Amazing talent!

Here's one that I've been contemplating for a good while, and with good cause.

In short, there are a lot of people in the world who have talents that I don't.

Yes, I know it's hard to fathom that I'm not an expert at everything, but just entertain the thought for a moment.

I have some things that I'm damn good at, but I keep being amazed at the things other people can do.

Take painters, for instance; people who can draw and paint something with easy. Myself, I have a really hard time at this. Just painting a few strokes is trouble in my book, but there are people who can just sit down and paint masterpieces like you've never seen.

Oh, and while we're at it; maths!

In my head, mathematics is jibberish. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever in my head, yet there are people to whom the numbers lay down like a bed of flowers.

Maybe I'm just happy there are people who can do all that stuff, because I sure can't, and I can't imagine what it would be like to be able to in the first place.

Harry Potter...

...is an absolute moron!

Really, he's a bonehead.

It's a miracle that he survived the books, because he sure as hell worked hard enough to avoid it!

Just look at that whole episode in the Ministry of Magic.

He gets a vision telling him Sirius is in trouble.

A smart person would figure that it's most likely a trap, and just double check with the magical mirror to see that everything is fine.

A slightly less intelligent person would not realize that it is a trap, but would still check with the mirror to see if Sirius is okay.

An even less intelligent person would not realize it is a trap but alert Snape, so that he can put the entire Order of the Phoenix on the job.

Now, a stupid person would try to break into the headmistress' office and attempt to use the floo-network to contact Sirius.

A complete and utter arch-idiot, the stupidity of which is unparalleled, would try the floo thingy, fail, alert Snape, yet still run off to the Ministry of Magic to try and stop Voldemort.

Now, let's say it hadn't been a trap, then Harry and his gang would have been faced with a reborn Voldemort in all his glory, as well as a horde of death-eaters. Surely, even if it wasn't a trap, it would still be a fucking trap, because Voldemort would still be there to catch Harry!

My god, the idiocy of it all! Hadn't fate been favouring him all along, he would be dead in a ditch by the second book!

Change!

I don't like when things change. In general, I'd like things to stay the same forever.

However, I want things to improve, so they have to change in order for me to get what I want. The eternal paradox of my existence.

The main problem with change is that it's not a game of sums, or at least it isn't in my case.

Let's say you lose a friend, but gain another friend. Some may think that you come out even, but the gaining of a friend doesn't change the fact that you lost one.

After all, people aren't just numbers, every friend is different, so losing one means losing a unique individual.

I don't like losing friends, and it seems to hit me particularly hard when I've been alienated from one, and no other friend will ever be able to replace that person, because they aren't the same.

In the words of Cardew Robinson; "They say when you gain a lover, you begin to lose a friend, that the end of the beginning's the beginning of the end".

Woah, hold on!

Wahey, two updates back to back, how unprecedented! ...shut up

Here comes something that has been niggling at the back of my mind; standup comedians without any panache on stage.

You know the type; morons who just stand there and talk about some stuff, nothing funny at all, just wasting people's time.

How about you take all that shit with your therapist? That is, unless he killed himself to get away from all your bullshit!

When I get up on stage, I perform! I entertain! I put on a bloody show for the audience!

They didn't come there to sit there and listen to the random musings of some tired old bat going on about how she has trouble finding men, they came to see a show, something great, something hilarious!

So why the hell do some people seem dedicated to making the audience depressed instead?

Say what you will about all the big names in comedy these days, they can put on a bloody show! They have flair!

Business as per usual!

Y'know what really grinds my gears?

Plot holes!

You know, parts of the story in fiction that just don't add up.

When the Rebel Alliance manages to destroy the second Death Star in Star Wars VI, they've suddenly won completely! Never mind that huge imperial fleet completely dwarfing theirs.

Like Ackbar said; "We won't last long against those star destroyers!", so why were those star destroyers no longer a problem after the destruction of the death star?

It seems to be a symptom of the lack of ontological inertia. In essence, that's the notion that if you destroy whatever created something, that something will also be destroyed. Thus, if you kill the emperor, the entire empire vanishes into thin air.

That's not how the world fucking works! If my father dies, I don't instantly cease to exist!

Morons...

Is it really too much to ask that the creators of a movie or series actually think through what happens so that it makes sense?

Now, what REALLY grinds my gears is legions of fans instantly jumping in to defend their object of adoration at all cost!

They suddenly go like "Oh, but the emperor was doing his battle meditation, which made the imperial fleet much more effective, and without it they lost the battle!"...

Fuck off! That bloody "battle meditation" thingy wasn't invented until about twenty years after that movie was made!

Thank god you're here!

Okay, this time it wasn't my fault, honestly! I couldn't log into my account, so I couldn't update my blog, it's terrible!

Anyway, now I'll try to be back in business, and I've got a backlog of ideas that the stupid technology wouldn't let me post, so here goes another!

I'm finally done with the main portion of my essay on the causes of the second world war!

The strange thing about it all is that at some point you have to concede that you're actually done, but there never seems to be one of those "Alright, finished!" moments anywhere. Instead, I spent two days sporadically reading through it and just realized that "I guess that's about it, really". I've covered everything I said I'd cover, my information comes from a bunch of different sources and it's all well-written.

All that remains is to write conclusion and final discussion, and I'm finished!

Hopefully another update will be along tomorrow, if the tech doesn't fuck me over again...

Dammit!

One, I have contracted quite a severe case of viral inflammation of the upper respiratory channels. IE, a bad cold, AKA the man flu!

My mother has had it for over a week, so she's clearly infect me.

Oh, and I just got my gym card two days ago, and now I can't work out tomorrow as I planned because I'm ill! Dammit!

Two, during class on tuesday I happened to notice one of my classmates wore an engagement ring. Why is that interesting? Because it's the exact type of engagement ring that I want!

I keep being reminded that I'm in fact supposed to be a girl. That is the seventh time it's happened, and yes, I do keep count!

Back from the dead!

So, after a bit of a hiatus I'm back in action, having had quite alot of to think about but nothing I wanted to share.

The subject for today is cheap tricks in comedy.

Y'see, there are a few things that I somehow feel are beneath me as a comedian; tricks of the trade that, while they may actually get some laughs, appeal to the least civilized part of the human brain.

I don't like them. It's depressing that comedians can actually become well renowned while dealing exclusively in these, so I'm gonna be ripping on them extensively tonight!

First, there is the shouting. Why the hell are people so bloody convinced that if you're being loud, you're being funny? Stop fucking shouting! Just because you say it extremely loudly doesn't mean it's funny by default!

Somehow, I can understand exaggerating a point in order to make it amusing, but just shouting doesn't accomplish that in any way. If you make a bad joke, it doesn't get any better because you scream it, it just gets embarrassing, like a standup comedian giggling at his own jokes; the audience sits there wondering if they should laugh out of pity or just boo the moron off the stage!

Second, there are the references to genitalia. Oh, so she said vagina? Well then, she must be funny, ha ha ha ...shut the fuck up! It's just the most insipid way of trying to coax people into laughing; say penis, and you're funny, because we're not supposed to say penis! ...shut the fuck up!

Basing your entire routine on such words is to comedy what americans are to the rest of the world; dumber than a bag of wet mice and as subtle as a half-brick to the skull!

Third, the aforementioned giggling to yourself... don't you think the audience can figure out when to laugh? Do you have to tell them "Oh, I just said something funny! (you should laugh now!)"? Hey, time to wake up, all you're doing is looking like a self-centered prick who wouldn't recognize a good joke if it smacked them across the skull with a cricket bat!

It doesn't take long at all!

All in all, more games along the lines of the LEGO games should be made! There cannot be any lack of demand for co-op titles of that sort; where you play on the same screen without splitting it, together on the same console.

There are just so many online multiplayer games of all kinds, but utterly few ones for just two people on one couch.

If only more developers would follow the lead of Crystal Dynamics with their Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light. Well-crafted, thought out and requiring some creative thinking between two people to pull it off.

And no, those LoTR games made to cash in on the movies do not count, because they are crap!

The dishes! Oh, the dishes!

As usual, as I'm getting ready to do the dishes, I find the kitchen resembling Hiroshima after a particularly wild night out with his mates!

Why does it have to be so difficult to stack all the cutlery properly?

You put plates at the bottom, then dishes, then desert bowls! All of the knives, forks and similar implements should at all times be placed to the side of the plates! At no point whatsoever should they be played inbetween plates and/or dishes!

This isn't hard to do, it doesn't take alot of brain power; just arrange the dishes in such a way as to make it easier to wash, rinse and place them on the rack.

Much can be made of the choice of whether to have the dishes or the plates at the bottom, but no argument could ever be made in favour of mixing them! Just put them in some semblance of order!

When I worked at an electronics warehouse, I often had to go fetch items from different parts of the facility. If I needed to pick up something from section 5, section 62 and section 64, I wouldn't just go to section 62, then hop to section 5 and then go all the way back to 62.

Why, I'm sure you'll ask, is it that I can be so picky about this when my room looks like it was just run through by a monster truck. The answer is simple; that's the way I keep my room; I very seldom, if ever, cleam it completely, because I prefer to have it that way, and there is nothing forcing me to clean it.

The dishes, however, need to be washed constantly, that is something that I cannot get away from, and believe me, I would if I could. Therefore, I take pride in doing it well, efficiently and in a well structured and logical manner, just as I would any job that I did on a regular basis.

So just stack the damn dishes properly!

Tautology!

This is a linguistic feature that can bug me quite abit.

It is essentially when a term contains different words that mean the same thing.

For instance, why do people use the term "Advance warning"? There is no such thing as a retroactive warning; that would constitute gloating. Saying that the warning is in advance is redundant, since that's the only type of warning!

The worst type of tautology, however, is when people say things like "The cheapest price" or "The fastest speed".

A price can be high or low, it cannot be cheap! Cheap means "Has a low price", if the price is cheap then it means that the price has a low price. That's nonsensical!

I would write more, but I don't seem able to. It's really quite disconcerting, the way in which my brain isn't functioning today. It might have something to do with my changes in daily rhythm, but I can't shake the feeling that I might be going slightly mad...

I've done it again!

So, another performance has come to an end, and I must say I'm incredibly pleased with it.

I would say I am a real attention whore; I want to be seen, to be recognized, to get affirmation! Getting on the stage and entertaining is the perfect way of achieving it!

Y'see, when someone laughs at my jokes, they are instantly showing that what I'm doing is giving them enjoyment, and that's after all what I'm trying to accomplish. There is very little delay before I get the feedback, and there is also very little hidden appreciation; if they laugh it's because they liked the joke, if they don't then they most likely didn't.

I am very grateful for every wave of laughter, and I feel quite alot of affection towards the audience for it, as they are in many ways my benefactors.

I hope to be able to continue doing this for many years to come!

What happened to my crew?!

I find myself time and again annoyed at human behaviour.

Why is it that people always stand up five minutes before the train reaches the station? I mean, you aren't actually gaining anything, apart from annoying people by elbowing them and shoving your luggage in their faces!

Also, why can nobody wait for people to get off the fucking bus before getting on it?

Why are people so bloody upset about the use of profanity, going so far as saying someone is unintelligent or possesses a limited vocabulary because of it?

Surely, being able to use strong and colourful expressions is an important way of making one's point?

The very worst part is when people use silly faux-profanity instead, as if the important thing is the words themselves instead of the meaning behind them.

If you say "Fink" instead of "Fuck", then all you're doing is giving the same meaning to another word, you aren't actually doing anything better, you just look a twat!

Words are not evil! People can be evil, intentions can be evil, but words can't!

Immortal pundit!

I don't get why I've been making these posts, it's nothing you couldn't easily figure out by going to Wikipedia, or actually playing the games!

So, go on, play the games, now!

Vae Victus!

Time to take a stab at another part of the Legacy of Kain mythos, this is going to be hard!

The results of Kain's refusal to sacrifice himself at the end of Blood Omen was that he built a vast empire and took over Nosgoth.

To this end, he...shall we say "recruited" some powerful allies by resurrecting the most powerful Sarafan knights as vampires, to be his lieutenants.

Most important of these was Raziel, a righteous fiend who believed wholeheartedly in the murderous rampage of his priesthood. Raziel infuriated Kain after a time by being the first vampire to sprout wings, and Kain consequently threw him into a watery abyss somewhat resembling the Niagara Falls.

This wouldn't have been such a big deal had it not been for the fact that vampires in Nosgoth can't stand water, and it has the same effect on them as acid.

However, Raziel was saved from the water by, unlikely enough, the Elder God himself. Thus begins Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver.

Armed with a spectral blade attached to his arm, the soul-stealing part of the Reaver, Raziel starts on his quest to hunt down Kain and his lieutenants, encouraged to do so by the Elder God, acting as his great benefactor.

At the end of the game, Raziel faces down Kain in a chamber known as the Chronoplast, which houses a timestreaming device which Kain ultimately uses to evade Raziel.

This concludes Soul Reaver, and leads directly to Soul Reaver 2.

Still not confused enough?

Not to worry, tomorrow is when some serious shit is going down!

Stay tuned!

The Legacy of Raziel!

Okay, where were we?

Right, the human guardians!

As I mentioned before, there needed to be one additional guardian of all the pillars as well as the Blood Reaver; Janos Audron. Because both the pillars and the Reaver were made by the vampires, this guardian needed to be a vampire. The relevance of this will be explained later.

As the years went by, the humans hunted the vampires, believing them to be demonic beings the sole purpose of which was to terrorize the humans. By the time of the events of Blood Omen, the first game in the series, the vampires were nearly extinct, Vorador being the last, at the hands of a fanatic order of vampire-hunters called the Sarafan.

Some 500 years before Blood Omen, six members of the Circle of Nine were slaughtered by Vorador in response to the Sarafan killing Janos, thinking wrongly it would put an end to all vampires.

Later on, the Hylden managed to corrupt the guardian of Death, Mortanius The Necromancer, and got him to murder the balance guardian, Ariel. Ariel's lover, Nupraptor the Mentalist, was driven to madness by this, and spread his madness to the rest of the members of the Circle, including the newly born balance guardian; Kain.

When he was a young nobleman, Kain was murdered in his hometown. This allowed Mortanius to "help" him by resurrecting him as a vampire. Unaware of it at the time, it was the heart of Janos Audron that Mortanius used to do it.

Kain was then sent on a mission to slay all of the corrupted guardians and recover items of importance from them to use to cleanse the pillars of the corruption. Eventually he found the Blood Reaver, the same sacred weapon forged by Vorador.

During this quest, he came upon the evil conqueror called the Nemesis, who was rapidly spreading from northern Nosgoth. Enlisting the gentle king Ottmar of Willendorf, he tried to stop the Nemesis. They failed utterly, and in the slaughter on Ottmar's forces in the great battle, Kain found the Hourglass of Time, belonging to Moebius the Timestreamer, the guardian of the Pillar of Time.

The hourglass took him back in time, to when the Nemesis was simply a good king known as William the Just. In order to prevent the Nemesis from ever existing, he fought and killed William, who just so happens also carried the Reaver. The paradox created by the two Reavers meeting changed history, so that the Nemesis never existed.

However, when Kain returned to the present, he arrived at the execution of Vorador, carried out by a mob lead by Moebius, who had manipulated Kain all along to get him to kill William, so that Moebius could make him out to be a martyr to motivate people to murder any vampires that remained.

With this act, Kain was left as the last of his kind, making him the guardian of the Reaver, as well as the Balance guardian.

After slaying Moebius, he came back to the Pillars, just as Mortanius the Necromancer killed Anarcrothe the Alchemist. After Mortanius was killed, the Unspoken, a demonic agent of the Hylden, attacked, and was also slain.

This left Kain with a choice; to sacrifice his own life to restore the Pillar of Balance, or refuse, damning the Pillars to eternal decay. If he decided to give up his own life, that would be the ultimate end of the vampire race.

He refused, and went on to build a great empire that spanned all of Nosgoth.

You think all of this is confusing? You have no idea!

Tomorrow, it'll get seriously weird!

My apologigiesage!

I know I haven't updated this in the last three days, but they have been rather busy and I have been giving alot of thought to the content of my next line of posts.

So, the topic to be covered is the history of Nosgoth; the gothic styled world of the Legacy of Kain series of videogames.

If you do not enjoy massive spoilers, then stop reading here!

Thousands of years before the first game in the series, there were the ancients. They ruled all of Nosgoth, and worshipped the Elder God. This deity was connected to the so called Wheel of Fate; the cycle of birth, death and rebirth upon which the Elder God fed.

These ancients were blue-skinned and had large feathered dark-gray wings. As they were described in old murals, they were beings of great beauty and magnificence.

Ultimately, however, another race rose up against the Elder God and refused to feed him, leading to a great conflict between them and the ancients. This race, the Hylden, cursed the ancients with a great thirst for blood, transforming them into vampires. While this was a terrible fate for the proud race, the real doom of the curse was that they became immortal and sterile, and were forever cut off from the Wheel of Fate and lost the favour of the Elder God.

A small note; the kind of immortality we are talking about is akin to that of Tolkien's elves; they do not suffer diseases or aging, but they can die through other means, but never be reborn. Many of them also took their own lives in response to being cut off from their god.

Since they could no longer reproduce, one of the ancients, by the name of Janos Audron, decided to turn a human into a vampire for the very first time. This man, named Vorador, helped the vampires by forging the blood-draining weapon called the Reaver.

In the end, the vampires managed to banish the Hylden with the help of the Reaver, and locked them inside a demonic dimension by erecting the Nine Pillars of Nosgoth, and binding guardians to each pillar. The pillars represented the different elements that made up the world; mind, dimension, conflict, nature, energy, time, states, death and balance, the latter being the most important one.

Each of these had its own vampire guardian, but there was one other; the guardian of all of the pillars and the Reaver; Janos Audron.

However, at some point, the humans of Nosgoth rebelled against them, and managed to overthrow them. With the loss of the pillar guardians, humans were chosen at their birth to become the new guardians.

This sets the stage for the coming story, which will be covered further tomorrow!

All wrapped up!

I must say, being smeared with some sort of oily goo and wrapped in plastic and towels was a...fascinating experience!

Good thing I slept through most of the procedure, or else my claustrophobia would probably have kicked into overdrive.

It was a cozy enough place, the Västerport Spa & Relax; they provided towels, slippers and bathrobes, as well as fresh fruit and lemon water. All of it reminded me of a dungeon, what with the oaken doors and the stone arches all over the place.

Between together and not!

A night out at the restaurant of our choice has come to an end, and I must say it was quite an enjoyable experience altogether!

Okay, so the pork fillet wasn't all that great, but the beef was excellent, and came bundled with alot of mashed potatoes and various sauteed vegetables, yum!

I'd say Table 20 is a good choice for anyone wanting a nice, but not overly snobbish, restaurant to bring friends or family to!

Oh well, time to go to bed, got a whole session at the spa tomorrow!

I'm working on my lie!

That's the results of writing and reading the caption on channel 4 at the same time, yes siree!

We just finished watching the latter half of the movie The Jacket, an absolutely absurd story about time travel and straightjackets...darnit, I really need to finish Time Traveler's Wife! At least it has more tits!

Methinks it could be a good idea to quit while I'm ahead on this one, seeing as how I've probably drunk enough to sink a ship!

Liberate tutemae ex inferis!

I got some feedback on my blog in the form of an order to make it green, as opposed to pink. Fuck it, says I, I'll keep it pink!

I finished watching the reboot of Friday the 13th yesterday, and I couldn't help but feel the people who died in that movie deserved it! One of them even took a bottle of Lagavulin and drank straight outta the bottle, not fucking cool!

Luckily, he ended up being inverse-garotted by Jason shortly thereafter!

Did you know, by the way, that there are no green mammals? The only one that comes close is the sloth, but it's only green because of the algae that grows in its fur!

Got it!

First order of business, I've got another opportunity scheduled for standup; November 5, this time!

Second order of business; I have been told that I should just leave religious people alone and not bother to try and shoot down their beliefs.

I can't be the only one thinking that's somewhat of a weird stance to take. After all, religious people aren't really renowned for their tendency to just leave people alone and not try to change them, are they?

If somebody says to me "Join us or go to hell", then that person has in every way possible relinquished his or her right not to have their faith shot down by me!

So sorry, some religious people can never play the "Let us believe what we want and stop trying to convince us that we are wrong!"-card, because they will never ever honour that when it comes to others!

Fact of the matter is, whatever god christians believe in is a malicious being that wants us to either go to hell or spend eternity groveling before him. Heck, I get bored listening to one bloody sermon for an hour, and eternity of that shit is supposed to be heaven? Gimme a break!

Oi, it's late!

No time to talk, gotta sleep! More of an update tomorrow!

Oh, and I've signed up for another performance on november fifth, hopefully I'll get a spot!

Good night!

Penumbra: Black Plague!

I just noticed a rather interesting phenomenon in that game while playing it in the dark in the middle of the night; being a game that encourages you to run and hide from enemies, since you can't defend yourself whatsoever, the scariest part by far is sitting in a corner listening for any trace of whatever monstrosity you don't want to come face to face with.

See, when you do face it down, and it starts running towards you to carve you up, it's no longer as scary, because your mind isn't filling in the blanks anymore, and it's very difficult for the designers of the game to live up to the fright that your mind conjures up.

The best part, and by that I mean the very most terrifying, is when you just hear the monster, or spot it turning a corner, not entirely knowing what it is you are perceiving. There really should be more of that in survival horror games, and less of the old bog standard blowing everything up with a shotgun!

The road goes ever on and on...

On the bus back home yesterday, something struck me.

No, it wasn't the stench of drunken adolescents puking (Lovely, wouldn't you say?), it was the thought that I'm doing something quite special when I'm doing standup.

See, I've never wanted to be an ordinary guy; I never wanted to be the kind of guy who has an ordinary job until retirement, at which point I kick back until I decay. To say I've always been meant for greatness would be presumptuous of me, but I have always had this idea that I would like to do something...out of the ordinary; entertain people, be seen by scores of people, on a stage, doing something I'm good at, something I have a flair for.

I've only just started it, but it feels like this is what I should be doing! It feels like I'm making an impression, and like it's something I wanna work on. It feels like I'm on the right course! This isn't make belief, this is real!

Stand up accomplished!

First, I'd like to apologize for missing yesterday's post; I was stuck trying to figure out which jokes to pick all night.

Today, the whole thing went quite well. I can't honestly say I was the card-carrying item, but I sure wasn't the least funny, and alot of my material worked well.

The bits that didn't work were, unsurprisingly, the World of Warcraft stuff and the bit about firemen letting a house burn down. I'll be cutting them from my next performance for sure.

With a bit of tidying up, I think I can come up with something quite excellent for next time.

The day draws nearer...

Very soon I shall be standing in front of what will hopefully be a room full of people, trying to make them laugh.

It's not really the thought of doing that in particular that absolutely scares the living shit out of me, it's more the whole idea of preparing for it. Sitting and thinking about which bits will work and which won't, which suits the mood of the room, which I'll know nothing about whatsoever, it all gets on my nerves.

I don't just want to step up and perform, I want to win. Heck, I know it's not a competition, but I wanna leave that night knowing I was THAT guy, that guy who everybody will be remembering as the guy who went in there and rocked the bloody room!

At least I know that I, unlike the audience possibly critically observing what I do, I had the guts to get up on that stage!

Busy!

'tis been a busy day today; went shoe-shopping earlier, looking for a pair of training shoes in my size, and failed miserably at it! I guess my next recourse will be ordering some from the interwebs!

After that, it was off to school for a seminar on the book "The Scarlet Letter". An annoying read, on all counts, that perfectly encompassed all the things I hate about puritan society, what with all the ruthlessness, hypocrisy and complete and utter lack of sympathy.

To top it off, I finished my current assignment for next week in Academic Writing, so I feel I have gotten some things done today.

All in all, it's way too late!

Comedy!

Since I have another chance to try out standup comedy this friday, I'm faced with a number of difficulties in deciding what I should be talking about.

First, what I'm about to talk about needs to be separate from what other comedians have already covered. I have to find my own angle on every issue and topic, which can be quite a challenge. Since I am a big fan of comedy, I have heard thousands of worthy stories that I could retell, probably with pretty good results, but doing so would be unfair, and would make me nothing more than a pretender.

Second, I have to connect properly with the audience. The tricky thing about certain subjects, like politics, is that you need to take a stand that the audience can identify with. If I stand there and start ranting about a specific party or point of view that the audience agrees with, I might lose their support, because they'll interpret it as simple political propaganda.

Third, I have to get the audience going properly. An active audience can really make the show great, and conversely, an inactive audience can make excellent jokes feel like they didn't take off at all. This is why it's so undesirable to be first on the card for the evening; it's entirely up to you to fuse the audience together, get them in the right mood and prep them for the rest of the performances.

Fourth, I'll need abit of luck. Fingers crossed!

The future!

For some reason, the people around me tend to be quite wary of the future. They worry about the implications of the development of modern technology, and the moral ramifications.

Personally, I'm very optimistic; the quality of our entertainment is higher than ever, we constantly develop new and improved ways to have fun and we have access to it more readily than ever before; the food we eat is of much higher quality than at any earlier point in the history of mankind, we are aware of what we eat and the risk of food poisoning is multitudes lower than two hundred years ago; more work can be done more efficiently faster than before, with greater ease and more flexibly.

All in all, life is getting better and better!

For instance, alot of worry is aimed at the concept of genetically engineered crops. Thing is, it allows us to feed a vastly greater number of people in areas where food is scarce at best, saving millions of lives. Local production of food in areas that are very dry is extremely important, and we really need that to improve their lives and chances of surviving.

The hippies who want to live in the past really get on my tits in a major way in general; asking that over two billion people be allowed to starve to death just so they can satisfy their egotistical mania by having 100% organic food production. I don't know about you, but I'd rather see those two billion people alive than dead from starvation!

Anyway, I'm interested in seeing what we can come up with in the future. Advancement is good, and we should not shy away from it simply because we fear the unknown!

My apologies!

I should have made an update yesterday, but some things occurred that threw my plans into disarray, so I'll have to ask your forgiveness.

Today I've been on a little visit to my sister's, and her two sons.

Alfred, age six months, is a fountain of happiness and excitement, intent on not only observing everything there is to observe, but also to gnaw on it.

Also, I went for a walk with two of my sister's four goats, something of an odd experience, I must admit. Everything that has been said of the stubbornness of goats is very much true, and I couldn't shake the feeling they were testing me to determine whether or not they could push me around.

His elder brother Vincent, age four, is also a very happy and very cuddly boy, who is incredibly fond of Alfred. It would seem he picked his grandfather to be his big favourite today, not that he didn't spend alot of time playing with me.

Right now, I'm dead tired from all the traveling, but tomorrow I should be back with a more important post.

The Story in Gaming Strikes Back!

I felt rather foolish a few hours after I made the first post regarding the interaction between storyline and gameplay. See, though I feel rather ashamed at this, I neglected to mention the two most amazingly fantastic examples of it in the history of modern games.

These two games are the duo of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Fallout 3. The reason why I put the two together is that they are in essence very similar; made by the same company, with the same engine and interaction between characters works in the same way.

What might have caused my forgetting them earlier is that they are such brilliantly magnificent beacons of light in this whole issue, that they just drop right off my radar.

In those two games, you aren't controlling a character; you don't just choose how the character acts, you are that character! You don't feel like you're controlling someone running around a big open world where you can do whatever the hell you want, you are living in that world directly. You go on adventures, explore, kill stuff, make friends, complete quests and have a bloody good time all around! What you do is live, breathe and experience it on your own!

That's all I can do to explain the greatness of those two games. If you only buy two games in your life, get them!

Story in gaming!

The subject of today's address; storylines, and the way in which they interact with the gameplay.

Let's get one thing straight right off the bat; I think story in games is very important. I think it's one of those things that can really spoil a game when done poorly, and can really rescue a game from the dung heap when done well.

However, the situation is not as simple as that. Story needs to play nice with the gameplay and the mechanics of the game, or it'll be much less enjoyable. While there are a great many different games that have a very interesting and engaging story, it is often the case that there is an incongruity between it and the way the game plays.

Case in point; Command & Conquer. It is rather heavy in the storyline department, but once a mission starts you're separated from it. The story is something that pops up inbetween building 20 medium tanks and steamrolling the enemy base. While it is incredibly well presented, always in full-motion video with quite a few bigshot stars, it is always confined to the cutscenes.

Fortunately, the further we progress in gaming history, the more games tend to incorporate the story into the gameplay.

What I would hold up as the shining example of this is a small collection of splendid titles:

#1. The Call of Duty-series, and most importantly; Call of Duty 2. The series prides itself in giving an unrelenting and gritty view of warfare, with a considerable emphasis on the characters involved. They are not only set pieces that say a few words inbetween missions, they are your brothers in arms; men you rely on to get through the mission, and people who share the horrors of war with you. When they die, it stings your heart, and when you pull through an unforgiving siege against impossible odds, only three of you surviving, you feel a mixture of pride and sorrow at the result.

#2. Bioshock 1&2. Bioshock does away with the cutscenes entirely in favour of having all the dialogue to your character take place in realtime, most of it in the form of communication directly to the protagonist. The rest of the story comes from log entries found scattered all over the underwater city of Rapture, relaying eerie details about the people in it. However, the story can be seen as somewhat dislocated from the action and shooting, because you never actually come face to face with the ones who are helping you. I find it very immersive, but I can understand people who don't.

#3. Mass Effect 1&2. These two games have more or less set the standard for cinematic gameplay. The dialogue is well written, the animations are superb and you really feel like you have control over what the main character does and says. In addition to that, you form relationships with the various crewmembers and you can even get so far as a romantic subplot with some of them, and I assure you it's much more than the "Gratuitous sex!" that media has trumpeted out about the game.

#4. Silent Hill 2. Silent Hill 2 isn't just gripping and terrifying, it is also completely based on the story; you'll be trapped within the story from start to finish. Seeing as how the gameplay mechanics are bollocks, the story has to be top notch in order to pull the game out of the dirt, and does it ever! Even though you don't pick what the main character says, everything you do will be directly tied into the story.

#5. Strife. Strife is abit of a wild card, all the way from back in 1996. To call it a Doom-clone would be highly unfair, it might be based on the same engine, but it's bigger and better in every way. It defies the technological limitations of its time and incorporates quite a few roleplaying elements. You have conversations with allies and enemies alike, and the game puts your own struggle into a broader perspective; you are part of a movement with droves of other individuals, and your choices affect the outcome of the struggle.

For those interested in a good story to go with their gameplay, you really should try these games out!

Mind your own bloody business!

Sitting on the bus a couple of days ago, I had a very disturbing experience with a fellow traveler. Minding my own fucking business, mind you, I was asked if the Nintendo DS, a pink one, that I was playing wasn't made for girls.

Who in the flying fuck gave her the right to pass judgment on that? I did not engage in conversation, I did not indicate in any way whatsoever that I wanted her input, and I sure as hell didn't do anything that could possibly imply that she had any say in the matter!

I'm not the type of person who is overly subtle about my intentions. If I were to be interested in hearing that bitch's opinion, the question I would ask would be something along the lines of "Excuse me, do you think this here Nintendo DS looks abit girly?". Now, I did not pose that question, so I would really appreciate it if nobody took the liberty to answer it!

Just because I sit next to someone on the bus doesn't mean we are friends, it doesn't even mean we are equals. I have nothing but loathing and contempt for such bottom dwelling filth. It's like people saying "If you want my opinion...", STOP! No, I do not bloody want your misinformed and ignorant opinion, because I did not fucking ask for it!

Feel free to ask questions in a social setting, but while traveling on the bus is not a bloody social setting! I'm there because I want to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible, and I do not wish to engage in moronic conversation with people while doing that, especially when I just sit there playing The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, and I'd like to keep doing that rather than talking to such a bonehead!

Kinda late, but whatever...

Seeing as how I am really late posting this, I shall have to cheat abit, by merely mentioning a couple of things to myself.

1. I shall not buy anymore sweets. It doesn't taste anywhere near as good as it used to, and it's not particularly healthy.

2. I will need to start working on my paper on the causes of the second world war!

3...okay, I'm going to sleep!

More bus-y-ness!

Had to spend another six hours on a bus today. My god, it's not just the boredom, having borrowed a DS staves off that, it's the damn pain in my knee from sitting still so long!

Add to that, there was a bloody beeping noise for four damn hours! I was ready to kill someone by the time I got off the bus!

Have a big fat exam tomorrow, and have to get up at six, so I'll just say good night right away!

Spirited Away!

I must say, it is without a doubt one of the strangest movies I have ever seen. It's not overly confusing; what's happening is usually discernible, but the twists and turns are bewilderingly odd and unexpected, it's absolutely impossible to determine ahead of time how things will unfold.

However, it's still a very good one. Just like the other movies from Studio Ghibli it tugs all the heartstrings at the right places, and confuzzled joy regularly follows.

All in all, this has been a fairly active day; we've gone shopping in the city, about 20 minutes walk from here, bought something to convert into a dinner and scouted out some restaurants for our rapidly approaching anniversery in three weeks.

Our attempts at finding a couple of training shoes for me were entirely unsuccesful; I merely had to say the words "Size 49" and they instantly told me "You're screwed!". We had much better luck at finding some jeans, as far as getting one whole pair that actually fit me properly. Though, the point of getting the shoes in the first place is to enable me to exercise properly so that I may lose some weight and a few inches off the waist, with any luck allowing me to squeeze into some other jeans I own.

Embarassingly enough, I had to resort to a walkthrough to get past a particularly tricky puzzle in The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, because I was quite simply stuck; nothing I tried seemed to work! But now I'm past that little bump in the road, and I'll be dedicating most of my journey home tomorrow to the venture of finding another place to get stuck!

A camel through the eye of a needle?

Today I would like to take the opportunity to yet again rant on the subject of religion. My specific gripe this time is heaven.

Heaven has come to be viewed as the most blissful of places, "heavenly" being an adjective describing beauty and delight. But what is heaven really supposed to be like?

If we read Revelations, it is described as a place where the only actions humans really take is to praise god at all times.

This offends me greatly! The thought of me, being a man raised with the ideals and goals of a free citizen, willingly giving all those freedoms up in favour of groveling in the dirt at the feet of a moody, willful and quite clearly maleficient deity is to me absolutely preposterous. We are, after all, talking about the same god that thought it would be the hallmark of a beneficent and sympathetic entity to stone to death disobedient children, homosexuals, witches and to smite with holy wrath a guy who accidentally touched the Ark of the Covenant to stop it from sliding off its carriage into the mud.

I wish I was making this shit up!

Even worse, it's not like this supposed god is giving us much of a choice. Either we spend the rest of eternity in slavery with no free will, or we will be cast down to eternal suffering in a sea of molten sulphur. Thank you very much, oh benevolent one!

All that apologetic bullshit about "Oh, god wants us to make our own choice!" rather rings false, doesn't it, when the options are either slavery or eternal damnation.

Good thing I do not believe in god, because I can't stand the idea of worshipping him in the first place. A good god doesn't let infant children die in an earthquake!

Friday night, dressed to kill...

Had a rather rude awakening today, thanks to my awesome autonomous nerve system! At 12:26, I awoke with my mobile phone in my left hand, having turned off the alarm in my sleep without hesitation.

Add to that, it spoiled a rather fascinating dream I had about suffering from radiation poisoning after a string of nuclear attacks against the city I was in. No, it didn't make much sense to me either.

I'm starting to miss the terrific feeling of dread that only Silent Hill 2 gives me. Oh, and Penumbra! Penumbra: Black Plague, to be precise.

As I might have mentioned before, a good horror game is one where the monsters in closets are kept at a minimum, where the terror of something you can't see is greater than the monsters you do happen to actually come across.

Black Plague also has the added factor of complete and utter lack of any means of defending yourself. All you can do if you're spotted by some faceless monstrosity is to run away, hide in a corner and try not to panic. Dammit, I've gotta pick that game up again. As always, the feeling of dread is lessened quite considerably when you are armed with a double-barelled shotgun and blasting holes in everything that moves, something that any good horror game avoids like the plague, the Black Plague in this case. This is why Doom 3 never actually qualified as a horror game. Sure, monsters popped out of closets here and there, but all you had to do was put a few slugs in their head and they literally dissolved.

Good riddance to that, we need more Penumbra!

The story of Rapture continues...

So far, I must say I'm rather impressed by Bioshock 2. While it doesn't improve dramatically on the graphics of the first game, the story is, as always, quite fleshed out, and exposition is provided in the form of audio logs littering the hallways here and there.

Like before, the feeling of isolation is rather strong, and the idea that you can't really trust anyone seems to be impossible to shake.

Also, I have purchased Monkey Island 1&2, both in Special Edition, from STEAM. What that means is the two first games in the series have been remade with new graphics, all new voice acting and smoother controls. At the press of a button, you can even switch back to the old graphics, if you want an injection of nostalgia straight into your spinal column.

Furthermore, I have returned to Mass Effect 2 to try out a couple new bits of downloadable content (DLC). The game, as ever, strikes me as being very heavy on the story, even if the general gameplay is more combat oriented. I feel this is how an interactive movie should be; dialogue and cinematic flair in which you are always in control of what the main character says and how he acts. Not to mention the parts where you are allowed to interrupt the events unfolding in a brilliantly awesome way, like punching an annoying reporter in the jaw!

All for now, time for bed!

Trains!

Guess what, my train was late earlier today, and consequently I missed my bus, causing me to be 15 minutes late for my class.

Now, I supposed one could understand the difficulties of managing numerous different trains and getting them all to work in sync.

I don't.

The train managers are quite possibly the most incompetent lot of morons in the history of transportation. They are in charge of one thing, and one thing only; to make the trains run on time. It's not exactly rocket science, and it's something those numbnuts should have been able to master during the last 150 or so years since the invention of the train.

Even worse, autumn is approaching rapidly, and soon the tracks will be covered by fallen leaves. Naturally, this will cause trains to be late and alot of them to be canceled altogether.

What the flying fish have they been doing every single year for these last 150 years, sat there twiddling their thumbs when they should have been trying to solve this problem. Every single bloody year those responsible for maintaining the tracks are always caught completely off guard by the arrival of the autumn.

Guess what, you idiots, it happens every year! Same with snow, it's an annual feature! Don't act so bleedin' surprised when it happens! Do something to fix this, or you should all be sacked you worthless pieces of garbage!

And no, I'm not being overly harsh. Compared to what they deserve to have said of them, what I just said would come across as a generous tribute!

A new start!

Seeing as how I've gotten complaints, all from the same person, about my lacking tendency to update this here blog, I hereby declare I will be updating it every single day from now on.

Naturally, this will result in the quality of content dropping and me just posting useless nonsense of no intellectual value that will probably qualify as gossip.

In other words, nothing will change!

Last week I had something of an uncomfortable experience in class. We were being taught the incredibly complicated and ludicrously roundabout art of academic writing. To this end, we were first told to make a mind-map on the subject of football.

There are two problems with this; the first is the fact that I hate mind-maps. They confuse me and give me no incentive whatsoever to be productive in any way, form or fashion. The second is the fact that I have no relationship whatsoever with football. I don't hate it, I don't love it, it just completely falls off my radar. This exercise went poorly.

Our second exercise was to make a list of things that sprung into our mind regarding the subject of Paris. I performed slightly better at this.

Lastly, we were asked to write in a free flowing manner on the subject of parks in cities. Sadly, it was marred by the fact that both the teacher and the rest of the class regarded this method as some kind of unknown monstrosity, never before seen in this part of the world. They all seemed to act as if I was expected to think this was the hardest way of getting off to a start with writing an essay.

Just to clarify, I'm doing it now for christ's sake!

At this point, I had to ask whether or not any of them had ever read a single blog entry in their entire lives. In response to this, they all looked at me as if I had just asked them whether or not they were in the habit of forcefeeding a hamster C4 while jerking off!

Idiots...

An issue of some importance...

This is not something that is very easy to write about, so you will have to be patient. In all honesty, it is not only something very close to my heart, but something very far removed from what, and who, I really am. I do not ask that you understand, I only ask that you listen.

These last few months, I have had dreams of a particular kind. Rather than being the kind of which I have written several times before, these are of a whole nother kind. I may, at times, have mentioned the concept on which they are based; false nostalgia, but lately they have gone from being a source of amusement and fascination to being a horror all of its own.

They are not, as one might think, visions of the way one's own supposed past would look like through the eyes of who one is now. I do not enter them with the mindset of one who has seen many things come and go since the events transpired, and matured in more ways than one. Were you to, at any point, go back and observe key moments of your childhood, you would not find the same awe and grandeur today that you did as a child. The world was a larger and much more impressive place back then.

No! Instead I step into them feeling every bit of the same awe and inspiration as I, supposedly, did when I first experienced them. Joys are as joyful, and enjoyment is just as enjoyable. When I wake up, I do so with a great sorrow in my heart, the kind of sinking feeling one can only get from watching the things one had loved fade away slowly, you being completely unable to do anything about it.

It would not bother me nearly as much were it not for the fact that the visions are not real. They are lies! Deception! But at the time, they felt so vivid, so real. The emotions I felt were not lies, the happiness was genuine, as was the despair that followed.

As I am writing this, the words themselves are fading. How do I describe what I saw?

There was a beach, or rather an entire campground. I was a boy, who's to say how old? My parents were both there, I remember my father particularly fondly. Maybe he had to pay some fee, I don't know. We were all bathing; me, my siblings, even one of my uncles was there.

But there was more to it than that. I made mistakes. There was an elevator that was supposedly out of order, and I feared it. For some reason it descended with a particular type of small figurine set of toys that I loved so when I was a young boy, but I wasn't supposed to have them, and the elevator was not supposed to move.

We all played in the water for a long time. My father, or maybe my uncle, made such a huge splash jumping from a little height that all the water temporarily receded from the lake, but slowly crept back again.

Truth be told, it was our house that lay on the beach of that small lake. It was ours alone, it belonged to no one else. It was my sanctuary, I could go back there and it would belong to us forever.

There were also some kind of camp meetings, and I reminisced about them to one of my cousins, who was also there.

From there, things went wrong. My brother, or perhaps it was my sister, got stuck on the boardwalk outside of the house, then all faded in a particularly strange way. It was not as if an image faded from a paper, it was more like a room of imagination you were in was being gradually razed to reveal reality outside of it's walls.

I cried. I walked from room to room in our house, and it was bigger than I had previously thought. I could not find where my parents slept, and I had done something very wrong. I cried, through it all. All was lost, it was just a fantasy. The scene I had enjoyed so was just part of a dead past that would never ever come back. Our front door no longer was there, because it was no longer our house, it belonged to someone else. I had no sanctuary anymore. I cried.

There was a kite, that I got to fly, and some kind of mechanical plane. They were the last vestiges of the past that I clung to in the hopes of spending just a few more moments in that blessed realm.

When I awoke, it was all gone, it had faded into a strange story of danger and action, but none of that mattered. My childhood was dead forever, and the dream had only afforded me a brief joy just to shatter me with the sorrow that it was all gone.

The dream was not real, but the feelings it left me with were.

Please, I want to go back there...please...

DDT Revisited!...again

And now, ladies and gentlemen, you will witness the long overdue return of Drwhyn's Drink Time (DDT)!

In this issue, we'll look into the mad, the bad and the downright brilliant in the way of alcoholic beverages! So hold on to your hats, and let's get them rolling!

First off, the bad:

Cassiliero Del Diablo; you've probably seen the advertisement, and for some odd reason I decided to pick up a small bottle of this as my first real foray into red wines. Safe to say, it's bad, just plain bad. It has no distinctive features whatsoever, and even though it was supposed to have a tangible fullness to it, I've had glasses of water that fit that criteria better. Don't buy it!

Serve at room temperature.

Chapel Hill; a sparkling wine along the lines of Asti, only without all the flavour. Another one that's completely unremarkable, you forgot it ever touched your tongue half a second after you swallowed it.

Serve chilled.

Port; no, just no. It's oily, has some odd wicked sweetness to it, and the flavour can best be described as freshly polished wooden furniture. Stay away from this one at all cost! For some reason, my mother rather enjoyed it, but I found it utterly impossible to get down my throat. If you let it linger on your tongue for a moment, the wooden aftertaste will make you wretch.

Preferably don't serve at all.

Martini Vermouth; See "Port". Also, I spilled a glass of it onto my Economics book; the paper still smelled exactly the same.

There, feels so much better now we've got those out of our system, doesn't it?

Moving on to the brilliant:

Cinzano Asti; a sparkling white wine that is just about everything champagne should be, but isn't. It's sweet, a little dry and very refreshing. It's the kind of thing you can sip for hours without ever getting tired of it. I recommend you try it as an alternative to champagne for big celebrations, as it's just that much more appealing in every way. Also, make sure it's the Cinzano one, and not Martini, because the Martini one, while by no means bad, is not of the same order. This is a must-buy for both cozy friday evenings and festive occasions.

Serve chilled!

Macleod's Whisky Trail; it's a collection of six small bottles of whisky, ranging from the very smoothest to the very peatiest. Not too expensive, and excellent for anyone who wishes to delve into the rich world of scotch without having to buy big bottles of each type. It's a rather representative collection of different kinds of whisky, and really another must-have for anyone who enjoys his, or her, spirits. It's quite simply put; wonderful!

Serve at room temperature; whisky suffers, as has been explained in earlier editions, from both too high and too low temperature, so make sure you keep the bottle someplace that's not too hot and not too cold.

That's all for this edition of Drwhyn's Drink Time (DDT), stay tuned for more, very soon!

Game Developers!

Yes, yes, I know what you're thinking; not another one about game developers. Well, here's what I'm thinking: This is me blogging, not you, shut up!

So anyway, with quite a few high profile releases having come out over the past couple of year that illustrate all the highs and lows of video game development, let us have a look at the big do's and don't's of the industry!

First of all, there are a number of things that add up to a complete video game, from a developer's standpoint. There is the story, the gameplay mechanics, the coding, the graphics and the sound department. Now, unsurprisingly enough, the big cruncher in actually making a game is how well the developers manage to balance the different factors into an end product.

If you look at any modern gaming catalogue, you'll find games with highly variable balance in this respect; there are games that are extremely well coded, but have gameplay that amounts to no more than a shit'n'chips sundae. Conversely, that are games that are so pretty any gamer will instantly want to have children with it, but is so badly coded that you run of the risk of causing a time-altering paradox destroying the universe, and crashing the game, if you so much as use the quickload button at the wrong moment.

Now, I'm not saying there must always be an absolutely even balance between them, because I'm not, and if you think I am you are clearly incredibly thick and shouldn't be entrusted with going to the lavatory by yourself for fear of you somehow drowning in the toilet! Rather, developers that try to achieve perfect balance is going to end up in that ninth level of hell that belongs to "People who make games that does everything poorly and nothing fucking well". As I've said before, alot can be made of a finely crafted plot that ties everything together and where everything makes sense without feeling predictable, but if you stick that into a game where the fun is derived entirely from running over old ladies while surfing on top of a car and shooting a rocket launcher at innocent bystanders it's just going to make you look like a fucking pretentious prat, which you are!

Case #1: S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl
The game looks more gorgeous than that classmate you always had a crush on, and has more atmosphere than jupiter, but there's just something odd about the game, namely the fucking atrocious coding. A game that constantly crashes and in which enemies can't decide if they love you or should ejaculate lead straight into your bloodstream in the middle of firefights is not bloody good! I don't know about you, but I've grown slightly tired of the old Oblivion-finger, namely that physical deformity that comes as a direct consequence of having to quicksave every .0 seconds for fear of losing progress when the game all of a sudden realizes that you're playing and decides that it's gonna have none of that, no siree!

Case #2: Saint's Row 2
Yet another game with coding that is simply a fucking pile of steaming garbage, but this time with developers who know what it is they are trying to accomplish. The story is at best a shallow and irrelevant necessity that you use to distract you inbetween butchering innocent bystanders and clearing out entire fortresses of goons with just your extremely overpowered pistols with infinite range, ammo and auto aiming (Yes, that's right, auto aim, even in the PC port), and at worst a shallow and irrelevant necessity that smells. Thing is, the story seems to be aware of that you're not expected to give a shit about it, and thus decides to take the scenic route by having you mow down an extraordinary number of enemies at every turn without all the action being hogged up by cutscenes (Yes, I'm looking at you, Metal Gear Solid...fuckers...). It's neither a smart game, nor a sophisticated one, but it's not trying to be! It's trying to be mindless fun, with things like jumping in front of cars for insurance money and riding around town hosing it down with feces to lower property value! Mindless fucking fun! Which brings us to...

Case #3: GTA IV
Here we're looking at something with the potential of being one of the best releases of the decade, expanding upon all the things that made the GTA series great and making full use of the current hardware to deliver an experience that amounts to nothing less than the gaming equivalent of an orgasm!...or possibly not just the equivalent...
Problem? It doesn't.
It's just one of those games that doesn't deliver at all. What made the previous GTA games good? As I've said countless times; Mindless fucking fun! What did not make the previous GTA games good? Trying to woo a boring middle-aged housewife and constantly getting phoned by your cousin to go play darts with him!
Quite clearly, Rockstar knew perfectly well what it was that made GTA III great, managed to distill it down to the pure essence of awesomeness, and then poured all of it down the drain in favour of a bland, dull and brown mess that had none of the appeal of it's predecessors. Largely, it boils down to that Rockstar somehow forgot all about the point of the series, that elusive Mindless fucking Fun, and instead opted for a more realistic depiction of life in a big american city seen with the eyes of a disillusioned immigrant. Who the fuck wants that?! Who wants to play a game wherein the main character has a life that is no better than yours or mine, and is boring as all hell to boot?
Sure, you can watch television and take your cousin out for drinks and drive home drunk as a lord, but who on earth would ever want that out of a game? Games are played for escapism, people don't play games to experience the very things people desperately want to run away from in real life, dammit!

The world would be a much better place if developers could simply get it into their immensely thick heads that the primary objective of any game is fun, and it shouldn't be fucking compromised by realism, or anything else that they ought to know doesn't belong!

Religion!

Now is that most special time of year; the time when I decide to say nasty things about religion and religious people.

First of all, what is religion? It is something that is very suitable for the large parts of the human race that favour bandwagons, hating those who are not on the bandwagon, and following ridiculous arbitrary rules and limitations. Also, and this is the part that bugs me, there existing no vertical discussion whatsoever.

Let's look at a piece of the Bible, that I find to perfectly illustrate the lack of critical thinking involved in religion!

Once upon a time, much earlier than last wednesday, there once was a man named Saul. He spent his days, merrily and gayly persecuting christians. In essence, he tried to kill them all, and since I've never been known to be above the odd dick-joke, I say it was because he was compensating for something...you know what!

But, see, his chosen line of profession had run into some difficulties; the christians were getting awfully numerous, and as any great persecutor will tell you, times are not necessarily good to you, if the persecutees outnumber the persecutors ten to one.

Thusly, all of a sudden, literally out of the blue, he had an epiphany! A, literally, blinding light struck him, and god told him to stop being such a fucking tosser to his babies.

Afterwards, he went and met with some of the people who he had been trying to butcher. He told them that he had received a vision from god, but that it had unfortunately made him blind as a bat. Here comes the funny part though; the idiots actually believed him. More stunning is, after them having prayed abit for him, he proclaimed that he could see again! What a bloody miracle, you don't find it at all a tad too convenient that he suddenly appeared to have gained absolution, a most fitting argument as to why they oughtn't lynch him?

If it had been me, I would have been slightly wary of Hitler suddenly walking into my living room, telling me that god had made him see the error of his ways, at a time when his chosen direction in life would have meant he'd most likely be hanged.

You don't suppose, just maybe, that Saul was feigning the blindness, and then claiming to have been cured by prayer, when he in fact had 20/20 vision all along, just so he could claim he had in fact been forgiven by the lord?


Of course, the problem with this line of reasoning is that it is contrary to doctrine, and ultimately, priests like sticking with doctrine, and equally ultimately, religious people will side with the fellow in the frock, if things get to a head. The example I have brought up, is just one bit where maybe the reader shouldn't be so utterly naive to believe every single word written, and perhaps not take something that can't possibly be verified scientifically, as gospel (pun intended).

Now, christians can sometimes shift their position, and decide that parts of the Bible are only metaphorical, and do not represent reliable historical facts. But surely, that's just a big cop-out, after all, if the Bible truly was the eternal word of god, surely he'd be able to put a note in the margin, regarding whether or not particularly silly bits are metaphorical or not.

Here's what I wish all religious individuals would do; read their respective holy scripture, and after every sentence just stop for a moment, to reflect on how that would have worked in practical terms, what the logic behind it is, or whether or not what is written is clearly silly. Read the part about Moses parting the Red Sea, and wonder how on earth they could just walk across the sea floor for miles and miles without the egyptians catching up until just after they had all passed it, or how it would have affected the surrounding area, that obviously was not exactly built to accommodate a huge corridor in the middle of the Red Sea being magically dried out.

Think, dammit, think!

Fun! Fun! Fun!

Let's get one thing straight right away; I'm a nerd. Yes, a nerd, that subsection of the human race that is commonly spurned by the rest, and usually considered beyond redemption.

Furthermore, I'm a computer nerd. Yes, a computer nerd, that most annoying subspecies of nerds, scorned and outcast from all the rest of nerddom for the complete and utter dedication to computer technology.

What's more, I'm a computer game nerd. Yes, a computer game nerd, the deranged secteric group hated by all others for the lack of complete and utter dedication to complete and utter boredom.

What am I, as a computer game nerd, looking for in life? What is it I want?

In a word; fun!

I want to have fun. I want to enjoy myself, laugh, be excited and blow shit up, lots of shit!

There are many different kinds of fun; the sublime pleasure one gets from taking part in a well crafted overarching storyline; the exhilarating rush of narrowly beating a challenge; the emotional satisfaction of being part of something great! But, perhaps most importantly of all, there is the mad, reptilebrainy, joy of ruthless and completely pointless destruction, mayhem and wreaking of ultimate havoc! Now, I don't mind following a linear sequence of events, or having little choice in what to actually do, so I decide to now and then play Half-Life 2 for 30 minutes or so, but I keep coming back to sandbox carnage!

Who really gives a toss about a well-written story or believable interaction between main characters when you can run up the wall of the highest skyscraper in New York, launch yourself straight towards the ground and land face first on top of an M1 tank, throwing the now burned out husk of the tank at an army helicopter, the destruction of which attracts another helicopter, which you hijack by pulling yourself up to it by way of your mutated upper extremity, flying to the nearest military base, jumping out of the helicopter to land next to the base's commander, eating him to get his keys, infiltrating the base, killing everyone in it with a blade that comes out of your arm, then exiting the base only to hijack another helicopter, use it to blow up the base, then eat any civilians who happened to be out for an afternoon stroll in the vicinity?

DAMN, FREEDOM ROCKS!

To, probably not, be continued...

Lots of stuff!

Alright, got alot of catching up to do, so let's get to it!

First point on the agenda; Lost. Hasn't it occurred to anyone that that show is absolutely fucking bananas? It's nuts! Crazy! Insane! It doesn't jump the shark, it flies constantly above it, on a pig! How can someone watch that useless crap?! There is no message behind it, there's no logic, there's just a bunch of incredibly incompetent writers who make up shit in exchange for a paycheck! It doesn't make any fucking sense whatsoever!

Second order of business; Batman: Arkham Asylum! How on earth did that game come to be? It's abso-fucking-lutely brilliant! The graphics, the animations, the controls, the characters, the story, it's just so incredibly great! So how on earth did the developers let this happen? A game of this quality comes around once every decade, if we're lucky, and between them the developers seem to just be phoning it in with every possible bit of the design on all other games.

Take Far Cry 2, for instance. The graphics and physics were some of the best I've ever seen. What was the problem? Everything else! The characterization wasn't there. There were supposed to be two different factions to work for, but since every single person outside of the main town was out to kill YOU, and do nothing else at all than kill YOU, you didn't really notice much difference apart from which building across the street you picked up the quests from

The natives never ever fought amongst themselves, there was complete peace and order in the little african country until you showed up, and anyone you encounter in the entire game will drop everything they're doing to hunt you down and kill you if they so much as get a whiff of your cologne!

Let's also look at Command & Conquer 4!

The earlier games in the series were built on the basis of building basic bases, basically, then training tonnes of troops to beat the enemy into submission with, all the while balancing offense and defense, managing your economy and enjoying the slaughter.

So, seeing as how this model had been so successful in the past, naturally EALA went and changed it completely.

Base-building? Gone, you now get exactly ONE structure, which is an MCV that conveniently builds all your units.

Economy? Gone, the game has no economic system at all, beyond you having to gather small tiberium samples to fund your research of new technologies, where one single crystal let's you research about half of all the potential technology in three seconds.

Large armies? Gone, you get a ridiculous population limit, so instead of a huge army of troops, you can get six tanks and three soldiers. Thus, any battle becomes a question of just churning out a steady stream of units rather than actually having something that at least remotely resembles an army.

Big-name actors? Gone, apart from Kane himself, there isn't a single face you'll ever recognize in any of the cutscenes.

So, apparently, EALA knew perfectly well which bits made Command & Conquer good, isolated them, and then burned them under ritual circumstances to make sure it would never affect the development of Command & Conquer 4.

You fucking whankers!

Education!

One thing that really vexes me about education in general, and the teaching of history in particular, is that most of it is absolute codswallop through and through.

Take the Marathon, for instance. Every kid is taught at an early age that the Marathon is based on the distance that a messenger ran from the battle of Marathon to Athens to tell the people there of their victory over the persians, upon which he fell down dead from exhaustion.

It never fucking happened! It's simply not true, there is no way around the fact that it is absolute nonsense! There was no such messenger, no such run and no such death!

And how about the earth being round? Every kid is taught at an early age that everyone thought the earth was flat up until Columbus proved that it wasn't.

Utter claptrap! At least for the last 2000 years people have commonly known perfectly well that the earth was more or less spherical. The reason why Columbus was initially laughed at was because he thought the world was much smaller than it really was, and everyone knew that. If he hadn't discovered the West Indies, him and all his crew would have starved to death, and his contemporaries knew that. They knew perfectly well that one could, in theory, travel to India across the Atlantic ocean, but in practice, it wasn't doable due to the immense distance. Columbus was in fact just an idiot who thought the distance was much smaller.

Now what about the V-sign? Nothing to do with archers wanting to show the french that they still had their fingers, or whatever. Do you know what it means?

FUCK OFF!

So, stop corrupting history, stop teaching bullshit to the kids, or I will come to your house and shove a copy of the collected works of Herodotus up your candy arse!