cout << "Hello World";

Oh, hello there. I didn't hear you come in. Please, have a seat. I guess it's been a while since we've spoken, hasn't it? Not since 2008. My word, we have some catching up to do. Oh, bother, who has time for that? No one wants to hear my long-winded tales of my everyday life. But at least the world didn't end, right? That's always good. Of course, now the Mad Hatter is throwing some absurd Tea Parties all across my nation. But what are you gonna do? Oh well.

In other news, it's finally happened. I've been waiting impatiently for twelve years, and Duke Nukem Forever has finally been released for Xbox 360. So naturally, I shelled out the $60 for it, despite the bad reviews and my better judgement, because I just had to see it for myself. I had to know for sure that it wasn't just a fever dream. And it wasn't. There it is, in my Xbox. And after twelve fucking years of development, they still somehow managed to fuck up what should have been the best game ever. And I'm not talking Turok-remake bad. That I could deal with. This is just... sad.

Sure, Duke's back. Sure, he's fighting aliens again. But what used to feel like a fuck-plot-and-exposition sprinting-at-you-makes-my-bullets-go-faster-and-hurt-you-more testosterone-fest full of quips mocking pop culture and what was modern gaming has now become a twisted amalgamation of pieces of those elements, as if the developers were building some sort of Frankenstein's Monster from Lovecraftian corpses they neither understood nor could ever fully grasp.

As a shooter, the folks at Gearbox lovingly stole all the most common elements from every other fucking shooter on the market and mashed them into a Duke-esque mold in the hopes of passing it off as fourth-wall breaking mockery of other games. Instead of regenerating health or shields, you have "Ego". Drink a can of beer, and suddenly you have overshields - I mean, it makes you tougher. Definitely not a Halo ripoff. And of course, Duke doesn't have time for a flashlight. No, after getting rich and famous in the aftermath of the last game's events, he's got the dough to pick up a pair of night-vision sunglasses. Well that's fucking plausible. Most of the weapons from the old game are there, however, in spirit if not in full functionality. But as a shooter overall, I'm not blown away. Mediocre at best.

They compensated for that by adding plot. Not good plot, mind you, but they tried. Good job, Gearbox. Now take this juicebox and go color in the other room while I talk to the grownups. Because Holy Ninja-Kicking Christ, is the exposition poorly done. It's so bad, while playing the first three levels, I actually got fucking bored. Playing a video game. Me. To put this in perspective, this is a guy who dug a 25x20 quarry down to the bedrock in Minecraft without mods, saying your shiny new game bored me to tears to the point that I was surfing the web while your NPCs jabbered, or while your loading screens chugged on and on for what felt like eons at a time. I swear, new species could evolve and die out in the space of time it takes to load a new zone.

But it's okay, because Duke Nukem is known for all the interactive shit strewn through the levels that have no impact on the actual game but are just neat to mess with. Like pool tables and strippers! The good news: there are still strippers, and eventually you even get some nicely rendered bare breasts. Bad news: You need to have the patience to play through a bunch of levels to get to them, and there are plenty of minigames with terrible controls to slow you the fuck down in between. There's still a pool table in this incarnation of Duke's adventures, but Odin knows the controls and physics have only gotten clunkier and less realistic. And don't even attempt the pinball machine. It's enough to make you lose faith in programmers.

The one thing I'll give them some credit for is that for every three to five dumb one-liners they've given Duke to spout (many of which are weak jokes referencing the old classic, like "I've got balls of... fail."), they give him one truly funny one ("Power armor is for pussies!" when offered Master Chief's suit from the Halo series).

But all in all, it's just not enough. Maybe it's my fault. Maybe I've built up my expectations too much over the years. Maybe it was wrong of me to expect the shining golden god of video games when I should have known that the amount of time it spent in development could only be a bad sign for Duke. Or maybe not. Maybe it is our duty to use these two incarnations, placed side by side, to finally boil down just what makes a shooter good, and what makes a flop. Science can guide us to a new golden age of entertainment, and Duke here is the perfect test subject.

In any case, the next game I buy for my birthday will be one which has had a demo publicly released.

Careful What You Wish For

So I'm getting my End Of The World Party after all. Tonight, I'll be celebrating the facade of a democratic election by the people with my friends, and we shall make merry as we watch the electoral votes be tallied. We're supporting Obama tonight, as we have through the course of the election, but my friends, let me tell you one thing about this election: however things go, this is the end of the world as we know it.

We are entering a new era for the United States, whether Palin - sorry, McCain - wins, or Obama. The Republicans seem to have taken their bag of tricks and honed it to an unprecedented destructive potential by even placing Palin near an office in the main 48, not to mention the unfortunate (for everyone, it seems) potential for McCain to not survive his term were he to win. Where with Obama's stance on gun control, I fear the underground market will continue to thrive, expanding now to half the country's population - perhaps even normally law-abiding, god-fearing citizens - through either fear of armed criminals or simply stubbornness to cling to the 2nd amendment (the most important one, through Charlton Heston-tinted glasses).

Regardless, these trying times are far from over. So tonight, let's get out and vote, my American friends and readers (for those of you who live in the rest of the world, may your country have the good luck not to be too closely involved with ours in the future), for whichever side you favor. But however our opinions divide us, let us always remember that we are still in this together. Tomorrow, we will wake up and face a new future. Together. As Americans, as nations, and most importantly, as humans.

Party Time, Excellent

So, I'm a little bummed, what with the upcoming holiday I'm gonna have to miss. I was hoping to get this big group of friends together, do inane things and eat food that we'd regret later (and probably drink things we'd regret later, too). And now, after months of buildup, I can't do it. OF course, I found out about this a while ago, but now that I see the originally proposed date drawing near, it's just depressing.

What's a guy gotta do for an End of the World party around here?

If you haven't guessed already, we're nine days away from the proposed firing date for the Large Hadron Collider, which would have been nerve-wrackingly awesome had they not had a SINGLE FAULTY CONNECTION out of 10,000 soldered wires. I mean damn, man. 1 bad connection and the cooling unit blows, and now we have to wait til the summer for electricity prices to drop enough for the damn thing to be supercooled to the proper temperature (or lack thereof) for the thing to fire.

What the hell. Maybe I'll have a Hey, The World Didn't End Yet party. And we'll all sit around, thinking about how we definately should go to work tomorrow, because we're gonna need cash to prepare for the enivitable total economic collapse we're about to ride through.

Ooh. And then we can have a Hey, That Sucked How The US Suddenly Became A Third World Country party. Or an underground Viva La Revolution party. Or a Socialist party.

Pass It On Or The Orphan Gets It

I found this gem among my facebook notes a while back and wanted to share it with the rest of you who aren't my [close] friends:

Dearest friends and allies, loved ones and the aloof, acquaintances and crew members, this is for you:

I'm tired of chain letters. I'm sure I'm not the only one. Of course, they're not a problem here on facebook, but you see them all the time via email and *shudder* MySpace bulletins. Frankly, they're just plain obnoxious.

Some tell about a girl who was murdered, so I should pass it on to ten friends so her misfortune doesn't pass to me. Others tell me how much a person cares about me, and if I don't pass it on to enough people, I obviously live the life of a destitute hermit who will never be happy. Others still will simply cause my true love to call me at four in the morning and profess their love to me if I pass the letter on, while failure results in lifelong unhappiness.

Anyone notice a trend? No, for once, I'm not pointing at the obvious reference to the Christian mindset of eternal damnation upon my failure to act for repentance.

No, I need to comment on the lack of humanity and common decency inherent in these letters, which I doubt lack any sort of mystical quality once translated into an electronic format (though I'm not one to take chances with the occult). Figure it out yet?

Well, here's a little something about me you might not all realize. I have a very open mind when it comes to the occult and mystic. I am also very cautious regarding such things. I don't disturb grave markers/ruins, I'm very careful around abandoned buildings and such places where spirits might be bound, and I greatly respect the spirits of others and those of Nature. But I don't pass on chain letters, at risk of life and limb and soul.

Why?

Because who the fuck would send something that might bring about eternal damnation to their friends? It's just cruel and thoughtless. And if there is no risk, and it's just a bunch of bullshit, then WHY THE HELL IS IT CLOGGING MY INBOX STILL?

I just don't understand. Superstition should not supersede common sense. DON'T SEND CHAIN LETTERS WITH BAD RESULTS. DON'T SEND THEM AT ALL, UNLESS YOU TRULY MEAN WHAT THEY SAY. I know, I'm acting like it's a matter of life and death. "Kyle, it's just an email. Chill the fuck out." Well, what can I say? It's messed up however you look at it.

I Hope It Doesn't Mean I'm Crazy

I think I finally discovered the physical, natural, spiritual boundary between Central and South Jersey today. Long has the argument ran, some claiming South Jersey starts more north, others more south, others that there is a central jersey and the jerks arguing about this without them are assholes. But never has anyone found quotable evidence of a split. I do not have photographs of my evidence as yet, but I think I might have to find a way to get some video when I pass next. Hopefully it will be visible again.

You are wondering what it is I'm talking about, I suppose. I would be too. But then, you've had plenty of time to come to the realization that it's folly to expect me to always make sense.

I digress. I was driving south to work today, into an ever thickening fog bank. It's a 45 minute drive, but I can tell you, there is a precise spot where I gasped and suddenly knew the truth. Right as I was coming to the Bass River Toll Plaza (southbound, so you're actually paying attention, not digging for change), I noticed a sudden change all around me. It was as if the world had suddenly shifted down the spectrum. To this point, the world had been bathed in gray, but the kind of grey you get in the Wizard of Oz opening scenes - that almost Sepia-tone that you know in your heart is really black and white, though you see it as black and brown. But as the tolls came into view, the color seemed to catch up with me, and the world shifted towards blue. Sepia became grey, the light went dark, and the dark went darker. It was strange and unsettling, and not the first time I've perceived this to occur, and the effect lasted the next twenty minutes as I drove to work. (This was around 8 in the morning)

Having noticed this more than once, I can rule out being crazy. So now I think I need to set up a digital camera on a video setting for this point. I'll just toss it on my dashboard and hit record, I guess. We'll see what I can get.

Pay-Pal Guy Rides Again

I was prowling the headlines in Google News earlier, as I am oft to do when I want to know what's going wrong in the world without getting too immersed in all the crap, and I noticed a fun one. As of about 4 PM yesterday, SpaceX is now the first privately-funded company to put a liquid-fuel craft into orbit. This is the fourth try by these folks, the last of which carried Jame's Doohan's ashes (this is Scotty from the original Star Trek, for those of you ranking below me on the nerd-o-meter) along with some of the remains of nearly 200 others. They lost contact with the vessel after the first separation stage, at which point their engineers believe residual thrust in the detached section caused it to rear-end the second stage of the craft. But this time, they sent the Falcon 1 up with a dummy payload, and achieved orbit without a problem.

My question here was: "Who was funding this?" I assumed it would be a group of investors, but couldn't imagine who they would be. Turns out, it's the guy who created PayPal. Apparently, he sold PayPal to eBay.com for $1.5 billion, which I suppose is more than enough money to, excuse the pun, get his company off the ground. So now we have the potential to actually get commertial flights in orbit in the future, provided the future holds a lithium-ion battery big enough to replace the damn rocket fuel, because by the time we get to the point where this might help, or even be available, it'll be too expensive to use.

Things The Star Wars Saga SHOULD Have Taught Us

About Life:

1) Light and Dark are not bad things. The Dark Side is not the Evil Side. But it's easier to use for evil means because it's more powerful offensively. The Light Side is only seen as good because much of it's power tends towards defensive abilities, mastered through meditation. But the saga is there for a reason larger than "Yay! Lasers and princesses in the same story! Let's blow things up in space!". The saga as a whole (Yes, I am recognizing episodes 1-3 as part of the saga officially, dispite my initial displeasure at how they were writen) is a lesson on the need for balance. Their conflicts arrise from the belief that one side is right, and the other wrong. Point of view draws them into combat with each other. The Jedi believe Anakin will bring "balance" to the Force by helping eliminate the Sith, when in fact, the only way to balance a council of several hundred Jedi against a few Sith is to kill a lot of Jedi. As it was, the Force was stacked in favor of the Light Side-favoring wannabe-Vulcans. And as good as it is to have them around, people are not meant to live lives of logic. Nor are they meant to spend their years cultivating hatred. The true "balance" in the Force ends up being Luke, who embraces qualities of both schools of thought to confront Vader and the Emperor. We must all find this balance.

2) It doesn't matter who shoots first. It matters if you can walk away from it.



About Film Making:

3) It's okay to change an audience, but not too much. A New Hope was so good because it was a grown-up's fairy tale. It was a quest to save a princess from a black knight. But with lasers and a wookie. The Empire Strikes Back was a great follow-up, and takes our heroes into darker territory, setting us up for a final showdown in the next film. Return (Revenge) of the Jedi is the darkest of all, and yet, for some reason, this film is infested with Ewoky cuteness. As if C3PO wasn't annoying us enough on his own, we now have to listen to the incessant screaching and purring of Ewoks as they show us all the reasons they should have never been able to flourish as their own society. But yes, many of them die (some heroicly), making the Empire an obviously horrible enemy, but by this point, we know how terrible they can be and we don't need the very obvious visual of stormtroopers killing teddy bears.

In these terms of an evolving tone through the movies, episodes 1-3 actually mature better, in a manner which I'm going to call the Jar-Jar Effect. The less he is featured in a film, the darker it is, and the closer to the original Trilogy you are. Jar-Jar Binks is inversely proportional to the quality of the movie.

4) We really don't need to see how everyone was as a child. Boba Fett, though in need of more focus as a character (since we assume he's a badass until he's beaten by a blinded Han Solo), was an entirely unneccessary addition to Episode 2 as a little boy. In the books, I know Boba Fett is supposed to survive, managing to escape the Sarlaac's stomach before he is digested, but unless the fact that the clone troopers were cloned from his father (like him) plays a major part in the next episodes (Lucas wrote 9, remember?), his history is something that would have been best left a mystery.

5) Human dialog is the key to a movie. I don't care how many ships you can show in combat at once, or how amazing the action is, if your main characters sound less human than R2D2, the whole piece of art will suffer and it will flop. I sincerely wish I could get a few people and redo the scenes that went wrong in the 'new trilogy' - say, all of the scenes involving Anakin or Padme.