Frustration

Dear President and Congress:
You are focusing on the wrong issue right now. Healthcare can wait, and it ought to. Get this need to issue resolved first. I’d be surprised if you did, but what a breath of fresh air it would be, no pun intended, to watch you focus on something that all reasonable people can agree needs immediate attention and drastic action.

No 2050 deadlines. That’s too late and you know it. The above linked report cites 2015 as our last chance. Other studies have predicted that arctic ice will completely disappear by the summer of 2012. With this in mind, f’ing around with a complex healthcare bill is burning up precious time to act on something monumentally more important. Every day you work on something else other than climate change (or nothing at all, as is common), you fail all of us.

TV Stuff

For a while, I’ve been touting the humor I find in a cartoon called Chowder. It is damned funny. And for nearly as long, Garvey and a few other others have been trying to tell me that another cartoon, Flapjack, is also hilarious. I was always a little dismissive, basically because every time I watched the show, I’d see a lot about a whale that isn’t very funny. But man was I wrong and I apologize. Flapjack is the deal. It might even be funnier than Chowder, in the right lighting, after a few drinks…

Secondly, Psych, the heir-apparent to Monk on USA Network, had an excellent episode recently where a mentally unstable person believed he was a werewolf. It was filled with several campy horror film references, but there was also a recurring theme on an 80’s classic. Without spoiling the episode:
1. The psychiatrist who had the man as a patient was played by David Naughton
2. When the afflicted character awoke naked in the woods in the classic “not again!” moment every lycanthrope knows well, he fled back to the Psych office for refuge. He showed up covering himself with two bunches of balloons. I get it!
3. The next episode made the reference complete with a gigantic American Werewolf in London poster in Sean Spencer’s apartment.

Don't make no kinda sense

President Obama addressed students today to send a message that there is no excuse for dropping out of school. The media found opposition to this message in some of the more extreme fringes of political society. Was this a media tactic to portray the conservative opposition as a little touched in the head? Perhaps. But never the less, they did find real people, just like the real people foaming at the mouth at town hall meetings and packing heat at protest rallies.

Who would oppose this message though? Isn't hard work, perseverence and self-reliance one of the cornerstones of conservatism? You'd think they'd be ok with this one at least. Maybe they're not thinking too clearly. Especially because their way of preventing their children from hearing about staying in school is to keep them home from school today.

360 woes

About a day after I rashly bid on and won a new xbox 360 elite during a charity event, I came to the conclusion that the Playstation 3 is really better for me. I like blu ray, wifi and rechargable controllers, and one has all of these while the other has none. So onto Craigslist goes the xbox 360 bundled with Resident Evil 5, Fight Night Round 4 and Fallout 3, all new in their wrapping. The retail value, even with the lowered pricing, of all this stuff is $480. I'm asking much less.

Alas, it seems that while Craigslist is a fantastic place to sell your furniture, it is a festering hell hole for video game sales. I'm up against shady characters offering to sell xbox 360's for like $100 new. They've been called out as having "hot" product, but that's my competition and likely how I am probably viewed as a result since I have no store receipt.

My first offer came from a scammer. My second came from a dude who wanted to trade his new blackberry storm for it. No thanks. The third one came from what turned out to be a kid using his aunt's email and only wanted to trade his wii. The latest one came from what I am coming to believe is a person who intended to rob me. There are some folks asking for xbox's who say they have cash, but my inquiries were scoffed at. Apparently, unless I practically give them the machine, they aren't interested.

Anyone want a new xbox 360? It's the cool black one with HDMI. eh? eeehh?

Oregon pics

Here are some pictures from our little trip.

Do I have to go home now?

Greg has earned the achievement [Explore Western Oregon}
On 8/1/2009, Greg (and Caitlin) completed this achievement by visiting the following places:
Portland
Columbia River Gorge
Bonneville Dam and Fish Ladder
Willamette wine country
Drift Creek
Lincoln City
Astoria (heeey you guuuuys!)
Cape Foulweather
Seaside
Newport
Cape Meares
Florence
Cape Lookout
Eugene
Crater Lake National Park

Best vacation ever.

Happy Friday

No Youtube nugget per se... that was someone else's province... but this is worth a post.

They're not for dudes. Or dogs.

From a recent conversation I had a coworker from California.

Coworker: Yeah, you see some weird stuff out here. I mean, you’ve got weird stuff there, but this stuff is on another level. Yuppie weird.

Me: Like a guy on rollerskates with Kenny G hair and no shirt?

Coworker: Do you know what a baby bjorn is?

Me: A young Scandinavian bear.

Coworker:…

Me: Yes, I know what they are.

Coworker: So the other day I saw someone wearing one with their dog in it.

Me: What?

Coworker: I wanted to punch the dude.

Me: What??

Got to get out there

Anyone up for some golf? Skill of any sort is not necessary.

Put on your dancing shoes. It's time for the news. It's time to chase the blues away.

Here’s a bunch of cool stuff, mostly video game related:

1. A new Professor Layton will be available in the US on August 29th
2. The Secret of Monkey Island is being re-released in high def complete with full voice acting (thanks to Alex for bringing this to my attention)
3. Tales of Monkey Island will also be released for PC and Wii in episodic form, similar to the Sam and Max series.
4. There is a very cool looking new Castlevania coming out for the high def consoles, but not until 2010.
5. There’s a bunch of news around Final Fantasy titles. Basically, there’s one for the Wii, a series following up on the world of FFIV 14 years later, FF13 for 360 and PS3, FF 14 for PS3 only.
6. New Zelda coming out for DS, too.
7. Lastly, there’s a new Metroid coming out for the Wii, being developed by the team that made the flashy new Ninja Gaidens for xbox and 360.

Most of this flurry of news was released in the past few days at the big E3 expo, where the big three console makers all try and outdo one another. I have a Wii, but I want a high def system as well. Seems to me that if you want great online options and a large array of titles, you go with the 360. If you want a blu ray player built in and the absolute best in graphical capabilities, you go with the Playstation 3. A system’s game library is really what matters, and there are a lot of crossover titles, which muddles the decision further. Where is the next Shadow of the Colossus or Okami likely to surface? Do I want Gears of War or God of War? Which system will have more games involving lightsabers?

... so many links...

Ouch.

Blizzard finally announced the winners of their creative writing contest. I offer hearty congratulations to those who won and those who got honorable mentions.

I received neither. My selfish ego keeps conjuring up this notion that my work overstepped some boundary that disqualified it for reasons beyond pure content quality. This is mostly a defense mechanism. When you play the Mega Millions on a big pot, you can't help but fantasize about how your life will change if you win. This contest became something akin to that. It was my big chance to get out of a line of work I don't love and into one I would. But rather than a meager $5 investment, I poured a bit more into it, and random chance wasn't to blame for my loss, all of which adds to my frustration and feeling of inadequacy.

Blizzard has released few details aside from winning titles and authors. My wish, unrealistic as it is, is to hear from someone at Blizzard who can say “hey, this is why you didn’t place”. But with 1500 entries, what we’re more likely to get, if anything, is a canned response that will end up insulting more entrants than it soothes. I do hope that the winning content is revealed soon, so that I can know that I was either displaced by a superior work and sharpen my pen for the next one, or take heart that my work was equally strong, but cast aside for arbitrary reasons. At which point, legal matters be damned (Blizzard apparently owns all submissions), I will release my work to anyone who wants to read it.

it is So Choice

To anyone shopping for a high def TV: buy a plasma. They are simply better than LCDs in every respect, especially if you’re shopping within a budget. I fully admit I am incredibly fussy, but even I can find no fault with mine, except for the fact that we are frequently mesmerized by the thing.

Squiggle mouth

To piggy back on Alex’s post, I too was recently told I resembled a celebrity I don’t care for. At a baby shower this weekend I was told by a stranger that I look like Jake Gyllenhaal, specifically his character in Brokeback Mountain. Ouch. The person paying what she thought was a compliment didn’t register what might not be awesome about that.

My dislike for Gyllenhaal has nothing to do with that movie at all. I’ve never seen it, so all off color jokes aside, it doesn’t weigh in on my opinion one way or another. I just don’t think he should be in movies. He’ll always be Bubble Boy to me. His mouth is shaped like a tilde (~). He seems simple minded and awkward. The roles I’ve seen him play, such as in Jarhead, were weak and unconvincing to me. That’s pretty much why I don’t like him. Who would want to be told they look like that? Caitlin says it’s the beard.

Sat down for a drink in my father's favorite chair

Earlier this week I was allowed into the Stereo Advantage showroom to test a Nintendo Wii on a few different flat panel HD TV's to see which, if any, made the damn thing look acceptable.

The first thing I tested was the Panasonic TC-P42S1 Plasma TV. AV gurus seem to favor plasma and this was cheap 1080p with a higher contrast ratio (2,000,000:1) and refresh rate (600hz) than any LCD. What could possibly be the catch? Turns out, power consumption is really it. It costs about 2.5 times as much energy to use a plasma than an LCD.

On the Wii: looked better than the Philips I bought earlier, that's for sure. Recognized the signal well, still had lots of jagged edges, but this was mitigated by the depth of color.

Standard Def: Again, better than the Philips, but still wasn't great.

So, unconvinced this was the saving grace, I asked about an LG LCD a friend pointed out to me, which at the time was on sale at Best Buy for $300 off. Stereo Advantage doesn't carry LG so the technician couldn't show me that specific model (42LH40), but he did plug into a Toshiba LCD with identical specs. I was impressed with the punchy, bright display.

On the Wii: it wouldn't give us 16:9 aspect ratio, but even crammed into 4:3, which normally smoothes out jagged lines by making them smaller, it still didn't look as nice as the plasma.

Standard Def: Not bad. Again, still gobbledy gook, but Toshiba did a nice job.

My final choice was the plasma. Stereo Advantage threw in too many goodies and the price was where I wanted to be. A later trip to Best Buy resulted in an attempted upsell to a Samsung Series 7 LCD, which, good though it was, didn't hold up to the Panasonic Plasma it was mounted next to. And that plasma was lower end than the one I bough. If the expensive, high end Samsung was better than the LG, but still worse than a 720p plasma, the choice to me was clear.

As for standard def help... we're in a transitionary period right now. Standard Def will slowly go away, or become an alternative, within the next few years. All HDTV's make HDTV look good; it's what they do. All the unsightliness of standard def is going to be magnified on any HDTV right now, because none of them will do us the simple favor of drawing CRT-Style scan lines across standard def to hide that shit. Some do an ok job, some don't even try. Until a set is made with this simple enough feature, we all get to suffer. There is no silver bullet for this. Trust me, I've looked under every corner for the right answer. Fortunately, most stations are offered in HD, except USA and Comedy Central, who both suck for that. So the suffering is limited.

As for LCD vs Plasma, again, no clear choice. What you see and like is what you should buy.

Sorry to any Ned's Atomic Dustbin fans who were hoping for something else from this post. I like my references.

Priceless

It's not much of a secret that I like Penny Arcade, or that I think Nirvana is overrated and stale as shit (thanks edge 103.3 and edge 102.1 for keeping their entire library in your daily playlists for 10 years straight), but this recent comic... it's like chocolate and peanut butter.

A splendid little war game

I picked up Civilization for the DS, which is fantastic, for only $15 new at EB games. I also picked up the GTA:Chinatown Wars. Once you let go of the idea that you'll be getting an experience as immersing as GTA 3 and it's successors offered, it's also quite fun.

I live

You may have heard about Blizzard’s “Creative Writing” contest, which ended yesterday. I decided to take a stab at it, not because I wanted the outwardly offered prizes, but because I thought it was their way of scouting talent for a writing position they have available over there.

I was right. When I submitted my story, which I had to reformat several times to fit the 100k max file submission size, there was a check box that read “I am interested in professional writing”. Click!

I’ve spent a good amount of time and energy on this thing. Maybe too much. The home stretch ‘finishing touches’ prior to submission amounted to about 15-17 solid hours of writing between Friday night and Sunday morning, all crammed into the spaces between repeated and lengthy Easter festivities. I also burned up the last free uses of Word that came with my computer. I’m now exiled to MS Works (the coach class of word processing programs) unless someone knows a way I can get a Windows Product Key without paying more than the $20-30 it’s really worth.

The various families and future families-in-law I’ve been seeing all weekend asked me what I’d been up to lately. My mind was –is– still consumed by the project, which made answering that question awkward, to say the least.

I keep re-reading my submission and catching stupid little errors. Will it be these amateur mistakes that cause the Great Pumpkin to pass me by? Forgot a pronoun here, left some ugly syntax there. The red, blue and green squiggles are still showing up. They only asked for my address and email… don’t they want to call me? Crap, I forgot to put my info on the header… what if there’s a mix up? And so on.

As a reward for completing the story (and not before then!) I promised myself I’d get some new DS fodder. But what to get! Age of Mythologies? Civilization DS? GTA: Chinatown Wars? Fire Emblem? I am once again paralyzed by choice.

Tar-tee-tar

St Patrick’s Day 2007:
Start the morning at one friend’s house, watch Avatar, play DS, begin drinking. Introduce my friends to my new girlfriend.
Move on to another friend’s house, picking up more friends and more steam, continue drinking and playing Bullshit.
Move on to Founding, add more friends, add more drinks, play Johnny Up, incur dreadful wrath over a few ice cubes, play more DS, and eventually the sun goes down.
Spent 3/17 making a nice corned beef dinner.
GOOD TIMES.

St Patrick’s Day 2008:
Run the Shamrock Run, shamefully (see my first blog post ever here).
Spent 3/17 on a boat sailing around the island of Kauai. Can’t complain.
GOOD TIMES, missed my friends though.

St Patrick’s Day 2009:
Run the Shamrock Run, turned in my best 8k time to date at 47:20
Attend the parade for the first time, largely due to an overwhelming crowd driving us from our beloved haunt. Retire with some friends in the evening for more drinks and hanging out. Many from prior years are absent, and we’re all a little more tired than fired up.
Spent 3/17 lying low and getting angry at the loud idiots surrounding my house. Wondered why all my friends were so intent on going out drinking when it seemed like a better idea to recuperate and wait for the weekend. Around 10:30pm, looked at a calendar and slapped my stupid forehead.
DOH.

The moral of the story? As far as I can tell, competing in the Shamrock Run somehow has an adverse effect on one’s ability to enjoy good old St Patrick’s Day festivities.

...Please let it be that and not that we’re getting old.

I swear I did not dream this

I often describe movies as appearing to have been written and directed by hyperactive 13 year old boys, but I encountered a movie this weekend that really stands out. The plot, cast and dialogue were so overblown and rotten that it almost had to be some sort of parody on big budget films.

I haven't found the name yet, but that's only because I haven't bothered to try. I'm sure it's familiar to some of you. Here's the actual cast of the movie. Note that all actors speak their roles in their natural accents. I may have misspelled some names. I'll edit and add IMDB links later if I feel like it. Ok, let's do this:

Jason Statham - as a simple medieval farmer with tremendous acrobatic, armed and unarmed combat ability.
John Rhys Davies - as a "magus", a wizard whose power comes from his devotion to the king. Which brings us to the king.
Burt Reynolds - ...wait, what? Yes, Burt Reynolds is essentially the aging King Arthur of this vaguely medieval set film. The Bandit, ruling with a just and even hand, beloved by all. He wears a white beard and looks like a poor man's Sean Connery. I think they were hoping no one would notice the difference.
Ron Perlman - as a tight-lipped friend of Farmer Statham who journeys with him to rescue his lost love.
Claire Forlani - as Jason Statham's lost love. The villain captures her. We'll get to the villain in a minute.
Kristianna Loken - a vaguely celtic/elven/hippy forest girl with bleach-blonde dreadlocks, who cares for the trees with a few other leather-clad girls. They might be a little... you know... into each other. It's never really explained. Nothing really is. Kristianna's character hates all the fighting because her beloved forests are spoiled by it. Also, she has some sort of forest voodoo where she can control vines.

So that brings us to the conflict.
Lee Lee Sobieski - plays a distraught daughter of John Rhys Davies, she falls in love with the villain who betrays her once he gets a magic thingy. She cries a lot, then dons armor in some steely Joan of Arc moment and rides around a lot in it, but never actually goes into battle. In the end realizes she is magical, too. But who is this villain?
Ray Liotta - complete with his ass-tastic almost Buffalonian "eaccent", as a powerful dark magus who learned from JRD, but then broke away to be evil. He controls a massive army of orc rip-off monsters, who he sends to battle repeatedly against King Burt's army. He stands against the king, which would normally cause him to lose his magus powers, but he gets around that by declaring himself king of his orcs. But even he needs a puppet, someone to control on the throne. He needs a spoiled nephew of the king who wants the throne for himself.
Matthew Lillard - as the spoiled traitor nephew of the king, giggling and writhing through his role like he just took a massive bong hit. In the big battle, he manages to shoot King Burt with an arrow. As the next in line for the throne, if the king dies, he gets to rule. And so after he's been captured for his treachery, battling the king's champion in some sort of grudge match sword fight, right before he can be killed, someone yells that the king is dead. Giggles reminds everyone that means he's king now, and everyone is his servant. That is, until John Rhys Davies announces that Farmer Statham is actually the king's long lost son and therefore the next in line for the throne. Yay, right?

One thing that really put all of this right over the top is that King Burt Reynolds has bodyguards that are ninjas. Not ninja-like european medieval warriors, which would at least make some sense within the vaguely dark-ages European context. These are actual Japanese ninjas, in ninja outfits, wielding katana swords. They come flipping through the air in unison to defend Burt whenever he appears to be threatened on the battlefield. Note: they don't work against arrows.

As the credits suddenly rolled, I was treated to a song sung by a male folk singer with crazy vibrato, as though ripped right from the Rankin-Bass Hobbitt cartoon.

The thing that gets me is that this movie somehow managed to be made and produced with Hollywood blockbuster veneer and star power. My only theory involves the Make a Wish Foundation.

The end of a Chair-a

For Sale: Papasan Chair. Frequently Used.

In its day, anyway. Lately it's been more of a clothes rack than piece of furniture, cast aside into one of the spare bedrooms. Never again to be used by someone who needs to get close enough to the TV to be the fourth player for a round of Smash Brothers or Time Splitters.

Player 5 has left the game.

Anthony Bourdain in Buffalo

A little while ago, Anthony Bourdain of No Reservations had a contest where viewers submitted a short video telling him why he should visit a certain region and take that person with him.

It was interesting watching the montage as a frustrated Bourdain grimaced over several weird, scary or stupid entries. "As far as I know, you've never been to the greater Denver area," one entry began. "And I never will," Bourdain responded and hit the stop button immediately. Another entry for some reason involved a shirtless man slicing through a snowman with a real samurai sword.

Eventually, he settled on four finalists. One, an American Muai-Thai Kickboxer, wanted to take Anthony to Thailand. Another immigrant from the Phillipines wanted to take him back to his homeland. The third finalist, a Saudi immigrant woman, wanted to show that Saudi Arabia isn't all fundamentalists, scorching desert and rage. The last was a musician who simply wanted to show Bourdain about Buffalo.

The show went to Saudi Arabia and it was a fine show, but we were disappointed of course, especially considering that humble Buffalo had made it to the final circle among so many much more exotic options.

But, it seems Anthony has been pursuaded to come anyway. Caitlin sent me this link from BRO. I can't wait to see the show. I just hope he got farther than Ulrich's and that he wasn't surrounded by gawkers the whole time.

Resolutions

1. Do more writing
2. Portion control
3. Decide once and for all where I will put up my tent stakes (Elmwood Village? No-Bo/Kenmore? Youngstown? Ashville? Seattle? Kashyyyk?)
4. Buy a house
5. Visit Seattle again, in the summer months, and do some real hiking.
6. Get an HDTV, now that I know what I want.