Purple Figments

This might spontaneously end much like the last one. If it does I don't really feel bad about it. I am in a good mood though, a good enough mood that I don't feel like dealing with people. I just sort of want to play my video games, read, and I dunno something else. Its sunday and I hate sundays because everything is closed by the time I get off of work and there are "things" I want to buy. No matter I'll deal with it tomarrow, which is a better time for me anyway. I have a not present present to give to someone. I like giving presents! I don't need a lot of things, just some blank dvd cases and what not. Other people give music or things, and I give out movies. Glorious movies. You know what? Fuck the -ous sound.

Oh so I really want a copy of "A course in modern linguistics" I was flipping through it the other day and it looks neat. I've always wanted a copy of it but every time I see it, it is around 20 bucks which is a large chunk of money that is primarily could be use for a cooler piece of theory. Of course all the books on amazon are really expensive so I don't know what the deal is. Oh well. I'll pick it up someday on a whim and vaugely regret it but not really.

Moving on. People who fry moonpies have problems. Just sayin.

I've been wanting to play through a big clunky roleplaying game. I really want to play persona 3, holy shit that game is so cool. I just don't think I want to devote the 80 hours it would take to beat it into the ground. That is some seriouse time to devote to a game. Of course I say that while spending at least an hour a night on kingdom of loathing, or a couple of hours on dungeon fighter, but it is diffrent with persona. There is a lot of extended concentration involved, and to be honest? The whole time limit thing sort of stresses me out. That is the main thing that is holding me up. That's kind of a lame reason but whateva.

Oh oh oh, I need to remind myself to go to the eye doctor on wensday, or maybe tuesday afternoon. Hell I should totally wake up early and just do that. Since I am reusing my frames it shouldn't be all that expensive. Its been an expensive month for me and the glasses thing is kinda unanticipated. I also need to get an oil change and some general maintenance stuff. Oh well. I guess no new toys for the next couple of months. Huh it isn't often I write about money. Most times I have more than enough and it is nothing more than an abstract concern to me. I don't really spend that much money on STUFF. It is just that by not spending money I don't even have to think about it. Now that I have to I am annoyed.

Oh well my battery is about to die, I left my power cord at home, and I am nearly out of things to say. Well that is not true at all, I have all sorts of things I just not for embloggery. Ah well, like I said earlyer I am in a GOOD mood! And hopefully I won't have to deal with a crippling headache tonight.

Loathing the Kingdom.

Okay I want to go work on the PPP but I have this one topic rattling around in my head at the moment and it doesn't fit with what I was doing earlyer so now here we go.

I've stared playing Kingdom of Loathing again on a regular basis. Everytime I start playing it again I am always left wondering why it is I stopped. Sadly it has grown to be a fairly time consuming game, but it is increadbly fun so I don't really care. I am more than willing to give it an hour and a half of my evenings.

This entry is going to be about the game. You should play! YES YOU DO IT! just go to http://www.kingdomofloathing.com and get started because this game is made of awesome. You also aren't going to fucking get what I am saying unless you do.

So yeah! Right now I am midway through a Sauceror hardcore run. At the moment I just want to reach through the computer and strangle him. Sauceror ascensions have never been very much fun for me. Once I am done though what I plan on doing is going back to pastamaster, which despite being practically the same thing is somehting I enjoy playing much more. The original point of this run was to grab the candy cookbook spell and right now I am trying to figgure out if I still wanna do that or not. I'm thinking yes I do want it, I mean it is fun and it provides a nice little boost which helps out, espcecially since I am not really using candy hearts anymore. Also the sugar rush effect isn't really half bad, actually now that I look at it closely it is pretty ballin. THough I would like the make more sauceror runs without horror and to do that I need Wave of Sauce. Tonight I am going to see what it will take to make wave of sauce pay for itself and to see if it is worth it. If it is then I'll grab it and try another couple of sauceror runs before going back to pastamaster. If it isn't worth it then screw it I am going back to pastamaster and when I come back to sauceror hopefully it will just be genericly less horrible.

In general the next few skills I want are:

Candy Summoning
Sauce Attack Spell
Pasta Attack Spell
Intrinsic Spicyness
Impetouse Saucyness
Way of the Sauce
Surge of Icing (I really think this skill will pay off amazingly)
Lasagna Bandages Actually before I do another Sauceror run I am getting this skill fuckit
Spirit of Ravioli
Candy Blast

Okay so I feel like figguring out what order I want to get these skills. Then I wasted a half hour before giving up on it. Oh well. So a couple of final things.

Notes to make the run go faster.

1) I need to use clovers more. Specifically to get Stats. I mean a couple of clovers can turn into all sorts of crazy stat gain, especially once the bathroom is unlocked.

2) There is an alternative to flyering the guy made of bees. I must know what this is. I think it is something in the bottles but I am not sure what.

3) I need to learn to use my love songs more. They aren't just stupid powerful combat items but they are powerful potions as well and I should make use of them.

4) I need to learn to balance the snowcone, stickers, and candy hearts.

5) I just read how mining works, I now feel pretty stupid. That will help right there.

6) I need to find a more effcient way to do the hippy/fratboy war. Right now I think I am doing pretty good with it, and the Bathroom is no longer sub optimal so I guess its cool, espcially now that I have Sonatta. I dunno. This go around I am going to start tracking how many turns the war takes.

7)Learn to use the He-Boulder more. That starts tonight!

8) Be more willing to try out alternative food sources. This really kicks into gear next ascension when I start doing muscle sigh ascensions on a regular basis.

okay that seems like everything I can think of at the moment. Woop! Okay off to something else.

Hopping from Puddle to Puddle

Taking a little break from Marx I decided to do some generalized talking about stuff.

1) I downloaded and played Spore. That game really is a pile of ass. As a toy it gains top marks. It is fun to screw with creature bits, desighn buildings, mess with junk...but the actual game itself is not fun. Well okay the cell phase is a great deal of fun. When something 80 billion times your size comes chasing after you it is increadble fun to turn, fight, and win. I did win too. My first battle was epic as I circled the giant monstrosity for mintus dodging nimbly between the spikes that covered its body, nibbling away at its health until it died. Then... I got absolutly no reward. Self satisfaction was almost enough though.

Then in the next phase we had tribes and such and we wandered around gathering food and kill those who fools who happened to be next to us. Now see this is where I thought it would get exciting. See if I kill 5 of thier dudes they go extinct and I naturally thought the same rules would apply to me. They didn't. Everyone left me alone and I was free to rip the heads off of whoever I wanted to with impunity. THe rest of the game left me feeling similarly blah.

I think it is because I've been spoiled. Some of my favorite games are X-Com UFO Defesne, Dwarf Fortress, Alpha Centuri, and I really want to take a couple of days off from work to learn to play Europa Universals III, or maybe the rome version I can't tell. Either way I am excited about those games. The point being is that when I sit down to the computer to play a game I have this weird expectation that things are going to be complex and exciting and when they aren't I am annoyed. The thing is that Spore could of been everthing I asked of it. 90% of the games development is graphics, so they could of spent a couple of extra months or even a year putting an actual game behind their little toy but they didn't. That is sad.

2) Bye bye hours. So my hours have been cut for no real reason other than to piss me off. I feel like I should be pissed off because they are my hours and I should both fight and die for them, and yet I just don't feel like it. I am enjoying the extra time I now have on a weekly basis and I have to say that I am much less tired and in a much better mood over all. It also makes my weeks fly by faster. So I am generally happy with this new situation.

I do make signifigantly less money now though. SAD! SO I have to seriously cut down on my cash expendatures, which is something I wanted to do anyway. It will be easyer now though because I work less. Yeah I know for most people the opposite is true, but I tend to justify most expendatures with the justification that I work a lot and I need these things to enjoy...gah lunch is over

Run Far Little Indian Run Far Far Away

A Eulogy.

Sometime in April 2006 I bought myself a Nintendo DS. Now two mighty years later I find myself laying my faithful companion to rest as its smaller flashyer replacement is now filling my pocket with its slightly reduced bulk. For most people a DS is just a game system. Something they bring with them sometimes to someplaces and sort of forget about it. Lots of people I know leave their ds's under beds, in drawers, tucked away in fogetten places never to be seen again.

Not me though. The DS is my very first hand held system and it is pretty much one of the most god damn amazing game systems to come out in a long long time.

Looking back though, developers had high hopes for the DS, hopes that were dashed by a variety of technical limitations, poor design choises, and idiocy. And yet despite all of that the DS has managed to produce some of the most increadble games I have played in a long time. Games that I have spent many hours curled up under a large pile of blankets quietly tapping away at my screen. It kept me company while I was alone, and it saw me through some of the worst times in my life. It really did. Coincidently it has also seen me through some of the best times in my life. Like the times I would spend furiously swiping away at "The World Ends With You" while Sasha would be off doing something or other. However, as the story goes, we hurt the ones we love.

And I hurt my DS big time.



My DS was more than a game system to me, it was a wallet, it was also an institution. You have to be tough if you want to run around with the crazy kids.

To be fair though this DS has lived an extrodinary life. It has been dropped onto concrete more times that I can imagine keeping track of. I'm clumsy, and I don't want to hear it from you, so yes I dropped the stupid thing a lot. It didn't compain though, in fact I think it liked it in a weird way.

One time someone thought it would be cute to hit me with a wooden cutting board while my DS was in my back pocket. My DS tanked for me. Yep it lept in front of that cutting bored and took the full force of the blow saving my tender backside. Of course my immeadiate reaction was to express my desire to kill the person who hit me, friends don't let friends get paddled unwillingly. That was a day we became closer.

Oh oh, and the time the hinge broke was pretty epic. Okay so the DS was on my trenchcoat, and my friend who was in a hurry to go grabbed my coat and flapped it sending my DS through the air. Now I don't know how high it went, but I am 6'7 and it was well over my head, then it fell down an incline with the only damage sustained being a cracked hinge which eventually came off.

Oh and another time I forgot to latch my briefcase closed so when I picked it up my DS fell out first, onto concreate of course, then several hardcover rpg books landed on top of it, and for extra awesome dropped my briefcase onto the whole pile. I am a fucking genius. The DS still worked though.

Most stupid shit has happened to that game system than just about anything else I've ever owned, and that's pretty impressive. Some of it my fault, some of it not.

But ultimatly when one day I flipped it open hoping to get in some quality time before my lunch rolled to a close I found, to my horror, that the top screen got caved in. I have no idea how it happened, but considering that both hinges were broken at this point leaving the top screen to just sort of flap around, so I knew the end was coming. I just kinda hoped it would be more epic than that. I wanted it to die via fire and violence just like it livedm and it did, I guess, but I wasn't really there for it.

Actually stupidly enough the thing still works, so I plan on making it my tetris machine. I can't sell it, and I love it way to much. So I will ignore the sad little "Please let me die" wimpers that I hear coming from it...like I ignore all wimpers and forge ahead. Besides I really hate the fact that my new DS is white, I really do.

Giant Robots? You Hardly Know Us!

This has been coming for quite some time now. It started with Godhand, then there is this new game by the devil may cry creator that involves a leatherclad librarian from hell, or my current fantasys whichever. Its come to a head with Red Alert 3 though.

Most of my knowlage involving video games comes from either gaming ooliticts.com or rpg.net which is an unusally well informed if slightly snooty forum. Anyway despite the world being in perpetual state of orgasam over the list of new releases that has come out some people have found time for good old fashioned red alert 3.

Red alert 3 is awesome. It uses cheese full motion video like its predicessors, it stars Tim Curry as the German Army Commander and the guy who played Chekov on star trek as the chinese prime minister. There are also a variety of other people I just don't really care about. The main criticism people are leveling at the game is that the units are campy and "fun". The chinese have laser sword samuris, giant robots, and all sorts of other anime inspired campy, rediculouse goodness. And everyone is bitching about it.

Maybe there is something wrong with me but damnit I still think Giant Robots are cool. I don't ever think I will look at a giant robot and go, "Oh no a giant robot boohoo I hate those now". Seriously what the fuck people? Last time I checked video games were supposed to be fun. You remember fun right? I don't know where video gamers got it in thier head that grey backgrounds, angst, and blood were the only paths to fun but it seems to of happened, much to my frusteration.

See I've already written extensivly on this topic only I used movies instead of video games, but movies are a slighly diffrent, oh Megan says hello. She has neat glasses. Movies have slightly diffrent target base, certainly a more main stream one. Anyone can watch both Deathrace 2000 and its associated remake, while not everyone can play Red Alert 3. And yet somehow people can't seem to grasp that giant robots aren't a thing to celebrate about. I love video games, I really do and i would prefere it if people didn't shit all over my fun with thier giant robot hate. Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you GIANT ROBOTS.

Lets move on to the game by the guy who created Devil May Cry. While I love the devil may cry series I hate its main charecter and every time he dies under my control I can't help but to smile happily and hope that this time it will be forever. Unfortunatly the games are fucking fun and I keep playing them. So this new game has a female main charecter who is dressed head to toe in skin tight leather, so instead of all the cleavage in the world we were treated to croch shots.

Women in leather? Yes please! Especially when they are a dominatrix style bad ass. There are just certain things I am attracted too, like that for example.

On a certain level this is a good step fowards for feminism. Most of the people railing againt the croch shots are older men who have been made more sensative to the fact that there are personalities to the woman who they masturbate to and that sexual misrepresentation of women is harmful, and that blah blah blah. I don't mean to belittle feminism right here at this very moment, even if it sort of deserves it. People are turning down sex objects.

At the same time though, she is fucking hot, and is a digitally created charecter who is deisghned to be put on display. So take a break and enjoy her. There is nothing wrong with feeling desire, its a normal thing. Feeling desire over a video game charecter is slightly odd but whatever, being odd makes you better in bed. I think part of the problem is that there is a pretty in depth complexity of emotion involved with the whole thing.

I'm going to link it to sadomasochism because I am fucking awesome. Sadomasochistic relationships can still be increadbly kind and loving. The dom can still view the sub as a fully realized intelegent human being. The amount of trust that is shared between the two of them is on a level that most normals couldn't even concieve of. It takes a lot of trust in your partner to be able to backhand her and have it be okay. At the same time it takes a lot of trust to be back handed by someone and to know that they won't push you to far and that they will take care of you afterwards.

Most of the backlash against these sorts of relationships truely fail to take into account the increadbly special bond that develops. They instead reduce the relationship down to base components that they can understand and walk away.

Back to video games. The thought process goes along these same lines. I can still fully respect the woman around me while playing a video game where I am playing a leather clad dominatrix lady who keeps doing her back flips in such a way so that I get a face full of croch. I don't feel bad or guilty about this. Instead i want to get my girlfirend a latex cat suit and have her kick the crap out of me.

At the end of the day I think that something wonderful has been lost on video games. People are now taking them far to seriously. WHich is bizzare because they are all about light hearted fun for me. Which means that giant robots are still cool, and hot chick dressed in leather are still hot. That doesn't make me any less mature or uneductated. It does make me less boring. So nyah.

Columbine Retrospective

One day I went off on someone. Long story short a group of us were talking pleasently about things like video games, and this person butted in. She started talking about how there was this new game "Bully" out and that it was all about Bullying people, she could never understand how someone could play something like that. So I testily explained how you played a kid who beat up other bullies, you couldn't hurt girls, et cetera et cetera, and at the end of it she repeated the exact same thing she said before. Except this time, for flair, she added "all I know" at the start of the sentence. That's when I really laid into her.

I've also gone off on a mother at a game stop, along with a gamestop employee when the game stop employee wouldn't man the fuck up and just explain to her that all three games were equally violent.

Then there were my parents.

Columbine is one of thouse life changing events for me. It wasn't so much the idea of randomized violence, or the savagry of thouse children who perpetrated thous actions. No it was the fact that soon after if happened I watched a psychologist calmly explain, using reason, and intelegence, why I was insane.

At that moment all I felt was dread.


On a good day I am a marginal person. That means I'm not really connected to thous normal society things. I don't like sports, I don't hand around dudes who talk about chicks, I specifically dislike desighner clothing, you know what I mean. Instead I spent a lot of time reading, writing, and playing video games. Essentially, all those markers that my parents looked for in a normal child were missing. I didn't even read normal books.

While growing up I was never allowed to play dungeons and dragons with my friends. My parents were afraid that I would get addicted in some sort of dream reality, never to return. That they would find me out in the woods over the corpse of the meter reader, looting his body for the 5 gold peices that the average human carried on him or some such nonsense.

Yeah straight out of the Chick Track

But who cares? I was fast approching the age where I just stopped listening to them altogether. By that time I could handle my parents. All of society though? That's diffrent.

See it wasn't so much that the columbine kids played Doom. At that day in age anyone with a computer has played doom to one extent or another. What this psychologist did was to sit there and make a big deal about how these kids had modified their copy of doom to make it even more violent than before. They used a program called DeHackedEd which lets you switch around graphics and such. I had taken an interest in game design and I figgured I'd cut my teeth by making a few doom levels, and modding the exe a little bit so that I could take advantage of some of my desighns. Yeah I made the game more violent too. You replace the normal dead sprite with the gore sprite that you get after using a rocketlauncher.

I was called crazy because of it.

He cited their doom game as an example. He then cited that the fact that they made a violent game even more so, is a clear indication of the progression of their antisocial behaviours.

He then said that anyone who would do this to their game has some sort of derangment and should seek help.

And then there I was.

Am I crazy? Even if I am I am not going to let some teevee asshole tell me if I am or not. The things is though that people believe the shit they see on teevee without thinking about this. I knew this because I expereinced it first hand.

As a result I have devoted a decent portion of my life to defeating the idea that one medium can somehow magicaly cause violence in a person.

It is something that I tackle with the utmost passion and dedication. A lot of it is simply shouting down brute ignorance, as most people really can't speak on the subject with any sort of intelegence. Its something I feel is very important though.

As I progressed through life this is something that I have carried with me, paticularly through a theory intensive english program. So I spent lots of time gathering tools. I realize though that this is something that has been going on ever since socrates and Aristotle.

Specifically the Republic book X and the Poetics. You would think there is a statute of limitations on this sort of thing right? No no there isn't. Its strange though.

Of all the things around columbine, that stupid little man calling me crazy sticks with me the most. It was his very basic misunderstand of the entire ethos around video gaming that really got to me. I don't like communcacation gaps. I think it is the teaching instinct or something. I'm not certain. With every kid who shoots someone and then blames GTA I just want to find everyone who takes them seriously, sit them down, and talk to them. After all how are we supposed to get anywhere if we can't understand each other.