August 2009 Archives

In a series of completely un-related google searches tonight, I found myself on the wiki page for another PC game I played back in the day. It was called "The Colonel's Bequest". The premise of the game was very Agatha Christie-like, which was perfect for me as I was quite into Agatha Christie back then. (Although, the first time I read And Then There Were None, I managed to completely skip over who the killer was. Yeaaah...classic.) The player gets to interact as the character Laura Bow, which, being a main female character, was also a bonus for me. Basic plot synopsis is such - you're visiting with your friend at her uncle's plantation. The uncle is loaded and close to death. He announces to the fam that everyone stands to inherit equal shares of his money. That's when the plotting begins...and the deaths. You get to snoop around and try to discover who the murderer is.
I spent hours on this game, and I remember being really creeped out as a kid. Not only are people around you getting killed, but their bodies would disappear before anyone else could see what was going on. I never did find out where the bodies where hidden. I'll be honest...that kinda irks me still.

Watching these videos, it's amazing how much of this is so familiar. I remember it like it really wasn't 20 years ago. (Eep!)

Here's the basic intro:

As for the game play, the interaction was mainly command-based. Spelling = good!
And you COULD die in the game. Many, many ways:

Here's the first murder in the game, along with the subsequent body disappearance!

I decided to google some more to see if I could find out where the bodies were hidden. Turns out, there was a whole other secret passage I never found. That actually irks me even more.

Ever have that one friend who, no matter what, always had some sort of quasi-epic shit going on in their life? And I don't mean good epic, but melodramatic, disproportionate shit. My best friend growing up was like that, unfortunately I didn't realize until about 10 years into the relationship. Not only that, but she was a perpetual liar. It was impossible for her to not lie, really. Finding that out after investing 10 years into her bullshit and drama hurt me deep, but it gave me the much needed lesson to be able to distinguish these types of people immediately and walk away fast.
Now, I'll admit...I have issues. But my issues tend to be either related to my anxiety problems or typical shit like I don't have enough money to pay a certain bill. Sometimes, it seems when there's one issue, ten more follow right along. I take them in stride. Shit like this happens, but it's not the same as people who are so utterly unsatisfied with their life that they MUST create some form of drama.
My former friend did stupid shit repeatedly. It began to wear thin that 10th year of our friendship. She dated and broke up with a guy multiple times - a guy who tried numerous times to get in my pants, and yet instead of realizing that he was a piece of shit, she acted like he was the best thing ever. In itself, that's not a crime, but it was how they conducted themselves that was too much - the weird phone calls and the dramatic breakups and the over-the-top fights about shit that was certainly made up. When she realized he was a piece of shit, she dumped him and started dating another guy. Unfortunately, BOTH guys were drama-whores as well, so there were ridiculous stories of stalking and death threats, and OMG, the friend of a friend of a friend who was TOTALLY spying on them all the time! (Riiiight.) If I was in the car with them and a cop drove by, they ducked cause they believed the local cops had it in for them. For what, I have NO idea, nor do I know why they thought ducking in a car granted them some sort of invisibility to the cops. It was around this time that I realized that she was a goddamn liar and had been ever since I knew her. See, she happened to be dating a guy that was friends with one of my brothers, so I got enough information from both ends to see where the conflicts were coming from. It was a real eye-opening experience.And as painful as the experience was, it gave me the no-tolerance for dramatic bullshit stance I live by now. The second I get a hint of someone who manifests situations for that emotional effect it has on someone else, I end the relationship. Live is too short for that sort of nonsense.
I've seen this former friend a few times over the next several years. At one point, she said to me , clueless as ever, "I'm not sure why we stopped hanging out with each other." I chuckled and said "Because you're a fucking liar." It was almost as if she didn't know how to process that. She didn't seem upset or try to deny it. She just said "Oh...", like the thought really hadn't occurred to her until I mentioned it...and yeah, maybe it kinda did make sense. Can't say I know where she is now or what's she's up to. She had told me back then what her plans were, but I didn't listen as I figured it was all bullshit coming out of her mouth.
I will say this though...she did introduce me to the wonderful world of NES, and I will always remember our nights staying up till 2 in the morning and playing Super Mario Bros or Paperboy quite fondly.

I've had the Gaming category for a while now, but had yet to actually make any gaming posts. I find it rather to fitting to start this category off with a post about the game that really defined my entrance into the gaming world. In 1990, Lucasfilm Games (now LucasArts) realized a pirate adventure game that opened my eyes to the wonder of gaming - The Secret of Monkey Island. Up until this point, the games I had played were largely text-command based with few graphics. I remember it was (of course) the monkey part that appealed to me, followed by the fact that this was a PIRATE game. I can't remember if I got it for a present or what, but I remember having it. Back then, if you got stuck on a game, you called a 900 number for a hint or saved up for a book. Yay for the internet. I spent 30 hours one weekend pouring myself into this game on our PC. It was humorous, it was fun..I felt like the game understood MY sense of humor for once.
Of course, computing changed dramatically and the new computers weren't capable of supporting these old games. While Monkey Island spawned a few sequels, the original had a special place in my heart. Imagine my jubilation when I found out that LucasArts was releasing The Secret of Monkey Island : Special Edition on Xbox Live Arcade this year. When it was finally released, buying it on XBLA was the first thing I did the following payday. I was amazed over how much I remembered from damn near twenty years ago. Of course, the game has updated graphics (although you can switch between the new version and old school one) and now it has an in-game hint system. No more 900 numbers! Except for...well...YOU KNOW. (Ha..sex line jokes...)
Now I doubt the game will really mesh well with the young generations of gamers. It's slower moving and command-based. Sword-fighting involves exchanging the right combination of insults to win, not fancy combo moves. But for us old school gamers, the ones that grew up with this, being able to play this game again is just incredibly awesome. I wish other companies would follow suit and re-release updated versions of their classic games.
Check out The Secret of Monkey Island on their website - http://www.lucasarts.com/games/monkeyisland/. Or just take my word for it and buy this awesome game. Pirates. Monkeys. Jokes. What more could you possibly ask for?

Found a pretty cool offer (assuming these songs don't suck ass) on iTunes' Facebook page. If you use the "Free on iTunes" app on Facebook (you have to be a fan of iTunes first), you can get the occasional code for samplers. Right now, there is a free sampler called Indie Spotlight - 20 free songs! You can get more info here. They also have a 15 song Lollapalooza sampler available, I believe until the end of August. I'm all for free music!

Last year, I was a madwoman when it came to exercising and eating right. I was doing strength-training, yoga, cardio. I felt fantastic! And then something happened - I ended up switching jobs. By switching jobs, I mean I got laid off from one job and got a job offer from another place IN THE SAME DAY. It was the best lay off ever.
Let me back up a few...In another life, I was working in marketing. I'm not even sure how that happened, cause I have had this sort of dislike of marketing people since my first professional job. Anyway, I ended up in marketing and I kinda rocked that shit. But company-wise...eh...things were getting rocky. For months, there were days I didn't even need to show up in the office, or I worked from home, or I worked short hours. The point is, I had a hell of a lot of free time with which to exercise with. Then one day, I realized that things weren't going to pick up and I started looking for another job. The timing was impeccable. Unfortunately, after months of essentially not working, putting in a full 40 hour week took some getting used to. Suddenly, I no longer had the energy or time to work out. I tried for a while to maintain my schedule, but there always seemed to be SOMETHING to throw me off.
To top it off, self-loathing happens to be one of my many talents. Not exercising propelled my self-loathing which propelled depression which stalled any motivation I may have still had.
That brings me to now. I needed to find something to motivate me, to get me back on my feet again. I was visiting a site that had the community support I needed, but the problem with me and "forums" is that I lose interest rather easily. But I did take away a trick that I found helps me stay motivated and focused. On the site, I would participate in team challenges, which were modeled as races to various parts of the world. Using the amount of steps you took on a daily basis, it would be calculated how many miles to that goal you would go. I decided to do something like this- small goals to a "destination". Showing the real progress would be something tangible to me, which is what I need.
For my first goal, I picked a journey from my hometown to Nashville - a total of 273 miles. Now so far, I've only done 3 of those miles since starting yesterday, which is pathetic. It's recommended that people walk 10,000 steps a day to maintain a healthy lifestyle - roughly 5 miles a day. I'm gonna cut myself a little slack since yesterday I could only track what I did on my nightly walk (if you haven't seen this tracker, do it. It's AWESOME.) But I definitely need to get my ass moving. Not sure how long this will take, but it'll definitely be interesting to see if this works!

Would it be surprising if I mentioned that sometimes I get obsessed with tiny tidbits of songs I hear on commercials and then I act like a mad woman trying to hunt down the artist? Yeah, I didn't think so.
My latest endeavor was based on a Target commercial (shuddup). I was never paying attention to the song closely enough to narrow down on lyrics to search. Plus, I've got this shitty short-term memory anyway, so I tend to forget things within about 30 secs if I don't get to it right away. That's usually the time it takes for me to be distracted by something else. It's horrible, really.
But I digress...I finally caught the commercial while I had the laptop with me and powered on. After some googling and some forum searching, I finally came across the band and song. The band is called Minnutes and the song is "More to Luv". They describe their sound as "happy music for a sad world". That's about right - really upbeat and happy. No melancholy dark souls here. Check out their website here. It's the kind of music that gets a smile on my face, and I could use some of that more often.

I decided to stop being lazy and do a much-needed redesign of the site. And by redesign, I mean "find a new template", cause, really, I'm not all THAT motivated. While I liked the dark background, unfortunately my eyes are getting older with the rest of me and I was seeing weird funky things after staring at it too long. So now it's bright and happy. Uh..unlike my soul, which is DARK! AND GLOOMY!
Heh.

New banner as well. For this, I used this awesome set of feather brushes for GIMP, by vrhmq7 on Deviant Art.

So..yeah...accomplishments!

I'll admit it- I love technology. I do. There's all sorts of cool shit out now, and being a self-professed geek, I find I have a sort of obligation to keep up on what's going on. Even so, I get overwhelmed by everything. I can't help but find myself longing for the days we all didn't have mobile phones, and we used cassettes and cd's instead of ipods. Of course, I'm someone who is absolutely addicted to my blackberry and I completely adore my ipod, and I "blog" and I use twitter and facebook, which has opened my world to many awesome new people and allowed me to reconnect with some old friends...but still...sometimes I hate being so accessible.

It's weird to see how easily my kids adapt to new technology without batting an eye. My 4 yr old figured out how to use my ipod before I did. And my 10 year old keeps me up to date on the obscure goings on in the world, thanks to the internet. Several weeks ago, we were in a restaurant waiting to pay the check and they noticed the pay phone on the way. You'd think it was the most interesting object in the world if you saw how fascinated they were with it. "Really, it's a phone you pay to use? Why wouldn't you use your own phone?" Meanwhile, I'm recoiling in germ-fear that they're touching a public phone. To a certain degree, I've become my own parents. My kids complain about being bored and I find myself saying "Back in MY day, we didn't have all these video games and computers. We rode our bikes. We PLAYED." And then I realize how parental I'm sounding and I scream and hide.

I guess I miss a certain degree of simplicity. Being able to get any amount of information with overwhelming ease has its definite drawbacks. Specifically, oversaturation. We're living in an era where "reality" tv is thriving thanks to society's desire for fame and self-importance. The internet has just further propelled the ease of oversaturation for people. As much as I hated AOL, at least it was simple. Mind-numbingly, dumbed-down simple, but simple. Although, they did used to have the Insomnia Lounge or something that I absolutely loved..there was some funny shit on there. I do miss that. And there were maybe 10 pages on the internet back then, it seemed. Back in 95 or 96, I had a book that was the internet yellow pages or some shit. It basically listed all these sites according to category. I'm not making this up - you can buy it off amazon still here. I may have to buy it again just to see how many of the sites are still in existence. It could be another one of those distracting projects I like to take on. (Distracting in that they prevent me from doing stuff I ACTUALLY need to do.)

Anyway, my point is...I miss simplicity in my life.

I hate to follow up a movie post with another movie post, but so be it. (And I'm aware of my lack of rating for that last one. I just couldn't justify a rating.)

I attempted to watch Blindness this afternoon because I'm either a sadist, or I have a weird Julianne Moore nekkid fetish that no one told me about. I say attempted, because it really did take some effort to sit still, but unfortunately shiny objects won in the end. I think I even left to take a shower at one point.
My problem with this movie is that it was a combination of shit that I hate: weak and stupid characters, and this air of being so deep and powerful. The Julianne Moore character is just smack-worthy. The character's lack of action at so many different points in the film where she clearly had the upper hand was maddening. The whole plot of the movie rests on the fact that she, amongst this quarantine of blind folk, still retains her eye sight. Now had that been me, you could guarantee that I'd be fucking with people and using that to my advantage. But as stuff continued to unravel and play out, she did NOTHING.
And I'm not a prude by any stretch of the imagination. I love me some nakeds. But the sex scenes in this movie were almost unbearable to watch. And I'm not just talking about the weird rape orgies either. It was like watching a porn, but being tricked cause it's not really a porn. It's making a statement! To that, I say 'fuck you and your supposed statements'. I get it. People will go Lord of the Flies when given the opportunity. The government is shady. Yada yada yada. Show more angry fucking to really drive your point home.
It's a shame, cause the movie started off rather interesting. It's a slow-mover. I'll accept that my dislike and disgust of the main character could be preventing me from taking in all the film and maintaining focus. So I'll withhold a rating yet again.

It's been a while since I did a movie review, but I had to comment on this one. And it's not horror! Variety!

From IMDB: Mattress salesman Brian Weathersby (Paul Dano) finds his plan to adopt a Chinese baby augmented by the arrival of a young woman, Happy (Zooey Deschanel), who comes into his workplaces, falls asleep on one of the beds, and starts to affect his life upon waking up.

This movie was pegged as an "Indie Comedy" as Netflix. I'm beginning to realize that translate to "bullshit".

I would like to recreate the movie in my own words. Ahem.

Brian: I'm Indie. Look at my lack of emotion. So indie, it's comedic.
Happy: I have an awesomely indie nickname. And I'm just like every other woman in an Indie movie. I am so upfront about sex that it's so Indie-licious shocking. And comedic. Commitment issues? INDIE!
Brian: You know what's funny? I want a Chinese baby. Cause that is Indie.
Me: Wait a minute...shouldn't you just be with an Asian woman and driving a Volkswagen like all the VW commercials want you to think white guys with an Indie-hip edge do?
Random Person: I... I don't think you're supposed to say that. Isn't that kind of offensive?
Me: How the hell should I know? Ask Volkswagen. THEY started it.
John Goodman: What the fuck am I doing in this movie?
Director: It's cool. Just act quirky like you do in all the Coen Bros movies. It'll be Indie. And comedic.
Me: Okay, I get the indie thing. But you guys have to admit, this really isn't funny.
Director: What about Zach Galifianakis? He's funny.
Me: That he is. But you know, throwing him in bizarre scenes and acting like it has some really deep meaning, while being pretentiously Indie, is not completely comedic.
Director: ....
Me: You see where I'm going with this? Overly quirky and weirdness does not a comedy make.
Director: Did I mention the Chinese baby plot line? COMEDY! INDIE!
Me: STFU.

/Fin/