Tuesday, September 29, 2009

New Gen, Same Turok

It seems that the chronic problem with Turok isn't the concept, because if it was I wouldn't keep coming back. The problem with Turok is that every game lacks the ability to direct you when you're lost. This wouldn't be a problem if the levels were open and the objectives clear, but it seems more often than not that I find myself in a clearing with a lot of dead-end off shoots with an objective like "Kill Everything" or "Find the Key" only with the debilitating problem of there being no enemies left and it's a fucking jungle. Often times the section that you are in is connected by a secret gate or tree that can be shifted or passage hidden behind bushes. The problem with this is that the game comes to a screeching hault every few minutes not while you solve a puzzle, but while you decode what a programmer thinks should be the obvious course of action.

What makes this worse is that you have a companion who does nothing but follow you around. Maybe if I've been running around in circles you could do something productive like stand near where I'm supposed to be going. A lot of games give you something like a Bat-sense or Wolverine-sense or Spider-sense or AnimalX-sense to keep the action moving along. Turok has his 1st-person ponder where he holds his guns out directly infront of himself and stands there, or the active-ponder where he holds his guns out directly infront of himself and runs around in a circle about 6 times trying to find a Bowie and Gretel method of getting the fuck out of there.

Or maybe I'm just balls a Turok. Is anyone actually good at it? I'd like to watch them play to get a sense of where the "logic" comes in.

Dear Playstation

I'm sorry that I was so prejudicial towards you in the past. We haven't always gotten along and I know that is mostly my fault. The truth of the matter is you are the most awesome thing in the entire world and I've had more fun with you than I have on just about any other game system.

Your sleek new design, albeit inconvenient, demands well deserved attention. You don't stand upright and you negate the ability to pile anything on top of you; you have forced me to rearrange my desk and use a large portion of it simply to have you, but you are worth it.

PS3, you do not look better than my 360. You don't have the classics of the Wii. You will not play the PS2 games of many years' past. Your controller design is unchanged from an imperfect design. Why do I love you, you ask?

Free downloadable demos.

I was never the kind of guy who downloaded demos for my PC, but this is because my PC is used for so many other things. It has videos and word processors and design programs and entire games loaded on to it that never look as good as they could and play rather choppily. For a machine that cost two grand, my computer started to suck awfully fast.

But you, Playstation, are, by definition, designed for playing. And so I play. Some of your demos are not fun at all (Condemned 2, although scary, was hard to control and all too easy to get killed by something you couldn't see. Maybe your demo shouldn't be the level where your character is drunk. Maybe I just think 1st person shooters are lame). Some of your demos are so fun that I want to buy them when I otherwise would not (X-Men Origins was beyond fun, Wet was surprisingly entertaining, Conan is a $14.99 discount buy). This last point is the most brilliant marketing strategy ever, especially for a more consumer conscious culture.

I don't want to take a $70 risk on a game that I don't know that I will like. If I were to buy Conan at its opening price, I would be disappointed and be less likely to buy a new game before I let it become preowned and dropped in a discount bin, or if it was a good game, wrapped in a "classics" package 3 years later. I would not buy X-Men, but now probably will. I would not even consider Wet, though now I will shop around for it. And I wouldn't have bought these demos if they hadn't been free, either.

This is why I love you, Playstation. I love you in the worst way. You make me want to spend money on things you've shown me I will enjoy, and I thank you for it. I see the marketing plan and I don't fall victim to it, I support it.



Thank you to those of you who made me buy one.

Desensitized

I've come to the conclusion that people are twats and desensitization is a good thing. This is not to be confused with bastardification.

Let me give you an example. We eat me, or at least a lot of us do. That meat comes from a living, breathing, and yes, thinking and feeling animal. It wants to live and hurts when it is killed. This is a fact of life. It's the food chain. We kill things and we eat them. Being humane isn't about not doing what we're designed to do because something gets hurt. Being humane is about being respectful for the life that ended to keep yours going. Look at most wild animals. A dog will shake the bejesus out of its prey to break its neck. A cat will go for the jugular to bleed it out as fast as possible. Given the tools that they have, this is a very good way to do it. It is the humane way to do it.

So understanding that animals are killed, bled out, cut into pieces and shipped to your grocer is something that I think is positive quality. Being able to see it and watch it and understand its necessity (for what portion of the process is entirely necessary. I do understand that a degree of slaughtering animals is a cost/time analysis) makes us better people because it keeps us from being ignorant. Enjoying it is another story. That's being a bastard.

That being said, if watching that sort of thing turns you off meat all together, then you're appropriately sensitive. What bothers me is the people who are bothered by killing animals but are comfortable eating them. It's the cold truth about the world that allows us to demand to make it better. If you disagree with killing animals but want to eat them then I urge you to tell someone how to kill animals without it being uncomfortable for you. The fact is, you can't do it. And if you say, "oh, just wait for them to die on their own" be prepared for less meat to cost way more. Animals that die on their own die in one of 4 ways, in order of likelihood:
  1. killed by another animal
  2. get sick and die
  3. die in an accident,
  4. or die of old age.
The maximum yield of meat from these events is thus
  1. none (another animal ate it)
  2. none (it's diseased. Unless you want to eat "we think we cooked what killed it out of it" beef)
  3. variable (depends when you find it)
  4. about half of what it could be (ever notice how old people are a lot skinnier than younger people?)
So stop whining about how we have to kill animals while you're busy grilling up another delicious steak. It's the circle of life.

If you don't like the meat debate, how about the encouraged desensitization we go through constantly? What about war? You can't watch an animal be killed for food but you can support the slaughter of a nation of people who aren't even necessarily fighting a cause, but are defending their country? How about our desensitization toward our fellow man? We hear about countless violent crimes every day and all we do is lock our doors. If you gave a shit about "humanity" you'd do something to stop it. If you cared about every life you wouldn't only be looking out for yourself. Start a neighbourhood watch. Investigate the crime. Make sure these criminals are put away. Feed the hungry. House the homeless. Hell, start small and give those cold bastards waiting for the bus a lift in your toasty 8 seater SUV.

Oh, I forgot you're doing your part by having a "fuel efficient" SUV. You're a real humanitarian.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Finishing Early

Finishing Early is the cure for everything. Bad knee? Finish work early. Got dumped? Finish work early. Bullet wound? Finish early.

No matter what's going wrong, finishing things early always makes me feel great. It just fills me with so much energy. Maybe it's that I'm getting things done, maybe it's that I have more time off than I thought. Whatever it is, it feels good.

Be Married

I just finished catching up with one of the few people I met last year at school. When I first met her I thought to myself "now here is a very attractive, smart, cheerful, bright, all around positive woman my age and she's sitting down next to me and talking to me. This can't be happening."

I soon found out in that semester that she was engaged to be married this past summer. After that, I had no problems talking to her. There really wasn't anything for me to be nervous about. There wasn't anything on the line.

I tried to work myself up to talk to this other girl in the same class. Well, the day I was going to ask her if she wanted to do something was the day she stopped coming to class. I emailed her and asked her what was up and suggested that we get together. She said we should and we back and forth'd a bit, and then I never heard from her again.

This is the case of so many single girls. Hook up with a single girl, get rejected. Talk to a single girl, she leaves the class. Friend of a friend, potential lesbian. Primed for a blind date, mysterious disappearance. Try and sit next to a girl in class, she moves to the other side of the room.

My conclusion is thus: Fuck single girls. One of the most fun times I've ever had in my life is stealing a girl from her boyfriend. Yeah, that ended poorly, and the type of girl that'll leave her boyfriend for me is the type of girl that'll leave me for her new boyfriend, but shit, that wasn't so bad, was it? So maybe the plan should be to subvert boyfriend "authority" and steal a girl who is already taken.

For all the talk I do about not wanting to do marketing because I don't like the idea of a competitive market, I sure do like winning. I like being better than someone else. And watching a social dynamic shift in my favour is the highest form of entertainment I have ever experienced.

Maybe I am enough of a bastard for marketing.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Don't Elect Me, I'm a Fascist

So, I'm reading this article and I can't help getting mad. The summary of the article is that a child rapist wasn't executed because he didn't have a good enough vein to give him the lethal injection.

  1. It's fucking poison! Who the fuck cares where it goes? Ice the motherfucker so everyone can go home.
  2. Is that the only "humane" way to kill a man? Gas his cell and cut him up while he's asleep! Give him CO poisoning, "accidentally" burn his cell block, pay another prisoner to shank him if you don't want the blood to be on your hands.
  3. Why the hell should we be treating child rapists humanely? Feed that fucker to the dogs! Have him fight tigers for our amusement! Give the tigers lasers.
  4. It's fucking poison! I know this was point 1, but I thought it was such a good point I should mention it twice.

Seriously. If we're worried about hurting criminals' feelings, they're going to take advantage of us. In fact, they are taking advantage of us. We need to fight back by being cruel to the most heinous of our criminals. Come on, if we're putting people down, we might as well make it an unfavourable way to go. If I wanted to die, I could just go rape some kids and get a few years in a Federal Country Club before they put me to sleep forever (not before feeding me the best meal of my life).

Am I the only one who thinks we need to chain these guys together and have them break rocks for no reason for 18 hours a day? I want their lives to be miserable and meaningless. I want them to pray for death, and when it comes I want them to regret that prayer.

I mean, while we're killing people...

And I'm all for killing people.

This Isn't The Life

How do vagrants do it? How do they live without having anything? How can they go from place to place without settling? How can they talk to everyone and yet know no one? I couldn't do it. I can't do it. Without a stable base, I can't even talk to new people. I move between the lives in these halls, careful not to intersect (or perhaps unable to).

I guess I'm tired of getting to know someone one semester, dropping them on Facebook, and then never hearing from them again. Not that I make any effort myself to stay in touch; what is there to stay in touch about? How's life? How's school? How's being married? They're all superficial things. It makes me wonder how sending letters used to work. What do you ask people? What do you tell them? Can you ever really get into the issues? Maybe discussions that would take us minutes took people months. It's a scary thought.

Maybe that's why we all like getting mail. Not bills, or flyers, or emails, but real honest mail, handwritten and addressed to you. It seems to mean more, though I don't know what I would ever write. Maybe nowadays mail is reserved for the things we have to say but have a hard time bringing up or talking about at all.

I guess the problem with letters now is that you only get one shot, and you'll most likely be getting a digital response soon after.

Monday, September 21, 2009

Mankind: A Million Years of Luck and Survival by Fisher Price

So, my younger brother is having a baby. We've been doing renovations and decking out the house with stuff and places for the baby. While I was at the grocery store my mom pointed out how gigantic the baby stuff section is. It covers 80% of the wall, two aisles thick.

My first thought here was, "how the fuck did mankind ever survive without all this crap?" What did we do before $30 baby pillows and $40 baby outfits and $60 baby toys and $300 baby boxes?

$300?! For a baby box?

For those of you who are unfamiliar with what I'm talking about, break it down a minute.

It's a box. A box that you put your baby in. You slept in one, I slept in one. I think they call them cribs, but I'm pretty sure that's what gangstas call houses. And they seem to cost just as much. It's like a scale version of a house with equally scaled cost, only you don't get a yard or bathrooms or outlets because your baby isn't an equally scaled version of a person.

My point is that for $300 I'm going to make my own fucking baby crate! I don't remember the one I grew up in and neither do you. And if you do, you certainly didn't care that it was $300.

I think a lot of people scoff at the cheapness of that plan, as if it were unthinkable that someone would put a baby in a non-professionally handcrafted wooden cage. Perhaps the precision engineering yields to the child superior growth and mental ability. Perhaps its finely tuned aesthetic design that has been passed down for generations soothes the child into a more restful state. Perhaps they imbue the very materials with ancient magicks in the factory which can never be replicated. Or perhaps it's just an overpriced box that you keep your kid in until you have to throw it out because your kid needs a bed in a few years.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Time Makes Fools Of Us All

I wish I had some evidence to back this up, but I couldn't risk it.

We all know what happens to eggs when they get old. They go off. Well, what happens when you let an egg go off for an eighth of a century?

That's right, twelve and a half years.

Okay, that's an estimate because truthfully, I don't know how old it was. How did it not stink horrifically and decay over the years? A protective layer of decorative glue and tissue papers; the kind that would be applied by a young child at Easter.

Yep, that was me, from an Easter many years past. I discovered it while going through old things recently. So what happened to it? The inside rattled, as if it contained a ball. The yolk, but with nothing left surrounding it.

But what the hell was I going to do with that? So I threw it away; and some more junk too. One item hit the egg and cracked it.

Oh Christ, the smell.

So I tied off the trash and chucked it. But what I did see was a charred black ball splitting to expose the chalky yellow yoke that once was.

Part of me wants to redo the experiment.

Friday, September 18, 2009

An Old Man's Proverb

The other day an elderly gentleman gave me some words of wisdom that I found simply fantastic. He said to me, "I learned a long time ago that the only one who can ruin your day is you."

I think this is brilliant. Never let life get you down. Things are always going to suck, but you have to enjoy what you've got. I know I've ruined a few days my getting mad at something or upset about something or being depressed about something that isn't happening. After the fact (though I may blog about it) it's really nothing worth mentioning or thinking twice about. In the end, I'd be better of to be cool and have myself a good day.

But on the other side of that, as I have also discovered more recently, no one can make your day like someone else. It's really hard to do something yourself that makes you specifically happy. Maybe it's a modesty thing, but when you make yourself dinner, you don't care. But when someone makes you dinner, you appreciate it. Little things that others do do so much to make my day. I'm sure that door swings both ways.

Keep it swingin', readers.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

People I Hate

  1. Money droppers. Fuck you. You can hand me your money, or you can place it on the counter, but don't fucking throw it at me. I should start throwing change back.
  2. In-your-facers. You have a question, not something to prove. Your toes shouldn't touch mine when we are talking. It's not like you have a secret or we're trying not to wake the baby. We can talk at arm's length.
  3. "Where's the _____?" Just the opposite of the above. Shut the fuck up. If you haven't looked, try having a glance at our handy aisle signs. If you are still unsure, kindly approach an employee and ask. Notice how that did not include "yell from the other side of the store."
  4. Retards and the Pompous. First, don't tell me what shit is, what shit isn't, or what shit is supposed to be. It is what it fucking is. Don't come into my store and ask, "Hey, bro, where the cold beer at?" because we don't fucking have any. We've never had any. In the who knows how many decades this store has been open, we have never had cold beer. Are you fucking new to this? If so, politely ask if we have cold beer, and I will politely tell you we don't, never have, and never will so long as we live. Secondly, don't assume like wine is common knowledge or that you're so much fucking better for drinking it. When I say, "no, I don't really drink wine" don't keep asking me how they fucking taste. They taste like grape juice that's gone bad! It's a fucking retail job. It's like the people who expect cashiers to know the posted price of every product in a giant store. What, do you think I go home every night and try a new bottle of wine so I can have a professional opinion on it? It's like asking a cashier at the grocery store if the fish is any good, and when they say "yes" you ask if the chicken is better! You should know which you like better! These people clearly make me the maddest.
  5. That fucking foreign bitch from today.
Foreigner (from another country, not the band): Ackskuse, Ihk'm lüking fohr jus, hkelp in wit it chippe botil... wïne. Und eeehhh...
Me (while at the till finishing running someone through): I'm sorry, what was that?
Foreigner: "Hkelp!" You dohn't no vat hkelp iss?!
My brain: Fuck you! You don't know what "get ze fuck out" iss? Schnell!
Me: ....
Foreigner: Chippe botil wïne.
Me: How much are you looking to spend?
Foreigner: Chippist botil.
Me: The Rossini. Right (fucking) here.
Foreigner: People (motions with hands) drink it?
Me: People mostly use it for cooking-
Foreigner: Cookink! What people drink? Vat else?
Me: We have Barefoot, red and white, $8.39.
Foreigner: Vat?
Me: Barefoot. $8.39. Aisle 4.
Foreigner: Where?!
Me: Aisle 4.
Foreigner: Vat?
Me: 4. Aisle 4.
(I go to help another customer at the till)
Foreigner: Vat khind?
Me: Barefoot. Aisle 4. Red and white.

I mean, jesus fucking christ, woman. You yell at me for not hearing you mumble behind my back and you can't comprehend one fucking word that comes out of my mouth! What's worse, she walks her cart down aisle 3 and makes a 15 minute phonecall! The icing? She didn't buy the fucking Barefoot after 45 minutes of shopping.

I don't know who you are, where you came from, or where you're going, but I hope you go die in a fire.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

The Term "X-Factor"

Stop using it. You sound like a douche.

Blag to the Basics

With an hour break to eat between Philosophy and Physics (why are the Ph- classes always either dreadfully boring or exceptionally awesome?) I should be conducting more consistent blogging. It's not really the hour break that's doing this, but the hour break with no one around.

That's been the anticipated biggest problem with going back to school; I am now on average 4 years older than everyone else. That's an entire presidency. Although I am an adult and 4 years doesn't seem like that much time, these kids are 19... Four years ago they were 15. When I started sleeping with girls, they started liking girls. How fucked up is that? Not that I'm interested in people who started liking girls, but think about the first girl you liked. Now think about the first girl you slept with. Now think about them at the same time. If this is arousing, I would kindly ask you to no longer be associated with me (that, or shit, dude, you were one academically focused little motherfucker).

But I can still get past that. What I can't get past is that all these girls here are in High School 2: I Can Do Who I Want, Mom! I thought Lethbridge was bad for being high school all over again, but we all seemed to grow up in our time there.

I feel like an amateur anthropologist in this food court, observing these ex-children/pre-adults (protodults, if you will). But I can't form any conclusions other than that I don't fit in at all. To boil it down, we have nothing in common. I'm not in a program, I don't know how long I'll be here, we come from many different places and live in many different areas and do many different things. That's what I miss about Lethbridge. People lived on the West Side. We were all in there for the long run. We ate at the same places, we drank at the same bars, we hung around on campus for hours on end because we had nothing better to do. I saw someone I knew every day at school down there. I've seen people here that I've seen before. So far, no one that I've talked to (save for Zack, who I came specifically to have lunch with) I have seen again. And I don't think I'll ever build those relationships with people here like I did in Lethbridge. Maybe it's who they are, maybe it's who I am, maybe it's just who they aren't.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Marketing Mishap

I think the guys at Koodo needed to stick to one marketing plan. That, or they have a very precise list of questions they feel the need to answer at the end of their radio commercials.
Perhaps it went a little something like this:

Customer: So, gentlefolk of telecommunications, why should I purchase your particular cellular telephone service?
Koodo: Say "no" to big billification!
Customer: Ah! What with the clever made up words and all. I understand. Thank you, obnoxious teenage girl brigade. But since I am in the market to acquire telecommuncative means I have no way to contact your services. Is there an alternate course?
Koodo: koodomobile.com
Customer: The internets! The "dot com" tipped me off. Though there still remains one fundamental question: By what moniker should I herald thee so that others shall follow in my path?
Koodo: Koooooooooooooodo.
Customer: Thank you Mrs. Motorola Man. Tell him I said, "Hello, Moto," too, and a good kooooooooodo to you as well.

Seriously, that's way too many catchphrases crammed into the end of one commercial. And when I say one commercial, I mean all of their commercials. Maybe I just need to stop listening to the radios, but I fucking hate those commercials.

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Inglorious Basterds: An Apt Title

Yes, they were bastards. And no, they were not glorious.

Yet somehow I was surprised by the complete lack of Basterds in this film. I knew they were Inglorious. I knew it was Tarantino. But somehow I was convinced that there would be a lot more from the characters.

I guess I'm finally realizing that Quentin Tarantino is a party platter. He's the variety pack; the summer sampler. His films are simultaneously extended movie trailers and at the same time the antithesis of movie trailers. You get a lot of little bits that make you want more, but it's all stitched together with prolonged dialogue.

That being said, it is a film that's worth taking another look at. Another five looks at, even. Pulp Fiction left us wanting more Jules Winnfeild, more Vincent Vega, more Butch Coolidge, but we satiated that need through repeated viewings. We grew to appreciate these characters based solely on what was given us and we learned that more is not necessarily better. (see Death Proof and the same fucking actors playing the same fucking parts just with different fucking names so they could kill them all a-fucking-gain!) With more Butch comes the cost of less Vince. More Vince means less Jules. More Jules, less Butch. It's a vicious cycle, but somehow we get The Wolf and Macelus Wallace rolled in there too (Uma Thermon does nothing for me) while maintaining a balanced film that gets across the point that life is all sorts of fucked up.

Fast forward to the Basterds. Could we have had fewer extreme closeups for no reason? Yes. Could we have had more Basterds? Possibly. Could we have had less of everyone else? Well, that's up for debate. The opening scene takes for-goddamn-ever, and the first time, as Tarantino ironically enough explains to us in the lengthy beginning of Resvoir Dogs, hurts, like a virgin. But after that, you begin to warm up to it. You see where things are going and the anticipation for what you know is going to happen is what keeps you excited. Before you know what's going to happen, you have boredom and confusion. Some people like to figure movies out, like a crossword puzzle, where the more you pick up on, the closer you are to knowing how it all turns out in the end. Tarantino films are like solving someone else's crossword puzzle... from another table... while you're having coffee with someone. You really have to work to know what's going on. But after you know where everything goes, like say watching someone complete yesterday's crossword puzzle, you being to see the amusement in watching the traps and folleys and struggles of the crossword puzzler. After knowing understanding why Tarantino does the things he does, the film becomes much more interesting to watch.

Would I pay another $12.50 to see this movie again? Well, I didn't pay for it tonight, but the point is I wouldn't pay by the viewing anymore. Maybe when it's in the 2 for 20 bin at HMV I'll pick it up and have another look. I might just grow to like those Basterds a lot more.

Friday, September 4, 2009

Muscular Discrimination

One thing I never claim to be is a biologist. So it is of little wonder that I'm confused about how the human body works.

Why is it that some muscles are meant to be worked and some muscles are meant to be left alone? I thought that muscles were muscles and when you worked them they got stronger. I mean, way back when people put their backs into it.
(pause for laughter)
And back then, these people were referred to as "strong backs." But it seems these days your back will only get worse and working your back will lead to "bad back." But none of your other muscles do that. You don't have people at the gym telling you not to lift that with your arms. Hell, people tell you to lift with your legs and then preach about how you're not supposed to strain your knees! How the hell do you lift with your legs and not your knees?

So if anyone is, or knows of, a biologist, please explain to me why my back isn't meant to be used, but all my other muscles need to go to the gym and work for no reason whatsoever!

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

The Faster and The Führer(ious)

Am I the only one who thinks this would be the best film in the franchise?

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

It's late

Colin James from the 80s looks like Tobey Maguire and Michael J Fox rolled into one.

I don't think it's a bad thing.