The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

LINKS! Goddamn I have a lot of links. Also, Chrome wants to restart for updates. So I bet be free of these links. LET’S LINKING!

On The Stick is starting a new October of articles this month! I have one coming later in the month! Yay! But you can read what they’re doing right now if you want. It’s sure to be good stuff!

I thought this was a pretty funny little video. It’s got, you know, jokes.

It’s Adventure Time, come on, grab your friends.

Two Memes, One Mashup.

Bask in horror upon the women of the future! What a strange place the future will be.

Why do I find this so funny? Because it’s hilarious. That’s probably why.

The quietest dinner ever.

Beware the COMPUTER CRIMINALS!

Finally, here’s some good advice from the Onion.

Matthew Essner often will tell me that I should read or watch certain things, and often I don’t, even when he forces stuff on me! But in his latest push, to read Cowboy Ninja Viking, I decided I was actually going to try, by taking the books to work and reading them during break. Slowly, I read both trades, and I have to say, it’s a damn good comic.

Here’s the thing. You read the title, Cowboy Ninja Viking, and you think “This is a comic that’s silly and meme-driven. It might be entertaining, but it’s probably a very surface entertainment you’ll just throw away when you’re done.” Not so. While there are some silly, humorous things about the very concept, the comic plays it very seriously, and shockingly enough, it works.

The idea is that there was a secret government project to create “triplets.” These people with three multiple personalities, through various therapies, would be trained so that their alternate personas actually had all the skills of those personas, which the main personality could tap into at any time. Duncan, the main character, got pretty lucky with the personalities he got: a Cowboy, a Ninja, and a Viking. Needless to say, this makes him a pretty damn effective assassin. Of course, he still has to deal with the fact that he has multiple personalities who all have their own motivations and such as well.

Each of Duncan’s other personalities is a personality, and the book does interesting stuff with word balloons to make it clear who is talking. So if the Ninja is talking, the outline of the word balloon has a katana in it, and so on. They also sometimes talk in Duncan’s head via running commentary beneath what’s going on. It’s just really effective. The personalities aren’t stereotypes too. They are a cowboy, a ninja, and a viking, but they make the sort of pop culture references that Duncan would know, and are knowledgeable about how the world today works, which really makes it feel less gimmicky, if that makes sense.

There are, of course, a whole world of other triplets out there for Duncan to fight, or be friends with, or whatever, such as his ex-girlfriend, a martial artist sniper chef, and other people like an army officer, demolitions expert, and Amish man. There tend to be a bit more jokes with these characters, but never in an unbelievable way, given the world. They just tend to be combinations that have an odd man out and clash a lot more than the three combat-focused personalities Duncan has.

The book is actually really wordy, in a good way. I actually got kind of lost in the second trade, but that was mostly because I was reading for only 15 minutes a day over a period of like 2 weeks. It’s got character drama, but it doesn’t let that get in the way of the fun of the concept either. It’s just really well-balanced, and I really think anyone who likes comics should give it a try. I don’t even read comics, really, and I really enjoyed it.

List of Fighting Games I Am Excited For, Ordered By Amount of Excitement.

1. Persona 4: The Ultimate In Mayonaka Arena
2. My Little Pony: Fighting is Magic
3. Skullgirls
4. Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3
5. Street Fighter X Tekken

List of Japanese Shows I Am Currently Following, None of Which Essner Approves of

1. Mawaru Penguindrum
2. Usagi Drop
3. Nichijou
4. Game Center CX

List of Candies I Purchase Too Often

1. Mike and Ike: Tangy Twister
2. Sweettarts
3. Nerds
4. Fruit Mentos
5. Laffy Taffy

List of Games I Wish I Could Buy On Launch Day This Year, But Shouldn’t Because of Money

1. Kirby’s Return to Dreamland
2. Professor Layton and the Last Specter
3. Solatorobo

List of Tumblrs I Check Daily

1. Fashion It So
2. Fillydelphia
3. Ask Pinkamina Diane Pie
4. Ask Princess Molestia

List of Things I Don’t Really Know How To Use Properly But Use All The Time Anyway

1. Tumblr
2. Fashion Sense
3. IRC
4. Microsoft Excel
5. Anger

I guess I should probably look at the ol’ list of topics I haven’t touched yet and write about one of them, huh? Let’s see. Ah, Groove Coaster. How have I not talked about that yet?

Groove Coaster is a game by the people who made Space Invaders: Infinity Gene. I still haven’t gotten to play that one because I keep waiting for sales and stuff that don’t come, but I’ve heard nothing but good things about it. If it’s anything like Groove Coaster, I bet it’s great, because Groove Coaster is great.

You pick a little avatar (mine was a goldfish) and you ride a rail throughout a level. The rail twists and turns in a pleasing way. Whenever a dot would hit your little avatar, you tap to play a note. There are also hidden “ad lib” notes you can hit for extra points. In the beginning and on easier modes, the dots to tap are just sitting on the rail that you slide down, but on harder modes, they’ll do cool things like fly in from the side and other visual tricks that also make it a bit harder to keep your rhythm. They also add in “advanced moves” like holding down on the screen instead of tapping.

That’s… pretty much it. The music is the sort of standard techno fare you’d expect. It’s great for in-game, but it certainly isn’t something I’d listen to outside of playing Groove Coaster. Really, what draws you into this game is the great visual style. Again, from what I understand, it looks a ton like Infinity Gene, which I haven’t played, but it just looks great. It looks retro, but not in a particularly identifiable way. It doesn’t seem like they’re copying a style. It feels like their own, but it also feels old. It’s pretty cool. Colors flash, and it responds satisfyingly to your input.

The thing that seems weird is the ability to buy power-ups for real cash. I mean, I guess that’s just going to be a thing now? But it just seems really odd in a game with a clear DLC model of more songs, which they are also doing. I can’t really fault them for throwing stuff against the wall and seeing what sticks, and it’s not like any of that stuff is required to enjoy the game: I certainly didn’t buy any of it and had a blast. But, well, it’s there if you’re allergic to it, I suppose.

I feel like this is not a game for everybody. It is very “old school rhythm game,” though not in the “punishingly hard” way like a Beatmani or something. But I love music games, and I quite loved this. So there.

There is a fundamental difference between how I look at the world and how my students look at the world, I am finding.

I assigned what I thought would be a super-easy and fun paper: play some games, including some on a list I gave you of free online games if you don’t already have access to stuff, and tell me about your experiences playing them and how those experiences reflect on the overused “are games art?” question. I went out and put together a list of art games I really enjoyed, and got a lot out of, as well as some silly stuff I put in there for fun. I was really looking forward to seeing how my students interpreted the games.

Well, I’ve read several drafts of their essays now. None of them are “doing it wrong,” really. But wow, I am not getting the kind of essays I was expecting.

When I play something that is supposed to be an art game, I play it, and then I sit back and, like I do with poetry or literature, I go “what is this trying to say? What does it say?” I look at the parts and see what kind of deeper message might be hidden there. I piece things together. I make theories. I do close readings. I analyze.

This is what I expected my students to do, but looking at things in this way just doesn’t seem to be in their vocabulary at all. They don’t read into anything: they take what is there. In a lot of these art games, there is not a whole lot going on on the surface, so they find them stupid, repetitive, or otherwise boring. This is as far as they go.

There’s nothing wrong with that. There are definitely movies, games, and whatnot where that is the level of engagement I have with them. I am not trying to find deeper meaning in Crysis 2. I am just trying to shot mans, and that’s as far as I go. However, when you present something to me and tell me it’s art, I assume this is how I’m supposed to approach it. I assume there’s something underneath the surface. They haven’t been trained for that. When I look at something like Today I Die, I see a message about how changing your outlook on life can CHANGE your life. They look at it and see a dumb game where you swap some words around for no apparent purpose.

I wonder if all my schooling and English classing trained this in me, or if it’s just something I’ve always done. I certainly can’t think back and think about myself as someone who would approach these games this way. I also wonder if it’s something I should be trying to teach my students. I mean, it’s not completely necessary to look at art like that, outside the sort of circles I roll in. Still, maybe not having that indicates a lack of trying to look through and understand any message, or how anything works. I don’t want to presume this about my students, but I wonder.

In any case, this assignment has been a seriously eye-opening experience. I’ve also been fairly impressed by how well some of the people who keep going on and on to me about “not being able to write essays” are doing, as they’re doing better than some of the people not telling me these things. I’ll keep on teaching. We’ll see what else happens.

Debated whether or not to write about this because I feel like it makes me an asshole. But whatever. I can trust you, right blog? You understand me, right? So I’m going to talk this out, and we’ll see where it goes. If you don’t like me being extremely personal and diary-like, this is not a day to read this blog, I guess. Come back later! Anyway…

At work, we often have coupons going on. By often I mean “always.” Over the past few days, we had a “friends and family” coupon going on, that we were supposed to give out to, you know, friends and family. Of course, we have some at all the registers in case people forget theirs. We do this for all our coupons.

Basically, though, this leads most people to just automatically ask “do you have any coupons I can use?” any time they come up to the register. Which is fine, I suppose. Kohl’s would much rather have them come in thinking “well, surely they have a coupon so it’s okay to shop” than not. When they ask, there’s nothing wrong with giving them the coupon. It doesn’t hurt me for Kohl’s not to make as much money, and it makes the customers happier, so I guess there’s that.

But there’s a part of me that’s kind of annoyed at the assumption that there’s always going to be a coupon there, and I’m not totally sure why. I think it’s the way in which a lot of people ask me for it, like they deserve a coupon and will be unhappy without it, instead of wondering if I have an extra bonus for them. It’s a difference between “hey, do you think you could do me a favor?” and “give me my discount, slave.”

The point is, all weekend, I’ve been telling people there are no coupons. Not every person. Whenever someone met criteria I didn’t quite understand I’d tell them about it, and get them their discount. Like, if they made a mistake, and pulled out their coupon for later this week, and looked sad instead of upset, or took the news well, then I’d offer them the other coupon instead. If nothing about them struck me as whatever, I didn’t mention its existence unless specifically asked for that coupon. Then I pulled it out, of course. I wasn’t about to get in trouble. But I held the power of 20% off in my paws, and I wielded it like I wanted.

The way it happens, though, is just… strange. It really is an almost subconscious decision. I’d smile at the customer and immediately fall into one of those two roles, and I could not break from it at that point, even if I wanted to. I couldn’t ruin the illusion. The lie. Even when there wasn’t any lie. It was so much faking it, something I’ve done so much of in my life, and have worked hard to get rid of. But here was a chance to do that, with no consequences and no reason not to, and I jumped on it. I jumped on it, and wielded this stupidest of lies to keep a barrier between me and these people who are all nice enough, and whom I have no ill-will towards, but who love to punch me in the gut and knock the wind out of me with mentions of me off-hand to their kids, for example.

Believe it or not, I like customer service. I like interacting with people, and the vast majority of people I see every day are awesome, nice people. I don’t mind working the register at all. But my own problems get wrapped up in these interactions. People I may never see again don’t know what they’re getting into and what they’re doing to me emotionally. So I keep coupons from them in order to feel distance from them so I don’t feel as hurt. I guess that’s basically the scenario I have talked through here. Maybe I should be doing other things to protect myself. Maybe I should be going overboard with my appearance so there’s no fucking way anyone could make a mistake. I don’t know. It’s silly to take it out on others, even with something as trivial as a coupon. I should really stop that.

Today, Jonathan came over and was like “Seriously, boot up LoL right now, and try Dominion.” That’s what happened. He coached, and I played, and I died a lot.

I was really happy when they announced Dominion. I mean, I like League of Legends quite a bit. I’ve put a lot of time into it and I’ve got what I feel to be my money’s worth out of the 30 bucks I gave them. At the same time, I was hoping they’d do something with it to revitalize it. The three lane thing is fine, and a solid, strategic game. But I wanted them to experiment more like with Twisted Treeline. I wanted variety. Dominion looked like it was going to be that, and I was all for it.

Let me just say that Dominion is fucking ridiculous. If you think normal LoL is fast-paced, this will blow you out of the water. It is a non-stop, relentless game mode where you are fighting other champions immediately. There’s no rev-up period. It’s just go, go, go. It feels extremely different, and that is cool.
Basically, there are five points on the map. You capture them by clicking on them, and your champion shoots some energy at it until it’s yours. If you get hit by anything, you stop capturing and have to restart, though it does keep your progress for a little while. The more points you control than the other team, the faster the other team’s life bar ticks down until one side loses all their life and dies.

They’ve done some super interesting things. Capturing a point turns off the turret while it’s being captured, making combats around points very interesting. If you can sneak one guy to capture while the rest are keeping the other champions busy, you don’t have to worry about turret fire turning the tables. If I had any sort of skill at all, it would really make those combats more dynamic and interesting.

I got trounced, of course. I played Alistar, because I knew him, but I just had trouble figuring out the new dynamics of combat. I’m so used to being support and focusing more on taking out towers than fighting other champions, but this is all champion-fights and I was really no good at it, much less while being as rusty as I am. I’m not quick on my feets. Still, I’m looking forward to playing more. This new mode is totally going to make me look completely different at some builds and really rethink things, and I hope they’re willing to keep mixing things up like this. I may not have the staying power of Summoner’s Rift (that’s always going to be the main draw) but I think it’s going to be a lot of fun when it’s out in the wild.

I am kind of in a lot of pain right now! I do not know why, but I hope it will pass. In any case, I am just going to write a little tonight and get back to watching shit with Brer on Synchtube.

But what is Synchtube, you don’t actually ask but I will answer anyway because this is what I’m writing about tonight deal with it.

I find Synchtube really awesome. One of the reasons I sort of wanted a Google+ Account, but not really, was the Hangouts. The idea that I could instantly sync and watch youtube videos with my internet friends is a benefit, to be sure! But then again, most of the stuff I watch isn’t actually on the youtube. Thus, when it was pulled into a Synchtube group the other day doing the pony-watching festivities, I was intrigued and excited.

It really works exactly as advertised. You don’t need to make an account to watch or make a group. You just dump the link into a chat and people are there. You can put just about any type of video you’d want on there: it supports stuff like blip.tv, making it good for all sorts of the content I watch on the lines. It’s just incredibly friendly to use, and it works. Apparently you can stall out of their little chat after awhile? But just don’t use their chat. The video stuff works just great. You’re synced up, and watching shit with your friends.

I like it. I will probably use it more often. I’m glad Phenwah showed it to me. You should use it to.
I’m off to bed.

Let me tell you about Shockers.

I purchased Shockers as part of a mix of candy from an expensive movie theater machine, and it reminded me that Shockers are pretty good, though I rarely have had them. I like sour things, and they were basically Chewy Spree with a sour oomph, which is right down my alley. It was a nice surprise and treat at the movie theater.

Then I made the first mistake of trying to figure out where I can find them. I couldn’t find anywhere selling them in Cape, but I did find places on my way to St. Louis that sold them. Of course, I wanted them, because they were good, and kind of a treat for when I did my commute. The problem is, I can’t buy them in Cape, so I always seem to end up buying two. That’s my second mistake.

Shockers destroy my tongue. Everything is basically okay for one tube, but a few pieces into tube number 2? Your tongue just becomes useless for the rest of the day. It becomes hyper-sensitive, and it’s frustrating to eat anything after that point.
I always intend to have one now, and one later when I buy more than one. That’s always my intention. But I have been having fucking horrible cravings lately. It’s frustrating, but I haven’t really experienced it before. I am just overwhelmed with a need for something sweet every so often, and when my body finally gets some sweet, it wants all of it. So, of course, I bust open the second tube and then I am in agony for the rest of the day.

Let’s be honest: this is about the stupidest problem a person could have. I really need to just quit buying Shockers, now that I know where to find them. But I keep doing it every time I go to St. Louis. Time flows like a river, and history repeats. No, wait, that’s the Mana Fortress. Well, something like that. I’m an idiot when it comes to buying candy. That’s all there is to it.
And now I imagined what a movie-theater box of Shockers would be like. Gods, I wouldn’t be able to eat for a week if I came into possession of something like that.

I’m writing this while my students take a test! While I can’t see my list of blog topics, I know one SUPER OLD ONE on the list is The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, so let’s see if I can’t make a blog post out of that while I’m here.

Many of the tabletop RPGs that I enjoy list a roleplaying game based on this movie, by the same name, as a huge influence. Thus, it made me interested in what the movie actually was. When I was visiting Brer (man, that seems forever ago now…) we saw the movie in the movie rental place. He had seen it, and thought I’d enjoy it, so we gave it a rent and a watch.

Man, that sure is a Terry Gillam movie, isn’t it?

Munchausen seemed like it was trying to do quite a lot of things that I completely and utterly agree with. It was trying to create crazy stupid layers of show within a show, story within a story, which let the entire reality of what was going on be incredibly flexible. Of course, sometimes that bending of reality was used to have a floating Robin Williams head be annoying, but, you know. I was actually surprised that the movie gave up on the show within a show as fast as it did, but it seemed to do so only to highlight that the movie itself was a show, and it was inside of it. Eventually you get to the point where the Baron is going around, and you get flashbacks to a realistic battle that he is supposedly trying to stop by gathering his old team of super-powerful dudes once again. You have these moments of seeing the world as real, and seeing what would be happening if the Baron were actually doing these things. Then you flip back to fantasy, with him having tea with Vulcan or whatever. It’s… it’s bold, especially when he does somehow save the day in this fantasy world, and then dies, and nobody has the fantasy to bring him back.

There’s also some level of “modern progress ends the old ways” about the film. The fantastic adventures were before science was really a huge thing, and you feel the analitical world crushing the Baron and what he does, which is probably what ultimately ends him. He dies not in a dramatic way, but from a sniper shot via hired assassin. By that new modern world. There’s something there, too.

It’s a movie that, overall, feels like it’s trying to make a point, and be fun while doing it. However, I just don’t feel like it completely works. It just didn’t seem to get the “fun romp” right, and instead tended to just be really weird. I never really got a good sense of it and what I should be making of it. Clearly, this is filtered through having watched it some time ago, but I just don’t remember it as fondly as one would hope. It’s an experience I’m glad I had, certainly, as I was wondering about it. But yeah. I can really see why it was kind of a flop. I’m just glad it existed to spawn the kind of games I am totally into.