The Insomnia Blog

One Last Continue

2009-06-18T06:48:00.001-05:00

Not sure if anyone is still checking up on this blog, but if you are, you should know that I'm now a regular writer for OneLastContinue.com, so please go check it out.

MiniReview: Dead Space

2008-11-02T02:19:00.002-06:00

When I first heard about Dead Space a year or so ago, I was intrigued. Not only was a sci-fi survival horror title outside the norm, but it was being made by an internal team at EA.

Long story short? Dead Space is a winner. The atmosphere, plot, and production values are all top notch. And it's got the same 'new game +' sort of mechanic that Resident Evil 4 had, so there's even some replay in there for ya. On top of that, the developers did some truly groundbreaking things in the fields of audio and player immersion... it's probably the best entry in the survival horror genre since Resident Evil 4.

If I have any complaints at all, it's that the 'normal' difficulty is way to easy, and that the story drags a bit in the middle. But ultimately, it's a great title, and well worth the hype.

Hopefully, this game represents EA's decision to unfuck themselves, now that they effectively own something like 40% of all companies making games. And hopefully we'll see another entry in the Dead Space saga...

RANT: The Culture of Stupidity

2008-08-09T19:00:00.004-05:00

Today, a friend of mine posted a video on a forum I frequent. It showed a British man interviewing people on the street in America, asking them to name a question that started with a U, or what countries were in the Coalition of the Willing, etc. Obviously, it was a comedy piece, designed to make Americans look stupid. And, of course, in such a piece any person who actually did know the answers to these questions would have been edited out, but even so, many of these people were so very wrong that is was, well, laughable.

Reactions to the video were mixed... some expressed anger at the Brits for mocking us, and putting together such a salacious piece. Others solemnly noted that it was all to easy to make Americans look stupid. Still others merely hoped aloud that this video wasn't totally representative of the majority. For my part, I took this video at face value. Americans are foolish... but it's not entirely our fault. Those in power have spent a lot of time and effort making this the case.

Years of conditioning have created a society structured to keep it's citizens distracted and ignorant, so the powers that be can have free reign over our tax dollars. Worse, the promise of the media age, (free information for all), has been perverted by those with their own agenda. There are now two sides to every fact, a 'right' way and a 'left' way, if you will. One side calls Iraq a civil war, the other sectarian violence. Semantics are used to squash arguments, and obfuscate the real issues.
American politics now more closely resembles fascism that democracy. That sounds like a exaggeration, but it really isn't.
A handful of geographically challenged morons aside, Americans as a whole aren't stupid. Mostly we've been confused or distracted from the important issues of the day. Most Americans can't even find Iraq on a map, or tell you how their tax money is spent, but Paris Hilton enjoys a 75% facial identification rating. That's higher than Jesus from da Vinci's Last Supper.

It is my opinion that America, and the world at large, are at a crossroads. A new age of global communication is dawning, and with the coming of this age lies the potential for all people to know and understand one another in a way that physical distance, and boundaries political, geographical, and lingual all once made impossible. At the same time, there exist forces in this world desperate to hold on to the old ways, to maintain their hold on the power that has been given to them, or the power that they have stolen away. In this new age, we can one of two paths...
One is the path of distraction and ignorance, in which we allow the global corporations, so called 'news networks', and partisan obfuscation to manipulate and control our minds. Where the truth becomes largely a matter of what channel you're tuned in to, and where we enjoy 'freedom' in name only.
The second, and more difficult path, is that of education and enlightenment. Compulsory education aside, it is the duty of free thinking people to learn all they can about their world, especially as relates to the choices made by those they have placed in a position of authority. It behooves all the men of the Earth to learn all that they can, and to share all that they know. To spread fact as fact, regardless of how the truth may sting, and to keep opinion or speculation firmly in it's own realm and identified as such.

Our government does not want the latter. And why would they? Intelligent people question, analyze, and protest decisions made by their leaders. Far easier to lead a nation of fools, kept busy by reality television. It may be no coincidence, friends, that education in out country is in stark decline. But whether by design or by accident, the effect is the same... we are being made into a nation of docile fools, our children the first victims. And our government is at best unresponsive to this trend, and at worst, duplicitous in it's execution. When those in power no longer represent the interests or the will of the people, when the people have no true voice or recourse in selecting a new government, it is the duty of the people to change this government, by force if necessary.

"...when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security." - The Declaration of Independence

If you ask me, folks, it's half past time for a new revolution.

"The Price of Freedom is Eternal Vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson

You're Doing it Wrong:Seriously, Alone in the Dark, What the Fuck?

2008-06-26T10:39:00.000-05:00

Episode 2, Sequence 5. It's possible to get stuck in a WIDE variety of really stupid places, but the worst one by far is when you can get stuck while trying to drive through the plate glass window towards the end.

That's just fucking retarded.

Re: Civilization 4: Colonization

2008-06-26T09:27:00.006-05:00

Reprinted comment from Kotaku.com, in response to this Variety article:

Fritz compares his distress at Colonization to N'gai Coral's outrage at Resident Evil 5. "A game about colonization", he says, "is 100 times more messed up." He laments the lack of outrage at this title, pointing to various attrocities commited through the ages by European colonists.

In essence, what Fritz is saying is that issues that have a possibility of being provocative, controversial, or even (god help us) offensive, have no place in games. Which is, if you'll pardon the expression, FUCKING STUPID. Fritz acknowledges the game likely won't have an 'atrocity button', letting you throw small pox laden blankets to the natives, but for some crazy reason, he seems to take offense at the mere NOTION of colonization. He even talks about how it's possible to peacefully resolve your conflicts with the natives... but, no. Still offended. Lastly, he talks about how he's for the first amendment, and how he believes 2K has the right to release the game, before saying they SHOULDN'T.

You can't sanitize history, Mr. Fritz. Well... you can, it's been done. But you shouldn't. It leads to bad places. Nor should you sanitize a video game ABOUT history. I'm sorry if the events of the 1400-1800s offended you, sir, but you seriously need to grab hold on some reality. The claim that a Civilization title is in some way obscene is just absurd.

Original Story on Kotaku.com

You're Doing it Wrong: Alone in the Dark

2008-06-26T08:20:00.004-05:00

What kind of museum stocks this much hard booze? In this one employee kitchen alone, I found 15 bottles of Jack, Vodka, and various other hard liquors. That's just silly. I know you've got to give us shit ot burn so we can make use of the fun fire engine and puzzles, but maybe a trip to the fucking gas station would be in order if we need to get blotto?

InsomniaReview: Alone in the Dark (360)

2008-06-26T06:46:00.004-05:00

I'm going to skip over giving a summary of the game's production cycle, because frankly, you probably don't care.

I got REALLY excited around Alone in the Dark around the time details game out regarding it's survival horror, item combining mechanics. I watched all the videos I could find on it, which showed off it's impressive fire mechanics, and all sorts of interesting uses for tools. However, as is the case with many exciting next-gen games, the hype has failed to live up to the promise.

The fire mechanics are exactly as interesting and useful as advertised. As are the variety of different ways you can combine items you find scattered around the game. You can shoot or bash open a locked door, use fire to clear a barricade, or combine several items to make an explosive to blow/burn your obstacles away. It's a mechnic that really fits well into the survival horror genre, where the main attraction is scavenging up the resources you need to progress and stay alive.

The problem, however, is the components you need to make these useful items are almost everywhere, which takes away from the sense of scarcity or urgency. Bottles of lighter fluid and double sided tape lie scatter along side the road at every turn. Ironically, scraps of cloth that can be used for molotov cocktail wicks are less common. And what's worse, you can usually empty a locker of it's contents, wait a few seconds, then open it back up and GET MORE STUFF. In the end, it makes the game almost too easy. I've never once run out of ammunition for my pistol, and actually ended up throwing away a stack of nearly 100 rounds to make room in my inventory. And since some of the 'tougher' enemies can only be killed by applying fire to a certain part of their body, you'd think they'd be hard to kill. You'd be wrong, however, since you can just use the aerosol flamethrower or exploding bottle almost willy-nilly, and find more supplies in short order.

Compounding that issue is your lack of inventory space. In most survival horror games I can recall, you once in a while would have to make a hard choice as to which item to take or leave. In Alone in the Dark, however, since items are so plentyful, you get to pick and choose constantly. And not in the fun way, usually. It doesn't really upset gameplay, but it is aggravating. In any other game like this, a lack of inventory space would add to the paranoia, but in Alone, it just frustrates as you walk past boxes of healing spray. Maybe that's just me, but my survival horror instinct blanches at having to leave good supplies unused and undisturbed.

Being able to hop in and hotwire a car in Alone is, to my knowledge, a first for the survival horror genre. And it's a great idea. The cars are well detailed too, and bristle with points of interaction. Some useful, some just fun. You can turn on the radio, dome light, and high beams, all without ever turning on the engine. You can raid the glove box for supplies, move around the seats, and even pierce the gas tank to drain it of it's contents (although with all the other bottles of gasoline lying around, you'll never really need to.) The cars fall apart, however, when you start trying to drive them. They handle poorly, for starters, and collisions are handly oddly within the game's engine. Worse still, it's possible to get your car 'wedged' on a hill, which makes it impossible to move.

The first driving sequence in the game, a break neck chase through a rapidly disintegrating New York, is painful. Frequently I'd hit an oncoming car, have to put the car in reverse to go around him, and end up failing. Even when I did manage to avoid all the obstacles the game threw at me, I might find myself inexplicably falling through what APPEARED to be a solid road. This is especially common after jumps... you'll look like you're just BARELY going to make it, only to find yourself falling through the environment.

And that brings us to another of Alone's features... the DVD skip feature. Which I employed after my 20th replay of that shitty driving sequence. The game allows you to skip forward or backward in the chapters as you see fit, but restricts playing the final chapters of the game to only those players who have completed enough of the game. I've heard some people gripe and grumble, but I was always in support of this feature. I'm paying $60 for a game, and god dammit, I should get to play it however the fuck I want.
I've actually been suggesting similar features in games since MGS2. Remember that one boss fight where it's Raiden with a Stinger vs 100 Metal Gear Rays? I loved that fight, and did it over and over. It's a hard fight, but I had mastered the MGS2 controls to the point where I could have done it all damn day, if it would let me. But, in order to play those blissful 5 minutes of Metal Gear Meyhem, I had to keep a save file at a specific point, which I would have to reload every time.
So, the DVD skip feature IS a good one. But it's also one I personally NEVER planned on using. I HAD to use it, because the driving was shit.

And that brings us to the story. Whenever you use the DVD Skip, or load a saved game, it treats you to a 'previously... on Alone in the Dark' vignette. The entire game is set to a haunting and epic score... one of the best ones in recent memory. It really fits well to the game, although it occasionally starts, stops, and swells at odd moments. And the game itself is broken up into 8 'episodes', which seem to want to capture the "Lost" style of cliffhanger television. Sadly, the game didn't seem to pay any attention to the fucking WRITING on that, or any other show. While the overall plot and characters are interesting, the interaction between them are just STUPID.

The main character, Edward Carnby, has amnesia, a mysterious past, and some sort of connection to all this crazy evil that's going on. Which is cliche, but I can forgive it because using the "protagonist only knows as much as the player" dynamic can really pop for immersion. But that's where the good news ends. The dialog is juvenile, at best. Carnby randomly degenerates into swearing every other syllable. At one point, when the inevitable female lead offers to tag along with Carnby into certain doom, he says, "Don't fuck around, or I'll shoot you myself." Dude seriously needs a hug. But it's okay... by episode 4 they're making out. Despite the fact that they've said MAYBE 50 words to one another.

The game leaves a LOT unsaid... which is fine to keep any air of mystery. But when people just aren't fucking TALKING to one another, it gets creepy. Driving around with Sarah in the passenger seat of a car, almost completely silent except for the occasional quip, makes me feel like I'm driving her to an abortion clinic.

Then there's parts of the story that are just ODD. For example, when first confronted with the fact that some sort of evil presence has possessed people and is speaking to him through them, Edward doesn't even bat an eye. Nor does he ask "What are you?"... he askes "WHO are you?". Like it's going to say "Greg Smith, nice to meet you. Yeah, I can make zombies I can talk through. Neat, huh?" And nobody else seems to be batting a fucking eyelash as the fact there's suddenly monsters everywhere, and New York is torn apart. Sure, they'll tell you "It's dangerous out there", but nobody seems overly concerned until they're getting killed. Characters will watch you do something COMPLETELY insane and survive, like rappeling along the side of a building while it's exploding, and not comment about it. And worst of all, the game occasionally take the reins and makes you watch, helplessly, as some poor schlub gets killed while Carnby looks on, silently. It's really fucked up.

Then there's the occasional cutscene glitch, where the first few second of a scene will get skipped (nothing important, but it makes for an odd transition), or where what should be a stunning look out over the city turns into a blur because the textures didn't load fast enough.

The only times you do see emotion from someone, it's similar to Carnby's "cap a bitch" outburst... it's like everyone in the game is schizophrenic. And, who knows. I haven't beaten it yet... maybe that's the whole thing. But for now, it really stretches credibility. How hard is it to write some lines like "What the hell IS that thing?", and sprinkle them in now and then?

Alone in the Dark gets VERY high marks for it's ambition and scale. Few games developers even TRY to push the envelope anymore, and Eden Studios is to be congratulated. But glitches, a wacky script, and the bad driving sections (or, perhaps more accurately, the unfinished mechanic) hamstring what could have been a solid 10 down to a 7 or 6. I have a feeling that's not entirely their fault... Atari has a history of shoving it's children out the door before they've learned to walk, and since the company looks to be going bankrupt (again), I'm sure they were desperate to launch this game. Hopefully it won't be the death of the series, however, since this title really breathes some new life and new ideas into the Survival Horror genre... they just needed to be better executed.

Personally, I'd love to see a sequel. Despite it's flaws and cringeworthy moments, the game is fun, well paced, and unique. I hope Eden Studios gets a chance to improve on what they've done right here, and eliminate some flaws. At the very least, Alone in the Dark is a good example of some ways the survival horror genre can be updated and improved for the next generation of games.

VERDICT: Rent it, for certain. You can beat it in a weekend, and it's worth a play. Buy it if you're a fan of Alone in the Dark, survival horror, or quirky games.

Dear Sony, Fuck You.

2008-06-17T05:03:00.003-05:00

So.

A number of months ago I bought a PS3. I opted NOT to purchase an extended warranty, since, hey, it's not MICROSOFT I'm buying from! It's Sony! Right? Haha! Ha! Haaaaaaaah...

I wasn't even going to spring for the damn thing, because, at the time, (Nov. 07), there wasn't a damn thing worth playing on the thing I could get on the 360. I ended up springing for it because I didn't want to miss the boat on backward compatibility, which turned out to be a wise move. See, the only model Sony even MAKES anymore is the 40gb version of the PS3... and it's not BC at ALL. (Apparently they still make 80gb models, but you can't find them anywhere, and they use software emulation anyway.)

Anyway. So I ended up buying a 60gb, used and refurbished, from Gamestop. It then happily sat on a shelf for damn near 8 months, seeing little action as a PS3. It was used as a PS2, from time to time. Also, it's enjoyed quite a bit of activity as a movie player/media center. But it wasn't until GTA4 that I really started trying to play PS3 games on it.

And guess what? It's fucking BROKEN.

Now, I'm not sure who to blame here. Sony, certainly. For all their high and mighty speechifying about producing the superior console, at the end of the day they hamstrung their own system, putting me in this position. Gamestop? Perhaps... I'm not sure if what's wrong with my system is a result of their refurb process or Sony's hardware. Myself? Well, I did try to hold off as long as possible, but when faced with the prospect of not being able to play my lovely library of PS2 games on the new system any longer... I folded. I suppose I COULD have just bought a new PS2 for $100... but FUCK that. It's 2008, and I'm tired of dicking with memory cards.

So here's where I am now: My PS3 plays PS3 games... sometimes. Mostly, it crashes withing a few minutes of gameplay, but I can, once in a while, coax it into giving me several hours of gametime. I've talked to Sony, who have said, basically, "Uh... we dunno what that is. Give us $150 and we'll fix/replace it."

Now, here's the good news: They say they'll either fix my system, or give me a new 60gb. Which is nice. Having to pay $150 is less nice, but bah. I'm already $600 deep. What's another buck fiddy?

Now that catch: Sony MAY decide that the problem is 'my fault', and tell me to go fuck the devil in Hell. And keep my $150 for their trouble. Sony's reps were kinda sketchy as to what might 'disqualify' me from getting my shit fixed. So I'm going to try to coax my way through MGS4 before putting myself before the whimsical god that is the Sony Repair Center. And I'm going to ask, point blank, if it being a refurb is going to disqualify me.

...and before you ask, yeah, I thought about sneaking this one back into Gamestop as a trade in, and picking up another 60GB for the difference, which would be about $200. But... you can't actually find a 60GB hardly anywhere. So.

All in all? I am NOT pleased with this system. It's a giant waste of money, and if it wasn't for the fact that METAL GEAR FUCKING SOLID is on it, I wouldn't own one today.

Mr. Kojima, I love you. But I'm NEVER going through this shit again. Not even for you.

You're Doing it Wrong: GTA IV

2008-06-17T04:57:00.005-05:00

It's been a while, but I feel this needs to be stated.

First off, stop having my fucking 'friends' call me every five minutes when I'm on a murder spree. If I wanted to have people nagging me constantly to hang out with them, I'd have kept all the needy bitches I knew in high school around.

And second, WHY in the name of holy FUCK are trees made of a 5th dimensional material that is impervious to harm? I can knock down a telephone pole with a god damn motorcycle, but a 4 inch thick sapling will annihilate the front end of an SUV doing 120mph?
Maybe Rockstar has some kind of mysterious grudge again Newton, and seeks to prove his laws of motion wrong. I don't know.

InsomniaReview: GTA IV (360)

2008-05-11T20:50:00.006-05:00

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last 7 years, you already know the name of the terrible threat to the American way of life that reared it's ugly head in the later months of 2001. No, not Osama bin Laden. If he was really that big a threat, I imagine we'd still be looking for him. Besides, his cousin is running for President or something, so he can't be all that bad. No no, I'm speaking of Grand Theft Auto 3.
Since October of 2001, the Dark Lords of Rockstar been corrupting our youth, degrading women, glorifying crime, and training our children to be murders/homosexuals/communists/liberals. Or, at least that's what the cable news networks have been telling me. Personally, while I have noticed that the world has become a much more horrible place in the last 8 years, I'm pretty sure we can attribute most of that to a wasteful and incompetent government. But, hey, if people want to bury their heads in the sand and pretend all the world's ills come from a video game, they can go right ahead. But enough about the rediculous claims of right wing decency mongers and absentee parents. On to the game.

I don't think we need to go over the history of the GTA series. You either know about it by now, or you don't care. If you really need to know what's going on with Rockstar and Take2, wiki it. And likewise, we don't need to spend too much time on the series' backstory, since each entry features a new protagonist and independent plot. And while GTA IV does return to Liberty City, you'll barely recognize her from GTA III. 7 years of console graphical upgrades and Rockstar's talented graphical department have made this faux New York a real sight to behold. I'm even told that Liberty City now resembles NYC to such an extent that even the street layouts are nearly identical. That's pretty impressive. It can be difficult to find a nice vantage of the city, however, and more often than not, you'll be too busy driving from one end of the city to the other for a mission to take in the view. And while the city itself looks spot on, some of the character models just look strange. A little 'uncanny valley', perhaps. Not the worst I've ever seen, by far, but it can be a bit disorienting when everything else looks so realistic.

Aside from the streets and people of Liberty City, then next thing you'll spend most of your time interacting with is the cars. Here, again, this title shines. The cars have a decent variety to them, and are much more believable than previous GTA titles, overall. Rather than just crumpling bumpers, cars can now be smashed up to a frightening degree. Smash into a telephone pole at 80 MPH, and you'll see about a two foot indentation in the front of your car where you hit it. Cars also explode a lot less often. When they do catch fire and explode, it's a sight to see, but let's face it: It's far more realistic for your engine to quit on you than for your vehicle to turn into a fireball. Pyromaniacs might hate the new addition, but I like it. Trying to evade cops after a difficult mission, only to have your car spontaneously explode was a frustration I had with previous GTA titles. GTA IV also seems to have taken a page from their competitor, Saint's Row. Every once in a while, Niko will forget to "buckle up for safety", and a sufficiently fast head on collision will send him flying out of the windshield. It can be pretty amusing, (depending on whether or not your on a mission) but the amount of damage you take from the event is usually minimal. That's a little freaky.

Aside from a few tweaks here and there, the bulk of the game is what you've come to expect from GTA. You do missions for a contact, who eventually introduces you to a new contact. Occasionally, a mission will introduce you to some new gameplay feature. There is the addition of being able to choose whether or not to kill certain targets. I'm not sure how much it affects the events of the game overall, but I doubt it's anything major. But aside from a few minor feature additions, it's the same GTA we've been playing since 2001, and that's a little disappointing.

The story behind the missions, however, is noteworthy. With San Andreas, Rockstar made an attempt to make GTA a series crime story. One with elements of morality and honor, even in the criminal underworld. That trend continues in GTA IV with the story of Niko Belic, an immigrant who comes to America to live the American dream. But it isn't all he thought it would be, and in the process of discovering what it's REALLY like in America, Niko's tale gives us a chance to look beyond our preconceptions. It's part crime drama, part satire, and part cultural analysis. And while I'm all but sure no 'serious' literary critics will look beyond the game's title and reputation to discover what's beyond the cover, GTA IV has a solid story at it's core. That's refreshing for any new title in an industry dominated by silent protagonists and stereotypes, but it's especially nice to see it in a game like GTA. It makes you think there's hope for game writing after all.

Aside from the constant, unrelenting grind of doing missions for your contacts, GTA IV does offer a few additional diversions. Throughout the course of the game, you make a number of friends and/or girlfriends. At any point when you aren't on a mission, you can call them up, and offer to take them out somewhere. And if your friends have a good time, eventually they'll offer to do you favors, like sell you discounted weapons, or send a taxi to your location. However, for some odd reason you can only go out with one friend at a time. This phenomenon, which I've taken to calling a 'man-date', means that maintaining all your friendships can take up a lot of time. Eventually, it becomes clear that this is just another "drive to point a, see a cut scene, drive to point b" mission.
As for the activities themselves, they vary significantly. Going out to eat is an empty experience, you drive to pick up your friend, drive to the restaurant, walk in, then immediately walk back out with your buddy telling you how they liked the meal and drive him home. Going out for drinks is pretty much the same, but at least there you get to see some amusing drunken conversation and stumbling, and drunk driving is a unique experience. Aside from that, a number of locations have mini-games, like darts or pool you can play, but they get old after the first time. The only activity of note is the 'shows', which are cut-scenes that can, on occasion, be pretty amusing. In particular, there's a comedy club that features performances from actual comedians, such as Katt Willaims and Ricky Gervais.

But that's pretty much all there is to Liberty City. Aside from these fixed areas, there's not much to do on the streets except go to the next mission. And even those missions don't typically bring any variety with them. And unlike San Andreas, there's no territory control or posses. Sure, you've got a bunch of friends, but you can't exactly call them up and ask them to cover your back on a mission. While exploring the city, you might eventually find something interesting, amusing, or useful, but by and large there's no reason to go anywhere aside from the icons on your map.

The multiplayer is also pretty bland. Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, etc. No multiplayer co-op. There is a cops and robbers mode, but from what I heard, it's not that great. Basically hide and seek with guns. Why not have a game mode where one team plans out a robbery, and the other teams responds as the cops, driving to the location in SWAT vans or helicopters? The cops gain points for every criminal killer, the crooks gain points based on how many of them escape, and with how much cash.

All in all, it's a pretty fun game, but it's also a game you've played before. The details have changed, but this is still GTA III. All the new gameplay elements that were introduced this time around were just window dressing, and they even went back a step from San Andreas in more than one area. Hopefully, GTA V will see some major steps forward, since presumably they won't have to worry about developing for unfamiliar consoles. If not, GTA risks turning into a more violent and controversial version of EA's Madden franchise... a game that comes out year after year, and takes no risks.

VERDICT: Rent it. If you're not sick of it after a week, go buy it.

Before the GTA IV Review: 360 vs PS3

2008-05-11T20:24:00.003-05:00

Well, after months of hype and thunder, GTA IV has finally hit shelves. And now, two weeks later, the most exciting part of the GTA IV blitz arrives: I'm finally posting a review. I'm sure you've been breathless with anticipation.

So, my GTA IV adventure started with the Gamestop midnight launch. No, I didn't wait around in line for a couple hours. I showed up a little after midnight, waited my turn, and bought the game like a normal person. No reservation. Why didn't I reserve I game that I knew full well I'd be purchasing? Because I didn't know which system I was going to buy it for.

See, one of the downsides of owning both a PS3 and a 360 (aside from being out close to $800) is that whenever a new, multi-platform release hits the market, you have to choose between the consoles. And about half the time, one version of the game or the other has some sort of annoying ass glitch. Last year's Madden had an appalling frame rate on the 360. Turok on the PS3 has that annoying texture pop-in, and Condemned 2 on the 360 had a bug that ATE SAVE DATA. So, seeking to avoid disaster once again, I decided to wait until someone out there posted a comparison between the two versions of the game. And it just so happens that the day of the game's release, I got the information I needed. According to a handful of comparison reviews, the 360 version had slightly longer load times, and the occasional texture pop-in problem. The PS3 had the mandatory 3.4 gig install, but seemed the stronger of the two graphically (albeit by a slim margin). The XB360 did have the benefit of easier multiplayer, via XBL, but I rarely play games online these days anyway, so I decided to spring for the PS3 version, and finally get some serious mileage out of that damn thing.

And, as with every other time I've given the PS3 a chance to redeem itself, I payed for it. After the 3.4 gig install, I settled in to play some GTA 4, only to have my PS3 crash (not freeze, not lock up, CRASH) before the opening cut scene ended. I'll cut the rest of the story short, but after going out and buying an intercooler (thinking the PS3 might be overheating), calling Rockstar tech support (they had no idea), uninstalling and reinstalling the game data, and trolling the internet for a fix, I was still stuck with a copy of GTA 4 I couldn't play. Thankfully, the guys at my local Gamestop know me well enough to allow me to swap out the 'defective' PS3 version for an XB360 copy.

I haven't had any trouble at all with the 360 version. I have occasionally noticed a texture pop-in, but it's usually pretty quick, and tends to only come up when I'm absolutely hauling balls in a graphically busy part of town. I'd still have liked to play it on the PS3, if for no other reason than to justify my purchase of a Dual Shock 3. But to Rockstar's credit (and the dismay of many a fanboy) it seems that GTA IV gives out an equal experience on both platforms. In other words, the only reasons to buy it on one system or the other are: which controller do you prefer, and who are you going to be playing it online with?

...assuming your 360 doesn't RROD, and your PS3 doesn't... well, doesn't do whatever the hell mine did.

You're Doing it Wrong: Condemned 2 (again)

2008-04-04T12:16:00.003-05:00

You. Sons. Of bitches.

I was really having a damn nice time playing Condemned 2. It was emersive, atmospheric, the themes in the story were great. And I really loved the unlockable bonuses you got at the end of each level. I found all the hidden crap, so I get a holster that can hold any weapon? Sweet!

So, I went through, got a gold rank on EVERY STAGE BUT ONE. I was most of the way through the game, probably at the second to last level. I turned my Xbox off... and you ATE MY FUCKING SAVE DATA? WHAT THE FUCKING HELL?

I was like ten hours in. And I've got no desire to sit back through the whole damn thing again. This just wrecked my whole day.

Ars Technica is sad, too.

You're Doing it Wrong: Condemned 2

2008-03-31T19:20:00.005-05:00

Okay. First things first, Condemned 2 has gotten a LOT right. It's atmospheric, it's spooky, it's got a GREAT first person fighting system, and a captivating story. But that just makes what they got wrong all that much worse.

The game is too god damn dark. Not occasionally, not once in a while, ALL THE FUCKING TIME. Every god damn level. I had to crank my in-game brightness setting up to 70. That's as high as it would go without making all the colors look blown out. And still, it's dark as fuck.

Maybe it's my TV, but I don't think so. I know, the dark is spooky. Oooo! But let's not get carried away, lads. I'd like to actually be able to navigate the levels. By far the worst example of this problem is in the occasional "crazy drunk hobo dream sequence" levels. I've played through two of them thus far, and at the end of both stages, everything on screen is covered in black tar, there's some sort of insane distortion effect on the screen, and an endless parade of black monsters are crawling out of every doorway to claw me to death. This is not fun. It's all but impossible to figure out which way I'm supposed to go, the enemies might as well be invisible, and usually I've only got to travel 20 feet in a certain direction to complete the level. I might as well put on kaleidescope goggles and try to navigate a hall of mirrors. In the DARK.

It's quite frustrating. Still, the rest of the game is good enough to warrant playing, so I continue.
(Image: icanhascheezburger.com)

About the backlog...

2008-02-07T02:03:00.001-06:00

According to the hit counter in the right hand side of this blog, SOMEONE is reading this.

God help you.
So, whoever you are, if you've been thinking about reading all the way through the Insomnia Blog archives... well, I wouldn't. There's a lot of crazy back there from a few years ago. Back in the days when I was really supposed to be in college, and was mad at the world that I wasn't. Also, I think hitting the legal drinking age somehow released some sort of post-pubescent toxin that made me prone to fits of Wookie hyper-rage.

You've been warned.

You're Doing It Wrong: Turok

2008-02-05T21:37:00.002-06:00

Dinosaurs. Teh Footure. And an Angry Injun with a Bow and Arrow. How could you fuck this game up?

Well, you can't. Not really. But if you're playing the PS3 version, you do get to enjoy a whole shit-ton of texture pop-ins. Mmm. Pop-in fresh. Also, on occasion, when turning your god damn head, you may notice a brief flash of white on some of the brushes. Pay no attention, that's just the medication kicking in.

I could also rail against lackluster level design, a control scheme best described as "Meh", and a completely nonsensical difficulty curve, but frankly, it's the lighting-like white flashes at the periphery of my vision every 20 seconds that really have my panties in a bunch.

Worst part? Saw a friend playing this game on the 360, and it didn't seem to have this problem. This is what I get for trying to actually play a game on my $600 media center.

(Image used without permission from some Emo blog I don't read.)

MiniReview: Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles

2008-02-01T04:25:00.001-06:00

Dammit, Yahtzee. I swear, he does this just to steal my thunder.

Anyway, Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles. About the only complaint I have about this game is the Wiimote is a poor substitute for a light gun. My first instinct is to aim and fire, and that just does not work. Still, it's a fun game, even if the difficulty curve is way too high.

VERDICT: Buy. Considering how slim the pickings are on the Wii, if you don't pick this one up, it's almost like reducing the value of the system.

You're Doing It Wrong: Project Sylpheed

2008-01-31T03:55:00.000-06:00

Project: Sylpheed, Square-Enix's spaceshooter for the 360 is not a bad game. Or, maybe I've lowered my standards during this post 2000 space sim drought. But anyway, I've been having a good time playing this title, but then I ran into a problem... a clipping problem. In space.
Several of the game's capital ship models have invisible edges that you can collide with. And the level I'm stuck on has a giant fucking space station floating in it, and if you get within half a light year of that fucking thing it's game over.
Also, why the fuck would a game auto-save when you first load it? REDUNDANT! And upgrades are fun, but buy the wrong ones (like I did) and ten missions in you're fucked.
And, finally, fucking AWFUL voice overs. Holy Jesus. We're talking 90s Capcom grade.
...still playing it, though.

InsomniaReview: Cloverfield

2008-01-25T02:53:00.000-06:00

I WAS going to make this brief... so as not to 'spoil' this highly anticipated movie for anyone. But... thinking about it... there really isn't anything spoiler worthy in this whole damn movie. Yeah, you heard me. From start to finish, Cloverfield is highly predictable. If you've seen a "man vs. the whatever" movie in say, the last 50 years, you'll be able to predict what's coming down the line a mile off. The ending (spoiler alert: everybody dies) is a bit of a surprise, but only if you aren't paying attention.

Now, let me start by talking about what I liked about the movie, before I chop it into a thousand little pieces. I LOVE monster movies. Love em. Godzilla, Gamera, you name it, I'll watch it. Hell, I even managed to squeeze some enjoyment out of the American made Godzilla movie. (Hey, screw you, the visual effects were pretty good. I mean, they managed to make Ann Heche look like she possesses a soul. That's quite a feat!) So, I love the PREMISE for Cloverfield. A monster attacks Manhattan (you had me at hello, sailor). And you, the viewer, follow along from the viewpoint of a handheld camera as a group of 20-something, trendy New Yorkers must... ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK.

That reminds me... I had a dream about Kurt Russel last night... sorry, what?
Oh yes, Cloverfield.
So, the whole concept isn't half bad. I mean, aside from having a bunch of yuppies as your entire cast. Giant monster. New York. Add to that some really great visual effects, a few cleverly written and executed sequences, and you've got yourself a sure win.

Except.
I hated absolutely every fucking character in that god damn movie. And the subplots left me rooting for the god damn monster.
We start off with a happy scene of Rob (the main character, I suppose) and Beth (his pseudo girlfriend) being all lovely-dovey for about 10 minutes. This should be your first clue that things will end tragically for the pair. As the "prologue" continues, we discover that Rob is some kind of emotional cripple, terrified of either commitment or expressing himself, and Beth is the kind of rotten bitch who will bring her new boyfriend to your "I'm leaving the country" party, a month after you two finally hooked up.
For those of you keeping score at home, Rob = pussy. Beth = slut. All caught up? Okay, moving on. We're next introduces to Rob's brother and HIS girlfriend. Out of the lot, Rob's brother is probably the only character I would have liked to see more of. He was a straight shooter, spoke his mind, and he was an ass. Good times, you ask me. But don't get attached, he's doesn't make it very long. Lily, or Liz, whatever the hell her name is, the girlfriend, is completely worthless. She's one of those well meaning types who's best left in the background. Seriously, you could have written her out of the movie entirely and nothing would have changed.
And that brings us to our final pair... Marlena (fucking New Yorkers and they're made up names) and Hud. Yeah. Hud. Hud is my least favorite character by FAR. Two reasons. One, he's the cameraman for the run of the movie. He is the lens through which we get to experience this film. And he's a fucking simpleton. I'm not being mean, or cruel. He is made out, in the film, to be a fool.
We've all known that guy who can't shut up, can't keep a secret, says the wrong thing at the wrong time, and who is completely immune to sarcasm. This is Hud. He carries us, along with his juvenile crush on Marlena, through the entire movie, blithering like an idiot the whole way. I suppose Hud was meant to be likeable, but he's not. He's an oaf. Personally, I would have rather had someone clever narrating this movie, but no. We get Hud. And as for Marlena.. well, see Lily (or Liz?) above.
So that's your cast. From there, the movie proceeds as expected. Rob and Beth have an argument at the party, because she's a WHORE. Hud moves around the party, establishing that he is an idiot to everyone there. And just as you start wondering if you've walked in on OC: The Movie, the monster saves us all from the travails of trust fund baby life and attacks the city. People are scared. Special effects ensue. An attempt to escape Manhattan is made, ending in tragedy and death. Rob recieves a call from Beth, who is hurt and trapped. He must save her (minutes after the death of his brother), and his idiot friends must help! And so Rob and Frodo... sorry, Hud, travel to Mount Doom, sorry, Beth's apartment, yada yada yada. Some people die, some people don't die soon ENOUGH, and in the meantime we occasionally get to see the military's vain attempts to stop the giant stonking monster rampaging through the city.

So, all in all, Cloverfield has a great premise, and fantastic promise. The monster bits are great, well done. Abrams is clearly a fan of the genre. But all the romantic subplots and character development was extremely shallow, and felt unnecessarily added on. Like a spoiler on a Dodge Neon, they served no purpose. I, for one, would have preferred more monster, thank you.

But by far the shittiest part of Cloverfield was the deluge of viral internet crap I had to wade through for the last 8 months. I mean, shit. After all the hype, you'd have thought this was the second coming of our Lord and Destroyer, Cthulhu. But it's not. It's not terrible, but it's not great, and it's certainly not as good as we'd been lead to believe. So, Kudos, nice marketing job, but I think I'll wait for the inevitable sequel on DVD.

VERDICT: If you REALLY like giant monsters, and can ignore or sit through pointless and shallow character interactions, and have an extra $12, go ahead. There will be worse movies to see this year, I'm sure. But if you think you should probably wait for it on video, you're probably right.

InsomniaReview: Call of Duty 4

2008-01-19T19:30:00.000-06:00

First off, let me say that I'm sick and god damn tired of WWII shooters. Yes, it's the Normandy beach invasion. Very nice. Clearly you've watched Saving Private Ryan. Can we do something new, now? Oh, tanks in Africa. Lovely.
But if you HAVE to play a WWII shooter, you could do worse than Infinity Ward's Call of Duty 2. This game was a launch title for the 360, and one of the big attention grabbers at the time. And it deserved to be, the game looked great. It didn't play half bad, either, I grudgingly have to admit.
This title is not to be confused with Treyarch's (ptoo!) Call of Duty 3. You see, after the runaway success of Call of Duty 2, Activision, who owns the rights to the title, told Infinity Ward they wanted another one in a year. IW replied, "Uh... we COULD do that, but it would suck." So, Activision did something kind of smart. They hired another developer to make Call of Duty 3 (Treyarch) and had Infinity Ward start on 4. This gave both companies an 18 month development cycle, but still allowed Activision to get it's yearly Call of Duty revenue.
Alas, Treyarch apparently spent their 18 months figuring out how to heat and compress a 20-pound back of horse shit into the shape of a DVD. CAll of Duty 3 was an abomination, even for a WWII game. But we're not here to talk about 3. We're here to talk about 4. I just want to explain to you that 3 and 4, despite being in the same series, could not be further apart.
Of course, another clue that this game is not like Call of Duty 3 is that it's set in the modern day. I know, I just about shat a brick when I heard that, too. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare takes you away from the trench of 1942, when America stepped in to save the world and defeat the legions of categorically evil Nazis, and instead drops you into the shoes of a handful of soldiers fighting in modern day engagements.
There's a lot to like about this title. First off, it's darn good looking. It doesn't exactly blow the roof off, but the graphics are enjoyable. But, for me, it's never about the shiny textures, it's about the game. And in that arena, CoD4 does famously. If you've played 2, you'll likely remember the
grenade indicator, the ability to make the reticle 'lock' to a target, going prone, etc. All those make their way into the game. About the only difference is they've taken away your handy dandy enemy radar, which is kind of silly, if you think about it. I mean, we're closer to having that kind of tech now that in WWII. But you get night vision, claymores, C4, and under barrel grenade launchers to even things out, so it's not all bad.
About my only complaint with gameplay is how fucking accurate the enemies are with the grenades. There's a particular level where you play as a sniper, and you're trying to hold your position and wait for a chopper to come pick you up. Inevitably, hordes of enemies start charging your position like it's the last dance of Genghis Khan. And that wouldn't be so bad, if absolutely ever fucking one of these guys could drop a grenade right on top of you from 100 yards away. I wasn't aware that football was the premier Russian pastime. Most of the time, their uncanny accuracy with the grenades wouldn't matter, but when you're lying prone with a sniper scope in your eye, you don't always have time to either get up and run, or lob the fucking thing back.
But that brings me to my next point: realism. Now, I'm not a soldier. At best, I'm a weekend warrior with a gun fetish. But to my distinctly untrained eye, it seems like COD4 managed to hit all the bases. In the course of your missions, you get to play around with everything from an MP5 (the mainstay SMG for, well, pretty much every military force that figures they might need to kill something indoors) to a fully loaded M4A1 (with grenade launcher, laser sight visible only to NVG, reflex sight, bell peppers and onions), to a god damn Barrett Light 50. Sadly, you only get to shoot that big bastard a few times, but oh, what a shot. Surprisingly, there was no 'tank' mission. Well, there was, but you didn't actually get to ride in the tank. But I can forgive not being able to play in an Abrams because of what they DID let me do... take control of the weapons suite of an AC-130. If you don't know what that is, wiki it. Frankly, I don't know why the US military doesn't show that thing off more often. I think if the poor saps were fighting over in Iraq knew we had those god damn things, they'd lay down arms.
And as great as all the toys are, the best part is it seems like Infinity Ward got the 'feel' right. When you play the SAS man, Soap, you and your team are unapologetic murder machines. You drop right into the first mission and start gunning people down without so much as a 'howdy do'. You and your squad have zero problems shooting sleeping (and therefor unarmed) soldiers in their bunks. It's a god damn mission. You're SAS. Somebody has a nuke, and you do not fuck around. Even better, the game doesn't analyze, or provide commentary on itself. It's not making a point on the morality (or immorality) of war, it's just showing you a snapshot. It's for you to make up your own mind.

But while I'm on that subject, I'd like to direct your attention here. I'm not really sure what the point of this article is. Okay, the Iraq war is bad. Pretty much all of America is with you there. But it was okay when you were just shooting Nazis? Gotcha. So, the German soldiers (not all of whom were Nazis, by the way) didn't have families? I'm not denying that some seriously fucked up shit happened in WWII, but the camps, the genocide, all those decisions were made up at the top. The man in the trenches? He was probably just pissed about the treaty of Versailles, and wanted to get 3 square meals. If "Nazis = bad, America = good" is what you've been 'teaching' your kid about war, then I'm afraid you don't really have a high horse to stand on, friend.
In addition, I'd like to point out that the conflict in COD4 doesn't take place in Iraq, it's in Azerbaijan. But fair enough, they're still brown people who don't worship Jesus. What's the difference, right?

All in all, I found Call of Duty 4's single player campaign fantastically enjoyable. The storyline is well done, start to finish, and along the way you get to play with all kinds of ridiculously expensive pieces of military hardware. I haven't sunk my teeth into the multiplayer yet, but from everything I've heard it's of high quality as well, and includes such mouth watering features as customizable character abilities and levels.

VERDICT: BUY, If you're a lover of high grade military carnage, solid multiplayer, or action movie-esque plots, this game is for you. If you're not... what the fuck are you doing with your life?

Okay. NOW I hate Kotor.

2008-01-17T07:07:00.000-06:00

I was just frustrated with the game's clumsy interface. Now I'm pissed off. I'm 25 hours into the fucking game, and I can't go any further forward. I came back into Anchorhead, and the game freezes on me. I reloaded my save file (at that exact point) and it freezes on me.

KOTOR ate my save data. Fuck this game.

You're Doing It Wrong: KOTOR

2008-01-16T10:11:00.000-06:00

First off, why is it every single original Xbox title I try to play on my 360 is glitched? KOTOR suffers from a pretty heinous bug where the framerates will just fucking DIE for about a minute whenever the game tries to load a character's "in combat taunts". Thankfully, you can set the game to auto-pause so you don't get eaten by a rancor while the system is freaking out, but it's still annoying as hell. But the failings of the 360's BC isn't the reason for this You're Doing it Wrong.

I've decided to go back and replay KOTOR (and eventually KOTOR II) because, well, I'm a giant Star Wars geek, and it pains me to not have a complete reservoir of knowledge about the subject. I have NO IDEA what goes on in these games. This is actually my third attempt to play this game. On both of my previous attempts, I made it up to Kashykk (after beating Tatooine), which only adds to my frustration with this title.

On the plus side: It's STAR WARS, BITCH!
On the down side:

To save on disc space, the game uses a sampling of 'alien voices', which are basically just the same 4-5 sound files per species. It's clever, but after 10 hours of gameplay, you never want to talk to anyone not relevant to the plot again. Alas, that's not enough to save you, and sometimes you still have to talk to a fucking rodian. Or a wookie. God I hate wookies, now. I know, I know, they probably didn't have any other choice, there's only so much room on a DVD. It's still annoying, though.
The combat system is just. Not. Good. It's not horrible. It's passable. Combat is not something to enjoy in KOTOR, it's the price of admission.
The pacing of the story is slow as hell. I'm trying to rush through crap, and I still end up having to do all kinds of dumb fucking side quests to get where I want to be.

Thankfully, BioWare learned well the lessons of KOTOR (and apparently KOTOR II and Jade Empire), because Mass Effect has NONE of these problems.

Rant: McCullough

2008-01-16T10:00:00.000-06:00

I was going to launch into a gigantic diatribe about this crazy bullshit, but it looks like Penny-Arcade beat me to punch. At first, it seemed like Kevin McCullough was just hideously misinformed. Mass Effect is in fact, not a sex simulator. There are, in any given play through, exactly TWO times you can have sex. You can choose BETWEEN two women to make your 'special lady', but you can't customize them. And no, you can't have hot man on man sex. Or a rape orgy.
So yeah. Obviously he's never played the game, and just wrote a big long rant about it. He was wrong, and it was inevitable someone was going to call him on it. His response? "Fuck you!"

At first, I was willing to dismiss McCullough as a bad writer. But his second article on the subject makes it clear he's not even that. He's just an attention whore. So, don't devote any more of your day to this ass-cheese than you already have. He's not only a misinformed idiot, he's a misinformed idiot who wants to feed of your irritation with him. This guy is seriously worse than Jack Thompson, and we should start ignoring him now before he becomes a problem.

In other words... Shuuuuun! Shun the non-believer!

(I could have linked to the original McCullough's original Townhall articles in the above story. I didn't.)

You're Doing It Wrong: Assassin's Creed

2008-01-15T03:23:00.000-06:00

NEW FEATURE: I'm gonna start putting these up any time a game displays a design decision so stupid I have to walk away and turn off my system. Our first winner, Assassin's Creed.

Apparently, the Crusades are more brutal than history had led me to believe. I just got stabbed to death for WALKING TOO QUICKLY. Not running. Not sprinting. Walking. See, there's a number of different ways you can move around in Assassin's Creed, separated into High Profile, Low Profile, whatever. You can move around normally, with the analog sticks, hold LT to run, or hold LT + A to move balls out. You can also hold RT + A to blend in, and move EXTREMELY slow.

I was walking normally, passed by a guard on my way to an objective, and ran over and killed me. I'm still very early in the game, but fuck me, that's annoying. Same rules apply to moving around on a horse. The only way to move anywhere within eyesight of a guard is to move at a snail's pace. That is not a lot of fun, gotta tell ya.

InsomniaReview: Uncharted

2008-01-15T02:27:00.000-06:00

Naughty Dog, of Jak and Daxter fame, have departed from psudo-cartoon science fiction for a jaunt into a more realistic tale with Uncharted: Drake's Legacy for the PS3. Uncharted puts you in the shoes of Nathan Drake, a treasure hunter who uncovers evidence that his ancestor, Sir Francis Drake, faked his death before seeking out the treasure of El Dorado.

The storyline for this game is top notch, if predictable. It's pure popcorn, but it's GOOD popcorn. The dialog is well written, the story moves forward at a decent clip, and there's even a few surprises about midway through the game that shake the action up. The game is quite obviously meant to be a modern day Indiana Jones, and it does it's spiritual predecessor a great justice.

Graphically, the game is everything you'd want out of a AAA PS3 title. In my opinion, it's hands down the best looking game on the system as of this writing. If this is what we can expect from PS3 titles moving forward, perhaps 2008 will be the year Sony convinces me their latest system isn't over-rated and over-priced.

Gameplay shines as well. The cover mechanics work fantastically. Frankly, I wish more games released in 2007 had used this system, instead of the 'walk near a wall and you'll automatically take cover' method. The weapons are varied and effective, and the combat mechanics work well. And a little more than half-way through the game, just when running from firefight to firefight is about to get repetitive, Uncharted's story throws you a massive "what the hell?" curve ball and introduces a new enemy that really switches things up.

The cliff hugging, Tomb Raider/ Prince of Persia are probably this game's weak point. They were fairly bland compared to PoP's wall running and jumping timing insanity, which I enjoyed immensely. And on occasion, the ledge or hole you were supposed to jump for wasn't easily found, meaning from time to time you had to take literal leaps of faith. But even so, it was solid, it just didn't enjoy the high level of polish the rest of the game did.

About the only criticism I can lob at this game is that it's short, maybe 6-8 hours. Which is a lot, for a movie, and this game certainly feels that cinematic. But as great as Uncharted's mechanics are, once you've beaten it, there's really no reason to go back for seconds. There are some pretty brilliant unlockable extras, like a weapon select mode or slow-motion, but in the end it's all just sprinkles on the cupcake.

VERDICT: Either way. Certianly, you won't feel ripped off if you do buy it, it's a phenomenal game. But after you beat it, expect it to sit on your game shelf for a long time.

InsomniaReview: Blacksite: Area 51

2008-01-12T19:33:00.000-06:00

Oh, man. Where to start?
I suppose it should be mentioned that Area 51 is the FPS sequel (of a sort) to the Area 51 on rails shooters you've seen in the arcade. Yeah, those games. While Sega was making the House of the Dead games, and Virtua Cop 3 (which is splendid), these guys said "Fuck that!" and stuck with the el-cheap-o gun, and trashtastic graphics. And they were shameless quarter eaters, on top of that. Not my favorite way to spend 50 cents.

Now, apparently, a number of years ago Midway released another Area 51 FPS , but this game is wholely unrelated. And from what I've heard the only interesting thing about that game was voice acting 'talents' of David Duchoveny. Take that for what you will. But enough series background, no one really cares, anyway. Blacksite, then.

In Blacksite you play a (shock) silent protagonist... whose name they certainly did tell you, but which I'm at a loss to remember. So we'll call him Lt. Wholly Unremarkable.

You play Lt. Wholly Unremarkable, US Army. The opening level has you and the rest of your three man team (god, no wonder we're still over there.) kicking Iraqi ass and taking names. You've been tasked with investigating a bunker said to house chemical weapons, but it turns out Saddam actually had him a chunk of an alien mothership he was screwing around with. You fight off some mutants, then leave your squadmate Somers for dead, fighting off hordes of aliens, as you make good your escape.

The story is actually pretty engaging for an FPS. It deals with some pretty heavy issues, like morality in war time, government corruption, the unethical treatment of soldiers, etc. It all basically revolves around the Reborn Project, a top secret government experiment to fuse dead, mostly dead, or useless soldiers with alien tech, thereby making an expendable army of super soldiers. The "Reborn" revolt, and start waging a guerilla war against the US from their former prison, a US military Blacksite. It's all fairly interesting in theory, but occasionally the narrative falls to pieces.

Typically in today's video games, the voice acting is rather shit. But in Blacksite the voice part of the equation is well done (kudos, lads) but the acting and script suffer. And some elements of the story just should have been handled differently. For example, Cpl. Somer's predictable return to the story. After having been left for dead half a world away, he turns up in bumfuck Nevada, worse for wear but alive among a horde of weird alien mutants. But rather than having some big reveal where he shows back up, it's handled in a very nonchalant manner. You complete some objective or anther, killing some badguys, and then your squadmate radios you and says "come over here". You enter a room, and, bang, there he is with your squad. "Look who we found wandering around! It's Somers!" like he was out taking in a fucking ballgame. A bit of shock is expressed, but they get over it pretty damn quick. I know, it happens all the time, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

But far worse than that are the reactions (or lack thereof) to the alien wildlife running rampant across Nevada. There was a real opportunity here to freak the player out with dialog, but it was passed up. I mean, your team is told they're be fighting a militia that's gotten out of hand, but when man sized bugs that explode like proximity mines start crawling up out of the ground, no one is particularly concerned. Once, just once, I'd like to see a game like this include a character the one Bill Paxton played in Aliens. I'm sorry, but if tentacled alien monstrosities the size of a fucking car start bounding out from over barricades to try to eat you, you're going to be a little freaked out.

It's about 3/4 of the way through the game before the more macho member of your squad FINALLY demands answers from the mysterious chick who seems to know what's going on. And frankly, by then, I'd stopped giving a shit. It just seems like at every turn, Blacksite is stopping short of having a really great story. Having a character tell you that "We should get moving" is just not an effective way to move the story forward.

As for gameplay, it's not atrocious, but it's certainly not good. Blacksite seemed to want to follow Halo's example a little too closely, by mixing up shooting and driving segments. Unlike Halo, however, it doesn't give you the option to man a turret or drive. And either way, those segments are pretty bland. As for the FPS elements, it's pretty standard fare. The inclusion of a squad moral bonus was interesting, I'll give them that.
The weapons you're given, however, suck a lot of the fun out of the game. You get an assault rifle, a pistol, a rocket launcher, a weird alien shotgun, and a weird alien plasma launcher. And pretty much every one of those weapons is useless except the AR. You'll be using it and grenades almost the entire game. Oh, there's also a sniper rifle (which looks like the sniper variation of the XM8), but don't bother trying to hit the exposed top of somebodies head while they're behind cover. It doesn't work. So, good look tracking them while they're running.
The assault rifle is almost absurdly accurate, but it's also difficult to aim precisely. But don't worry, every single enemy is a dead aim with the damn thing. So, basically, every time you pop out from behind cover, even for a second, you're getting shot. It's not as game breaking as it sounds, you can take a lot of damage and you regenerate if you fall back behind cover, but it is contrary to every instinct you have if you've ever played an FPS before.

Lastly, let's talk presentation. Here, Blacksite both shines, and fails utterly. Like the rest of the game, the level design is of two worlds. Most levels are full of detail work, have destructible elements, and lend themselves well to a firefight. But some levels are repetitive and lazy (some of the Bunker/Blacksite levels are just room after room full of enemies.), and others are unnecessarily difficult to navigate. The tone of the game, a dark, disturbing romp through a small Nevada town overrun with aliens, is carried out best in the rainy level (the one from the demo). Small touches add to the sense of impending doom, such as hearing a dog barking in the distance, only to have it's barking silenced in a yelp. It's a subtle background element, but if you notice it, it's really creepy.
Lastly, by far the most damning criticism of Blacksite is continual graphical glitches. They're EVERYWHERE. Usually it's just the kind of stuff you catch out of the corner of your eye, a texture flash here, a bad seam there, a brush that's transparent when viewed from one side.

A few months after the game's release, Harvey Smith, (the lead designer on the title) came out and said that the development cycle on this title was totally fucked. "This project was so ****ed up," he said. Really. That's a quote. Midway apparently rushed this bastard out to get holiday dollars. And that's a real shame. I can see a lot of lost potential here, and Mr. Smith has an impressive resume. But, like most titles I can think of in 2007, Blacksite was rushed out the door. So, rather than being a timely, insightful game with a solid story and game mechanics to rival Halo, it's just a lackluster shoot-em up.
Publishers. Let your development team do their fucking jobs. Stop rushing shit out. It's dragging the whole industry down.

VERDICT: Rent it. Blacksite is fairly enjoyable (especially if you enjoy a good "bad government" yarn punctuated with aliens), but it offers zero replayability, and it isn't worth the $50. And it's generic to the point of being unremarkable. If you see it for $20 in a bargain bin... maybe.

Rant: On Conscience

2008-01-07T01:43:00.000-06:00

In Response to: http://kotaku.com/341253/the-moral-cost-of-video-games

If a man can lose his conscience so easily, he never truly possessed it in the first place.

We all try to sustain certain beliefs. Belief in God, belief in a code of laws, belief in the human conscience. We try to reason that because we can feel remorse, because we have sentience (as we so choose to define it) that we as humans are somehow elevated above the rest of the creatures on this planet. We tell ourselves that because we have technology, because we no longer live in caves and hunt for our food, that we are somehow superior, above the laws of the jungle we left behind so long ago.

This is simply not the case. Every day, human beings prove themselves to be the animals that we are. We kill, maim, rape, steal, betray, and destroy. We commit crimes of passion, because our "human" emotions overwhelm us with hate and despair.

We commit crimes of hatred, because we fear those different from us, for a variety of reasons. Some fear men from other lands, thinking they mean to do harm. Others fear or hate those who believe in another God, or in no God at all. Still others hat those who live a lifestyle outside a loosely defined social norm.
In the end, the conclusion is the same: man is an animal. An animal with a heightened ability to reason, perhaps, but an animal nonetheless. Nothing will ever change that. No matter how many thousands of years of evolution separate us from the jungle, we will always retain that heart of darkness that allowed our species to survive those more savage days. It waits there to be unleashed, waiting to come to our aid in a time when logic fails us, and we are reduced to having to fight and kill to live on.
Throughout the years, many have tried to explain away incidents of terrible violence. Nature versus nurture, they say. They try to tell you people do bad things because they listened to bad music, or played violent video games, or watched too much television, or didn't go to church. But the truth is far simpler, and much more terrible. The equation isn't nature or nature, it's nature AND nurture.
The savage nature of our ancestors is in us all. In some more than others, perhaps. A broken home, a childhood exposed to violence, these factors can contribute to a man losing himself to his animal nature.

But to say that violent movies or video games desensitize a man to violence is to claim he has a sensitivity to it in the first place. This just is not so. Conscience is an illusion, a comfortable lie we convince ourselves is true so that we can face the horrors of the world we live in. We listen to the tales of war and murder in foreign lands and tell ourselves it could not happen here, because we have a "conscience". "I could never do something like that", we say. But it's a lie. We could, and we would. And we have.

But while we might be savage animals at our core, we are able to reason, and in logic comes our salvation. If only we are wise enough to use that power for our benefit. Rather than turning a blind eye to our own nature, we should accept it, and do what we can to change. Only in this way can we move forward as a species. Reliance on the crutches of ancient mysticism or faulty morality will not assist us. Only in looking within, and gazing at the monster that lives inside, can we change.
Look in the mirror, and see the beast. Understand the reasons for your irrational hatreds and prejudices, and cast them away. See through the falsities and misconceptions you carry for what they are. Endeavor to learn more about those matters you do not understand, especially when they relate to other people. In learning to understand your fellow man, you learn to better understand yourself.

While we cannot hope to defeat our nature completely, knowledge is the only tool that can shackle to beast. Go out and get some.

Rant: Hardware Failure A-Go-Go

2008-01-06T05:02:00.000-06:00

Last week my 360's DVD drive died on me. Just stopped reading discs overnight. And yeah, I'm out of warranty. I had two options: buy a new one, or send it off to MS, pay them $99, and wait god knows how long to get my system back. I was in the middle of a Mass Effect binge, and didn't much feel like waiting months to get my system back, so, I bought a new Arcade system. That ran me $279, $219 counting the $60 Gamestop gave me for a broken system.

So, I get this new system home, but the controller that came with it won't charge with my play and charge kit. I get Gamestop to replace it, and the new one is working fine.

While my 360 playing was on hiatus, however, I picked up Warhawk for the PS3. The first PS3 title since Uncharted that seems to be worth a damn. I'm actually having fun playing (despite the fact that I can't seem to join a competent team to save my life. FLAG DEFENSE, you silly fuckers)
when, lo and behold...

My PS3 shuts itself off randomly. Yeah. Just turns itself off. I figure it was probably a fluke. But it's happened 4 times now, always while playing Warhawk. My god damn ridiculously expensive "lol, Xbox has RROD lol" PS3 is BORKED. And it's borked when I FINALLY was starting to feel good about it as a game platform. The irony is not lost on me.

Alas, I bought it more than 30 days ago, so I can't take it back to the store. I knew there was a reason I should have waited until there were some games out for it. If there had actually been any titles to play on it, I would have realized this system had a major hardware issue before the two month mark. I tried calling Sony, but their hotline just said "yeah, call back another time."
This was at 10am on a Saturday. This not a good sign.

I've heard both good and bad things about Sony's hardware replacement. From Sony fanboys, I've heard you get your new system so fast it'll be there before you realize your old one is broken. I've also heard a horror story from a non-partisan sounding type. Sony told him they couldn't repair his system, because it was too dusty. Yeah. I guess we'll see.

While I'm on the subject of the PS3... no, I'm sorry, it's just not a better system than the 360 in any way. Not from my experience, in any case. It's game selection is inferior. It's online system, is a pale imitation of Xbox Live. And yes, fanboys, it's free. But I guess you get what you pay for.
You can do pretty much everything that Live let's you do... download games and demos (what few there are), talk to friends, buddy lists, a rudimentary email system, all that good stuff. But that's where it starts to break down. What you CAN'T do on the PS3 really stands out.
You can't, for example, see if your friends are online while playing a game. The PS3 neither alerts you to them coming online, nor allows you to see who's online without backing out to the main PS3 screen. Once you're in the game, you're locked in. Sony seems to have left it up to the developers to implement functions like friends lists, and etc in their game. Yeah, good move, jackasses.

Frankly, in the department of communicating with your friends and setting up a game, the 360 kills the PS3. Maybe I've been spoiled by the 360, maybe I'm expecting too much.

Oh, wait, no I'm not. The thing cost me $600. Everyone and their brother keeps telling me it's BETTER. Well, hey, guess what? It's not. Maybe next year, it will be, but right now, the PS3 SUCKS. And it wouldn't suck if it didn't cost so much damn money. If it was about the same price, it just wouldn't be as good. But to be less useful and more expensive? There's no other word for that than sucks.

Random Insanity: Master P's Theater

2008-01-01T23:10:00.002-06:00

Okay, I'm putting this out before someone else beats me to it...

New TV Show: Master P's Theater.

Join host Percy Robert Miller (aka Master P) as he takes us on a journey through the world of classical literature!

Imagine Lil Kim as Jane Eyre. Imagine Great Expectations, with 50 cent as Pip. Romeo and Juliet, set amidst the backdrop of East Coast vs. West Coast rap rivalries.

All the players would wear period costumes, but with a "gangsta" flair. Colonial era pantaloons, with one pant leg rolled up. Long underwear hiked up over the belly button. Tricorn hats, over a dew rag, slanted to one side. Grills. And oh, what chains. And of course, the actors would ride around in pimped out rides, regardless of historical accuracy.

Episode 1: Charles Dicken's "A Christmas Carol" - Ebenezer Scrooge is a generous and thoughtful man, who spends each day trying to help his community. But one Christmas Eve, as he sits alone paying his bills, Scrooge's dead business partner, Marley, shows up to caution him that he will be visited by three spirits. After a harrowing glimpse into his past, present, and future, Scrooge learns the true meaning of Christmas: GET MONEY!

Starring
Busta Rhymes as Jacob Marley,
Biggie Smalls as the Ghost of Christmas Past,
Tu-Pac as the Ghost of Christmas Present,
Ol' Dirty Bastard as the Ghost of Christmas Future,
and introducing Lil' Romeo as Tiny Tim.

UPN or BET, please contact me at this website to discuss royalties.

InsomniaReview: Mass Effect

2008-01-01T19:50:00.000-06:00

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last year, you've probably heard SOMETHING about Microsoft's Scifi epic, Halo 3. Sharing the same release month as that uber blockbuster, however, is BioWare's Mass Effect. If you own an Xbox, you probably remember BioWare from the KOTOR series, or Jade Empire. If you own an Xbox and haven't at least tried those games, you should probably just go kill yourself. Just sayin'.

Mass Effect takes the formula from the KOTOR games, and improves on it. You are Commander Shepard, a human soldier who finds himself smack dab in the middle of a plot of galactic proportions. You are appointed as the first human Specter, (which is sort of a cross between SWAT and Jedi) an organization that serves the interest of the Citadel, a conglomeration of various alien races. One of your fellow Specters, Saren, has gone off the deep end, and teamed up with a sentient race of machines called the Geth, with the intent of killing/conquering the galaxy. That's about as far as I'm prepared to walk you through to plot. Any more explanation than that would make me sound like a crazy homeless person rambling under a bridge (more so than usual), but suffice to say, it's pretty good. The amount of backstory and subplots built into Mass Effect are the sort of thing you'd expect from a science fiction story that had been around 20 years, like Star Wars or Star Trek. It's got that same feel to it, but it's all brand new, from scratch. If you ask me, that's quite an achievement from the writing staff at BioWare, and they should be proud of the work they did here.

The game does a great job of only giving you as much story as you want. Your primary storyline objectives and side quests are easy to tell apart in the Journal screen, so you always know where to go to move the story forward, and where to go to just screw around. And there's a LOT to do while just screwing around. The game features hundreds of planets, asteroids, and ships floating free in space, and many of them are explorable, but only a handful are relevant to the main quest. But, if you're the type of player who's only interest in a game is your body count at the end, well, Mass Effect can accommodate you, and you can bypass all the side quests without difficulty (but you should probably stick to Counterstrike).

The gameplay is solid, but could have been more refined. The cover mechanic is passable at best, and at worst frustrating. Your teammate's AI shifts between "okay, that was somewhat helpful" to "For god sake, don't walk in front of my gun while I'm firing!" with disturbing frequency, but for the most part they do more good than harm. The bumper buttons bring up a hot menu of weapons or abilities you can activate, both for yourself and your teammates, but you can only map one ability to a button, despite the fact the y button isn't used in combat. My other frustration is that you have the ability to 'talk' to your teammates by pressing A while on a planet, but doing so in combat just has them chastise you for trying to speak during a firefight. One has to wonder why that's even there, at all.

The lack of context in the controls shows up the worst in the driving sequences, where your weird, tank/moon buggy's controls are based on which direction the CAMERA is facing, not the buggy. It can make trying to maneuver around enemy fire extremely difficult until you get the hang of it.

Then there's the much lamented inventory system. I've heard all sorts of complaints about it, but while it's not a GREAT inventory system, I don't think it spoils the game. Specifically, I've heard people say there was no way to tell if an item has upgrades installed on it without looking at the individual item, but that's only true at the Sell screen. (which, to be fair, is an oversight.) My main complaint with the invo system is the lack on an ability to scroll quickly down to the bottom of a page of items. For that matter, reducing the icons for each item to the size of a line or so of text would help... there's no reason you should only be able to see 4 things at a time.

But, by far the biggest complaint I have is the absurd amount of load times. Now, I have to qualify this complain: My 360's DVD drive is dying a slow death, so I'm probably experiencing more of this than is usual. Even so, the game is loading stuff CONSTANTLY. Texture pop in is worse than a Halo 2 cut scene. The designers obviously knew this, and placed a few elevators here and there to break up the monotony, and give the illusion of a continuous environment. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. The elevator in the heart of the Normany (your ship), for example, takes about a minute to deposit you one floor down. It's the most absurd thing I've ever seen.

And yet, despite this problems, Mass Effect is a fantastic game. BioWare took the old KOTOR good/evil scale, and threw it away, in favor of a new Paragon/Renegade scale. The two sides on this scale aren't quite opposite to each other, meaning you don't see-saw back and forth between them. You accumulate points in one scale or the other, based on how you play the game. Earning higher levels of either unlocks more conversation options, side quests, and goodies. The conversation system itself is fantastic, and combined with the full voice acting for ALL characters, gives the game a much more cinematic feel than KOTOR. It certainly keeps my interest better than it's ancestor did.

The RPG system is pretty good as well, making Mass Effect one of the only action-RPGs I've ever been able to enjoy. There are three main specialties a character can have, combat, tech, and biotic (magic, kinda). The classes you choose in the game either specialize entirely in one field, or spread out between two. Based on your class, some abilities will be available to you, and others will not... you can use heavy weapons and armor, but not biotics or tech. You can use tech AND biotics, but not as well as if you specialized, and no spiffy guns for you. This choice is made at the start of the game, and it's locked in afterwards.

BUT! After unlocking several achievements, on your next play through, your character will start with skills from your first class, regardless of what you pick for your new one. In other words, you can play through as a soldier your first time, and the second time, play as a biotic who can also wield heavy weapons. Since Mass Effect has so many secondary quests (not to mention the Paragon/Renegade specific stuff) that you're likely to want to make a second play through. I know I am.

Despite some rather annoying bugs, and a few sloppy design choices, Mass Effect is an amazing game. If you own a 360, and have a even a passing interest in RPGs, games with plots, or the Sci-Fi genre, you should pick this one up. It's well worth the money.

Alas, this title is 360 exclusive, which is a shame, since it's the first title I ever looked at and said to myself, "Man I wish this was on PS3." Rumors persist of a PS3 release in 2008, so maybe that version won't suffer from texture pop-in and numerous load screens. We can hope, anyway.

VERDICT: BUY. THIS. GAME. If you like Science Fiction. If you like RPGs. And, possibly, if you like shooters. And especially if you like games with a god damn plot.

2007: A year in games.

2007-12-27T00:25:00.000-06:00

(transposed from Kotaku.com)

You know, thinking back, 2007 was actually a banner year for disappointment in games. Perhaps I'm just getting cynical in my mid 20s, but just about every major, hot shit title that came out this year came with caveats.

A whole mess of games were released buggy, some almost to the point of unplayability. Others had glaring bugs that never should have made it past QA. And I'm not talking about 4th party shovelware. I'm talking about AAA titles. It just seemed like almost every major title could have benefit from another few months in the oven.

Let's look back at some of my most anticipated games of the year, and see how they fared:

The Orange Box: Well, not much to complain about here, actually. I figured I'd start off on a high note. Three great games (5 if you're new to HL2), one low price. About the only thing I can complain about is having to wait another 18 months for Ep 3. And, supposedly, the PS3 version fails at RAM.

Halo 3: Microsoft spent billions of dollars and sacrificed the population of a small Indonesian island to a dark, tentacled god to make Halo 3 a smash hit. And it is. The gameplay is solid, the multiplayer is rather nice as well. But, still, two major complaints; friendly AI is still skullhumping retarded, and the interesting bits of the single-player story are so deeply buried that they might as well not even be there. Bungie gets an A in game design, but a C- in storytelling.

Hellgate: London: The long awaited spiritual successor to Diablo 2. With guns. In a ruined, post apocalyptic London. What could go wrong? Well, apparently, everything. The game is basically WOW with a single player mode, the players models look like utter CRAP, and bugs are so prevalent you'd think you were in a dollar an hour motel in Tijuana.

Kane and Lynch: Without even approaching Eidos' shady advertising tactics (*****!) or the whole Gamespot debacle, Kane and Lynch fell off of it's hype and landed on it's ass. The cover mechanic was just...FAIL. Mass Effect basically did the exact same thing, but at least it sort of worked. In Kane and Lynch, taking cover is mostly guess work. It's a shame, too. The gritty, evil 'buddy criminal' genre had quite a bit of appeal to me.

Assassin's Creed: I still haven't played this one, but I did watch my brother play it for about half and hour. And most reviewers seem to agree; Assassin's Creed has two major flaws. The enemy AI is just plain silly, and the repetitive investigation missions lack punch. Also, the ending is apparently a total bitch-slap.

Lair: What more do I really need to say? The controls are fucked. The total lack of an optional analog stick mode is just silly.

Bioshock: It's beautiful. It's mysterious. You spend way too much time plumbing. I mean hacking. Dead bodies dance creepily due to a minor ragdoll glitch, which really probably could have been fixed. And the endings were just... well, kind of meh.

Mass Effect: Probably one of the most ambitious American RPGs to date, Mass Effect delivers on almost every front, save two: a slightly better cover mechanic than Kane and Lynch (seriously, did no one play Gears of War last year?), and a messed up inventory system.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head.

Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but it seems to me that publishers are pressuring developers to put games out on the market before they're really ready. I hope that's not the case, but the evidence abounds.
I for one am getting pretty sick of popping in a brand new, AAA title, only to run into an obvious bug within the first 10 minutes of gameplay. Here's hoping that 2008 will see less of this phenemenon.

InsomniaReview: I Am Legend

2007-12-25T21:30:00.000-06:00

Before I get to the actual review, let me first say this: I'm pissed off at Will Smith. And not for any conventional reason, lots of people are mad at Will Smith, I'm sure. Being rich and handsome earns you a lot of enemies. But the reason I'm mad at the Fresh Prince is because I feel like he's betrayed me.
I typically don't pay any attention to celebrities. I make a conscious effort to NOT learn any more about them than I have to. This is not as easy as you might think. You see, I watch the news. I like to stay informed on what's going on in Iraq, or what dumbass, ineffectual move Congress is trying to pull now. But I defy you to turn on CNN or MSNBC, or even FoxPropoganda Department and watch it for an hour without hearing about how Brittany Spears is a terrible, drug addict of a mother, or how Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan are insanely rich whores.
I don't want to know any of this. I don't care who Anna Nicole's Baby Daddy is. So I try not to find out.
But as much as I try to stay outside of the celebrity obsessed culture that America has become, it's really not possible. See, I also love a good movie. And I've come to the realization that even I have movie stars that, sad to say, I LIKE. I shouldn't like these people. I have no idea what they're like in real life. I'll never meet them, and even if I do, I'll never have a real conversation with them. For all I know, Christian Bale beats his wife.
I came to this realization when watching a recent interview with Will Smith (supposedly held to promote I Am Legend). I saw a link to another video, in which his Jiggyness defends Tom Cruise, and Scientology. Here is that story.

So, when I saw that, I felt betrayed by Will Smith. Scientology? No, Will! Say it ain't so! But then I thought, "Why?" And I realize that, yes, even I have filed away Will Smith in some "nice guy" category. And now, it seems like he's insane. After digging a little deeper, no, Will is NOT a Scientologist. He's basically just saying "be nice, and accept people, no matter what their religion." Which, okay. I agree with you in theory.
And you know, if Tom Cruise and all the other Scientologists out there do genuinely believe in the whole aliens and thetans and volcanoes and nuclear bombs origin of man story, hey, fine. That's his faith, and I can't touch that. But I'm still going to put his file in the drawer with all the other crazy people, like the ones that believe and invisible man in the sky made us out of clay, and loves us all unconditionally, but will hate us forever and send us to a lake of eternal suffering if we have sex the wrong way (which is either before marriage, or with men, depending on who you talk to.)

Anyway, the movie.

InsomniaReview: I Am Legend
(no, really)
I Am Legend is based on the novel by Richard Matheson. You may recognize that name. He's the guy who wrote Duel (Steven King's first movie), Nightmare at Twenty Thousand Feet (the classic Twilight Zone story), Stir of Echoes, The Incredible Shrinking Man, What Dreams May Come, Hell House, and a whole mess of other stories. He's easily the most influential fiction writer of the mid 1900s, and he's inspired such authors as Steven King, Dean Koontz, and, well, pretty much everyone else worth reading in the horror or science fiction genre.

I Am Legend is, in my opinion, his finest work. It follows the story of Robert Neville, possibly the last man on earth. A deadly bacteria has wiped out almost the entire human population of earth. Those who did not die exhibit vampire like symptoms. By day, Neville leaves the safety of his home to gather supplies and exterminate nests of the creatures. At night, he seals himself up inside his home turned fortress, and fights off the attacks of the infected.

The movie differs from the source material in premise very little. Rather than being an everyman, Neville is military scientist, and the mysterious bacteria is changed into a cancer curing virus gone wrong, giving us a nice 'folly of man' twinge to the story. In the movie, Neville lives in New York city, which gives us some amazing scenery to look at. Nature has been hard at work over the last two years, reclaiming what man no longer maintains, and the effect is impressive. In the novel, the infected were vampires of a more traditional sense, shouting insults and Neville and trying to kill him. In the movie, they're mindless brutes, and Neville seems to pity them more than anything. But while these changes are relatively small, and in fact enhance the storyline, there are major problems in the final act.

Initially, both the novel and the movie spend a decent amount of time playing up Neville's isolation, and his desperation for human contact. The fact that he can't even trade insults with his nemeses in the film version seems to add to the sense that he's all alone. But there are hints of a building intelligence in the vampires. In one particularly interesting sequence, Neville captures one of the vampires for study. Shortly after this event, another one of the infected walks out into full daylight, and roars at Neville, glaring at him angrily. Despite the fact that it's fairly obvious Neville has just captured it's mate, the scientist later dismisses this evidence of higher brain function, explaining it away as further brain deterioration, or starvation from lack of food. It seemed to me as if the writers were trying to convey that Neville was in denial about the intelligence level of the infected, and it worked well.

Later that same vampire makes himself into Neville's new nemesis. He leads him into a trap (by moving one of Neville's mannequin 'neighbors' out of his usual place), and sicks a pair of infected dogs on him. That same night, Neville goes out for revenge, and nearly loses his life to a coordinated attack by the infected. He is saved by two other survivors... and this is where the movie goes to hell. While entertaining up until this point, the final act just leaves me disappointed. The original ending was completely ignored, in favor of a happier, much more ambiguous one.

You see, in the original story, Neville came to find out that while most of the 'vampires' were mindless monsters, some of them had retained their humanity. They still had to stay away from the sunlight, were still comatose while they slept, but at night, they were very much human. And these survivors has begun to congregate and build a new society. These 'still living' vampires captured Neville, and put him on trial. You see, Neville had been going around staking people while they were asleep in their beds. Through this revelation, Neville realized that he had become the thing that goes bump in the night (or day, as the case may be.) He has become anathema to society, the monster in the castle that brave men had to face. In the novel, vampire and man had their roles reversed. Neville had become Human, the monster of Legend.

Every other change to the storyline up until this point would have actually enhanced the original ending. Neville had been kidnapping the infected, performing experiments on them in search of a cure. These experiments lead to their deaths, and there had been a lot of them. Honest, up to the final ten minutes or so of the movie, it really did look like the original ending was going to make it. But, instead, the movie threw that version of ending out the window. Kind of like a baby. In some bathwater. I've read that a lot of re-shooting was done for the ending towards the end of production. I can't help but wonder if the 'real' ending got left on the cutting room floor for some insane reason.

Still hanging plot threads about the growing intellect of the infected, or Neville's possible inhuman experiments, or the blind eye he turned to the infected's remaining humanity, are left to swing in the breeze. Instead we get a final shootout with the mindless horde. Neville comes face to face with his nemesis, a slab of plexiglass between. Neville and the nemesis' paramour on one side, the vampire thralls on the other. But rather than have any sort of revaluation here, the nemesis just smashes his skull against the glass until it breaks. Neville sacrifices himself to save the two other survivors we met ten goddamn minutes ago, and sends them off to the promised land with a cure for the vampire infection. Also, believe in God.

THAT'S the new ending. You can't even explain the title of the damn movie with that ending! I was really hoping for a movie true to the original story, with a thought provoking morality tale masquerading as a horror novel, but instead, I got this. The ending RUINED what could have been a great movie. I Am Legend is still entertaining, but it's nowhere near as profound as it could have been, and that lost potential really saddens me.

I Am Legend scores an 9 out of 10 for most of it's runtime, but the last 20 minutes are only worth a 4 out of 10. We'll call it a 7.

InsomniaReview Score: 7/10.
Enjoyable, but with a shallow ending. See it in theaters if you like horror movies that explore human nature, rather than human anatomy.

2007-12-25T21:08:00.001-06:00

This is a test of the InsomniaBlog Emergency Posting System. This is only a test.

InsomniaBlog: Version 2.

2007-12-25T20:42:00.000-06:00

Hello, again, Internet!
Just went over the old archive again... wow. A lot of anger there, hm? And a lot of it misdirected. Ah, my college years. Well, I say 'college years', but really it was just a semester or two. But, I digress.

I am now officially relaunching the InsomniaBlog. I've redone the graphics, gotten rid of all the laundry, thrown away all the old pizza boxes.

For anyone who might wonder why the site looks the way it does... well, I was looking through the built in templates here on blogger.com, and frankly, they all sucked. The only one that wasn't all bright colors and happiness was so generically dark that I felt if I chose it, they might send an Evanescence CD to my house. And since no one wants that, I chose the happiest, most Pop template... and I sodomized it with Photoshop.

Before, the Blog looked like this. Now, as you can see, it's much better. It's like Evil Eye for the Straight Guy in here. Big improvement.

If you MUST go back and read the older posts beyond this point, you may do so. I don't know why you'd care to, but they're still there. I'm not going to delete them. There's a couple funny moments in there, a couple moments of me writing how proud I am of being a total dick to socially awkward strangers, and a lot of me just rambling in an amphetamine fueled rampage. I make no apologies, and I'm not going to censor my past self. It is what it is.

2007-06-23T02:09:00.000-05:00

....and now, back to our show.

Good sweet Christ, it looks like satan threw up on this blog. Gonna have to really do something about these images.

Bah, later.

Anyway, I find myself with an abundance of free time these days, so I'm reopening the blog.

Let's see, what is there to talk about...
an almost absurd amount of corruption in the justice department?
an increasingly ridiculous war?
Paris Hilton?

for fuck sake, mankind. I leave you alone for a year or so, and look what you do to the place!

This is why we can't have nice things.

2005-11-25T23:39:00.001-06:00

Hollywood has lost it's damn mind.

Forgive the hotlinking, but I feel a dark need to direct your attention to this article on joystiq.

This should prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that mankind is in it's last days.

To start with, I must say that I like the Dead or Alive series of games. Rather, I should say, I like ALL fighting games (there is something about slamming opponents into things and throwing them off buildings that fills me with joy.), and I tolerate Dead or Alive because it's in that genre, and has solid gameplay, despite the fixation on "jubbly bits".

But come. The fuck. On. LOOK AT THIS CRAP! First off, it seems that NONE of the male characters made it in to this movie. ...whatever. THAT alone might not have killed it. Jamie Presley damn sure will. I think she'll be hard pressed to outgrow what I would consider the perfect role for her, the trailer trashy ex-wife on "My Name is Earl". Acting like that can't be taught. You have to be BORN that trashy.

As of late, the the entertainment industry has been getting pretty crazy. They're going to pretty amazing lengths to protect their "intellectual" property (and I'm using that term loosely), such as HACKING YOUR COMPUTER, and sueing old people. They've even gone so far as to suggest that if you own a DVD burner, your next major purchase may well be a needle for horse. And, I'm sure we have ALL seen the informative public service announcement from the MPAA featuring some set builder, talking about how every time you download a movie, God eats one of his babies, and the interweb is making him poor.

The MPAA estimates that it loses 3 billion dollars a year to internet piracy, admitting, though, that since the exact scale of internet piracy isn't precicely traceable, that number could be much higher. They neglect to mention it's possible that number is much lower. I should point out, here, that the movie industry makes a shit ton of money, and records record profits, every single year.

I have an idea. If you want to save money, MPAA, how about you stop paying lawyers to sue the crap out of 12 year olds, quit lobbying to politicians to get draconian limits on digital broadcasting made, and, here's a crazy thought. STOP MAKING SHITTY MOVIES, AND EXPECTING ME TO GO SEE THEM!

I love movies, but in the last 6 months, I think I've only seen a handful. Serenity, Batman, Domino, Harry Potter, Jarhead... that's it. Is it because I'm cheap? Because I download movies on my computer? Addmitedly, I do. But I only download subtitled foreign films that haven't made it to the states yet. So why arn't I going to see more movies?

Well, let's start by looking at what's coming out soon...(and yes, I'm hotlinking these. Why? SO I CAN PROVE TO YOU THAT I'M NOT MAKING THESE MOVIES UP. Also, I want to see if I can get the MPAA to sue me.)

Aeon Flux, what looks to be a terrible rendition of a very strange animated show from the 90s. Pass.

Get Rich or Die Tryin'. If I were a drug dealer, I would seriously hope someone shoots me in the chest and face 5 times so I can have a movie/record/video game deal. STOP GIVING THIS MAN MONEY, YOU SICK FUCKS! For fuck sake, the movie title is spelled in Ebonics.

Cheaper by the Dozen....2. I didn't want to see the first one. I can't really get behind a movie about two morons who just have TOO MANY FUCKING KIDS. It's like there's a conspiricy to convince stupid people to have rediculously large familys, which keeps them poor, stupid, and voting republican...maybe I'm reading too much into this...

Yours Mine and Ours... or maybe not.

Underworld: Evolution. The first movie was fucking horrible. The only way I'll go see #2 is if it's free, and they're issuing refunds for the people who saw the first one.

Big Mama's House 2. Someone, for god sake, please kill Martin Lawrence.

Final Destination 3. The first two were already black marks on the movie industry. Now this. This movie doesn't even have the destinction of being "a piece of crap with Devon Sawa in it."

Bloodrayne. GOD DAMMIT, it's bad enough that you're making shitty movies about good video games, now you're making shitty movies about shitty video games?

If I CAN find a movie to see, which happens MAYBE once a month, when a few years back I went almost every weekend...I get to spend 10 bucks a person on a movie ticket. For my ten dollars, first, I'm treated to 30 minutes of commercials, after which I get to spend 2 hours in a crowded movie theater with morons who won't shut the fuck up, turn off thier cellphones, or hire a god damn babysitter.

And fuck me if either I or the people with me get thirsty. Three bucks is the cheapest you could expect to spend on soda, popcorn and candy prices are even worse. It used to be I could get a giant box of Junior Mints for 3 bucks, but now that same $3 buys me a regular size box, which doesn't even set me back a full dollar in the outside world.

And now, this Dead or Alive movie. If you're really worried about losing $3 billion dollars a year, you might want to stop spending $100 million dollars to make movies so bad that they cause seziures and anurisms in anyone that watches them.

As of right now, I'm boycotting Hollywood. Before they KILL me.

2005-03-24T01:10:00.000-06:00

2005-03-23T16:56:00.001-06:00

Terri Schivo is fucking dead, already. Let it go.

It's not like I don't feel bad for the parents. It's not like I want to condemn a woman to death. (well, at least, not this one.) The fact of the fucking matter is, this chick is GONE. She's a veggie. And she's always going to be. If there was a chance she'd get better, I'd be all for stepping in. But if that was the case, the federal government, and those boot lickers in Congress wouldn't HAVE to. If she wasn't anything but a organic shit factory, this wouldn't have even gone to court.

Instead, she's in a persistant vegitative state. Which is not TECHNICALLY "brain dead", but if you looked the word up in the cultural lexicon, well, it'd be there. The lights are quite literally on, and nobody is home.

Congress is not only GROSSLY overstepping it's bounds in passing this bill, it is doing it for a purely political reason. President Bush is either doing it for a higher approval rating, or because the little man who lives in his ear told him to, it's really hard to tell these days. They don't give a fuck if this woman lives (ha) or dies anymore than they care what I had for breakfast.

As for the opposition, look, christian nutcases, yes, it sucks when someone dies. I think we can all admit this. But this woman has been "dead" in every sense of the word save the biological for 1.5 DECADES. Her husband has been fighting a bitter legal battle trying to put her out of her misery, basically, for 7 years.

The only quasi-rational argument I've heard supporting having her feeding tube put back in stands on one clump of 'facts'. That Terri responds to her mother. Laughs, cries, and her eyes follow people around the room. If you trace these facts back to their source, they come from two places. The parents, who, frankly, are biased, and overly optimistic about thier child, as parents are wont to be, and Christian Pro Life groups websites, or websites owened by said groups, who have had NO actual contact with this woman.

Every doctor who has spent time with her has diagnosed her the same way. "Persistant Vegitative State". And they've sent a lot of doctors in there. But no matter what you might think of the medical community, they arn't in the habit of saying people are vegitables so they can get a perverse joy out of watching her die slowly. That's all you need to know. DOCTORS SAY SHE IS BRAIN DEAD, AND WILL NOT GET BETTER. So why the fucking national forum? What right do ANY of us have to stick our dicks in this man's buisness? What right does the GOVERNMENT have to try to tell this man he can't let his wife die, because some outwardly moral pricks in D.C. want flak to aim at their opponents in the next election?

I didn't really want to write and article on this issue, but once again, the papers and the television news arn't saying what they fucking SHOULD. Becuase, at the end of they day, they make their money to pry into people's lives. Even when all America should really be doing for Terri Schivo at this point is leaving her the fuck alone, and letting her family try to come to peace with what has happened.

For the record, if I ever end up like that, kill me. I figured I should put that in writing, since otherwise my mom might go nuts with grief and keep me alive with a tube in my intestines for a few decades.

...though that's not nessicarily going to be enough. If she gets enough media coverage, at least we can be fairly certain that some republican dickhead will be ready to champion my zombified life. Yay. Hooray for government.

2005-03-22T03:09:00.000-06:00

Redesigning the Blog.

Decided the blog looked like ass. Actually, it always has, but I've decided to do something about it now. I changed a few things, (and removed some old articles about me ranting about my old roomates), and it's still a work in progress. Not a lot of options, so I'll have to whip something up all custom like.

It looks cheezy and preppie now, but when I'm done, kids, don't you worry, it'll be just as offensive on the surface as the details are.

I have to go to my soul crushing place of employment in 8 hours, like a good little human status-quo bee. So I don't feel much like writing. But I've got some great ideas for how the site is gonna look. You'll hate it. I swear.

Guitar Wolf is coming to Saint Louis in 2 days. They'll be playing the Creepy Crawl at 7 on Wednesday, March 23. I'll be there, and I'll be Punk as Fuck.

2005-03-21T15:49:00.000-06:00

Been away a while. A long while. Work has kept me busy, and frankly, I haven't felt like writing cause I doubt it would do any good. Seems like I'll never get a damn journalism degree, which is the only chance in hell of getting a writing job. Hell, I doubt anyone reads this.

But I don't care anymore. Someone needs to write this shit. Blogging has even gone so far that the mainstream media is critisizing it, saying any idiot with a computer instantly becomes a journalist, only they don't check sources, and are free to make shit up.

First off, (raise hand) Guilty.
Second, the government's been making shit up for YEARS and feeding it to be. This is just tit for tat.
Lastly, I've never pusblish any 'facts' that were anything but. And mostly, I've put forth opinions. To that end, I will CONTINUE to check my facts before I post, and I will still not give a shit and say whatever I damn well please.

I'm gonna start writing again. I need to. Someone needs to get this sort of writing out there. It's not enough to try to be dispassionate and objective about the news. Hell, it's not even possible.
Analouges to Schrodinger's Cat aside, you change something by observing it. It's true. So even if you CAN be 100% objective, which in my opinion only a machine (or perhaps a sociopath, and even then, I doubt it) can achieve, simply by bearing witness, you change what has transpired.

So, why bother to be objective? Why not simply be truthful? Write what you think, write what you feel. Just make sure you present the facts, and TRY to make concessions toward the other side of the arguement.

If this all sounds familiar, good. This is Gonzo Journalism, a style put forth by american writer Hunter S. Thompson, (author of, among other things, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) who, despite his almost unending battles with drug addiction, and madness, was quite possibly the greatest modern writer since Hemingway.

A few weeks ago, my hero, Hunter S. Thompson, the man who made ME want to write, killed himself in his compound outside Aspen, Colorado. You probably saw something about this on the news, maybe not. It doesn't really matter. He's gone now, and will never write again.

I'm not so egotistical to think I should try to replace him. Nor do I particularly wish to emulate him, he had his style, I have mine. But I did gain a new resolve to write. My hero is gone, but I still live, and as long as I'm alive, I'll write what I think and feel.
Even if it does no good.
Even if it costs me money, and makes me none.
Even if no one ever reads it. I'll write anyway.

The world is full of bastards. Bastards that survive by keeping things hidden. Most of these bastards work in the government, and a good chunk of them we elected, and almost all of them do not honestly give a shit about you. Just about what you can get them. As long as I live, I'll shine a light at those bastards. Even if I'm opinionated and wrong, at least with me, you can be sure you're getting more of the truth than someone who has sponsers.

Now I'm gonna go thrash around to Anti Flag and get drunk in Hunter's Honor.

2004-02-27T15:16:00.000-06:00

True Tales of the Outside World: Freaky Guy at College

Recent events have proven to me, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I am back to my old self.

Earlier today, I was walking out of the cafeteria at college, heading home. As I'm going down the first staircase, I head a voice behind me say "Hey".

I turn to see a short, weird looking guy, maybe 4'5", wearing a baseball cap, thick rimmed glasses, and a vinyl jacket, the kind they used to hand out at baseball games. He's dressed like maybe I used to dress in the mid 80s. When I was 7. And he's got more than a passing resemblence to that guy who was in Rushmore, in miniature. It's spooky.

I acknowledge the greeting with a dismissive "Hey." and keep walking. Never missed a step.

Short comes up right beside me, and falls into step. And he starts talking.

"So yeah I need to get out of here cause I've got to be back here at 6:30 for choir and I still have to go home and shower and change my clothes, and my mom said she wanted me to do some laundry..."

It was at this point I came to two important realizations.

One, this kid has some kind of mental, or social disease, which makes him want to accost random strangers, and two, he was annoying me.

While the first one didn't register one way or another, the second matter made him open game.

I interupted his tangent.

"You know those people you hear about on tv? The ones who've just got no love for their fellow man, and would just as soon kill them as look at them?"
"...yeah..."
"Yeah. That's me." For added effect, I glance at him disaprovingly. Mind you I don't want to scare the poor geek. But I am wondering how he reacts. Sadly, his reaction only served to further push my "must mess with pathetic person" button.
"Wow......so what makes you feel like that?" He says, hardly pausing a moment. He either recovers fast, making him some sort of conversational savant, or he's working on instinct.
"Well, I guess you could just say I'm a PRODUCT of my environment." I add extra creepy inflection. In my mind, I'm imagining myself as Jack Nichelson, playing the Joker.
"So.....you'd just rather kill someone than look at them?" Regurgitating a statement into a question. Very weird.
"Well, that depends on how much they annoy me." I glance over at him AGAIN for effect.
"Isn't that like a satanist thing?"
"No no no, the word you're looking for is PSYCHOTIC. Satanism would be devil worship."
"Oh. Well that kinda scares me that you might ever try to kill me."
"Well......we'll see how the day goes." This time I don't look over. He follows another ten steps, then stops. I figure maybe he's turned off, and run away, perhaps. But after a few seconds, I hear someone talking about their laundy, and choir practice.

I turn around, and about 20 steps behind me is a preppy guy in all white (likely Sean John, or Nautica, or some such), backwards ball cap, oozing "south county sauve" as I call it. It was too far for me to see if he had a dirtlip.

And he's trailing my new friend. Now his new friend. And I think, maybe, the new friend of anyone he happens across.

Now mind you, I do feel somewhat bad for the guy. He must get lonely, and that's his way of trying to make a connection. I can identify with that. Sadly, he crossed the line from, "Guy who needs a friend" to "Freakshow who is bothering me". And I have a zero tolerence policy.

We should all just be glad it didn't come to violence.

2004-02-27T10:24:00.000-06:00

Technological Advancement. The New Enemy of Freedom.

Or so Bush would have us belive. Let's look at the evidence.

Let's talk Freedom Car!

You can look around on the internet and find plenty of sources talking about Bush's 1.2 billion dollar freedom car project, set to give us a hydrogen car in ten years. What all this doesn't tell you is how the money is going to be spent. For the record, a shit ton of it is going into "researching" new ways to use fossil fuel technology. Or adapt the hydrogen car technology so that instead of solar cells producing the initial charge needed to seperate the hydrogen from water, we use good old Texas Crude. And by "Texas", I mean "New Texas." You might remember it as Iraq.

It also doesn't mention the Clinton/Gore plan to have a 80 mpg car on the market by 2004, which Bush scrapped. We could be sitting in a car that would take me too CHICAGO and back on 10 bucks right now. Instead, we went to war with Iraq, which I'm sure made her oil rich neighbors VERY agreeable in new oil dealings. And yet, the price of gas continues to rise...

I seem to recall Clinton making some major waves when the prices got this high during his term. Words like "price freeze" and "profiteering" were being thrown around. But, I guess you people can only remember that fat whore, Lewinsky.

Meanwhile we're all driving SUVs. Funny how those got popular, and by popular I mean LEGAL, with a Oil Money brat in the White House. No conservative...no, scratch that, not nessicarily true. No SANE, and HONEST president would allow a car with such a frighteningly low fuel efficeincy to be MADE, let alone mass produced and mass marketed. The damn things are only LEGAL because of a technicality!

America NEEDS a fuel efficenient vehicle. I applaud the attempts of Toyota and Hunday to market one. I only wish they had gotten a warmer reception. The fact is, the whole country is in the throngs of a mass market SUV entanglement. It's fucking UNAMERICAN to not want a car that gets 6 miles to the gallon.

God dammit, if Dick Cheney is going to drive around in a 6000hp turbo powered, 48 wheeled, 40 passenger DEATH WAGON that turns raw crude oil into hundred dollar bills and spews black smoke the color of his SOUL, then why shouldn't every soccer mom own a fucking SUV? After all, they're so SAFE. And...CHEAP!

Saddle up, Dicky. Why don't you kick it into 48X48 mode, cross the friggin ocean, and use your On*Star to find those WMDs, you prick. And while you're at it, bring our boys home with you. You've got room.

We NEED a hydrogen car. Or at least a REALLY good hybrid. With the number of vehicle on the road, (not withstanding the gasoline guzzling SUVs), we're burning up petrol like the Bush family is burning up braincells. And if you count all the coke Dubyah does, and all the underage drinking that slut of a daughter of his does, THAT right there is enough brain power to cure aids twice. Who knows what the rest of the family contributes. Frankly, I don't know how they can still be breathing.

We invented the electric fuel cell in 1839. And the space shuttle god damn well does not run on fossil fuel.
But hey, no rush, guys.

There are those people who say that Hydrogen cars, and hybrids just don't work in the long run. You know who disagrees?

THE MOTHER FUCKING US MILITARY.
http://www.evworld.com/archives/reports/humvee99.html
Look at the STATISTICS of these mother fuckers! Tell me the technology is unproven! Tell me it's slow, and inefficent.

You know what it is? It's NOT FUCKING OIL.

We're an oil based economy. And we're running LOW. I think we're gonna run out a lot sooner than anyone thinks. Some of the best estimates I've seen for the realistic lifespan of the oil market has it bottoming out sometimes before the end of this century. Now, granted, Dubyah, George Senior, and Dick Cheney will probably be recalled to an Enron ellumnai meeting in HELL long before then, but we're gonna have to worry about that big ass backlash. And that's not if those estimates arn't a little...conservative. I feel dirty using the word conservative in a scentence relating to oil companies, but there it is.

The bottom line is this, people. Bush sabotaged a perfectly good hybrid car project, and tweaked things to his liking. By "his liking", I mean the liking of SATAN. Or whoever has the windup key that fits in Bush's back, and winds his spring.

Let's talk about a happier issue. Let's talk about babies.

Actually, let's talk about organic mush. Similar, in many ways, to snot, or flegm. That's about the state of human life required to get a stem cell.

And yet, Mister Bush, in his characteristically short sighted way, in effect, aborted this important, and signifigant research, because some dumb fucks decided to bring to the attention of the whole world that "SCIENTISTS KILL BABIES FOR EXPERIMENTS." That's a real headline.

Let's talk some facts here.
For one thing, to call what you take a stem cell sample from a baby is like calling my home phone a HAL 9000. Yeah, it could be that, I guess. If I put a LOT of time into it. And if it was sentient.

But it's not. It's goop.

Futhermore, there are two very improtant things everyone seems to overlook. For one thing, you can get stem cells from umbilical cords. Didn't know that, did you? Oh yes.

Secondly, show of hands, who can tell me how many unwatned pregnancies are aborted each day? Answer? More than enough to give our scientists all the samples they needed to figure out how to cure some of our worst diseases.

There was promising research coming forth for MDS. Cancer. Even the AGING process, could in theory, be retarded by the benifits of stem cell reasearch. But no. Bush canned it. Because that's what Jesus would want.

Jesus would want the sick, the dying, and the helpless, to suffer so that inert goop may live. You take a highlighter to the part of the bible where it says "Thou shalt not fuck with my goop.". Find the part where god hates cloning, too. We've banned that as well.

And do you know what the worst part of all this is? Our scientists, AMERICAN scientists, are going elsewhere to continue thier work. Sure, some is still done here. But with no new cells to study, and no grant money, as a result of a lack of government funding, and bad press killing most private funding, our boys are going elsewhere. China selectivly breeding, and cloning gigantic carp. They are going to be feeding their some odd billion people for much, much cheaper, very, very soon. Already, the effects are showing. And that might just mean true communism for them.

While we shake our fist at Korea for it's nuclear program, they are working on stem cells. Soon, they will have a cure for cancer. And they will not share. Because we have treated them like fucking idiots since the 50s. And they arn't.

At this rate, America will lose it's place as the dominant superpower in the world. We will be replaced by China, or perhaps by a coalition of Asian nations. Hell, at the rate we're going, even the EU could take our spot.'

Bush says nice things for the cameras. Bush says "Let's go to MARS!" and a part of me is hopeful. Then a part of me realizes two very important things. One, it's an election year. And it wasn't that long ago Bush was pro-civil union. Before the numbers came in. And two, all the technocrats I know are weary of anything Bush wants. So now they arn't sure Mars is a good idea.

I want to go to Mars. Not personally, mind you. I wouldn't do anyone any good there. But there would be other worlds. And eventually, there might be a call for people to leave this planet, and live on those worlds. To explore. To chart and discover. And I would be more than happy to be that person.

But let's be honest. When Bush says "Let's go to Mars", it's like telling the kids you're going to a party before taking them to the dentist. He says "Let's go to Mars" the way he says "Terrorist", to mean "look over there.", "Al Quida" to mean "it's the boogyman.", "9/11" to mean "He's gonna get you."

"Freedom". Synonamous with "pay no attention to the men behind the curtain".

We arn't going anywhere. There's no oil on mars.

The only thing that seperates us from the apes is technology. Only through discovery, through the power of science have we grown into what we are today.

Through modern medicine, and social practices, we alrady have, in many ways, turned our back on evolution.

If we now turn our backs on technological progress, we, as a people, are doomed.

I imagine the future, and I see a small minority of intelligent people, inventing new ways for their barely human simian masters to live more comfortably. Computers that make things easier. Cars that are BIGGER and LOUDER. Shinier televisions. And I see this ignorent mass of humanity, slowly destroying itself. A portion will live well. Surrounded by the technology of easy living. They will understand none of the principles upon which it works. They won't care to. They will just pay someone to fix it when it breaks, and complain that their lives are not easy enough.

And evenutally, our race will die this way. Smothered by our own complaicency.

Don't let it turn out that way, friends. I beg of you. Support our dreamers. Our adventurers. Support the ones who would see mankind advance, out beyond our petty conflicts over the decompossed remains of jurrassic plants. Past the ignorence that blinds us, that makes us assume a moral imperetive over others. That makes us hate those who are different.

I say evolve. And let the chips fall where they may.

This far more coherent peice of journalism was brought to you by whatever in the hell I'm on, and a liberal (ha!) dose of insomnia.

2004-02-27T09:13:00.000-06:00

This is great.

Three posts in less than an hour. Amphetimines are great.

So let's talk, America. You've got my undevided attention. I'm all juiced up, and I've got my news feeds screening in the background as we speak.

Congress, Congress, Congress. You make me fucking sick, you corporate ass-lickers. You've fucking allowed a 275,000 dollar fine for cencorship? That's more money than I'll likely make in my lifetime. Let alone more than some fucking disc jokey makes in a year.

What about the FIRST FUCKING AMMENDMENT, YOU ASSHOLES! Do you remember that? Didn't you bastards take OATHS to serve this country, to uphold the laws and guidelines outlines in the constitution?

You're doing this, while Iraq and Pakistan are lying in ruins. While Hati is tearing itself apart.
You do this while the cost of healthcare is skyrocketing. While marauding corporations suck the oil out of the earth, pollute the air, and raise prices all the while.

You fucking comfortably liberal sicophants make me SICK. Democratic. Republican. It doesn't fucking matter. You're all the same, at the end of the day, you're driving by the buck.

You can pass the Gun Immunity Bill, but you can't figure out a way to keep these weapons out of the hands of madmen, and nutcases. You can't even begin to DISCUSS the issue of making radio pattern recognizers, or access keys, manditory.

The Supreme Court slams a student for wanting to use his scholarships to become a minister, citing the speration of church and state. While the president takes a fundementaly Born Again Christian stance on gay marriage. On the war in Iraq. (godless heathens, all of them.) On, hell, everything.

Even the institution of journalism has been polluted. And to little suprise. For all this talk of 'decency', we're just slowly selling our souls to corporate america. After all, it doesn't matter what you say, as long as you don't 'cross the line'.

Lemme tell you something. The line is relative, assholes. Hitler didn't even see the line when he crossed it. Neither did most of his higher up generals. They walked right over what most people would consider 'the line'. Cause it wasn't THIER line.

Now we're doing the exact opposite. Soon our line will be so far into happy land, no one will ever offend anyone, because no one will ever say anything important. And if they do, we'll sue and fine the everloving fuck out of them.

The television news networks, and the web based fronts are lousy with corporate sponsership. Our news is flitered through a comfortably bi-partisan, corporate friendly lens. It's nearly impossible to get the hard stuff unless we're talking foreign news. And even then, mostly only when you go with the BBC.

This is AMERICA. Home of the FREE. Land of the brave. And we can't get to the truth behind anything. We can't even try without drowning in McDonalds new, annoying fucking ad campaign. That stupid, corporate engineered hip hop/fresh and funky "Bah da bah bah bahhhh" bullshit.

This country is about freedom.

Or at least it's supposed to be. Instead, all I see a self destructive, corrupt government. A puppet president, dancing on the strings Oil Companies, speacial interest groups, and the Moral Majority.

I see Alan Greenspan cutting the legs out from under poor families. No more Social Security Benefits?

Well, I suppose we can't help it when we've got a $521 BILLION DOLLAR PROJECTED BUDGET.
I see a tax cut for the richest people in america, while I sock away and EXTRA $15 dollars a check, and I'm not gonna get shit back? Because I'm not making enough money? What the fuck are you gonna do with the extra money, Bush? Pad a fucking matress? Could I have your old one, then, since I'll be sleeping out on the street?

You fucking madmen. You're all so wrapped up in your little petty crap. You're election races, you're corporate bullshit. You're so worried about your re-election campaign, mister bush, you either can't see, or don't care, that you're leading us to certain doom.

Ladies and gentlemen, I think we've had enough, don't you? It's time to stand up, and ask for something new.

Democracy has failed us. We knew it when Bush got in to office. No matter who you voted for, it should have been clear that things were too fucked up to work now.

It's time for something new. I'll see what I can cook up. You just be ready for it when the time comes.

I'm fantastically off topic. I'm going to try this again.

2004-02-27T08:28:00.000-06:00

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN...

My name is Robert MacKie. And I am a part of the fucking Problem.

You god damn heard me.

You people have clearly lost your mother fucking MINDS.

Howard Stern is getting censored, banned from the air. For NOTHING.

Mel Gibson is a fucking anti-semite, and a mad man, but he has GREAT hair. So he's okay.

Rosie O'Donnel get's married, and the President of the United States says it's morally wrong, and tears at the fabric of society.

Walmart is fucking your children and your parents in the asshole, and you smile and say "well, they're cheaper than the mall!"

You people have fucking LOST IT.

Our boys and girls are dying in Iraq, shooting at other boys in girls. Why? Who can fucking tell me.

Not the god damn president who ordered the war.

Nobody remembers WMDs, or the Taliban. Now we're worried about Mel Gibson's Jesus, and the Atkins Diet.

Low carb beer. Low card meals. Low card fries.

Low carb milk.

How about some low carb ethnic cleansing?

Good morning, Mr. President, would you like some low carb censorship?

It's an election year, people.
The gloves are coming off.
You want a fucking war? I'll give it to you. Watch this.

2004-02-23T08:10:00.000-06:00

This is your life...

...and it's ending, one minute at a time.
My muse has returned. And before you start assuming it's some girl, why don't you page back a while and think. Lately, I haven't talked about sleep problems, have I? I've been sleeping fairly well, actually. But now, she's back. My muse. My insomnia.

The funny thing about insomnia is the sunrises. No matter how many of them I see, they always seem sureal, if I haven't gotten a good coat of sleep gunk under my eyes. There is something unnatural about watching the sun rise, set, and rise again without any sleep. The body rebels, it aches, creaks and groans like a spainish galleon. The mind burns, neurons firing like a mexican justice squad. Bad metaphors and nonsensical journalistic tangents follow. It's a trip.

People think they yawn because they're tired.
When you yawn, you exhale deeply, which causes subsequent breathes to be deeper, as well as stimulating your heart. This forces greater quantities of oxygen into your brain, giving it a bit of extra pep. Your brain is a junkie, and oxygen is it's H. It's needs it, baby, needs it. So when you're tired, you yawn because your brain is starved for oxygen. And it'll either get it from rest, or from making you yawn.

When you don't sleep, the brain is slowly deprived of oxygen. In addition to the pschological aspects of not sleeping, the oxygen depravation makes for an impressive floorshow. If you go outside, in public, people seem strange to you. More hostile, maybe. Or just plan uglier. It's hard to say. But everybody offends.

After a day, you feel like your eyes are on fire. Maybe you get splitting headaches that make you feel like ACUTALLY splitting your head open would be a nice respite.

Headaches can also be cause by lack of bloodflow, and thereby oxygen, into the sinus cavities.

Around day two, your eyes feel like they could shoot laser beams, if only you knew the right nerve to stretch. You're also constantly flopping between hungry, and sick to your stomach. Your body is burning fuel at a breakneck pace, at this point, to keep up with your constant activity. If you kept this up long enough, you'd look like Kate Moss's exoskelton.

On day three, you're pretty much locked in a state of delerium. Your brain is jonesing for it's REM sleep fix, and like a new born crack junkie, it cries out. And when it cries, it leaves you in a state I can only describe as "woogy". Nothing seems real. Or it seems too real. Like you're watching some dumbfuck art student film, and the director keeps changing lenses on you. It's similar, in way, to being drunk, in that reality bends slightly at the edges, but not in a terribly noticable way, unless you know what to look for. The cartoons make it easy to see when your drunk. Probably why so many kids in illinois kill themselves in high school. Oh well. More chlorine in the gene pool.

Your senses are at once hightened, and lowered. Your tactile sensations are through the roof. You can feel everything. You'd sooner eat a lightbulb than put on a wool sweater. Aside from sexual organs, and maybe your tounge, your fingertips are your most sensative area. Tocch a square of sandpaper to your arm, no big deal. Use your fingertip? Goosebums. On day three, your entire body feels as sensative as they are. In addition, your eyes and ears feel hightened. Like you just got new perscription glasses from god. You see more detail than ever before. But are you really seeing more? No. You're just noticing more. Those details? The lines in the floor, the walls, the slight color differences, the shapes, they were always there. If you go back later and look, you might see them still. If you can remember. You were just too busy to notice the little details before.

On day 4, you start making up your own details. Having not slept a wink for four days, reality goes the way of a Salvador Dali painting. Mind you, that's not what you see. But that's what it FEELS like. Like the whole world is melting. Events, people, places, all run together into a weird reality soup. Hallucinations are not to be totally unexpected. At this point, your brain has decided to try to put together it's own meth, using your brain as a hot plate. It catches little hits of REM sleep when it thinks you won't notice. When you let your gaurd down for a minute. When you're driving.

Sometimes, if you're doing something you've done often, you're brain will go on to auto pilot. I once caught three hours of sleep while running a register at a movie theater concession stand. I kept perfect change.

On day five, all bets are off. With the combination of bad brain chemestry, stress, anxiety, irritability, and just plain hurting, you are Charles Manson, pumped full of adrenachrome and mescaline, itching to go ten rounds with anyone who gets in your way. And especially if it's Jesus with a shotgun. At this point, if there is any decency left in you at all, you will find a way to sleep before you kill someone, or yourself, or both.

On day six, you will probably not be waking up anymore. I read somewhere, once, that a radio DJ tried to stay up a whole week for some dumbass contest. He's a vegatable now. Brain damage. His brain suffocated from the lack of oxygen. It drowned in his own impotent bloodcells.

I've been to day 5. Once. Hopefully, I'll never go back.

2004-01-27T19:48:00.000-06:00

I am fucking sick of you people.

It's true enough. I've always disliked you, masses. I've always thought of you as one might an ugly, slow cousin. You hang around, unwanted, and unloved, saying stupid things to try to fit in, smelling foul and just generally being a pain in the ass. No, mankind, I've never liked you, particularly. There are some exceptions, of course, fewer and fewer, these days, but on the whole, I don't enjoy your company. I think you are fat, ugly, and stupid, and no I don't want to go to your party.

Lately, however, and especially today, I find myself filled with complete and total HATRED for all of you.
Every,
last,
stinking,
one of you.

Women, men, adults, children, white, black, you all make me fucking sick.

Men. Stop being so fucking pathetic. Stop allowing your penis to lead you around. Or at least stop letting women lead you by your penis. It's insulting to the entire fucking species. You must realize it, on some level, right? Stop going out of your way to thrust yourself on these girls who don't know any better, or who do know better and are just using you. It makes me sick.

Women. You, perhaps, are the worst of all. Figure out what the fuck you want before you open your god damn mouths. I mean, seriously. It's not hard to do. WHAT. DO. YOU. WANT.
From life. From me. From the fucking EASTER BUNNY. WHAT DO YOU WANT? Quit playing games with people. Quit getting dragged into stupid relationships. Just be clear. Make your feelings known. AND STOP TELLING US YOU ARE FAT.

Children. Stop being so god damn noisy. Clean your room. AND DO NOT GET ONLINE, MESSAGE ME, AND TALK ABOUT WHAT A L337 H4X0R you are! It's fucking DONE, and a god damn yahoo chat bot does not make you bill mother fucking gates! SHUT UP! CLEAN YOUR ROOM!

You people are fucking disgusting. I can't STAND to be near any of you. You're all so petty, and self absorbed. Heaven forbid you think of something outside your own meager 'thoughts, and feelings'. Pathetic. GROW UP.

I know what I want. I know who I want to be with, I know what I want to do with my life, I've got that all figured out. You know what the bitch of it is? I can't seem to get my hands on any of it. When I do get a little taste, when things start going right for a change, my life among you PEOPLE has made me so distrustful and paranoid, if some circumstance doesn't come along and royally fuck things up, I FIND ONE THAT DOES. I'm USED to looking for the worst in people, so when I see something that MIGHT be that, I figure that it's the worst case scenario!

And I'm usually right. Usually people do not suprise you. They are just as petty, and self absorbed, and stupid as you might expect them to be.

But then there's that ONE person who isn't. And I fucked up. I made a mistake, and a blew my chance at a really good thing, and I don't think I can get that back, no matter what I do.

And yes, that's my fault. But WHY did I do it? Why did I fuck up? Because of you. You untrustworthy, selfish fucks. I've gotten so accustomed to being fucked over by people, I assumed a very nice girl would, too. And I was wrong.

I'm so furious right now. So amazingly pissed of at all of you. The past, the present, the forseeable future. In all 3 time frames, you're driving me fucking insane.

My eyes red over with anger, and I can hear the sound of my blood pumping through my veins, like it's right inside my ear drum. I stalk around the house, nothing to do, no one I'd want to talk to, feeling so angry I'm sick to my stomach.

I can't sleep.
I can't eat.
And the temptation to bury my fist in the drywall of my house is becoming to much to bear.

WHEN I manage to sleep, I have the same old nightmares. I wonder if that's the right word for a dream that causes you to wake up screaming and drenched in sweat after what seems like only minutes. Vivid, terrifying dreams, full of things i could not being to discribe in words (and I've tried.), things that stalk, and chase. But the worst dreams arn't the ones where some unknowable monster chases me. It's the other ones, that whisper some hidden truth about my own mind, that scare me the most.

I find myself stuck in the house. No where to go. At least, no where I want to go. With the storm closing school on monday, I haven't left the house in at least 5 days. Maybe more. And I don't care to, either.

I feel like i'm cracking up, and it's your god damn fault. I used to be a very nice person. I really did. But then you people came along, and you just couldn't let me be. You chipped away at me, bit by bit, and I think soon there might not be enough left to hold together.

I've been on edge for a long time now. For at least a year now. I think the last straw is coming soon.

I hate everything, now. I hate you people, I hate this country, I hate this situation. I hate the direction my life has taken. I hate the fact that there doesn't seem to be a god damn thing i can do about it.

But I REALLY hate the fact that I'm just like you fucks, now. I have become what I hate.

I wish I could say I could sink no lower, but I've learned that's not true. Hell has no bottom.

2003-11-23T20:05:00.000-06:00

Slave Wages

Song: Anchondo - She Devil

So, I'm working retail again. It's not too bad though. I'm lower level managment, I get to work with some funny people, and the pay ain't bad. I like my new job. And it keeps me busy.

I'm moving out of my current residence, this place is a shit hole anyway, so I'm outta here. Moving on up...to the west side....to a semi-crappy 1 bedroom house...in kiiiiirkwoooood.

The Skywalker Ranch it ain't, but it works for me, and it's closer to my job. And the plumbing works. Or will, anyway.

Aside from that, things are rather uneventful.

But I can't just leave you without any hate, now can I?

www.nomarrige.com

Now, I've been known to enjoy the occasional bout of mysogony, but this guys takes the mother fucking cake. Direct quote: The thing about 90% of most women that become mothers is that their twat stretches out and they get a big gut.

Wow. That's some good hate.

2003-10-15T16:46:00.000-05:00

What is the matter with you people?

Okay, seriously now.

I know I can be a bit hard on you, mankind, but, well, it's just because I expect so much of you! I mean, you've walked on the moon, you've discovered gravity, electricity, and the power of the atom, and even invented online banking!

So, when I see things like Chick's Tracts, well....

I'm not angry, mind you. I'm just, disappointed.

Mr. Jack Chick, of "Chick's Tracts" is what we called in high school, a "shit starter". He makes inaccurate, insulting, and inflammatory remarks on subjects he has little to no knowledge of, and does it all in the name of being a good christian. Oh, and making 50 cents a pamphlet. You see, Mr. Chick SELLS these "informational guides to christian living", with titles like "In the beginning...Soup?" in which Mr. Chick goes on to tell you how teaching children about evolution leads to school shootings. No, I'm not fucking kidding.

DIRECT QUOTE FROM CHICK.COM!
"Why shouldn't kids be expected to shoot their teachers and fellow students when they are taught that their creator was primordial soup? That false teaching steals their purpose in life and the basis for their moral standards"

False teaching? Wait....let me get this straight.
Evolution = Scientific Fact.
God > Scientific Fact.
Gravity = Scientific Fact.
God > Gravity.
Ergo....
Christians can fly.

Hm. Glad we got THAT cleared up.

In closing, I'd like to talk to all you religious folks out there.
I don't believe in God, I'm a man of science. But even so, I keep an open mind. If I encountered something modern science can't explain, I'll admit that. Most scientists will. Some will go on to add that it'll be understood later, but I digress.

We people of science, that is, rational thinking human beings, have managed to come up with a lot of answers to the questions of the universe. Quite a few. If it was not for us, we'd all be living in caves still, howling at lightning.

What's more, we can admit when we are wrong, and more importantly, when someone else is right.

So, I ask you, mankind, is it REALLY to much for me to ask you ignorant christian savages to accept the scientific FACT of evolution? I mean, jiminy CRICKET!

And you know, just because evolution exists doesn't mean your god doesn't. Is it so hard to believe a big invisible bearded man who lives in the sky who has the power to create the universe in 6 days wouldn't ALSO have the power to set evolution in motion?

Some of the most common "reasonings" I hear from christians when I mention this...
"It's not written in the bible."
Well, that's true. But then, why would an all powerful deity write a book of truth for his people, and try to lay out evolution to a bunch of cromags who just figured out the wheel?
And, for that matter, it doesn't say in the bible "Thou shalt disparage and beat queers", but you guys seem to have picked that up anyway. What's one more allowance?

"But what about the story of The Garden of Eden?"
Seriously, I don't know why you people even bring this up. And yet, it's the one I hear most often. For God's sake, does this look like a fucking Kinder-Care to you? That storytale shit isn't going to fly. If anything, it's a fucking metaphor. It's not fucking LITERAL, you god damn idiots. But for that matter, maybe there IS some truth to it. God created man and all the animals from clay, right? Well, lets say you are trying to relate evolution to a 3rd century BC human. What term are you going to use? "A mixture of amino-acids in a primordial soup?" or "mud".

"Evolution is just a theory."
No, it's not. It was a hundred years ago. We managed to prove it since then. But you don't have to take my world for it. Go to the library, get a book on anthropology, or go to a museum, and LINE UP THE FUCKING MONKEY SKULLS!

"Well, what about the missing links?"
Sh*t-hea*. See, looky there. Missing two whole letters, but still, if you look at it and think about it rationally, you know it still says "shithead."

Well, that's enough for now I think. All this talk of religion is making my frontal lobe burn.

Time to go consume some yummy alcohol! Uh oh! Look out, Mormons! I'm going to hell! But you'll be fine, I'm sure, with your ten wives under 16. Freaks.

2003-09-25T21:23:00.000-05:00

I am Jack's Wasted Life

For anyone who has BEEN reading this, it should come to no suprise to you that I am an utter waster of a human life. However, I would like to ask, which is the bigger loser, the loser, or the man who reads about the loser?

In any matter.

I don't have much to say today. Oh, sure, I could rant and rave about how our government went to war with an oil rich nation based on the threat of imaginary weapons of mass destruction, or the terrible fact that George W. Bush used to work for Exxon-Mobile. (He took a pay cut when he became President, did you know that? But then, I guess with all those under the table deals and kickbacks from the oil industry, it all works out in the end.)

I could, even, go on to foam at the mouth about how Fox fucking News should be wiped from the earth with nuclear fire. I can't fucking tell you how tired I am of those bastards coming up with a fucking anacronysm for EVERYTHING. OBL (or is it UBL? They change from week to week.), WMDs, blah blah blah. FUCK OFF! No one cares! Just when you thought journalism couldn't get any cheesier and more rediculous and useless, along comes FOX. Thanks.

But I won't. At this point, if you're reading this, you already knew this shit. If not, well, fuck. Stop watching TV, get you some REAL news. Fuck that "comfortably liberal" bullshit they feed you on the networks. Break away from the teat of the false information community, start looking into things for youself.

In any matter, I'm really only here to tell you about a wonderful Manga called BLAME!, by a very nice man named Nihei Tsutomu. If you ARN'T reading this, you should be. You can find a link to it over in the link section. It not for everyone. It's really only for people who can interperet a story, and enjoy well drawn characters and dark, technological vistas. That's probably about 2% of the American public. And yet, it's doing very well in Japan. Well, at least evolution works SOMEWHERE.

2003-09-22T04:54:00.000-05:00

I just thought you should know...

...that right this VERY second, every dead astronaut and rocket scientist in this country's history is spinning in his grave fast enough to generate electricity.

Yes, that's right.

Why, you ask?

Galileo.

No, not the mother fucker with the telescope. The space exploration probe. You remember that. You learned about it in school. Oh, what's that you say? You were too fucking STONED to learn anything in high school science class? Well, okay. I can't claim I'm surprised.

Allow ME to refresh your memory.

The Galileo space probe is an unmanned craft we shot towards Jupiter in 1989, to get a NICE good look at that fucker. Any time you've ever seen a picture of Jupiter, that's been from Galileo.

Galileo orbited Jupiter 34 times and obtained the first direct measurements of its atmosphere by sending a descent probe parachuting down toward the planet in 1995.
It detected evidence of underground salt water oceans on Jupiter's moons Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, and examined the lively, intensely hot, volcanoes on the moon Io.

But most importantly, this probe has traveled 2.8 billion miles, a journey that took it 14 years, just so it could suicide dive into Jupiter, transmitting data all the while, sacrificing it's mechanical existence for the sake of human science and advancement.

Do you know how I know all this?

I saw a news broadcast about it on the BBC. The fucking BBC.

Do you know why YOU don't know this?

Because fucking John Ritter died. And we're a country in mourning.

Do I really need to go into how specifically horrible that is? How utterly ridiculous that is? Do I need to tell you how disgusted I am with this country right now?

I scanned the American news. Didn't see one god damn thing on Galileo. Perhaps the LAST great undertaking of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and it didn't even get a 3 minute spot on the local news.

You know what? I'm fucking GLAD John Ritter is dead. You dumb fucks can mourn him all you want, but frankly, if you're under the age of 27, the only reason you even know who John Ritter fucking IS is because Ted Turner had a hard on for threesomes (and Susan Sommers), and got Three's Company reruns to air on TBS.

We lost contact with the Galileo probe at 3:40 p.m. EDT, as it slammed into Jupiter's upper atmosphere and tore itself to shreds, sending back data until the last possible second.

Where were you when that happened? Were you watching the fucking FONZ talk about what a great guy John Ritter was and getting all teared up? Were you nodding your head in disapproval upon hearing that Ben Affleck and J-Lo broke up? People, CAST ASIDE YOUR FUCKING CELEBRITIES, and see the BIG PICTURE. Our species is going BACKWARDS. The most topical or interesting piece of national news today? New season of CSI: Miami on CBS!

DAVID FUCKING CARUSO? Couldn't you people at least pretend to have TASTE?

God I hate you all! I'm going to go drink now. Fuckers.