The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

I have cancer.

HA! See, it’s hilarious, because it’s April Fool’s day! I don’t have cancer!

Or do I?

HA! So funny!

Tricking people is hilarious!

Or is it?

HA!

Speaking of which, I decided I was going to do this project I have to do this semester based on Francesca Lia Block, and author I have quite admired. I mean, she’s not really writing for me? She’s writing for like… junior high girls. But I like her writing style. So I go and oh, the compilation of her first book series, which I liked a lot, was only like 7 dollars on Amazon! I’ll just order that as a reference. I always meant to have copies anyway.
So I order it, and I get a book with a cover like this. Compare, if you will, to the not as painful to the eyes cover of the first copy of Weetzie Bat I saw.
HA HA! Very funny, book publishers!

What really gets me is that there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in these books that has to do with fairies. She’s written fairy-oriented books, but these are not those books. There are some ghosts. There are some gay dudes, but I wouldn’t call them fairies. The cover has absolutely NOTHING to do with the content inside! I’m proud to own that inside content, but I will never be able to look at that book without wincing.

Somebody has unchained one of the soda machines in the english building and moved it upstairs.

I was kind of shocked when I walked out of class and I saw it, sitting out there, taking up too much of the hall, plugged in. I wondered what it was doing up there, and then I walked downstairs and there was an empty space, with the chains that kept it against the wall discarded on the floor. The patch of floor that it once covered was disgusting with candy and soda residue.

The most likely cause was that someone decided they would sell more sodas if the machine was actually where people go to class, and moved it.
But man, it’s much more entertaining to think that someone moved it as some crazy joke, isn’t it? That someone learned the chain wasn’t locked or something and just got a dolly and moved it upstairs. Why is that a joke? Hell, I have no idea. That’s part of why it’s such a mystery.

I attempted to construct a mental image of someone who would have done that. They would probably be wearing a frat t-shirt and a baseball cap. There would probably be high-fives afterwards.
The dean would cry out. A picture of a puppy would be put in the dorm of the frat responsible, with a note attached reading “By order of the Dean”.
There would be tears. The frat members would take down the picture, only to have it be replaced, and a picture of a cute kitten added.
Soon, the entire dorm is filled with pictures of cuteness to punish those who dare rebell.
The Dean cackles evilly, and then points his browser towards Cute Overload.

This is the stupid bullshit I think about instead of paying attention in class.

So, all this week, Ubisoft has been having a Steam sale. 50% off a game each day! Nothing was really appealing to me, though. Assassin’s Creed? Not my sort of game. Prince of Persia? I want to play it, but it’s so much a console game, I couldn’t imagine playing it on the PC. Brothers in Arms? I’ll stick with Call of Duty, thanks.

Finally, on Thursday, they put up Far Cry 2.

Now, maybe it was just all of the, I don’t know, rabid love on the Idle Thumbs, but I had always meant to try Far Cry 2. It’s a game well-suited to the PC, so that wasn’t an issue, and Brer was going to buy it, so I could talk about my experiences with him, if I wanted.

Of course, Tuesday was my birthday. I have TONS of games to play right now. TONS. Not to mention my bank account still hasn’t recovered from my PC purchase. I’m so busy I’m not going to get to the games I have anyway. No, I decided, purchasing Far Cry 2, even for the very nice price of $15, was a stupid move. I wasn’t going to do it.

An hour or two later, I purchased Far Cry 2.

I partially blame Sarcasmorator for his tweet explaining why I wanted it. I’m so eager to go with the bandwagon sometimes. It only takes such a little push. I also blame my always keeping Steam open now on the new computer, so I could constantly look at the sale. How foolish I am.

I need to teach myself that dammit, I don’t have to play everything. I really don’t. There will come a time, very soon, where I have significantly less funmoney than I have now. Breaking myself of these horrible habits would be a very, very good thing.

But will I until I have to?

I would be money on “no.”
And hey, when I win the bet, I guess maybe I’d have some more money to buy vidjeo games.

Yesterday was my birthday!
It was kind of a boring day.
I’m not especially complaining or anything, but I didn’t do all that much. I sat around playing the new Wallace and Gromit game and Broken Picture Telephone (both which will be in blog posts soon, I’m sure) and then I went out to eat with Essner. We discussed his script and how awesome sports movies are. Then I went to class. Then there was some cake, and some very nice presents, and some awkward sitting around. Then I installed and updated and now here I am.

There wasn’t any big parties or anything. That happened back on Friday when I went out to eat with the grandparents (and apparently we’re going out Thursday as well? So that’s nice, I suppose.) It was really, mostly, just a day. A day in which I should have gotten more homework done, but didn’t. Good for me.

What are the spoils of the anniversary of my birth? Let me share real quickfast.
-Dawn of War II from the parents, which I’ve played a couple missions of and has already been exactly as I had hoped. More on that later, of course.
-Dungeon Delve from my brother, another great DnD supplement that is just going to make me crave playing all the more.
-Loco Roco 2 from Jonathan’s ladyfriend (which still embarrasses me, that she’s so wanting to get me gifts), a surprise gift which I was worried I wouldn’t be able to play, but after upgrading the homebrew firmware I’m going to give that a nice try before bed.
-The Path from Brer, a artsy Indie game I quite want to try, but is one of those games I have to be in the mood for and then will play all the way through in an afternoon.
-The one libram I was missing in KoL from Cris and Val, which I will use to summon countless items.
-A shite-ton of candy.
-And, of course, additional funds, for buying stupid things. Like Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time.

Yep. Expect writeups of a lot of those in the future. Cause, fuck, that’s basically what this blog is. My impressions of all the entertainment I consume.

So, remember that write up of bit.trip beat I did the other day? Have you seen the comments? The creator went and posted something on there. Makes me wish the post was a little better written. (I have several sentences I would edit, in retrospect, but it seems bad form to go back and do it)

Man, what is this? Why do I have people like that coming to this blog? Do I have an actual website or something?

Let’s look at the facts.

I post every day now. When I started doing that back in… what… November 14th of last year? I didn’t expect I would really keep with it as much as I do. But dammit, I haven’t missed a day yet. It’s interesting to be so dedicated to putting some stupid shit up here every day, but I very much like that it’s become a habit. It’s something I have to do. It keeps me writing, even if it is just whatever random shit that oozes from my head. I have something to show for it, at least. I like that. So yeah, like an actual website, I post every day.

I have readers. And you’re all awesome.
But seriously, I have some readers. This is to be expected. I mean, I have friends who could care what I think about things. But the thing that makes it legit? Some of them I don’t even know who they are personally. I even have commenters now who I cannot place and can’t figure out. And they aren’t spambots! That’s something an actual website has, right?

Finally, I have things like I mentioned earlier. I have some recognition from people who make things. Granted, it’s mostly from indie things (completely awesome indie things, though) so it’s not too shocking that someone like Jalapeno Bootyhole from one of these smaller outfits might have the time to leave me a comment. But it’s still totally ultra cool. It certainly seems like something an actual website would have.

Is my hard work paying off or something? Am I legit? I mean, if nothing else, I know I have a lot of Google cred. My website has existed for a long damn time. But man, I can’t really get it around in my head that what I’m writing might actually be read by a human somewhere. It’s still kind of crazy.
I think it’s best if I keep it that way, though. I don’t want to keep myself from writing very personal blog posts, even though I also want to keep writing my little very personal reviews and stuff. Basically, what I want to do is write. Something. So I shouldn’t hold myself back or make myself write this or that… I should just write. And I will.

And if you keep reading it? Well, that’s totally awesome. Thanks.

Ugh. Arg.

So as I’m writing this, it’s Thursday of my Spring Break. I’ve not even attempted to get anything done during this week, school-wise. I’ve just been relaxing. Dammit, I needed some relaxing! Why can’t the whole break be a break! Grumblegrumble.

But still, now I’m working on homework, and it’s going to badly because I just want to fall asleep and be lazy and check out the Player’s Handbook 2 and all kinds of stuff. But I have to be good. I have to go to work, I have to write these stupid papers, and I have to things as well as other things. But I feel burned out so quickly on them. I couldn’t even get a whole draft banged out before this. I stopped in the middle out of frustration. Granted, I was bothered by providing tech support in the middle there to stop my flow, but still, I should be getting more work done than that. I can’t slack off! It’s the last semester! Ever!
ARG.
ALTERNATE REALITY GAME.
Okay, not really alternate reality game. Just Arg.

Welcome to the real world, me. Breaks are hard to get. You don’t get breaks! Ha ha!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go curl up with my vidjeo games and my nice friends and hide from my homework for awhile longer.

Hey! It’s dream-recounting time!

I dreamed that I was some sort of blogger (crazy, right? Me? Blogging? Insane.) and that I was writing a blog entry about how much I was getting screwed by my current employer, and how much better I’d have it if I was working at Criterion. I certainly wasn’t working at Kohl’s in this dream (as it was somewhere with a big campus and a movie theatre) and I have no idea why I was wanting to work at Criterion, or even, exactly, what Criterion is. I guess they put out movie collections of Wes Anderson’s work?

In any case, I wrote a detailed blog entry about why I should rather be working there. It was intense. I think it might have had video.

The next day, I went to work, at this place where I don’t work, and Randon, the Loss Prevention guy from Kohl’s, kept threatening me. He said I needed to take down my blog entry, or there would be hell to pay! I was telling him it was weird that he’s complaining now, because in dream time I apparently posted it weeks ago.
Eventually, this lead to a chase, where I was running away from Randon because he was going to beat the crap out of me in order to teach me a lesson. He finally caught up with me, and then I promised to take down the blog post.

I did, though I wrote a description of why it was taken down on the blog. The next day, Randon was giving me the evil eye, like I didn’t do enough.

Then I woke up.

Heyyyyy it’s Spring Break! I’m off of school! I guess!

It’s kind of a fleeting break, though. I work constantly throughout and I have at least two papers and a speech to write. (Granted, the speech will take me all of 10 minutes to write. I’ve got it all planned in my head. It’s more the papers that are the issue. Especially the one for my novel class.) I told myself Friday that I would write one of those papers Saturday so I wouldn’t have to worry about it! Ha ha, I’m so funny! Thinking I’m going to do work. Crazy.

But yeah, I’m trying to take a break. I gave in and bought Mad World to play over the break, and am trying desperately to pace myself on it so it lasts the whole time. I’m sure I’ll write more about it later, but here’s a preview: IT’S FUCKING AWESOME. I also plan to continue to work through World of Goo and the UT3 campaign, since I bought them during a Steam sale. More on those later, too, of course. There was also hope about playing some Dungeons and Dragons, but that doesn’t really seem like it’s going to happen. I can dream, though.

In any case, please try to keep me on the level with my assignments, I suppose. This is really more of a “hey, the semester is over half over” milestone more than a break… but I can dig it. I’m almost done. I’ve almost graduated. That’s a good thing, right?

Yeah…

What operating system do games run in?
Answer: Microsoft Windows.

What mode should ALL games run in?
Answer: WINDOWED MODE. Because it’s running in WINDOWS.

I really can’t get over this. Why in the world don’t developers do this? I’m fine with things not defaulting that way, but not having the option is just retarded.

My computer isn’t a dedicated game machine. It is a computer. I chat, I research, I do so much. I don’t want my gaming to keep me from that. All games should play windowed, and be alt-tab friendly, or they should get the fuck off of my machine.

Yeah, this is an old rant, I guess… but as I’m attempting to try new things to try out the new computer, I’ve run into it twice. First, I redownloaded Dark Messiah of Might and Magic and decided to give that a go. I never got very far in that the first time because I couldn’t run it windowed. My memory told me that that was because my computer couldn’t handle it windowed. I was wrong. It’s just locked away for no fucking reason. They unlocked it for MULTIPLAYER, but not for the single player I wanted to play. Bleh.
Second, I tried the Company of Heroes demo. I should talk more about that later, but let it be known that there is no Windowed option in that game either. Luckily, you can force it into a window via the command line, but it doesn’t work smoothly. It would be much better if it actually supported it. I hear Dawn of War II is like that as well. Not surprising. Same publisher. But it could work a whole lot better.

Am I alone in this stuff? I mean, I know I am not everyone. Full Screen should not go away. Some people do use their computers just for gaming. But come on. I can’t be the only one with two monitors. I can’t be the only one wanting this. And is it really so hard to use Windows in its normal mode? In a window? Bleh.

What a useless, angry rant. But it’s frustrating. To me.
World, revolve around me.
PC Gaming, work exactly how I want!
Come on.
Come on!

Yay! Merry Festivus!

So, I get home from my classes today to find a mysterious box!
Normally, I get boxes all the time. Even more often, now that I have Amazon Prime! This box, however, was different. It was from Fed Ex, for one. My boxes normally come through the normal mail or from the Ups man. It was also heavy. I carried it upstairs.

It was full of stuff!

It turns out that it was my Festivus gift. You remember? Back in November and December? When Talking Time was doing an exchange! I wrote a lot of poems and sent out my gift on time, but never got one! But now I got one! And then, even though it was late, I posted about it on the boards, like I was supposed to.

I do admit I was kind of surprised it got here! Not because I, I dunno, dislike Ample Vigour. He’s a good enough guy. But it was mostly that he told me he was going to send it out like… in January. So I’d kind of written it off at this point. It was a very nice surprise, though, and a very generous gift.
My main issue is going to be figuring out what to use the iPod for. I’m… having trouble figuring out when I could put a Shuffle to use! I’m a podcast person, not a music person. I refuse to let it go to waste! It’s a great and very generous gift! I just gotta think outside the box, that’s all.

But yeah, Festivus in March… who would have thought, huh?