_If there’s one thing growing up has taught me, it’s that hindsight isn’t always 20/20. Sure, it totally is immediately after making a decision which is where the saying comes from, but the farther back into the past you go, the blurrier it all seems to get. That’s not 20/20 vision. But when people look back…boy, you’d think everything was peaches and cream. “Boy, they don’t make [things] like they used to. I remember being a kid, when people were REAL artists!” Mmmmmmmhmm. “People don’t know how to make anything good nowadays. Old stuff was way better.” Uh huh. “What ever happened to quality entertainment?” I know what happened…you got older. Really not that hard to figure out. “But I vowed when I was young that I wouldn’t be one of those crabby old people that complains about the current trends and how crappy they were! I was gonna be hip!” Yeah…the follies of youth, eh?

_Why is it that as we grow older, we inevitably end up not liking all the trends that today’s youth finds so cool? Here’s my theory: because we’re not impressionable youths anymore. Ever watch a movie or listen to a song from your childhood that you loved, only to find that it’s kind of not that good…and yet you still like it? Don’t worry, it’s not crazy…I understand. We were young and impressionable. And big companies were doing their damnedest to impress us. And not “Oh wow, you can juggle a dozen eggs and drop them back into the carton without cracking the shells?” kind of impressing. The “Could you please move your bangs so we can stick this hot branding iron across your forehead” kind of impressing. It’s kind of like how they say that little boys want to meet a girl that reminds them of their mother. Assuming they did it right, mom’s instill a sense of awesome to their kids, so when boys start to realize that the way girls look is kind of awesome after more than a decade of hating them for their dumb dresses and stupid tea sets, the easiest way to cope with it is to find one that most reminds them of the girl that it’s OK to like cause she’s awesome. Now, imagine that same “mind instillation of awesome” sense, only this time it’s with media and you didn’t hate it for that long. Sure, it’s not a perfect analogy, but I think it’s semi-applicable.

_You’re a kid. You go to school. You find out that all the older kids are swearing. “Whoa, isn’t swearing bad?” “It totally is. They could get in trouble for it.” “But they don’t care?” “No. Caring is something old people don’t have to do!” “Well then…FUCK caring!” This is very likely a quote from a real conversation two 3rd graders in Sayexactlywhatyou’rethinking Town had. As you can imagine, it’s not hard to manipulate these tiny folks. From this point, one might start swearing as much as they can…though at first, despite their previous statement that caring is lame and they would forever forsake it, they only do it around other likeminded youths. Eventually, a habit is formed as it’s kind of habit forming. And as the name of the blog will tell you, change is scary. But it’s not just scary for kids. It’s scary forever. Blame humankind’s active imagination for always envisioning worst-case scenario. “If I drastically change my haircut, maybe the security guard who recognizes me will think I’m a stranger and repeatedly shoot me in the most painful places imaginable.” “I have a gut feeling that the fate of the known universe is directly tied to the answer of a date offer.” “I always get my steaks well done, because what if I order it rare but they think I mean ‘Still alive and willing to do anything to stave off death and breath in the sweet air of the Earth for one more moment’?” As far fetched as these sound when written out, the fact that it’s really easy to come up with outlandish and highly improbable horror scenarios shows that the mind has a knack for it.

_So I’ve established with no actual study that habits are hard to break and that we’re impressionable as kids. Still with me? I’ve rambled a lot, I know. It’s alright if you got lost in the labyrinth that is my mind put down into text-form. So let’s jump into something that might resemble the point: Young people are easily influenced by the trendcrowd, moving with the current, curious to see what lies ahead. Until, over time, their legs start to hurt from all the moving. “Why don’t we just stop and smell the roses every once in a while?” “Psh. Smelling flowers is something stuffy old codgers do. Young people aren’t interested in agriculture!” Eventually, you’ll get to a point where you just say “Man, these guys I’m around are kind of naive” and you decide that you’re content with everything you’ve seen up to this point. Not literally, of course. Most of us pine for more things that we like. We just kind of stop expanding our field of taste. Whenever this happens [And the likelihood of realizing it happened is 0% when it first occurs, and that number slowly increases as time passes] it marks the end of our “Impressionable youth.” No longer are we impressed upon. From here on out, when people try to impress upon us, we push them away and tell them “No. You will not trick me into liking you. If you want me to like you, you’d god damn better change what you are entirely to cater specifically to me!”

_So that leads into…the good ole days. We end up looking back on things we liked, and shockingly enough…we like them. Who’d have thought? We end up liking things we grew up liking? Get the fuck out of here with that nonsense. What we liked as kids often has a lasting effect on what we like as adults? I’ll cut you, you keep up with these falsifications.

_”They don’t make ‘em like they used to.” A truer statement was never uttered. Except maybe “1+1=2.” Honestly, how much more true can you get outside of math? Anyways…really, watch a movie from the 1970′s. It’s written differently than movies are today. The camerawork is different. The way sets are built is different. The way the movies are scored is different. It’s so much different. You could say…that movies are no longer made in the same way that they once were! Take writing…back in the day, people spoke differently. They don’t write books in Shakespearean English anymore because nobody speaks like that anymore. Thanks to blogs, more shoddy writing is distributed on a larger scale than ever before *winkwinkhudgenudge*. Video games are made differently now because there’s less of a limitation on what’s possible. When a game is complex, having a tutorial makes sense. Games didn’t use to have tutorials because in Super Mario Bros., all you had to do was run right and there were only two buttons on the controller. It’s kind of self explanatory, unless you had a theory that there was a secret code you could input to make the screen scroll left and there were 8 more mirror mode worlds in the game.

_And really, so what if things change? Shockingly enough, “back in the day” there was a lot of awful shit. If I looked up the top ten movies from 20 years ago, odds are there will be as many if not more forgettable and terrible films in the Top 10 weekly box office. I just googled it, by the way. Out For Justice, Defending Your Life, The Marrying Man, Sleeping With the Enemy and Class Action were all top 10 movies for the week for April 12th-18th, 1991. Quality stuff. Think back to the classic coin-op arcade games. For every Centipede, there was…something you’ve never heard of because it was terrible and not worth dropping 2 quarters into. They don’t make ‘em like they used to, indeed. When was the last time a forgettable movie came out, or a game not worth giving a second glance? It’s been a while, man.

_Things have a habit of changing over time, for better or worse. People have a habit of only looking back at the good things from the past. Who could blame them? Who wants to look back and go “Hey…remember that shitty show from when we were kids? …yeah, I just wanted to bring up how bad it was and how much I hated it. End of conversation, I’m leaving.” Better that our memories be filled with joy and happiness rather than a bunch of garbage, and if we need to put on the blinders to block out the crap when we look back, than so be it. But let’s not deny the existence of it so as to bring down terrible modern day culture. Terrible modern day culture doesn’t really need the help. Burned.

_*I’ll try to write some stream of consciousness posts, as ridiculous as they might end up being *

_This is the first post I’ll be making on this series, but not the last. First, let me say that I enjoyed the 30 For 30 series very much. However, the airing schedule of episodes was simply horrific. As I said before, the series original intention was to air  during the channel’s 30th anniversary. The first episode aired on October 6th, 2009…and it then concluded December 11th, 2010. You don’t even need to know WHEN their 30th anniversary is, simply math would tell you that the series lasted more than a year, making it impossible to actually start and finish within that time frame. Sure, you go to the main page for 30 For 30 now, and it just says that they’re “detailing the issues, trends, athletes, teams, rivalries, games and events that transformed the sports landscape from 1979 to 2009,” but right underneath that synopsis is Bill Simmons’ essay about how the series came to be. Sure enough, it details the origins of being done for their 30th anniversary.

_OK, maybe the filmmakers just wanted more time to polish their work. That would be a reasonable explanation as to why they couldn’t get it all aired within 365 days. Whatever. But that doesn’t explain the horrible airing schedule. The first six episodes were aired on weekly basis. OK, a new episode a week, that’s cool…then the next new episode came a month later. Weird…but nice to see it back. But then there wasn’t a new episode for three months. Whaaaaaat? When it came back, it was seven episodes, then another month for two episodes in back to back weeks. One month later, one more episode, then another one month break. Thankfully, this marked the longest run of new documentaries in the series at 12 episodes in 12 weeks. But they couldn’t help but have one more hiatus before the finale. I mean, geez. That was a chore just to type out. It was even more of a chore trying to follow it. And if you missed a new episode? You better have DVR’d it, cause odds are it was only going to repeat once in the next month, if that. If it wasn’t for the internet, I never would have been able to catch some of the various episodes I missed.

_All that aside, again, I DID thoroughly enjoy the series. Granted, with 30 different people doing various stories, some will be better than others. “June 17th, 1994″ was a fantastic watch, both for the content and the presentation. Seeing the media go crazy following OJ while so many incredible things happened in the sports world on the same day, and having a documentary told only via archival footage with no testimonials of any kind was like going back in time. I remember being a kid, being super excited for Game 5 of the NBA Finals, turning on the TV and not seeing the game at all. Instead, I saw a white jeep driving down a highway. It was like going back in time. “One Night In Vegas” was interesting for me, because as far as being a sports doc, it mainly just focused on Tupac Shakur which threw me for a loop. I felt like the director was getting away with something. But, being from Vegas, I remember a lot of this stuff as it happened. I didn’t hear about anything the night of the shooting, but everyone was talking about it at school the next day. We even watched local news programs in class to find out if anything new had happened. We didn’t follow it because the entire school were a bunch of Tupac nuts…but more that something that crazy happened here in town. That a celebrity was shot and was in critical condition in the hospital HERE. Even still…the documentary was more about Tupac. Sure, there was a lot of stuff on Pablo Escobar in “The Two Escobars,” but it all ended up tying into the story of Andres and the Cuban soccer team that it made perfect sense to have all of it there.

_Anyways, this post was like a half-assed synopsis/opinion, and also a post simply to explain the series before I get the gift set later this week and start mini-reviews on each episode. If I tried doing it off the top of my head, bad shit would happen as it’s been over a year since I’ve seen some of them =P I’m looking forward to rewatching everything and getting back in the blogging mood. You should look forward to it too.

_The first one was The Rescuers Down Under. I used to watch this on VHS all the time as a kid…which is exactly why I haven’t seen it in so long. Not the “I watched it all the time” part, the “VHS” part. The VHS player was not hooked up for a long time and now is MIA. So I was looking forward to re-watching this again for the first time in a possibly a score of years. OK, not REALLY that long.

"I'm a SWELL GUY! Hahahaha!"

_This movie was…really different upon re-watching it now. My opinions on it have done a total 180. The plot is wildly uneven and the pacing is kind of crazy. A lot of Disney animated films have that timeless appeal, both in that they tend to age really well and that there’s a lot to like about them regardless of the viewer’s age. This one really didn’t have that quality as much in the plot department, although McLeach is still a great villain. He might not have much in the way of depth…but he’s a poacher! He just wants the dollar signs! Not having depth is his character! It’s surprising that it’s refreshing to see a villain just be an out and out douchebag throughout an entire film. Hell, when you think about the premise of Expendables, the idea is to have good guys be good and bad guys be bad, and that’s supposed to be a throwback. Crazy.

_Anyways, being older, I now took notice of the beautiful animation in the film, something I never really looked for as a child. There’s a TON of gorgeous work done in this film, more-so than you’d think considering that it rarely if ever comes up in conversations about great looking animation. Maybe it’s because it was the first film to use computer animation, which in turn ended up killing Disney’s hand drawn department for years…or maybe because Rescuers Down Under isn’t one of Disney’s “sexy” titles like Beauty and the Beast or Aladdin. Whatever.

The Brave Little Toaster, looking like he just got out of the bath.

_Up next…The Brave Little Toaster. Being a huge Pixar fan and reading about John Lassiter’s involvement in the film really made me want to see this movie again, not having seen it since before Toy Story ONE. And wow…you can totally see it. There’s so much thematically going on here that carried over to Pixar’s later works…inanimate object having feelings for their owners, themes of abandonment and companionship, cars using their headlights for eyes and grills for mouths…it’s all there. If this movie were to have come out WALL-E with no changes, you’d accuse it of being a cheap re-hash of the Pixar filmography. As it stands, it’s almost more like “The Lost Pixar Film,” like they originally made this, but then the finished product was deemed crap and never released, so they just took various small ideas from the script and fleshed them out to make entire movies from it. Then when you study their “Unreleased work” you see this and you go “Holy shit, it’s everything!” Random ass tangent aside, outside of a few “Wait, how come only the vacuum cleaner needs to be plugged into the battery to move around effectively?” moments, this one totally holds up, which isn’t surprising. It is a hand animated mini-Pixar movie, after all ;-D

"Pshaw, Abba is for babies"

_Last, but not least…is Persepolis. Talk about stark contrast from the last two. Remember all that garbage I was spouting off at the beginning about animated films being for babies because you had to use your hands? Yeah, this doesn’t fall in that category. At all.  What’s it about? Well, let’s get my copy/paste/edit/paste again on from Wiki…*ahem*

“Persepolis is a 2007 French animated film based on Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novel of the same name, following a young girl as she comes of age against the backdrop of the Iranian Revolution.”

_Bring the kids, right? In all seriousness, though, the film is really good. The pace with which the story unfolds is rather fast, but is told so well that it the quick progression is never a hindrance to the storytelling. The film juggles the rather sad content and overall story with humor so well that the two never seem to clash. Scenes with a little girl horrified from seeing a dead body buried underneath rubble co-exist in the same film as her revised memory of her cheating ex, pimple faced and picking his nose in the car so he doesn’t have to pitch in for their pot. The script is very tightly done, that way. This is the kind of film that you’d tell someone to watch if they thought all animated work was for kids.

_I didn’t really have any intention of having three animated features be my first three DVD’s I got from Netflix…it just kind of happened that way. But it was really interesting, watching all three in the span of a week, what with the contrasts in styles and tones between them all. Throw in the instant stream viewing of Ponyo, and I ran a pretty good gamut or varied animated movies. (Opinion of Ponyo: Very adorable, pretty enjoyable. I generally enjoy Miyazaki’s work, although this seemed the most kid-centric of his movies I’ve seen. I’m sure it’s rife with adult themes and symbolism all over the place that went over my head.)

_Some people dismiss the animated medium as being “for kids,” and while animated films generally are targeted towards youths, that’s not the fault of the medium as much as it is the people producing the content. And of course, that’s not to say that a family friendly, kid targeted film can’t be enjoyed by adults. The best movies in the “genre” utilize the animation to their advantage, by creating action and scenes not really feasible in live action. There’s a place for both in the movie world and there should be a place for both in the hearts of movie watchers everywhere.

_Olivia Wilde looks better with jet black hair.

And if you disagree, that look is sign language for "You're wrong."

_The Expendables is supposed to be a throwback to 80′s action films, but I can’t think of a single 80′s action movie where a team of good guys go into a mission, then when the dust clears, all the good guys are still alive. I mean, I didn’t mind it, it was just weird that there was no sacrifice to make it seem like “The people they’re messing with are not to be trifled with because they might actually kill some good guys!” Nope, good guys all live. Still awesome. Also, there might be 80′s movies like that. I just can’t think of them.

_In Die Hard, the bad guy computer wiz is a nerdy black guy and he gets knocked out by the dorky black limo driver that looks like he’s about 15 and a half and 70 pounds soaking wet.

_Alan Rickman is a great man. Die Hard. Galaxy Quest. Harry Potter.

_Auto from Wall-E isn’t as much of a dick as he is misguided. He’s just following directives. It’s just the fact that he sends Wall-E down the trash chute that makes us hate him. From the other perspective, you can’t really fault him for following orders, only in his method of following said orders.

_In the Jungle Book, King Louie is all about wanting to know how to harness the power of fire and never once mentions wanting to know about the wheel. Are we to assume that he’s ignorant of the wheel’s greatness or that he’s already unlocked its great power and that’s why he shows no interest in it?

_If you’re a cop worth a salt in the movies, you’ll have handed in your badge and your gun at some point in time over the course of the film. And if you don’t do it in the film itself, it’ll be referenced that it’s happened to you in the past. If neither of those things happen, you’re simply a bad cop. You can’t make a difference from behind a desk!

My step mom married my dad when i was a senior in HS.  As I’ve gotten to know her, I’ve learned, that quite honestly, she’s not very sensitive.  She doesn’t have any sort of filter, and to make matters worse, she tries to act like she’s my mother.  Bi-HIIIG Mistake! (Scrubs reference btw).

One thing I NEVER like talking about with my step mom is my love life.  I never mentioned that I was dating ALisha to her, or anything along those lines.  Somehow she found out, but i mainly just covered it up by saying that we just hung out a few times and let that be that.  She even had the nerve to bring up the person that I was dating for 1.5 years (back when i was in college) KNOWING that we had been broken up for over a year now.

However, yesterday, she made a comment that was very offensive.  Basically, she said that all guys who have gamers won’t ever have a girlfriend.  She further went on to say that all girls who play vgs wont have boyfriends. (I didn’t mention anything about girls dating girls or boys dating boys because 1.) That might have been an opening for more problems with her and 2.) her response probably would similar…or worse.

Of course when she said this, I went into full defense mode.  I immediately thought of Alisha, because 1.) we dated shortly, but she was still someone who liked me even though I was a gamer, and 2.) SHE was a gamer as well.  So, immediately there she’s been disprooven.  Yes, I’m not CURRENTLY dating someone, but the fact that we DATED means that at some point I had a girlfriend.  Even when i was dating the other girl from college, I was a gamer, and she dated me (even though she hated gaming and tried to get me to stop…lets not go there though).

Also, I think to most of the people I’ve met on Backloggery and in real life.  WorldDude and Hoboriss have been dating for a bit over a year now, and they’re both gamers.  One of my closer RL friends (whos also a member on BL) has a b/f right now and she herself is a gamer.  One of the people i used to go to group with is MARRIED, and he’s a gamer (though idk how their marriage is going to end up due to non-gaming things).  And im sure there are other BL members that have are dating someone (Male or Female).  So, maybe I should introduce my step mom to BL.

Anywho, I really hope that what she said (or her words through me) have offended anyone.  They did make me mad, but I did wnat to stand up and fight for her…and for you guys too.  We all might not have the best love lives, but that doesnt meant we wont have them someday.

_I was at a family reunion on my mom’s side. Kind of like the one we had for my grandpa’s 80th birthday, only instead of being at a sit-down restaurant, it was buffet style. Anyways, the thing that stood out from the dream was that I didn’t see anybody’s face except for my cousin Hannah’s. It was all like that cut scene in Final Fantasy 8, where Squall is at the ball with Rinoa, and everybody is blurry except for her. It’s like the camerawork inside of my dream was done JUST so as to keep only her face in frame. Other people were acknowledged as being there, putting a a hand on my shoulder and saying hello, but they were never seen. Hannah, a cousin who I really don’t know all that well but have met a few times, was simply selected by my brain to be my “party running mate” for the dream. This, by the way, was the first dream that I had in untold months or years. I awoke from it feeling very strange. It wasn’t that the dream itself was strange. It was more that I awoke and had the acute knowledge that I had had a dream.

_I was walking the halls of a school. I was on my way to Homeroom with my unnamed bearded friend when he told me of his plan to ditch class that day. Logically speaking, why he’d even show up to school when he planned on ditching is a little bit beyond me…but it was my dream, so I guess it’s not beyond me. Maybe because he knew I’d be at school and he wanted me to hang with him? But then why didn’t he call me? Anyways, I’d never ditched school before in my real life, but in my dream, I didn’t give ditching a second thought. I accompanied him to his car, where our North Korean friend Jasmine was waiting for us, obviously already aware of the plan. BTW, I didn’t know her name was Jasmine until later on in the dream, when someone else shouted it out. It wasn’t one of those “Dream awareness” things where I knew everything about everybody. I was dream aware that she was from North Korea, but I had to find out her name. Anyways, we proceed to have a “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” kind of thing…only instead of a teenage comedy, it’s an intense action film. And when I say “Ferris Bueller,” I’m not shitting around. The dean of the school was chasing us down the street and it was also during a parade, only instead of a song and dance number we were involved in a high speed car chases with the dean and shots were fired in both directions and explosions were involved. If I had wrote this up when the dream was fresher in my mind, I probably could have told you how the exact situation came up, but I know the time when Jasmine’s name was said was when a female spy shouted it as we sped away from a hotel heavily fortified with other spies. Why 3 grade school students are anywhere near a heavily fortified spy hotel is anybody’s guess.

_I watching my uncle play various MMORPG’s. First, let me mention that this is semi-ridiculous. It’s ridiculous because he’s never play MMORPG’s. It’s semi-ridiculous because he used to be really into tabletop RPG’s and does play various PC games like Civilization and Elder Scrolls. But MMO’s? My dreams are obviously slipping into the realm of lunacy faster and faster. Anyways, he’s playing WoW or RO or something or other, and after a few hours of watching him play this, I say to him “You should try playing Minecraft.” That was the whole dream. Me sitting around watching him play MMO’s and suggesting Minecraft to him. And I don’t play either MMO’s or Minecraft. I’m still trying to figure that one out.

_I think I had another dream over the last month…but I forgot the details, as all of my dreams have been kind of fleeting. The family reunion one has stuck the most, simply due to shock value of having a dream from out of nowhere. I think I had dreams before, but I had no conscious recollection of having had any of them…but I get deja vu a lot, and I think it’s from seeing things in life that are eerily close to an image I saw in a dream. Well…I think it’s safe to say that most of these won’t give me any deja vu. Except maybe the Minecraft one. That’s really not that farfetch’d.

Just think...if this was released today, they could have the game automatically detect if a Zapper was connected and choose which game you want to play based on that. So much time we would save...

_crossposted from Slaves to the Grind

_Day 1 – Very first video game_Sad to say that like so many others, my first game played was that little bundle of joy Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt [Get it? I know, clever, right?] It’s also sad to say that I honestly have no idea which one I played first. Honestly, it was probably Duck Hunt. Logically, I see it like this: put a plastic rectangle or a plastic gun in front of a 4/5-year-old boy and then take a guess as to which one he’ll be more inclined to play with.

_I have many memories of both these games. SMB was a game that, shockingly enough, my dad played the shit out of. And he was way better at it than either me or my brother. He just kept finishing off loops…I wonder if he’d have kept at SMB if someone told him that there would one day be people competitively speed running the game? Probably not unless there was a decent amount of money involved…

_When a lot of people think back on Duck Hunt, they always mention the dog. I really don’t remember the dog that much. Because real gamers did the skeet shooting. That’s about all I have to say on Duck Hunt =P

And to think that his long hair doesn't really stand out in-game.

_Day 1 – Your favorite character_Happy days, questions I can answer with Xenogears related things. While I could just post “TIE: The entire cast,” not really, some characters are fucking lame, I’ll nominate Mr. Hyuga Ricdeau a.k.a. Citan Uzuki for the role of favorite character. Actually, I’m not nominating him, I’m electing him.

_Why is he my favorite character? Because he’s a dick. Not like, a total dick, but he’s totally a dick. He goes through the entire game knowing more than he ever lets on his companions know, and goes through with elaborate plans involving them that he never tells them about. “Oh, yeah, sorry for getting you thrown in prison. But it’s OK, that was the plan from the start. You’ll thank me later.” You know, Citan, if the end result is beneficiary to everybody, the odds are they’ll still do it. I mean, nobody really like going to work, either, they just do it for the monetary gain. It’s the same idea.

_That’s not the only reason, though, seriously. He’s portrayed as a strong, intelligent and caring man, and over the course of the game, he proves to be all of the above. He’s arguably the best party member in battle…then gets an upgrade near the end of the 1st disc. He’s not afraid to strike his friends when they need to be slapped well, that’s not surprising, I already said he’s willing to have them risk their lives unknowingly and have them thrown in a holding cell. He also does more spoiler things that make him awesome…Citan is just a bad ass, end of story.

_Also, just an FYI, while I’m going to try to avoid too much Xenogears spoilers…sometimes, I’m just not going to be able to help it. You’re just gonna have to deal with it.

_Day 1 – A game that is underrated_I’ve seen more lists without it in the #1 spot than I have with, so the obvious answer is Xenogears. Seriously, list makers, get with the fucking program.

_Day 1 – Your guilty pleasure game_I’m wracking my brain on how to semantics my way into answering this Xenogears, but I’m having a hard time with that…on my own. Thankfully, Dictionary.com has me covered.

_Guilty – synonyms: felonious.

_Felonious – wicked; base; villainous

_Wicked – 3rd definition: Distressingly severe, as a storm, wound, or cold. 10th definition: (Slang) Wonderful; great; masterful; deeply satisfying

_Well, I can easily define the pleasure derived from Xenogears as both “Distressingly severe” OR “Deeply satisfying,” not to mention that the game itself is wonderful, great, and masterful. So my guilty pleasure game is the wicked, wicked, and wicked Xenogears.

It's like staring into a mirror, only he has great hair and is in shape.

_Day 1 – Game character you feel you are most like (or wish you were)_Easy. Fei Fong Wong of Xenogears. Despite hating fighting in Gears, Fei finds himself doing just that constantly. He wants nothing more but to live in peace amongst the people he loves. He is unable to keep his emotions in check. He is a master of martial arts. His character is based around Chinese folk hero Wong Fei-hung. It’d be faster to list our dissimilarities: NOTHING.

_He’d even fall under character I wish I was, too. The idea of being reborn, fated to meet and love your soul mate in every life…it’s a beautiful idea. So romantic…I’m jealous. Sure, some stuff I could live without (like blowing up my hometown), but just like with love, you gotta take the good with the bad. Besides, in his world, such a thing as fate exists, so there was probably no way for him to not blow it up and kill everybody. Not his fault!

In a better world, Chu-Chu is the person you spoke to to change your party, and Margie joins here.

_Day 1 – Most annoying character_This would fall to Chu-Chu from Xenogears. I mean, where to begin? First off, Chu-Chu is fucking annoying to begin with. Look at that dialog. Fuck off, Chu-Chu. Second, Chu-Chu is a playable character, and she’s horrible to boot. It’d be like Marlene joining the party in FF7. You’d just shake your head in disgust the moment it happened. That’s the exact thing that happens when Chu-Chu joins. Third, Marguerite was at one point in development going to be a playable character. She didn’t make it in and Chu-Chu did. Chu-Chu cock-blocked Margie into being a main character that just stands around the ship all game. Fourth, Chu-Chu’s design is “token cute furry animal made to sell merchandise”.  And yet no Xenogears merchandise exists! Her archetype is a to push non-existent merchandising! It suggests that some should exist! There is no Xenogears merch! Fuck you, Chu-Chu!

See? It's meant to be!

_Day 1 – Favorite game couple_While there were plenty of candidates (Bart and Margie; Citan and Yui; Tolone and Seraphita), there really isn’t any other answer besides Fei and Elly of Xenogears. I mean, they had a kiss that was important enough to be almost shown in anime form, and important enough to give them each unique kiss sprites. They hooked up in four different lifetimes. They each flat-out express their love for one another in words, instead of just dancing around the issue and blushing when they hold hands. Their actually talk to each other a lot to build their relationship, instead of having a love build up because they’re opposite genders and traveling together for a long period of time (although I’m sure that helped). They totally sex’d up in-game before the ending. They take other couples and crush them under Elly’s heels, because Fei doesn’t wear heels due to Elly letting him retain his manliness by wearing enough heel for the both of them. Yeah, that’s right, they actually work in tandem and they complete each other. What has your couple done lately?

_Day 1 – Best soundtrack_Not that Yasunori Mitsuna isn’t always excellent, but his Xenogears score is just…it’s like ear sex. All of his stuff is all great on its own, but Mitsuda is so good at ambiance and matching music to the mood of scenes that everything is always better in-game, and Xenogears is no exception.

_I have a hard time picking out my favorite tracks, due to having mental attachments with some of them with great scenes, not to mention that it’s almost like picking your favorite child: You love them all so much, how can you pick one over the other? So, easier to just go with the basic staples, like the boss battle music and the ending theme of the game.

_Day 1 – Saddest game scene_While there are parts in Xenogears that  would qualify, the game fills me with such joy that I don’t even associate it with the term “sad” anymore. For this, I’m going with the ending of Final Fantasy X. God…that was depressing. Like…really depressing. Even when someone said “I assumed that at the end of FF7, Holy eliminated all of the evil from the planet, meaning both Meteor and people. That’s why Midgar is all shitted up – people stopped maintaining it because they were wiped off the face of the planet forever.” My response was “But at least people are all together in the Lifestream. Plus, Red XIII was the only one of his kind remaining, and yet he miraculously was able to asexually spawn children. Tell me how this isn’t a happy miracle of some kind.” I won that argument. But FFX’s ending? You can’t happy that away any way you slice it. Even Cloud had the right angle in the love triangle Tifa to fall back on. Aeris was willing to sacrifice herself not only for the greater good, but to go be with her BFF Zack. S’all good. But what about FFX? Tidus just disappears and leaves Yuna alone. Yuna wasn’t in a love triangle! She didn’t have anybody to fall back on! And what about Tidus? Where did he even go? He faded away into non-existence! And Kimahri didn’t even get his horn back! Lose-Lose-Lose. FFX ending, you’re the saddest scene ever.

_Day 1 – Best gameplay_…I see what’s going on here. You want to see just how far I’ll take it, don’t you? Especially with the category following this…you want me to have Xenogears not be my answer for two straight questions, that’s all. Well, OK, fine. You win…but not without me bitching first.

_I’m giving this to Tetris Attack/Panel de Pon. While I’ve never liked it when people called rhythm games “puzzle/rhythm” because…I dunno, it’s a completely different genre, they do share one aspect which is what has always drawn me to them. With both genres, it’s almost always pure gameplay. A lot of the time, there isn’t even an AI to get in the way. Sure, maybe in Tetris, the game gave you too many S pieces and Squares to give you a good set-up…but if you get better, you could work around it. Yeah, some of the note patterns thrown at you in Rock Band are hard…but if you get better, you can play it. It’s never a matter of “find the right strategy to cheese the computer.” The solution is always “Get better.” This should put it into some perspective how much I hate Puzzle Quest.

_Don’t worry, I know that this is “Best gameplay” and not “Wax poetic on some of your favorite genres.” But Tetris Attack really is great. It epitomizes what I love about the genre. There are always moves you can make. The end only comes when you either can’t handle the increasing game speed or you’re simply ready to call it a session. It’s simple, it’s addictive, and I can’t really think of a downside to the gameplay. God bless you, whoever made Panel de Pon.

"Bwah! Crush tiny console!"

_Day 1 – Gaming system of choice_This really is a tough decision…do you go with a classic console, which has already had enough time out of the spotlight for us to properly look back on and decide upon the quality of the console and its library, or a current console, which has the power to do things the older systems simply couldn’t do? As much as my nostalgia bug wants me to pick something else, I’m going with the X-Box 360.

_The more I thought about it, the easier this choice became. It has the best online service of the 3 modern consoles sans having to pay for it. Specs-wise, it’s strong enough to properly support any genre. It’s got the best controller on the market, and with Kinect, maybe we can even get a real RTS on a console? …lol, moving on, to top it all off…you can mod your console and put a shitton of classic console games on the hard drive. That was the kicker, even though I haven’t modded my 360 [and don't have a Kinect, either]. But the option is there. I’m thinking about the future, here. In 5 years, when the X-Box4 is out [despite it only being the 3rd X-Box] and they shut down the 360 LIVE servers, there won’t be a good reason not to mod your console and put all those awesome games on an upgraded hard drive. And when that 360 red rings, they’ll be cheap enough to easily replace. In all seriousness, the 360 is a fucking fun console, and as ludicrous as this entire explanation is…the most ludicrous part is that it’s not really a lie.

_Day 1 – A game everyone should play_Xenogears is a masterwork of the classic RPG. The traditional ATB turn-based combat, the way the hand-to-hand and Gear battles intertwined, and not just in the fact that they used the same battle engine. Granted, the battle system isn’t groundbreaking. But there are plenty of tricks you can do with your equipment that most players don’t notice at first glance. The plot is on a grander scale than anything else Square has ever attempted with the possible exception of Ivalice [although whether any of the Ivalice stories would have ever all been connected is now a mystery]. And that’s really amazing, considering a lot of story elements are missing due to budget cuts and time restraints [Thanks FF8!]. It’s huge, complex, and deep enough that you’ll actually spot things you might have missed or forgot about on a second playthrough. The pacing of the leveling is fantastic, as there really is no point where you ever “have” to grind.

_Xenogears is simply an RPG anybody that claims to enjoy RPG’s should play. And if you’re not an RPG fan…fucking play Shadow of the Colossus. It’s not for everybody, but there’s nothing else like it on any console. The closest thing would be Chaos Field, a vertical shmup which is nonstop boss fights. The fact that it’s that unique makes it a “must play.”

_Day 1 – A game you’ve played more than five times_Believe it or not, but I’ve played Xenogears more than five times. I’ve actually played it once a year since I got it…but I haven’t played it this year yet…and it’s December…hmmmmmmm…

_Day 1 – Current (or most recent) gaming wallpaper_Sadly, most Xenogears wallpapers are pretty shitty. Ms. Asuka Langley Soryu graces my desktop most of the time, really, but I do let the game pop on there every once in a while. While not really a game, per se, the last gaming related wallpaper I used was a piece from IIDX artist Maya…

...here it is. I don't have a clever caption for this. It's just pretty =)

_Day 1 – Post a screenshot from the game you’re playing right now_All I have to say…

Thank God for Record of Agarest War.

_Day 1 – Game with the best cut scenes_Man, there are so many choices here…first, you have legitimately great cut scenes with jaw dropping graphics that tell great stories…then there are games like Lost Planet 2 and the Dead Rising games where the cut scene fantasticalism comes from the ability to change the character skins. So then…what do I choose? Bayonetta of course!

_Why Bayonetta? Because it takes one viewing of a cut-scene of Bayonetta to understand the tone of the game: Over-the-top dialog, over-the-top plot, over-the-top action, over-the-top gore, and over-the-top sex. The cut scenes perfectly represent the game itself. Damn Xenogears for being so sparse with the anime cut scenes…

Ramsus in his element...with no shirt on, as evidenced by the lack of collar ;-D

_Day 1 – Favorite antagonist_My choice here is Kahran Ramsus of Xenogears. At the start of the game, Ramsus is just a bad ass with a sword and a hot girlfriend. Then he upgrades to bad ass with a bad ass giant mech with a hot girlfriend. Then as the game progresses, you find out a bit more about his past, and his connections with members of your party. Then he starts to go insane for seemingly no reason. Then you find out that his life sucks. Like…REALLY fucking sucks. As in “He literally got thrown in the trash as a baby” sucks. He’s an antagonist who’s manipulated by forces greater than himself throughout the whole game. By the end, you know almost everything there is to know about who he is as a character. You pity him by the end. The only issue I have with him is that Citan doesn’t slap his bitch ass into the party at the end.

_Day 1 – Favorite protagonist_As much as I would love to answer this with a Xenogears character, I have been answering these questions honestly. And to say that Renegade class Shepard from Mass Effect isn’t my favorite protagonist would simply be lying. He’s such an arrogant, smug asshole that you can’t help but love him. Some people might be a little squeamish at the fact that he kills people without remorse…but, really…did those people ever not deserve it? Well, OK, Samara in ME2 didn’t deserve it, but she only died due to Shepard’s actions and not by his hand, which isn’t too bad, right?

You know, I didn't realize that picking Shepard for this category would give me another reason to post this pic until halfway through that paragraph. Oh wait, this hasn't been posted on this blog before.

_Day 1 – Picture of a game setting you wish you lived in_I was really tempted to say “Xenogears” for this one, but I’d have a hard time talking my way out of the civil wars between Aveh and Kislev, the entire planet being ruled by Solaris from the shadows, and half the planet getting mutated in some way, shape or form by the end. Plus, if I was to live here and then get dropped off at the beginning of time, there’s a 1 in 15 chance I could get potshotted in the back, so I’m tempted to say “No Xenogears” for this one.

So…I’ll go with Parnasse from Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean. Why Parnasse, you ask?

The city is made out of fucking candy!

_Plus it’s on a magical continent. It’s pretty boss, to be honest with you. I’m trying to think of shitty things that happen there, and other than “The bad guys chase your party into town,” I can’t think of anything.

God, I don't even know what game this is, I just googled "SRPG isometric" and this made me cream myself.

_Day 1 – Favorite genre_You’d think with the way this has gone, that I’d say RPG. Or Puzzle or Rhythm from earlier. But no…it’s the Strategy RPG. They hold a special place in my heart. I love the way that every game in the genre has just accepted the simple point-and-click world map. I love the overtly drawn out battles. I love the fact that every plot of every SRPG always involve warring factions. I love moving on grids. Honestly, I could have said “the Strategy-RPG genre” as my guilty pleasure, if you wanted me to answer it for the original intended meaning, because even though a lot of them are legitimately good, I really do enjoy the entire genre far more than I know I should.

I was going over this post and I realized what a sausagefest my Xenogears pics were. Problem solved.

_Day 1 – Game with the best story_Man, this one is just a gimme. I can’t say Xenogears fast enough, although I could have said it faster, like before I said “Man, this one is a gimme.” That’s just semantics, though.

_But man, the story is so good…I don’t even know where to start. It works as a love story between Fei and Elly. It works as an epic narrative. It works as a typical “Mild mannered youngster from a small village embarks on adventure and saves the world” story. It works as a giant mech story. It…doesn’t work as an intriguing sewer mystery, but that’s about it. Plus, they also did nanomachines way before MGS4. Yeah, you got fucking served, Kojima. Wait, they actually talking about nanomachines in MGS1 too…oh yeah, people on the internet are just stupid, that’s all.

_Day 1 – A game sequel which disappointed you_Fuck you Wild ARMs 4! Your gameplay might have been passable, but your plot was the worst fucking thing I’d ever experienced in my life! The story in the franchise mode of yearly Madden installments are more gripping. Fuck. You.

_Day 1 – Game you think had the best graphics or art style_

Thank God for Record of Agarest War.

_Oh, art style. Well then…I suppose my answer is a little different then…ah ha! A perfect opportunity to praise a normally unheralded game, GrimGrimoire. A 2D RTS on the PS2 (Let that sink in for a second), it is rather fun game, with an incredibly fun plot which starts off giggly and ends awesome. But artistically, it is a rather beautiful game. It’s brought to us by Vanillaware, the same people who made Odin Sphere, and is done in the same style, with the “living” sprites. So why this over Odin Sphere? Everybody already knows Odin Sphere, jeez!

Why is the other one a fake sequel? Because I wasn't in it!

_Day 1 – Favorite classic game_Hmmmmm…that’s a pretty vague adjective, “classic.” I’m…going to assume you mean “really old game” and just stretch that definition to “Game more than 20 years old,” to which the winner is Super Mario Brothers 2. The REAL Super Mario Brothers 2. The one with Mouser in it.

_SMB2 is a terribly underrated game, a victim of Black Sheep-itis if there ever was one. I remember even as a child, other kids in elementary school always complained about SMB2 because “It’s not like SMB1.” Boo fucking hoo. Mega Man isn’t like SMB1 either. Guess that sucked too [Well, MM1 did. MM2 was where it started getting awesome ;-D]. You see how that entire argument is retarded? Exactly. SMB2 is great in its own right. Sadly, due to stupid kids from the late 80′s, we haven’t seen more games in this style since. Thanks a lot, guys.

_Oh yeah…consoles that aren’t current gen fall under “Classic consoles.” Xenogears is the best classic game. Disregard all previous statements.

_Day 1 – A game you plan on playing_I already told you, I’m planning on playing Xenogears again, and I plan on playing it continuously throughout my life. Well, actually, I only hinted at that…but it should have been apparent.

_Wait…you probably want something that I haven’t played that I’m planning on playing…you sly sons of bitches. OK then…I’ll be your huckleberry again. So…I recently got a DS and a PSP, so I’m roaming around in handheld country right now, dipping my toes in a bunch of games I got from Gamestop’s Buy 2 Get 1 Free sale…but I’m basically treading water right now, waiting for the Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together remake and The 3rd Birthday, both due out next year for the PSP. Tactics Ogre was originally an SNES game made by much of the same development team that went on to make Final Fantasy Tactics. In a twist of fate, TO was made when they were with Enix, then they left to join Square, and years later Square and Enix merged to form one mega-company, allowing the same team to now head up the current remake. Yeah, that’s pretty bad ass. Anyways, the best way to describe TO is “Hardcore FFT.” Yeah, exactly, “Fuck yeah.”

_The 3rd Birthday is basically Parasite Eve 3, only it’s not named “Parasite Eve 3.” Why is this awesome news? There are any number of reasons why this is awesome, but first and foremost is that PE1 and 2 are fucking sweet, and it’s about time Square started releasing new entries in their long overlooked series. I bet after 3rd Birthday, Chrono Break will be soon after.

_Day 1 – Best voice acting_You’re killing me, list. Oh well, another opportunity to give some credit where credit is due. The VA in Dead Rising is incredibly underrated. The game isn’t incredibly serious in tone, but the cast delivers their lines the authority. And while they aren’t really nobodies, the VA’s aren’t done by the usual suspects you come to expect from video games or big name talent. There isn’t a bad performance in the bunch, and it helps make the game what it is.

_Day 1 – Most epic scene ever_

_Bart is so fucked.

_Day 1 – Favorite game developer_Before leaving Square to form Monolith Soft, the majority of the team work on Xenogears and then Chrono Cross. They then went onto make Xenosaga Ep.1, and I said “Monolith, you guys rock my God damn socks.” XS Ep.2 was…decent. While I freely admit that it’s easily the weakest entry in the series, I do hold that the game still holds some merit. But Ep.3…after playing that, I actually said “I will buy anything Monolith Soft does from here on out.” I’ve actually been looking for a copy of Baten Kaitos Origins for quite a while now, and I’m actively searching for Super Robot Taisen OG Saga: Endless Frontier now that I have a DS. Fuck, I’ll get the damn DBZ game too, I don’t give a shit. With XS.ep3, they relayed to me “Everything we do is worth playing. Even the mediocre stepping-stones have a purpose. Trust in us.” And I do.

_Day 1 – A game you thought you wouldn’t like, but ended up loving_I didn’t go into Eternal Darkness with the highest of hopes. Yeah, yeah “OMG best new Nintendo IPz in 4evur!” hype and all that, but I’m just not that into survival/horror. But at the time, my Gamecube library was pretty lacking in any titles at all, not just quality ones, so I decided to hang onto the copy I had stumbled upon and gave it a go. Funny enough, I found a decently playable game, and I’m not exactly sure why. Thinking back, it had a lot of similar trappings that other S/H games that I didn’t like had…the shiny “Nintendo” logo on the box must have just made it transcend all of the flaws and delude me into liking it. Oh wait, that didn’t work for Earthbound, so it must be a decently done game ;-D

"We're registered on Starmen.net, and we didn't find your last statement to be humorous at all."

_Day 1 – Your favorite game of all time_It’s been a long road here…has it really been 4600+ words? Boy…time flies when yo…wait a second, “time flies” my foot, this has taken me forever to write-up. No fucking joke, I answered half of it with stuff pertaining to one game and this still took me more than a day to write. Sheeeeez.

_So…the moment you’ve all been waiting for…you ready? My favorite game of all time is…

I actually didn't post this pic every time I mentioned it before on purpose to make this seem more shocking and suspenseful. And I do believe it worked.

_Some might accuse me of being a Xenogears lunatic. Some might call me a Xenosagagears Freaks. Some would even go so far as to say Xenogears fanboy (Ooooooooooh, ahhhhhhhhhhh). To all of those, my response is “Yes, yes, yes.” I make no denial about it. Despite its faults, the game can do no wrong. Regardless of the missing pieces of plot, the story is flawless. While the battle engine might only be a slightly modified variation of an already existing one, it’s completely unique, ground breaking, and its impact on the industry as a whole can not be overstated, and the reverberations are still being felt today and other developers are still scrambling to catch up. One might call the sprites “muddy and embarrassingly low-res, even for the PS1″ and the polygons “plain with stiff animations;” I’d call them “deliberate and highly stylized.” I could make the argument that the Japan-only supplementary book “Xenogears: Perfect Works” is the only piece of media with “Perfect” in the title to ever live up to the billing…except as it’s indisputable fact, I don’t actually need to argue the point.

_On a serious note, Xenogears holds a very special place in my heart. When I first finished the game as a young teen, I didn’t fully understand everything that had gone on before me. But while I didn’t fully grasp it, I did know that what I had experienced was something truly special and not quite like any other RPG I had played at the time. Some people might say that it was the latent life force of the game, pulling at the strings of my soul, as it knew we were to be connected. Others would say it was my young self subconsciously recognizing “fate.” I’d be more inclined to say that it was a young me recognizing something beautiful. In any case, I felt the urge after finishing it for the first time to start it up again within the week. I’ve been playing it ever since. As ridiculous as it might sound, Xenogears has been with me through a lot. It’s gotten me through some tough times, and it’s been there through the good.

_There are adults now who grew up with the Lord of the Rings novels, or with the Beatles, or Star Wars. Those things are a part of who they are. I’ll grow old and Xenogears will be a part of who I am. That’s the best way to describe my feelings towards it.

_We gathered around the kitchen table with neatly stacked Black Friday advertisements in front of us. We knew our desires, and we stalked the paper for the most appealing prey. Scanning the various deals, we formulated a game-plan based around doorbusters; she would go to Best Buy with her boyfriend and, together, they would wait for a laptop while I would head to Wal-Mart to wait for a DS and also get a PSP while I was there. Wal-Mart weekend sales started at 12:01 AM, Doorbuster sales at 5:00 AM. Initial plan: She stands around at Best Buy, I go to Wal-Mart to throw all the crap she wants from their weekend sales in the cart, then proceed to stand around for a DS. Then after she gets her laptop from Best Buy, she meets up with me and we buy our respective shit. We were ready. At 10:30 PM Thursday night, the game was afoot…to head back to our respective houses and do stuff before ACTUALLY going out.

_So, 11:00 rolls around and Audrey heads over to Best Buy, and she finds that the line is both long and outside. “Outside” in Vegas normally is not be too bad, but it was an abnormally cold winter day in Vegas this year, hanging around a pretty steady 32-38 degrees all night. So she said “Best Buy is lame,” then calls me up to say that we’re all hanging out at Wal-Mart 2nite. Works for me. They proceed to beat me in the unofficial race to Wal-Mart [only unofficial because I didn't win], I meet up with them at about 12:15. And…it’s pretty crazy. But if you’ve ever been Black Friday shopping, it’s nothing you wouldn’t be used to, really. I find my sister randomly walking around the aisles and get to lo-down. Turns out her boyfriend is already waiting in line for the DS’es, which go on sale at 5. “Kay.” We grab weekend sale stuff, toss it in the cart, then start our search for the laptop line. That’s…where things start to get hectic.

_We ask a couple people where the line is for the $200 laptops [Quick note because it hasn't been important until now: Wal-Mart had two doorbuster laptops, a $200 one and a $300 one]. A couple people don’t know. I guess they’re just working stock…but still, seriously? You don’t know? What would their response have been if I came back with “I’m actually a planted supervisor working the floor and you don’t know where shit goes on Black Friday? What’s your name, son?” Honestly, do they use detailed maps to stock product in their store? Well, funny I should say that, because the only person who knew where shit was was the lady in the back with a detailed map. Whatever. So we’re told “Near the front by the produce.” Kay…we head over there…and nobody’s there…kay. We start to look around various market aisles and eventually find the line…nowhere near where we were told it was. Oi. Well, we get there just in time; they’re doing a head count of people in line in relation to the amount of laptops available, and we’re one of the last 10. From there, I bid a temporary adieu to my sister, as she goes off to wait in line for the DS’es so we have two people there to get two [limit one per customer, and all], and I stand alone in the laptop line because…we only want one. Simple. So…after the line fills to capacity…they proceed to move the line to the front…by the produce. Now, let’s back up a second. The line for the $200 laptop was SUPPOSED to be at the front of the store, but was actually in a random spot around that location, and then, when the line was FULL, they moved the line to where it was supposed to be in the first place…yeah, that actually happened.

_After about 30 minutes of waiting in this line in the relocated spot, the employees did another head count and informed us at the back of the line that there “probably won’t be enough laptops after here *points 5 people ahead of me*.” My first reaction was “You son of a bitch.” Then I ran through the sequence of events that had transpired in the past 45-60 minutes in relation to this particular line, and I then realized that this was not surprising. I mean, it’s not like they were actually taking names or anything. They were just counting heads. Nobody was stopping anybody further up the line from just getting their friends cut in line with them to claim more after the first head count. So…$200 laptop is a bust. “But…there is a $300 laptop also being offered.” But…we were about an hour and a half deep into Black Friday, and the lines for the hot deals were already getting long. What chance was there at getting a $300 laptop?

_Turns out, the chances were pretty good. Thing is, Black Friday can be unpredictable. You’d think “Oh shit, doorbuster deals. If you’re not lined up early, you got no chance.” Well…turns out that everyone that wanted a laptop wanted the $200 one. At 1:30 AM, the line for the $200 was full…and I headed over to the line for the $300 laptop and was the 20th person in line. To give a better idea of how ridiculous this was, the number being tossed around by employees at the $200 line was 170 laptops. So basically, while the $200 line got to 170 people, then stood around for 30 minutes and gained 10 or 15 people from cutters/earlier miscounts, the $300 line was all of 20 people strong. Now granted, by the time 5 AM rolled around, the line for every doorbuster was long as piss…but considering how long the $200 line was *cough* “closed,” it seemed crazy short. Plus, I saw more than 20 people told at the $200 line that there wouldn’t enough laptops for them, meaning that a bunch of them just up and left. I mean, sure, it’s a $100 difference between the two machines…but it’s like “I guess I can get the pretty cheap one…but I really only wanted the dirt cheap one. Ehhhhhhhhh…fuck it, I’m leaving!”

_From there, it was smooth sailing. Three and a half hours of reading and chatting up the lady with her kid behind me. Turns out her son was a gamer, asked to come with his parents Black Friday shopping, and didn’t bring his PSP. Sorry son, but you totally deserved the trolling I was giving you that was way over your head ;-D But they were fun, even while I was reading. I overheard them playing a game where you go through the alphabet, using words beginning with each letter to describe the other person. Stand-out words from the little boy were “Bug” and “Grasshopper.” Fun times in the Black Friday line.

_So what’s the Black Friday shopping experience like? It’s really not that bad, assuming you know what you’re getting into and are going to the right places that aren’t beyond horrible [Looking at you, Best Buy]. All these huge stores have been around the block a few times now, and [most] of them have really figured it out [Looking at you, Best Buy]. Wal-Mart really is the shining example of this. Black Friday in its current form has two different sales: doorbuster sales and weekend sales. Doorbusters are the high ticket, biggest savings items of the day, and are the products that people generally want the most and wait in line for. But people ALSO wait around for filling their carts with assorted weekend sale items. In previous years, Wal-Mart would start weekend sales and doorbusters at the same time. This year, they started their weekend sales at 12:01 and did doorbusters at 5. What did this accomplish? It split the rush.

_Instead of having everybody that waited in line buying their shit at the same time, you end up with the people buying only weekend sale items at midnight checking out while people waiting for doorbusters are waiting in line at out of the way areas of the store. Then at 5, doorbusters go on sale and there’s a 2nd rush of people. Are these huge masses of people at the front of the store waiting to checkout insane? Yes…yes, they are. But are they SIGNIFICANTLY less insane when the two groups aren’t checking out at the same time? God, yes. Other years, the things at the front of Wal-Mart couldn’t even be called a “line.” It was just a mob. It reminded me of the food carts back in grade school. There were so few carts, it was impossible to sell food do everybody that wanted it during the short lunch period. The students knew it. The people working the cart knew it. So nobody tried to form a line, and nobody tried to make them form one. Newbies would start at the back and try to push their way forward. Pros swept around the side, and would just sneakily go towards the corner of the cart. Black Friday at Wal-Mart used to be similar because EVERYBODY was checking out at the same time. And because there were people standing around in the middle that didn’t know what they were doing, if you were standing in the wrong spot, it was possible to not move for long periods of time. This year, with the rush split into two groups, there were actual LINES, and the wait in said line was only about 10 minutes. And as far as waiting in line for three and a half hours for a doorbuster item…that’s what books are for.

_If I had thought about it beforehand, I’d have realized that Borders would be the worst part of my Black Friday. Borders had a ridiculously great deal for the weekend, that being 50% off any item in store with their BF ad coupon. I saw said ad and the first thing that popped in my head was “Calvin & Hobbes or Far Side collection.” Obviously, I was in a state of delirium brought on from the joy of this thought, because I did not think my strategy through. Now…was it a good idea to get 50% off something as ridiculously expensive as the Calvin & Hobbes Collection? Yes, it was. Was it a good idea to make a store with only 4 registers at the front and no shopping carts my last stop of the day after not sleeping the night before when I had the sole intention of buying an oversized collection of heavy, hardcover books? No, it was not. I mean, the wait at Wal-Mart was easy. I just sat and read. But standing in line at Borders for 15-20 minutes, carrying this fucking thing? I mean…look at it:

From this angle, it looks perfectly normal, right?

Yeah, that's the OG X-Box it's sitting on. It's so big, it covers the entire system from the top!

_Needless to say, a man exhausted from Black Friday shopping really should not be carrying this around out of caution for the people around him. Because he might drop it on their fucking feet. I didn’t…but i considered it. Lucky for the people next to me in lines, they were all very friendly, so it made me want to do it less. Plus, I wasn’t about to risk damaging the collection. One of these was a more pressing issue…I’ll let you try and figure out which one it was ;-D

_Those were my two major stops. I also went to Target, which I would say is a fucking great store, had awesome weekend sales, but lackluster doorbusters, but their stores are so nice and the people working the front are so good, it seems to be impossible to get a line to form there, even on Black Friday, but if I said that, then it might be more crowded there. But seriously, Target is great, I can’t even bash on them jokingly. I got 3 pillows, the first 2 seasons of Big Bang Theory, some Andes chocolate mints, and Dragon Quest IX for the DS for about $50. That place was busy as piss, and seriously, we straight up walked up to a register with no line and bought our stuff lickety split. Plus the people working there are friendly and the store is clean. I fucking love Target and I would romnce the giant bullseye logo if it were a woman. Yeah, that’s right, not “Wham, bam, thank you ma’am” to the Target logo, an actual romance and relationship. What of it? Moving on, I browsed a few more stores with Audrey, but didn’t buy anything else and we were done before noon. After that…I came home and collapsed into bed. Seriously, I hadn’t slept.But Saturday was “Buy 2 Get 1 Free used” day for me at Gamestops, and I used it to bolster the collection of my new handheld systems. The victims: Phantasy Star Portable 2 and Pokémon SoulSilver with Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker free [Side note, this was the first purchase of the day, where I was originally going to get two games for under $15, but when I couldn't find a sufficiently good enough game to get free with them, I ended up getting two $30+ games. Fucking B2G1F], Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure and Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core [not letting it unalphabetize that easy] with Elite Beat Agents free, and finally Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey and Star Ocean: First Departure with Jeanne D’arc free. So other than my first PSP having a problem with reading UMD’s and needing to be exchanged, I was pretty pleased with myself.

_So…that was my Black Friday/Black Weekend in a nutshell. You like how I capitalized “Black Friday” every time it came up, like it’s an actual holiday or something? I just figured since it IS technically a proper noun describing a specific day of the year and all…yeah. Anyways, I look forward to fleecing big name stores out of their merchandise and spending far too much money again next year…although I know ways to fleece them all year round, but it usually involves being shady and mean, and I honestly feel bad doing it. My daddy either raised me well or raised me stupidly, I’m not sure which. I’ll leave you with this, with which you can enjoy all future Black Friday’s…adios.

But what I don’t get is the love for one particular character: Rita Mordio. In terms of gameplay, she’s your basic mage, and a damn good one at that. I’m sure plenty of people have heard about her broken tactics for Grade farming at the end of the game. However, in terms of personality, she’s an absolute dick to everyone (most everyone, at least). Now remember, this is based on what I know of her before the end of Chapter 1 (I think it’s Chapter 1? There’s no actual indicator in-game). Everyone seems to love her character, but I just can’t see it. The only thing I can see liking about her is her gameplay usefulness, which in-and-of-itself is spotty (with her AI not using items on herself when she’s low on TP even if her strategy tells her to). Maybe that’ll change by the end of the game.

I do, however, absolutely love Estelle. The easiest way to put it is that she’s absolutely adorable. Maybe she is the cliché naive princess character, but even that has a certain charm to it. In fact, now that I think about it, a lot of her character encompasses many of the role-playing clichés generally associated with princesses, but tbh, I don’t really mind any of them with Estelle. … it might also be that she’s got a lot of pink and I love pink. I’m not a girly girl; shut up.

Do I have an opinion of Ristelle? Not yet. But even if I don’t support the ship, it’s still cool.

I went to college graduating with a degree in Music Education.  Where has that landed me?  On my brothers couch still subbing and paying back school loans.  I haven’t really been looking for teaching jobs in the past few weeks because I kind of feel like its pointless.  I’ve applied to millions of places and I’ve only gotten 1 interview (this was while I was still in school).  The district i subbed in had alot of good things to say to me, yet when it came time to hire a new orchestra teacher, they promptly looked me over.  Now they dont call me for subbing anymore.  So…yeah, its kind of discouraging.  I applied to numerous places over the summer, not one single call back for an interview.

I’m honestly at a point where I dont know what I want to do.  I know alot of people are like that right now.  I guess i have the unfortunately pleasure of being one of these people.  Its even worse considering I went to college, paid a bunch of money for classes (having to retake a few) got a degree, and still nothing.  I’m not bitter or anything like that…more discouraged.  Furthermore…I think it might be the environment or just the fact that I constantly hunt subbing jobs every evening, and feel like i dont really get a break from that that could tire me out.  IDK.  I guess i also dont feel motivated to do any sort of job.  IDK why.  We won’t try to turn this into an emofest.

I honestly feel like i should have just gone into the work force after i graduated HS.  That seems to do most of my friends better.  IDK if thats how things are now…or if its just from the economy.  Whatever the case is….it sucks.

Why did i mention cosplay before?  Well, I honestly enjoy it a ton.  Making a costume is fun, getting into character is fun, and quite honestly, conventions (minus the drama and immaturity present) is fun.  Its something I’d liek to do for a while.  However…i dont want it to become life.  I feel like im trying to balance my worklife with cosplaying now.  I don’t have a girlfriend (btw, Alisha and I aren’t dating anymore) so its kinda nice not to have any sort of commitment outside of work.

To be honest, my main problem is that I don’t know how I’m going to balance everything in life.  My work life is important…and then theres my fun life of wanting to go on vacations and go to cons.  Eventually I will have a girlfriend, and eventually I will get married.  Just right now, its a bit simpler…but im sure that’ll change.  Maybe right now i should jsut enjoy it until I find my place.  Of course, i still need to get to the point where I can move out and get all set on my own two feet.

Hopefully, this means finding a new church, a new circle of friends…and eventually the Ramona to my Scott.