Say What

A few more places in New York, Road Trip Ch. 7

2009-03-29T19:20:00.008-04:00

Madison Square Garden

I arrived in Penn Station, the train depot under Madison Square Garden, and took a picture of the Empire State Building in the distance.

Basketball game entrance: not on this side.

Much better.

View from the nosebleeds - Knicks vs. Pacers. I absolutely loved the crowd. I'm considering becoming a Knicks fan because of their intensity. Every miss was booed and every point was cheered. Incredible.

Anyone recognize the GT alum?

Anyone recognize the really famous guy?

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The Bronze Man. A bronze man. The first and best that I saw during my brief travels (including the wannabes in New Orleans)

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The Museum of Natural History.

I wasn't feeling well so I only snapped a few pictures.

Dinosaurs right when you walk in.

The Big Bang Theory.

I wish I would have gone inside of it.

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Macy's

I walked into Macy's expecting it to be a larger version of the mall department store I'm so familiar with. I was also looking for a coat. Seeing only ladies' apparel, I went up the escalator a few floors. I saw another escalator to the 5th floor. Another to the 6th. Macy's had 9 floors - ten if you include the basement. It was incredible. The coolest part for me were the wooden escalators used from the 4th floor and up.

Neat!

New York Munchies, Road Trip Chapter 6

2009-03-26T19:25:00.008-04:00

Each of the places had food or something like it and I ate there.

The Hungarian Pastry Shop

Funny story. My friend said I should eat at the Hungarian pastry shop near Columbia University. I didn't think much about it when I wrote it on my list of places to see. After leaving the Church of Saint John the Devine I looked at my list and said "Hmm... I didn't write down the address of [the pastry shop]. Also, it isn't very specific. I walked by a Hungarian market earlier - maybe that was it." I then looked up and saw The Hungarian Pastry Shop across the street. It was jam packed.

Hungarian Pastries? Well, I got the baklava.

To the right of my table - the coffee and dessert counter.

To the left. The guy in front and his friend talked the whole time Chris and I were there, but I will dedicate a whole post to that.

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Pinkberry.

In Atlanta, I was introduced to an absolutely fantastic yogurt place called Yoforia. It is the only one I know about in Atlanta. These places are all over New York and, apparently, this place, Pinkberry, started it all.

The best dessert I've ever had - and you feel good after, too.

Each yogurt place is set up with a similar, minimalist, bright, and modern design aesthetic.

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Crumbs. A well known cupcake cafe.

That's right; not Magnolia's.

It looks like business is slow until you see how many cupcakes are out of stock. This place was ransacked.

I can do stuff like that. I shouldn't, but I can.

A little more tame. Also, the beginning of the sugar headache.

Not to mention sore stomachs. We left in pain.

How do people eat such sugary goods?

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Ono.

Chris and I walked into this upscale sushi restaurant and asked for a table of two. We arrived before the dinner rush, or after?, because only two of the tables were taken. The hostess tells me she'll check to see if anything was available. She returns a few minutes later and says that they have room for us to eat at the sushi bar, if that's ok with us. Sure! That's what we're here for. We foolow her back to the sushi bar. The entire side of the restaraunt was empty. I then realized I was wearing my GameTap hoody and probably looked a bit 'under-wealthy'. The waiter brought us water and gave us the sushi menu. After looking at the prices we left because it was way too expensive.

I did get this sweet shot, though. I wonder if they thought this was all I came in for.

Times Square. Road Trip Chapter 5

2009-03-26T19:22:00.000-04:00

I. Was. There.

With. Chris. O.

It was crowded at all hours.

Gay bar.

Night shots of the beautiful giant world of luminescent advertising. (spell check please?)

One day shot, taken the next day.

A box for Obama sneakers being sold on the street corner. I quote, "Get your OBAMA SNEAKERS. We got 'em in white and black! White shoes for the white folks and black shoes for the black brothers."

This guy sold us tickets to a live Comedy Central taping of famous comedians. Long story short, everything he said was a lie, except that there would be funny comedians at the comedy lounge on 86th street. Best con I ever fell for.

By the way, the police station was not really a gay bar.

Road Trip: Chapter 4, The Financial District

2009-03-26T18:22:00.000-04:00

The financial district. I was very excited to visit here due to my recent interest and activity with the stock market.

I. Was. There.

I was cold and a bit excited. Does my nose look bigger than usual?

Home to lots of stocks. I wasn't let in because I'm not certified and don't have a badge. Security guarded the doors. You could say that security was guarding securities. If you wanted to.

I did not spend enough time making this picture good.

Bull market? Not then, maybe now. Too bad there isn't a bear statue. Would that be too pessimistic? It would be a shorter's golden messiah.

No one leaves without this picture.

Further up the street. I took this picture from the graveyard across the street. I won't say it, but you can.

Nasdaq for all my tech stocks. It's all computers with no people. It's not even in the financial market - this is Time's Square!

Road Trip: Chapter 3, New York City: Part 1

2009-03-04T12:34:00.009-05:00

Friday morning, I joined Chris Occhipinti on his usual commute to work: a 45 minute express train ride to Hoboken and then an underwater subway ride to get to Manhattan. You really tend to forget it's underwater though; it looks pretty normal.

Chris O. on the train.

Hoboken Train Station

The financial district from the train station. (Will be there soon enough!)

Chris works for MLB.com. Their office is on the 7th floor of Chelsea Market - a fairly popular food court-type area with a few clothing shops. From what I could tell, none of the shops were chains. We had breakfast around 9:30, before he had to be in for work.

Bagels and coffee. Also, the first time of many that I am told to pay with cash - not a card.

Close to our seats; bagel place on the left.

A cool area in the Chelsea Market. Rebelliously, I did not take a picture of the small indoor waterfall that seemed very popular and photogenic.

I feel like I've seen this area online, in a youtube video or something...

I had never seen parking lots that double stacked cars until New York.

Tribeca Theater; this area is home to the Tribeca Film Festival.

I had to get a hot dog from a hot dog stand in New York.

Oh man, it looks so good.

Oh yes.

Flattering myself on the streets.

I didn't want to risk asking a scary New Yorker to take my picture.

Interesting factoid: People in New York are not mean. In fact, almost everyone I talked to was very nice and very helpful. In fact, the only mean person I came across was a lady that I saw right after I thought to myself that no one in New York was mean.

She started walking across the road right when the light turned green and the taxis were going to have none of it. So they just started going and she had to jump out of the way. She proceeded to scream at them and call the driver a "Stupid n____, dumb black motherf_____." So yea, other than that, everyone was cool. Well it was kind of cool to see a lady lose her shit for no reason in the middle of the city. Take a chill pill, girl.

Road Trip: Chapter 2

2009-02-19T23:25:00.006-05:00

If I had twitter and had written everything I thought was slightly important, this would be the complete feed:

It's snowing. I'm only in North Carolina. I forgot about how cold it will be.
I should have put my ham and cheese sandwiches in the fridge last night. Now I don't want to eat them. I think the mayonnaise went bad.
I'm taking a few pictures of the mountains while driving. I wish the camera previewed the shots on the screen. For now, I'm guess and testing.
(I count how many times I use the brakes on the highway. The fewer the better. I don't count breaking when exiting) First and second brake use - right before and right after Charlotte.
The second time, a 18 wheeler swerved in front of me.
A silver Toyota Matrix just flew by driven by the fastest grandparents I've ever seen on the road.
I love Earthbound Remixes.
Jimi Hendrix time. Great for drum practice. Not to complex. (I drum on my steering wheel and other parts of my car while driving)
I'm in Virginia now. A sign says "Speed limit enforced by aircraft."
2:20 pm. I get my first speeding ticket of the trip. To my dismay, I was not pulled over by a turbo jet. Oh, and my court date is on my birthday. wth? (Fortunately, I don't have to go)
OMG I just passed mile marker 1337!
3rd time using my brakes - a little past Virginia Tech.
Filling up the tank of gas and getting junk food.
West Virginia.
I've now driven 500 miles. My energy has been depleted. I feel like a nap. I'm actually scared of narcolepsy. That reminds me, I've been wanting to listen to my old Third Eye Blind CD.
Drumming to Third Eye Blind wakes me up.
Maryland.
4th brake use at 668 miles. 18 wheeler cuts me off for the third time. Ruining my record.
Why am I still seeing Cracker Barrel billboards? How far north do I have to go?
I gave in and bought McDonald's. The southern style chicken sandwich really doesn't taste that bad.
At Chris Occhipinti's house. 13 hours after I left. There's a lot of snow in his yard.
I'm going to buy a huge coat in New York. It has to be New York-y and I will keep it for the rest of my life.

All packed up and, apparently, I love the color blue. Hm. An eye opener.

Going 80? Isn't this how all road trips start - with an awkward picture?

Part of the mountainside in either North Carolina or Virginia

I took the scenic route.

Aging speed demons.

The cop pulled over both me and some other car. He used his flashing blue lights to get me off the road, but for her, he just pointed at her as she drove by and said "Here. Now." I'm serious.

I'm only posting a few of the total pictures I've taken. At the end of it all, I will post every one of them and each will be nicely labeled.

I turned off my GPS tracker now that I have arrived in New York. If I left it on, my phone would die within an hour. It's really bad.

Tomorrow: a full Friday in New York! I get to be that guy. That tourist that takes pictures of everything. Everything. Also - keeping my wallet in my front pocket. If I suddenly feel aroused, I'll know I'm being pick-pocketed. Did I cross the line? Yea.

Road Trip: Chapter 1

2009-02-19T08:46:00.002-05:00

I'm gone baby gone.

Track me online here: http://www.instamapper.com/ext?key=7072494938049602401

Track me with your smart phone here: http://mobile.instamapper.com/ext?key=7072494938049602401

I am leaving in about 20 minutes from my house in Taylors, South Carolina. I'm driving to my friend, Chris Occhipinti's house in New Jersey. He commutes to work in New York every day and will be my guide all weekend.

Current Playlist:
King Crimson
Earthbound Remix music
Joe Frank podcasts
Mars Volta (Who woulda thought...)
Incredibad

Road Trip: Prologue

2009-02-18T19:45:00.006-05:00

"It's Wednesday night. Nothing good is on TV. Conditions are perfect."

Tomorrow morning I will drive to New York. I should arrive about 12 hours after I leave, depending on.. lots of things.

Traffic. Policemen. Hunger pangs. Hot hitchhikers.

Also,

Restroom breaks.
Picture breaks.
Sleep breaks.
Car brakes.
Hand brakes.
Swerve to the shoulder breaks.
Avoid a wreck breaks.

Breaks to catch my breath.

Most importantly, "Please officer don't-give-me-a-ticket I live 500 miles away. Hey what's that? VROOM. Just kidding, my car isn't that fast. I would never, yes sir, ok, I'm sorry."

Important
I set up my phone to be tracked by GPS so that any one can see where I am at any time with the following link:

http://www.instamapper.com/ext?key=7072494938049602401

Also, I installed the facebook app for it. It's on the left of my profile under my friends.

Pre-trip pics:

Lots of ham and cheese sandwiches

It's called a living room because I lived in it.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Boring.

2009-01-26T09:21:00.004-05:00

I was going to let this movie die alone, but then it got a bunch of Oscar nods. Now, acting purely to balance what I see is quite off, I will give you my thoughts on the movie.

1 word: boring.
1 Phrase: It's not Forrest Gump.

Not that Forrest Gump is the most incredible movie ever. But so much happened in Forrest Gump. This is an equally long movie about...

SPOILERS

... a guy who was born old and grew younger. I would think a guy like this would have had a pretty epic life. "He's so curious" we are told by one of the actresses saying some lines.

Let me explain how curious he was. He got out of the house he was raised in only once in the roughly twenty years he lived there before moving out. Then he got a job on a ship and did that for a while. Then I walked out.

About 2/3 into the movie, Boring has aged (or de-aged) about 50 years. All I had seen of his life are the three girls he dated. One was the raspy, frustrating woman trying to narrate the story, one was a woman that cheated on her husband with Benjamin, and the other was a prostitute he bought every Sunday at a brothel. He also made some friends on the ship we worked on.

Like Forrest Gump and Big Fish, the story sets up for an incredible life story, but all we get is a summary of his sex life and job. Granted I walked out 2/3 of the way in (I did, actually, have to be somewhere and, not doing my research, did not know the movie was so long).

Anyway, that's the short and sweet of it, IMHO, from the critic that hates movies.

Added: This is the director (David Fincher) that made Fight Club and Seven. Talk about going downhill.

Michael's Stories: Episode 2: Asleep at the Wheel.

2009-01-06T22:24:00.011-05:00

Michael's stories are absolutely true stories as told by my friend "Michael" and transcribed by me, with permission. All names have been changed.

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Michael is currently dating a girl I will call Brooky - not officially - because that's not what he wants at this point in life, but they do hang out all the time. A few days ago, she invited him to drive with her to Pennsylvania to visit her family for Christmas.

He precludes the story by explaining that Brooky is competitively stubborn. She graduated from college in three years because one of her siblings said it was impossible.

Befre they begin the thirteen-hour drive to Pennsylvania, he says, "I'll drive. You haven't slept in two days."

Somehow, that sounded like a challenge. "How about this," she replies, "I'll sleep for an hour and then drive the rest of the way."

After seemingly putting his foot down, he picks it right back up. He either doesn't want to argue with her - familiar with her competitive nature - or he is curious to see how it will play out.

"Alright. Whatever you want," he says.

Brooky sleeps for six hours. He tells me that she was fast asleep and didn't budge at all. When she wakes, she tells Michael to let her drive.

He reminds me that six hours is nothing when you haven't slept for two days. I agree.

She drives for a little and then tells him to lean his chair back and take a nap. He isn't tired, but reclines the chair anyway. He turns on his side, facing Brooky, and squints his eyes. He watches her blink and then blink again, slower the second time.

"Brooky, are you still tired?"

"No, I'm not tired at all. I'm wide awake. Go back to sleep."

"If you're tired, I can drive for you," he offers.

"I'm fine, really. Don't worry about it. Just get some rest."

He pretends to close his eyes again. She opens her eyes really wide and holds it for a few seconds as if to stretch them so wide that they will never close again. Then she blinks and blinks again, much slower.

"Brooky! I'm serious. Do you want some coffee? I'll buy you some coffee. If you really want to drive, just pull over at the next exit and I'll get you some."

"I don't need any coffee. I'm fine. Go back to sleep." she says.

Yea, right. Michael adjusts his chair into the upright position. He was wide awake, he tells me.

They were on a four lane road driving in the right-most lane behind a slower pick-up truck and Brooky slides over to the left lane to pass it. She speeds up a bit and when far enough ahead of the truck, she slowly starts drifting back into the right lane.

Really, though, she slowly starts drifting off the road.

The car keeps going to the right. The tires cross over the white line, clunk off the edge of the raised asphalt, and rumble into the riveted, alarm-clock segment of the road; the rough, graduated lines that sound like a drill-bit. Michael looks over at Brooky. She's knocked out cold, her head bent over on her shoulder.

"Brooky! WAKE THE FUCK UP!!!" He slaps her shoulder. "What THE FUCK are you doing?!? PULL OVER."

Her head jerks up. She grabs the wheel and steadies the car in the right lane. Then she pulls over to the shoulder, gets out of the car, and sheepishly walks over to the passenger seat.

"Sorry..." she says.

She slept soundlessly in the passenger seat the rest of the way there.

Michael's Stories: Episode 1: A Stereotype Exists

2009-01-06T17:32:00.013-05:00

All true stories as told by my friend "Michael" and then, with permission, transcribed by me. All names have been changed.

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Today, Michael drove to his school, a local tech college, to figure out how he can register for next semester's classes even though he still owes money for classes from the previous semester.

I'm talking to him on the phone as he arrives and he inadvertently cuts me off with a subconsciously spoken "Whoa, there's a lot of people here." Classes start next week and a hundred students just like him need help because they have also waited until the last minute to register for classes. He tells me he has procrastinated every other semester, as well, but has never had any problems getting the classes he needs.

We're still on the phone as he parks and walks to the WIA office.

"Hey, hold on Chris, what time is it?" I am sitting at my computer desk at home and I glance at the corner of my computer screen, but he continues before I can answer. "It says the hours are 8am to 5pm."

"It's 4:55," I told him.

"Oh," he sighed. "That would explain why they won't let me in."

"So you pretty much drove down there for nothing."

"Well. Hold on."

"What are you going to do?"

"Hold on, I think I can talk to someone else." He starts walking to another building.

"Hey Mike," I start, "I'll just let you go so you can focus" Since you only have 5 minutes, I implied.

"Alright man, talk to you later."

---

He calls me back about thirty minutes later.

"Hey, what's up?" I answer, which is my usual hello. Before I ask if he had gotten everything figured out, I start talking about the gym down the road he had told me about that morning. "Yea, I called that gym you told me about, but its thirty bucks a month, not fifteen."

"Oh, my bad," he says. "Maybe Sara got a deal or something." Sara must have been the friend that told him about the gym.

"It's cool. Thirty bucks isn't bad, I could do that for a month. They also said they give away free guest passes, so, if I went today, they would let me work out for free."

"That's cool," he says.

"So what are you up to?"

He tells me that he is heading over to the animal shelter he volunteers at and that he wants to vent a little bit.

"Go right ahead," I tell him, preparing, for the first time, to remember every detail so I can write this blog later.

He starts by saying that he just wants to talk about something else - so that he can be distracted from his aggravation - and then he goes right into what happened.

Since the WIA office closed their doors on him, he walked over to the building containing his school's financial advisers. The WIA has an office on campus, but is not part of the school and, apparently, they lock up earlier.

Walking into the financial adviser's office, his first impression of the lady that had been stationed to help him and other students like him is that she looks good. And nice. He tells me that he felt that his chances of getting help were promising.

She asks him what she can help him with.

"I have a bill to pay before I register for classes, but I can't pay it off right now, and I need to register for classes... So I need help with that."

"OK" she answers. He tells me that she answered quickly and smiled, but it wasn't really a friendly smile.

He paused to give me a little backstory. He owes nine hundred dollars from the previous semester. He originally arranged to pay it off monthly, but his money got tight (small world?) and he wasn't able to. In order to register for classes, he has to pay it off.

He first asks, "Can FAFSA pay for it?"

"Nope," she responds. Again, terse.

"Can I work with [the school] to pay it off with monthly payments?"

"No."

"Ok. I'm about to get four grand from WIA to pay for my tuition. But, I need my [academic] transcripts. Can I get them from you?"

"No. You can't get your transcripts until you pay off what you owe," she says, adding a trite catch-22 to the story and, at the same time, proving that such cliches are both real and seemingly common.

"I started to realize that I was in a jam," he tells me. In front of the lady, his breath catches a bit in his throat as he tries to restrain the exasperation in his next question. "So what are my options?" He opens his hands in unison with the question and lays them on the table.

She tells him that he can get a student loan. He tells her he doesn't want a student loan. He doesn't want any debt.

"[Our school] is not responsible for something you should have taken care of a long time ago." He swears she must have enjoyed saying it. He knows he could have prevented this, but did she have to say it like that?

As he continues the story, I'm thinking to myself: my friend and everyone at that school is trying to move up in the world. They are self-motivated, they are paying for their own classes... you think that a member of the school's faculty would realize this and give a little help.

He tells me again that he started to feel like he was in a jam. Four months without classes suddenly became a realistic scenario. He has only two semesters left before he can transfer his credits to a graduate school. Four months without classes meant another four months before he could pursue a real career and that he would probably have to get a second job.

At this point, he tells me that he started to feel a twinge in the back of his neck; a small pressure that only arises when he gets truly aggravated. He said the pressure point continued upward into the back of his head and then pressed into the back of his mouth where the only thing he could do to dispel the tension was laugh. So he starts laughing.

Amidst tense chuckling, he musters a final, obligatory question, "Is there anyone else here I can talk to?"

"Nope," she replies.

He starts laughing again. He's laughing because of the tension in the back of his neck and because of his situation. He has become a part of textbook irony. He's laughing because we always hear about these kinds of people - people that seemingly enjoy not helping other people - and here, in front of him, the stereotype turns out to be true and all he can do is laugh. Right in front of him is a real and true stereotype.

The lady laughs with him. They're both laughing. They're looking at each other right in the eyes. He explains the situation, "There was absolutely nothing funny happening, but there we were, laughing and staring at each other. We were two people that (for the moment) absolutely hated each other, just sitting across from each other, laughing. "You bitch," he thought.

He tells me that he could have punched the lady right there. His fists balled up a little bit as a result of the tension pulsing through his body. He lightly, subconsciously, rapped his hands against the table.

"Ok," he says. He stands up and walks out.

---

"Oh man," he chuckles, sounding much more relaxed. "She was so mean!" He laughs again. He says he has almost arrived animal shelter, but if they don't have any volunteer work available for him he would come hang out with me, "Since I'm on your side of town."

"She was probably just in a bad mood," he continues, then pauses. "Yea, I'm going to say that was it."

"That's probably a good way to think about it," I state, never able to say anything is absolutely true. "She was probably dealing with people like you all day," I poke at him.

"Yea, she probably was. Alright, I'll give you a call later."

"Alright, see ya."

A more blog-like entry

2009-01-05T15:14:00.004-05:00

Here's what's going on with me:

I graduated a few weeks ago (December 10th, Georgia Tech)
I don't have a job yet.
I'm talking with 2 companies. This week, now that the holidays have passed, is when I expect to hear from them.
One company is in Sunrise, Florida and the other is in Austin, Texas.
One makes applications for a smart phone and one makes video games for the Wii.

I'm living with my parents, sleeping on a couch, and actually doing a bit of traveling. Why?

I got a new car. A brand new Toyota Scion. Manual.
I've already put 2000+ miles on it.
I'm using Geico. It's all because of the caveman.

About 6 months ago, I broke up with my girlfriend of three years.
We're still friends.
I feel like my life is moving in the right direction.

I'm living off my credit card.
I have not been very productive (call it fear of starting a project while in such limbo or... something else)

I am, in fact, on the opposite side of production. I am absorbing. I am in the middle of quite a few pieces of work:
My 3rd Haruki Murakami book: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles.
The English Translation of Mother 3, the sequel to Earthbound.
Mushroom Men. A very colorful game with incredible music for the Wii.
Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass for the Gameboy DS.

I hope to finish them all before my vacation ends.

I'm growing out sideburns similar to Jemaine's from Flight of the Conchords. It's taking a while.

My younger brother, Jonathan, (my only blood brother) shipped off to Iraq.
I sent him my PSP and a few games as well as a bunch of beef jerky, chunky soup, and baby wipes (which are apparently worth their weight in gold in the ash-filled "shit-hole" of Iraq)
He promises to send me pictures someday, though he can't post pictures online that may give away his location to... terrorists.

My grandmother moved from Iowa to North Carolina. For now, she's close again.

As I said, I'm staying with my dad and stepmom until I get a job. They moved into this new house a month or two ago.
It is awesome.
It is right across the street from my stepmother's grandparents- which is great for everyone.

I've had a sharp pain in my back for the past few weeks.
It could be the result of driving too much, sleeping on everything but a bed, or stress from being in limbo.
Last night I slept 11 hours for the first time in months. It felt great.

I have no idea where I'll be in a month.

I think I'm going to start writing more blog posts- possibly starting with a nitpicky review of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button or a new type of episodic blog post called 'Michael's Stories'. These will be stories recounted by my best friend "Michael" who has a natural storytelling gift. I haven't told him I'm typing up all his stories, yet, and I don't know when I will. :D

How come no one knows anything about anything?

2008-10-23T11:07:00.004-04:00

In this new age of logic, proof, and a wealth of information, why am I so confused about everything? In our world, proof is a paradox and all logic is fuzzy. I can never know if something is absolutely true because there are too many compromising questions. We live within a system of opinions and arguments- the last good argument provides the current theory.

To fully believe in something, I have to disprove every piece of compromising data. Even personally experiencing something doesn't offer enough proof. People may never believe you and you may not believe yourself looking back on your dreamlike infestation of memories. Ever said to yourself, "Maybe I'm just crazy."

I look back on a few examples in my life. I remember I had a bunch of planter's warts on my feet wen I was a kid. I started taking some Vitamin B- with the intention of just getting more vitamins- and a few months later they all disappeared. Was it the Vitamin B? Or did they just suddenly decide to go away.

When I was 12 I went to a Tourettes fundraiser concert because I had Tourettes. It was in a building with a small stage and a movie theater sized audience; all sitting. Behind the audience were the camera men and behind them was the sound booth. I got bored and decided to sneak into the sound booth. On both sides of the camera men were long stairs. I sat down on the lowest part of the right side (facing the stage) and inched backwards as the bands played. After a few minutes, I had made it to the door so I quickly stood up and walked in.

The sound booth had three rooms. There were walls with doorless doors separating each. The two side parts were entrances and were very dark. The middle part was the sound booth where the sound technician was carefully watching... er, listening to the show to make sure the sound was perfect. As softly as I could, I'm pretty sure I had taken my shoes off before creeping up the stairs, I walked into the main room behind the man in the sound booth. Inches away. I crossed behind him and entered the opposite room. He must have had headphones on, but honestly, I don't remember.

On this side of the room was a ladder leading to a catwalk above the stage. So I climbed it. Slowly. And then there I was, above the audience, above the stage and the playing band. I wasn't in clear view or anything, there was a ceiling. The lights were up here, so a person walked used the catwalk to set up the lights before a show. After a few minutes I went back. I climbed down the ladder and exited on the side I was one. I inched my way down the shallow stairs. On the second to last stair, a cameraman looked over and saw me. That was it.

Is it true? I swear it. But even when I look back on it I can't seem to picture it. It was ten years ago. It seems crazy, it doesn't make any sense.

Did I tell you about the guy who thought he knew me, followed me until I bolted around a corner to my car, and then when I pulled around to get a second look he grabbed a stop sign and bent it over to his knees?

Do you believe me? Or do you think I'm nuts. I know when people tell me crazy stories i have a hard time believing them. Especially if they're over ninety and won't stop jabbering about the past even though I have no idea who they are and I just happened to sit next to them at Denny's.

On the other side of the crazy train are the people who believe some of the craziest bullshit you've ever heard. And they really do believe it. They can disprove every bit of information you show them.

For example:
The Flat Earthers
Time Cube
A Whole Bunch Of Conspiracy Theories

Conspiracy theories prove that we can never taste the sweet lovin' of undeniable truth.

So. Did Michael Jackson ever touch that kid in that place? Is Michael Vick actually sorry? We only know what we are told. What we are told was told to someone else. Plus the fact that people can say whatever they want, whenever they want.

Does this frustrate anyone else? I WANT to KNOW the TRUTH about everything but I just CANT. I just can't.

The worst part is that, I don't even know truths about myself. I can't decipher my own feelings. I dated my previous girlfriend for three years and asked my self every day "Do I love her?" No. Yes. No. I don't know. Am I tricking myself? Am I convincing myself? On this day I felt this way. On that day I felt that way. This thing never clicked, but this thing did. I DONT EVEN KNOW MY OWN FEELINGS. And I never will. I just had to weigh the pros and cons, the bits of evidence I could piece together, and trust that I made the right decision.

Trust.

Politics.

Plenty of people believe Obama is a terrorist. They have their proof. I believe that Obama is a good guy and honestly wants to change government for the better. I have my proof. So is he trustworthy?

Plenty of people believe the Republican Party is full of scumbags, liars, and thieves only looking out for number one. How true is it? Is there really a shadow government? Are presidents just puppets? Do they know they're puppets? Do they actually believe most of what they say? Is there a group of people that really wants to keep screwing the American people? Is Osama Bin Laden truly a terrorist? Is the bailout a big scam?

Who. Really. Knows.

The world is full of evidence but no judge. We are the jury and we can deliberate as long and as hard as we want, but we can only provide theories.

And what about bias? My beliefs are so peppered in bias, I could marinate a steak every time I pissed.

I don't want to go into bias right now. It's a larger subject that I thought. Save it for later.

I'll end with a note on Atheism. Though Atheism has seen vast growth recently, I don't think it will last. Atheism has become popular with our society's appropriate acceptance of logic and science. Since you can't 'prove' that God exists, less and less people believe in him. The values of science have started to overcome the values of faith. But, as it starts to become clear how hard it is to prove anything, Atheism will die down.

Positive Feedback, please

2008-10-15T11:18:00.004-04:00

In my video game design class I am working in a group to create, well, a video game. It's a semester long project. Over the past weekend, we prototyped it and in class today, we let our two professors (a dual-teaching threat) and other classmates test it.

Our prototype was a 3D model of the first three levels of our game. We used thick posterboard for the base and thin posterboard for the walls. First we drew the levels out on paper a few times, tweaking the 'flow' of the level and then we assigned appropriate lengths, widths, and heights, to the appropriate walls, pits, switches, and platforms.

We outlined the blueprints of each level with light pencil on the face of each thick piece posterboard. The walls were all four inches high and were between four and sixteen inches long. The posterboard used for the walls was flimsy so we created a support structure for it. We taped toothpicks along the wall three inches apart. We had the pointy part of the toothpick stick out past the bottom of the wall; We were going to treat the wall like a long fence-post, sticking the toothpick bottom into the floor. We didn't want to ruin our thick posterboard by stabbing into it, though, so we placed little globs of sticky tack along the wall and instead stuck the toothpick ends into them.

Props to the female member of my group for figuring out how to do all of this and getting a head start while I was vacationing.

Since the walls were separate pieces, we cut thin pieces of posterboard to acts as joints for each corner. For the switches, we cut 1 inch squares from thin posterboard, drew black borders on both sides of each, and then colored a red circle on one side and a blue on the other. In our game, a switch starts red but turns blue after being hit.

Each level had a title card. One level had platforms and a large pit we colored in with thick, high-inducing, permanent marker. We created a sample HUD and the female member's boyfriend even made our little game character out of toothpicks and scrap poster. The next morning- this morning- we carried it to class.

We got to the classroom early and watched everyone else trickle in. The four other groups assigned to present today set up their prototypes around the room. When class began, everyone not showing a prototype is told to visit each playtesting station around the room.. The two professors walk to our prototype first, saying it caught their eye (how couldn't it?). That was the only nice thing they said.

***

A few minutes later, they've moved on to the next group's prototype, and we're left sitting on the tops of the adjacent desks, heads on our knee, eyes drooping down, gazing at our masterwork that was torn apart as half the class crowded around to watch. I'm doing my best to find something constructive in the notes I made as they played. I realize that they didn't offer anything positive about our game.

It's not like they said it sucked. That it was terrible or boring (which I heard them say to another group). They just didn't point out anything good about it. They didn't even say the prototype looked cool.

Here's a sample of the test. The female professor was the subject and the male professor stood behind her and offered his ideas. On the second level, we told her she was standing in the wrong place and that the she couldn't shoot the switch correctly from that spot. She tried another time from a different angle and we told her it fell short. Then, in sort of a controlled hissy fit- some would call it a condescending joke- she says "All right, I run up here and shoot around for half an hour trying to get the perfect angle to hit the switch"

Not only is that not constructive, it assumes that we are just bad game designers. Like we'll create a game that is intensely frustrating. Hey, maybe we were going to. Maybe we are complete gaming newbs with no sense of the difference between frustrating and challenging a player. Maybe we thought having really hard to get switches would be a just so much fun.

Even if that is the situation, it is bad to treat student game developers, ones in the process of learning; ones that are intensely optimistic about their future with game design (you have to be optimistic to imagine a future in game design, right?); ones that obviously spent a lot of time on a stupid prototype that counts for only a small portion of their grade; ones that enjoy doing this kind of work, creating, thinking, and spending their free time imagining puzzles, levels, challenges, surprises, rewards, and experiences for their beloved players...

Looking back, it was kind of confusing. There was no ceiling and we didn't go so far to create a miniature gun representing the in game gun. We just assumed that they took the best shot available at the certain spot they were standing and told them where it would land and if it hit the switch or not. I understand, now, that was a little confusing and we should fix it for further testing.

This is criticism 101. Say something positive before pointing out something negative. Tell people what they did right and what they did wrong. Offer possible solutions, don't force your own personal answers. Don't make them feel like they've wasted their time or that their ideas have no merit. Don't condescendingly roast their hard work.

Another professor of mine is just the opposite. When I presented a project in her class I always felt like I did a really good job. She always pointed out the weaknesses and potential tripping points of my game ideas in a way that helped me solve them. Sometimes I felt it was just me, that she favored my ideas, until the next person presented and I knew that that person felt the same way I did. She offered us encouragement, not frustration. We didn't want to give up, we didn't feel that our game was hopeless or a waste of time. We realized the good of our ideas and were ready to take the next step.

For example, she would critique game ideas that were too large for the time frame of the class by calling them great, but ambitious ideas. A game that was good enough to be pursued as a capstone with her if they wanted. Then she offered ideas to slim down their game to something that could be done within the class's time frame.

Constructive feedback is important in all fields, but not offering it in games seems plain counter-intuitive. (Most) games are supposed to be fun. If you suck the spirit of fun from the game's designer, how does the spirit of fun enter the game?

In the words of Flight of The Conchords... "Why? W-why? Which-Why? Why exact-ly? Be more constructive with your feedback. Please. Why? Whhyyy?"

Burned After Watching

2008-09-23T12:30:00.000-04:00

I feel like the Coen Brothers invited me over for dinner and some board games, strapped me in a La-Z-boy, and then repeatedly punched me in the face. Thanks, you two. It's been a wonderful evening.

Usually I feel quite the opposite after a Coen Brothers film. I'm laughing, relieved- excited that I saw something fresh. Not this time.

Burn After Reading is so aggravatingly over the top; so flooded with Coen conventions; so utterly stupid and irreasonably violent; that it forces a revelation on me. I can take a look back on all of Coen movies and say "They really do write the same stuff over and over." This movie functions like the twist at the end of every M. Night Shamalan film. Now, it is clear what to expect from them. Now, they are predictable. This movie bombed the illusion.

So, what is it? What is the core of the Coen Brothers' filmic lifeblood? Stupid, greedy people screw up eachother's lives. That's it. To be honest, it makes for a great movie. It has worked very well until now.

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Immediate Spoilers. Don't even think about it. Seriously, I will spoil the shit out of this movie.
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The movie began slow and that is mostly the trailer's fault. The plot as revealed by the trailer starts forty-five long minutes into the movie and, while we wait, we are introduced to a wide cast of characters and four unrelated factions of the main plot.

Unfotunately, this is the catch 22 of commercials. They exist to guage interest, but they spoil scenes and may prime audiences for a totally different movie (see The Fountain).

Eventually the stupid characters arrive to make stupid decisions. Let's talk about stupid characters.

Generally, I HATE stupid characters. I have recently realized that, really, it just depends. When a stupid character is done correctly, it can work. Can you tell that I'm reluctant to say that? Sometimes stupid characters make great jokes. Sometimes smart characters fall into follies that we can relate to. That's also reasonable.

But. In most movies, ignorant characters exist solely to move the plot to places that the director would have a hard time moving it to without thinking creatively. I'm saying stupid characters and their stupid decisions are a cop-out. Instead finding a solid plot point, directors just throw in a fucking moron.

Babel has a perfect example. In one scene, a Mexican man, his aunt, and two American children she is watching over are trying to cross the border into the U.S. The racist border patrols are giving them trouble, but seem like they will let them through. Yes, even they would have made it over BUT THE FUCKING MORON DIDNT LIKE THE OFFICERS LIP AND TALKED BACK. DUDE SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GO PEOPLE ARE COUNTING ON YOU TO GET ACROSS THE BORDER.

Of course, he gets arrested, the plot gets worse, I get angrier, I throw a bowl of plums out the window. Whatever. I hate dumb characters.

Unless we're talking about, say, the cast of Tropic Thunder. It's a picky subject.

So, typical of most Coen movies, the cast in Burn After Reading is a bunch of morons. Fortunately, Brad Pitt makes half of his lines funny. Unfortunately, the female lead, Lilly, was WAT TOO DUMB. SO DUMB.

"You never go full retard." - Kirk Lazerus, Tropic Thunder.

I'm serious. There's dumb and there's 'I want to choke you with a queen-sized pillow soaked in ammonia'. There's 'I want to send the Coen Brothers a hot water bottle filled with bacon and bird shit.'

This woman bitches the entire movie. "I want surgery!" "I want surgery so I can begin a new life." "This will at least put a dent in the cost of my surgery." "This money will be a great start to pay for my surgery." *sob* "I've taken this body as far as it can go." Bitch. Shut. Up.

sigh

You know. I really only had two problems with this movie. Camerawork was excellent and dialogue was appropriate- as it always is in a Coen film. So, other than annoying characters, what was it?

I feel that the Coen Brothers, for the first time, forgot about their audience. They forgot about what we care about. They were so absorbed in their black comedy that they ignored the effect of the movie. The movie is undoubtedly disturbing and to me, it is depressing. To put it shortly, they murder everything we could care about in the movie.

Brad Pitt's character, as I said, was pretty funny. He's lively, young, and George Clooney shoots him in the face half way through the movie. Why? Shock value, I assume.

It's not the kind of shock that makes you say 'Oh Damn! I didn't see that coming. Wow, what a twist.' That's how I felt watching The Departed. This is the kind of shock that makes you say 'What the fuck? What the shit just happened? Grr...'

The movie has one redeeming character. The boss at HardBodies who loves Lilly. He tries to get her to recognize her true beauty, forget about the surgery, et cetera, et cetera. He's a nice guy; an innocent, patient, grandpa figure with light-blue eyes. How does this sad teddy bear die? First, John Malkovich shoots him above the heart. Still alive, he tries to get away, but Malkovich chases him outside with a small hatchet and hacks into his chest, his head, and the back of his neck. The blood spreads as the scene fades out.

Did I mention that this is the same way Steve Buscemi dies in Fargo? Even the angle was similar.

Not only did the Brothers Coen kill off both likable characters, the annoying one gets rewarded in the end. In the last scene, we are told that Lilly will get her surgery.

You know, what can I say? I agree that movies niether have to include redeeming characters nor that all likeable characters should survive. I just think it was a very poor choice. No, it was tasteless. It's Fuck You embroidered on a wedding dress; gift from daddio. Well, fuck you, Misters Coen.

I mean, do you think we're going to stop caring about your characters? Just because this is black comedy? Just because the movie is so obviously not supposed to make sense, I'm not supposed to take it seriously? Not supposed to be affected by it?

It's like they're telling me, "Look, buddy, this is just a movie, these characters are stupid, this plot is wild and unbelievable, it's ok if disturbing things happen, it's ok if we murder whomever we please. It shouldn't matter to you. Take it for what it is. A joke."

That's where I think they got it all wrong. I can't take it for what it is. I invested emotions into these characters. I knew crazy things would happen but I never thought they would bloody their hands so much for a gory joke. Nor that they would tear apart my investments by sending a parasite through the umbillical cord with which I fed from the movie.

That's why I feel burned after watching.

Burn After Reading

There are no good ideas. There are no bad ideas.

2008-09-20T10:26:00.004-04:00

Check out this great idea. So this young actress comes to Hollywood. It's tougher than she thought. It's scary. She falls in love with another actress. The other actress wins a part over her. The young actress gets jealous and hires someone to kill her. K. And it's all going to be represented in a dream.

Sounds like a piece of shit, right? Wrong. It's Mulholland Drive. And it's incredible.

How about this one: A poor guy and a rich girl fall in love on the Titanic. Then it sinks. That's a 600 million dollar idea.

So, the next time you have an awesome idea and someone sighs at you when you explain it; just get over it. They can't see what you see.

Most video games that suck don't inherently suck. Teams get focused on the wrong attributes; they underestimate how hard it is to accomplish all of the initial ideas; they overestimate their budget. If companies had as long as they wanted to make every game, and they stayed focused, all games would be fun.

Games, unlike movies and television shows, can always be fun. Raking your yard can be fun. Make it competitive- that's easy. Make it a puzzle game, you have to change direction every time you hit a boundary. (Alright, that's easy - just rake in a spiral). Or with two players, play Isolation while you rake. Yes, I just linked my homework assignment. Scroll down for the game's description.

As Mary Poppins says:

In ev'ry job that must be done
There is an element of fun
We find the fun, and snap!
The job's a game!

This is my game professor's email sig.

This is why we are taught to pitch games. Good ideas can sound bad. All ideas can sound good. Witty lines do wonders for shitty ideas. (See: The 'Three Strikes and You're Out' Law)

I said there are no good ideas and no bad ideas. Well, there are a few really good ideas. For example, Crank's pitch sounded so good, they got funding immediately. It was something like: 'A guy is injected with a poison that will kill him unless the he keeps his adrenaline up.' Is there any better way to frame an action movie? 'Guy must do awesome shit from the beginning of the movie 'til the end.' It's like Speed, which was very successful, except it's a person instead of a bus. And the bus only had to stay over 55 mph. That's the speed limit.

I Like The New Facebook

2008-09-18T21:21:00.001-04:00

I like how my wall, my feed, whatever it is now, is all in one place.My info is in one place. My pictures are in one place. I'm not scrolling down 6 kilometers to find out who doodled on my super wall. Not that I ever had one. Which is another reason the new facebook rocks. All those FUCKING BOXES are out of the way. THANK GOD.

Not only that, the important, simple information - my basic information, my friends, my notes, my badge - if I'm not worried about privacy issues - are neatly lined up on the left, always there to see.

Like most, I was taken aback at first. I thought it was messy and I couldn't find anything. It's like the first time you use a Mac. It's annoying for a bit, but as you learn the system you realize that everything is organized better, everything is easier to use, everything is pleasant. Deny it if you want, it's an aesthetic machine.

I like that the adverts are still unobtrusive. I like how the 'Twitter' box is still at the top. I've started using that a lot lately.

I understand that the 'wall' is harder to read now. I mean, everything is posted there now. The feed became the wall. I miss scrolling through all the messages I've gotten. Having them all stored in one place. The new facebook is focused less on the sentimental accumulation of wall posts and instead on the hear and now. Wall posts are now voicemails; no longer birthday cards stored in a shoebox. It's not as sweet or nostalgiac (or whatever if you never gave a flip about it), but it is what it is.

My only beef is that at the top. Clicking 'facebook' and clicking 'Home' bring me to the exact same page. I wish there was just one button. I mean, the links are right next to each other. It wasn't a problem in the old facebook where my only two options were 'home' and my 'profile.' Much more efficient. Less annoying. The such.

That's it.

Well, lastly, now that I'm single I'm getting ads targeting single guys. They are super annoying, especially because some of them lead to malicious websites. I know you make money facebook, so, if you could, would you please screen your ads? I don't want to chat with millions of singles at photoshoppedbreasts.net.

Haruki Murakami

2008-09-17T12:08:00.008-04:00

Writes books I've been reading. Books I love reading.

I don't agree with everything Haruki Murakami writes. Some of his ideas annoy me. His characters think a lot, sometimes too much, sometimes to the point where they are so self-referential it is bothersome. Sometimes I say to myself, "I've thought of that." And I don't enjoy reading too many things I've already thought about. But, his characters don't cross into the aggravating zone of over-self-consciousness as often as they could, which is surprising because a lot of characters in a lot of books do.

Each of Murakami's characters openly offers their impressions of the other characters either from the outside-in or the inside-out. Sometimes descriptions will start with a physical symbol - maybe a pair of mismatched earrings - and the observing character describes what the symbol means. He or she will explain how the mismatched earrings define the other person. He or she may comment on how the observed keeps her shoulders mostly upright, yet slouches slightly when sitting. She wants to be seen as strong, he will say, but when she is away from the crowd, sitting and eating, she lets her shoulders rest. He says "She is not an inherently strong person, but she tries."

Murakami takes his time and I admire that. I have so much appreciation for those auteurs that take their time. They aren't pressured by standards and they don't conform to what is expected of them, as defined by their job: novelist, director. They aren't trying to rebel, they are just comfortable - and insistent - on doing it their way. They spend time on the details and the mood. They move through stories at the pace they want. They are bold. Their films have the utmost effect on me. David Lynch is an example of an artist that takes his time.

We all know that modern fiction, be it movie-making, novel-writing, screen-writing, etc., is pushed to be fast paced. Pushed by the businessman, the producer, the dollar and all its associated charts and calculations. Rule 1 in writing to get published is writing to keep the story going. Every action has an effect; an effect that moves the story. It's Hollywood, it's books, it's how you get paid.

Murakami spends time describing almost everything: characters, settings, feelings, words, thoughts, glances, hand shakes. Unlike wordy filler or incomprehensible symbolism that fill the pages of every book on the high-school AP Literature reading lists - Dickens, Dickinson, the lot - Murakami's words are not hard. No Old English, large words, unforgivable run-ons, layered analogies - though surely their are metaphors - are road blocks not included. All that I listed are undoubtedly important - Shakespeare is a genius, right? - but they take training to read. I'm new to the art. And even after training, it takes so much energy to read through.

I'm not saying Murakami's books are easy, like they are stupid, for young adults, or not thoughtful. They are definitely thoughtful. Most of all, though, they are relaxing.

I've never held a book that felt so much like gentle meditation. I find myself picking up the book just to relax. It's a new concept to me, a child in the Age of Technology - you know. Most books I read for the knowledge they have, i.e. the non-fiction I have around. How to Use Your Camera and Not look Like a Fool. That sort. Otherwise, I enjoy books that are intelligent, witty, and exciting, like Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. But I sink into Murakami's books. I rest my head in them. I don't have to think if I don't want to. I could, the book offers much to learn from, but I'm not forced to. Most of it comes naturally.

Murakami writes a lot in passive voice - something I've always been told not to do. That's his style. He shows when he wants, then goes when he wants.

Maybe I don't always want to be in the middle of an action verb. Maybe I don't have the energy to follow a jumping, fighting, rocking, socking, pick-pocketing, master of movement.

When Murakami describes a room, I don't have a hard time imagining it. To me, this is unusual. When most writers start describing something, I usually start skimming the page until something important happens. His storytelling creates a whole new frame of mind. I am not rushing to the action, I am wading in the water of a pleasant stream on a sunny day explaining to five year old brother how much I enjoy the yellow glint on the clouds and the pink haze over the daisies. His book sets a mood that you fall into. Like a dream. Like a good night's sleep, I've never had a problem falling in.

Sometimes I say to myself: 'He puts too much Murakami in his characters.' His writing is too easy, he just writes about himself. I say, "His characters are all the same. They think a lot and are very intuitive, just like an author." But then I read more of his characters. Though they all possess the gift of keen people-watching, they are much different. They all have different back stories. They come from different places, eat different foods, and wear different clothes. And then again, they all contemplate loneliness and the importance of social interactions. Many have similar goals in life. To get away for a night. Or forever. They are different. They aren't. I don't know. They are so compelling, though.

Sometimes I think: "Does he rewrite anything?" His books feel like rough drafts. He just seems to go with flow. He just says what feels right at the moment. He moves on when he's ready to move on. I think, "Does he even plan?" I'm sure he does, he is a professional writer, he must plan. I can't imagine it, though. His writing style conflicts with planning.

If I wrote a book and I knew that my character was on his way to a train, he would be there pronto. I don't have the patience to detail the scenery. But, if I never specify where my character is heading, I feel that I would have no problem describing the scenery. I could explore my character's setting and also his path. The details arrive from the lack of a goal.

But this can't be how Murakami works. It wouldn't work. He must plan or the book would never have a satisfying ending. It would just end and nothing would have happened. That isn't necessarily bad, see Godard, see Neo-Realism, but I just don't think that's how Murakami works. Plus, he usually tells two or more stories at once and then ties them together as the book progresses.

I don't think he writes a few hundred pages and then quits when nothing is left to write. This made me realize that this man is really smart. I'm in awe of him; his self-control, his care. He cares about everything.

But all writers care about heir writing, right? Maybe to a certain extent, but I mostly disagree. Most have money, publication, and other people's ideas lingering in the back of their mind. Ideas that work. Ideas that sell. At the end of the day they can say "I wrote that" and "I know my writing inside and out" but it isn't pure. It isn't them. Or it is them but they are just someone else.

Murakami writes softly.

Incidentally, he is associated with the man who created my favorite video game, Earthbound. Shigesato Itoi isn't a video game guy and he only worked on four games: the Mother series and a bass-fishing game. He's a journalist and essayist. The pair co-authored a book of short stories called Yume de aimashou ("Let's meet in a dream"). I think I'll pick that up next.

The short list of Murakami's books that I've read or am currently reading. And he's already inspired a blog post.

After the Quake.
After Dark.
Kafka At the Shore.

Links:
Haruki Murakami

Shigesato Itoi
Earthbound

Logical reason why writing ideas down is important

2008-09-16T18:16:00.003-04:00

It's arithmatic, actually.

So, you're thinking of ideas for a project, a game, a story, etc. You're thinking all day, but at a certain point, it becomes hard to build off your ideas.

You're wasting mental storage space- and energy - on remembering the ideas you've already thought. It's overloading your short-term memory. It doesn't always go to your long-term memory, that's why we can recall plenty of times where we can't recall a great idea we've had.

So, as soon as you can, write those first ideas down, clear out the freezer, fridge, safety-deposit box, washer, dryer, whatever.

I would say, 75% of the time, at the very least, you'll come up with more ideas while you're writing down the ones you have. Your brain automatically starts making connections to more ideas. It won't do this, most often, if it risks losing previous knowledge.

So, yeah. It's math, baby!

Today I'm Just Writing

2008-09-16T15:27:00.004-04:00

Otherwise known as, "No one wants to read an emo post," because no one does, or "Reminding myself that the only obstacle between me and having something written, is myself writing it." And all that. Write away. Right? Got it.

Man, I haven't written but once in the last two weeks, and only to finish up a month-old game review. It's stoppage, a block, it's creating a block between me and creativity. The more I write, the more creative I feel, the looser I feel, the more verbal I am, the better words I choose - in writing and everyday communication. I talk better when I write. The stop between myself and what I want to be is 'not writing.' I do it, I did it, I'm better. Just do it. Kabam. Done.

This is a weird post, because it's purely for me. I have some form of audience out there because this is a blog, but this is not for anyone but myself. This is not for you. That's not true, I'm just reminiscing an opening page from the book, House of Leaves. "This book is not for you" it says. Let me check. Nope, I had it right the first time. "This is not for you." This paragraph is for you though. For a minute, I'll acknowledge you're there, possibly, reading this post, which has nothing to do with you, and connecting with you, so neither of us is confused. This is not for you, even though it's a blog post, not a personal post, not in a private diary, nor sticky note, nor Moleskine pad, if you like those, that name brand of art books imo, yes, imo, in my opinion, like a text message, im or forum post.

Honestly, I wouldn't read one god damn bit of this post. Self-referential shit makes me throw up. It really does. See my comic-strip Post Modern Throw Up. Not even a comic, but now it's out there, an unofficial release, I have another blog where I post what I will call really bad drawings, and you'll say I'm being self-deprecating, and then I'll say, look at them. It's on purpose. Or I'll at least draw them worse than I could because I don't think I can draw, which is self-deprecating.

Who can read this kind of stuff? Self-referential is a new kind of emo. You just want to say "Hey, shut the fuck up." Get over it, get over yourself, stop thinking so much, stop questioning your existence and your medium. The paper, pen, keyboard, screen, film, that you exist on and just be. Just be. Just be yourself. Tell a story or teach something important. You're on a screen, I'm on a screen, we're all on a screen, now do something. Stop talking about it.

It's old to be postmodern now. It's cliche. For the first time, thanks to those terribly unoriginal ____ Movie directors, even parodies are cliche. Since when is making fun of something cliche? Now. Now it is. And that's really all I do in this blog. It's time to step it up. When? How? Do I have the vision to become a writer for the future, or just the maturity to stop using so much obscene language.

See what writing does for me? Wonders, apparently. All these jumblings, excuse such a messy word, you- audience, come out clean, for the most part, in writing. Granted they'd read much clearer if I would reread them, but that's not for today. Today is free writing. To reference the title, I'm just writing today. No backspace, unless I misspell. I've used it once or twice, but never went back farther than a sentence.

I'm too honest, I think. When I'm writing, like now, as you may even be able to tell, I want to sayeverything that I'm thinking. I can't have a thought that may or may not add interest or important information and leave it out. I thought it, it's fair for me to say it. For you. Looking back at my writing I can say, that's everything I was thinking. That's all of it, everything on my mind. I'm not too ashamed. This is the case in real life, too. I always say what's on my mind. Correct that, I always want to say what's on my mind. I have been taught courtesy and, mostly, when to hold our tongue. So, yes, I won't say everything. But then I don't know which direction to go. I can't usually get it out of my head. If you're hanging around me, we're in a conversation and you find my conversation has died out, I haven't been moving forward as rapidly as usual, it's because something is on my mind and I don't want to say it.

Talking too much can be bothersome at times. I mean, let's say that everyone likes talking so talking a lot in itself isn't annoying. It's bothersome when I want to explain a new concept to a person, or a concept they already know about. I give some information, and they get it. I think of something else to add, and I genuinely think it will add, but they get it, I don't need to go on. Sometimes I have a hard time discerning if what I'm saying will really add something or if I'm just elonging (?) - what is that word... - making the conversation inappropriately longer. There's people in class that don't know when to shut the fuck up.

I feel a little better already. Say What. Talk it out, now talk it out. Talk it out now talk it out. Haha, I've been wanting to write that line all week I was thinking of writing this post. It's referencing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KU3N5c2Kxnw.

Just talk it out, just talk it out. Write, talk, Freud. One of the ways he helped or 'cured' people with emotional problems was by getting the to just talk. Talk and talk and talk. Say whatever, the first thing to come to your mind, all the things that come to your mind. Let it out.

Nitpicky Gamer: Mission: Runway

2008-09-09T00:57:00.001-04:00

In every Nitpicky Reviewer post, I put on my critical top hat, wave my elitist cane, and chauffeur sarcastic verbiage with full intent to tear apart a piece of media as if it were supposed to be art. True, I'll never realize that criticizing games made purely for dollars doesn't mean anything.

The last few times I reviewed a game, I took notes while I was playing. This time, I'll be making notes directly into the blog. Hopefully I'll end up with a post that does not feel like a rewrite and hasan't forgotten any jokes.

First thing I thought when assigned Mission: Runway: 'Ah shit, at least I'll get a decent blog post out of it.' I'm pretty sure this game is about modeling based on the reality TV show Project Runway. I just finished another review for a game based on a TV show, Dancing with the Stars, the worst game ever released to the public. And the public was charged for it.

First thing I thought when the splash screen came up: Hotties! Hell yea, I get to look at models all week. Wait. Why is there a stoned, tired, sick-like-an-overdose, hippie princess lurching in the back? She looks lost, high, sad and beaten, and like n evolved form of the little girl from The Ring. She's even wearing the same white dress. I can't mix sexy and nightmarish. I'll get sick or feel really guilty.

The girl in front, the main focus, isn't even real. She has more Photoshopped brush strokes than a Van Gogh rip-off. Her eyes look swollen and her hair copy-and-pasted. Her boobs look flat even though some digital artist tried to make semi-circles above her dress line. She has a certain Gestalt: the sum of her pieces is a paper-doll project from a fourth grader with a pole-dancing mother.

I've never seen a girl so real and so airbrushed.

Upon entering the main menu, I was instructed to create a profile. A flashing asterisk at the bottom of the interface tells me I should start typing. Instead of the default mouse cursor, the simple arrow, I wave around a severed hand. Not the Adobe white glove, a fucking dismembered, I-love-The-Addams-Family, calloused and thick man hand. Ready to slap a bitch that missteps on the runway. That hand could tear up the whole game with the full-hand or backhand slap command. Shit, how awesome would it be to play game where the goal is to slap through terrible user interfaces, beating their structure, smashing their poorly chosen fonts, and eventually wringing the neck of the apathetic jackass that programmed them.

Clicking on the highlighted row does nothing. Less than nothing.

So. The beastly five-finger I'm waving around keeps highlighting all the rows in this interface, even the one with my instructions. Usually something highlighted is something to click, but what about the flashing asterisk. The game has temporarily stunned (not awed) me. Not being one to click around, or go with the easy solution to just start typing, I sit, stare, and just think about what I want to do. Do I click? Do I just start typing? Which will serve me better? Which am I supposed to do? I don't know, so I just sit there. I actually start to feel a little fear, a nervous ping on the backside of my melon; I want to find out what happens when I click on a highlighted row, but I have this wary feeling that I'll fuck something up.

I do it anyway. I'm both saved and extremely disappointed; clicking on any of the highlighted rows does absolutely nothing. I proceded to type my name: Leggy Blond. (Flight of the Conchords, baby).

Now I'm choosing my avatar. Honestly, I'm still blown away by how much better this is - looks, feels - than Dancing. My point of view is nested in the center of a circle of wannabe models. Or wannabe 3D models. Maybe the designers were self-deprecating, the models aren't supposed to look good because they aren't actually models. An arrow pointing left and an arrow pointing right are fixed by each side of the focal model. I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THEY DO. Fortunately, the game designers thought ahead, realizing that the large portion of their audience would be confused by such a little-known convention; a hint box appears when my mouse rolls over an arrow.

In case I didn't know what to press after deciding which model to represent, the 'Check' button also has a hint box.

Really, though, does 'OK' tell you any more than the check mark? I imagine: "Alright, I'll play with this girl. What do I do now? Oh my God, I'm so confused. How do I continue in this game?? This game sucks! I don't know what to do! Wait, there's a huge check mark. I wonder what it does. I don't want to press it because something terrible might happen. What if it exits the game? I'll just let my mouse hang over it while I think. Oh, a hint! OK, it says. OK what? I'm going to kill myself."

After selecting my avatar, I am brought to the list of episodes I will compete in throughout the season. The name of each episode is some kind of pun. For example, the first episode is called 'Freestyle Style.'

Others include:
Miss Mission Runway
Alternative Reality, an episode with alternative-style fashion
Everyday [sic?] a New Design, an episode focused on everyday clothing styles
Business Sense, an episode showcasing business formal.

Will somebody tell whoever made these titles that a pun isn't a pun IF YOU USE THE SAME WORD. A pun is a play on words. Not a play on word.

Thankfully, I'm not completely disappointed. There's an episode called Fashion of the Opera. Ok, I am disappointed.

To the Stars is another episode dedicated to designing an outfit for the Oscars. I kind of get it, but I think it should be For the Stars.

One episode name makes up for them all: Life's a Beach. That's right, punned the phrase 'Life's a bitch.' It's for the kids, mother, it's for the kids.

I select the first and only available episode: Freestyle Style. The host introduces my competitors, and, oddly, I can't tell if they are standing or sitting. They have slightly bent legs, but look like they are standing and leaning forward. Kind of like they're about to shit.

The instructions are given in paragraph form at the bottom of the screen. Halfway through the first paragraph, it flashes to the next. And when I say flashes, I mean the whole screen skips and refreshes, not just the text box. I may have finished the first paragraph, but I was steudying the setting. There's a check box at the end of each paragraph, so I assumed I would click it when I finished reading and that it wouldn't continue without me. So much for conventions. Maybe that's why there's a hint box on everything. The outsourced programmers just don't know our conventions. It confuses them, they over-reinforce us, and then they still get it wrong. I blame on the company that chose to outsource.

In the introduction to the first episode, 'everyday a new design' I am told, in a block of supposedly-spoken text to dress normal... but not be limited by my imagination. I'll let that sink in...

After the show's introduction ends. it's time to dress the model.

Wait. I just realized that I don't play as a model in this game, I play a fashion designer. I just voided half the jokes I've used so far.

So, I want to spend time trying out different outfits, seeing what the game has to offer, but the model is just standing in her underwear and I feel like a fucking pervert in a room full of ~~game testers~~ guys. Any second, I'm going to get a hand on my shoulder followed by the words 'Move on Chris, it's just a character model'. Fuck you, buddy- she's hot!

The interface is surprisingly, fairly intuitive. Yes, it is surprising that it appeals to any bit of my intuition. Fortunately, the interface uses pictures instead of words - clothing lists would really become tedious. Unfortunately, the pictures don't match clothes. For example:

Here's what I chose:
And here's what I got:

Also, take a look at the buttons that designate clothing styles:
1) Obligatory raonbow gradiant.
2) Skull for 'Alternative' clothing
3) Flower for 'Girly' Clothing
4) A hand-fan for glamrous clothing? No one's used a fan like that since Shakespeare died.
5) A golden star for... being good in class? I don't actually remember.
6) A douchey smiley face with a baseball cap giving you a huge thumbs-up for being such a bad ass. That woud be 'street wear.' Only those with the baddest asses rock out in street clothing. Congratulations for having the balls to be the poorest-looking model in town.

I wanted to see what the model looked like from different angle, so I clicked and dragged around her - a norm in most character creators. Nothing. Above the model are two arrows, one pointing to the right and one to the left. They look like perfectly good rotation buttons. I click to the right and my model turns black! Wait, no, this is a new model now. See, there's a new name above her head, in obscure, white font between the arrows. The girl looks identical, except her skin and the sound of her name are more black.

I cycle through the models. They all are the exact same height, have the exact same hairdo - it must be fake on some of those girls - and nearly identical jawlines.

Four small buttons hide in the bottom right of the screen: zoom-in, zoom out, rotate left, and rotate right. Rotating the girl reveals that the game's 3D modelers are either ignorant foreigners or feminist revolutionaries. I'm staring at a model with a big booty. I'll go with... outsourced unprofessional. And I guess outsourced implies a certain ignorance to the target audience's culture.

Fuck it, let's walk the runway.

First let's reinforce how stupid the developers think we are:

After tooling around for so long in the dressing room, I am supremely curious on how the game plans on judging my choices. In the ideal fashion game, the artificial intelligence would probably have long lists of clothes that don't match; an algorithm that judges poor color combinations; and, of course, some simple check to see if I wore the correct style the episode called for. I don't have those expectations for this game.

After confirming that I do, in fact, want to strut my junk down the runway, our mute announcer spells out: "We've seen some great designs [sic] now lets see how each model fared on the runway!" But momm-y, they haven't been on the runway yet. What's this lady talking aboouutt? I think they were going for 'fares on the runway.'

My model walks the runway first and then each model from each other designer follows, one at a time. The techno was pumping and both the judges and photographers were excited.

What can I say that they aren't saying right now?

Most photographers handle the boredom by taking pictures of their rivals on the opposite side.

The walks lasted about a minute and a half each and looked like they had been edited by the programmer's toddler. Random frames of disarray appeared between each cut. Some shots would linger and some were cut short - but don't get me wrong, there was no sense of flow. At one point it even cut to the same angle. You could tell because it skipped, as if were cutting away, and then the same angle loaded back up, a few pixels off center.

It wasn't until the third walk I realized my dismembered hand was covering the click-to-skip button. I must have saved half an hour when I finally used it.

This girl is a professional waitress that just fucked up her chance to be a real model.

This doesn't mind showing up in her jammies.
This girl's booty is so fly, it makes straight lines go jagged.

Now the judges will tell me how I did...

Holy shit, they just ripped me apart. What the hell did I wear that got me booted off the first show?

For a second, I thought they were going to murder me on stage.

Back at the main menu- hey wait a minute. Where did all of these options come from? Now I can practice dressing models outside of competition, look at my currently-empty photo album, and examine my wardrobe, complete with the design that just got me booted. All this for losing! And... when do I get to take photos? It says it is empty because I have not taken any photos in the photo booth. So, where is it? Maybe I have to win first. Or at least pass the first week.

This game is going down. I begin my second tour de campaign mode in the same episode: Freestyle Style; normal clothes. This time I'll follow a simple rule: pick clothing from the same category. This time, my model will only wear clothes from the 'Girly' category.

Delving deeper into the clothing styles, I see that there are actually quite a bit of designs, though they all look like variants of wrapping paper.

Moving on to jewelry... I take everything back. There's only one necklace to pick from. Wait. Ok, help me out here.

In the make-up section, my eyes feel like a 256-color processor trying to differentiate between a million shades of peach. My eyes can't tell the difference between these colors. I'm clicking the right arrow button, cycling through, and I can't even tell what I've looked at and what I haven't looked at. Sometimes the shades will cycle whole rows at a time and sometimes it will rotate over only a few shades at a time. I honestly can't tell.

Well, now I'm curious. I screenshot the first row and then click the right arrow. Comparing it to the screenshot... it moved one square to the right. I click the right arrow again, and it moves back. I can't believe it. The whole time it was rotating over one color.

Next time, just cut out the last color.

The ability to change models' hair style instantaneously is unsettling. I find myself wondering if all models are bald and they just change wigs every day.

By the way, this is what spiked hair looks like:
Yes, it cuts right through the hoody.

I submit my second design. Once again, the judges are stupified.

The model walking after mine wore an outfit designed by 'Tiffany,' a girl with no crotch.

I skip through the rest of the models to the judges.

What the fuck? What did I do wrong this time? My outfit looked way better than those other bitches.

I was so apparently bad that two of the three judges said the exact same thing. "Who will be the first loser? Sadly I think it will be you."

How do you win this fucking game?

Wait. Woah! I'm moving on to the next week! They didn't boot me after all! They booted some dude with a pink cowboy hat. What a scare. Two of those three judges really had me going.

This game accurately portrays the lack of emotion in the fashion world. The judges are stoic. The photographers and respectful and the crowd quietly golf claps. When my avatar is criticized, she puts her hands near the front of her face, does a shake left and a shake right, but is otherwise OK. When a designer is voted off, he or she just sits silently, staring off into a depressing void.

I think I've gone on long enough, I'm going to try and beat the game now. I don't seem to be getting very far - I've been told I know how to pick out a good outfit when shopping with girls - maybe it's all the movies I've watched - but it doesn't seem to have translated over to the game. On the other hand, maybe I just don't understand the subtle complexities of fashion. In any case, I'm Googling a walkthrough.

(A few days later.)

I'm on the second to last 'episode' and I am totally stuck. The two other models have been wearing completely different outfits each time I try to beat it, so I'm not picking up on the style I'm supposed to use.

I'm on the 'pick out an outfit for your host to wear out at night' show. How 'bout a black trash bag and duct tape. Shit, this isn't anything like the 'Life's a Beach' episode in which I just have to put on some kind of swimming suit to pass. I don't know what they're judging! I wore a bunch of 'alternate' clothes and 2 of the 3 judges gave me a thumbs up. I tried it again the next round, only changing a few things, and all the judges dumped me.

So, now, tying desperately to win, I start copying the other two contestants. I recreate one's all-silver outfit. Amazingly, randomly, the model wears the same outfit again, right after I've re-created it. There we are, walking the runway with the exact same outfit. Guess who gets voted off. Me. This fucking game.

I mean, you can't expect much from a game that isn't even proof-read: (You may need to click on the picture to read it; I'll have my own site one day, but for now, bear with me.)

Itit? Re-tarded.

A bit Dj Vu?

"You really took it to the mountain?"

I think he meant Hasta Manana. And since when are Spanish words capitalized?

Finally, after 20 hours of wages that will never be earned back by the game, I beat it. Celebrate with me.

Nitpicky Moviegoer: The Dark Knight

2008-08-31T19:42:00.002-04:00

Now that a few weeks have passed, let's get serious about The Dark Knight. In every nitpicky review that I do, I point out movie flaws that the majority of the world gives no shits about. In this case, judging by the record-breaking sales, absolutely no one cared about the little things- including myself. Only in retrospect, now, a month after the viewing, can I bring back up the details I ignored.

Before I begin, I assume everyone has watched this movie. There will be spoilers.

This review will seem extra picky, because the movie was so good. But, like the director that created it, it isn't perfect. Am I the only one who thought half of Memento was a psychology lecture?

To start off, let's talk about one thing Batman did that was so utterly ridiculous, it strikes deep fear into my heart about the stability and mental resistance of my own mind. The fact that I did not question this impossibility makes me wonder how long I would last if aliens started brainwashing the planet. Could I resist their advanced mind-mushing techniques? I'm not so sure.

About halfway through the movie, Batman extracts a fingerprint originally pressed on a bullet from its bullet hole. (The bullet had been removed from the scene.) It's not even from the original bullet hole, though, he reproduces one - I think - because in some sort of montage-like explanation of the process, he fired five other bullets into similar material to see if the damage matched the damage of the first bullet. He then arbitrarily picked one of the reproductions and... what the fuck am I even talking about? What the fuck was this movie showing me? What the fuck-fuck?

Not only that, the fingerprint wasn't from the Joker, it was from a random guy who lived in some apartment. It was a set-up to get Batman to go to that apartment where decoy sniper fire was set up so that the Joker could assassinate the Mayor from the ground.

The Joker is so fucking smart! He was so intuitive, he knew that Batman was going reconstruct a fingerprint from a shattered plaster wall, leading him to the scene, where he could only helplessly watch the assassination attempt from above. Is there anything else he could have thought of? I mean, Batman could have also released deadly android birds from the rooftops; each honed in on the unholy scent of a man who hasn't washed his hair in three years. That's reasonable.

But wait, there's a loophole here. The reason Batman had to reconstruct the fingerprint from the bullet hole in the wall is because the Joker took the original bullet from the crime scene. He did that so neither Batman nor anyone else could trace it. Yet he still made the fingerprint a decoy?

Another scene confused me even the second time I saw the movie: when Batman and the Joker play chicken. Well, it's sort-of chicken, Batman's on a super-powered motercycle and the Joker is just standing there, and he wants Batman to hit him. It's not really chicken if some guy wants to be hit. Still, Batman chickens out, unable to kill the bad guy, which is appropriate to his comic-book history, so he swerves out of the way and then... crashes? He had so much open room to direct his bike to. I guess he thought too hard about crossing the line he never crosses, and became a nervous wreck.

Come on, how does Batman wreck his bike? And then he lay there in his super-stiff bat suit like a frozen hot dog. I understand his bat suit afforded little movement, but the restriction didn't show when he fought, only when he lay on the ground. Don't you think the director unnecessarily exaggerated his immovability? Those are three of the largest words I've ever used together in a sentence.

Later, Christopher Nolan decides to bring pop conflict into the movie. He brings up the as-of-now highly controversial subject of spying on everyone for everyone's safety. The Big Brother thing. Batman creates a system of SONAR images transmitted from every cell-phone in Gotham so that he can see and hear pretty much everything. It has a great interface, representing Gotham in its entirety on only about 50 TVs, and the program follows whatever you thought you just heard with only a few keyboard strokes. If you look closely, you'll see that one of the screens shows a person in a bathroom- how appropriate to the issue of privacy.

The director asks the question, should we jeopardize the privacy of every person in a city to find a 'terrorist'? Lucius Fox, Batman's trusty assistant, says that he will resign as long as this system is in place, after they get the Joker. Hard to say if he really disagrees. In the end, the voice-tracing, city-imaging, spy web helps them capture the Joker.

So what's Christopher Nolan's conclusion on protecting the privacy of citizens? That privacy can be ignored if the threat is too large. Well, thanks Christopher, you've gotten us nowhere. You've just repeated the same conclusion - and confusion- of everyone involved in this debate. How do we know if a threat is too large? I don't think the government will spend a billion dollars on a cell-phone-based tracking system and then BLOW IT UP after the currently most-wanted terrorist is found. There's always going to be a terrorist, so the system will always be up and running; i.e. voiding our privacy.

So, once again, thank you Christopher Nolan for bringing up a sensitive issue and offering... absolutely nothing.

Close to the end of the movie, Mr. Nolan breaks a scriptwriting rule: never avoid conflict. At the same time, he breaks one of my rules: don't bullshit the audience. In the tense, who-will-blow-up-who, boat scene, he cuts to that huge, rough-as-hell prisoner like four fucking times. Each time, he sneers and looks ugly. I get it, he's going to stand up and cause havoc, take the detonator and blow up the other boat; he doesn't want to die and no one else will follow through. He's the only one mean enough to actually press the button. The time comes and he uses his scary bulk and his understanding of fear and politics to convince the man holding the detonator to give him the detonator. And like the badass he is... he throws it out the window?

This twist is not some 'unforeseen surprise,' it's a lie. Like, I go to the doctor to visit my dying great-grandmother and the doctor tells me she passed away. Of course I believe him. He's a doctor telling me someone died. If he says 'just kidding' it's not like he tricked me, like I'm an idiot for not picking up on it, there's no way I could have known. It's a lie. Films that lie instead of offer clues suck.

Take this puzzle for example: Billy found a blue building block. What color is the building block?

Uhh, blue?

NOPE, ITS PURPLE!

There has to be hints or the game is ruined.

The reason Mr. Nolan concluded this scene like he did was to give audience a ray of hope in a dark movie. Or at least that's what I read in a review, I never thought the film was 'too dark.' I mean, Batman has always been dark and Mr. Nolan does a great job keeping him that way. This scene is a cop out. I know it was rated PG-13, but imagine how crazy it would have been if Batman was holding the Joker by his feet from the top of the unfinished skyscraper; and suddenly one of the boats exploded. That would have been intense. He may have even dropped the Joker, forgetting his anti-killing cree, and then, of course, the Joker would have laughed his way to the pavement. Whether you like my alternate ending or not, don't avoid conflict, scriptwriting 101.

Jim Gordon coming back from the dead? See the previous paragraphs about pointless puzzles.

This movie is the best comic book movie I've ever seen, besides Sin City, which was just like a moving comic book. I LOVE how Christopher Nolan makes so many comic-booky, i.e. corny and unbelievable, remnants of Batman's history make complete sense. Despite the small things I've pointed out, Nolan has achieved greatness by making Batman almost logically exist. He undoubtedly made Two-Face logically exist. The person he loves the most dies as he tells her she'll be all right. He flips his shit. And the face in oil! What a great way to explain Two-Face's charred left side. In the comic book, some mafia thug threw acid on his face in the courtroom, somehow 'coloring within the lines' and magically disfiguring only the left side of his face. Nolan makes it make sense.

And, my God, did Heath Ledger become the Joker.

I have to stop while I'm ahead, these posts are about tearing movies apart, breakin' them down, revealing their true colors! not complimenting them. I must. not. break. down. and describe how awesome this movie was.

Great Connotations ep. 6: I didn't do it! in more or less words.

2008-08-29T16:12:00.001-04:00

In every Great Connotations post, I examine the meaning behind the everyday word choices that people make. People can say the same thing a hundred ways, but the specific way they say it reveals a lot about their personality and what they're really trying to say.

So, the other day I picked up a shift from my girlfriend as a waiter at my old job because she had important plans. A number of new workers seem to have been hired since I've left, but then again, restaurants generally have a low retention rate.

There was a new waitress working that night who seemed a little shy - it was only her third or fourth shift. She seemed very nice, and I'm sure she was, but she always had a worried look on her face. Maybe she had a test or a project hanging on her consciousness, or she had a rough day, or she's generally pessimistic - a feeling I got as I talked to her, but not what I'm discussing today.

Anyway, I was punching an order in with my fingernail on a very sturdy, hardly-registering, 'touch' screen computer when she runs by me into the kitchen with a small stack of dirty dishes.

A few seconds later a plate crashes to the ground.

She walks out, turns to the first person she sees, me: "Were you the last person to put up a plate? Because a plate just broke." She was about to place the plates she had been carrying in the dirty dishes bin, but the previous stack had toppled.

First of all, a broken plate can rattle a new employee. It's obviously much less embarrassing in the kitchen and not on the main floor, but, for some reason, no matter what you drop or where you drop it, or how many of it you drop, if you drop it in a restaurant it will be really, really loud.

Like any self-conscious employee, knowing half the staff heard the plate shatter; knowing she stood right in front of it when it dropped; she wanted to let someone know that she didn't do it.

She asks me 'Were you the last person to put a plate up?' At first, it seems like she's throwing blame at me to cover up for herself. But, I don't think she was trying to pin blame on me, or anyone else, she was just un-pinning it from herself. This is reinforced by the second sentence "Because a plate just broke." She says, I didn't break it, you didn't break it, no one broke it; the plate broke itself. All the blame is the plates and none of the blame is ours. So, are you or I sweeping it up? Don't worry about it, the kitchen staff will.

It's important to note that she left out how the plates broke. She goes from 'putting up a plate' to 'the plate broke.' She left out what I explained: that the dish bin was so full that the last mother-fucker to stack a plate on it should have been a little more fucking careful! Don't add to the four-foot tower of plates rocking back and forth next to the over-powered, thirty-seconds-flat, rumbling steam bath of a dishwasher. Just don't stack your mother-fuckin' plate up there!

She could have said everything I just did, but she didn't. What does that tell me about her? One, she's non-confrontational. She chose to disperse blame into the unknown.

Also, since she didn't discuss it further, with me or anyone else, we didn't waste trivial effort in finding the plate-breaking dunce. I mean, who cares? It was an accident. After she relieved herself of the guilt by confiding her innocence in the nearest co-worker, she probably doesn't care who did it either.

The situation is over and what have we learned? I dunno, she didn't want to be labeled a plate breaker?

Let me ask you a question.

If you're at work, let's say you're doing opening duties for a restaurant: pulling chairs off of tables, cutting lemons, organizing cups, making sweet tea, etc.; and your manager walks up to you and says "Don't forget to make the sweet tea," and, obviously, you knew you had to make sweet tea, it's been ingrained in your mind since the first week you started the job and you've never forgotten, I mean, who could forget the sweet tea?, that would cause a meltdown in the South, a Revolutionary War between customers and floor-staff, where we would lose and they would waste a lot more tea, well... What do you say back to your manager?

1) No shit, Sherlock.
2) What the fuck do you think this gallon of sugar I'm carrying is for?
3) Have I ever forgotten to make sweet tea before? Douche-bag.
4) Of course I'm going to make sweet tea! I always do.
5) You've gotta be fucking kidding me. Just go away, I've worked here longer than you.
6) Yes sir.
7) Sure will.

If you've thought about, or actually said, any of the top five, you're just like me, just like this girl, and just like a lot of people. It makes you feel like an idiot. Like you're forgetful and untrustworthy.

But, in reality, the manager doesn't know everything. Maybe yesterday another server forgot to make sweet tea and sweet-tea fiends jonesing for their fix boycotted and picketed the entrance causing the restaurant to lose hundreds of dollars. He just wants to make sure that doesn't happen ever again. But we get so offended.

On the other hand, some people are a bit too controlling, in the sense that they love to double-check every-one every-second of the day because they haven't learned to trust people. They're too much upstairs and not enough in the living room sharing the love or the television remote.

So, the new waitress is kinda like me, and you, and now that I've picked apart two sentences she said to me, I think I can sympathize and empathize with her more. Even though I'll probably never work with her again.

The English Language Needs a New Word.

2008-08-26T23:50:00.007-04:00

I don't know what it will sound like or how to spell it. I just know that again and again I run into the terrible grammatical predicament of he/she. If a writer does not know the sex of a referenced person, ~~they~~ , he/she, he or she, hi, ho hum, ek, ugh, too many options. All look bad.

We need a word that replaces he/she.

Any suggestions? It has to be short and easy on the tongue, because it will be used all the time. I never studied linguistics, though I'd like to, but from what I understand, the point of grammatical rules is to make language sound more elegant. Even though English doesn't sound nearly as elegant as some languages, like Spanish, yet more elegant than Chinese, IMHO.

Hit me. Hit me!

Nitpicky Moviegoer: Vicky and Christina visit Barcelona

2008-08-20T17:24:00.006-04:00

Woody Allen tells everyone that the life of an artist is better than your life. Artists are erotic and beautiful. They paint during the day and fuck in the evening. They live in large houses in the most beautiful parts of Europe, even without any apparent source of money.

He wants us to know that we all have doubts about settling down into a stable relationship. The better choice is to live free, take chances with love, even if love grew from a one-night stand with someone you absolutely hated the day before.

People with knowledge of the internet, people that plan ahead, and are successful at business make for a boring relationship. Who needs these new advances in technology. Maria Elena, played by Penelope Cruz, deters Christina, played by Scarlett Johansson, from using a digital camera for her photographs. She gives her a film camera, instead. It's all about the dark room.

You know what? Fuck you Woody Allen. Take your pretentious, doubt-causing, home-wrecking, PG-13, anarchic love home to your wife - who happens to be your sixth spouse, former stepdaughter, and 35 years younger than you.

This movie is your steamy, dreamy life-story. With included fantasies of a third partner, who, may or may not really exist your life. It's not that I'm jealous you can do this. Art. Sex. All Day. It's that you make a movie about it, almost bragging, and if not, at least trying to convince the rest of the world that this lifestyle works; it's what we're missing from our life. Well, it's not. And it doesn't work unless you're super rich.

What pisses me off is the way it ends. Doug, Vicky's husband, walks off the screen toward the audience with Vicky and Christina following a few steps behind. The narrator, who sounds completely out of place through out the whole film, sadly explains that Vicky will be pursuing her life with her husband. The one she cheated on and wanted to leave for the sexy painter, Juan Antonio.

It compels the audience to say "Aw. She shouldn't do that. It's not what she really wants. She wants a fiery love affair with an artist who always seems to need a girlfriend, as charming as he is." The audience thinks, "I have doubts about my relationship. I'm a lot like Vicky. Maybe I should do something daring. There's this really hot guy at work who always looks at me. Hmm."

As for the narrator, he should not exist. He's in the film for two reasons: to make it quirky like Wes Anderson and to explain all the stuff old-man Allen left out. For example, the audience would never guess that Vicky and Christina are best friends unless we are told that. They don't act like best friends. They don't look like best friends. They are completely different from each other and disagree over and over through out the film. They only hang out in the beginning. Sometimes you wonder if they even practiced their lines together. It's stupid.

Woody Allen's characterization of Doug, Vicky's husband, baffles me. Vicky 'loves' him and wants to marry him because he offers a stable future. Most of his traits degrade his stereotype. He has a hard time understanding free-love and the three-way relationship between Christina, Maria Elena, and Juan Antonio. He mainly talks business at the dinner table. He works for 'Global Enterprises.' COME ON. WHAT THE FUCK IS GLOBAL ENTERPRISES. COULD YOU HAVE THOUGHT OF ANYTHING LESS ORIGINAL.

He is also shorter than Vicky, unlike the dashing Juan Antonio. It's very flattering. He is less romantic in bed. He awkwardly initiates sex, while Juan Antonio is so natural.

But Woody Allen fucked up, I assume. I mean, he gave Doug all these negative characteristics and ended the movie on a depressing note about Vicky's future. So, Doug's virtues almost seem like a mistake. He is deemed uncreative and unadventurous, yet he finds a way to leave work and fly to Barcelona early. His idea is to elope in the beautiful city of Barcelona and still have an extravagant wedding in New York City when they return to the States.

Towards the end of the movie, he thinks of creative ideas for their house and for gifts while they browse the street market.

He is in tune with Vicky's feelings about half of the time. He notices Vicky's emotional distress over the phone and in most conversation, but seems oblivious to her sadness after they marry. He hardly questions Vicky's bullet wound.

Vicky is such a bitch, anyway. She bitches about Juan Antonio for the first half of the movie and complains about lost love throughout the second. She's one of those people you want to pull aside by the arm and say "Shut the fuck Up" to.

I feel that Woody Allen just sped through the script. Well, he is one of the most 'productive' filmmakers alive.

--

Positive Notes:

Penelope Cruz does a great job. Just like Volver, she plays a Spanish drama queen perfectly. And it isn't annoying, it's really exciting.

I liked how the love triangle between Christina, Juan Antonio, and Maria Elena progressed and started to believe in it. Maybe a relationship like that is possible. Just not with two men and one girl. That would be weird. And not look as good on film.

To be honest, I'm glad I saw it. It was my first Woody Allen film. It had a more distinct flavor than the majority of Hollywood movies, but I won't call him an auteur.

I just wish that some filmmakers wouldn't make films about their opinions. Mr. Allen, create a story, don't gloat about your lifestyle and try and persuade preteen girls to emulate it. And please, learn to focus your camera.

Talking to Strangers

2008-08-17T23:39:00.001-04:00

To me, there is nothing more awkward than sitting next to someone for a number of hours on, say, a bus, and not, say, saying anything. Knowing that the conversational potential with another speaking machine is right there, inches from you, rubbing against your arm, afraid to make eye contact, bothers me.

If I have the isle seat, I won't dare look towards the window, unless I know the other person is already looking out the window or I know we are passing an eye-catching landmark - something that gives me motivation for the crime. I mean, I don't want the people to think I'm looking at them. They're checking on me with their peripheral vision and wondering, why is this guy staring at me? You know it, you can't look out the window if you don't have a window seat. That's why everyone wants the window seat. That and it makes a decent pillow.

Headphones are the sliced bread of self-conscious people. Put on the music, close your eyes, and forget about your neighbor.

Recently, I've decided to get rid of my fear of talking to strangers, of invading their space or opening mine to them, at least a bit. I can't sit in awkward silence anymore. I can't sit right next to someone and completely ignore them for hours.

Now, I throw a few words toward them, mainly greetings: "How ya doin'?" "Where ya headed?" "You have a cute baby." "Sup."

After the small talk, I feel less awkward when stepping over my neighbor on the way to take a leak in the back of the bus. My neck has increased degrees of freedom. I have a smaller chance of getting left at a rest stop when stuck in line. Sometimes, I get some food out of it. Sometimes, I realize just how nice people are.

I feel the same at the movie theater. Once, out with my roommates, I struck up a conversation with the lady next to me before the movie started.

"Did you see this because of Will Smith."

"Yea-ea, I love Will Smith," she said, sweetly.

"Me too."

Ironing out our informal, short-term relationship as movie-going neighbors increased my comfort zone by a foot or two allowing me to comfortably enjoy the whole movie - if it hadn't sucked, of course.

When she left to get popcorn, still pre-movie, my roommates turned to me. "You're one of those guys? The guy who always talks to person sitting next to them?"

"No, no, no. I just started doing this," I explained. "I feel totally awkward ignoring someone right next to me for a few hours, so I try to say a few things. I'm not like my grandma who will talk for hours."

I didn't mean that. My grandma isn't one of those 'talkers' who will ramble on forever about her life. She's very sweet, usually asking more than telling, all in favor of spreading the love.

The lady returned with a boat of popcorn and lots of napkins. She handed me a napkin and offered popcorn.

"Oh, no thanks."

"You sure?"

Well, I couldn't hurt her feelings, could I?

----------

On the other hand, certain people are harder to strike up conversations with. Like good-looking girls. I know what you're thinking and it's not because I'm nerdy, you're nerdy, he's nerdy, we're both socially awkward because we spend too much time inside and on the computer, or whatever other stereotype you can summon- er, think of; it's hard because I think that, you know, everyone's looking at this girl. No one has the balls to say anything. And even if I just strike a friendly conversation, I assume that most people assume that I am just talking to the girl because she's good looking. And I think, maybe she thinks the same thing. He just thinks I look good, that's why he's talking to me. I guess I mean that it's only hard to do if you think way too much. Like me. And you.

So, this also happened on the bus. In fact, I don't know how good this girl actually looked, but she was wearing a sweet outfit- one of the outfits that make a person (guy and girl) go Damn! that girl looks good, even before you see them. It just radiates some kind of style. Like anything bought at American Apparel. Anyway, she got on the bus in Greenville, where I got on.

We didn't sit next to each other, the bus was packed and the few people that fit found their way next to a road-weary, bus veteran. Seriously, I only go from Atlanta to Greenville and back on Greyhound; an easy-going two-and-a-half hours. Going anywhere else takes an exponential amount of time. Some people take weekend bus rides across country. Those people have buns of steel.

So, the story could have ended there. Instead, about fifteen minutes from unloading my baggage, hopping on Marta, and finally seeing my girlfriend after a week, the bus suddenly starts making a terrible fwup-fwup-fwup-fwup noise and leans to the left. At first I thought the driver had drifted a little too far to the left and entered the riveted, 'wake-the-hell-up' lane. And then I realized it was a flat. I clutched the seat in front of me and mimiced the driver's looks as he made his way across six lanes to the right shoulder. He then pulled over and almost everyone, all a bit annoyed, exited the bus to get some ~~fresh~~ air.

The girl and I ended up sitting side by side on the guard rail. I knew it would be a while before any help arrived and I had two easy-to-learn card games in my bookbag. All I had to do was ask. Time would pass quicker, it would be fun, and, important to my interests and my future, I would get to study how a person acts and reacts to a new game, what was easy or hard, what she laughed at and what caused her frustration. It would be great. But I didn't ask.

After a while, I started thinking about it more and I had to ask. But I couldn't ask someone to play a game after sitting right next to her for over twenty minutes. She would think I had been planning it the whole time. I was, sort of.

Also, our bus driver let everyone know that a back-up bus would arrive soon.

You know, just to clarify, I probably wouldn't have asked anyone else on the bus to play. Many were much older than me and call me cynical, but I felt like I would have to do more explaining than playing.

Knowing that I had chickened out, I strongly planned to ask her to play if we sat next to each other. I had to do it. Fear would not win. She found a seat a few minutes before I did because she had no bags to place under the bus. When I entered the bus, I looked around at the ten or so seats available. One was next to her. So, I took it.

Before I was even completely adjusted in my seat, she was already pulling out her headphones. Because this had become such an affair in my head, I was actually a bit nervous. What's so hard about asking someone to play a simple card game? Anyway, I acted quickly to catch her before her music started playing.

I reached into my bookbag's front pocket and pulled out Fluxx. "You wanna play a game?" I asked. These are the first words I had spoken to her during the whole trip. It made sense at the time.

"No thanks, I'm fine." I don't even know if she really heard what I asked. It was an automatic response like when a homeless person approaches me on the street. 'No thanks.' I don't always know what they are asking for or offering, but I usually don't want much to do with it.

I shoved the deck back into the front pocket of my bookbag and pulled out my Gameboy DS from the middle area. It had the Simpsons in it, but I didn't have any headphones that worked. I switched it out for Puzzle Quest, a game I could play without sound, and hit buttons until a puzzle opened.

I couldn't concentrate well. I just poked away at gems. The weird rejection from someone I knew nothing about to play a stupid game that would have been a pain to play in the dark- it was evening now- something that means nothing but had been built up in my head just because of the fact that talking to someone you don't know is so-freaking-hard; I'm wondering what she's thinking, lucky her, she has music, am I a weirdo or does she really just not want to play a game? Not with a stranger who could have started a conversation an hour ago, who could have at least started with a greeting, an introduction, not a question to play a game she's never heard of, fifteen minutes from drop-off, on the way to see her boyfriend.

After beating one puzzle, I couldn't play anymore. My head was buzzing too much. I put it away, closed my eyes, and let my head rest against the back of the seat. I couldn't do it for long, though, so I sat up and opened my eyes. My arms felt longer than usual draped into my lap. My hands were holding each other. I looked exactly like the sexual-stalker stereotype used so often in as-weird-as-Hollywood-will-go movie flicks. You know, he sits on the bus, eyes open wider than normal because he's so self-conscious, his arms are folded in his lap. His face is unassuming, giving a false sign of harmlessness. I felt like that guy.

She gets a call from her boyfriend and she exchanges terms of endearments, arrival plans, and I-miss-yous. I had already texted my girlfriend, but I made sure to call her again and exchange my own terms of endearment loudly enough for her to hear; to at least erase the 'scary man' label from the terrible stereotype she probably imagined me as. Now I was just a socially awkward, video game playing, skinny guy that shouldn't have sat next to her. Feels better.

I felt even better a few minutes later when this blog post began forming on my mind.

We arrived in Atlanta, I went one way to Marta and she the other to the Greyhound Kiss-ride.

--------------

So, that's what this post is: a comparing of good and bad reasons to talk to strangers. Should I? Should I not? Should I have been nervous when asking the girl to play the card game? Are other people like me?

I know I'm not supposed to end with a bunch of questions. A weak protagonist makes a bored audience, right? Well, I dunno. This is a sentence.

What every video player needs: A button that rewinds the movie 10 seconds

2008-08-17T11:33:00.005-04:00

What'd he just say? I totally missed it because

1) You were talking
2) I was talking
3) An ambulance was passing
4) The actor slurred his words
5) The actor has a thick accent
6) Something really funny happened
7) A mosquito flew by
8) Someone dropped a pen.

Instead of painstakingly dragging the playhead to the correct spot, which becomes harder the longer the video, just click the 'Rewind 10 seconds' button. Honestly, I'm so lazy that sometimes I'll just go on watching the movie or show without going back to see what I missed.

DVD players and their large, usually unorganized remote control, have the ability to skip back pretty easily - if you can find it. This idea is something I really want for all my online video players.

A keyboard shortcut would make it even easier. Moving the mouse ruins the cinematic feel by bringing up the player's interface and sometimes exiting fullscreen viewing. '[' , 'K', '<', could all work as keyboard shortcuts.

So. A few ending questions.

Is it already implemented somewhere? (i.e. did I just make a pointless post?)

How do I make this happen?

A few ideas to improve posting on blogspot.

2008-08-17T09:43:00.006-04:00

I don't mean to undermine the ease of use, or the minimalist beauty I like so much about having this blog. This is just a list of problems I've had that would be great if fixed.

1) Importing pictures.

I have a lot of posts with both paragraphs and pictures. When I am writing a new post and I choose to add a picture, it always imports to the top of the blog. I have to copy and paste to where I'd like to place it. It would be easiest if the picture went directly to my cursor's position.

2) The editing box is too small.

When typing up a post, I can only see about two paragraphs at a time, and have to scroll to everything else. The option to resize would be best, but just having a larger box would be great.

3) Previewing the post.

This one bothers me the most. In fact, I rarely use it, because it doesn't help much at all. Usually, a preview button displays your post exactly how it would look if posted. Instead it uses a larger font, a wider column, different line spacing and the words are gray.

4) Odd editing bugs

Sometimes bold and italic go goofy. Like, sometimes I can't turn it off, even though I am. It will reverse 'on' and 'off' and, well, it fixes if you click the 'Save Now' button. Also, sometimes, the flashing cursor will disappear, but that's also fixed when you save your post.

That's all I have, or can think of, right now. Nothing major, I'm just being picky.

Nitpicky Gamer: Dancing With the Stars

2008-08-15T13:07:00.003-04:00

In every 'Nitpicky' review, I point out details in a piece of media that the majority of the world doesn't care about - but pisses me off. In this review, I didn't have to be nitpicky at all; this game sucks. I'm sure this never-should-have-been-a video game took the most of a month to make. It's perfect for a Mystery Science Gamer episode, though it would probably last a peak twenty minutes before those robots short circuit.

This game is bluntly underdeveloped. The producer probably asked for a working prototype then immediately put it up for sale in bargain bins everywhere. The game debuted with a $14.99 'Clearance' label. I'm trying to say I feel like I'm beating a dead horse. Is there any point to pointing out problems in a so obviously hacked-together game? Well, it doesn't matter, I'm going to beat the hell out of this horse.

--

I load Dancing With the Stars. Like most games, it begins by displaying each company daring enough to associate their name with it. I press the escape key to skip the credits, wary to see a company I have respect for or a company I've never heard of ruined forever. Instead of immediately taking me to the main menu, I get a pop-up box that asks 'Exit to Main Menu?' Um. Yes, please. Great start.

The main menu is a mix n' match collage of resolutions. The background image, a time lapse of two dancers, looks hi-res, or should I say: normal. But each menu item has an adjacent disco ball that looks like a miss-imported jpeg - completely fuzzy.

Seeing a disco ball in a brand new dancing game makes me wonder. Does anyone dance anymore? Is Disco the most recent form of popular dancing? It makes sense, I guess, since the most current form of dance is vertical dry humping.

Before I begin a new game, I check out the bonus videos. Various dances line the left side of the screen. This is pretty cool - I'm fairly excited to watch and learn about twelve different dances. The background is the same as the main menu. Red, remnants of flowing movement, probably a stock photo, but it works as a good dance background.

I select the first dance and a rigid white box is slapped on to the screen. No... 'box' infers depth. These are just plain white pixels with no visual connection to any other element on the screen. A medium-sized, feathered circle within this square spotlights two dancers. I don't know what to say, the quality speaks for itself.

An awkward narrator explains a tiny bit about each dancing style. I can't really concentrate; I still can't believe they just threw this junk on the screen. Why even use the white box, the video would have even better on the original background. Even taking a few minutes to design a stage for the dancers would have looked ten times better. Also, the video is too small. After thirty seconds, the asynchronous mix of dance, music, and narration abruptly cut off.

--

All right, back to the main menu. I start a new game. I am prompted to create a profile. Under the words 'New Profile' are a few sentences explaining my role in the game.

"You are a professional dancer and you make sure your partner performs well. We wish you best of luck and hope to see you in the final."

So, I'm the professional dancer and I will be training my partner. I'm the one playing the game, don't I need training? In any case, I sincerely appreciate the game developers wishing me ~~'the~~ best of luck'. It will surely boost me towards the 'final'. (Final episode? Level? or maybe they are going for finale?)

I can choose between four difficulty modes: Easy, Intermediate, Hard, or Ultimate. Some games are too easy. Some are, you know, intermediate. Some games are just hard. Some games, though, are FUCKING ULTIMATE!

I am now choosing my contestant. Myself and everyone standing around is erupting in laughter. These are the worst character designs ever. Keep in mind, this game came out this year. Half of the characters look in-bred with Alvin and the Chipmunks. They all stand the exact same height and have the exact same Body Mass Index.

--

First off: choreography. The instructions contain must-know information like: "As the competition progresses, you will receive new dances to perform and eventually multiple dances."

Got it. In my first routine, I am supposed to create a routine worth 210 points. What the heck does that mean? Where did 210 come from? It's so... arbitrary.

I need to start with an 'opening move.' In the top right of the screen is a list of buttons. Wrong. Do not be confused. These are not buttons. They may highlight when your mouse passes over them and may indent when you click on them, but they are not buttons. They do absolutely nothing. Instead, I need to select a piece of the dance floor's grid.

When I select a piece of the grid, it turns bright red. No, not some bubbly, decent looking gradient, pure, ugly, basic-as-html red. Not only that, it isn't positioned correctly. How hard is it to color within the lines on a computer?

When I click on a square in the dance floor's grid, a menu pops up offering different levels of dance moves: opening, beginner, intermediate, and advanced. But, I can only use an opening move for my opening move. Why even have the other choices? If I hover my mouse over these other options, beginner, intermediate, and advanced, of course there are no moves. In fact it goes through the trouble to list 'NoMoves'. No space between the two words; it's a variable name for a null value. They could have just left the options off the list.

Not only that, but under 'Opening Moves', my two choices are 'Openingmove1' and 'Openingmove2'. How descriptive.

After choosing 'Openingmove1', a circle of blue squares slowly renders onto the dance floor. Slowly. Seriously, how long does it take to set a few pixels to blue? Most games nowadays render high quality, multi-polygonal graphics faster that this game draws a fucking blue square.

I am told that I can choose any moves listed under beginner, intermediate, and advanced, but harder moves may earn less points if my dancer is not skilled enough to perform them. So I choose all beginner moves. This brings me to exactly 210 points. Well, I guess that's where the number came from.

After completely laying out my routine, I take a look at my masterful choreography.

What the fuck did I do?

--

Next, I start training. Wait, what? I choreograph, then I train, then I dance? Shouldn't I train, then choreograph, and then see the results of my choreography? Why split it up?

I was then plastered with this boring, probably default, user interface.

Training consists of three mini-games. Each began with a set of instructional gems.

"From left to right across the top, the shoes are pointing left, up, down, and right."

"You can click on the shoe outlines with your mouse instead of your keyboard, but the speed of the shoes will increase as the game goes on, as well as the number of waves and the shoes in each wave."

The first mini-game models the typical rythm game, like Dance Dance Revolution. Numerous waves of shoes fly up the screen with no regard to the generic genre music playing in the background. I am instructed to hit the arrow key when one of the flying shoes crosses the appropriate 'left, up, down, and right' pointing shoe.

The second quote above explains that I can use my mouse instead of the arrow keys. It also explains that this is a bad idea because the shoes will eventually become too fast for a mouse to keep up. If it's such a bad idea, why is it implemented? (I know, I know, because they wanted to make a game playable with just a mouse. Who has a mouse, but no keyboard? I dunno.)

The game explains that I will be awarded a score of perfect, good, or miss for each shoe. What a selection.

I begin the first mini-game. I'm doing my best to hit the correct arrow keys for the appropriate shoes. But I have no idea how I'm being rated. When I press an arrow key - or click a shoe with my mouse - my only feedback is DING! That's right, one of the first sound files that shipped with the first computers. The ding. It sounds almost identical to the brain-chipping ding heard when I press a key I'm not allowed to press on my computer. You know, I'm at home on the internet, peace and quiet, filling out a suggestion box for some online retailer; I'm hoping to win a $500 gift card. I'm typing as much as you can, but the box only allows 500 characters. How do they tell me I've filled up the space? DING! Or, in most cases, since I was typing pretty quickly, DINGDINGDINGDINGDING.

Anyway, I don't see 'perfect', 'good', or 'miss' anywhere. In most games, the words jump out at me, blasting like fireworks and pixel explosions. Oh, wait, something just caught my eye. In the very center of the screen, away from all the foot action at the top, for a split second after each shoe passes over its silhouette, 'Perfect' in green, 'Good' in pink, or 'Miss' in black, appear; all in the default font TIMES-NEW-FUCKING-ROMAN size 12.

Did I mention that this took thirty seconds to load?

You know what I just realized? Bubble are floating around the screen.

--

Second mini-game. Another fuckin' doozy. In order to improve my contestant's posture, I have to balance books on my head. I need to keep my head in the green part of the rainbow that sprouted from my cranium.

Speaking of dancer, that isn't the celebrity I chose. That's me? the professional dancer. I thought the celebrity contestant was supposed to be practicing balance, not the professional.

In any case, I have to do this for a minute straight. A WHOLE 6O SECONDS. It only takes 5 seconds to figure out the incredible logic programmed into this mini-game. If my mouse is on the left side of the dancer, he or she will lean to the right. If my mouse is on the right side, he or she will lean to the left. So, I just move your mouse back and forth across the screen until the game grants my leave.

--

The third game manages to make something I usually enjoy not fun: a short-term memory test. Four to five shoes are randomly scattered around the center of the screen. One lights up, then another, then one more. I am told to click the shoes in the same order as I they lit up. Let me tell you, memorizing three shoes in a row is fucking tough. On the next level, I had to memorize four. Four. I almost started taking screenshots. In my later Ultimate campaign, on the very last level, I had to memorize six shoes in a row. Ho-Lee Shit.

The average person's short-term memory can hold seven to nine items. This isn't ultimate, it's cheese-balls. It's the Discovery Zone. It's tard school dropout. Forgive me.

--

After completing all three mini-games, I finally get to watch my couple dance. I don't have to do anything, they just follow the dance I choreographed an hour earlier.

Well, great. Judging by the performance, we're going to fail out. Their hands weren't touching, the guy was all in the girl's dress, and I think he put his hand through her stomach. After each move finished, my couple teleported to another part of the stage to begin their next move. Isn't that against the rules? We're going to get voted off first week.

After the Jumpers finished, the judges awarded my hard work: Three 8s baby!

--

Week 2
I now have to choreograph a dance worth 215 points. 5 points more than the previous week. Sigh.

And now I have to complete all three mini-games again, with minor changes to make them tougher. What exactly does tought mean?
Tougher adj. longer and more boring. When Samantha told Tommy he was tougher than Matt, Tommy felt confused.

More bubbles. More waves of shoes. More books on top of my head. I don't understand how adding more books makes my posture better. Sure, it's harder to balance a taller stack of books, but these ten-pound, hardcover textbooks would break a man's neck.

After that, I memorize a ~~longer~~ pattern of footsteps.

My couple then dances through my masterful choreography, I receive more crappy feedback from the judges, and once again, I'm awarded all 8s.

This time, on couple will be voted off. The dialogue is as follows:

"One couple will be voted off this week"
(10 second pause)
"The couple is..."
(Another pause)
Emmit...
(pause)
and Janine.

They have a sound clip with every guy's name and a sound clip with every girl's name preceded by 'and'.

I reluctantly trudge through the weeks until I win.

And now I get to lose. In order to complete my testing (did I mention I was a game tester?), I need to make sure 'getting voted off' works correctly. So, I started up the 'Intermediate' campaign and tried to lose. In retrospect, I should have just gone 'Ultimate'.

--

I got a perfect zero in the 'rythm' mini-game - I started it up, went and took a shit, came back, then waited for the last few waves of shoe imprints to finish their quest to the top of the screen.

I got a 50% on the balancing game. It's the worst I could do. Basically, every second my head is in the 'green' portion of the rainbow, I get plus points. Every second my head is in the red I get no points. I would just let it drop every time, but since it took a second for my head to tilt, I racked up a nice fifty percent.

By the way, it totally sucked because time would stop whenever the books hit the ground, I would have to click my mouse to reset my character to the original position and the click again to start. And time would stop every time. The sixty-second game took two and a half minutes because I was perfectly fucking it up. Seriously, it took willpower to keep myself from playing that game correctly.

I got another perfect zero on the third mini-game, intentionally disremembering all of my fancy dance steps.

I watch my couple take the dance floor. They dance the same every time. I can't tell if they are dancing good or bad.

Finally moment of truth. Get me off this show!

5 - 7 - 5.

What the fuck? I just failed everything the best I could. And I get better than average scores? I have to try again to fail out? I don't know if I can do this.

It took me 4 more weeks to fail out. I was rewarded with a Game Over (Thank God) screen and the credits.

--

I wrote down the names of developers and companies that worked on this game while the credits rolled. I need to know who to avoid. After a bit, I noticed that I had seen credits listed for three different studios that provided music. Why so many places? There weren't that many songs. Wait a second.

The credits were repeating. They just kept on going and I had missed the brief blank space between the end and beginning. Dumbass here had been watching the same credits repeat for five minutes. I knew there was no way over a thousand people collaborated on this crap.

--

I exited the game with five pages of notes on everything that sucked about it. Why even write it up? Because companies shouldn't release this kind of bullshit. How do you get someone to change their ways? You make fun of them, of course.

Nitpicky Gamer: Empire Earth. A Quick Example of How Not to Design a Game

2008-08-13T14:59:00.011-04:00

Today I had to test a number of games already part of the GameTap service to make sure they work with [some new drivers]. I only spend about 15 minutes with each game. That's all I needed with Empire Earth to teach a quick lesson on what-the-fuck-not to do in a video game.

First, a trend I've been seeing in many shitty games I've played lately: a sort of super-reinforcement; explaining simple buttons. A very obsessive or very paranoid game designer added little hints to every single button in the game.

I now understand that 'Play Campaign' means 'Play a Campaign.'

Also, not pictured, the 'Single Player' button was cleared up to mean 'Go to Single Player,' 'Play Saved Game' means 'Play a previously saved game or scenario' and 'Exit Game' means 'You probably won't play this game any more, will you?'

I started a Single Player game for testing purposes. I just wanted to get in and get out. It loads and I press the 'escape' key hoping to access a menu. Nothing happens.

That's rule number 2. In any game, the escape key should always- always- bring up some kind of menu; hopefully, the one with save/load and game-settings options.

In this game, like Warcraft, I direct my 'minions' around a large map. The map is pitch black except for where my people have been. I can still look around though, and to do that, I roll my mouse to the edge of the screen. The map will scroll to where the mouse points.

With that explained, you can see why placing really small buttons on the edge of the screen is a stupid idea. In this case, the options button, decorated with a picture of a parchment and quill (you know, recording data, like, you know, saving and loading), is in the top left corner of the screen. It is also the same size as my mouse pointer.

So, here I am, ready to leave. I roll my mouse over to the tiny, options icon. Faster than Superman's middle finger I'm carried to the other side of the map. My screen is pitch black. I roll my mouse back to the opposite side of the screen and, again, I fly past my small group of poorly-rendered herders.

It seems the only way to get to the options button is to turn down both mouse sensitivity and map-scrolling speed. But I have to click on the options button first. I start hitting every button on my keyboard. Surely, there's a shortcut. Yes. F10, you tricky bitch.

Adjust graphics... no. Ah, interface. I click on the interface tab and- what the? I don't understand. How is- the mouse sensitivity and map scrolling speed are at 10%.

It's time to quit playing.

I back track to the main options menu and select 'Exit', you know 'The Button that exits the game, this game you're playing, called Empire Earth, are you sure you want to leave?, please don't, ah fuck it, I know, it's me, not you, call me?'

Before I can leave, this unrelenting muse of poor design grants me another blog-inspiring screenshot. Please, programmers, use your own buttons, and if you don't, just don't use the default Microsoft Windows buttons.

I slowly exit the game.

I Read a Book: Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow

2008-08-10T12:14:00.001-04:00

This is the first fiction book I've read since reading the first half of House of Leaves, graphic novels notwithstanding. Keeping up this blog has made me appreciate writing more, and given me more patience to sit down and read. I read the first two chapters of this book at the beginning of the summer, but quit, unable to focus. My roommate, who lent and suggested the book to me, urged me to pick it back up. So, a few mornings ago I started again on chapter two and finished it that night in my pajamas before I went to sleep.

Here's my summary of the summary on the back of the book, the general synopsis I give people who ask what I am reading and the same synopsis my roommate gave me.

The book takes place in the Earth's future. Death has been cured and there is no scarcity of resources or food. The economy is made of Whuffie, a measure of how much people like and respect you. The main characters live and work in Disneyland.

Man has only recently gained immortality, the ability to back up memories and reload them into a clone if death occurs. The last few generations still don't know exactly what life should be like. Society is only one generation into a world with no fear of death.

But that isn't exactly true. Julius, the protagonist, will not to reload into his previous backup after his brain takes permanent damage. He is unable to go online and his doctor says the only solution is to switch to a new clone from his last backup. He has not backed up for a few months and a lot of things have happened. His best friend wants to permanently kill himself, an unheard of act in an immortal world, and Julius wants to keep the memories of their final year together.

Doctorow does not waste time describing the skies and heavens of his future. Instead he gives special attention to the things that make up the world. His description of a modern gun with body signature seeking bullets; the ability to subvocalize - to talk to others without opening your mouth; and the everyday uses of having your brain hardwired as a personal computer - the ability to command, search and communicate with only thoughts and flicks of the eye; each item reinforcing the materialist obsession in Doctorow's world.

Without death and scarcity; with endless amounts of time for creativity, production, and problems solving, the people continue to concentrate on their status in the world. They ping the Whuffie of each person that walks by to decide if the person is worth talking to. Sometimes they will just take something from a person with very little Whuffie, because they know no one will care enough to come after them.

Dan, Julius's best friend, starts with amazing amounts of Whuffie. He decides to kill himself, starts acting recklessly, and loses it all. He doesn't want to commit suicide anymore, because he wants to go out with lots of Whuffie. He wants to make it worth it. Whuffie even drives a person who cares nothing about living forever.

After writing this much of the review, I realized something. Doctorow created a world devoid of God. God and religion are so irrelevant, they aren't mentioned. He is completely left out. Who needs God without fear of death?

There are new gods now. The Creative High. Endless Knowledge. Also, gods of Stuff, gods of Greed. People will continue on with their issues; their inability to live peacefully; their me-first attitude.

A new artistic medium is created and it also challenges the power of God. It is called flash-baking. A person plugs in and sensory information is pumped directly into their brain. In Disneyland, the Hall of Presidents is remade using flash-baking. Each user becomes Abraham Lincoln during his famous speech. Each feels his limbs, sees from his viewpoint, and smells pine tar and smoke from the pipe hanging from his lips. Though self-aware, they are completely taken over by a new experience.

Overall, the book was great. I finished it in a day and was left with new, fresh ideas to consider. Also, I don't know how to end this review.

Good Republican, Bad Republican

2008-08-07T23:15:00.002-04:00

Unfortunately, the Republican party is the only option for conservative Americans. When voting time comes around, we bubble in the candidate that fronts the best summary of our beliefs.

Many people will cast votes for corrupt politicians. I can't be afraid to say that. I say corrupt, you say conspiracy. I say overwhelming proof and you ignore me. There's a difference between circulating emails about Obama: the Muslim; the Manchurian candidate, and the documented payments many politicians have received from lobbyists.

Here's the non-question: Would a person with conservative beliefs ever vote for liberal president?

Well, no.

So, they don't really have a choice. They can either withhold their vote, or cast another slick oilman into office. Some, like my mother, will vote for Ron Paul if he decides to run Independent. Good luck with that.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I've never been a Republican or a Democrat. I'm pretty darn liberal and I'm for Obama '08, so I'm labeled the latter. I don't want to be labeled a Democrat, though. Both parties have revolting secrest. Both have changed policies for lobbyists. What more do you need to say? Most people fall between red and blue, anyway. For example, I would never have an abortion and I don't think homosexuality makes much biological sense. Does that make me sort-of purple?

When I was eighteen Bush and Kerry were battling for office, and I said I would never vote until I found a candidate I could trust. No 'lesser of two evils,' no bullshit. Now, I've realized that if everyone were apathetic like I was, we would be in even more trouble. From now on I'll vote in every election, even if I just fill in the bubble for 'None, thanks.'

In any case, I am an optimist. Obama may turn out to be another corrupt politician. If that happens, I'll change my view of him and start waiting for another good-looking candidate. Or I'll leave the country.

When a candidate comes along with so much positive energy, so much of his own optimism and hope, knows his stances so well, how can you ignore him? Anyone can say 'He's bullshitting.' Well, he's not getting paid by big oil. He's not keeping all the money he's raising. He doesn't have any obvious or known alternative motives. Maybe he just wants to be president. He just wants to experience the thrill of the oval office.

It's hard to ignore a wave of proof against a candidate. If shocking, documented, terrible proofs about Obama surface, like they have for every other presidential candidate I've ever seen, I'll like him just as little. I'll probably start crying, too.

Until then, truth and hope for the win.

Cannibals

2008-08-05T12:42:00.002-04:00

Courtesy of Connor Henderson, 12 (My little bro)

Craving a Completely New Experience

2008-08-04T21:29:00.004-04:00

Sometimes. Usually when I'm lonely or down or have too much on my mind. Too many of the wrong ideas, thinking about the wrong things over and over. Unable to choose what I want to think about and only able to repeat to myself things that bring me lower; I'm driving home at night, or lying in my bed or my parents couch when I'm on vacation. I'm thinking. That I just want to see what another life would be like. Not permanently.

I've lived my life, the same life, a common life to me and most of America - middle class, white male - and I'm not saying that if I was a different sex or race I wouldn't feel the same - I don't know. I want to move to a poorer neighborhood and live for a month with completely different friends, family, and food. Completely new living conditions. Live in a house dirtier than I'm used to, forgetting my obsessive cleanliness, though admittedly, I'm not nearly as clean as some people.

Or I want to drive off to another city and stay with a friend for a month at a time. Get a new job, one that doesn't mean anything for my future, but teaches me about people. Experience a side of town, a side of the country, continent, and world that I haven't been in.

It's a feeling that most people feel when they leave the country. I went to Italy for six weeks a few summers ago, but I didn't feel anything new. I just felt like I was in another America with people that spoke a little different. Every person I met knew English anyway. The only time I felt uncomfortable and even a little scared on the whole trip was the layover in Toronto. I didn't want to talk to anyone, I didn't know anyone, and it was all weird.

I imagine that Italy and the rest of Europe I toured, not as much as I will eventually, would have been just as shocking if I hadn't been with other people from my school. If I wasn't waking up for scheduled classes taught by the same teachers from home. If I didn't run into students from nearby colleges on every train I got on. The world is way too small, in Europe, during the summer, at least.

I visited a number of locations I had seen a hundred times in photos. I'm sure I've written reports and essays on half of them through grade school. Sometimes new places are not new at all.

But, if I hadn't stayed in a five start hotel with all of my classmates, it would have been different. If I rented an apartment from an Italian landlord, met and drank with new people, spent time alone in small nooks of these global hot spots, maybe I would have felt that wonderful shock, that deep dread in my stomach I felt at the airport in Canada.

What would it be like to enter a new lifestyle, instead of touring it?

Even if I moved to a city not a few hours away, something that offers only a slightly different experience, but with completely new people, I could be moved. Do I really want to, though? All through my college career, I hear people talk about how they can not wait to leave Atlanta. They can't wait to get to a new city, one that doesn't remind them of late homework, poor examination grades and stress-stress-stress.

But I rarely feel that kind of stress. I do well in school and I like the majority of my teachers. I am in no way sick of Atlanta and I plan to enter graduate school Fall a year from now. I trust my teachers and the path my school offers.

That's why I only feel this way when I go deep within my head. Approached with conflicts I can't begin to know how to resolve, some small, some life changing, sometimes I can't figure it out. I just sit, deep in my chair, my hands, my bed sheets with the lights off, deep into loud music or deep into sad music - the music that only amplifies the way I feel, a welcome and helpless experience.

I feel pressure in my head and under my eyes. If I write any more I may cross over, I may let a tear drop or at least let my face contort. The answer for my problem is far from me, and my obsessiveness brings hopelessness. When I can't figure something out, it drives me insane. There must be a ready answer for everything. Usually, if I don't have the time, brains, or effort to come up with a solution to my problem, to make a permanent choice enabling me to forget the question, I just find a way to delay it. It may be procrastinatory like 'I'll make that decision when the time comes' or just stupidly despairing like 'Whatever happens, happens.'

The stupidly despairing solution is ironically similar to optimism, which I undoubtedly follow most hours of the day.

Sometimes I just want to lie down on a rug that I've never felt. Feel the fibers against my face and in my hands. I'm the kind of person that touches anything that I'm curious about. Not gross like stroking ant larvae, but feeling every wall and surface in every new hotel I walk into.

Honestly, I don't know how long I'd last in another culture. If I prearranged a way to keep myself there, I'm sure I'd make it, but I wonder if, as soon as I'm a step out of the darker gray parts of my mind, I would just opt-out and return to a more practical lifestyle. My life that is learning and going places, keeping myself and my mind busy. I probably wouldn't like my choice to completely change my life and my surroundings. But sometimes, I get so bored.

Boredom is healthy and unhealthy. It gets you to try new things, do things differently, and keep the world fresh. But it can drive you away from things you love and are meant to love. You know you wouldn't be happy for long with a new girlfriend, but sometimes you think about it. Sometimes, it bothers you.

A guy doesn't want to do any harm, he just doesn't know what to do. Every now and then, this guy gets the urge to change everything about his life. But, obviously, he's too scared, or smart, to change some things. I only hope the people around me can cope with, forgive, or understand me. Everyone is given different gifts from birth, or different genetic subtleties that boost a performance in different areas, and... I just think too much sometimes.

Great Connotations ep. 5 What's in a Name?

2008-07-29T13:05:00.005-04:00

The Connotator was my initial choice for the title of my sentence-analyzing blog, not one that was too thought out. In my head, the blog 'destroys' sentences; it breaks them into little pieces so that I cananalyze each element. Well, I guess that is a lot of what I do in the blog. But, it's too campy, too easy.

How to make something sound bad ass and dangerous: Combine the word with The Terminator. The Babynater destroys babies. The Rebublicanater destroys Republicans. Facenater destroys faces.

Wow, Facenater is actually a word. How do I know? No red-dotted lines from Firefox me that I misspelled it. Firefox knows what a facenater is. They define it.

Anyway, -nater is like -meister. Add the -meister suffix to anyone's name to make them sound really, really cool. Ted-meister. It's the Chris-meister! Look out for the Connor-meister...

As much as I love destroying sentences and I will continue to do so, The Connotator is out. Great Connotations is in, for now at least.

The title great Connotations reminds me of the importance of connotation - of how a little means a lot - which is the main focus of these posts. It refers to, or 'is a pun of,' Great Expectations, Charles Dickens Christmas classic also known as the bane of highschoolers that thought taking AP Literature was smart. Obviously that book and this blog are on opposite ends of the spectrum. I'm going for the irony.

In other, similar news, I rethought my labels. Now, they make sense. I had been using them like tags: filling them up with as much as many keywords as I could.

Nitpicky Reviewer: Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones

2008-07-28T22:53:00.006-04:00

In every Nitpicky Reviewer post, I will discuss the things in movies and games that no one else cares about. The little choices filmmakers and game developers make, or forget to make, makes me crazy.

Before I start, I liked the game. It was fun and I was excited to pick it up every morning at work. How do I make a Nitpicky Reviewer post about a game I liked? I'll just have to focus on everything that sucked and channel the energy into sarcastic rage until I hate the game. Here we go.

Immediately upon starting the game, in the tutorial, I am hit with the garlicy punch of confusion.

I ran towards a boarded doorway with only crawling space available to pass under it. In bold white text I am told to press the space bar to roll under. Sweet, it works. Next, I am told to press the space bar to jump up on top of a crate (yes, even Persia is home to a few). That also works. Then I am told to move the right analog stick to look around. What the fuck? Right analog stick? This isn't a Playstation. It was a port, though.

I spent the next twenty minutes setting up a computer 'gamepad.' It's really not a 'pad' but a 'regular controller' modeled exactly like a Playstation controller - except it uses the numbers 1-9 instead of, Square, Triangle, L, R, etc. Even though the game was ported from consoles with inherently similar button schemes, no default button setup existed for my perfectly replicated gamepad. So I looked up the control sceme used on a real controller and mapped it to mine.

Do you know how hard it was to move downwards through the menus? As you can imagine, there were plenty of buttons I had to assign: buttons 1-9 and three analog sticks. At the top and bottom of the list of buttons sat a small arrow. Neither clicking and holding one of these arrows nor holding the down arrow on my keyboard moved me any farther down the list. I could click the arrow once to move it down a single row, but it only detected about one click per second. As many people know, rapid clicking ensues when a list is ready to be moved. I was clicking away and it was hardly moving. It's very frustrating to not recieve feedback when clicking.

I finished mapping the buttons and I am good to go. I love the way this game keeps you constantly occupied. You rarely walk more than 5 seconds without approaching a new puzzle. These aren't the puzzles that frustrate the player. They rub your back and make you feel good like a prostitute does - the way all games should be according to Shigesato Itoi. I've been wanting to quote that for a while.

As I was saying, the player is constantly rewarded. Though this is my first Prince of Persia game, I am pretty certain this is signature to the series. Quick puzzles, quick fights, and if you save your 'sands of time,' you can quickly correct a misstep.

This is genius game design. People hate repeating levels again and again. So, introduce these sands of time that allow a player to rewind time up to about 6 or 7 seconds, and they can retry that part of the puzzle. Only the people that play Contra, the ones that enjoy punching glass shards with their face, like repeatedly starting stages from the very beginning. I'll say it a hundred times proud as the casual gamer I am: Fuck That Shit. Thank you, Prince of Persia. You have saved me hundreds of dollars in healthcare.

The sands of time were especially important to the story of the game. Those powerful, essential grains of time saved me from tearing my ears off every time I heard the story. Each piece of dialogue was stuffed fuller of cliches than clothes in a college student's laundry basket. Be it the angry protagonist bitching about the world, his verbal inhabiting demon bitching about him being such a bitch, or his bitching bitch side-kick that he loves except she doesn't know who he is because he turned time backwards. Sucks to be you.

During boss fights, the parts I did have to repeat a number of times, I had to watch 30 second, unskippable cut scenes. Wait. Some of those cutscenes were skippable. Please, developers, be consistant. Make them all skippable.

Luckily, the game solves its own problem of bad storytelling. If you screw up a jump, usually resulting in a fall to your death, while the story is being told and you then rewind time... the words are cut off! You don't have to hear any of it.

"Notice how the well has no water, Prince? Do you know why it has no water? I'll tell you. It's because (oops, a little early. rewind)"

Wait. Because what? Why? Why is there no water? Ahhh Nooooooo! I want to know! I'm sorry I made fun of you. I promise. I'll get over the kitschy dialogue, I love the game. It's a ton of fun. Please, forgive me, just tell me why there's no water. I want to know, I really do. AHHH!

You would think that the dialogue would rewind as well. No, no you wouldn't, who are we kidding. That's a level of polish reserved for only the classiest games.

And before you ask, no, I'm not going to let myself die so I can listen to it again. That would take too much time.

Another huge problem occurs because, like most games, the storytelling happens between scenes. You finish a few puzzles, get to the other side of the burning village, and Voila! story time. But, you know what also happens between sections of gameplay? Saving. The player can only save at water fountains - err... fountains of water - so every time I see one I immediately run over to it and save the game. Every single time the stroy telling is cut off. Saving cuts off the storytelling. Sigh.

When I access the in-game menu - which allows me to adjust the graphics, audio, controls and, of course, to save - the female narrator says one of a few things including:
"Would you like to continue the story here?" or "This is an excellent place to resume your story."

Alright, we got it. It's a story. Are you postmodern or are you reassuring me that everything will be OK because... I forgot to mention, this narrator dies about an hour into the game. She both appears in and narrates the first bit of the story, she speaks every time the menu is accessed, and then she is murdered. And then she starts narrating again. That was a nice twist and a perfect opportunity to completely shock the player by permanently removing this female and her voice from the story. Instead, we are at first confused that she narrates the menu to us right after dying and secondly given the expectation that she will show up again later.

Since she's still narrating, she must be important, right? Yet by the time I'm battling the final boss, which is one of the coolest fights ever, she still hasn't shown up. Not until the very end of the game, after the what-I-just-thought-was-the-final boss, after the last level that was so awesome and out of this world that I will say it rivals the final levels of Half-Life 1, she shows up for a few seconds in the final cutscene as a laughing, smiling, I-knew-you-could-do-it, sexy sand phantasm. Except sand isn't that sexy. Even if it's curvy.

According to one of the final cutscenes, the villagers rose up against their demonic slavers. They were outnumbered, out-equipped - pitchforks and broken doors as shields versus daggers, swords, rapiers and supernatural muscle, and, also, out of this fucking world. These skinny, sun-beaten, farm hands that had been enslaved for days somehow had enough strength to defeat an army of unholy sand minions. Whatever. They don't call it 'suspending your disbelief' for giggles.

By the way, I love green-ery. The last few levels of Prince of Persia made it worth the 10 bucks an hours I was paid to play it. The overused glow filter on castle shrubbery, crumbled castles, streams of water, and the prince's glistening golden leftarm brought peace to my mind. It reminds me that I need to pick Farcry back up, because I love the jungle scenery.

Another element that I liked, that I think all games with cities or other large conquerable spaces should possess, are high points where you can view it all. Usually these special places are found before and after a large map so that you can see your destiny and then see how you've left your mark.

In the beginning, I think to myself, 'This place looks awesome, though I think it'll be hell beating to death every devil spawn that I see. But, you know, I'll enjoy every damn minute of it.' At the end of the stage, after scaling a half-destroyed tower, I gaze at the burning city through a hole made by a cannon and think, 'I just aced this part of the game. I just completed every bit of this city. Damn, it looks so big from up here!'

It's pure gaming joy.

Things I won't get into detail about: The voice acting. Why won't I go in to detail? Because every game I've played after Bioshock seems to have shitty voice acting - even if it isn't that bad. That game made a new bar.

I love the doors in the game. Every single time I saw a door I tried to walk though it and slammed right into it. The prince doesn't use doors! They're all locked anyway. Call me a slow learner, sure, but I kept thinking I could one would open for me, like every other game. That's not how Le Prince de parkour gets around town, though. In every other world, gaming or irl, doors afford transition from one place to the next, yet here, they just hit you in the face.

What can I say? I liked the game. I wanted to play it - unlike the upcoming Dancing with the Stars - which I didn't know was a video game already - that I will be playing this week. Well, who knows, that game may rock.

Also, this game rarely left me confused. At some points I may have felt the game was too easy, but, for me at least, there's a fine line between too easy and really annoying. I'll take the former.

This is a game I would recommend to my dad who recently retired from more hardcore games like Unreal Tournament. He's now living off of puzzle games like Inca Ball and Blockbuster. Even though Prince of Persia involves combat, the majority of gameplay consists of ultra-satisfying puzzles.

Most of the combat is even set up like a puzzle. The player tries to figure out how to position him or herself behind an enemy in order to initiate a 'quick kill'. Instead of entering regular combat, the angle changes and the prince starts his attack. The player must press the attack button when the prince's dagger flashes bright white. Some enemies require only one correct hit and some up to five. If the player does so successfully, the prince slays the enemy without a fight. Also, the player is rewarded with the killing stroke performed in slow motion that probably looked amazing when the game first came out.

Play it, ignore the storyline, don't worry, be happy.

Connotator ep. 4: Old Friends on the Phone

2008-07-26T09:26:00.009-04:00

After talking on the phone for five minutes, ten if you were lucky, your humble, respectful, conversation enthusiast reluctantly tells you:

"You sound pretty busy over there, so I'll let you go."
"I don't want to hold you up any longer, I'll give you a call soon, maybe this week."
"Alright man, awesome talking to you, really great to hear from you, but I know your plate is full right now, you're such a hard worker, really, so I'll talk to you later."

Come on gents, say it like you mean it.

"I'm busy, I gotta go."
"I don't want you to hold me up."
"Alright, look, this is boring, we're not as good of friends as we used to be, I don't know shit about what your schedule is, so how about we talk again on some unplanned occasion, really let's not plan anything, especially in less than a week because I'll just fucking kill myself. I hate you get out of my life."

Ever run into a friend, so you think, that you haven't seen in a while? You want to plan a time to hang out and they tell you one of my personal favorite white lies, truly classic BS:
"I lost your number."
"I got a new phone and misplaced your number."

Unless a phone dies and thus loses all of its numbers, it is impossible to lose a number.

This really means, I got a new phone and went through the list of numbers to see who I actually had a chance of having a lasting friendship. I've only talked to you a few times so I didn't transfer your number over. I have no idea how I got in this position, with you asking me to hang out again, I really didn't think we were ever going to talk again, really, why are we talking? Fuck it, sorry man, I just lost your number.

Its even more apparent when a person did not get a new phone and you saw them put the number in. The person scrubbed your number doing some house cleaning.

You can't be too mad that your friendship never went anywhere. You didn't hang out for weeks because you probably kept turning down opportunities to hang out. In respect to your fragile feelings of emptiness and sensitivity, this thoughtful almost-friend used a harmless euphemism.

They don't want to bring you down, so they tell you it was an accident. If you can suspend your disbelief and get over it, you still have a chance of becoming good friends.

The following line has a few meanings, I'll cover the two that occur the most. They also happen to be the cynical, depressing translations.

"We should hang out some time."
"We should go out to dinner some time."

1) "I want to keep as many friends as I can, even if they're attached by fantastical strings. You and I used to hang out a few years ago, but I have a completely new set of friends, I'm getting married, I graduated and you still have a few more semesters, I have a well paying job and you're still a waiter.

We're completely different people now. I've moved up in life and you've been completely static. Why were we ever friends? Maybe we weren't friends. I can't remember now. We should discuss it over lunch, one day, some time, in the distant future. Of course I'll pay.

Honestly, though, we're probably never going to hang out. I'm way too busy with my new life, my wife, my kids. But, every time I see you I'm going to mention it.

'Hey, we should do dinner sometime,' because we're still friends even though we're not. Please don't de-friend me on Facebook. Or Myspace. Thanks. Talk to you later.

2) The person really does want to hang out. They look you in the eyes when they tell you to see how you react. They know you have been turning down a lot of recent opportunities to hang out and they want to see what you'll say this time. This is the least restrictive offer they could possibly give you. Let's go out to dinner. Some time.

Any time. I eat dinner every day. If you do as well, maybe we should eat it together. Really, any time you want, but hopefully soon. If you don't want to sit down for 30 to 45 minutes, I know you aren't my friend and I'll stop bothering you.

The last one was for you dear reader(s?). The best response is, of course, "Of course! We should definitely go to dinner this week." If you really want to see this person, maybe you really have been busy and you do miss your friend, then you plan a time. "Let's eat tonight," you say.

If you don't really want to, you'll probably start listing everything you're doing between 5 and 11pm or even from noon to midnight if the friend starts asking about lunch and late night snacks.

"Let's get some dinner tomorrow. Oh shit, I have a test early the next morning. But I should be free for lunch. Oh, duh, I have classes all Thursday. That night, I'm working, you can come by if you want to Haha. Uh. Friday should be good. What about you? Oh, that's too bad. Friday would have been perfect for me. Saturday and Sunday I'm usually free, but I'm going home to visit my family. Its been a while. Monday... I have a paper, no that's Tuesday, I'll be writing it all Monday. I'll probably have to stay up all night. That's gonna suck. Man, I forgot about that. How about this. You just give me a call sometime next week after Tuesday and we'll figure something out. Awesome, talk to you later. Good seeing you."

For me, will everyone that reads this call up a friend and hang out with them? It'd be nice.

See you sometime!

Connotator ep. 3: Dialogue Between a Waiter and a Tipsy Girl

2008-07-23T22:12:00.005-04:00

There are an infinite number of ways to say the same thing. The little choices people make in everyday language can tell you a lot about who they are, what they are trying to say and which ways they are trying to persuade you. Jokes and sarcasm can reveal favorable and unfavorable personality traits.

In these 'episodic' posts, I will humorously discuss pieces of dialogue I have recently heard, read or remembered and the nuances in each that give meaning behind the words.

I had an English Professor that could tell if a student enjoyed writing after reading an essay they turned in. I asked her if she thought I enjoyed writing, and she didn't give me a solid answer. I always thought I enjoyed writing, but it was always a hassle and I either rushed through papers or tried to make them sound too smart. If only I could have written those papers as freely as I write these posts.

-------------

Episode 3: Conversation between a waiter and a tipsy, flirty customer.

(Waiter to female customer) "How is everything?"

Lazy, naive waiter. Laziness emanates from the word 'everything.' Instead of asking specific questions like how she liked her ambitious mixed drink, the Blue Mother Fucker, or how her slice of pineapple and pepperoni tasted (nasty, I assume), the waiter just walks by and throws an easy 'How's everything?' onto the table.

This leads to the second problem, one that the very first waiter serving the very first customers had, a problem I've known throughout my six years of taking tables for tips, asking a customer if they like the food.

Everyone assumes that everyone likes the food. But when the special guest speaks otherwise it become disastrously awkward. Suddenly, the waiter has to appease the guest. He's wondering, "Why did I ask? This guy has three fourths of a plate of food covered with napkins. His silverware is sticking solidly upright in his tenderloin."

The waiter chooses to offer either a discount or replacement dish, or can choose a guiltier, more ignorant option and say "I'm sorry you don't like it. Usually everyone loves it. I love it. You know what? Better luck next time." As a note a waiter should never, ever say sorry. Instead of "I'm sorry the food is taking so long," say "We're really busy, thanks for being patient." Greatfulness sounds, and makes the customer feel, much better than asking for pity. My first boss taught me that.

(Female customer to waiter) "Everything's wonderful. What's your name again?"
Wonderful. As much as the waiter believes the customer likes the food, the word 'wonderful' is most likely a product of something else. She may be in an excellent mood, she may have been starving before this meal, she may be just drinking with a large group of friends. I'll pick the latter, because that was what she was doing.

Many customers like to know their waiter's name. It creates a more personal dining experience (you know, some people are in to that) and also makes it easier to call the waiter. At any time, the person at the table with the loudest voice can shout 'Chris! We need you. We can't get the ketchup out of this damned bottle. Oh, you just squeeze these ones. Sorry about that.' The can ask any passing floor staff to 'send Chris over,' as well.

But by using the word 'again' at the end of the sentence implies something else. This one word sums up the common pick-up line 'Don't I know you?' Of course she doesn't know the waiter, but she can possibly lure him into conversation with this added confusion.

An unlearned person may think "Do know her? Maybe I do know her. She does look kind of familiar. Did I forget her? What's her name? I'm so bad with names."

Professional daters may instead say, "WTF is she talking about? Again? I've never seen this girl before. Wait. Maybe she's crazy. FACEBOOK."

"My name's Chris."
No need to repeat the question back to her, Chris. Just say 'Chris.' But that would make the response too concise and it would sound unfriendly.

She responds, "Hi Chris, my name is Emma. Are you new here?"
Hi, Chris. I'd like to get to know you. That's why I'm telling you my name and raising my hand for a hand-shake. I'm being forward because I've had a nice little bit to drink. Usually I'd just keep quiet and continue to talk nonsense with the rest of these girly girls.

She repeats his name to both help herself remember and assure the waiter that she knows him a little more personally now.

Asking if the waiter is a new employee obviously means that she has not noticed him before, but that isn't important. It is important that she chose to ask a question and continue the dialogue. She could have easily ended the conversation by saying "Hi Chris, my name is Emma. Nice to meet you." Without any further unanswered inquiries, the waiter will again reuse her words and say "Nice to meet you, too." That's the end of the conversation, unless the waiter asks his own question.

To summarize: she's hitting on the waiter.

The waiter replies, "You probably haven't seen me because I've been working another job this summer. But I worked here for three years."

Words like 'probably' are unnecessary. Of course she hasn't seen you. We already talked about this. Maybe, like before, the waiter feels that extra words make for nice, less formal conversation.

You can also see that the waiter's pride has been hurt. Her words challenge his status as a veteran employee of this fantastic establishment he doesn't work for any more. He worked this job for three years, though! Everyone should know about his tenure.

The situation is similar to when a new employee starts work. Sometimes, older employees with self-importance issues find ways to let new employees know how long they've been around.

"Wow, it hasn't been this busy since last year's opening football game. We were so slammed. And two guys called in sick. I don't know how we did it."

Or, "I remember when we didn't have steak sandwiches and fettuccine alfredo on the menu. That was like 2 years ago. I don't think you were working here yet."

"Ah," the female customer replies. The waiter's words were too ambiguous. He needs to explain why he's working tonight when he just said he doesn't work here anymore.

He catches on, "I pick up shifts every now-and-then if people need me; plus, extra cash is helpful."

The waiter just revealed that he's broke.

He continues, "I picked up this shift for my girlfriend because she has a test tomorrow."

Ah, the loyalty is beautiful. The only, I repeat, the only time a person mentions his or her spouse (except, maybe, a rare slip, an accident, a slap from a frat boy's hand to a frat boy's forehead, or that stupid, stupid cock-blocking friend) is to ward off potential suitors. The homeowner says no to buyers and investors because he is content or scared because his girlfriend is a waiter and she keeps a heavy eye on him. Just kidding.

This is the weird part of the blog where my life starts intertwining with my businiess-only post. This dialogue is one that I took part in with a customer the other day and, especially in the last paragraph, it's easy to say I'm writing something safe, something that will make my girlfriend happy and my life better. IM WRITING THIS FOR YOU, BABE. Can you hear me? Its funny that I felt the need to write that in caps as if the words literally needed to scream for her to hear them. As if the letters needed all of their voice to be heard.

But, seriously, believe me when I say I'm writing about myself as if I'm another person - consciously unbiased.

End Program.

Sarcastic School Teachers

2008-07-21T23:29:00.002-04:00

I took Greyhound Bus Lines from Atlanta to Greenville on Saturday. The driver gave his obligatory speech after offering a bag of chips an 3/4ths of a soda he found for 75 cents each - if the unknown owner didn't want it. He didn't. Half-way through his 'don't smoke and don't take your shoes off' verbal escapade he caught someone jabbering.

"You want me to stop the bus? I'll stop the bus. I'll kick you off the bus if I have to. It's no problem. Don't talk while I'm talking. Don't talk while I'm talking." The person whom I never saw stopped talking.

After a few minutes of quiet as we were settling into our not-so-long ride to G-Vegas, the bus driver brings it back up.

"Now, why would anyone talk while I'm talking? Does anyone know why you would talk while I'm talking? Anyone? Answer me that. I don't know why. Does anyone have an answer." His parade was laced with sarcasm as he called out the chatter fiend.

The man sitting next to me, who must have been aged between thirty and forty, whispered to me, "Actin' like a school teacher."

"Heh," I agreed.

All throughout the day that line kept my mind bothered. "Just like a school teacher." How true. I started remembering some of my sarcastic, impatient, cranky, less mature teachers littered between Kindergarten and 12th grade. I think about my little brother who is now home-schooled because he doesn't know how to handle the teachers. Well, I'm sure they have a hard time with him as well.

He's just 11 now, a bully with a soft heart, and he can't help snapping back sarcastic remarks at sarcastic teachers. He told one frizzy-haired teacher to 'Brush her hair!' when he got in trouble after another kid tripped him. After being told that class was not "The Connor Show" he thought back, though holding his tongue, "Well, this isn't the Mr. Rice Show, either." You go boy. I think I had Mr. Rice in middle school, too.

I also had a teacher I'll call Mr. Capiche (Not because he was Italian, but because the name sounds close and far enough to make telling this story feel just right.) He was a big n' tall, well built black man and former paratrooper for the military. He taught 7th grade social studies. He won Teacher of the Year a year or two before and he loved telling stories.

He usually only told stories once, but he told us about the Alpha Wolf a few times. Just like the alpha wolf proudly walks through his pack, Mr. Capiche would pace from his desk to the chalkboard down the middle of the classroom.

If another wolf makes eye contact with the alpha wolf for more than three seconds, then the alpha wolf would attack and possibly kill it to show the pack his superiority.

Yes sir.

In his class, you were safest in your seat. If you got up to sharpen your pencil, you risked being asked what you had for supper the night before. It was impossible to remember.

He would make a buzzer sound,"ENNNH. Times up. Better luck next time."

One time I was ready.

"Chris! What did you have for dinner last night?"

"I ate at Ryan's, what'd you have?"

"Uh. Chi.. cken and um." he paused, "You got me. I had chicken and potatoes, though, I didn't forget. But you got me."

Short victory. The next day he asked me to come up to his desk. He placed a 12 inch ruler halfway between him and I.

"On the count of three, try to grab the ruler before I do." This was one of his favorite games.

"Corey," he called to one of his favorite students, "count to three."

Needless to say, he grabbed the ruler quicker than I. He regained his superiority, his mental stability, over me. I remember he called me bug-eyed, or that I had bug-like eyes, they were larger than most eyes in proportion to my face, I guess, and I told my stepmother about it. She had a conference, or maybe just a phone call - I can't remember - with him.

The next day in class he called me out for it. In front of everyone he told me not to go complain or cry to my stepmother about stuff. Capiche?

Maybe you can tell, maybe you can't, but I was definitely a little wimp in middle school. I was that way until about 11th grade. I liked his class even though he picked on me, though, and I respected him. I used to give respect to a lot of people that didn't deserve it. That's what you do when you're a wimp. You want the people who bully you to respect you. You set the wrong goals in life.

Anyways, I got the best of him, eventually.

One day in class he offered a gamble to anyone that wanted to take it. He would ask a question, something to do with geography, and if we answered correctly within thirty seconds he would give us a free 100 quiz grade that would average in with our other quizzes. If we got it wrong, he would average in a 0 quiz grade. Being the little gambler that I've always been, I went for it.

"What's the capital of Missouri?" What was I thinking? I don't know this stuff. I didn't answer, or I didn't answer correctly, I don't remember.

I sat down with a new zero quiz grade. He asked if I wanted to try again and that this time I could use the encyclopedia. Honestly, I can't remember if he offered the encyclopedia or I asked for it. Either way, he asked a much harder question and I had no idea where to look and I sat down again with two fatty zeros.

Because of that, I received a B instead of an A in that quarter.

Getting to where I got him back. One of the most memorable parts of Mr. Capiche's class were the daily trivia questions he had written on the chalkboard. Each was worth a pretty decent amount of bonus points and the points increased throughout the year. Questions ranged from "Who was the first person to discover North America?" (Leif Erikson, I believe, not Christopher Columbus) to "What is the southernmost point of the fifty states of America?" (Key West? Actually that was the wrong answer according to his trivia book, which did not understand English. The answer was death valley, which would be the lowest point. Whatever.

I never got any of the question correct until I cheated. During a class before his, I excused my self to the restroom and went by his empty class. He must have been at lunch or had a teacher planning period. I pressed my face against the door's clear plastic pane and read the chalkboard on the far side of the room through the dark. It asked about some kind of dance. I went to the library and looked it up.

Whenever a student correctly answered one of these questions he would ask how they knew it. He probed them until he believed they had not cheated. Fortunately, I was enough of a queer (quoting my fellow students) to have taken dance the previous year. And I had spent a some time in ISS (In School Suspension). So, I planned to tell him I learned it while doing busy work in ISS for dance class.

Before class, I told another student, Caleb, that I had to study dance in ISS. Mr. Capiche trusted Caleb. In class I submitted my ill-gotten answer, gave my perfect excuse and even had good ol' Caleb back me up. He was surprised, or, I dunno, he respected me for getting the answer right. He wrote a note for me to take to one of the secretaries in the principal's office. It instructed them to change my B from the previous quarter back to an A.

For a few years I wanted to tell him what I did. I wanted to send him a letter explaining that I beat him. He always said he had great memory and I'm sure he would remember what happened ten years later. But, I don't really care. It's not worth it. I'm not sure if he still teaches, either. Maybe he'll read it here one day. Most likely, he won't.

To summarize, I feel that a lot of new teachers, the ones that have grown up in our age of cynicism and sarcasm, take that attitude to work. It may feel appropriate with older kids, to fit in as my mom does her students in high school, but in elementary school? Like I said, my little brother is eleven. He just got to middle school. And just got out, too.

Teachers need to hold their tongue, need to be trained to handle stress better. They all need to age fifty years. Not really, I know.

Call me a hypocrite, I get it. I'm a sarcastic person. Can't you tell? I love using sarcasm to put down bad products or crappy work.

But, really, I hate it. It's like smoking. It kills me and poisons the people around me. I think everyone has similar harmful habits and most self-conscious, or should I say self-aware, people would like to do away with them. It's so deep, though, I was raised with it. It's so stupid.

Every time someone speaks, my mind starts working for the next thing to say. If they said or did something dumb, the first thing I think of isn't patient, it isn't helpful. It's a fucking joke. Some sarcastic remark meant for laughter. Laughter at anothers expense. And it builds up.

Sigh. I just trailed away there. What can you do? ~~I don't really feel like proof reading this, either.~~ Just let me know if I screwed up. Speaking of which, ~~I'm going to buy a grammar book this week~~ I just bought a grammar book. That's right, it's time to step it up.

Connotator episode 2: Great Connotations

2008-07-20T02:58:00.006-04:00

What does it mean when a person always rates something at the extremes on a website? For example, when rating a movie on imdb.com do you always rate a one or a ten?

Most likely you're doing it to counter other people's votes. You absolutely love (underrated masterpiece) but it only carries a 7.3 average. Looks like it needs a boost. Why is it rated so low? Obviously some people who know jack about movies and probably didn't understand the cinematic nuances - and subtle, beautiful anti-political agenda - rated it low. ~~That person is stupid.~~ Those people are stupid and I need to be a counter weight.

Or it's the opposite. Some terribly trite Hollywood junkfest is rated much too high. Looks like it needs as many bad ratings as it can get to deplete this unexplainable average. Maybe I'll sign up another account so I can vote it down twice.

In summary, if you're a person who does this, you're probably full of yourself. Your opinion is founded in 'intelligence'. You take out your frustration of being 'surrounded by idiots' on movie rating sites, youtube videos (that video was not funny), amazon, forums, and blog posts. Oh.

Is the iPod iNtuitive?

2008-07-15T16:12:00.006-04:00

I'll start by giving the obligatory priming for people ready to bash the article: I have an iPod, I think it's the best mp3 player on the market, I have a Mac Pro and I love it.

But to me, the iPod is not intuitive if you've never seen it used before. In fact, I still press the wrong buttons a lot.

Lets pretend I already have my music on my iPod. We'll come back how annoying it is to transfer music.

All of my music is playing at the moment. Song 1 of 1342. A for... Amy Winehouse. Yep, that's right, I was lucky enough to hear her music before I heard about her. I like the 50s, big band sound. But, as usual, I'm in the mood for some Mars Volta.

I press the menu button to access the... menu. Good. I rotate my thumb around the circle down to Artists. Artists is highlighted and an arrow at the end of the line tells me that the list of Artists are located, symbolically, to the right - like the start menu in Windows. Simple. I press the right arrow. It goes to the next Amy Winehouse song. Wtf?

Oh, I need to press the center, circle button. Good good, now I'm scrolling down to The Mars Volta. Hmm, they aren't under T. Ah, they don't count 'The.' I agree. Oops, I scrolled up too fast and selected Marshal Mathers free style. That's embarrassing. I press the back arrow to go back. Amy Winehouse restarts. Fuck. How do I go back?

Oh, I need to press the menu button. ~~That makes sense.~~ . I don't really want to listen to any more Amy Winehouse. I press the center button to access the Mars Volta albums. Ok. I want to listen to all of their albums, how do I do that? Well, Play All is highlighted, so I press play. Well, at least Amy Winhouse stopped. Oh, it paused it.

I think I understand, now. The menu is simply on top of the songs that are playing. You know, I'm just not the kinda guy that enjoys perusing my iPod menu. I don't want or care to pause, skip forward and skip backward. I just want to stop listening to Mrs. Winehouse. Please, go back to rehab.

I like the whole Back to Black album except the first song, Rehab. I don't know, it's just annoying; too repetitive. Turns out it's a grammy award winning single. Sigh, I'll never be part of the masses.

Turns out, I'm not in the mood for Mars Volta. I press menu to access the menu. Just kidding, I am in the mood for them. Now, how do I exit the menu? Um Only time will tell...

You know what brightens my day? When you pull your iPod out of your bookbag and see that it's halfway through song 130 of every song in your iPod because you forgot to lock it. It has been playing for half a day and only has a red sliver of life left. Maybe I won't work out today

Trying to get music on your iPod is such a pain! I know not everyone is a computer savvy, technology nerd. I mean, not everyone knows how to plug their iPod. Wait. Not everyone knows how to open a folder. Wait. Not everyone knows how to drag a song into a music folder. Wait. Not everyone WANTS TO MAKE A PLAYLIST AND COPY ALL OF THEIR SONGS INTO IT, OR JUST CERTAIN SONGS, MAYBE THESE SONGS, NOT THOSE SONGS, NO I'LL MAKE ANOTHER PLAYLIST, ITS COOL I'LL JUST SYNC IT ALL, NO, MAYBE I'LL JUST LOSE ALL MY SONGS WHEN USING SOMEONE ELSES COMPUTER. Wait?

That's my list of negative iPod design elements. To be fair, I'll mention something I LOVE about the iPod. Whenever your headphones accidently pop out, the music pauses for you. That makes me happy.

Redesigning bathrooms for the overly self-conscious

2008-07-15T14:25:00.005-04:00

My story:
I walk in a bathroom and take a stall. Unfortunately, I have to be a neighbor. So, I sit down and wait. He leaves and I start. Within a few seconds, 3 more people enter to use the urinal. Come on, guys, shake it and leave. I'm dying here.

Everyone's gone and I have a cramp. Finally, I'm ready. The door swings open as I rip a huge, echoing fart. The newcomer puts his hands up to shield his face. His girlfriend, who was standing behind him, yelps a little. He turns back around and leaves. This sucks.

I'm almost ready to leave when another dude walks in. Peering through the cracks in the door, I think I recognize him but I'm not sure. Didn't he sit next to me in Cog Sci? He takes the stall next to me, of course, even though there are two free stalls.

I bend down to check out his shoes and there he is, staring me in the face. I will never, ever check out another person's shoes. I sit back up as quick as I can. Not fast enough for the auto flush to go off, though. For both of us. Water splashes onto the floor from the nuclear powered toilet bowl. I'm soaked.

How embarrassing. And no, it wasn't the guy from my class. Some random dude with black hair and classes.

"How are ya?"

Yea right. I'm out of here. I stand up and pull up my pants, but get blasted with water before I can pull them up. I grab my book bag from the hanging hook and pull open the door. Well, I try to. I can't really fit because the door opens inward. My book bag is catching on everything not smooth. I get my legs out first and the rest finally follows. I think I ripped my shirt.

I do wash my hands. I don't care if someone just tried to have conversation between stalls, I'm not carrying poop-germs outside of this bathroom. Ooh, a zit! Don't touch it! Wash your hands first.

I wash, use a paper towel and head for the door. Wait, I'm not going to touch the door handle. That's the dirtiest part of a bathroom, right? I would use a paper towel to open it, but there's no trash can near. Sigh. I'll just use my pinky.

The problems:
We have to find a way to control the auto-flush!
Shoes untied? Flush.
Reaching down to silence your pocketed cell-phone? Flush.
Shin itches? Flush.
Door won't stay shut? Flush. Flush. Flush.
It tears me up that I could fill up a pool every time I drop the kids off.

All stalls should be handicap stalls. There just isn't enough room to move around. Especially with a book bag. Especially in the winter when you're all dressed up.

Music! There should ALWAYS be music. "I want to know what love is! I fart want to feel what love is!" See, you didn't even hear it.

Why do stalls and urinals have to be grouped? Why can't it be stall-urinal-stall-urinal. Or even stall-urinal-urinal-urinal-stall. Simply separate the stalls. I don't want to pass dirty, cacophonous notes back and forth with my bathroom buddy. I hate shitty neighbors, don't you?

And lastly, please, put a trash can next to the door.

We're all little John Stewerts and when your brain takes over

2008-07-13T16:55:00.009-04:00

It's been a weird week in my blogging world. I ~~ranted about~~ reviewed a game and a movie, felt they came out entertaining and thus decided to open my blog up to the world. Really, that just means I linked it on facebook and told my roommates to read it.

Still, that's kinda scary. Now I'm starting to pay attention to what people say about it, the good and the bad, and trying NOT to change it based on what I hear.

Some of my friends got back to me and said they thought my posts were hilarious - a great compliment. It's exactly what I want to hear. But, now I'm scared to write anything that isn't funny.

If my friends are anything like me - or anything like I envision the majority of the world is, reading a blog that turns the funny off and on which each post is frustrating. Some people, including myself, don't like to read sentimental mush next to theories of the world and language next to elitist media reviews.

It's just confusing, right? For example, let's say a crazy thing happens: someone links one of my posts to a major website because they thought one of my posts was funny. A lot of people read it and start browsing through more posts only to realize only 1/3 are similar. It just feels like a turn off.

Raise your hand if you think I just shouldn't worry about it.

Put your hand down, Chris, this is your blog.

Secondly, I've come to accept that one of my main writing voices is the nitpicky, elitist asshole that likes pointing out the flaws in all the little things in life. I love doing it. I have so much to say about unoriginality, bad design and bullshit.

But... many people do this. Every week I get linked to some smart asshole that tears apart a terrible video game, points out the hypocrisy in a tv show or a lie in an advertisement. What's it good for? We all do it. Does this mean I'm unoriginal?

It seems we're all little George Carlins, miniature Jon Stewerts and baby Stephen Colberts. If you're wondering why I put Jon Stewert in the blog title, it's because I know him better. Call me uneducated, but I really didn't know much of George Carlin's material until he died. To me, The Daily Show is where I get my subversive material.

Again, what's it good for? To be honest, I figured out the answer before I started typing this blog. Pointing out these terrible nuances in the world gives our audience a little more of a push to do things better. Who would want (to do this dumb thing) when (this smart person) just made everyone realize out how ridiculous it was. Well, the people that agree with that person, anyhow.

Still, should I quit being that guy? Try to find a different voice? Maybe I won't curse as much as the other guys and I'll learn some bigger words. That will set me apart.

And then I start thinking about money. Common occurance when you're broke and full of ideas. How can this make me a buck? If I had a buck for every time I stopped doing something I enjoyed because of that exact thought.

I used to draw and a few people said I should try to sell my drawings - on postcards or something - and not long later, I didn't have the heart to do it anymore. When I doodled, I was letting certain emotions out, but not all of them would sell. Some came out messy and jagged. Suddenly an audience was all I could think about when I sat down with white paper and drawing pen.

Money. A vision. A few people liked my reviews and suddenly I find myself only writing video game reviews and movie reviews. I get excited and want to make an elitist video game and movie reviewing website. I know, I just started writing this blog a month ago. But that's what my brain does. It hates taking it slowly. It wants to be good immediately.

I know plenty of other people think like I do. The opportunity to make quick money overcomes and the motivation to work hard at something disappears. This is when people burn out.

I just wanted to make a post about this destructive ongoing process that I've had for a while. I start something, I don't improve quick enough, and I quit. For the first time, I can document this struggle as it happens.

It's so unsettling, though! I just opened this blog to the world and I'm documenting a breakdown. Well, that's a little dramatic.

As for my prose, I know many people that will never show people their prose. It's so personal, yet rarely very good. And to ask someone what they think of it? Oh man. Shivers.

Like I said before, though, I'm not going to give up on (everything) because I'm afraid to hear someone says it sucks. Yes, it sucks, but one day, it won't be that bad.

Problem: I want it now.
Solution: Shut up and get to work.

Where am I. I've kept this blog up for a month. I've been going to the gym since the beginning of the summer. (Time to gain some weight!) I've worked on a few other projects here and there. I think I'm doing alright.

Read it and weep, WALL-E

2008-07-10T08:32:00.013-04:00

I'm going to make this post short since my last post also happened to be a ranting review - and it was very long. Plus, no one wants to get labeled a meany, do they?

WALL-E was cool, sometimes funny, mostly mellow, and sort-of thought provoking. I remember thinking to myself, "Why would a ship full of lazy, overweight people who have had nothing but fun and free food want to go back to Earth: the dumpster. I correct myself, WALL-E made neat little piles of all the trash in the world, except for the garbage that littered the outside of his trailer.

Speaking of a futuristic world filled with garbage and advertising - anyone see Idiocracy?

Writing the latter latter paragraph made me think of something else. Why were there so many advertisements on the ship? Those people have been on a cruise for 700 years. I don't think money is an issue. (Everything was free, right?)

I'm going to compare audience reactions to things in the movie to audience reactions to those same things in real life.

WALL-E is a sensitive, nerdy robot with low self-esteem.
Real Life: Shut up, WALL-E. Keep it to yourself. Need a hanky?
Movie Life: Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

EVE is a quick tempered, trigger-finger that cares more about her job than a relationship.
Real Life: WALL-E, this is an intervention. We're here to tell you that if you don't break up with that crazy woman, she'll mentally destroy you. You'll be an abused, slave husband for the rest of your life.
Movie: LOL Did you see her nearly disintegrate WALL-E? This is amazing.

To put it simply, both of our protagonists are bitches.

The next paragraph contains a spoiler. But honestly, if you've seen any other movie before, just apply your knowledge and this won't ruin anything.

AT THE END of the movie... (That was to scare off those people that really don't want to read a spoiler but continue to read naturally). At the end of the movie, everyone in the theater got quiet and a little teary-eyed. WALL-E had just been crushed by the plant hibernation stand and wasn't moving. He may have been dead... I had mildly enjoyed the movie until this point, but now, I started sinking back into my chair. I started getting a little angry - I'm short tempered when it comes to these things. My head felt heavy, like I had too much to drink, and my fingers started clinching subconsciously.

It took about 10 minutes for him to come back to life. That's a long time when you aren't suspending your disbelief. Did you really think Pixar was going to kill our cute, whiny protagonist at the end? Of course not, it wouldn't be qualified as a family movie. Instead it would be another emotionally distressing Indie flick. Once you realize that, it's just a waiting game.

It wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't just gotten out of Hancock, in which the exact same thing happens.

Here's my bet. List the last 10 movies you saw. I bet 5 of them had endings like this.

A Game Tester's Woe

2008-07-08T14:08:00.010-04:00

Whoa, you're a game tester?! You get paid to play video games? What's it like being a game tester?

Well, have you ever played a game you hated?
Yea.

Have you ever been forced to play a game you hated.
No.

Week 2 at the new job. Monday morning. My boss asks me a question, revealing as little information as he can about his intention. "Have you ever played a simulation game?"

Me. Dumb me. "Yea, I love them. You mean like Sim City... or Civilization, right?"

"Not really. Have you played a Sub Game?"

"I don't think so." I didn't even really know what he meant. Sub... game?

"Oh well, I'm going to put you on Sub Command: Seawolf. It's a military submarine simulation game."

Sounds. Like. Fun.

I walked back into the game testing lab. "Hey guys, guess what I get to test. Sub Command!"

"Ohhhhhhh...."
"Ouch"
"Good luck with that."
"Sucks to be you."
"You're fucked."

And he wasn't lying. Apparently the reason we haven't released it is because it sucks, it's boring and no one can beat it. It's so bad that the credits play every time you exit the game. It doesn't expect you to come back. But, you know, supposedly it's one of the most accurate submarine simulations out today. I was actually a bit excited. After I beat this game I'll have the knowledge to pilot a real submarine!

Here's my work log that I submit at the end of each day explaining to my superiors how many hours I put in and what I accomplished.

Monday
"Checked out different menu items and played through the three training missions. Not sure if I really passed the third training mission."

Tuesday
"Went through training missions again. Completed 2 easy missions in 'Mission' mode: Spec Ops and Ice Maze. Started 'Campaign' mode and failed first mission."

Wednesday
"Completed 3 missions in Campaign mode"

Thursday
"Failed campaign mission Ocean Vultures a number of times. Read more of the manual. Played training mission three a number of times also without success. Made notes of a possible bug, but mainly on how insufficient the tutorial missions are."

Friday
"Completed training mission 3 more times unsuccessfully. Can't figure out if the bug is in our version or the retail copy of the game - The tutorial keeps going even when you have not successfully completed it's step by step objectives"

You know how when you're playing through a tutorial, you are told something along the lines of "To do a kick flip, press X after releasing the jump button." The game then waits for you, newb, to complete a kick flip successfully. But that's not the way Sub Command does it. It just tells you to do something, waits a few seconds and moves on. If you didn't do it right, if you have the wrong coordinates, if you don't even have the right screen up, it will continue. The learning curve of this game is a brick wall and the only trick I've learned so far is how to grind my face into it.

Monday
"Completed training mission 3 successfully. Played 'Ocean Vultures' again. "

Tuesday
"Failed Campaign mission Ocean Vultures again, twice. Pulled out the 200 page manual again and started crying."

Wednesday
"Successfully beat Ocean Vultures. That's right! This game is going down. You can mark that on your wall, this game will be done tomorrow ~~bitches~~.

Thursday
"Failed a mission repeatedly. Went home early."

Friday
"Spent 8 hours looking for a tutorial on the internet. Turns out the only people that play this game are WWII vets in Europe. None of them speak English."

Thank God for Google Translator:

vla good jai find a technical denfer. so when a torpedo you happen above you say shit jsuis death when she seeks a sible and what you find are two possibiliter the worse and that you must darken above (before what does declanche) or the best (and you better not dive very deep about 800 feet before walking all 32 noeus you activate RUDDLE LEFT in loption of soumarin Right click with your soumarin will go a brisk pace in round and that the torpedoes and you go very close to the surface without using the balaste the torpedo below you will (just before you save time because the torpedo can but it will depend on the distance of the torpedo when you go back to the surface other thing when you go back to the surface it can seut your underwater not turn over enronds therefore Fos reactivers RUDDLE LEFT

"So when a torpedo you happen above you say shit?" Got it.

Monday
"Thanks to Google Translator, I completed 3 missions."

Fast forward.

The Land Strike Mission.

I start off in the ocean waters to the right of a large land mass. My first objective is to navigate to the 'launch point' - the place I'll launch a barrage of missiles at two airports on land. I turned SHOW TRUTH on so I know where my enemies are. It's basically for cheaters, or really frustrated, suicidal game testers. I just want to avoid any enemies and get to the launch point. Fortunately, there are no enemies except for two planes flying around, monitoring the seas. So, I set my destination to the launch point, crank up game speed to 8x real-time (yes, some people play this in real time...) and wait.

20 minutes later I arrive at the launch point. At 8x speed, it took me 20 minutes to get to the launch point. I did NOTHING else. There were no enemies, just open sea. I spent 20 minutes moving a dot across the screen. This is NOT A FUCKING GAME.

When I arrive, I am informed by one of my digital crew mates that I am correctly positioned to launch my attack. I press F6 to access my weapons.

oh shit. oh no. no way.

I left my air strike missiles at home. That's right, this game doesn't give you the weapons you need, you have to equip them before the mission starts. After you are debriefed, there are three buttons on the bottom of the screen. One of them lets me choose which weapon I want to bring. How about the ONLY ones that I can shoot in the AIR?

Why would a game send you on a mission that you can not possibly complete? I know, I know, it's a simulation game. It simulates real life. Ok, I'm over it.

This reminds me of something that happened in an earlier mission. I was supposed to guide at least 1 of 3 ships to safety. I failed, of course, and one by one the ships were destroyed behind me. After each one was destroyed, I was told "[Ship 1] has been destroyed, continue with your mission."

Yes, even after the last ship was sunk, I was told to continue. So I spent the next 10 minutes navigating to the finish line. Nothing. So did I or did I not fail this mission? It seems obvious that I failed, right? But I've had other missions that I failed that still advanced me to the next campaign mission. I mean, that's all I really want here - to get to the final mission and beat the game. Respectable, sea-scarred captain or not. So, what do I do here? Do I press End Mission and risk missing one small objective and doing it all over, or do I keep searching?

I eventually pressed End Mission and found out I had failed. This was one constant nagging problem with the game. When you completed a mission, it wouldn't end automatically. I have to press escape, select end mission, and then select Yes when it asks "Are you sure?" Of course, I'm sure! I just beat the mission. Don't scare me like that.

Back to Land Strike. I restart the mission and fill up all of my 8 weapon slots with HLAM air strike missiles. I turn on the Daily Show on an adjacent monitor and watch the full episode while my submarine cruises atbaby speed to the launch spot. When there, I press F6 to access my weapons screen again. I assign the missile in slot 1 to the airport by pinpointing it on the world map. I flood the tank, open the gates and press Launch. I press F7 to open the world map so I can watch my missile. Where the fuck is it? "Lost the wire on tube 1, sir." What the fuck does that mean? Where's my fucking missile? Ahhhhhhhh!!!! Where did it go? I'm sobbing. My co-worker behind me adjusts his headphones and stares into his monitor. Where the fuck did it go....

You can't launch an air missile under water, dumb ass.

I rise to the surface. "Surface, surface," my invisible crewman tells me. I pinpoint the airport again and launch another missile. I turn the speed up to 8x so I don't have to wait. It gets halfway to the airport and suddenly... the airport launches a counter attack. My missile is intercepted. And then one of the circling airplanes drops some torpedoes on me. I need to remember to save my game.

Next day. I know what I have to do. I equip the correct weapons and float over to the launch point. I save the game.

I set up 6 of my eight missiles to attack the 2 bases - the airport and one a few blocks over. I figure I'll save 2 in case something happens. Launched. As they zip away at thunder speed I see the circling airplane fly towards me. Haha! Not this time, buddy. I submerge to 600 feet and head away from the launch site as fast as I can. There's no way he can hit me this time. Wrong. He flew right to me and dropped two more of those motherfucking torpedoes in the water. How the fuck does an airplane detect a submarine 600 feet under the water?

Needless to say, my 6 missiles weren't enough to destroy the two airports. Try try again.

Load Game. Launch 8 missiles. Doesn't work. That's all my missiles.
Load Game. Launch 8 missiles again. There's still damage left on the airports. Why am I doing this? Desperation.
Load game. Launch 8 missiles. Circling airplane drops torpedoes on me. But... but... my missiles work! I win! I fucking win! Airplane's torpedoes destroy me. New survival technique - don't celebrate until you've ended the mission. Like I said, I have to manually end the mission when I complete it. It's like the old days in Sonic: the Hedgehog when you would die right after beating Dr. Robotnik because he had two left over flames hanging nearby in the air and you jumped on them.

Two weeks later. Today.

Final Mission.

It honestly took 30 minutes to get to the ship I was supposed to sink. It's surrounded by a bunch of other ships that look very similar on my RADAR. I worked through them. I took out one of the surrounding ships with one of my missiles and was left with a clear path to the mothership. I fired two missiles. I saved the game as the missiles were half way over in case something weird happened. I've sank every ship in the game with 1 missile. So, I sent two just in case. "Loud explosion bearing 255, sir." "Loud explosion bearing 255, sir." Both hit. 46% damage. Damnit. I fire two more missiles off quickly, but the ship is long gone, weaving away, impossible to get to now. Why did I save after I launched?

Load game. I send 2 missiles to the first ship, sink it, and this time the ships scatter. I pull up parallel to the target ship. We are about 1000 yards from each other - closer than I've ever been to any target that hasn't killed me yet. I still can not find him on my RADAR, though. Luckily, these ships - unlike submarines - send off SONAR. Tracking his SONAR gives me his direction, just not his distance. But I can see that when I use SHOW TRUTH - you know the cheaters' way.Well, better to cheat than to kill myself, mom always said.

I assign all of my torpedoes to this Russian ship that was important too many years ago. Launch. 8x speed. WTF? My torpedoes just went the opposite direction? Why are they going south. They're assigned to go North. Towards the Kursta - fucking - shav. I grab my coworker's chair and swing him around. TONY WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON. Do you see this?

Load Game. I don't know what happened, but, maybe I need more than a SONAR tracker before I should launch my torpedo. Obviously, knowing the exact direction of the enemy ship isn't enough to get the torpedo going the right direction.

I circle around, try a few different angles. I finally get the right coordinates and a good tracker. I launch 6 missiles at it. They soar in underwater unison. A perfect 10 in synchronized swimming. (Great AI, really). And then... HIT! THEY SUCCESSFULLY HIT. I swing around in my chair and pump my fist. What a relief. A smile shoots across my face. After a month of playing, I finally completed the last mission. Tony! Look at this, I beat the game. Finally, I really did. I beat it.

"Congratu... " He shakes his head. "Oh the irony. I couldn't have done it better myself."

I turn back around in my seat.

Goodbye, sweet world.

Hey CHRIS! Keep this in mind.

2008-07-07T20:19:00.003-04:00

1) Trust your idea. No one can read your mind. Just because you can't explain it well doesn't mean it isn't awesome.

2) Recognize Positive Feedback (laughing, crying, smiles, shock and awe) Don't fish for compliments. In fact, never ask someone 'how they liked it.' I mean, ask technical things like, what could be better/worse, what is you least/most favorite part, but don't fish!

3) When a gametest sucks, fix things, don't wimper.

4) Understand natural human limits. People don't want to play your game all day no matter how fun it is. They have stuff to do. And so do you. Children don't have long attention spans.

I had this written on an index card near a game I'm working on. Now it's a little more permanent.

The Connotator (Name Pending) Episode 1

2008-07-07T18:27:00.007-04:00

I'm going to start an episodic post, though, like this blog itself, the posts will come unplanned. These posts will often be spurred by something I heard, or was told, during the day, but some, like today's post, will be inspired by things in the past.

Each post I will take a sentence, no, a line of dialogue that someone has told me, scripted and fake as it sounds, and break it apart to reveal its true meaning.

Notice my annoyed tone. The way a person structures their sentences can reveal a lot about who they are and what they are saying. There are numerous ways to say the same thing, so if you take into consideration the nuances in their choice of words, you can learn a lot.

Be warned, this can make you a cynical, over-analytical bastard.

Sentence 1:
(Over the phone - I had just asked an old friend to test a game I made.)
"It's too late for me to come over, but I'll tell you what, I'll buy a copy of your game when it comes out."

1) "It's too late for me to come over,"

We can go ahead an mark through this first part of the sentence. It's a common excuse. She doesn't want to come over, she doesn't want to play the game, it's an easy excuse that only a pitiful person would argue with. If someone tells you it's too late to come over, deal with it. They don't want to come over. Don't prod, pry or try to get 'the truth.' It doesn't matter, the person doesn't want to come over. Once you hear this, take your first steps to getting over it.

2) "I'll tell you what"

Go ahead, tell me. Grandpa. Who are you? It sounds like you're about to make me a promise about something in the future that probably won't happen. Have you ever heard 'I'll tell you what' followed by anything other than 'if?'

"I'll tell you what, if comic book characters come to life, I'll hang out with you. And them."

Well, it's not totally true. Other things can come after "I'll tell you what." Sometimes it's "I'll tell you what, next time that I stop by..." This is what your dad that left your mom says after he visits for the first time in years. I'll buy you new shoes next time I'm around. Thanks dad.

3) "I'll buy a copy of your game when it comes out."

Well, this has a few meanings. It all depends on how optimistic you are. First case, the bright side. The person believes that you'll make the game. You're young, in college and have a brand new idea for the game. She can't wait to help you out.

Second case, the truth. The person killed two birds with one... To the naive audience, it's a compliment. See the first case. This person really thinks I'll make it, even though they don't want to come over and help test it. It's late, testing is boring. The real product will be a blast compared to whatever I had in store tonight. This person believes in me.

On the other hand, the person is completely relieved of ever helping again. She'll get a copy when it comes out, so there's no need to ever ask for her help again. She'll help the cause, but only if I make it that far. Is it too pessimistic to say that this is the same person who is surprised when your game comes out, and makes up another excuse to not buy it?

Yes, it is. (Connotator over, regular blog taking over)

Let's forget about this person. It's cool, it really is. My point was to take apart the sentence, not to rant. Plenty of times I've turned people down for various activities, I understand. But one thing I've learned is that you CAN NOT expect people to believe you will make it. When I was young and ripe, about a year ago, I finally figured that out. How many people have come up to you with dreams of making it big - sports, acting, filmmaking, video game design, politics - and you went along with them, yet on the inside you just shook your head. It's just hard to believe - no, I'll say it - it's naive to believe that this random person so openly expressing their dreams to you will actually make it.

That's who I am. I'm that guy telling you all of my ideas, but you may or may not believe I'll make it. I used to fish for compliments. I wanted to confirm that my teachers saw in me what I saw in me. But how can they? You just have to believe it yourself. That's all there is to it.

Step 1) ~~Cut a hole in the box~~ Believe in yourself.
Step 2) ~~Put your dick in the box~~ Put the hours in.

We've all heard it. It just clicked one day. I haven't made it, yet, though. You may not think I will, I may not think I will sometimes. But that doesn't mean I'm just going to give up.

Sorry if the last bit caused a flinch in you cliche-conscious people. I don't believe what I said is cliche, because I mean it, but there's only so many ways to say something, right? ;)

Free-writing frees the soul

2008-07-04T16:39:00.006-04:00

Holy hot water, thought fodder for the tot's father. Imagining rings quick when the bee sings I just start seein' things. Forget about it, don't talk about it, somethin' gonna come with it, chew a stick of gum with it. Talk to my mee maw all about the see saw, tell me a confusing thing, don't wanna beat -ing. Stick with the tough oak, t-ball to the goat glove, feel me with your what? love, just trying a new thing woman. Worms, what a terrible mind shot, get it out your mind cause its gonna bring a bigger buzz. Don't warn me when I warned ya, I told you not to talk bra, it's just a little dementia. Take one step at a time suh, sugah and a lime suh, come on with the booze bra. Take me for a ride man, let's get out of town man, I'm just feeling down man. Risk away the tears main, I just want to hear you mane, the cause it not insane man. Feelin a little buzz man, whiskey in the fuzz man, can you get a country man. Sitting in a daze man, a down influenced maze man, just doin' what the doctor says, man. Carry on the ways man, take a turkey to a fair fan, flaky on the chairs man. Chris. I'm talking up a lot to you, it's time to change your pesky tune, can you face away your faces man. Break me from the single rune, repeatable and glory food, sensible and single, too. Just take him for what he is, a little self-conscious - but who is? n't. Just a pleasant Christmas dinner with your nieces fellow feathers, missing all the reindeer stomping because of a portable potty. Take the turkey, eat around it, eat the heart out, keep the napkin. Just one present for the homeless, window shopping - we live on main street. Give him something, give him nothing, what's a gift but huffing puffing. When your frost shows when your breathing, some don't hold those heated chest things. Eating breast wings for our Christmas, from our baker - he loves our business. Send us else where, enjoy your vacation, where'd you get your information. We've been here from day one, we always miss the school bus. Drop the kids at school ourselves, self-rightous exploding nitrus, we do it for the glory, but we only do it once. We practice plays in a dunce cap, owe it to a runt's chap, tried out for a gingersnap ate while his cat napped. Change the laundry, chage the diapers, change windows and the wipers. Change the the heart throbs of the snipers. Trim the fingers of the typers, find the findings founding finders. Jeepers jipers, cripes and sand mites, dusty match lights and lite brite fight the nites.

Johnny Walk 'n Rock pt.1

2008-07-02T08:31:00.007-04:00

Johnny 'Walk 'n Rock' is on the run and tonight he's either staying at the Super 8, which is where I'm standing, or the Pasadena 64 down the street - which I heard is exponentially better. I have a picture of him in a slightly bent manillla folder and he will not being autographing it. I need it for my report. It's from the Walk 'n Rock '84 downtown showdown. He's caught in mid-stride, halfway to stage right. Both of his hands are tearing up the guitar neck and he's yelling some poetry. A large red, rectangular sticker seems to hold the front and bottom panel in place. TNT. It's dynamite.

I ask the lady at the front desk if she's seen this man.

"Oh my God. I love him." Her hands naturally move together and her sweet mid-life smile lightens up a few years. "Is he staying here tonight? My boss said someone special was booked but he couldn't tell me. I wouldn't hurt him! Do I look dangerous?"

"No, you look sweet. "

Damn it. This is too much like No Counry for Old Men. Next.

List of everything I wouldn't mind having a career in.

2008-06-30T16:51:00.005-04:00

My friend from back home (Greenville - I've been in Atlanta at school for 4 years) visited and we immediately started discussing how we plan to change our life. Well, not change just, pick it up. Get the pace going a little. Do something. Admittedly, we're both young, but in our eyes, life is going by too quick and we just might miss it.

The problem is, like a lot of people, we're interested in a LOT of things. It's hard for us to say "I want to dedicate myself to this and this only," even if it's only for the time being. We have to make money and be happy. How can we best do both? So we made a list of everything that 1) We could see ourselves having a happy career in and 2) Hobbies, art forms that we would like to master - to fully comprehend and enjoy - by the time we die.

Here's my list:

Fulfilling careers:
1) Video game design (my current focus)
2) Film (though, at the moment, I am pretty burnt out)
3) Consulting (I LOVE efficiency!)
3a) Environmental 'consulting' - I would love to go to a business and teach them how to reduce their energy use, waste output, etc.
4) User Interface Design or User Experience Design.
5) Teaching (I've always been told that I explain things well)
6) Psychiatry. (This is something I would not as much enjoy taking the time to learn the 'science' of - but I love talking to people and helping them think logically about situations - helping them through their problems.

Hobbies:
1) Singing. I love the emotional output that singers are allowed. the ability to put all of your emotions in to something. Writing, drawing - sometimes it isn't enough. I just want to let go. Yes, I'm that weird guy driving by you on the freeway with his mouth wide open and tears streaming down his face.
2) Writing. Say What?
3) Drums
4) Drawing

I'm definitely missing a few. Where'd my list go? Edits coming.

If liberal coverage is unbiased, then conservative coverage is..?

2008-06-30T11:52:00.008-04:00

Some things just make you so angry.

I read today about Conservapedia. And then I read over a few articles. And then my head exploded with rage.

Apparently, a young conservative fellow named "Andy Schlafly, son of conservative matriarch Phyllis Schlafly" started this site to correct Wikipedia's 'liberal bias.' (I've never heard of the Schlafly's before, I read this here: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070304-conservapedia-hopes-to-fix-wikipedias-liberal-bias.html)

Liberal bias. From my understanding, Wikipedia's goal is to be like an encyclopedia - unbiased. Opinions do not exist. Opinions that do exist are (hopefully) eventually replaced by more unbiased writing. Of course, Wikipedia, being written by many people, allowing any edits, versions and revisions - stuff can change, be factually incorrect and biased. But not much. The goal is clear.

Let's take a look at Obama's entry on Conservapedia. First, let me add 'Obama' to the Firefox dictionary so I don't have see these obnoxious red lines for the next half an hour.

http://www.conservapedia.com/Obama

Conservapedia articles are layered with both subtle and in-your-face bias.

This is actually something I've wanted to discuss for a long time. The power that writing has over people. On a subject with an unclear solution, the person with the last believable word wins. Neither could be right, but the person to make the wittiest comment is deemed more knowledgeable. In fact, many time witty comments, wrong or right, are more persuasive than the truth.

In Conservapedia's case, a person that does not pick up bias in writing is subject to unlimited amounts of brain washing. Also, a person that shares those views will quickly ignore bias.

But EVERY SENTENCE in the article about Obama IS NEGATIVE. This website was made with the intentions to counter liberal BIAS. If I'm not mistaken, a writer is considered biased if he or she only points out views that agree with their views.

Let's break down an entry from the article:

"Obama was on the faculty of the University of Chicago from 1992 to 2004. He claimed that he was a constitutional law professor, when in actuality he merely held the title of "Senior Lecturer."

First sentence: Fine. Sounds good to me.

Second sentence: 2 words make me want to bang my face against my desk: 'Claimed' connotes a lie - no, a liar. Maybe he flubbed, maybe he lied. We get it. But there is nothing important or historical about this information. It's sole purpose is to make the reader think Obama is a douche bag. That's all there is to it.

And then the word 'merely.' This word is mean, it's obvious and underhanded. Does the sentence lose any factual value without it?

"Obama was on the faculty of the University of Chicago from 1992 to 2004. He claimed that he was a constitutional law professor, when in actuality he held the title of "Senior Lecturer."

Did you notice a difference? It looked like I just copied and pasted it, didn't it. Well, yea, I did.

So, as we can see, with 'merely' the facts are the same. That word is pure opinion, meant to stir, I would even say place, emotions in the reader. Imagine a naive reader taking in books of information like this without realizing the sentences are laced with bias. And it grows on them and it becomes the way they think... I could but I won't.

The fact is, I have seen hundreds of books like this. I feel like the only believability they have is the reproducibility of their bias. The fear and racism they evoke.

Speaking of racism, the same article calls Obama the first 'Affirmative Action President."

Oh My God.

From the source: "Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. (allegedly born in Honolulu,^[1] August 4, 1961) is the presumptive 2008 nominee of the Democratic Party for president.^[2] Obama has served as a freshman Democratic Senator from Illinois for three and a half years. In 2007, Obama was the most liberal Senator.^[3] If elected, Obama would be the first Affirmative Action President."

Note how he is 'allegedly' born in Honolulu, as if he is so untrustworthy we can't even believe he's telling the truth about his birthplace. In fact, I'm sure he has a birth certificate. So who do these 'conservatives' really not trust - Obama or... the government? No, I really don't know.

Back to the racism. Here's the first paragraph from the Conservapedia article on "Affirmative Action President.
"An Affirmative Action President is someone selected for that office based partly or entirely on the person's race or gender. Every U.S. President has been a white male. As of 2008, affirmative action has not yet been successfully used to fill the position of President of the United States. However, in the past blacks and women couldn't vote or run for President, and white males did benefit from their race and gender."

In the word's of Jay-Z:

"What more can I say?"

Diablo III Cinematic Trailer

2008-06-28T13:52:00.005-04:00

Every now and then you see an epic movie or trailer, or epic game trailer, and it doesn't matter what actually happens in the movie or game, but they bust out the Indian Hymnal / African Tribal music mix. Nothing works better.

Here is the word for word script of the Diablo III cinematic trailer just released on Blizzard's site.

http://www.blizzard.com/diablo3/

"It has been said..."

Warped buzzing starts up in the background. The begining of our cultural experience.

"That in the end of all things..."

More convuluted snake dancing flute music.

"You find a new beginning..." (roll eyes)

hhheeeeeeeeeEEEEUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHH

"But as the shadow crawls once again across our world"

Crow squawk.
A little bongo tapping.
HHHEEYHEYHHYYEEEEE

"And the stench of terror drifts on a bitter wind"

UUHHHOOUUHOOYYEEAAAAHEEEYYYY

"People pray for strength and guidancOOOOAA HEEYYAAYYYAAA

Heavy tribal bongos come in
"They should pray for the mercy of a quick death"

OOHHEEEEYYY HEEEEYYYYYYYY

"I've seen what the darkness hides." (sigh)

HEEEEYYYyaaaaeeeeeeyaaa

(BUMBU BUMBU BU)

HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOEEEEAAAAAA

Uhheyheyheyheyheyheyheyheyheyhey

UHHYAAHAYHAYHAYHAYHahayahehayhayeakdhkanfkjnaahsiuhiw

new girl, breathing hard "I... think it's safe here..." (You've got to be kidding me)

I'm not going to rant. I could, but, really, who can't. No one likes cliches, I don't need to go into it. This shit blew my brain.

Sabotage.

2008-06-27T09:53:00.006-04:00

Oh my God, it's a b-log.
sumthinsumthinsumthin it's Sabotagggeeeee!

Shout out to the Beastie Boys. Shout out to Rock Band. And to everyone in the house. You're all killers, real killers. Don't have to look far to see the metal gleam in your eye, silver bullet in your pocket. Catch me on the way out. Way out. Say what?

Today a gentleman walked up to me in a gray tuxedo. Curly white linen protruded from beneath the coat's vest. In one hand he had a buoyant glass of bloody red wine and in the other a champagne glass with light pink, cherry wine. Most likely kid's wine - the carbonated virgin cocktail found in the Thanksgiving isle. He held them up shoulder height, and shoulder width apart.

"I'll take one. Thanks. I appreciate it. "

"I mean it. Just hand me the skinny glass."

I looked into his face, finally, and saw matching gray eyes unfocused like haze from a smoke bomb. And then a tie rolled down from his chin. It was scary like a clown. A long red velvet tie unrolling down the front of his body. A mix between that crazy cartoon wolf and Oscar night entries.

"It's a party in your mouth."

I tried to take a step by. And did! I left the scene like a tourist in a wax museum that should never have been on the itinerary. I proceeded to the bagel stand. Friday is bagel day, thank goodness. Thank you grandma! Thank you. Amazing. I'll send flowers, I will. 3 kinds. Sunflowers, Dandelions and... no I won't send you those weeds. Tulips, roses, and those other ones made by 3rd graders with Crayola crayons.

---
If you would like to respond to these writings, please keep in mind that my goal here was imagery, not logic.

Thank you all!

Why I don't write.

2008-06-26T09:12:00.004-04:00

My Apple Cinema Display short circuited in a power outage, so I had to send it in for repair. The whole process took about 2 weeks. I can't decide to write about light or heavy topics - video game and movie reviews, or blog my inner thoughts on life. I work out most days after work - what a time crunch. I've been dong other productive things. The Daily Show is on Hulu now and I have to watch it during my lunch break. I have to think about, uh... WAHH WAHHH WAHHH.

It's true - excuses are just that. The real reason I haven't blogged is fear. I'm dealing with a resonating fear deep within my ~~heart~~ head. I'm never going to be the best. I started too late. Let me list the geniuses of modern day art and cinema and how old they were when they started. 21, 25, earlier, later. It seems that there are a number of people I can hopelessly compare myself to. There are also many famous people today that didn't get famous until their 30's or 40's. Like Colbert, I was reading about him yesterday. College -> 10 years of improv on the road -> tv show - > fame.

I find myself looking through all these people who 'made it' and comparing their qualities to mine. Oooh! I do have a little Wong Kar Wai in me! He didn't go to film school and neither have I! Colbert is from South Carolina! See, people from my state can make it.

I'm going to skip ahead a little. Here's the question of the day. Or my life...

(To myself)
"Will you, Chris, live your life in the chains of fear, unmotivated and unwilling to take yourself to the next level, forgetting your dreams and your creativity, because you, Chris, at age 22, don't think your as good as Orsen Welles was at your age?"

Well, no. I guess I'd rather do somehting with my life other than wail in pity. But, lets say I'm not good enough to make it until I'm 30. Euugh! When I'm 30 I'll be so old!

Fear. How do you get out of it?

Ska-Doosh

2008-06-14T15:01:00.004-04:00

I saw Kung Fu Panda the other night and loved it. What can I say? Ska-Doosh.

But, after I was out, I decided to think more critically about it. I've stopped doing that so much while I watch a movie; I would never enjoy movies again if I did. I realized that I don't like the messages it gives to kids, to anyone. I see movies like this all the time that reinforce a very common, wrong, idea in America. That it is easy to be on top.

Shows like American Idol feed on the belief that celebrities, professional athletes, and "rich" people become who they are overnight. People get in the mindset that naturally talented people are the ones that reap rewards. It's a de-motivator and it's completely wrong. Anyone can "make it." They just have to do it.

That's my problem. I see an excellent film or I play an excellent video game and I get inspired. I whip out my notebook and write down some cool ideas. Sometimes, I even get to my computer or camera and start making something. But, after a day or two I realize that it looks like complete crap and that I do not have near enough talent to finish it the way I had imagined. So, I do this once every two or three weeks.

By that rate, I'll be good by the time I'm 50. That's depressing. Easy solution, though, right? Just do it. The only thing standing between me and my dream job is time, commitment, and practice; hence this blog to practice my writing.

Back to Ska-Doosh. Jack Black plays a panda named Po that loves Kung-Fu but has never practiced it. He looks up to the five Kung-Fu warriors that live in town, in a dojo at the top of a giant hill with about a million stairs. Ok, I just about started detailing the whole plot. Let me summarize.

(Spoilers)
Po gets chosen to be the Dragon Warrior by accident. The dojo's master explains that there are, of course, no such things as accidents. But, what's important is that he was a nobody and he got chosen to be the Dragon Warrior.

He doesn't know Kung-Fu, yet, and the five masters he looked up to, who were vying for the chance to be the Dragon Warrior hate him. He's no good.

Next. The dojo's, uh, sub-master, can't figure out how to train Po. But Po loves to eat and, apparently, can do fantastic physical feats in order to get to it. The sub-master walks in one day as Po bouncing around the kitchen, reaching the highest cupboards and punching through wooden cabinets to reach food. It hits him, Po already has the talent. And he can be taught Kung-Fu with food as a motivator. If Po had not had this hidden physical greatness connected to food, the sub-master may havce never come up with anything. He didn't use creativity, perseverence, or trial and error when thinking of ways to train Po. He just walked around with his head down until he stumbled upon something already there. That doesn't teach anyone anything.

Later, Po opens the sacred Dragon Scroll that holds the legendary secrets to become the Dragon Warrior. But it's blank. Confused, he gives up.

His father, a noodle expert, sells a noodle dish with a secret ingredient. While Po is moping, his father finally reveals to him the secret ingredient: nothing. His noodles were delicious, but people made believed they were even more special because of the supposed secret ingredient. I like the message. Po applies what he learns and realizes the Dragon Warrior is in himself.

Applying knowledge is nice. Figuring things out yourself is better.

We can't be taught that if we wait around long enough the answer to all of our problems will just appear. That's called apathy.

Also, apparently learning Kung Fu only takes a day.

I mean, it was a satisfying scene. They all are. There's one in almost every family movie with a little fighting to be learned. Its a usually creative montage where a protagonist goes from being a complete klutz to a master in about 5 minutes. It's true, though, I love it. I enjoy seeing every mishap in the first two and half minutes and every bullseye in the latter.

Anyways. I liked the movie. I just want movies to stop sending these helpless messages to audiences - as if we aren't unmotivated enough.

Start it up.

2008-06-12T12:21:00.003-04:00

I am now doing what all the Little Women desired. What Anne Frank was doing, before she knew how well known she would get. What all the people we read about in history class dreamed of, by candle light, with their fathers inkwell. Writing a journal, in second person, as if talking to someone. But, in fact, I am, and I think that's what all people who kept journals secretly wanted. Someone to read it.

But, that's kind of scary. It's scary because people could read it, but maybe they won't. It's scary to think that I may spill my guts and no one will read it.

Anyways.

For all you out there. This is a blog whose main purpose is to make myself a better writer because I believe that writing is the most important and influential art. Great writing makes people change their mind, as does great speaking. They are hand in hand.

The writing that I present as most important is the writing that is presented directly to the audience: dialogue. In movies, video games, speeches, blogs. The writing that hits you in the face when you switch on the television. The words chosen by the news, by politicians, athletes, or your roommates - who can say the same thing in different words depending on how they are feeling.

When looking into the entertainment world, the people we that go down as the best are the ones who could write. Those people are totally in control.

Arguments, as discussed in Thank You For Smoking, are won by the person who makes the last, best point. When no one knows the truth, the elegant speaker, the debater wins.

The power of words just blows my mind!

Goal: blog 3 times a week.