it, so I always end up feeling cheated, because in the back of my mind I know that what I'm reading doesn't come close to stacking up to that first time I read my favorite series. After reading a new book, instead of the first time I'm usually thinking more along the lines of the last time, as in it better be the last time I'll see this piece of crap again.

The same is true of movies. I have movies that I could watch over and over again. I've seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail in its entirety well over 15 times, I've seen awesome movies like the Bourne series

Bridge on the River Kwai, First Blood, The Count of Monte Cristo, Tombstone, Batman Begins, The Great Escape etc, these are some of my favorite movies, but I've already seen them. Anytime I watch Gladiator again I'm going to enjoy it, but the magic is gone. And since these are my favorite movies, when I watch new shows they hardly ever stack up and I just end up missing my favorites. I even miss new episodes of The X-Files, Seinfeld, and King or the Hill. Reruns just don't cut it.

The same even holds true for games, not all are created equal. As nerdy as it sounds, I'll never forget the first time playing through Baldur's Gate 2, Symphony of the Night, Civilization 2, Silent Hill 3, FF6, Abe's Oddysey or Day of the Tentacle.

Things with gameplay as fantastic as Deus Ex that drew you in from beginning to end,

or fantastic stories like in Planescape Torment just don't come around everyday. Even though Planescape is one of the best games I've ever played, I know how it goes now so that first time wonder is forever gone. Most of the crap that comes out today just doesn't come close, Fallout 3 will never be as good as Knights of the Old Republic. Spongebob Squarepants is crap compared to Animaniacs. We had our fair share of crap back then, but over time all the old crap has sunk into obscurity. When things are new you're never sure if they're going to be good or not

There are plenty of things that never get old, and don't have that sense of second time melancholy, but this isn't about them. Sometimes I wish I could relive the first time I heard a favorite song, or how I felt after my first kiss or the first time I hiked to a mountain summit. I guess there's still plenty of sweet stuff waiting for me to experience that will blow me away, but until then, here's to the first time!

Holy crap a photosynthetic sea slug.

2010-01-14T00:19:00.003-07:00

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34824610/ns/technology_and_science-science/

Everyone knows the next logical conclusion.

My top 10 favorite horror movies.

2009-10-04T15:58:00.010-06:00

I already talked about how the horror genre seldom has anything original to offer these days, but I am still usually entertained by them. Being October I'll keep on the horror track and give you guys my top 10 picks for favorite horror movies.

The Faculty (1998) Honorable Mention

You know those paper cutters with the giant blades? Well this movie has the distinction of having one of those being used as a weapon. It's got an Invasion of the Bodysnatchers style theme where aliens are taking over the teachers and students. While not original, the plot is pretty entertaining, if dumb at times, but I still liked it. Kind of cheesy though so that's why it didn't quite make the list.

Rosemary's baby (1968) #10

Don't read any reviews or even, if I remember right the back of the box before you watch it. Because they spoil the last 20 minutes of the movie right off the bat. Anyway, the non spoiler version is that Rosemary gets pregnant, but begins to suspect her next door neighbors and even her husband are witches that want to kill her baby. They wont let her see any doctor, but their own and so she has to defend herself and her unborn child while making sure everyone doesn't think she's some kind of psycho. There is hardly any action or special effects, and the pacing is really slow, but that's how movies were back in the day. It also makes it really interesting. They were going to make a modern remake, but thankfully it got scrapped. Of all the movies on the list this one is by far the most bizarre. It's an oldie but goodie.

The Skeleton Key (2005) #9

A prime example of not having to reuse the same tired old plots in every horror movie. On the surface The Skeleton Key seems to be just another haunted house movie, but it transcends that and ends up being pretty unique. It's about a home healthcare nurse who moves into a creepy old house in the south to be an old man's caretaker. She is told never to go into the attic and soon finds out why. Once again, this movie is not overly scary, but is an enjoyable watch and brings in some new themes.

Rec (2007) #8

There was an American remake of this called Quarantine that I haven't seen so I can't comment on if it's any good or not, but this is the original version and it's pretty freaking awesome. It's in Spanish so if you don't speak it you'll have to find a subtitled version, but it follows a reporter in Spain who is giving a report on firefighters and what they do in the middle of the night. The firemen get a call and so she accompanies them into the building which quickly gets quarantined off and no one can go in or out. It's shot in that shaky handycam style and pulls it off really well.

Poltergeist (1982) #7

This movie is a frigging classic. If you haven't seen it you owe it to yourself to pop it in. It stars Craig T Nelson and some little girl who died a year or two after filming. The family moves into a nice new subdivision and start experiencing all kinds of crazy paranormal activity every night. The movie manages to be funny while at the same time having some really creepy moments. The special effects are a little dated by today's standards, but they're still really well done. This is how a haunted house movie should be done.

The Descent (2005) #6

A group of adventure-junkie girls decide to go caving to help one of their friends get over a traumatic event that just happened to her. The one who plans everything picks an uncharted cave to explore, but tells her friends that it's just a regular old cave that tons of people have done before. They soon discover that others have been in the cave before, but none of them made it out alive. It has a really tense atmosphere and manages to draw you in from start to finish. It is pretty gory with lots of language though.

Alien- (1979) #5

I actually liked Aliens a bit more, but Aliens is much more of a Sci Fi/action movie with very little actual horror involved. Alien however has just one alien and instead of it being among a group of space marines it's there with a bunch of civilians to pick off the crew one by one. Really creepy and well done. The scene where the alien bursts through the guy's stomach in the cafeteria is one of the most famous and well known scenes in modern movie history. This movie is just awesome. Despite being made in the late 70's the special effects are really pretty good and it lacks those weird acid trip sequences that all of those 70's movies seem to have (I'm looking at you last 20 minutes of 2001: A Space Oddysey)

Wind Chill (2007) #4

Generally, not having a budget is a bad thing. Especially for horror movies. This movie is a big exception to the rule however. I had never even heard of it until I saw it for free on Netflix. Basically, it's Christmas break and so these two classmates drive back home together. The driver takes a shortcut on a disused logging road and ends up crashing into a snow drift. So they're sitting in the car in below zero temperatures only to find that something outside of the car desperately wants them dead. There's only like 10 actors in the whole movie, but it comes off as really believable.

El Orfanato (2007) #3

Another one of those Spanish horror movies. This one has a middle aged orphan who decides to buy the abandoned orphanage where she grew up so she can help out some other kids with special needs. She soon finds out that the orphanage has some pretty frightening secrets and is supposedly haunted. Not only that, but the ghosts have a special interest in her son. The cool thing about this movie is you're never quite sure if there really are ghosts or if everything has a much more practical explanation.

The Ring (2002) #2

Ok, so this one has me looking at it through nostalgia goggles. The reason it's so high on the list is it scared the crap out of me when I was in high school. I rewatched it a couple months ago and wasn't even phased, but back in the day this scared me for days. The premise is pretty simple. There's a videotape and if you watch it you will die in seven days. The scary part is you watch the tape along with the main character and some of the stuff that happens to her is really pretty scary. The monster is pretty freaking terrifying too.

John Carpenter's The Thing- (1982) #1

In the epitome of hypocrisy, the movie that actually tops my list is in itself a remake. How bout dem apples? There was a 1951 movie called The Thing from Another World that this movie supposedly redoes. I haven't seen the original, so I can't comment on its quality but the John Carpenter movie is fantastic. This is one of my all time favorite movies in any genre. It stands far above every other movie on this list and if you have not seen it I would highly recommend it.

It centers on an antarctic research crew who go to investigate after one of their sister bases stops all contact. They go and investigate and find everyone dead. What follows is the most intense suspense movie I've ever seen. They bring something back with them that kills people and takes their form. So you have these researchers who are completely cut off from any help and they have absolutely no idea who they can trust. Paranoia runs rampant and the acting is fantastic. I absolutely love this movie. Also the South Park episode where they try to figure out which of the schoolkids has lice is a tribute to this movie. If you haven't seen it do yourself a favor and pick it up. It isn't particularly scary by today's standards, but remains one of the most intense movies I have ever seen.

There's more good horror movies out there, that I either didn't mention or haven't seen but these are the ones that struck me the most. Check 'em out this October if you have extra time.

Why is it so hard to make a good horror movie?

2009-09-28T01:53:00.003-06:00

I like movies quite a bit. The problem with movies is that you very rarely get anything original. Movies like to borrow from other movies all of the time. A little here and there is fine, but sometimes the movie can't stand on its own and so they recycle other people's good ideas over and over again. Nowhere is this practice more evident than in the horror movie.

Kurt Russell has stumbled upon the last good horror writer.

Now, I like horror movies. That is, at least I'm willing to give them a shot. Especially with Halloween coming up pretty soon. The major problem I have with horror movies is that almost every single one of them completely sucks. For pretty much any genre I'm interested in I can pick out a movie that looks cool and it will probably at least be passable. With horror movies finding a good one is like winning the lottery. I can honestly pretty much count the number of superb horror movies I've seen on one hand.

Samarra is counting on her hand too.

The main problem I can see is just how stupid or redundant some of the premises are. Who is the freaking idiot that keeps saying, "Hey, you know what's never been done before? Vampires, zombies, serial killers, ghosts, werewolves and Frankensteins. Let's make more of those!" Honestly, just stop it. Stop it right now!

Also, reading the first paragraph of a wikipedia article does not entitle you to use an existing monster and then make crap up about it. Oh, that monster? That was a succubus. They eat people to stay strong and can only be killed by a metal rod through the heart, I learned it at the occult section that our high school library has. Yeah, doesn't everyone remember the occult section? You know, the one at your high school that tells you exactly how to stop the exact demon you're dealing with? What, your high school didn't have that? (Yeah, Jennifer's Body and Drag me to Hell were both really retarded) Especially since succubi don't eat people, or need to be impaled *sigh.

Then you get your movies like Candyman. I mean really? The guy got stung to death by bees or something so he comes after you with a hook. Bees are not scary, and why the crap does that give him a hook? I mean, in real life if bees decided to swarm you it'd be scary, but watching someone else play with bees is not scary. At least it's more or less original, but bees? Come on.

Where is your originality? Even those campy B horror films from the '50's had that going for them. Sure Freddy is a cool villain, but do we really need a Nightmare on Elm Street 56? Or Friday the 13th part MMMCXCVII? Is it that hard to come out with a good scary idea that you feel the need to make yet another Final Destination movie? It honestly makes me sick just how unimaginative these people must be. Just because Poltergeist was a sweet movie does not mean you need a Poltergeist 2!

Don't worry. In the sequel your character doesn't exist.

Then there's the guy who decides that random Japanese movie X about a pale asian girl with hair over her face was really scary and so he decides to remake it for Americans. Yeah it was really scary. In the first movie I saw it in.

There's also the trademark jump shot. What is the director thinking? "Maybe if we play really ominous music and put the camera at an awkward angle the audience wont suspect anything." Yeah, because I haven't seen this exact same thing 50 times before. Oh hey there's no one there, Let me just turn my back and AAAAAAHHHHH! a monster! I totally didn't see that coming, just like I didn't see it coming in the 50,000 other movies that did it.

Lastly there's the torture/gore horror movies. All I can say is you people are sick. Gore is only scary if it's done right i.e. Dead Space. Otherwise it's just another special effect that looks really dated and stupid in 10 years.

The bottom line is there's nothing wrong with originality. Those overdone franchises were popular in the first place because they were original. Your film tanked at the box office because it was not original. We need groundbreaking new concept movies like Silence of the Lambs. Not Hannibal vs. Clareese vs. Alien vs. Freddy vs. Mike Myers in the outer space indian burial ground: part IV. Also, did you know that you can only kill a North Korean Banshee with a bamboo stick sharpened in South Korea? I learned it in the occult travel section of my college library.

Back in my day...

2009-09-08T22:21:00.004-06:00

When I was a little kid we hadn't quite hit that anime phase that seems to plague most action oriented cartoons that come out these days. Sure, some of them are good, but most are either complete trash, or take 50 episodes for anything to happen. Anyway, I didn't see any of those kind of shows until late junior high school.

I also grew up after most of the really cheesy 80's cartoons were over and done with. Although those are still pretty awesome, notwithstanding how campy they are. When you're a little kid you'll basically watch anything that's on as long as it's animated. Why did I watch Captain Planet occasionally? It certainly wasn't because I liked it, it was because there was absolutely nothing else on in its timeslot. There were a lot of terrible shows like that in the early 90's. And if I didn't have anything else to do I'd watch them if nothing else was on. However, if there was anything even remotely entertaining anywhere else Captain Planet and co took a back seat to it. That being said, there were some cartoons that were just so freaking awesome that you would drop whatever else you were doing and just be entertained for an entire half hour. For me there were two, right after elementary school. Animaniacs and...

Batman: The Animated Series. This show was so frigging awesome that it does not even have a title sequence. Yeah, that's right. Never anywhere does it ever show the title. All you see is Batman kicking the crap out of two bank robbers and then standing there lit up by lightning, I think one of the reasons I liked this show so much was the animation style. Since Batman is the dark knight and always works after the sun goes down it makes sense to portray everything as dark and gloomy. The way they did this was by drawing everything over a black background instead of a white one. Then they went way back to the Superman cartoons from the 1940's. All the cartoons from that era had a really blocky look to them. The animators brought that look over and the result is a very unique and awesome cartoon show with a running retro theme throughout. Couple that with some sweet voice acting (Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill) music by Danny Elfman, and an awesome rogues gallery (TAS introduced Harlene Quinzell, Joker's psychiatrist who broke him out of Arkham Asylum and adopted the name Harley Quinn.) and you have an amazing series.
The series was my first real exposure to Batman and is probably the reason he's my favorite superhero to this day. There wasn't really a Superman cartoon around. The Ironman cartoon sucked. So did the Fantastic Four, Hulk and probably many others that were so crappy I didn't watch them. Some of them were good like X-men and Spiderman, but with those you'd occasionally have the crappy episodes and have to watch a 16 part episode where Cyclops goes into space for some reason, or Spidey has to rescue Mary Jane for the 4,000th time. That's not to say that Batman TAS doesn't have a bad episode or two, (I'm looking at you Catwoman episodes) but for the most part they're awesome.

Let's take Temple Fugate for example. Temple appears in one episode. He is obsessed with punctuality and is riding the train one day with the mayor. He tells the mayor that his clock company is being sued for 22 million dollars and how stressed he is about it. The mayor tells him to relax and to take a little time off. He asks when Temple takes his coffee break. Temple tells him at 3:00 on the dot and the mayor tells him to take it at 3:15 and shake things up a bit. This of course makes him late for his court appointment and he loses the case bankrupting the company.

He then becomes the Clock King and holds an elaborate scheme several years later to ruin the mayor's re-election campaign. This includes messing up the train schedules, locking Batman in a bank vault and tying the mayor to the hour hand of the Gotham City clock tower so that at exactly 3:15 he will be crushed by the minute hand just like Temple Fugate was crushed by that 3:15 coffee break so many years ago.

Now that is awesome! Not to mention that's just one episode with a really obscure villain. They need to bring shows like this back. Sure Spongebob is funny and well written, but he's got nothing on Clayface.

modurn intrnetz grammur & u.

2009-08-27T22:16:00.003-06:00

Remember those riveting days of secondary school education where we all learned the exciting nuances of grammar and syntax? Well due to the combined miracles of the internet and it's ready accesibility to overweight illiterate hambeasts all of that is now happily obsolete. Gone are the stressful days of spelling, and predicates and nominatives. They've all been replaced by exciting new better trends!

Oh, Herro! So sorry! Can I herp you a wiff your grammar prease?

This poor child does not have regular internet access. He learns his grammar from outdated textbooks and periodicals.

Back before the internet our forefathers used such archaic linguistic phenomena such as, apostrophes and capitilization. Not to mention complex words like ignominious and inalienable. Seriously though, who has time to write out ignominious in this day and age?

Thankfully the internet has obviated the need for any sort of grammatical convention. So, without further ado, I present the revised handbook of internet grammar and syntax.

Rule 1: Their, there, and they're, as well as your, ur and you're are now completely interchangable.

Ex:Ur sure that there friends are over they're next to youre's?

Rule 2: Bulky worthless objects like a thesaurus are thoroughly antiquated and are to be replaced with repetitive 3-4 letter abbreviations and emoticons.

Ex: Omg, Lol ur webcomic is so funny :P

Lol, thx I try. :)

Omg, your like really talented. :-o

Omg thx lol. ;)

lol :~)

rofl :^o

lol o_o

Rule 3: Grammatical rules dictate that anyone commenting on the internet follow a strict and concise formula. Every Youtube comment ever created follows this incredibly complex grammatical algorithm.

Ex: XXASHKETCHUMXX: First!!!!!!! -56

#1Slipknotfan2: ur an idoit +4

Adbotindisguise: Lol, check out my music channel. -1

Narutofan24924823: First! -30

Rule 4: Proper nouns and capitilization rules are too complex to consistently remember. With the advent of the internet capitalization is carried out at random as it should be.

Ex: PupPIYS: noob. goku-san could totally TaKE out yu-GI-Oh in like 2 SECONDS wIth HiS SupEr SaiYAN!

ALlYOu'rebAse: NO WAY! YU-GI WOULD TOTALLY JUST PLAY A TRAP CARD AND BE LIKE HAHAHA GOKU-SAN I PLAY DARK MAGICIAN GIRL.

PupPIYS: WhaTEver U don'T KnoW YouR StUpid.

Rule 5: It is perfectly acceptable to change the spelling of a word if you wish to substitute the correct spelling with an adjacent keyboard key.

Ex: Moar, teh, pwn, stupud, idoit, etc.

Above all, to garner respect on the internet you must tenaciously follow these guidelines, and keeping in mind the golden rule.

Golden rule: Effort makes you unfit for the internet. People are much more likely to read 1 giant 4 page, run on sentence with no paragraphing than they are to read something that you've proofread. Also, it, never, hurts, to, add random commas, commas, are just, awesome, and are always, correct grammar,,,,.

Cakey please!

2009-08-18T17:09:00.004-06:00

What do you get when you combine capture the flag, Team Fortress and high calorie cake fests? Fat Princess. Fat Princess is a PSN game in which the red and blue teams try to rescue their princess from the enemy castle, while keeping the opposing team's princess locked up in their dungeon.

Your job as a loyal subject is to free the princess. There are several obstacles in your way however. The first and foremost being the 16 players on the other team who will do everything they can to keep you from rescuing the princess. Since she likes cake so much you can feed it to her and she will eventually become quite massive making it much harder to get her anywhere. You can always grab a few buddies to help you carry her home, or lob her into your castle with the other team's catapult, but that's much easier said than done.

Each person starts out as a villager. A weak little peon that slaps people and has little health, but he's really fast. Your base however, is full of upgradable hat machines. Sick of being a villager throw on a hat and become a warrior with a sword and shield. Not your cup of tea? There's also an archer, mage, worker, and priest each with their own strengths and weaknesses. The worker has the ability to harvest resources and upgrade the hat machines. Once upgraded each hat machine gives the base a specific advantage. Archers suddenly have muskets and flaming arrows, mages can freeze and throw chicken potions, workers chuck bombs etc.

To assist you in breaching the enemy castle the worker can also build siege equipment, such as catapults, springboards and ladders helping you to get that princess. There's other modes too like soccer, capturing outposts, and good old fashioned team deathmatch, but the meat of the game is in Rescue the Princess.

Take this, add a good helping of cartoon gore and you're on your way to a strangely addictive game. You are playing online though, so while most of your games are really awesome you will occasionally have those games when 7 other people on your team rush past you, completely ignoring the shortcut that goes right into the enemy base that you're standing by, only to die at the castle gates leaving you to take the shortcut and rescue the princess alone. Or that one guy who keeps harvesting wood the entire match even though you'll never need more than 20 wood, much less 85, so there's been absolutely no point to it for the past 25 minutes. I wonder if Kevin Hale plays this game? It's glitchy, frustrating, and sometimes the games take forever, but it's awesome. As the game says, "The cake is not a lie."

Hiking: Mt Olympus

2009-08-15T13:28:00.008-06:00

Mt. Olympus

Location: Mt Olympus trailhead off Wasatch Boulevard near 4700 south
Distance to summit: 3.2 miles
Perceived Exertion Level: 82/100
Scenery: 3 1/2 stars

Olympus is a trail I've always wanted to do. I lived right next to it growing up, but until recently I never did anything about it. I tried hiking it in July during the middle of the day, when I'd given blood the day before and only made it 1/3 of the way up. My second try yielded better results however, and I came within a hundred feet of the summit. We came up a little short of the very top because we lost the trail and got semi stuck at a part way too steep to climb when it started to rain. We decided to head back instead of being on the 6 'o clock news.

There's a small parking lot at the base of the trailhead, and as soon as you start climbing you realize that the trail is pretty viciously steep. Thankfully it's only like this for 5 or 10 minutes. Eventually you'll pass a giant rock that overlooks Wasatch Boulevard and things flatten out a little bit.
After the rock you'll climb a set of gentle switchbacks which offer little protection from the sun, so if you go make sure you start relatively early in the morning or on a cloudy day, because there isn't much shade until you get higher up. Eventually at the top of this set of switchbacks you'll reach a stream.

The stream was almost dry on the August hike, but was deep enough for a couple of dogs to lie in when I hiked there in July. Regardless of its level it's shady and is always a good spot to stop and take a little rest before you go any further. We met an older couple here who told us that the stream is about 1/3 of the way up, which seems to be relatively accurate. Then they told us that the steepest part of the trail was behind us and that the rest isn't anything to worry about. So we got excited about the alleged near flatness of the upcoming trails only to discover that they blatantly lied and the trail became really steep again like it was at the very first.

At this point the trail has a habit of changing from dirt to these crazy looking sharp narrow rocks that jut out of the ground. While you're following the trail you enter into a canyon and the switchbacks stay relatively short, but they're really pretty steep. Eventually you'll enter the cover of brush and trees and the switchbacks disappear. Instead of them you have a really long straight trail that leads up to the saddle and gets even steeper than before.

Despite the overall steepness of the trail, on our hike it actually got pretty chilly up here. You're in the shade most of the time and are pretty high up. The trail is still really clear, albeit rocky, and eventually it will lead you to the saddle. From here you can get a good view of the surrounding mountains and of the Salt Lake Valley itself. If you're feeling adventurous you can make a left and head toward the summit. The hike to the top involves a fair amount of scrambling and is fairly easy as long as you stick to the trail. Unfortunately the trail is easily lost and as soon as you lose the trail the climbing becomes ten times more difficult. Of course we lost the trail and had to scramble up some really tall rocks on our way up to the top. Unfortunately near the summit we reached a part where we couldn't go up any higher because of the steepness of the rocks and we didn't know how to get back down to the trail. Eventually we made it back within sight of the trail, but with a lot of crabwalking, looking for ways around chasms, and climbing down some very steep, very tall rocks. After we got back to the trail we decided that we must have veered off toward the left at some point and lost the trail without realizing it. If you hike to the summit make sure you take a friend and that it isn't rainy or dark.

The view from that high is amazing though. You can see the entire Salt Lake Valley and even down into Provo, it's awesome! Also, since you're so close to the valley you should have cell phone reception for pretty much the entire hike. As always with mountains however, coming back down is a beast on your knees, hips, and ankles.

Top 5 cartoon villains to fix the economy.

2009-08-06T15:23:00.008-06:00

Ok, the economy's in bad shape I'll admit it. It seems like it's going to take forever to get it back on track. It seems that a lot of people have just given up. Well, if there's one thing that cartoons have taught me it's that villains can turn even the most dire situations into something profitable and lucrative. Sure, they don't win very often, but they come back every time. Maybe the Penguin gets the crap kicked out of him by Batman every other month, but without fail every time he comes back he has a new henchmen army, a new hairbrained scheme to take over the city, and a new style of exploding umbrella.

It's that kind of tenacious ingenuity we need these days to get everything back on track. Some villains like the Shredder or the Joker may have the skills necessary, but they're a little bit too unbalanced. You'd tell them to fix the economy and they'd spend all the money on ninja commandos and high tech death theme parks. So, we'll ignore the extremely mentally unstable ones.

#5: Hoggish Greedly

You know your parents have it in for you when they name you Hoggish. I mean c'mon how sadistic do you have to be to name your newborn child after a barnyard animal? Well does Greedly let it get him down? Not at all. Not only does the guy build up a multinational evil empire, he somehow manages to completely circumvent any and every environmental law ever put into effect. If this guy wants to build an oil derrick he doesn't just do it the old fashioned way he builds a giant walking battle mech whose sole purpose is to drill for oil in the arctic. Pesky environmentalists in the way? Who cares? That thing has flamethrowers, rockets, giant claws and pollution cannons. And if anybody says anything bad about him the media will tear them apart because they're making fun of a poor old deformed pig man. Anyone who can afford to build one of these things every month knows how to manage their finances.

#4: Carmen SanDiego

You know what'd fix the national debt faster than anything? If somebody stole it. Leave it to the greatest kleptomaniacal supergenius of all time to get us out of this mess. How does she afford all those henchmen and helicopters. How does she steal the Mona Lisa, Big Ben, the top of Mount Everest and Stonehenge? Who knows? Without fail she can steal the most closely guarded items in the world and hide them away from the public eye. To top it all off she never gets caught, ever. Ponsy schemes and corporate embezzlement are child's play compared to the things she's done. All you need to do is sell the Great Wall back to China. Economic crisis? What economic crisis?

#3: Skeletor

Not only is this guy an evil genius with a rams-head death staff, but he's ripped. He's got his priorities down. I mean look at him. The guy is stuck on some backwards middle ages planet called Eternia and what does he do? Does he waste his time with bows and arrows, or catapults or other medieval technology? Not Skeletor, while everybody else is trying to fix their chariot he's building laser cages, doomsday robots, invisibility helmets and death lasers. Can you imagine what would happen if he got brought into the modern age? This guy would have an evil moon base within the week. Hey, if he can raise the cash to make all that crazy stuff during the Dark Ages just imagine what he could do for us now. Now if only he could capture that stupid Castle Grayskull so he could move onto more pressing problems like the economy.

#2: Cobra Commander

What's the most efficient way to spend a trillion dollars? Is it on national defense? Healthcare? Civic improvements? How about a giant weather control machine to control the world? Cobra isn't afraid to do what needs to be done. If he has to buy out an entire TV station to broadcast anti GI Joe propaganda then he'll do it. If he has to build laser planes and sink a fleet full of aircraft carriers then he's not afraid to go try. Cobra not only has his own super highly funded elite terror cell, but he's not afraid to go out and lead them himself when the time comes down to it. That's the kind of leadership skills the world needs right now. Cobra Commander isn't afraid to take charge and personally get things done. Even if he has to level entire cities with his weather control machine to do it. Too bad they're taking off his hood for the new movie. Heaven forbid a terrorist cell leader look like a racist jerk. Cobraaaaaaa aaaaattaaaaaack!

#1: David Xanatos

Now here's a villain who has it all. Charisma, fashion sense, billions of dollars, and super intelligence. He has more tv-tropes named after him than any other villain except Cthulhu. Including the infamous "Xanatos Gambit" where the good guys go out and take out some of the bad guys, but find out they were being manipulated all along and actually ended up helping the villain they were trying to destroy.

So, why is he perfect to fix our economy? Well for one his philosophy is, "Pay a man enough and he'll walk barefoot into hell." That and he took a $20,000 investment and turned it into his own evil genetics company, robotics company, and television network. He is a member of the Illuminati, knows Karate and Judo, and made an evil cyborg and clone version of himself. This guy is so rich that he had an ancient Scottish castle disassembled and airlifted to the top of his New York skyscraper and then rebuilt brick by brick just so he could see if the gargoyles would come alive at night. Then he used those gargoyles as templates to make a cyber gargoyle army and even made himself a gargoyle powersuit. He's everything you want in an evil mastermind and is even voiced by Jonathon Frakes. If he can't fix the economy then no one can.

Water water everywhere; nor any drop to drink.

2009-08-04T03:00:00.005-06:00

When you're a little kid there's nothing better than playing outside in the summer. Of course eventually it gets really hot and you'll do anything to cool down. Whether it's grabbing the sprinklers at the school and spraying each other with them 'till you get sent to the Principal's office, or throwing a sprinkler under the trampoline and jumping through the water, summer inevitably involved getting wet. In quite possibly the most ninja-epic moment of my life, I was jumping on the tramp one day with Mike Call and a bunch of water balloons. I kicked one and it sailed toward him and exploded in mid air, getting him drenched, but leaving me perfectly dry. When he tried, all the balloons just burst on his foot. It was pretty much the most amazing achievement of my childhood career.

I grew up in what I would call the "water fight arms race." Back in the day all we had were some water balloons, those crappy one shot tube rifle things, and some of these crappy All a Dollar squirt guns that every kid seemed to have.

And then it happened. I don't know if it was a Christmas present, just something to get me out of the house, or something to celebrate the Gulf War, but one day I received one of these bad boys.

The Super Soaker 100. This thing was a beast. You had everything you wanted; range, high volume spray, and a huge reservoir of water so you could keep on fighting with fewer refills. This monster could drench you and just keep on going, it was fantastic. Suddenly the tables had turned and I could rock at every water fight. Little kids with their cheap All a Dollar water pistols got owned. I could even get a pretty good fight in when somebody inevitably picked up the hose. Sure they can try to spray you, but that hose only reaches so far and this super soaker had a long reach. Especially if you unscrewed the water tank and just poured it all over people.

However as cheap plastic pieces of crap tend to do mine eventually broke and I moved on to bigger and better squirt guns. One of mine had a backpack reservoir and another pressurized itself from the hose, and you didn't even need to pump it. It had two streams and shot so hard that people would scream and run if I hit them in the face. My other squirt guns were better, but nothing beats the nostalgia of that awesome plastic blue and puke yellow Super Soaker 100.

Hiking: Mt Timpanogos via Timpooneke trail.

2009-08-02T15:55:00.010-06:00

Mt Timpanogos

Location: Timpooneke trailhead, On the Alpine Loop in American Fork Canyon (there is an alternative route called the Aspen Grove trail in Provo Canyon)

Distance to summit: 7.5 miles (one way)

Perceived exertion level: 70/100, hard to classify. It's never steep, just long

Scenery: 4 1/2 stars

Special Considerations: If you are in any way acrophobic then the hike to the summit is not for you. You'll be fine until you get to the saddle, but after that it looks kinda scary. I'm only very mildly afraid of heights and there were plenty of times that I felt really edgy the last mile or so. Honestly though, even if you fell, most places give you enough time to catch yourself before you plummet over a precipice. So,it looks much more dangerous than it is.

For the unholy love of frigging Cthulhu, if you value your sanity do not hike this on a Saturday!

I've heard tell that this is the most summitted mountain in Utah and I believe it. I got to the campground at 6:30 in the morning and the parking lot was completely full. I had to drive down past a spectacularly long line of cars and park at the end, and to top it off I still got a parking ticket. If I had to make an estimate I'd say I saw about 1,000 people on the hike. No lie, it was ridiculous. It took me about 4 and 1/2 hours to make it to the summit, but at least a 1/2 hour of that was me very slowly walking behind intellectually challenged Provo residents that I very strongly wanted to strike in the back of the head.

Other than just how sheerly crowded it was, the hike was awesome. The first leg of the trail is Scout Falls which I've already covered. After that you'll climb a few more switchbacks over some stream crossings until it flattens and you come to a sort of valley meadow surrounded by mountains.

Eventually you'll reach another set of switchbacks which slowly, but steadily climb up to the Timpanogos Basin. This set of switchbacks is probably the longest part of the hike, but it really isn't that difficult because the climb is so gradual. Notwithstanding there's plenty of shade and rocks and even a couple more waterfalls if you want to stop and take a break.

So eventually you'll start to see the first traces of snow and you'll reach the top of the switchbacks and reach the

Timpanogos Basin. From here you'll be able to catch your first glance of Mt. Timpanogos. There were 4 or 5 tents down in the valley, and quite a few people stopped to take a rest over here. Shortly ahead the trail intersects with the Aspen Grove trail and you can either follow it to Emerald Lake or go right to Timp summit. Emerald Lake is far from impressive so I made my way up to the summit. Here you'll go through another series of switchbacks and the trail is often lost completely in the snow (Aug 01) but you can still follow it fairly easily. Eventually you will come up to the saddle and get a magnificent view of Provo and Utah Lake. It seems most people stopped here. I don't know why, as you're only a mile from the summit, so I kept going.

The hike to the summit is the part I was talking about when I said your fear of heights might get to you. There is less of a well defined trail here and even a bit of scrambling over rocks. Although it looks like one misstep would be fatal, most of the time you'd have plenty of time to catch yourself, if for some reason you did fall. Eventually you'll reach the summit and see the little shack up there.

From what I gather this shack was built as a triangulation point before they developed the technology to just use planes and satellites. It used to have windows, but they've all blown out. There's a lot of graffiti, including an amusing picture of a clown with the caption, "If this clown can make it you can too." Seriously, I saw everone from a group of 12 year olds, to an old man who looked to be in his 70's on the trail. You get an amazing view of your surroundings up here and can see the faint outlines of the trails you hiked coming up. I also got 4 bars of cell phone reception :) If you're feeling adventurous you can keep going and there's a perpetual snowfield you can slide down that'll take you to Emerald Lake. Everyone was going that way though, and since I was so sick of BYU students everywhere I took the other way. I lost the trail once or twice, but eventually I made it back down to the Timp Basin.

At the basin there's a sign marked toilet and allegedly if you follow it there's a B-25 crash site a mile or so off trail. On the way down I decided to take it and check it out. The trail goes for a 1/2 mile or so and then disappears at a river formed by snowmelt. From here I went off trail for an hour or so and looked for the crash, but all I ended up finding was a tent and two other hikers who were also looking for the site. There was still some snow though and the crash is 50 years old so it's altogether possible that I walked right by it. Eventually I met up with the trail again and decided to just head back down. The hike down is actually harder than going up, as it's really hard on your knees and ankles. After what seems like forever you do eventually make it to the bottom though.

Hiking: Scout Falls.

2009-07-31T14:25:00.004-06:00

Scout Falls

Location: American Fork canyon. Timponeke trail off the Alpine Loop

Distance to falls: 1.22 miles

Perceived exertion level: 38/100

Scenery: 3 stars.

A nice well shaded trail with a gentle incline, lots of aspens and quite a few streamcrossings. You can follow the trail for as far or as little as you want, because the Timpooneke trail goes all the way up to the summit of Mt. Timpanogos if you're feeling ambitious. The trail doesn't ever get all that difficult unless you accidentally leave it like Ryan and I did and climb up the streambed. The streambed is marked off with a couple of big rocks across the trail, at which point you're supposed to turn around and go up a switchback. If you don't, you'll reach the falls faster, but you'll have to deal with some fairly difficult scrambling while watching out for mud and loose rocks. It's nothing unmanagable though.

Overall this is a fun hike achievable by hikers of most skill levels. It offers a view of several mini waterfalls, streams, and of course Scout Falls itself which is really pretty. Other than that there isn't too much to see unless you go farther up the trail.

One man's trash is another man's... bonfire?

2009-07-29T20:54:00.003-06:00

There are some pretty bizarre games, but Trash Panic pretty much takes the cake for me. Imagine Tetris, except instead of L blocks you have barbershop poles, playground slides, blimps, space stations, etc.

There are 6 levels you have to go through and each one of them has a boss. After each successful level your trash can gets bigger, but the things you have to shove in there get bigger as well. So what's the point of the game? Your job is to get everything the level throws at you safely into your trash can. It doesn't fit you say? Smash it with other trash! Sure that HD tv takes up half your trash can, but it's not nearly so high and mighty after you smash it down with a computer monitor, folding chair, giant safe and a guitar.

You can choose to be eco friendly and keep things like oil tankers intact, and just decompose them in the water. Or, you can decide to just screw the environment, smash those oil tankers and then light them on fire. MWAHAHAHAHA!

Not burning fast enough? Slam your trash can lid down on that sucker. The temperature will skyrocket, but you just might asphyxiate your fire so be careful. If you shake your controller then your trash can will shake as well and any loose trash will settle. Occasionally you'll get items that aren't trash and you need to get those items to the bottom of your trash can as soon as possible for the little penguin men to collect. If you accidentally destroy one then you're screwed because you're punished with a can full of excess trash.

Each level has a boss that you have 10 seconds to defeat. The bosses range from simple like a piggy bank to a giant Yugo truck, to something diabolical like that stupid giant evil cloud on level 5. Oh and if you drop 3 pieces of trash, it's over, you lose. If a boss falls out of the can, you lose. You also have to beat all 6 levels in one sitting, as each time you quit the game you have to start from level 1.

It's a good game to exercise to. I've found that when I'm super frustrated I don't notice that extra 10 minutes I spend on the treadmill/elliptical/bike. Count on being frustrated though. A lot. If I ever find the jerk who's been throwing mattresses, blimps and clouds away, he's going to have to take a little excursion into a burning trash can himself. :)

If you have diabeetus and you're on medicare then YOU'RE RUINING OUR COUNTRY YOU SOCIALIST FREAK!

2009-07-27T00:38:00.006-06:00

The face of the enemy.

One thing that I find strange is how averse conservative America is to the word socialism. Let's get one thing straight, socialism is not communism. It will not result in the American Dream being turned into the Soviet Dream. Socialism is when taxpayer money goes to the government and the government uses that money to provide a service.

The biggest issue with this at the moment is the issue of whether or not we should socialize medicine. Conservatives freak out at this and think it means our medical system will somehow turn all our hospitals into a medieval witch doctor with a saw who has a waiting list like a Disneyland line. Well I have news for you people. America already uses a biased socialized system for their medicine. Yeah, that's right we already do have socialized medicine. Has anyone ever heard of Medicare, Medicaid, or veterans benefits? Yeah as long as you're an injured veteran, over 65, or poor as dirt you are taken care of by the current administration's socialized healthcare in the United States.

Well you know what, I don't qualify for any of those things. If I want to be able to afford to be healthy I have to either get a job that gives me health insurance or pay a ridiculously high amount to a private company so that I'm covered. We all know how benign insurance companies are too right? I swear, I could go to the hospital with two gunshot wounds to the chest and insurance would just write it off as a pre-existing condition.

The system we have now is terrible. You either have people that can't afford health insurance, or people who are denied legitimate claims by their insurance company because it doesn't want to fork out the cash. What happens is people are afraid to work for small businesses because small business can't afford to provide health insurance to their employees, consequently they have to work at a giant corporation just so they're covered if they happen to get sick.

There are two main complaints I hear about socialized medicine. That our private healthcare is the best in the world just how it is, and that I as a healthy person should not have to pay for the medical needs of someone I've never even met. Well guess what? I've never started a fire, but I pay for the frigging fire department. I've never been in prison, but I pay for the state to incarcerate felons. I've never called the police, but I pay for it. I never drive over roads down in Mexican Hat, but I pay for them. Services like libraries, the postal service, public education, even public works in general are all completely and utterly socialism in action. They do not however, eliminate the private sector as some people say universal healthcare will do. Just because USPS exists does not mean that UPS and FedEX aren't doing very well. Just because there are public schools it does not mean that people still wont pay exorbitant tuitions to go to private schools because they think they are better. It does mean that pharmaceutical companies wont be able to charge $400 for a single pill and we wont have 40 billion commercials for pills we don't want or need.

The other complaint is that universal healthcare is inferior to our current privatized system. Well according to the World Health Organization the United States is the second highest country for health care expenditures, 24th for life expectancy, and the W.H.O ranks the U.S in 37th place overall. The U.S. is also only ranked 44th lowest for infant mortality rates. Granted these ratings depend on many factors and the U.S. does have some of the best care if you can afford it.But, even an ambulance ride nowadays is liable to cost you $1000, and there is no substantial evidence that says our healthcare system is inherently better than countries with socialized care like Canada and England.

Oh, there is one more complaint I almost forgot. Some people say that our healthcare will be monopolized by illegal aliens. Most countries with socialized healthcare only offer it to residents. Problem solved.

So, what's the problem with socialized healthcare? Well [insert right wing talk radio douchebag here] says it's bad, and so people think it's bad. Think for yourselves people! I honestly don't think we should get rid of the privatized sector. We should keep it as a viable alternative, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with further socializing our healthcare past what Medicare, Social Security etc is already doing. Some corrupt pharmaceutical companies might go out of business, doctors might take a paycut, the hospital line might be 10 minutes longer, oh, and then there's the small fact that 45 million uninsured Americans could finally go to the hospital.

To conclude, the American Journal of Medicine claims that in 2007 62% of all bankruptcies were linked to medical expenses. Socialized medicine is far cheaper in the long run and almost every other first world country has it. We are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, but so far getting treated if you're very sick isn't one of them. I'm sure someone out there totally disagrees with me and has a valid reason that I haven't thought of as to why we should keep our medical care mostly privatized. I'm dying to know what you people think.

1,000 faces all look the same. They're all so boring, mild and tame.

2009-07-26T19:14:00.003-06:00

My sister used to read to me when I was little and ever since then I've always enjoyed reading a good book. The problem is it's so hard to find one sometimes. Non fiction is cool and all, but when you have to read generic textbooks all day for school you kind of get sick of it.

I've always been a fan of fantasy. Whether it's sci-fi or all mystical with elves and dragons and such. The problem is I've already read the two great epics in these series Dune and Lord of the Rings. Now I know what you're thinking, there's tons better books out there, and there're awesome books that have nothing to with either of those series. You're completely right. So, if there's so many other awesome books in fiction, why is it a problem that I've already read Dune and Lord of the Rings?

The answer lies in the fact that if I go to a library and pick up a fantasy book there's a 50% chance that it will be a horrible attempt to be Lord of the Rings. Tolkien wrote a trilogy that was so different from the norm and well written that it was wildly successful. The modern author however, for some obscure reason has seemingly abandoned creativity entirely. Almost every other book I pick up is just another terrible rehash of Tolkien's work. Look, just because Tolkien had crazy names for everywhere does not mean you have to give every town, person and place an obscure name like ZIX' TSAROATH or something like that. It worked for Tolkien because he was one of the first ones to do it. You do not need to include elves and dwarves; and they most certainly do not have to be carbon copies of the creatures that Tolkien made. Yeah we get it. Tolkien's elves are bowmen from the forest and his dwarves live underground in giant caverns. If I wanted to read about Tolkien's creatures I'd just re-read Lord of the Rings.

Science fiction isn't quite as bad for lacking creativity. But, to be honest I don't even like it that much. Unless the book is very well written I'll generally just avoid it entirely. Again, though; if I want to read about Paul Atreides' fight against an intergalactic empire then I will read about Paul frigging Atreides and not your crappy version of it.

So it's refreshing when you find a book that isn't just a Lord of the Rings clone, or another entry in a franchise that was awesome when it came out, but should have died a long time ago when it was still good. Like DragonLance, or Star Wars.

Some of these series that I've liked because they dared to break the mold have been:

Xanth: Some are much better than others, but this series has always had a good mix of humor and action.

Harry Potter: It's a good series, don't look at me like that. o_O

Sword of Truth: Suffers from the annoying, "Oh no, a main character has been captured again." syndrome, but other than that it's pretty good. There are plenty of loose ends though.

Narnia: They're childrens' books and some of them *cough*(A Horse and his Boy) aren't that great, but there's a reason they're such renowned classics.

Lord of the Isles: The characters actually have a skillset that isn't super one dimensional, (i.e. a Legolas arrow to the face from five miles away) if they're a blacksmith then they actually act like it. Plus, one of them is written entirely in first person. Let's see you try that and make it interesting.

Shadowmarch: Not as epic as the others on the list, but it has a cool plot device involving mist and the monsters inside it.

Wheel of Time: Suffers from "I haven't seen the interesting plotline for 5 chapters, why are we still on this other terrible plotline" syndrome. Just as epic as the Sword of Truth series, but dragged out over 4 or 5 more books.

Clan of the Cave Bear: I've only read the first 2, but just the premise of Ayla is really interesting.

The Runelords: In addition to magic, people use rare mystic blood metal to become nearly invincible. For example you could take somebody's sight as an endowment, that person loses their sight, but yours becomes twice as acute as long as they're alive. Thus, lords and warriors siphon off people's attributes like their strength, wit, grace, hearing etc. And become superhuman.

And my favorite fantasy series of all time would be

The Belgariad: This series involves the clash of two polar opposite, but equally plausible destinies as they wage war by manipulating the people of the world in a fierce contest to upstage the other. One destiny chooses Torak, a greedy and deceitful god that chased his brothers out of the world to rule uncontested. Half of his face was hideously melted and maimed by an orb of power several thousand years ago and he's been comatose since then. The other destiny works through a party of people, including two sorcerers and a boy capable of using the same orb that burned Torak.

Quite possibly the best character development and pacing I've ever seen in a fantasy book. Humor, action, suspense, this series has it all. I would highly recommend it to anyone else who's sick of reading the same drivel over and over again. There's a follow up series called The Mallorean that continues the story a few years later, and it is equally as epic and well done.

Hiking: Mt Aire.

2009-07-21T17:51:00.006-06:00

Until last week or so I decided I wasn't going hiking enough and am now going to try to start going once a week at least. Most recently I hiked

Mt Aire (How do you even pronounce that? Is it air? Ay-ray? Air-ee?)

Location: 6.1 miles up Millcreek Canyon

Elevation: 8621 ft

Distance to Summit: 2.21 miles

Perceived exertion/difficulty level: 79/100

Scenery: 4 1/2 stars

There's a parking lot with a fair amount of spaces right at the start of the trail. It was full, but somebody pulled out right when I got there so it worked out really well.

The trail starts out at Elbow Fork and branches about 1/4 mile in. The left path leads to Mt. Aire while the right path takes you to Lambs Canyon. The Mt. Aire trail takes you beside a little stream and there are wildflowers absolutely everywhere. Because it follows a stream parts of the trail are really muddy and there's bees and flies everywhere, but it's nothing much to worry about. This is one of the best hikes I've ever done in terms of wildflowers.

As long as you don't go when the sun is directly overhead you'll be shaded along most of the trail. I started around 10:30 and it was shady all the way up to the saddle. You're going to need the shade however because as mountain trails tend to do this one leads you straight up. I was hiking by myself so I just took it at my own pace and it didn't end up being that bad. Just make sure you stop to take photos every once in awhile and that you bring plenty of water.

A little over an hour into the hike you'll come upon a big meadow full of wildflowers. Follow the trail through it and eventually you'll come to the saddle and get some pretty sweet views.

I came to climb the mountain though! So, looking around the saddle I saw 2 lightly worn paths. One went straight to who knows where and went down the mountain, while the other went left and up. So, I took the left fork and immediately noticed that it was really steep and not very well maintained. On my way up I saw a grouse that ran away from me, and finally I made it to the top over the very faint steep trail. I took out my GPS to mark the summit and that's when it occurred to me that the summit should have been several hundred feet higher. I looked over and saw Mt. Aire on the other side of the saddle with a very well defined trail going up it.

I named the mountain I was on Mt. Deception and very slowly made my way back down the steep shale covered trail until I reached the saddle. If you look closely you'll see a trail in between the flowers that takes you up Mt. Aire.

Once you're on the trail it's obvious, but unless you know what you're looking for it's pretty hard to spot.

This is looking directly at the trail up the summit.

So yeah, once you find it you'll go through 7 or 8 switchbacks which aren't quite as steep as the rest of the trail was (they don't have much shade either though) and you'll reach the summit. The view from the summit is nice, but is probably the weakest point of the hike. Mt. Aire is the opposite of its neighbor Grandeur Peak. Grandeur had a spectacular view from the summit, but not much to look at on the trail, while Aire has a beautiful trail and a somewhat obstructed view from the top.

All in all it took me a little over 3 hours from start to finish, (That includes my little detour up Mt. Deception though) and was a rather enjoyable hike.

Bait and Switch.

2009-07-21T08:58:00.004-06:00

Back in the day I was a big fan of cartoons. Garfield and Friends, Batman TAS, Batman Beyond, Heman, Animaniacs, Ducktales, Talespin, Darkwing Duck, Gargoyles, Tiny Toons, Ninja Turtles, whatever I watched it all. Several of these have been made into movies. Most of these cartoon movies have kind of been terrible, but for a brief 30 seconds I thought they were about to release the most epic movie of all time.

So I'm sitting through the previews before Harry Potter with Ryan. Up comes some animated movie with a kid walking around the pyramids. Typical preview stuff. The kid walks off some scaffolding and bounces off of them. They discover that the pyramids had in fact been stolen, Now there's only one animated villain who's badass enough to steal the pyramids and get away with it. I started getting really excited. Quite possibly the most epic educational show ever was about to get it's own movie. I looked over and Ryan was really excited too. They finally get to the big reveal and holy crap it's CARMEN SANDI-... Oh, it's just some non Carmen SanDiego movie called Despicable Me. :(

WHAT!!!! Listen Hollywood you just made me think there was going to be a Carmen SanDiego movie and that most definitely was not. You can't just steal the motivation of the greatest cartoon thief of all time and give it to some crappy new cartoon thief and pretend nothing happened. Now that it's in my head I demand a Carmen SanDiego movie. None of this spin off crap.

To be fair, the movie looks okay, but it most definitely isn't

Here's the link for those who share my ire.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpM7c0uGTes

"Kids are different today." I hear every mother say. Mother needs something today to calm her down.

2009-07-18T22:25:00.006-06:00

One thing I generally like to do is exercise. Nowadays, I'm a fairly solid believer in having a healthy body. Probably, because of how terribly I treated my body back during High School. I used to drink two or three Dr. Peppers every day and would always have something like chips or a Little Debbie snack for lunch. This happened every day in high school and when combined with a healthy dose of videogames it left me as one out of shape little S.O.B. I was never a fat kid, but back then I was horribly unhealthy. I even got nauseous and threw up at the end of the trail to Dog Lake.

Since then I've tried to keep myself relatively healthy, and you know what? I feel fantastic. I stopped drinking soda over a year ago and I noticed an immediate difference as soon as I stopped. Soda makes you feel like crap and every once in a while it would even give me headaches if I drank too much. All soda is just a nasty dose of sugar water. Diet soda is even worse. It tastes horrible and does not in any way help people lose weight. If you want a healthy drink then get yourself some Skim milk, water, or a V8. I promise you'll feel a lot better. Also, stand up straight. I don't have the best posture, but standing up straight makes you feel more confident, attractive, and works your core muscles.

Something else that helps me feel good is getting outside and getting a little bit of exercise. Nothing beats winding down after some good old strenuous activity. It releases endorphines, removes stress and makes you look better. I was in pretty good shape last year until Winter hit. I stopped exercising completely and I went from a lean 145 pounds, doing 70 push ups and 10 consecutive pull ups to 157 pounds, not doing pushups and maxing at 2-3 consecutive pull ups. 4 months or so of doing nothing but sitting on your butt, driving to school and eating, apparently destroys whatever physique you've spent months building up. For me at least it seems that four months of working out 4-6 days a week gets you in some pretty amazing shape. You need to be consistent though. If I work out too hard at the beginning then I get discouraged and end up not working out at all. You have to start out at a level you're comfortable with and stick with it.

I found a solution though! One of my buddies gave me a Chuck Norris calendar. I keep it in my room and every time I exercise I write down for how long and exactly what I did. This keeps me from being lazy because every time I don't exercise there's a big ugly empty white spot on my calendar. It also lets you know exactly how much (or little) you're doing. I started keeping track at the beginning of July and hopefully in a couple of months I'll be back to where I was last year. Is there anything Chuck Norris can't do?

One of the awesome things exercising let's me do is go hiking. If you're into photos then there really isn't a better hobby than going on a nice relaxing hike through the mountains. Especially if there's a mountaintop or a sweet waterfall or something at the end. Being outside rocks. Now I just need to find a way to stay in shape during Winter.

Oh, and from personal experience don't try to climb Mt Olympus the day after you give blood. Once you hit 7000 feet it gets a lot harder to breathe.

Bwahahaha! Am I bad person if I think this is hilarious?

2009-07-14T00:01:00.005-06:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Hk-ru57A-c

As amusing as this is, it's kind of sad how addicted people are to technology these days. This is why people shouldn't text and drive. I mean when you can't see construction workers 10 feet away when they're getting cones you have problems. The girl didn't look like the smartest cookie in the jar either. I'm sure at least she was able to update her twitter account while down there.

What are you doing right now?: Alexa is neck deep in ****

Staten Island is pretty much all just an open manhole anyway. She should be used to it. I hope the city compensates her for that shoe. I'm kind of surprised she kept the other one though.

But, what's puzzlin you is the nature of my game.

2009-07-12T15:29:00.006-06:00

And now the exciting conclusion of the 15 most terrible games I own.

#5 Fighting Simulator (Gameboy)

Were they really even trying with this title? I mean honestly Fighting Simulator? Actually it's called Fighting Simulator 2 in 1: Flying Warriors which is even more retarded. Especially since there aren't any flying warriors, and as far as I know there's just one game. But whatever. It's a pretty poor simulator for fighting, it's not like you get to practice punching people in the face or anything. You just push the A button a lot. So yeah, this is one of those fighting games where you have a grand total of two moves, and basically get to show the folks on the right side of the screen why the left side of the screen is vastly superior. You do this by walking right and using your one crappy punch/kick attack until they die. It's like one of those old Tyco games in all of its monochrome glory.

Now that my friends is what you call an epic story. So apparently that's why they called in the elite fighting flying warriors. Haven't these guys heard of a safety deposit box? I like how his liverspots are symmetrical too. Must be the ninja training.

#4 The Amazon Trail (PC)

Wait, huh, what? There wasn't ever even an Amazon Trail. How can you make an educational game out of something that didn't even freaking exist. I mean the Oregon Trail was freaking awesome, but you know what? There actually was an Oregon Trail! I don't know if you can see it very well, but the cd contains such exciting selling points as. "Full version, not a demo!" and a big General Mills logo. Yeah that's right. This game actually came in a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I bet Wendell was apalled.

So what can this riveting game be about you ask? Well apparently there's this disease that is wiping out the Incas, so you go back in time somehow and for some reason to go and fix it. So your goal is to find the ancient Incan city of gold or something and once you get there to cure their plague. Except you don't bring back any medical supplies or anything, you just decide that a brisk walk through the jungle does a body good. You win if you make it to the ancient Incan City alive. Also, who names their kid Kermit?

#3 3D Maze Man: Adventures in Winter Wonderland

You know a game is terrible when you can't even find a picture of it on the internet. This game isn't even listed on Gamefaqs. Anyway, I really don't know how to describe this game. It's basically a mix between Pac Man and Mario if you decided to set them both in a "Winter Wonderland." Basically you are Pac Man in a santa hat and can move in all four cardinal directions, as well as jump. So yeah... for some reason Pac Man in a santa hat wants to eat pellets, for whatever reason Pac Men eat pellets. So you guide him through a bread crumb trail of pellets until you get to the end of the level. There's really no mazes in 3D Maze Man it's just a straight path to the finish with the occasional baddie along the way. I think this came in a cereal box too, but I don't remember.

#2 The X-Files (PSX)

In my opinion the X-files is one of the best tv shows of all time. At least until they decided to jump the shark and get rid of Mulder and Scully for Annabeth Gish and the T-1000. The two movies and some of the alien episodes kind of sucked too, but for the most part this series was freaking awesome.

So you'd think a point and click game would be pretty sweet too right? Especially if it actually has some of the actors like Mulder and Scully or Walter Skinner. That's what this game tried to do. It has 4 discs of grainy FMV goodness which look fantastic for PSX standards.

What's the problem then you ask? Well there's several. The resolution is really low, a mouse cursor is not meant to be controlled with a d-pad. The graphics glitch out every once in awhile and your cursor disappears all the time.

The main problem however is, you will never throughout the entire game have any clue as to what you're supposed to do. Generally point and click games are either animated, or at least do a fairly good job of letting you know what's interactable. Not the X-Files. You may be able to open that closet, but expect to click around desperately on all the coats looking for something to do in there. Maybe I need to put one on? Maybe this coat does something? This one? Oh, there's a business card in one of the pockets of the gray coat. Yippee. It's especially fun when your cursor randomly decides to turn into a giant pixellated square of death and you have no idea where you're clicking or what you clicked on.

You can pick up a phone, but you better know beforehand what number you're dialing because you have to enter it in manually. It took me a good 10 minutes to even find my FBI badge so that I could even get out of the frigging office. You play as some random agent trying to find Mulder and Scully, but not before you systematically click on everything in the city first.

AND DRUMROLL

#1 Target Renegade (NES)

You wondered where all the NES games were right. Well, most of my NES games got jacked by other people and I have no idea where they are. I have maybe 10 games left to remind me of my childhood and one of them happens to be this abomination. This may actually have the honor of being, not only the worst game in my collection, but the single worst game I have ever played.

First off, look at the cover. I have no idea why there's a black haired martial artist without a shirt busting through a window. Because that never happens. Nothing that close to awesome even happens. Your character who I will call Billy Lee (because he's quite obviously ripping off Billy Lee from Double Dragon) has a brother who was assasinated by Mr. Big who owns a bar downtown.

Out of anger Billy Lee dons his kung fu overalls and decides he wants to get revenge. His extensive martial arts repertoire has taught him how to kick, punch, pick up crap off the ground and hit people with it, and do a kind of flying leap kick if you can somehow manage to push A+B+Right at exactly the same time. (It's much harder and annoying than it sounds)

So the game starts off with Billy Lee on the street when he suddenly gets accosted by a motorcycle gang. The motorcycles come on screen and run you down, while making a sound effect that sounds eerily like a four year old imitating an airplane.

So after you get run down a couple times you think, "Screw this I'll just leave the screen." You thought wrong! Billy Lee isn't going anywhere till all those bikers are dead. So, you try to kick them and punch them, but keep getting run over. Eventually you figure out that you have to do his flying jump kick at just the right time in order to knock them off their motorcycles. So now you have to do a ridiculously complicated move AND time it correctly.Finally you kill them all and can go right to the next screen. You beat up a bunch of homeless guys when suddenly... the timer runs out and you lose. Ok apparently Billy Lee only has 20 minutes of his life to spare to find the man who murdered his brother. Wait longer than that and he has other things to do.Game over man, game over.

So you kill the bikers again. Beat up a whole bunch of other guys. Kick some cyclops boss repeatedly in the crotch while he throws tires at you and then you've beat the first level. Next you go through the street and beat up hookers for some reason and then through the park and the mall, killing all who stand in your way until you get to Mr. Big's bar. You beat up all of his bouncers and then finally get to fight Mr. Big. And he's... 3 feet tall. Yeah, apparently your brother got killed by a psychotic entrepreneurial midget, go figure. If you've never played this game you should go check out a rom. If, for no other reason than to hear the sound the motorcycles make as they come on screen.

Also, if you've never been kicked in the junk before then give Target Renegade a try. It's able to simulate the feeling pretty accurately. Even down to the violent retching sensation.

I watched with glee as your kings and queens fought for ten decades for the gods they made.

2009-07-11T15:55:00.002-06:00

Continuing with the list of the crappiest games I own. Today we get to see the wonders of #10-6

#10: Star Ocean: 'Till the End of Time (PS2)

You know when something is made by one company and it's awesome, but then it's handed over to another company and it sucks? Squaresoft was awesome. Enix was okay, but Square Enix is like when the new episode of your favorite tv show turns out to be a clip show. You probably should like it, but for whatever reason you turn it off in disgust after 5 minutes.

Star Ocean 2 is one of the best rpgs on the playstation. Each character has different talents and abilities and you can teach them things like kitchen knife, which is a skill that contributes to both your cooking and fighting abilities. There's almost 100 different skills and a crazy amount of abilities you can use with them. There's even super skills which are combinations of other skills. Say each party member plays a different instrument. Well if they all get good enough you can combine their skills into the orchestra super skill. It also had 80+ endings, two main characters you could start with, decent voice acting and an awesome combat system.

So how did Square-Enix decide to improve that awesome skill system? They removed it entirely. They made the story suck even more, but the worst thing they did was to the dungeons *shivers*. They implemented a new gimmick where if you explore the whole dungeon you get an item. Sounds cool right? Well I'm talking about the WHOLE dungeon. Meaning you have to hug the walls of the entire thing 3-4 times to fill in the .001% you missed. Add that to the fact that there's only like 2 monster types per dungeon, and the terrible music the whole time, and you'll end up with this piece of trash. I hate you Sqaure-Enix!

#9 Grand Theft Auto (PSX)

The game that started it all. Now I liked the 2nd one and most of the ones after that, but this one is just so simple on all levels. The game was so basic that after you had loaded it you could take the disc out and play the entire game (except for missions) off of the playstation's 3 megabytes of ram. That's when you know you have a really basic game. When all it takes is 3 megs to play as long as you want.

The other problem is, with the terrible overhead view all the cars are exactly the same. You want to drive a sports car? Ok well there's a red block you can hijack. Red is fast right? Then you hijack it and find out that it's exactly the same as every other car you've been in before. Some cars are slightly faster, but since they all look almost exactly the same you have no idea what you're getting 'till you grab it.

This is one series that got a ton better as it went along. Not much else to say about it.

#8 Homeworld 2 (PC)

The thing that still grates me on this one is that I paid full price for it. I'm still pissed to this day about that. When you're a little kid you don't have the cash to get game after game, so if you buy a terrible game you're stuck with it for awhile.

I tried to like Homeworld, I really did. It just didn't happen. So basically you control a giant mothership that builds other smaller warships which you use to destroy whatever's in your path. Sounds pretty fun right? Yeah that's what I thought, till I was out $50. :( So you decide that you want to build cruisers. You look up what add ons you need to add to the mothership to get them and finally get outfitted to start mass producing cruisers and raining untold destruction across the denizens of space. Then you realize that the game only lets you build 20 cruisers. So, you say, "screw that" and decide to build frigates. Then you find out you can only build 10 frigates.

So now you're poor and have a military of about 30 ships and you're ready to go attack some aliens. Well, Homeworld teaches you one thing about space... it's frigging huge! Seriously, after you send your units to go attack you might as well go make yourself a sandwich because it's gonna be awhile before they get anywhere. So, after you've made and eaten your sandwich you come back and have some epic battle.

Except you're zoomed out too far to see anything. So, you zoom in. Well now all you can see is one of your frigates. In frustration you rotate the camera like a hamster rolling USS Enterprise to try to get a good view of what's going on. In the confusion you click on something else. Well now you've just lost the game. It's going to take you a good 5 minutes to find your army again and by the time you do it's almost completely gone.

The graphics were awesome for back in the day though.

Socom: Combined Assault (PS2)

I don't think I've ever played a game for as long as I played Socom 2. For a year and a half I didn't even buy another game and basically all I played was Socom 2. I even bought a 50 foot ethernet cable and ran it through the floor and wall just so I could play it online. There was nothing like playing as a terrorist online with 15 other people. Being the last one alive on your team and killing all the remaining seals with your fully automatic shotgun.

Then came action replay and there was always more glitchers and cheaters than regular players, so I stopped playing. Then Combined Assault came out and I eventually decided to get it. Immediately, it just felt wrong. There weren't any terrorists anymore, this time you fought against "mercenaries." Instead of having levels customized for specific level types they just let you pick a level and set all the options. Making some pretty bland games.

Because Halo had them they finally decided to include vehicles, but it just doesn't work in Socom. Navy Seals aren't going to take a tank into the jungle by themselves thank you very much.

The other problem is that they took what's clearly intended to be an online game and stuck a big crappy single player campaign in there. Because they divided their attention the game ends up sucking in all departments. Why do people do that these days? Not all single player games need multiplayer and some multiplayer games definitely don't need a crappy single player campaign.

#6 Namco Museum Vol 1 (PSX)

How can you go wrong with a collection of old school arcade games? Pac Man is awesome on any console right? Well yeah, the games themselves are pretty fun. The problem is they actually set it in a museum. Yeah, so instead of just selecting Pac Man from a list you need to -LOADING- wait for the hotel lobby to load then make a left at the front desk and open the door to the Pac Man wing -LOADING- Then you walk past all the useless Pac Man trivia until you get to the game itself, and then finally -LOADING- um... when it loads you can play Pac Man.

Repeat this process for Pole Position, Bosconian, Galaga, Rally X, and Toy Pop. If I want to play an arcade game from the early 80's I'll do it without going through 10 minutes of loading screens thank you very much Namco.

Please allow me to introduce myself. I'm a man of wealth and taste.

2009-07-10T21:04:00.003-06:00

Every once in awhile I buy something that is completely and utterly crappy and useless. Since I'm a nerd every once in a while this happens with video games. More than once I've thought a game would be awesome, blown money on it and then stuffed it away in a deep dark corner somewhere never to play it again. In honor of crappy buys I've made over the years I decided to make a list of the top 15 worst games I own.

So obviously I have to own the game in order for it to qualify. I also must be in possesion of an actual physical copy of the game. So no roms or anything like that. That also means that I still have to have it, so even though I owned Sesame Street Countdown at one point, somebody kifed it and it's no longer eligible. So after a short search through my crap I bring you!

#15: Wild Arms 3 (PS2)

The original Wild Arms was awesome. It had music that rivals Final Fantasy's. Each character had tools which allowed them to solve puzzles in all the dungeons they went to. The combat was short and awesome. And the story and characters are really top notch. It was my very first playstation game and is one of the few that I've busted out and played in the last couple years.

So, why isn't Wild Arms 3 awesome? Well the biggest complaint I have is that the cities are not visible on the world map until you find them. And it's not just cities either. It's signposts and vendors and basically anything you want to find. Not only that, but they will only show up after you've met certain requirements to unlock them. So let's say you want to go to a dungeon. You have to go to the world map and walk around spamming square. Each time you push square a little wireframe grid pops up around your character and reveals adjacent hidden objects. So the game basically goes like. Take 5 steps, push square. Take 5 more steps, push square again. Random battle. Take 5 steps, push square. Riveting isn't it?

When I was looking for the 2nd town I was wandering around spamming square like usual when I uncovered a signpost. The signpost told me that the town was due south. I got excited and combed the desert looking for the town. Well guess what? The second town will not appear until you talk to someone about it in the first town. The story and characters suck and the combat is slow. Luckilly I got it for $5

#14 King of the Monsters 2 (SNES)

This game is actually kind of fun. You're giant monsters that roam around the city ripping up skyscapers and chucking them at aliens, and wreaking widespread havoc with things like thermonuclear breath with 4 different monsters to choose from. It even has 2 player co-op. This game made the list for one reason alone. Whenever you touch another giant monster you have to wrestle it by moving your thumb back and forth across the D-Pad as fast as you can. Whoever's faster does a devastating attack to the other guy. This ends up happening every 15 seconds or so until your thumb starts to bleed and you want to throw the controller against the wall. If it were an arcade and you had a joystick it'd be awesome, but, as it is, it literally rubs big chunks of skin off of your thumb by the time you're through.

#13: Star Trek Generations. (Gameboy)

The movie was ok, it had its share of cool scenes and good lines. The Gameboy game however just has you endlessly barrel rolling, searching for romulan ships to blow the crap out of. Remember that part from the movie? When Picard tells Data to keep spinning the Enterprise around in a circle until they find the Romulans? It's the frigging 24th century! The Enterprise has high tech sensors. It does not need to travel through space rolling like a hamster ball. So that's basically the gameplay. Search endlessly for enemies. Find an enemy and phaser them for 2 seconds before you lose them again and then wait for them to make another pass. I don't think I ever got past the second level, but as far as I know it has absolutely nothing to do with the movie and a ton to do with lateral cartwheels.

#12 King's Field (PSX)

Look at that box! It's frigging huge. This is the only PSX game box I've ever seen that you could use to carry your bible around in. This game is actually pretty fun. The gameplay is pretty engaging. The controls are pretty good, and while it's difficult it's still playable. The problem with the game lies in its graphics. Now I'm not one to complain about graphics, I like old games quite a bit and usually the graphics aren't a problem. Unless the game is huge and all the areas look alike. I had absolutely no idea where to go when I played this game as a little kid. Everywhere looks exactly the same. To add insult to injury the game came with a 5 minute prepaid card to a 1-900 number tip line. How much help can you get in 5 minutes? "Ok, I'm in this gray hall place where I just killed a skeleton... um, there's there's two more gray halls on either side. One has a bat and the other has like a green cube monster. Both of them are guarding doors that lead to other gray halls." By the time you got all that out all your time was up and you're stuck wandering through more gray halls till a polygon man kills you. This game would be awesome if they remade it.

#11: Motorstorm (PS3)

I really don't know why I don't like this game. The graphics are pretty good and racing games in general are pretty fun. Maybe it's because there's no local co-op play. If you could play against friends it might actually be pretty fun. It came with my PS3 and I've played it a grand total of twice. Each time for about 15 minutes. It's like when a little kid wants to watch another terrible movie with you. You don't know why it's there, or why you're watching it.

Honorable Mention- Ren and Stimpy: Space Cadet Adventures (Gameboy)

Um.....? Why are they in space?

Old Lady's Yard! Old Lady's Yard!

2009-07-09T15:50:00.004-06:00

I was a pretty good kid when I was little. I was also an awkward little punk if I wanted to be. And I loved it. You can't beat jumping out of the swings, over the gravel and trying not to hit the relocatable, or putting your arms inside of your long sleeved shirt and secretly flipping off cars as they go by. I still have no idea why we did this, but we called it the "birdie wave." The girls would always make little nests out of grass they'd pulled out of the lawn, and for whatever reason I'd always kick them over whenever I saw them. I was also the kid that busted up everybody else's snowman. I even got sent to the principal's office once because we would grab the sprinklers and spray people. Usually we just sprayed our friends, but the principal didn't care :(

I'm somewhat less of a jerk nowadays, but sometimes I miss the good old days. One of the things that we always used to do was go to the fence at the northern end of the field and gaze at "Old Lady's Yard."

I don't think it looked this crappy when I was little, but this is the illustrious "Old Lady's Yard." I really don't know why we called it that. I'm not even sure if there even was an old lady that lived there. I certainly don't remember one if there was. Anyway, it's one of the few houses that you can see on the edge of the field at Cottonwood. For some obscure reason that has become lost to the mists of time a couple of kids, myself included would stop when we reached the fence and would do a chant of, "Old Lady's Yard, Old Lady's Yard!" I honestly do not remember there being an old lady over there, but I guess our taunts got to her because the yard looks horrible nowadays.

One day, during one of these chantings I noticed a big piece of silk that the wind had blown into one of the trees. It had the texture of a laundry sheet, but was about as tall as I was. I played with it for awhile, when for no reason whatsoever I found a big piece of dog crap, loaded it in the silk and then slung it over the fence directly into "Old Lady's Yard."

The second assault on "Old Lady's Yard" wasn't carried out by me, but by a kid named Tait. For some reason he had a cheap little flipbook with him. You know the kind you can draw animations on and then flip through them so they look like they're moving. He decided that he'd write all the swear words he knew on it, and then after he was done we all went over to "Old Lady's Yard" and he tossed it over the fence. The next day there was an announcement from the principal trying to figure out who had done it, but as far as I know no one ever got caught.

So that's "Old Lady's Yard." To this day I don't know why we chanted by that house, but it was pretty awesome nonetheless.

I am camping deprived.

2009-07-06T22:13:00.002-06:00

Nothing beats busting out the deep woods off and still waking up the next day with an arm full of mosquito bites. Those things are pretty friggin resourceful. Especially when you come to think that they all spawned in a pool of some poor sap's blood, only to go out and suck more blood so they can spawn some more.

I came to two conclusions these past couple days. One is that I really need to go camping more because it really is a blast, and the other is that my sister's tent isn't totally waterproof. That made for an interesting night.

I don't know what it is about the outdoors, but I always feel invigorated. In the city I am far from a morning person. I always stay up late and hate getting up in the morning. When I'm camping though, I wake up really early and am really energetic all day. It's awesome!

So we went river rafting in the afternoon. The Snake River is really high at the moment and so the rapids were crazy fast and really fun. I almost got bucked out a couple times, but managed to stay in the raft. I'm in the middle of the picture with the bandanna on.
So yeah, if anyone is up for some camping/hiking/skydiving etc hit me up. Being outside is a lot more exciting than playing videogames (although those are awesome too.)

Albireo.

2009-07-05T21:51:00.003-06:00

This is just a binary star that I think is really cool. It's part of the Northern Cross constellation, and when seen by the naked eye it just looks like a single star. When viewed through a telescope however you can see that is in fact two seperate stars orbiting each other. I'm no astronomer by any means, but there's some sweet stuff up there if you look in the right places.

America frigging rocks.

2009-07-04T21:45:00.003-06:00

That's all I can say. I get so sick of all the people who sit and complain about how this or that is ruining America. That Bush ruined it, or that Obama is ruining it now. How about you sell your house and get on a plane to Venezuela, India, Saudi Arabia or wherever and we'll see how long you b**** about America then. There really aren't any better places you can live. Sure there's problems, but I can live my life however I want here and that's certainly not true of other places.

I still can't believe we won the Revolutionary War. Seriously, whenever you look at any of the history books or watch any of those documentaries you can see how amazing it is that a ragtag collection of 13 rebel states could gain independence from the most powerful army in the world. America rocks. Even the super polluted parts like New Jersey, or the ones with really messed up laws like California. America is just frigging awesome!

Iblis and the creation story.

2009-07-01T19:47:00.002-06:00

Since I'm reading Arabian Nights and it talks so much about djinni I figured I'd research them a little bit to find out what they are. I found the really interesting story of Iblis in the Quran. Iblis (which means he who causes despair) was a Djinni who lived with Allah in the preexistance. When Allah created Adam he commanded everyone to bow down before his finest creation. Iblis refused saying, ""I am better than he: Thou didst create me from fire, and him from clay." For his rebellion Iblis's name was changed to Shaitan (Satan, also the name of the evil one in the Wheel of Time books) and he vowed that he would seek vengeance upon the children of men and that he would drag as many down to hell with him as he could. In the Quran Iblis tempted Adam to partake of the fruit and not Eve. I thought that was pretty cool because the bible isn't very clear on there being a pre-existance, but the Quran excplicitly states there is. It just goes to show that there are some truths in other religions.

Can your friends do this? Can your friends do that? Can your friends pull this outta their little hat?

2009-07-01T19:27:00.003-06:00

So on a whim I picked up the old classic 1001 Arabian Nights from the library the other day. I've only just started reading it, but so far it's been pretty good. It's about two brothers who rule over different nations. The elder brother sends for the younger brother because he hasn't seen him in a long time. As the younger brother goes to get his gift to give to the elder brother he catches his wife cheating on him with a black man and cleaves both of them in half with his sword. He is understandably very upset, and when he visits his elder brother they find out that his wife and concubines aren't faithful either and so they all get slaughtered.

The brothers feel betrayed and decide that all women are evil and that none are faithful and so they decide that the only way to have a faithful woman is to only pick virgin women as their concubines and then to slaughter them after one night. That way they wont ever be betrayed again. Eventually people start to flee and the Wizier's daughter Sharazad gets an idea to stop the slaughter. She volunteers herself to be the king's concubine, and at the end of the night she calls in her sister and they start to tell the king a story. They intentionally don''t quite finish by the time daybreak rolls by, but the king is so fascinated that he lets them live another night to finish the story.

Sharazad is a pretty smart girl though and each night she and her sister have a new tale to tell the king. I assume there's 1001 but I haven't got that far yet. It's interesting though because all the stories like Ali Baba and the 40 thieves and Alladin come directly from this book. So far most of the stories have been about people who can talk to animals or get turned into animals by witches, but they're actually pretty good. There are 16 volumes though so I'm not sure if I'm going to get through them all or not.

Real life survival horror.

2009-06-29T18:47:00.002-06:00

You know those video games where there's like 40,000 undead chasing you and you only have 10 bullets? Well if you like handguns you're probably really familiar with it. With the change in presidents this year there was a panic among some people that our second amendment rights were about to be stripped away. So people went nuts and bought all the ammo and guns they could. Because of that ammo got kind of hard to find so casual gun owners went out and stocked up also so they could still go shooting ever now and then. Then since there was almost no ammo and still demand speculators began to buy it in bulk so they could turn a profit.

So President Obama has yet to enact a single piece of legislation affecting guns, (hopefully he wont either.) But because of a false sense of hysteria about not having any guns or ammo there is now hardly any handgun ammo in any type of sporting good store across the entire U.S. I'm sure it'll return to normal in a little while, but it's really annoying when I want to go to the firing range or wherever but can't because I don't want to waste the ammo I do have. Let's just hope the zombies don't decide to come now when everyone's low on bullets.

They were all in love with dyin' they were drinking from a fountain that was pouring like an avalanche coming down the mountain.

2009-06-29T16:55:00.002-06:00

Mikey, are you ok? Are you ok? Are you ok Mikey? From the news this week you'd think that Elvis had died again. Seems like every time I turn on the news all they talk about is Michael Jackson with another clip of thriller. I liked Michael, he's got some sweet songs, but c'mon do you really need to do two autopsies to figure out what happened to the guy. He probably died when his inner child finally managed to claw its way out of the basement. Ok bad joke there.

Let's see what else was on the news? Billy Mays died, Farrah Fawcet died, oh yeah and there was a violent military coup in Honduras. I think it's ironic that a popstar dies and that's on the news for a week, but a country gets its government overthrown and its president gets forced into exile and that takes a backseat to where Michael Jackson is gonna be buried. Oh and apparently Honduras is the 5th largest exporter of bananas to the U.S. go figure.

Abandonware rocks... when it works.

2009-06-28T23:19:00.006-06:00

Bonus update! Because blogs are boring if there aren't any posts.

So, when I was a little kid I loved the point and click style adventure games. Like Sam 'n Max Hit the Road, Day of the Tentacle, and King's Quest series. I also liked Wolfenstein 3d, but my mom deleted that pretty fast. My first computer was a 386 and I had some pretty sweet times on that thing. I remember my brother wanted to delete my Space Quest game so he and his friend Bryant could install something. I told them no and got all mad. Joe's friend Bryant told me that he could give me an invisibility cheat in Space Quest if I let him. So I got all excited, let him use the computer, and... he deleted my game. My poor gullible little 6 year old self :(

Anyway, recently I heard about a series called Quest for Glory. It's really old, but it's a point and click with combat and stats and rpg elements. Plus the fourth one is voiced by John Rhys-Davies (Gimli from Lord of the Rings) So, I thought sweet! After seeing a $150 price tag on amazon, I quickly looked elsewhere. Finally after a lot of searching, installation of alcohol 120%, removal of trojan horse from alcohol 120%... wtf internet? :( and a good old shot of dosbox I got it running.

So it starts out pretty sweet. I get to pick my hero as a magic user and get through about 5 minutes of gameplay when I get to this little hill with a squid obelisk.

I walk to the path on the left and...

Wait, huh, what? Not an object? Your moms not an object! So after a little internet research I find out that basically if you're computer is faster than a pentium 133 the game will go crazy right there and crash. The weird part is that they had computers that fast back then. I bet Sierra got a lot of angry phone calls about that one.

Luckily the dosbox program I'm using let me run it as if I were using my old 386 again. Through the course of my travels I also encountered errors 49 and 52 due to the same problem. And a bug with the end boss that actually made me have to speed up my cpu. Other than that though it's one of the best old school games I've played in a long time. I'd recommend you try it if you have the patience. It's all the point and click puzzle fun you want with a pretty sweet combat system thrown in to boot. After you get it all installed and working I can even help you with the invisibility cheat :)

Will fight hobos for food.

2009-06-28T20:49:00.003-06:00

Hobos are exciting. They get to travel around scenic downtown with a mystery bag full of exotic random trash they've found in their travels. Sure, they can smell a bit gamey and have a habit of muttering indistinctly as they travel to various places, but they're sure to give you that guilty 15 seconds as they stare at you teary eyed, with a cardboard sign about starving puppies while you wait for the light to turn green.

Well I'm on to you hobos! I know you're just showing off that you have something I don't. A day job. Well just you wait hobos! I'll be productive someday and have my own shopping cart to wheel around downtown, and my own giant refrigerator box to sleep in.

So yeah, for the past two weeks I have basically been a stay at home hobo, without the benefits of sleeping in the back of a UTA bus. Originally I had the fantastic idea to take summer school. I had the likewise fantastic idea to take chemistry and math over the summer. At first this seemed great. Then my inner hobo and I came to an important realization, math and chemistry suck!
So we dropped chemistry and were left with just a math class. Well, that math class wasn't available at the campus by me, and the online class was full, so I had to commute to it every day. Well after about a week of pointless commuting I got sick of it and dropped that class too.

I am now free to enjoy all the exciting benefits every jobless, single, 23 year old gets to enjoy when they're not in school. With such highlights as: looking online for scams, er, jobs that offer me 5,000 dollars a day from home! Playing video games for several hours. Belittiling the elderly for fun and profit. And sleeping for unhealthy amounts of time.

Hooray for summer! I will need to get a job in the near future though. After all, if your spending dollars don't go to me they'll probably end up with some homeless guy. And he already has enough change dang it!

What hath God wrought?

2009-06-28T19:52:00.002-06:00

So this will be my first attempt at any kind of a website whatsoever since I was like 11 and had my own Geocities page that I updated twice. I'm pretty sure that page is still on the internet somewhere, and I'm sure someone still checks it daily to see if there's anymore pictures of dogs, or if I've added any cheats to the three games I arbitralily stuck up there. Don't worry though, hopefully I've learned a bit in twelve years and can talk about more than how to get past the first zombie in Resident Evil. Although that is an important life skill/ rite of passage in a young nerd's life.

So, enjoy. I guess we'll find out if deranged minds are contagious via internet. I hope not, but if you start getting the sudden urge to post horsies everywhere... sorry.