Anyone still alive has let me down

:(

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 06:40:34 GMT

It's been one of those days/lives.

LJ, you begin to bore me

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 19:49:56 GMT

All I have consumed today:

Today should be a hoot until about 9:30.

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 18:16:58 GMT

Yeah, the voice-posting thing is starting to piss me off, honestly. I can't go on the extended tirades I would like to, as it keeps cutting me off at the 5-minute mark. Bloody annoying.

So, yeah. Whatever.

apresminuit, guess what?

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 17:50:52 GMT

apresminuit asks: Kittehs?

tinyfolk, come on down!

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 04:42:45 GMT

tinyfolk asks: What are your parents like? Do you get along with them? Do you have any siblings?

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 19:53:35 GMT

And I thought MY vitriol about certain things was uncontainable.

My birthday tiara

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 17:16:30 GMT

Just in case nobody believed me.

Also, right after this, I washed my hands. Dumb ol' mustard. :P

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 02:11:55 GMT

The problem with seeing things on the outside...is never knowing whether the inside is worth it.

And the risk of trying is often too much.

chocolatebark, you're next!

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 22:51:49 GMT

His question: If you absolutely HAD to relocate to another state, which state would you pick, and why?"

Memories be made of theese

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 04:33:10 GMT

I was turned on to the blog Sleeveface by my amazing pal James tonight, after sandwiches and soft-eating licorice. This led her to take this photo of me...

...which, if my shirt were brown and I was holding the book out/up a bit more, would have been perfect.

As it stands, it's simply testimony to wild-child awesome friends.

liamtheruiner's question gets an answer

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 20:08:37 GMT

I'm generally against cosplay on principle

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 15:54:56 GMT

Some things were just never meant to be seen in actual, tangible three dimensions. Just my opinion, shared by many others.

That said, I admit both an attracted-ness and respect for this young lady from Stockholm, no doubt now being swarmed by fanboy fanmail begging for her hand in marriage...

...for her $350 representation of Zero Suit Samus, including materials and batteries for the LED lights in the gun. Yep.

And when they catch wind of the fact that she's also responsible for this little number...

...an oil painting (done in 16-bit, no less) of the iconic scene in A Link to the Past of the hero retrieving the Master Sword...well, you're likely to hear the concerted *THUD* of several hundred waning fanboys fainting dead.

Okay! Gonna clean the apartment, and get to some o 'dem questions. Promise. :)

My experiences so far with I Wanna Be the Guy

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 07:13:40 GMT

I've played many a game in my day. And I've beaten about every game I've ever played, and the ones I haven't...are renowned for their extreme difficulty. Well, loathed by some. Example: The Legend of Zelda 2: Link's Adventure is not a crucible designed to separate wheat from chaff, worthy from scum. It is designed to inspire smoking, barren hatred in the Nintendo generation.

It's one of the games I haven't beaten. The others? Battletoads, Ghostbusters for the NES, and Spy Hunter. Those games are known to me as the worst of the worst, the games I hated enough not to put away, but to keep playing. To over and over again spit in the eye of their contemptible, soulless gray encasements, letting all and sundry know that this was my world, and I was going to govern how I saw fit.

With the exception of Battletoads, though, none of those games offered anything in terms of the barely visible reward that's supposed to come with playing games that have been hence known as Nintendo Hard. Battletoads got so hard I almost cried, at the age of 14, but it looked and played so awesomely that I just had to see how it wound up. I got as far as the jets. (Remember the hoverbikes in Level 3? Picture those, but faster). Spy Hunter offered more slate-gray roads and more armored cars that can take my bullets. Yay. I was told there were boats later in the game, but I never bothered. Ghostbusters was one of the most abysmal games I have ever played, period, and I'm leaving it at that.

I Wanna Be the Guy is somehow leaving all of my "Nintendo Hard" memories eating its own brand of sweetly vitriolic dust. This is difficulty bordering on Sadism, then bounding over Sadism and straight on, headfirst into leering-in-the-dark-while-taunting-you-with-nursery-rhymes Ax Crazy.

Yet, not a bit of it makes me the least bit angry. Let me see if I can explain.

First, the story. You're a little (TINY) guy called "The Kid." You want, as the title suggests, to be "The Guy." So you have to set out to find and kill The Guy so you can take his place. You have a red cape, a pistol and a permanent dur-face on at all times, and you set out for your adventure.

That's the story, such as it is. Sounds simple enough, right? And from the look of it, you could readily assume it's a sort of generic side-scroller, like Mega Man or Whomp 'Em. The downside? You have one hit point, and everything in this game can kill you. And will. Many, many, many times over. The fruit, the stars, the moon. It will all blow you to cinnamon.

The screen up above is a prime and ripe example, and actually sets the sort of tone that needs to be established before you can even begin to take it all on. There's a reason this game is often downloaded as the three-level demo and not as the entire game; most people never make it past the first couple of screens.

So, that screen up there. You will notice that the giant cherry is falling up at our hero. And this is the first real screen of the game. Those trees are, when you start, covered with the giant red fruit, straight out of Super Mario World. When you run under certain pieces of fruit, they fall from the tree onto your hero. Well, I'll just jump over them, then, you think to yourself. The first of many insanely faulty assumptions about this game. As you can see, some of the giant fruits decide that they want to fall UP and smash you. And yeah, everything that touches you immediately reduces you to pulp. Even giant gravity-defying cherries. Again, first screen.

I don't know where this is. I haven't made it here. I may NEVER make it here. But doesn't looking at it kinda just make you think "Oh, my sweet God, what can you even do about that?"

And that's this game in a nutshell. "What the FUCK do I do?" followed appropriately by "How the FUCK did I just die?"
Pro-Tip: it may have been the Q key. While trying to figure out the controls of this game, I pressed Q. Don't do that. It instantly kills you. Yep. You have a self-destruct key. Do be careful.
Also, do not press the R key, or you'll immediately be sent back to your last save point. That can be very frustrating.

Which brings me to an odd little codicil I found myself noticing. For all its Nintendo-levels of difficulty, I was more amused than anything. Sure, after about my 70th time trying to nail a certain jump, only to be intercepted by one thing or another and made a gore sprinkler, I was a little peeved. But like any good (great?) platformer, there are promises made that make you want to keep playing. Like Battletoads, insane difficulty lead to greater plateaus of awesomeness, until you felt good, worthy of the grand quest set before you. That is, before you lost that last continue at the "Snakes and Spikes" level and hid the cartridge under your mattress until your family moved, like some of us did.

So, what keeps me playing I Wanna Be the Guy, easily the most difficult game I have ever played?

Things like the boss fights, really.
And yeah, take a good long look at that. That is the actual first boss in this game. The oversized 8-bit sprite of Mike Tyson from Tyson's Punch-Out!. Putting his fists to your bridge.
Yup. Eventually, you actually fight Dracula from Symphony of the Night, and even more bizarrely, a massive sprite of the arms and upper torso of Zangief from Street Fighter II that fights like Kraid from Super Metroid.
I think that speaks for itself.

This is is still one of my favorite screens in the whole game:

You know when you pick a Robot Master to fight in Mega Man, and this screen comes up, and the heroic music queues in, and your chosen Robot Master drops into that blue band in the starfield? Yeah, that's your character in the blue band itself. And if you don't haul ass, the sprite of Gutsman will indeed fall into that area and crush him like a grape.

Fuck. Yes.

And so far, this is what's been keeping me at this game, having lost +110 lives on "Hard" mode.
(Yeah, that's another thing. There is no "Easy" mode. There's "Medium," "Hard," "Very Hard" and "Impossible." And if you choose "Medium," your character suddenly wears a pink bow in his hair, and all the SAVE points, instead of saying SAVE...say WUSS underneath them. Yeah.)

It's the burgeoning insanity, the constant threat of something new and crazy coming out to kill me. Will the novelty wear off, and will I ever take this game seriously enough to actually give it my time, thus dooming me to put my elbow through my monitor like an ersatz Steve Wynn to a digital Le Rêve?

Only time will tell...

Oh, and we'll get some questions answered tomorrow, too!

How the FUCK IS it the 2nd week of July already?!

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 16:21:15 GMT

The problem with being 13 years old, emotionally, is...well, that is the problem, isn't it?

Oh, well. Further on down the line.

I hate to be a pest

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 05:40:33 GMT

But that won't really stop me.

I have 5 questions and one sort-of un-question to answer for Tuesday.

Is this all you want to know?

Last chance. :)

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 05:20:14 GMT

Lord knows I'm not the "squeeee"ing type, save when kittens are involved. Then I'm a-gush, and without restraint.

There are some events, however, that strain what my brain can call awesome, and reach a new horizon, a metaverse where I can be found alone, shaking and cackling with the classic mad scientist glee.

Today was such an occasion.

"How?" some of you are doubtlessly asking.

This is how:

=

Today was the day I discovered that Herbert West & the Question are the same fucking dude.
Phew.I think God just teabagged me.

I have a hat, and today, it's off to one Jeffrey Combs. :)

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 16:42:13 GMT

Rube at work doesn't understand how a robot with gold buck teeth who admits to "not doin' too much readin'" is the least bit racially offensive. "White people act that way, too!" he asserts. "Should we call Barack Obama racist because he acts white?"

...I might hit him, one day.

I urge you to place your questions, in the meantime.

Dennis cheers himself up

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 20:33:49 GMT

I haven't done this in a while, and I figured it was about time. I know it's the weekend, y'all got lives and duties and whatnot. Indulge me if you can.

Ask me one question. Anything you've ever wanted to ask me, or were just curious about. I'll answer it to the greatest extent of my abilities. Don't worry about embarrassing me or offending me. Ask whatever's on your mind.
One per customer.

I'll answer them in a post all its own, probably around Monday.

Lay it on me.

One of the few things that can depress me to the point of going back to bed

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 16:12:23 GMT

Reading that someone tried to immolate a kitty.

So, g'night, again.

EDIT: The story, if you've the stomach.

NNNRRRRGGGHHH

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 05:11:50 GMT

Just why do I play video games, anyway?!

More importantly, why do I keep going back to them? ALL THEY DO IS PISS ME OFF!!

SORCERY!

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 04:34:22 GMT

Before the computer crashed, I never saved my Cave Story game. I thought, no big thing, I redownload it.

When I did, I booted the game and started at my last save point. Whuh? Cave Story, what do you have on me?!

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 18:05:22 GMT

Hoo, boy.

Firstly:
I've seen a number of puerile little men on the internet, however few, defending the 'merits' of this film. They are remarkably few, but most of them like to end their reviews with things like "Don't think about it too much" and "It's not Citizen Kane!" as if these statements were actual defenses. Indeed, they are not. To give a movie a bit of thought to plot and credibility does not make you pretentious, and NO movie since Citizen Kane has tried to be Citizen Kane, and we are grateful for that.

I intend to give action movies as much thought as they give me in return. An action movie can and will truly rock if I can be compelled to care enough what's going on on the screen, if the characters DO something for me, if the effects are decent, and so on. When asked by folk to see the first one, I was naturally disgusted. "Michael Bay, toy franchise I loved as a child, no, please!" I stood by that throughout the first movie, which contained more irritating attempts at comedy than a MADtv marathon, through Shia LeBouf being one of THE most annoying young men I have ever witnesses speak...through John Turturro attempting to outdo him in that department. Through robot pee jokes.

Robot pee jokes.

So this one, I at least knew somewhat what I was getting into. The first one's staunchiest defenders came to me one at a time, at work and online, informing me of what a massive letdown this second film was. Michael Bay LETTING DOWN his fans in terms of blow-my-shit-up action movies? How can you possibly derail such complete basement-level expectations, anyway? The answer's simple; by not giving a shit, which this movie did in spades. Though a very enjoyable read, io9's claims that Bay has made a madness-inducing art movie are a little off the mark, if I may say so myself. (I know it's intended as a massive snarkfest, but bear with me). To have something so blast-and-boom inconsequential cause madness and illusory feelings leaning toward loss of control in anyone would be a testament to a sallow and sickly will, unfit for even the most basic of bad/mad movies. This movie doesn't care enough to give you a sense of madness. It doesn't care enough to point you in the right direction, or even light that path.

Its goal is simple: to disorient you, to make you wonder if a plot exists. It fails even at that. By the 30-minute mark, you will not care. Hate to say it, I was often too disoriented to be truly offended. Though that didn't stop me from being annoyed, and were it not for my exalted company, the screen would have been torn from the wall and wadded in my mouth, spat out in speared ribbons at the 4 other people in the theater with me.

The story, such as it is...Sam's off to college, which has his Mom (one of THE most brazenly annoying presences onscreen there have EVER been, bordering on bamboo chutes under the fingernails) sobbing uncontrollably and without restraint, and his Dad (Kevin Dunn, the poor man's Danny Aiello) cartoonishly lamenting how much money he spent on it. He then calls his girlfriend, the catcher's-mitt-skinned Megan Fox, who now works with her Dad in an auto-shop. The very first shot of her in the film, she is working on a motorcycle in an untenable and improbable position, in which her posterior is jutting upward at a 35-degree angle. Before this, two jokes are used involving dogs humping.

You're in the first 8 minutes, and your only hope is to invest nothing of yourself in this film, to give it exactly what it's giving you; the finger, figuratively, which I gave back, literally.

So, the robots. They're there. Moving on...

See what I just did there? Bay did it first. Bay barely involves a number of characters (including the titular Fallen, who has a silly robot beard and is in the movie for about 12 minutes), but expects us to care when things happen to them. Optimus has less screen time than the terribly offensive Skid and Mudflaps (who I'll get to in a minute), but dies in the first 25 minutes. Or 45, it's terribly hard to tell. There's choirs queuing, slow-motion used to excess, but you're barely familiar. All these fiberglass Ents of Cybertron look exactly the frick-fuckin' same, you'll wonder how the character designers didn't off themselves out of boredom, essentially creating the same characters 11 billion times.

The heroes are inconsequential, so Bay decides to pad his film with acres of maddeningly unfunny comic relief. Remember Anthony Anderson from the first movie? Remember NOT laughing at him and his "My gramma don't like nobody on the carpet, specially PO-LICE!"? Now magnify his lack of dignity and respect for black people, that sublime feeling of somehow lamenting Stepin Fetchit's subtle nuances, by about 100,000. You now have the lethal mix of Skid and Mudflaps, sadly played by Spongebob Squarepants, a.k.a. Tom Kenny, a venerable voice veteran and one of my heroes. Skid and Mudflaps talk in outdated black vernacular. They have golden buck teeth. They admit to "not doing much reading." That last line stuck in my craw for the remainder of the film, essentially Bay climbing a tall mountain, fistfuls of cash, crying out "...AND I HATE BLACK PEOPLE, TOO!"

It would be the end of a languorous climb and tirade for Bay, for he declares war on a great many things, in a very literal sense. Bay likes explosions; we all know this. He aims them, however, at libraries and universities, and then historical ruins. Higher education is of dire consequence to our youth...it is much better to be the paper stereotypes Bay thinks we all are. And to have whole functioning Mountain Dew machines in our dorms. Women are criminal waifs who want to eat our souls after having sex with us, and if they're not, they're dumb as fence posts.
Among other things, need it be said, Bay hates us. His contempt for the people he's taking money from is unrivaled.

I should mention again that the comic relief isn't funny. A robot humping Megan Fox's leg isn't funny. A conspiracy theorist whose sole purpose is to scream "WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!" over and over again when anything ever threatens him? Very not funny. A giant robot's very obvious, hanging and clanging genitalia? NOT FUNNY. His Mom not knowing what a hash brownie is, eating one and acting like a complete idiot on campus for several minutes? The DEFINITION of NOT FUNNY.

But where was I? The story, right. Sam has a fragment of the silly Cube from the first movie, the one that can animate any machine and make it a violent gremlin immediately set on murdering its surrounds, and the bad robots want it, so they can...ah, well, they don't really need it. Coz there's an Energon source on the planet, which...is never really brought up again. Also, did you know Decepticons hatched from eggs, from some giant Transformer in space who shits out new ones? Me, either. Again, like it matters.

What it all boils down to is this thing, which is supposed to be the Autobot Matrix of Leadership, but really just looks like an exotic vibrator designed by H.R. Giger. With it, the remains of Optimus can be reanimated, and only a Prime can kill the Fallen. Again, never explained, never detailed. Only a Prime can kill the Fallen. Ask any questions and you're an asshole who's doing too much thinking.
With the Dildo of Death Metal in his chest, Prime wakes up and starts owning robots left and right, along with an elderly robot version of myself. Oh, yeah, I didn't mention Jetfire. Ostensibly the best thing about the film, if only because he reminds me of what I will be when I grow older; namely a craggy, forgetful loon who farts parachutes. I have a soft spot for robots that remind me of me, okay? Lay off.

Prime owns, Starscream wieners around, Arcee is blown up after her one and ONLY line in the stinking movie...like, immediately afterward...and Sam dies. Shucks. But then...hahaha, oh I almost forgot...he goes to Robot Heaven. Yup. Shia LeBouf dies and goes to the Land of Dairy Queen, all chocolate mountains and fog, only with more bearded robots. They tell him he's awesome, and bring him back to life. The Fallen has his face peeled off (which doesn't kill any other robot, but is an apparent death sentence for the Fallen; all questions are to be directed at Bay's accountants), which makes Megaton and Starscream run off.

Uh, victory?

There's also something about a cannon that's supposed to extinguish the sun, but I forget.

Also, it must be said. I have a bit of a fetish for seeing the insides of control rooms. I love monitors and men having information relayed to them by other men, and I love seeing people do things with that information, namely typing into a computer to have that information put to some use. After this film, my lust for such activities has been nipped squarely in the bud. I never want to see another man, upon getting a crucial piece of information through one of his lackeys, say "Let's have it." Sorry, Fallen. You killed it dead.

*hhhhh*

SO. I don't often pull this card, but I'm going to anyway, because this movie stole, like, $200 million, easy, and still made that back threefold. So...

If you liked this movie, if you laughed at any of the jokes, if you're willing to forgive it for a performance or two or the occasional appearance of a wallet-skinned girl who can't close her goddamned mouth....you're an asshole.

The only people who could like this movie are assholes. I can't even forgive the "but it's robots fighting!" angle anymore, because it even failed on that front. If you can tell me at any point who was winning, during any given fight (except Jetfire's 15 seconds of stomping), or given any more of an impression that random piles of garbage weren't just rolling down hills and being flung from great heights, your eyes function on some sort of higher understanding of sight.

And you're STILL an asshole.

So yeah. Kitty sleeping on a stack of papers, anyone?

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:21:31 GMT

Computer did a quick "shit itself" last night. My desktop wallpaper actually became a poorly spelled warning against spyware.

YOUR'RE COMPUTER IS IN DANGER! IT COULD BREAK YOUR LIFE!

Yeah. Just like that. Those exact words. I was noticeably freaked out...I didn't know spyware (or it's anti-brethren) could hijack my lovely desktop wallpaper.

So I quick-yanked everything onto the external hard drive and reformatted again. Though now that I look, I forgot two videos I paid money for. Shit.

'Nuther day in the misadventures. I wish I could say, once in a while, "FOR SCIENCE!" about this sort of thing. It would justify...everything.

Do WHAT YOU WANT COZ A PIRATE LIVES FREE

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 06:10:11 GMT

Yar har, fiddle dee dee, being a pirate is all right to be!
Do what you want coz a pirate lives free!

YOU ARE A PIRATE

Pray for me, folks. Tomorrow, I brave the untold depths...

And pay money to see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

Least I know what I'm getting into this time.

All's Fare

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 18:19:05 GMT

View Poll: All's Fare

I think I know what most of you will pick. :D But that's why we have these polls!