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

Mariokart

I liked Mariokart DS. It was fun, exciting, had great multiplayer, and was one of my first Nintendo DS games.

Now, several years later, Mariokart Wii comes along, toting everyone's favorite motion gimmick with the addition of a hunk of plastic shaped like a steering wheel for an electric gokart designed for six year olds that travels slower than just walking.

After swiftly giving up on the motion based hunk of crap that was the wiimote I downgraded to the Game Cube controller, and found it to be a much more enjoyable experience. It's got to say something about game and console design when using a controller from a previous generation means you beat the person using the fancy new technology designed a half a decade later hand over fist.

Leaving aside the game developers' insistence on using the newest Nintendo gimmick, the game is relatively fun. The controls on the Game Cube Controller are fluid and responsive, and the graphics are as decent as the Wii can get. So now you might be getting the assumption that I like Mariokart Wii. That's about as right as me saying that I like a bible thumping democrat. There are elements I like, and other elements that I just CAN'T STAND.

Full fledged races are one of those things. The game relies 95% on being lucky enough to get a red shell at the right time and 5% on being half decent at racing games. I have had repeated scenarios where I am ten miles in the lead of the race, and suddenly some asshat in last place gets a blue shell and shoots it at me, causing my bike to spin about and causing me to flail my arms around helplessly as every racer and their mother finishes the race.

Now that we're on the subject of bikes, I'd like to stay on it for a moment. I like the bikes, and I think they're great addition. But now that I have bikes, I can't imagine ever wanting to ever go back to karts, because bikes are far superior in the forementioned 5% where you actually race. This also completely alienates me from ever playing any other Mariokart game other than Mariokart Wii, because every time I try to get anywhere in a kart playing Mariokart DS, I slam into the nearest wall because I look funny at the drift button.

Another thing that I can't stand aboot Mariokart Wii is the level design. The people who created Wario's Mine and Rainbow Road and half of the other maps must have been shooting heroin while popping antidepressants with a barrel of wine while clubbing themselves over the head with a bat covered in an IQ destroying virus. The over emphasis on being lucky enough to not have the malevolent god of that track decide that it would be hilarious for you to be crushed by an unnecessary weight placed in an otherwise empty location is completely mind boggling. What were they thinking? Did they think it was FUN to fall into a pit fifty times in a row while the entire population of the Nintendo Universe races past, effortlessly bouncing across the ten mile expanse of two centimeter wide platforms?

Which brings up the question of, WHY THE HELL ARE THEY RACING THROUGH THESE PLACES? There is no plot to this game, unless the plot is watching me destroy my Wii in frustration. These people are hurling banana peels and shells that somehow can tell the difference between first place and second place and fly and picking up boxes that cause you to become a huge bullet for NO REASON.

Webcomics

I hope you didn't blink at all while you were staring at my awesome picture.

I like webcomics. Because they're free comic books. YEY

Here's a list of webcomics I check regularly:
The Order of the Stick - http://www.giantitp.com/Comics.html
Thinkin' Lincoln - http://www.thinkin-lincoln.com/
The Slackers - http://theslackerz.com/
Penny Arcade - http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/
The Warehouse - http://www.warehousecomic.com/
Cyanide and Happiness - http://www.explosm.net/
El Goonish Shive - http://www.egscomics.com/
Digitial Unrest - http://digitalunrestcomic.com/index.php
Dueling Analogs - http://www.duelinganalogs.com/
Ctrl-Alt-Del - http://cad-comic.com/comic.php
Buttersafe - http://buttersafe.com/
Questionable Content - http://questionablecontent.net/
xkcd - http://xkcd.com/
Weregeek - http://www.weregeek.com/
Amazing Super Powers - http://www.amazingsuperpowers.com/
Thingpart - http://www.jsayers.com/thingpart/thingpart.html
VG Cats - http://www.vgcats.com/comics/
Subnormality - http://www.viruscomix.com/subnormality.html
2P Start - http://www.2pstart.com/


And that's only half of the ones I used to read. I won't list the ones I lost interest in. ;)

So I recommend them all to look into. But, why the hell would I put them on my blog if I didn't recommend them? I mean, srsly, gyz.

I also check four movie sites regularly:
Smosh - http://www.smosh.com/
Cinemassacre/AVGN - http://www.cinemassacre.com/new/
Zero Punctuation - http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation
Weebl's Stuff - http://www.weebls-stuff.com/


Yeeeeup. there ya go. I might actually critique each of those individually. But mebbe not. If I do, it'll be screenshoteriffic! :D

Last thing. Here are the two blogs I read:

B(labber)log - http://phailpants.blogspot.com/
//Commented - http://miky.comyr.com/

Call of Duty 4

I like Call of Duty 4. A lot. Probably more than is healthy.
I sleep with its CD case.
I'm passing a bill to marry software.
I've signed it forty four trillion times in my blood.

Just kidding. I'm not that obsessed. And you believed me. HA! Ha ha haaaa.... Stupid blog reader. No, I'm kidding! Please keep reading!
Ha! You thought I cared! Ha ha haaaa.... Stupid blog reader. No, I kid. I kid. (That's a double negative! :D)

But I do like it. I play the multiplayer daily, and I beat the Single Player in about 2 days. But I didn't skip school to play it or anything. The story was actually really short.

It seems like a lot of video games are like that these days. I feel that games such as Halo 2&3 and COD4 have really short story modes. Is this because I play them obsessively? You might say that, you jerk. But I don't. Apparently the focus is on the multiplayer, which makes a little sense, but cutting out hours of game play kind of alienates people without Xbox Live.

Here's a funneh picture. STARE AT IT UNTIL MY NEXT BLOG POST COMES AROUND.

I review all of my iPhone Apps

Here's a quick review of all of the applications I currently have on my iPhone.
Text: What it was meant to be. It lacks picture sending and text forwarding, though, so that's a little disappointing. 4/5
Calendar: Pretty intuitive, goes into infinity as far as I can tell. The option for repeating events is nice, but I think some holidays should be pre-added, like Christmas, Hanukkah, New Years, etc. 5/5
Photos: Shows all downloaded images and taken pictures. The Slideshow option is an interesting touch, but it's unintuitive with management of picture folders. (You can't make them or delete them without the help of a computer.) 3/5
Camera: Decent quality, but even though it registers that a picture was taken sideways, it will save it as a portrait photo in Photos, which is annoying. 4/5
Settings: Pretty self-explanitory, but not all apps have settings, when it seems they should. 5/5
YouTube: Up to par with internet speeds for the iPhone, it lacks some of the features that Youtube has though, like "More From". 4/5
Stocks: Pretty intuitive if you follow stocks, but it seems to be sort of silly to have pre-programmed in. It should be downloadable. 5/5
Weather: It tells you the weather. Yay. 5/5
Clock: A nice little app. It has world clocks, alarms, stopwatch, and timer. Very nice. 5/5
Calculator: Pretty cool. Turning the phone to landscape gets you more complex actions such as cos, sin, tan, square roots, and a bunch more stuff that I never use. A graphing calculator would be nice, because as of right now, there aren't any decent ones for sale. 5/5
Notes: A nice little app to write whatever in. The option of emailing the notes is nice. 5/5
Maps: I rarely use this app, but from what I have, it is excellent. It's relatively fast, and it has tons of options to calculate distances and travel time. 5/5
App Store: It lets you download more apps. 5/5
iTunes: It lets you access iTunes. It seems like it should be combined with the App Store, though. 4/5
Contacts: Good organizing, very useful. My one complaint is that it should save what you've written so far in a contact if you exit before finishing. It's annoying to retype phone numbers and addresses. 4/5
Wikipanion: A very good application for looking up things on Wikipedia. It hides graphs and large images and gives you the option to view them, which is excellent for speed. It also is very intuitive with working between it and the Safari app. 5/5
Dice Bag: An app that rolls dice. It has a d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20, percentiles, 3 d6's, and 4d6's with one removed (Useful for creating D&D characters.) The randomness of the dice rolls have been called into question in comments for it, but it seems pretty good to me. 5/5
Units: An app that converts measurements and such. Has a lot of choices. 5/5
Translator: A decent translator app. I think it accesses Google translator or something. It has serious gaps in its vocabulary, though. 4/5
Google Earth: An app that emulates Google Earth. It's pretty slow, but pretty neat too. It's got a lot of options. 4/5
Dots Free: A good iteration of the popular Kids-menu past-time. Allows Two player or one player, or zero player (You watch it play itself)! The AI is moronic, though. 4/5
FourFree: Connect Four. Has the same playing choices as Dots Free. The AI is excellent. 5/5
Checkers: Has same player choices as the previous two. AI is decent. 5/5
Scribble: An interesting drawing app for the iPhone. It has a very limited choice of colors, but you can take photos from the Photos app. 4/5
Topple: A fun stacking game. You stack the blocks with the touch screen, and tilt the iPhone to keep the pieces balanced. 5/5
Tap Tap Revenge: Like Guitar Hero, but for the iPhone. Has a large library of free downloadable songs, and it takes advantage of the accelerometer with directional notes at points. 5/5
Cube Runner: A fun app with simplistic graphics. You endlessly go forward, dodging randomly placed cubes the whole way. Apparently it has downloadable map sets. 5/5
Shazam: One of the most popular apps for the iPhone. It listens to music and tells you what it is. It seems to work about 60% of the time for me. It'd be cool if you could sing or hum a tune and it would give you a list of possibilities. 4/5
Quickvoice: A sound recording app. It's extremely quiet, and you can't connect it to the computer. Of course, it's the free version. 3/5
Backgrounds: A large, regularly updated gallery of images sized for use as your iPhone wallpaper. Very cool. 5/5
Echo: "Simon" for the iPhone. That's it. It lacks options. It would be nice to have it speed up. 3/5
Zippo Lighter: An app that shows a lighter. Tilting the phone changes the direction of the flame, and holding it upside down or touching the flame makes the phone vibrate. It has a large-ish selection of designs for the lighter. The flame is pretty low quality, though. 4/5
PapiJump: An app where you endlessly climb up a tunnel by jumping from platform to platform. Highscores are held on the internet, so it redirects you to the Safari app to submit scores. Needs a high score list for just your iPhone. 4/5
Tunnel: Just like the Calculator game. Tilt the phone to navigate through the endless tunnel. The simple graphics are pleasing, and the high-score system is relatively intuitive. 4/5
Crossbones: A pirate themed matching game. I got it when it was free, now it's $2.99. Pretty fun, with good AI. You get a new hand by shaking the iPhone, which is really annoying when playing it in a vehicle. I wouldn't pay for it, though. 4/5
Trace: A platforming game where you draw a path through the level. Sort of unappealing graphics, poor hit detection. The controls are in a tiny bar at the bottom, which makes it very hard to react quickly without missing. Low replayability. 2/5
DuckDuck: A game where you bring different colored ducks to whirlpools matching their color by tilting the phone. Appealing graphics, but it gets retarded when there's twenty ducks on the screen and you're trying to navigate them around. It has a lot of options for the design of the pond and weather. 4.5/5
BubbleWrap: An app where you pop as many bubbles in bubble wrap as you can in 45 seconds. As soon as it ends, it goes to the highscore screen, which has ads all over it, so you accidentally hit one, which redirects you to the App-Store. You lose the highscore when this happens. Needs alternative game modes. 3/5
Darts: A poor dart shooting app. The AI is idiotic and easy on the hardest setting. 2/5
Ultim(ate Coun)tdoun: An interesting app where players hold onto a portion of the screen as the timer quickly counts down towards zero. The player closest to zero without going into the negatives wins. It needs different game modes, maybe AI, and the name needs to be shortened so it isn't "Ultim...tdoun" on the menu. 4/5
iShoot: A fun artillery-tank game where you buy weapons and fire them at other players. It has a large list of maps and weapons, and the game modes are customizable to take out certain maps, change tank health, change the economy, add or take out weapons, etc. Very polished off. 5/5
FallingBalls: A silly game where you dodge circles of varying sizes as they bounce across the screen. Good use of the accelerometer, and good hiscores. It's also very cool that they only put in ads between games. My only complaint is that it won't let you restart until all of the balls have bounced off the screen, so it's annoying when you die and a ball slowly makes its way across the screen. 4/5
Frotz: A poor choice of names for an app (look it up on Wikipedia, NSFW). It's got nothing to do with its namesake, though. It has a list of text-based RPG's and a lot of downloadable ones from the interwebs. 4/5
Brick FREE: A breakout game with powerups. I'm considering buying the full version. 4/5
Tap Tap (Revenge 2): A "Sequel" To Tap Tap Revenge. It's got better graphics and different songs, but is the same game at heart. It seems to crash often, though. The high-score system is pretty nice, and there seems to be a community behind it. 4.5/5
SpawnLite: An app where you watch a bunch of color-shifting lines swim about the screen. You can direct them by touching the screen, and make them explode into a ton of lines by double tapping the screen. 4/5
Bix Lite: A pretty fun game where you trap or avoid balls bouncing around by hurrying across the screen and filling it in so it's a certain percentage full. I'm considering buying the full version. 4/5
geoDefense: A tower defense game with vector graphics. It's pretty fun, and it has special towers that suck up shrapnel from destroyed enemies and use it to power up it's fellow towers. It's pretty difficult. 5/5
Pocket God: A fun game where you torture a bunch of cute islanders on an... island (INO,RITE?) It's updated every 8 or 9 days for free, which is cool. You can check out their blog at pocketgod.blogspot.com 5/5
FlightControl: A fun game where you direct different flying vehicles to their respective areas. you have to make sure they don't crash. It's actually pretty stimulating. 5/5
Textfree Lite: An app that gives you free texts. The texts are sent to a server or something and then forwarded to the intended receiver. The lite version gives you a 15 text a day limit. It'd be better if it would redirect reply texts to the text app, but it can't be everything. I'm actually confused how it can be economical, but then again, a text only takes a couple of cents to send (despite arguments from my friends.) 5/5
Mines Free: A Minesweeper game. Pretty fun, but the free version is Mehish, with only two sizes. The graphics also don't look like minesweeper, and are kind of unappealing.
Skype: A decent emulation of skype. It's pretty slow, but it's pretty cool for what I use it for. It's got pretty good quality for sound. Most people who complained about it were using it to call non-skype users, but isn't that what a cell-phone is for? A good skype app. 5/5
Phone: The cell phone portion. It's got different tabs for your contact list, your favorites, the numpad, and recent stuff. Just what it should be. 5/5
Mail: Checks your Email. It randomly doesn't receive some emails, which is really annoying, but it checks multiple email addresses, which is cool. 5/5
Safari: Internet. Very cool. It's got history and bookmarks, but it needs an orientation lock, because I often like to read stuff on the internet while I'm lying down. 5/5
iPod: The iPod portion, obviously. Decent sound quality, and good video quality. One problem is that all of my album pictures were overwritten with pictures for downloaded podcasts when I connected my phone to the computer, but that's a one time thing. 5/5

Wow. That was long. Obviously, this isn't an encompassing view of iPhone apps, cuz I delete the sucky ones. But there's my short opinion on all of my iPhone applications. I could delve into each one and give an individual blog post for most of them, but would you really want to read all of that? I didn't think so.

The Nintendo Wii

I own a Playstation 2, an Xbox 360, and a Nintendo Wii. The Xbox 360 is my favorite console. I've had the PS2 for a half of a decade, and it's been my only console for that time. I've probably got more than forty games for it.

So, in between, is the Wii. I've got about the same sized library for my Wii as I do for my Xbox (About 6 or 7). I've got to say, the only game on the Wii that's really stellar in my eyes is Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Mario Kart Wii's bikes are a great addition, but the new maps are retarded at the best times, and there are too many power ups. Twilight Princess was fun for a while, but the Halo Series, Call of Duty 4, Bioshock, Left 4 Dead, and I find that even Phantom Hourglass have it beat. Metroid Prime 3 is interesting, but it's sort of tried-and-true. There's nothing that really makes it stand out as a better video game than others. Warioware: Smooth Moves is relatively fun, but I prefer Touched! for the DS better.

I've sort of dragged this on, but my point is that the Wii is the inferior of the next generation consoles. It relies too much on the gimmick movement based controls that aren't even that precise.

Grenades

I hate grenades. Grenades in First Person Shooters are the most retarded things ever to be come up with. I imagine people hate them in real life as well, but I can't speak for them, since I've never actually been in a war zone.

Grenades suck. People always use grenades in FPS games, and just keep throwing them in the spawn locations. And when they don't grenade spam your spawns, they're throwing them at random. Grenades are totally up to luck. There's no skill involved with throwing a grenade. You are not a good gamer because you luck out by throwing a grenade over a wall and somehow have it land on me.

One other thing, and this doesn't frustrate me as much as I find it interesting. I find it funny how somebody who can't spell the word "the" can have the top score in a video game match.

Phail

Look at that. Isn't that hilarious? I took that picture myself. That was a sign outside a consrtuction site (heh heh) near a court house.

I wish I'd found out what company was working there...

Bioshock/Left 4 Dead

I got Bioshock with my Xbox 360 in December, and I hadn't been very excited about it. Of course, I'd wanted it, but not as much as other games.
It's only recently that I've realized how freaking great it is. It's got to be the most fun and original game I've ever played.
Originally, I was a bit adverse to playing it because I found it so freaky. I was always afraid of everything in it, because I didn't really get it. But now that the shops are relatively common place and I can hold my own, it's less terrifying as it is extremely exciting.

I got Left 4 Dead recently. It's also a very fun game. The co-op aspects are great, but the plot is nearly non-existent. There are four plot lines each with five levels, but these can't really be called plots. Each one is different from the last, the first plot being a city/hospital, the second rural, the third city/airport, and the fourth rural/farming. Each one consists of you rushing through to the next safe room in levels one through four, while the last level (the fifth) has you holed up in a defensive position waiting for a vehicle to come and save you.
Each plot lasts for about an hour, if you take your time. I've played all four plots on normal, so I tried playing on Expert for the achievements. There was a mistake.
There is a serious difficulty gulf between normal and expert. This is, of course, only to be expected. It took me three tries to get through the first level in the first plot, and I gave up after dying a second time in the second level. Obviously I'm going to need some practice before I can take on Expert, which should keep me playing for a while. (Probably only after I finish Bioshock, though.)
I also expect more replay value once I get Xbox Live, but I'll probably be playing other games like Halo 3 on it for a bit first.

Halo Wars

I got Halo Wars when it came out, and I didn't really feel the right amount of excitement. For a game like Halo Wars, I feel like I should be tearing into it. But for some reason, I feel kind of subdued about it. It might be because I'm worried about the replay value. I actually got the Limited Edition version, so I sunk about 75 dollars into it. Naturally, I feel like I should get the bang for the buck, you know? I mean, when I play it, I enjoy it. But I'm wondering how much play I'll get out of it.
I expect that I'd be supah excited about it if I had Xbox Live, because one of the best features of it is the multiplayer. But not only is it 40 bucks a month for Xbox Live, but we don't have a way to connect it to my internet. I am a mac user, so we can't use the wireless port thing that came with the Xbox, and it's on a seperate floor from my computer, so linking it with wires is out of the question. We would have to blow a hundred dollars on a bridge, plus pay $50 a year. Not that it wouldn't be worth it. It's just, the money factor is.... relatively large.
I currently own, for my Xbox 360:
Halo 2
Halo 3
Halo Wars
Bioshock
Lego Indiana Jones/Kung Fu Panda (Came with it)
And my brother just ordered Left 4 Dead

I want to get:
Mass Effect
Resident Evil 5
Braid
Singularity

Introduction

ANUS
There. Pretty shocking, right? You weren't expecting a blog to begin with a naughty word. I just blew your mind. You're thinking,
"Why would he do that? Why would he begin a blog with the word anus? My entire existence is falling apart!"
And then you'd go cry yourself to sleep, even though you're reading this in the school library before first period begins. Then, after you woke up, it would be second period, and you'd cry yourself to sleep again, because your first period teacher had said that if you got one more tardy or unexcused absence, you would fail his class.

I like video games, reading, writing, Magic the Gathering, and Apple products. I like music too, and I'm getting into computer programming. You're probably jealous. You're saying to yourself,
"He likes all those things?! Why can't I like all of those things? What a jerk!"
Then you'd storm out of the room and punch somebody. But this is in the middle of third period by now, so you run into the principal and she's the person you punch. And you'd get detention, and you'd cry yourself to sleep because your mom said that if you got detention one more time, you were grounded. And you couldn't be grounded, because you're just about to go on an epic quest in World of Warcraft with your friends over the internet, and if you don't go then you won't get the pwnz0r l00tz and you'll cry yourself to sleep.

So yeah. You can expect me to: whine about things, post short stories, critique video games, or just write my political or religious views. (I am a liberal atheist-agnostic.)

If you enjoy my blog, link to it. Scribble the address on your desk in detention. Carve it into your forehead. If you hate my blog, and wish it didn't exist, complain about it everywhere and site it as the most retarded blog evar. Then carve it into your desk. If you're somewhere in the middle of those feelings, link to it anyway.