Tax Day

Well, good morning people

Let’s see what’s going on in your world today… I mean, what I found interesting, at least

*Melissa Huckaby, the woman accussed of raping and murdering 8-Year-Old Sandra Cantu, was arraigned today
>>> More…

*Parents aren’t happy about Burger King’s new SpongeBob ad campaign featuring Sir Mix-A-Lot… I gotta say, I don’t think it’s appropriate either, but I like The King mascot and those chicks in the SpongeBob pants are kinda hot… Besides, as a white guy, I’m apparently required to love this song…
>>> Baby Got Back!

*Jamie Foxx makes some racy remarks about Miley Cyrus on his Sirius radio show The Foxxhole. I didn’t need any more reasons not to like Jamie Foxx, but apparently I got another one. And I really wanna see The Soloist, too.
>>> Grow Up!

*In the wake of the Somali pirate attacks, the U.S. military is apparently designing new weapons aimed at specifically dealing with the coastal terrorists. Why does this rifle look like it’s straight outta Halo?
>>> Frag Me…

So those are news stories interesting to me today…
Lemme share some other sites for you to look at while you’re at work… Or not

*Parry Gripp
*Bueno The Bear
*The Tenth Dimension
*Falling Sand
*Glass Giant
*zeFrank

It Doesn’t Mean Anything

So, bottom line, the Wii IS the GameCube, relaunched with motion controls and built-in (Under-used and suffocating)online connectivity. The PlayStation 3 is a hulking conglomerate of mass media entertainment, overpowered and under-used with the ability to play games thrown in for good measure. The Xbox 360 is a next generation system launched two years before the last generation ended, and at this point, is losing ground among the others. The Nintendo DS is for babies. Wii is full of shovelware. The PS2 will just not die. PS3 is too expensive.

Are you tired of seeing articles like this in your game mags and game sites?

Me too.

I’m also tired of seeing long-winded, deliberately high-brow-worded articles on the “merit” of video games as art, the fall of “real” gaming to the “casual market,” and this overall elitism “real gamers” feel towards the rest of mass media entertainment. In the end, for me, a video game should be JUST THAT; A video game! An interactive media experience with a goal and reward system, that I can play with an input device!
Sure, they can be art; Okami and Braid prove that there can be visual and dramatic appeal within a game and still make it an enjoyable experience. But just because Boom Blox, Onenchanbara, or Ratchet and Clank aren’t art or drama driven games, doesn’t make them any less fun. (And by the way, for those of you who think those games are art, they aren’t. Stop lying to yourself.) On the flip side of that though, just because a game is dramatic and story driven, that doesn’t mean it CAN’T be enjoyable either. God of War and Dreamfall are just as enjoyable as Cooking Mama and Tetris.
As far as the whole “new” casual trend, stop it. Stop telling yourselves and all your other message board buddies that the casual game trend will be the downfall of gaming. First of all it’s not new… And secondly, it’s been with gaming from the start. Pong was made as a home game that could be played with the rest of your family and friends. It’s based a freakin’ table tennis, for Christ sakes! Do you know why Pac-Man and Bubble Bobble have food in them? The developers wanted to find the most common denominator between a boyfriend and a girlfriend so that the couple would want to play TOGETHER! They figured boys and girls enjoy eating food together on dates, why not introduce that same concept in a video game? “Hardcore” games were born from that same generation, and “hardcore” games will continue to be born this generation as well, no matter how many Wii hyphen insert real life simulation heres are thrown at us. In a year where Wii-Fit was one of the top-selling games, Gears of War 2 still managed to be developed… Imagine that!
And when it comes to this feeling that a lot of gamers have as far as games vs. movies, there really is no comparison. You get a different feeling when you WATCH The Dark Knight as opposed to PLAYING LittleBigPlanet. And yeah, guess what? You liked both experiences. Neither media form has to justify itself to the other. And that goes for books and the like as well.

I just read an article in PLAY from a reader that called for a split between gamers who believed in the emotional, art, and purpose driven games and the gamers who believed gameplay comes before anything, visuals be damned, as long as the game is compelling to play. While I lean more heavily towards the latter, I think a split (As well as the current one already fervent in the current game community between console fanboys, and between “casual” and “core” gamers) is a DANGEROUS thing.
Games should be games. And if playing Barbie Island Princess The Game makes you feel good and keeps you coming back, than by all means play it! If Final Fantasy X makes you cry like a little baby, please, weep! If you wanna unleash your inner space marine, fragging and sniping anyone who so much as even walks into Coagulation on Halo, then by all means kill that newbie bitch!
Play what compels you and enjoy it!
They are video GAMES people!
And while I could ramble on about the whole idea of a fun game and a good game being two mutually exclusive ideas, that’s another blog.

They are meant to be entertainment. And if you are entertained, then shut the Hell up and play!

Are you not entertained?

Halloween Is Fun

I haven’t updated this blog in awhile, but I wanted to drop in and show you that I’ve actually been actively updated my DeviantArt. I got a new series of Halloween drawings and I hope you’ll look at them and comment here on my blog! Or not… It’s al very self serving, so you know… Whatever ^_^

I will start updating this blog more often so I hope you look forward to it!

Below is a taste of my new cartoons!

Halloweenie!

I’m Not Important

How is a world so small still so large?

I have always been interested in space travel and what the worlds outside of our own have had to offer…
But after an almost two-hour marathon rampage through Wikipedia articles and external links to the most random places I’ve ever been on the Internet, I have discovered something anew
Though the world is shrinking and the space between us is smaller nowadays, I realize that there are now still many places on our very own planet that are not yet discovered, or well known about. I don’t remember now how I started… OH! Yeah that’s right! So follow this maddening train of thought, and you shall know how and why I now listen to a man reading the news from one of the most remote islands in the entire world on streaming online radio… And note that this is usually how my time on the Internet goes:
I was looking up the big movies expected to release this year in theatres… (NOTE: My spellcheck just underlined “theatres” as misspelled T_T) Among the many I’ve been excited about (See earlier posts), I notice that another frackin’ Ice Age movie is coming out. My dissatisfaction with most shoveled CGI movies aside, I clicked on the link to the page, and then got curious as to why a T-Rex would be running around in the Ice Age; So I searched the Ice Age and then remembered that there have actually be four Ice Ages and then I just went from there. I clicked on pages leading to the different formations of the continents over time, the names and even theorized societies of past continents and proposed continents. I learned about the weird and fascinating names of the past super and mega continents and what the continents may look like in the future. Depending on which ways the plates move, California could become the new neighbor of China with Japan squished there in the middle. You’ve probably heard of Atlantis, Gondwanaland, and Pangea, but have you ever heard of Mu, Vaalbara or Ultima? It’s fascinating stuff, at least to me anyway
Looking up all these ancient continents and such got me curious about the creatures that used to roam them; Unlike the usual path I take tho, I gave up dinosaurs to more discreet and lesser known animalia (I love dinosaurs and I figured I’ve neglected too many other nerd subjects in favor of the terrible lizards). I found so many other weird and wonderful animals that I never knew existed. I saw a bird as tall as a tree. Did you know that America used to have a lion species? Furry rhinoceri? Again, I was mesmerized…
This, of course, led to lists of endangered and modern extinct animals… Recently I’ve had a pretty harsh outlook on the environment and the animals that may or may not be suffering. I figured, the Earth has cleansed itself many times before, and will probably remain to do so until it blows up, or the sun blows up and ejects it into the rest of space. And we have missed so many species and animals and will probably continue to miss even more incredible animals and plants of this planet as time passes and we are dead and forgotten
(NOTE: At this time the author took a ten minute detour to learn about the life span of planets and the various celestial bodies discovered thus far by man… And also to get an apple)
But I also realized now that we should treasure the things we have here on Earth, the good and the bad, and hope that one day we will have some rightful place in someone’s history… So of course I became sad for the animals and things I discovered extinct, but hopeful for those who have been saved and are recovering and focused about the ones who are at risk. But these aforementioned lists led me to an endangered earwig on St. Helena Island in the South Atlantic. So I read the Wiki pages and those attached, including the home page for the island and the paper for the island itself. St. Helena has a population of about 5000 and the smallest island in the Edinburgh territory is Tristan de Cunha, with a population of maybe 280 people. Tristan de Cunha has a population that have only eight different surnames! Anyway, recently St. Helena has begun broadcasting news and music through it’s first radio station, Saint FM and it’s also streamed on the St. Helena Independent website. So Now it’s 7 or 8am over there, and 4am here, and I’m listening to a man with a strange African, English, and Dutch accent taking requests and doling out news and forecasts. Most of the music is dated and some of it is very religious but I would just like to let it be know that Chris Brown and Fergie have both been on the play list T_T So have Alan Jackson and White Lion (?!)
But that’s my adventure for the evening… And I want to travel the world so many times over now…

When I was a little boy, I wanted to be an explorer/plaeontologist, NatGeo was my favorite magazine, and Star Wars and Indy were my favorite movies. I also loved monsters and any puppet thing. I still love drawing and video games

I think that I can tie all those words together with just one:
Exlporation

One day, World, I will!

Curious?

IUCN
St. Helena @ Wiki
Tristan de Cunha Official Site
List of Extinct Animals @ Wiki
Pictures Of Our Solar System
Planets @ Wiki
2008 In Film @ Wiki
Saint FM and The St. Helena Independent
Definition of Exploration

~Get outta my dreams…
Get into my car!
Get outta my mind…
And into my life!~

Games, Onigiri, and Pop Music

Your headline news for the day

So, I’ve acquired and started playing through Zelda: Twilight Princess for the GameCube. I’ve already played through the one for the Wii, and was impressed by the story telling and overall style of the game. One of the best Zeldas for sure. However, when I started up TP for the GCN, the graphics immediately struck me as awesome. In the Wii version, they use generous amounts of bloom lighting, which looks really good, but also emphasizes the poor texturing of environments (And let’s face it… They look like shit… And why does Link sound like he’s walking on cobblestone even on the grass?). In the GCN version, the lighting is not used as much and it seems the images are sharper. So we’ll see. As a long time Zelda player, it is also easier to slip into the familiar controls, rather than waggling everywhere with my Wiimote. It’s also important to note that in the GCN version you can move the camera (A feature I didn’t know I missed until I moved it) and everything is flipped, meaning that lake on the left, is now on the right. The Wii version is actually mirrored off of this version, and as a nerd, it bothered me to see Link’s sword in his right hand, for he is indeed left handed

All that said, both versions are excellent games and the minor differences are not deal breakers (If you don’t have it tho, get the Wii version… I’ve seen new copies of the GCN build sell for more than US$80!)

Mario Kart Wii comes out next Sunday, April 27th

The riceball character, OMUSUBI, that I created last night is really cool. He’s cute and seems to be a hit. I think maybe I’ll try to develop something with him in it. God knows that anything Japanese is likely to permeate the 12 to 16 year old masses

GTA IV comes out next Tuesday, April 29th

Today Cloverfield comes out on DVD. I would definitely recommend renting it before you buy it. I thought it was awesome, but I can see how it would alienate the general audience of movie goers. Juno came out last week, and I would recommend a rental on that too. I thought it was awesome, but I didn’t see why critics made such a big deal about it. I’ve seen better comedies that didn’t even have to try as hard *coughtheroyaltenenbaumscough*
Next week 27 Dresses comes out and if you need a date movie that’s the one to pick up… I don’t like Katherine Heifer- Er, Heigl, but the movie was really good
And just so you know….
UPCOMING THEATRICAL RELEASES

Baby Mama – April 25
Iron Man – May 2
Speed Racer – May 9
Narnia: Prince Caspian – May 16
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull – May 22
The Love Guru – June 20
Wanted – June 27
The Dark Knight – July 18
Pineapple Express – August 8

And lastly, I’ve decided that while yes she is crazy, I still really like Madonna. Her new single with Timbaland and JT did not influence this decision at all o_o

Also don’t forget to vote fot bT as America’s best DJ @ AMBDJ starting May 1st

Those are your headlines, stay tuned for news at 10!

Wii Would Like To Play

So… As a gamer, there are a few titles I’m looking forward to in the next few weeks and month:
River King DS (DS)
The World Ends With You (DS)
Mario Kart Wii (Wii)
And with the imperative notion that I will own an Xbox360 in the next few months, I’m also looking forward to Grand Theft Auto IV
(Sorry Sony, you won’t get me to play a game on YOUR system if I can do it for $200 cheaper with Microsoft)
As a FATTY, tho, I’m looking forward to Wii Fit, a new exercise supplement kind-of-game-kind-of-not-game for Nintendo Wii.
Check out IGN.com’s Preview to hear how it works and plays
And check out this video on YouTube for the E3 Preview

And not because I hate the PS3 (I will eventually get one), just Sony as a general company, check out this video too

*sighs* As a side note… I would love for gamers to just get along… All of us fanboys… We all love our systems and will never convert anyone else from one to the other… So just get along… Or do like most gamers do… AND GET ALL THREE!

Thinking Out Loud… TOL?

Hmm… So I’ve been going out with my girlfriend for seven months now… She hasn’t told me she loves me… I wonder if that means she doesn’t?

It’s rather discouraging

This Is The Hub

So I actually think this would be a great hub for all of my community and online profiles…

Thinkin’ about just using it as a central link hub for all my other sites… Check out the BlogRoll

Blog Number… Ergh… Eh…

So I liked the way one of my friend’s blogs looked on here… And MySpace is crowding up… So… HI!