Halloween Story

It's a few days early for a Halloween story, but I wrote about it on twitter (http://twitter.com/Animawish), so, yeah.


Turn off the lights or something when you read it. :P



The whirling winds of that cold October evening sent chills down my spine as I ran. The meager illumination from the street lamps flashed above me as I ran under them, their dim splotches of light offering only the knowledge that I was being chased, not the identity of my pursuer.
I sprinted down the street, the wind and my pounding footsteps the only sounds in the night. My pursuer was completely silent, but he matched my pace with ease. I felt he was toying with me; waiting for me to exhaust myself before he killed me.
For I knew he would kill me. I could feel it. The way he stood in the corner of the bar, his empty hood pointing towards me. The awkwardly straight angle of his spine, the absence of acknowledgement from others as to his presence.
I was having drinks at the old bar with some friends. The place had a reputation for being haunted, so naturally it was packed on Halloween. The figure had stood out to me the second I entered the bar. He stood in the corner, on the opposite side of a table where two young women conversed over beers, heedless to the apparition to their side.
When I had gotten up to leave, the figure’s empty hood had followed me to the door, and as I walked out, the figure began to move towards me...
As I thought frantically back to the figure in the bar, trying to justify his reason for chasing me, I missed a flaw in the concrete and stumbled. It was at that moment I could feel the figure’s aura, because the specter radiated pure freezing energy. I could feel the sweat on my body solidifying and landing on the pavement with a faint tinkling as I stood there in sheer terror. After thirty seconds, I worked up the courage to slowly turn my stiff body around and face the figure.
The figure was standing right next to me with its arms spread. In a perverse part of my mind, it occurred to me that it was trying to give me a friendly hug. But I knew. I knew that the embrace of the creature would be my last experience. I could feel the intense cold literally freezing my arm. I couldn’t move now, or I would shatter. It was out of some sadistic part of the phantom’s consciousness to keep my brain functioning, to feel the intense pain of my nerves hardening into ice.
I watched the arms close around me in my peripheral vision. I couldn’t even close my eyes against my impending demise.
All I could do was watch as Death himself embraced me.

Video Games and Torn

Games I'm looking forward to getting:

Modern Warfare 2
Starcraft 2
Left 4 Dead 2
Assassin's Creed 2
Bioshock 2
Singularity

Yeah. The next couple of months will be the land of the sequels.
I'm going to get Modern Warfare 2 when it comes out, and probably Left 4 Dead 2 when it comes out. They come out on Nov. 10, 2009 and N0v. 17, 2009, respectively, so I'll be all gamed up. Assassin's Creed 2 comes out at the same time as Left 4 Dead 2, so I'll probably be asking for that for Christmas. Along with a balisong knife. Those things are expensive!

Mmmyeah. Frustration, here. Team Fortress 2 is an awesome-sauce game, but I have it for the Xbox 360, and the PC version gets so much extra stuff. So if I want it, I have to get my own computer, because my dad refuses to let me install Windows on our Mac with boot camp or parallels. So I've got to get my own computer, get parallels, Team Fortress 2, blah blah blah. Annoyance.

Another thing. Visit this site:

http://www.torn.com/register.php?XID=1278303

That's an online game. It's a PBBG, and it's fun (in my opinion.) If you click that link and get to level 5 in the game, it gives me stuff. So, yeah. http://www.tcbasic.com/ has some helpful guides and stuff, and it has its own guide.

Wheee

High school sucks. Hands down. 3-5 pages of writing a day? SRSLY?

Gaah. I don't have time to post on this blog really anymore. It takes a while to write these essays about video games and stuff, and that time is being used for essays for school.

If anybody reads this and gives a damn, I have a twitter. whee. I update it more often, but long things will still be here.

https://twitter.com/Animawish

Wheeeeeee.

PETA

The people over at PETA have to be the stupidest bunch of people on the planet. Who else could take a good idea, i.e. the protection of animals, and screw it up so badly that nobody with a brain takes them seriously?

For the few who don't know or haven't cared enough to know, PETA stands for "People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals." I'd change it to META, for morons, though. Plus, it's ironic, because it turns into Meat if you rearrange it!

Personally, I agree with some of their fundamentals. Animals are great, and shouldn't be mistreated. I disagree with the "ZOMFG NUB GO VEGAN OR BERN IN HEL" aspect of them. You can look at pretty much anything on their homepage and either have your intelligence insulted or be disgusted.
Here are some examples of META being fakktards:

1) http://www.peta.org/sea_kittens/about.asp
This is a petition to change the word "Fish" to "Sea Kitten". I am not kidding. And they say they have nearly 13,000 signatures. Imagine if everyone started using Sea Kitten instead of fish;
"There's plenty of Seakittens in the sea."
"I'm going Seakittening."
Fish-eye lense would become "Seakitten-eye lense". Imagine a director,
"Alright, for this scene, it's going to be in the point of view of the alien, so put in the seakitten-eye lense, and dim the lights."
And the Little Mermaid would make no sense. Imagine Sebastian's "Under the Sea" song. Here are the non-chorus parts with fish replaced by sea kitten:

Down here all the seakitten is happy
As off through the waves they roll
The seakitten on the land ain't happy
They sad 'cause they in their bowl
But seakitten in the bowl is lucky
They in for a worser fate
One day when the boss get hungry
Guess who's gon' be on the plate

The ray he can play
The lings on the strings
The trout rockin' out
The blackseakitten she sings
The smelt and the sprat
They know where it's at
An' oh that blowseakitten blow

Seriously? And imagine all the fish with fish in their names. Pufferseakitten? Anglerseakitten? Mudseakitten? Damn, Peta. Marine Biologists won't be happy with the reclassifications.

2) This is an article about Obama owning a fly: http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE55H4Z220090618

The excerpt in question:

But now People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, calling it an "execution," wants the commander-in-chief to show a little more compassion to even "the least sympathetic animals."

"Believe it or not, we've actually been contacted by multiple media outlets wanting to know PETA's official response to the executive insect execution," a blog on the group's website explained. "In a nutshell, our position is this: He isn't the Buddha, he's a human being, and human beings have a long way to go before they think before they act."

The group has sent Obama a device that traps a fly so it can then be released outside.

"We believe that people, where they can be compassionate, should be, for all animals," PETA spokesman Bruce Freidrich explained.

Seriously? A fly? I bet every member of PETA has killed bugs. You're saying we should, instead of slapping a mosquito, capture it with a mechanism and release it somewhere else? Should we leave rotting meat outside our doorstep to help the poor little grubs, desparately clinging to life and trying to grow up to be a fly for a half of a month at the most before perishing, either from another predator or old age? You critisize Obama for swatting one of several trillion flies on this planet, but say nothing of Bush's war in Iraq? Hiroshima? Would you people take a bullet for a house cat? When did the life a fly become a higher priority than STOPPING A WAR? Christ, PETA!

3) http://www.peta.org/cooking-mama/index.asp

PETA has made a flash game based on Cooking Mama where you mutilate a turkey for a thanksgiving dinner. It's extremely disgusting and fails to make a point. The only thing I see here is some sick minded PETA member having too much fun portraying the gruesome treatment of a turkey. I'm kind of at a loss for words here. I mean, really? You made this for the shock value, period!

4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_rights_and_the_Holocaust

They actually compared animals to the Holocaust. The. Freaking. Holocaust. WHAT THE FUCK? Have PETA completely forgotten everything about decency or the value of human life? That's a good campaign. "Jews are like animals. They're both killed a lot." I mean, for god's sake! In my opinion, the life a person is just a LITTLE more important than the life of a freaking chicken!

5) http://www.peta.org/featureBunniesiPhoneApp.asp

It's an iPhone app that checks if stores are cruel to animals. Which is funny, because it's not like every time Albertson's makes a sale, they kill a baby seal. Certain products that ALL COMPANIES GET are harmful to animals, while others, like LEGOS or VIDEOGAMES, have next to nothing to do with animals. And plus, the app isn't free. You have to pay if you want to help animals. What? That's right, the app is two dollars. You need to shell out two dollars for an app that'll tell you something you can find on google.

6) http://www.peta2.com/BreastsNotAnimalTests/game.asp

I don't even know what this is. Something about animals being used with breast cancer tests. PETA is obsessed with the sexy timez and the boobies. From their intentionally controversial Superbowl commercial, to a video game where you click on boobs, they are seriously sex crazed over there. Probably because they get none, being complete freaks. Here's another sex thing:
http://blog.peta.org/archives/2009/07/peta_cuties_bea.php

7) https://secure.peta.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=1858

Sure, seals are cute and shouldn't be slaughtered. But seriously, they enjoy the descriptions way too much. Look at that picture. And listen to this,

Sealers routinely hook seals in the eye, cheek, or mouth to avoid damaging the pelt, then drag the seals across the ice, in many cases without checking to ensure that they are unconscious.

Baby seals stand no chance against club-wielding trappers, and they must look on as fellow pups are bludgeoned to death before meeting the same bloody fate. The anguish that a mother seal feels as she watches her baby being beaten to death just a few feet away from her is horrifying and can be heard in her desperate cries and seen in her attempts to get to her baby.

Did we really need to hear that? FFS.

Not to mention all the shock value videos of cows being slaughtered. I've decided that PETA are obsessed with sex and violence.

Those are seven examples of why PETA are nothing but a bunch of immature freaks who need to grow out of their five year old obsession with violence and whining, and do something productive that isn't disgusting.

Noah Kalina

This is the most beautiful video I've ever seen on YouTube. I feel like he's a part of me in the five minutes of pictures.

He's got a website, http://www.everyday.noahkalina.com/ , where he posts the ongoing pictures. I really can't imagine checking up on it daily to see the progress, but it's still an amazing project.

The progression of his aging is so gradual, you don't even notice it. But compare the first pictures with the last pictures, and look at the latest pictures on his website. It's stunning. Nobody notices this progression. You can't see the constant aging bringing you to the end. This is a documentary of life, and it gets the point across better than if Morgan Freeman was narrating it in full detail.

The Office

I don't have broadcast television. I don't have cable, dish, comcast, or even an antennae. I get my entertainment from rentals, video games, books, and the intrawabz.

My brother discovered "Hulu" a couple of months back. It's pretty neat. You've probably heard of it, you get to watch TV shows on the web. If not,

http://www.hulu.com/

check it out. So anyway. I've mostly used it to watch Family Guy, which is pretty much the only show I miss from TV. I'd probably watch some of South Park too if I had TV, but mostly Family Guy.

At school, I hear everyone talking about the Office. Everyone says it's their favorite show, and they make it sound like it's a laughter fountain.

So, today, I watched it on Hulu, and I'm sitting here going, "What the hell?"

I've watched two episodes, and between them, I've had two instances where I've physically laughed out loud. The show is faintly amusing, but it's overshadowed by shows that aren't even comedies. It isn't that funny, and I don't get why everybody loves it. Maybe it's because everyone at my school is Mormon, and they're deprived of funny shows like Family Guy? I don't know. But the Office doesn't deserve the kind of praise it gets, in my opinion.

The Candy Shop Wars/More crap aboot vidjagemes

I read the Candy Shop Wars recently (like, yesterday) and I liked it. Brandon Mull is a Utard (like me) writer, and he wrote the Fablehaven books, along with this stand alone novel. The book follows the seemingly standard template of having people involved in something bigger than them by the bad guys, and then they switch to the good guys. It's interesting how Brandon Mull's books all focus on children. This isn't uncommon, he's a children's author, but he writes about children in such a specific age group, which is around fifth grade.

Yeah. So I recommend it if you like fantasy and are looking for an easy read.

ENN EE WEY.

I got Mass Effect for the Xbox 360. It's pretty fun, but it seems almost... unfinished. There are no cinimatics, because the graphics are always amazing, but as a consequence of this, you can see the environment and people's bodies and stuff trying to quickly load into the detailed texture right in front of your eyes. It's kind of distracting as a space ship takes off to see the walls go from craggy gray to polished steel.

I've also been playing Final Fantasy X. It's also pretty fun, and I've had it for ages. If you've played it before, I've been stuck on the "Seymour Natus" stage. It's not even the final boss, but I had such difficulty with it. So I've restarted, and I've reached that point, so now I'm kind of nervous to progress to that point, because even the random encounters are really hard all of a sudden.

I've also signed up for Blizzard Betas. I'm hoping I'll get chosen for the Starcraft 2 beta, because that would be awesome, and the comic I submitted didn't win. D:


I will leave you with an updated version of my video game wishlist:

Bioshock 2
Assault on Dark Athena
Street Fighter 4
Modern Warfare 2
Starcraft 2
Resident Evil 5
Braid
Singularity