Haha, Kyle's a Tropical Depression

I got it. I've killed a great many things. I've jumped great heights and gone to great lengths to destroy anything that stands in my way. And according to George Lucas, it's all Star Wars canon.
If you haven't already guessed, I'm talking about The Force: Unleashed, the newest game in the Star Wars galaxy. It's really everything I could want in a game, though it does have a few noticable flaws, like the difficulty aiming, and the poor controls for blocking (Enemies just seem to rip you apart sometimes even with the block button firmly depressed before the attack). It's really about just being able to pick up a wookie mid-attack, bounce his head off a tree once or twice, and them slam him onto a few of his buddies. Yes, Darth Vader is a total badass as he is meant to be. (side note: the psp game presents your character as a much more brutal killer)

Being almost done with the Xbox version (and having beaten the psp version), I've glanced at the news again. Good gravy, world, what the hell is wrong with you? I look away for a little bit to do my own thing, and you start to crumble on yourself? The stock market's gone wrong, there's a Large Hadron Collider when we could have saved so much money and building a Small Hadron Collider (See, I'm a practical thinker. They should appoint me to the Treasury. I'd save people billions), and Sarah Palin is still a major focal point of McCain's campaign (which seems to be performing a charade for the economy, and crashing as we watch in awe). But there's hope. Google's putting out a phone to counter the iPhone. Yay!

Oh, and apparently, Tropical Storm (read: Hurricane-in-Training/Hurricane Apprentice) Kyle is making it's way to our anti-social shores. Woo! Can't wait to see my namesake tear some shit up!

Happyness is a cold, dead Stormtrooper

I haven't been excited for a video game since the Wii came out with the new Super Smash Brothers game. Granted, though I wasnt disappointed with the game (it's still a favorite in my circle of miscreants. Apparently, its great to play stoned.), the system itself proved to be a major let-down. What with the wonky motion sensors, and Nintendo's strange, zealous focus on gimmicky games based on looking like an idiot as opposed to games based on story and skill, and more peripheral attachments than Batman's utility belt, the whole deal seems to add up to a large waste of money.

But. There is hope. It comes in the form of The Force: Unleashed, which comes out today. At last I can satisfy my Sithly urges and throw things at people from afar with the force. Crushing people with TIE Fighters? I'm there. Working for Darth Vader? I don't even need benefits. I'll intern with the motherfucker. Killing everyone I come across? ...Erm, I do this already in all my other games... But hey, now I can do it in style!

I get my copy delivered on Friday (supposedly). I'd thought it came out friday until just this morning, when my friend pointed out it comes out today, which means I misled myself and had read the shipping date for the game and thought it was the release date. I get it three days sooner! W00tz!!1!

Anyways, this seems to be the begining of a parade of good games to come, like the new Spiderman game, Web of Shadows, which I might actually overlook my hatred of Spiderman to play, now that I see a decent combat system in play. And Left 4 Dead looks like it'll be quite the party game - if, of course, you have four-person parties.

And Fallout 3. That will be good. I hold Oblivion as an example, and contest the nay-sayers that Elder Scrolls 4 was a good game. Screw you people, I can't wait to kill some poor, radiation-addled, mutated sons of bitches.

Extended breaks from blogs are totally fall-damage

Haha, I'm back! And you thought you were rid of me. Silly humans.

So it's been a while ride since my last post in December. (...Holy crap, my last post was in December.) Since then, I've been to California, been convinced I'd fallen in quicksand, eaten a squid's face (fried, of course. How else would you eat someone's face with dignity?), bought a knife from a Marine, gone kayaking in the ocean with a Marine and played kayak tag with said Marine, beaten Guitar Hero 3 over the course of a single day on Medium (this is back when it came out, I'm not bragging about it), trekked on foot over most of San Francisco, gotten a harmonica lesson on Haight and Ashbury, got a new girlfriend, traveled to Minnesota with her and her family for a week's vacation during the summer, got a new bike, bought and became proficient with a Ripstik (a caster board - I'll explain some other time), obtained an Xbox 360 at last, decided the Wii might have been a waste of money after all, tried the Wii Fit and walked away from it, found out that Spore is a totally fall-damage idea, decided that I use the word "gay" to describe things that are horribly lame too often and switched to a more accurate term - "fall-damage", missed the financial aid deadline and inadvertantly took a semester off because of it, and got a new job at the head office of Spencer's Gifts, where I use all my Computer Science talents to pack boxes.

Anyways, I'll be here from now on, keeping you guys posted on everything that really matters, without ever mentioning fall-damage things like Sarah Palin's Miss Congeniality award.

...And Then Mary Poppins Pulled Out A Shank

So I saw The Golden Compass a few weeks back, opening weekend, with the usual crew of miscreants and otherwise awesome characters. And of course, I come expecting a kid-oriented Lord of the Rings style movie, and I'm there for the fighting polar bears, hoping Daniel Craig will make it interesting.

Well, little did I know that Daniel Craig would barely make more than a few brief appearances, leaving the main characterly duties to some little girl I've never heard of before who is followed by an increasingly annoying shape shifting weasel with an inability to shut the hell up - think Navi from the Ocarina of Time, but slightly bigger. But at least I find that I was right about the child-orientation. It's very much a children's film, because no sane adult could possibly write this without a kid in mind. They hardly reveal any plot at all, they gather allies like they were a dime a dozen, and somehow this little girl is the only one who can figure out the relation of a series of three symbols on the stupid golden compass among a group of elders and leaders.

I digress. There is indeed a polar bear. He wears armor. He fights. He is Ian McKellan. WHAT?! How the hell did he not even get mentioned in the commercials? He was GANDALF. He's a big name in the fantasy/super hero deals. And he plays a much bigger part than Danial Craig, even without an actual appearance. Okay, so I've been entirely deceived by the cast. At least Nicole Kidman is really in it. That's the only thing they've been up front about. And Christopher Lee popped up, too, to further surprise me.

Anyways, back to the polar bear. He fights another polar bear, in a thoroughly satisfying yet oddly Simba v. Scar-esque fight scene. And then it happens. The atom-bomb of target audience eliminations. Gandalf the bear punches the other bear's JAW OFF. Clean off. And proceeds to bite him in the throat and smash him on the ground until dead. So much for a flippin' kid's movie.

But then we plunge right back into the mostly childish stuff, and close with a large, kind of ridiculous battle with flying archers and machine-gun toting Russians with wolves.

Of course, this isn't the first time I've seen this kind of thing recently, nor will it be the last, I'm sure. Ghost Rider, of course, could have been fantastic if they could have simply accepted that the comic itself had very dark themes that they'd need to keep consistently. Of course, some genius decided it was a comic book movie so they had to keep things a bit more family oriented. Awesome. Let Nick Cage fight the devil's son, but let's not be too scary. Yeah. Great idea.

700% Off

I was led to wonder recently, as I wandered through a department store with a few friends of mine, just what goes through a man's head when he writes "LOW LOW PRICE" on a sticker in hopes of making extra sales. I never trust a man who repeats something like that. That's too much of a good thing.

What about just the low price? If your LOW LOW PRICE is the price of the holiday season, then what were your other prices? Just normal low? I'd imagine, though, that they'd be higher than the LOW LOW PRICE. And if your low price is higher than the current one, that makes it your high price. Which means I've been getting screwed on high-priced crap the rest of the year. (Or I would be if I actually bought any of the garbage) And if that's your high price, what about the stuff that's not on sale? It's priced higher than the high price stuff! Maybe they should call those the HIGH HIGH PRICES, and advertise them as a challenge for those who can afford it. "Only a real man will pay these prices." And just show the Marlboro Man having sex with a supermodel while flying a jet and holding the product in one hand.

Hell, maybe I should go into the business of advertising.

I <3 Alien Invasions

Pathetic humans,
Clinging to mere hopes and dreams.
INCINERATE THEM.

Farmers aren't the only ones with hoes

Just a quick one before I head to work:

I was driving past my place of employment the other day in an intellectual fog, and skewed as my perspectives on everything were at the moment, I got to thinking (a dangerous habit, I know): I'm being rented.

(For those of you who don't know me, and that's likely all of you, I work at my local county library as a "Student Shelver") I'm paid by the hour. There is no commission for shelving books, and I am not rated on how well I do my job - simply that at some point, I do it. I am literally renting myself out to the county.

...Which leads me to wonder: how does a prostitute determine the going rate? I suppose we have to account for the presence of competition in the area, whether she works for a pimp or freelance, and based on skill. But, the question is: would the charge be incurred for each service rendered, or since we know time is money, by the amount of time it takes? Is someone actually paying for the sex, or the time it takes from her busy schedule?
I assume it must be some combination.
But if a pimp is involved, from what I've gathered from movies (a surprisingly reliable source if you're willing to filter certain theatric elements ), he collects much of the revenue for himself. In which case, does he pay his ho by the hour, or does she earn commission?