I don't like watching movies very much, especially Hollywood movies, so I don't know about a lot of things that other people my ages would commonly be expected know. So in an attempt to bring myself up to date with my contemporaries, I've been working to rectify this. Since I can't actually be bothered watching any of the movies, I've instead been spending a lot of time reading about various well known films on Wikipedia ("the One Stop Resource For Damn Near Anything!")
I've been focussing on films in the genres I have at least a vague interest in, which basically means science fiction and horror. Actually, I don't like horror films at all (although I have a fondness for horror video games like Silent Hill) but I do confess to a sort of macabre fascination with them, especially classic villains like Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger. So as a result I've recently read about: the Predator series, the Alien series (and Alien vs Predator), Starship Troopers, Robocop, Friday the 13th, Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the Exorcist series, the Hannibal Lector films, Final Destionation, the Scream trilogy and -just for the hell of it- the Scary Movie series. I also looked up The Crow movies (the first installment being one of my all-time favourite Hollywood films) and various other random things, such as H.R Geiger's night terrors and the Heavy Metal movies. I love Wikipedia.
As a result of my studies I can detail with reasonable accuracy the order in which Jason killed his victims in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (which was only the 4th film).
Unfortunately, I also feel a strange compulsion to watch endless amounts of Hello Kitty...
Saturday, December 9, 2006
Wednesday, December 6, 2006
World of Whatcraft? Don't bother me, I have a guild to run!
MMORPGs are an evil, insidious corruption which creep into our lives and devour all our free time with adventures that have no true end. Not that that's a bad thing, of course. I love a good online RPG.
My game of choice is Guild Wars. I deliberately selected it over World of Warcraft for a number of reasons: 1- Guild Wars has much lower system requirements than WoW. 2- Guild Wars actually gets regular expansions (or to be precise, whole new campaigns) released ON TIME! 3- WoW is so notoriously addictive that it has literally ruined lives, and all I want is good game to play. 4- Guild Wars is FREE of any kind of online fees. Wonderful game. Truly wonderful. Looks pretty too.
OK, so I've been spending the last 20-odd hours of game time just saving up for a suit of 15k Kurzick armour for my warrior/necromancer. OK, so I haven't moved forward in the storyline of any of the three campaigns in ages. OK, so my guild is pretty much a hollow shell with practically no activity. Doesn't matter. I love this game, and 2 hours of 12 on 12 alliance battling this evening reminded me why.
So if you're ever online, keep an eye out for my characters, Arcane Azmadi, Kurimoto Takeshi, or Vahrshak Azh Mahdii. And if you're a Luxon, I'll kick your sorry ass on the battlefield.
My game of choice is Guild Wars. I deliberately selected it over World of Warcraft for a number of reasons: 1- Guild Wars has much lower system requirements than WoW. 2- Guild Wars actually gets regular expansions (or to be precise, whole new campaigns) released ON TIME! 3- WoW is so notoriously addictive that it has literally ruined lives, and all I want is good game to play. 4- Guild Wars is FREE of any kind of online fees. Wonderful game. Truly wonderful. Looks pretty too.
OK, so I've been spending the last 20-odd hours of game time just saving up for a suit of 15k Kurzick armour for my warrior/necromancer. OK, so I haven't moved forward in the storyline of any of the three campaigns in ages. OK, so my guild is pretty much a hollow shell with practically no activity. Doesn't matter. I love this game, and 2 hours of 12 on 12 alliance battling this evening reminded me why.
So if you're ever online, keep an eye out for my characters, Arcane Azmadi, Kurimoto Takeshi, or Vahrshak Azh Mahdii. And if you're a Luxon, I'll kick your sorry ass on the battlefield.
Tuesday, December 5, 2006
And now for something completely different.
Well, it's happened. Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard have sucessfully challenged Kim Beazley for leadership of the ALP.
I say it's not before time. Kim Beazley was a decent bloke (unlike John Howard, who is a spiteful, corrupt little gremlin) and I sympathize with him over the death of his brother, but he simply didn't have what it takes to win the PM's office. His much-touted "experience" doesn't count for anything when what he obviously had the most experience at is losing.
It remains to be seen if Rudd has "what it takes" to defeat Howard, but I at least expect he'll take more initiative than Beazley (and won't make stupid mistakes like confusing Rove MacManus with Karl Rove). And Julia Gillard is more than competant- she's one of the few ALP members who can be relied upon to score serious points on the Coalition in debate.
At least, that's the impression that I get. I don't generally pay much attention to politicians who I can't either despise or ridicule, but I probably should pay a bit more attention. I know I'll be voting for the ALP come next election, regardless of who's leading them, but it'd be nice to know I'm backing a winner for once. Howard HAS to go. He's shamed this country for long enough.
I say it's not before time. Kim Beazley was a decent bloke (unlike John Howard, who is a spiteful, corrupt little gremlin) and I sympathize with him over the death of his brother, but he simply didn't have what it takes to win the PM's office. His much-touted "experience" doesn't count for anything when what he obviously had the most experience at is losing.
It remains to be seen if Rudd has "what it takes" to defeat Howard, but I at least expect he'll take more initiative than Beazley (and won't make stupid mistakes like confusing Rove MacManus with Karl Rove). And Julia Gillard is more than competant- she's one of the few ALP members who can be relied upon to score serious points on the Coalition in debate.
At least, that's the impression that I get. I don't generally pay much attention to politicians who I can't either despise or ridicule, but I probably should pay a bit more attention. I know I'll be voting for the ALP come next election, regardless of who's leading them, but it'd be nice to know I'm backing a winner for once. Howard HAS to go. He's shamed this country for long enough.
Monday, December 4, 2006
Wrist pain, and other rock-related injuries...
OK, so I eventually settled on Guitar Hero II for my after-work fix today. What can I say, I didn't feel in the mood for Battlefield and my brain was too fried for something as intense as SMT:DDS.
I love rhythm games like DDR, Guitar Freaks and all that, but the Guitar Hero games have something the Japanese games seem to lack- a real sense of roleplaying. Yes, you only have a 3-foot plastic guitar with buttons and a strum bar instead of strings, but you ARE a rock and roll hero while you're jamming on it. You can choose from a variety of venues, characters and guitars and the songs are real classic rock songs (OK, so they're mostly covers, but still...)
And the songs are generally pretty great. The first game has (among others) Incubus, Queen, David Bowie, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, White Zombie, Deep Purple, Bad Religion, Audioslave and FRANZ FERDINAND! Yes, 'Take Me Out' is available for you to rock out to! The sequel isn't quite as good but still has Kiss, Nirvana, The Stone Temple Pilots, The Living End, The Foo Fighters, Wolfmother and Rage Against The Machine. It's a pretty good collection of music.
Still, I can't help but feel that Guitar Hero II at least was a bit of a wasted opportunity. Where was 'Black Betty'? Where was 'Chop Suey'? Where was 'Unforgiven II', which has what it in my opinion both the best guitar riff and solo in history? And if they're going to use The Living End, then why would they choose 'Carry Me Home' instead of the far more appropriate 'All Torn Down'? They didn't even follow up on GH1's 'Take Me Out' with 'Do You Want To?' or even 'The Fallen', which is a crying shame. And there's still no AC/DC at all. I'm aware that there are licensing issues involved and that because of Guitar Hero II's new co-op mode all songs must have both a good lead guitar and rhythm/bass line, but I really feel it could have been a bit better.
On the bright side, these games are doing really well, so we can expect to see several more installments before the series runs its course. Which means a whole lot more wrist pain before I'm done rocking. Ouch. Shouldn't have had that go at 'Freebird' on Hard level. 20 guitar solo sections in a row can really take it out of you, even if I failed around the 60% mark...
Maybe I should take the game's advice and consider buying a real guitar...?
I love rhythm games like DDR, Guitar Freaks and all that, but the Guitar Hero games have something the Japanese games seem to lack- a real sense of roleplaying. Yes, you only have a 3-foot plastic guitar with buttons and a strum bar instead of strings, but you ARE a rock and roll hero while you're jamming on it. You can choose from a variety of venues, characters and guitars and the songs are real classic rock songs (OK, so they're mostly covers, but still...)
And the songs are generally pretty great. The first game has (among others) Incubus, Queen, David Bowie, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, White Zombie, Deep Purple, Bad Religion, Audioslave and FRANZ FERDINAND! Yes, 'Take Me Out' is available for you to rock out to! The sequel isn't quite as good but still has Kiss, Nirvana, The Stone Temple Pilots, The Living End, The Foo Fighters, Wolfmother and Rage Against The Machine. It's a pretty good collection of music.
Still, I can't help but feel that Guitar Hero II at least was a bit of a wasted opportunity. Where was 'Black Betty'? Where was 'Chop Suey'? Where was 'Unforgiven II', which has what it in my opinion both the best guitar riff and solo in history? And if they're going to use The Living End, then why would they choose 'Carry Me Home' instead of the far more appropriate 'All Torn Down'? They didn't even follow up on GH1's 'Take Me Out' with 'Do You Want To?' or even 'The Fallen', which is a crying shame. And there's still no AC/DC at all. I'm aware that there are licensing issues involved and that because of Guitar Hero II's new co-op mode all songs must have both a good lead guitar and rhythm/bass line, but I really feel it could have been a bit better.
On the bright side, these games are doing really well, so we can expect to see several more installments before the series runs its course. Which means a whole lot more wrist pain before I'm done rocking. Ouch. Shouldn't have had that go at 'Freebird' on Hard level. 20 guitar solo sections in a row can really take it out of you, even if I failed around the 60% mark...
Maybe I should take the game's advice and consider buying a real guitar...?
Sunday, December 3, 2006
The randomness has begun... feel free to ignore me...
My good friend, the CEO of NivCorp ( http://www.nivcorp.blogspot.com/ ) recently suggested I make my own blog. So I thought "what the hell, it can't be that hard", so here I am.
What will you find on my blog? Basically me rambling on about anything that interests me. My interests mainly centre around anime and video games but I will also go on about movies, music, politics, interior decorating, funny things that happened recently, ferrets, whatever random thoughts cross my mind.
What you won't find is me angsting on about how much life sucks and I want to die. I leave that sort of thing to the professionals.
I may bore you, I may fascinate you, I may make you laugh. No-one really gives a damn anyway. So I might as well stop rambling and... well... start rambling about something else.
Anyway, I had my hair cut today. That doesn't sound like a big deal, unless you know that I haven't had my hair cut since early 2001 (OK, I had a minor trim last year). I went from having a ponytail nearly a foot long to an extremely typical close-cropped cut. To be honest, I don't like it, but my long hair was getting to be a nuisance and I think I was starting to go prematurely bald simply from the number of hairs that got snagged on my brush and yanked out every time I brushed it.
So now all I need to do I shave my stubble (something I do only when it starts to actually irritate me) and trim my beard back so it's actually shorter than the hair on my head, and I'll be one step closer to actually looking like a real human being...
Tomorrow I'll probably ramble on about Battlefield 2142, Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga, or Guitar Hero 1 & 2. It just depends whether I feel like shooting people, eating them alive, or rocking out with a small plastic guitar...
What will you find on my blog? Basically me rambling on about anything that interests me. My interests mainly centre around anime and video games but I will also go on about movies, music, politics, interior decorating, funny things that happened recently, ferrets, whatever random thoughts cross my mind.
What you won't find is me angsting on about how much life sucks and I want to die. I leave that sort of thing to the professionals.
I may bore you, I may fascinate you, I may make you laugh. No-one really gives a damn anyway. So I might as well stop rambling and... well... start rambling about something else.
Anyway, I had my hair cut today. That doesn't sound like a big deal, unless you know that I haven't had my hair cut since early 2001 (OK, I had a minor trim last year). I went from having a ponytail nearly a foot long to an extremely typical close-cropped cut. To be honest, I don't like it, but my long hair was getting to be a nuisance and I think I was starting to go prematurely bald simply from the number of hairs that got snagged on my brush and yanked out every time I brushed it.
So now all I need to do I shave my stubble (something I do only when it starts to actually irritate me) and trim my beard back so it's actually shorter than the hair on my head, and I'll be one step closer to actually looking like a real human being...
Tomorrow I'll probably ramble on about Battlefield 2142, Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga, or Guitar Hero 1 & 2. It just depends whether I feel like shooting people, eating them alive, or rocking out with a small plastic guitar...
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