Assaulting the Spire

If your an old school gamer like me you’ll remember this intro:

And you’ll absolutely squeal with delight to hear this dude play an almost exact rendition on electric guitar.

That is AWESOME.

Way more plausible now that one of the punks is no longer in custody.

I usually don’t weigh in on race cases because, like most people, I usually don’t want to be within 100 yards of anything that has “race card” written on it, but I am just so sick of hearing about these miscreants being labeled as “victims” that I’m about to just vomit all over my shoes.

Ok, here’s the deal. The school is about 85% white and about 15% black and in alot of instances that creates racial tension, but then again that is just about anywhere so lets move on to another fact about the events leading up to this. A bunch of idiot white kids decided to pull a very tasteless prank (yes, prank, that is exactly what it was) where they hung nooses from a tree outside AFTER a black student decided to ask a teacher if it was ok whether of not he could sit under the “white tree”. Hmmm, wonder why a kid would ask that? was he looking for conflict? Was there something about this tree that was so gosh darned attractive that he had to go pop off at the mouth and insinuate that because a group of white students generally convened in that area that it was an anti-black tree?

So, the white students, as freakin ignorant as they are, decided to hit back by hanging nooses from the tree. Totally inappropriate and they shold have been punished for it. They actually got suspended so, im pretty sure it could have stayed settled right there. However, more tensions between the races began to rise because, as usual, the black community couldn’t let it go. The tried to crash a school party without invitations which caused a fight, another group tried to cause trouble at a convenience store, and then they approached the school board about the noose incident because they felt that suspension wasn’t a harsh enough punishment.

Then, oh and im soooo sure they didnt plan this, a white boy was assaulted and beaten until he falls unconscious. Now, this was no ordinary beating. Oh no no, there was no beforehand provocation from the white boy as far as the reports go. He was blindsided by one man and then five others joined in and kicked him repeatedly until he passed out. Now, if this had been a one on one fight it would have been different, but this was no ordinary fight….this was a beating. In fact, i’m pretty sure that when you plan to jump someone in the hallway and then have 5 of your buddies leap out and beat him till he hospitalized that it is considered attempted murder.

Unless of course the race pimps get involved and then it’s no longer attempted murder. Because then it’s no longer the black kids fault for instigating a gang beating and sending a boy to the hospital. Oh no, now its the white communities fault for not incarcerating those white pranksters with their nooses for life because they committed a hate crime.

In short: Beating someone till they are hospitalized is much MUCH worse than being an ignorant prick who shows his racist side. I agree that the white kids should not have done what they did, but good god people….do you think that these 6 black boys are innocent of something? Are we going to be convinced that the thuggish behavior is the result of some victim of emotion? I sure as hell hope not.

Sorry for the rant, but this fiasco has gone on long enough. I hope that the justice system somewhat prevails and doesn’t buckle under the pressure of the ignorant masses that line up behind Jackson and Sharpton. They are race pimps who are trying to rile up a small town in Louisiana they have no business being in. In fact, all those people that marched in Jena had no damn business being there either. Do they not have jobs? or are they all welfare recipients or do they actually believe that it is their “duty” to go march on the streets of a town they don’t need to be in?

Boy, this is reminds me alot of the Forsythe incident in Georgia all those years ago. They didn’t need to be marching all over that town and they don’t need to be making a big deal out of Jena either. The only people guilty of any crime in this case is those 6 boys who beat another boy. End of story. Like it, lump it. Whatever.

According to Ahmadenijad anyways.

Pure comedy. The guy gets a question he doesn’t know how to answer and what does he do? He just flat out says “Gays? What gays? we don’t have GAYS in Iran! We’re not gay, YOUR gay! What is this GAY that you speak of.”

Then hotair has links to pics that actually show Iran performing the acts that Ahmadenijad just denied. I mean, come on, the guy denies the holocaust happened. Bonus: the BOO’S! that he gets when he says it.

Yay. It’s released.

Still no sign of that gaming messiah that Microsoft promised with this release. I just see a shiny new simplified FPS shooter that has managed to seduce and stupify quite a bit of buyers.

Luckily, I am not swayed by Master Chief and his shiny helmet.

Oh, for you Halo 3 fans out there? I just have a few things to say to you.

Arbiter gets away safely and manages to make it back to earth. The War is over and everything is happy go lucky in the end. Two major characters die and one of them is a woman that fans seem to love. Master Chief gets stuck on the other half of a ship (the one the arbiter was on but one was caught in a warp and sent out in to space seperately) with Cortana and he goes in to stasis mode while Cortana sends out a beacon to have them rescued.

Thats it. The game is over. Hip hip hoorah.

I hope I ruined it for the lot of you. Why? because I cant even pump my freakin gas without seeing HALO 3! advertisements. Sick of it. Tired of it, and I’m glad that it’s done with. Make your millions and shut up.

Thank God.

Click the link above for video. You know, I watched the emmy’s last night and I thought to myself “hmmm….I wonder why she was silenced. Was it a glitch? Did she curse? Did she say something stupid?”

Well, two out of those three were some pretty good odds I’d be right.

I don’t know why ANYONE would put Thomas the Tank Engine with a song that is about debating serial murder, BUT for some reason the music matches the video. Which means that I’ll probably never see a commercial for Thomas the Tank Engine without getting some shiver up my spine.

Murderous trains. Creepy.

First off let me say that Bioshock isn’t a bad game. It’s actually a quite good game which tries to add some bit of depth to the overall simple premise to the FPS genre. Unlike its other hyped up FPS cousins (Halo) this game actually tries to dig up something more than just “pew pew pew” laser beams and gunshots. However, in the course of the production of this game it seemed to lose something.

Namely, an actual personality of its own. “But Aurvant! You just said it added depth and stuff!”

It does. Sorta. Let me explain.

Bioshock is the “spiritual successor” to an older game known as System Shock 2. The latter game was created some years ago and it has been hailed as a brilliant and horrifying game that takes the player through a pretty detailed world that has some FPS and RPG elements all mashed in there. As I just mentioned the game has been thought to be “brilliant” and apparently just because Bioshock has the term “shock” in its name we should all assume that this is the next game in the series we’ve been waiting for and should fall down and praise it’s name.

Here’s where I have my problem with the game and many other people do as well. When they said the game was a “spiritual successor” to System Shock 2 they figured it was built in the same element. However, the truth is that Bioshock actually sucked out the soul of SS2 and has paraded around as if it had a inner being of its own. In short - It isn’t LIKE System Shock 2….It IS System shock 2.

Aside from the 1950’s like propaganda mantra and the inclusion of Big Daddy it pretty much is the same game in a different closed in area with a nice bit of polished paint thrown on top of it. Plus, the RPG elements of Bioshock are so incredibly simple that a child who is required by the state to wear a helmet could figure out how to “customize” the character. When I first played the demo I was amazed to see my character pick up his first plasmid and then see Big Daddy and stuff, but then I noticed something really weird. My character could immediately use anything he so wished without having to carry any type of proficiency in it at all.

Namely, Hacking. I found it somewhat disconcerting that my character, who has no battle experience, mechanical prowess, or history of even knowing what the hell a Plasmid was, could just run around and pick up anything and start killing and hacking things with it as if it were second nature. This is a common occurrence in FPS games, but if your going to tout the addition of an RPG aspect then by GOD actually add something RPG-ish in to it.

The tonics are, for the most part, trivial and really don’t change the aspect of your game, and considering that your guy can just use anything he sees from the get go they don’t really make much sense.

The shining aspect of the game is it’s battle system (which is actually just the standard point at things and shoot it interface) and it’s well done. The animation was nice and it was cool to see Big Daddy running around but aside from all of the eye candy and wonderment of exploring Rapture there really isn’t much to see. I previously wrote in a post that the greatest part of Bioshock wasn’t the gameplay or the story itself but instead it is just Rapture. The city is glorious and if they could remove all of the broken crap that gets in your way (splicers) of exploring the underwater city then it would actually be a much better game.

That said, it’s still a pretty decent game. It’s not the gaming messiah that it was promised, but it IS fun to play….at least until the last 1/4 of the game where it just feels kinda rushed. However, I don’t write game reviews so you’ll have to go to some other mainstream source to get the story on what some of the “experts” in the industry think. However, I came across this guy and he pretty much says exactly what I was thinking when I completed the game.

I’m obviously talking about Kathy Griffin.

Click the link above to see the video that is guaranteed to make you cringe. What is that an example of? Someone who has pretty much lived a life of bitter failure and ridicule taking it out on the one person who had nothing to do with her own shortcomings. She pretty much insults Jesus in the most offensive way that a person could could insult someone who can put on his resume “Son of God”.

I’m not sure but if it was possible for a person to carve out their own personal niche in Hell I’m pretty certain that Kathy Griffin just build herself a mansion of torment in that Dark Place where the Worn Never Dies and the Fire is Never Quenched.

Seriously, I couldn’t stand to hear it due to the skin crawling effect it sent down my spine. I’m hoping for some kind of divine retribution but her getting her spotlight stolen at the Emmy’s is a start.

I’m back! Where have I been? It’s called Vacation, Yo.

I take a lot of them and I take a lot of them frequently. I’m just awesome like that or whatever. At least that’s what I tell myself most of the time. My wife begs to differ but she’s a woman and like he opinion matters. I’m sure she’ll kick me for that later, but anyways…on to more random news and totally riveting stuff.

Mostly.

Really busy today so I can’t update like I was hoping too. Which means that you get your news without my cynical commentary! Yay for you. I’ll be back tomorrow so chew on these links till then. I may have something funny posted up later but thats a “maybe”.

Headlines Today from ALL OVER:

1. Pavarotti passed on. The dude could belt out a tune and carry it all the way to the bank. Died at the age of 71 after a long fight with Pancreatic cancer.
2. Fred’s in! Liberals and Hippies beware!
3. More political correctness. Freedom of Speech is just being crapped on isn’t it?

I’m so happy cause i’m a gummy bear. GUMMY BEAR!

Video was broken but now it’s fixed. Yay!

Ever heard of Lucky Star? No? Well, unless your some anime fan or you know….from JAPAN you probably wouldn’t know or care about what Lucky Star is. Well, my friend over at That’s Not Kanon is obsessed with the show and I found the opening on Youtube. Cute and Rot-Your-Teeth sugary is all I can say to describe the opening.

Laugh all you want but Doshi says the show is gold. I watched like a ten minute segment where it showed a bunch of girls discussing the correct way to eat a chocolate comet which, apparently, is some shell shaped pastry with chocolate stuffed inside of it, and apparently the main character is some video game obsessed slacker.

Here’s Megaman jamming to the opening song too.

Weird? You betcha.

What? noooo…really? I always thought men liked those big, fat, nebulous women who shatter the ground when the stride up next to you.

Where’s Carlos Mencia when you need him? I just wish I had a button that would make him pop out and say “Dee dee dee!” every time someone publishes something redundant and commonly known and then tries to pass it off as “science”. Not that Mencia is funny but I just like the dee dee dee thing.

Anyways, heres what the great minds discovered:

Men’s choices did not reflect their stated preferences, the researchers concluded. Instead, men appeared to base their decisions mostly on the women’s physical attractiveness.

The men also appeared to be much less choosy. Men tended to select nearly every woman above a certain minimum attractiveness threshold, Todd said.

No kidding. Men like HOT women and everyone has known this. The study also shows that women are more discriminatory when choosing a partner. DUUUUUH. You know what?….this was a waste of time and money. Everyone already knew this and these scientists should be charged with theft for stealing “grant money” and doing absolutely nothing productive with it.

Sorry, but I just had to go there.

In case your wondering just what type of F-word it was then call up Isaiah Washington that used to be on Grey’s Anatomy and ask him why he called his costar a faggot. Oops.

I’m not sure but the last time I checked people in this country had free-speech. Well, at least the minorities do anyways. Heaven forbid someone use an epitaph that the complaining group in question uses on a daily basis, but I guess they could just use the whole Black community excuse by saying “Thats our word”.

Oh really? Well, then I make a motion from here on out that Zesta no longer call their products “Crackers” but instead should just be referred to as “Saltine Wafers”. So, why the big hub-bub?

Monday’s monologue prompted a critical statement Tuesday from the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.

Neil Giuliano, GLAAD president, called Lewis’ use of the term “simply unacceptable.”

“It also feeds a climate of hatred and intolerance that contributes to putting our community in harm’s way,” Giuliano said.

Should I whip out my cell phone and call you a Waambulance? If I got upset everytime someone called me some demeaning term I believe I would have to be put in to therapy from all of the anxiety I would be causing myself. Hah, must be why many alternative lifestyles have therapists and emotional problems. But I digress…this is another example of the PC (political correctness) crowd trying to put a plug on peoples actual freedoms. Regardless of what the GLAAD community would like to think, Jerry Lewis didn’t commit any illegal or improper act. Why? because he has every right to say whatever the hell he wants too.

If you disagree with it? fine, but how about not mucking up my news day with your boo-hoo crybaby tripe. There’s alot better things to be doing than polluting the news lines with your personal problems.

Actual news, Not makin this up.

For goodness sakes! People make movies all the time where Monks and Ninjas battle each other and then some guy posts a story claiming a Ninja beat up a bunch of monks and they threaten legal action? Is that some ancient Shaolin manuver i’m not aware of? Some kind of Sue-U-Kung-Fu or something?

The posting last week on the “Iron Blood Bulletin Board Community” described a ninja who challenged the monks of the Shaolin Temple to a fight in August after practicing boxing at a Japanese mountain retreat for five years. The Internet user claimed the monks accepted the challenge and the ninja won, proving the monks are trained to perform rather than fight.

Well if you guys would kick somebody in the teeth once and a while people might think you guys are actually dangerous! Your only proof that monks are badass was Jet Li and he’s not doing the martial arts movie thing anymore so I guess your gonna have to pick up the slack from now on.

Besides….a Ninja? Do those even exist anymore? Sure, Ninjas but I cant honestly say that I’ve ever heard of a “Ninja Clan” in the news or anything out of Japan in the last….whenever….that alludes to the notion that Ninjas do in fact exist. Then again maybe the Ninjas are so awesome they make people think the DONT exist…..or something.

I guess what I’m getting at is that the monks just need to fight some ninjas and see who’s better. I think everyone wins in that situation.

Like Newt before him he just lines up with the rest of the MSM and calls Iraq “A mess”

I wondered when he was going to do this. First he portrays himself as the conservative candidate and gets a base working and as soon as he wins public opinion he begins to distant himself from the current administration policies. Its the “well you may like this guy already but I have a better idea” move. He gets conservative followers using conservative motives and then pulls out the “I got a solution!” banner.

Well, not like I was gonna vote for the guy anyways, but he’s at least put the last nail in the coffin of “maybe” that I had for him. Funny that he calls it a mess when he isn’t a general on the ground or privy to the inside information on the reconstruction.

Now, if Petreaus (spelling?) says that it’s a mess in his report then by God it’s a mess then, but until we hear from the generals on the ground (and most of them are fairly optimistic) that it’s a problem lets just go ahead and assume there isn’t a big one yet.

Mitt can’t do that though because he has a goal to try and achieve. He’s got to gather himself some of the anti-war crowd to go along with that war crowd he’s been pandering too. How? he sneaks in a few comments here or there to show that he knows how to play the fence. Not exactly a quality in a leader I look forward too. If a guy can play both sides of the line it usually means that he doesn’t know what he really believes and I can’t afford to have some indifferent candidate trying to run the country. It just wouldn’t be right for the people in my opinion.

So, no vote for Romney if he’s the primary candidate.

I came across this on Youtube:

I finally found out what the name of the classical piece that plays at the end of this scene was. Sure enough! it was J.S. Bach and it’s called “Sleepers Awake, The Sentinel is Calling.” Man, I love that show and considering I got to watch that episode again on the Labor day marathon just made my weekend.

“Because the Dead can’t speak for themselves.” A kinda sad ending if you’ve ever seen the episode and that last line one that just strikes me for some weird reason.

One word: Better

Why people have fawned over a mediocre FPS game that brought literally nothing new to the genre is beyond me. Now, I will concede that Halo has some of the best music in an FPS, but pigs will fly before I ever acknowledge that the game is the messiah-ish digital king that people so claim it to be. I think I know why Halo has done so well and it has nothing to do with the actual game itself.

Marketing.

Halo has the largest marketing budget of any game I have ever seen. Hell, even Mario doesn’t see this kind of fluff and he’s Nintendo’s poster boy. However, there isn’t anywhere you can turn without seeing some mock up of Master Chief. Heck, i can’t even drink a mountain dew now without having a Spartan staring at me. Yet, with all of the marketing that goes in to Halo has anything really been said about the game itself? Not really if you think about it. Sure, the beta was cool but underneath the hype it’s still just a polished FPS with an amazing soundtrack.  Halo does the FPS genre right and that is largely why people still want to play it but the fact that the franchise is being touted as the greatest game EVAR bothers me.

Especially since there have been far better games made before and after Halo’s conception. Blasphemy you say? Well, it’s true though. Hell, in many ways Bioshock is leaps and bounds better than Halo and even looks better than Halo 3. However, it’s a cash-cow and Microsoft has thrown everything they had in to it. Herein lies their folly and could possibly be the downfall of the system. Downfall of the 360?! Thats fanboy talk! Now now….hold on just a minute! I have a good reason why I think something like that is going to happen. Allow me to explain:

Halo is the single strongest franchise on the Xbox. In fact, if you asked the majority of gamers who purchased a 360 why they bought the system in the first place they would simply say “Halo”, but with Halo 3 being the final game in the series what are those 360 fans to do? Do they wait for Mass Effect or the ill-fated Too Human? Possible, but how many of the casual gamers on the 360 world actually know those games exist? And better yet…how many of them are going to be able to play the game without saying “Halo was much better”. The truth of the matter is that Microsoft may have laid too much faith upon a single franchise and have effectively cut their legs out from under them. Nintendo and Sony do not suffer from the same problems in this catagory because they do not carry a singular face to drive their products. Sure, Nintendo uses Mario Universe as it’s pilot franchise but it still has Link and Samus to drag more of the casual and hardcores in to their base.

Am I bashing Halo? No, it is a good game. Not a wonderfully innovative and original game but still a good game nonetheless. You can disagree with that statement all you want but find me something in Halo that hasn’t been done before and i’ll concede that Halo has created something fresh. However, i’m confident that you wont find anything.

Why the long rant? Because the Halo buzz is killing me and everything else around it. It’s a monster that which cannot be sated and it’s not only gobbling up the hype surrounding Sony games or Nintendo games….oh no…it’s also stealing hype from it’s own systems games. The games coming days before and weeks after the Halo release will see some of the hardest hits from any purchasing period this year. Why? because people (like the masses they are) love Halo and the hype surrounding Halo has made it seem like there is no other game coming out but Halo.

On Sept. 25th I DO hope that Halo 3 finishes the fight. Why? because then I might be able to traverse the world and the internet without having Master Chief trying to kick me in the face with his awesomeness.

Because now you can “eat pinata people”

Like a Cannibal even. I mean…if it was Halloween and someone was throwing a zombie themed party and people had a cake or something that resembled a person then maybe it would seem appropriate. Still weird, but horror-film appropriate, BUT when your actually going to go to a restaurant and pay to cut up and devour a pinata-like construct in the shape of a person (with red stuff for blood and everythin’!) then I think your hittin the weirdness red line.

I always wanted to go to Japan, but now? Not so sure.

Or something to that effect.

By using Calderon’s logic in this situation means that not only do Mexicans entering the country illegal bring drugs, terrorists, and other social deviancies but they also bring the country with them. If oh! Mexico “El-presidente” uses that type of weird thinking does that mean I can walk in to Mexico and say “Where there is an American that IS america!”? Yeah, you go try that in a foreign country and just count the seconds before someone makes you disappear for a long long time.

Couple this craptastic news on top of the recent news that Mexican trucks are soon to be traveling freely on American highways and you have yourself a big giant border problem that is reaching critical mass.