Dream of Waking

So I’m in Iraq. Compared to Kuwait, the weather here is rather pleasent. I’m at a base somewhere near the base I’m supposed to be going to and it’s big and has lots of stuff like Burger King and a big PX and lots of free internet and phones that I’m trying to take advantage of before I have to leave. Scary moment of the week, our plane coming here couldn’t land because the base was under attack (probably a mortar or two) and when it did land, we had to get under this big concrete awning until the “all clear” was given. Other than that, this place is kind of enjoyable.

So I’m alive and safe and hopefully I’ll be a little more settled in on my next entry.

I honestly and sincerely want a $500 watch with a geiger counter. When I come home from Iraq and I have $500 to blow on a new watch, I will be buying this watch.

Can you fathom a nuclear apocalypse? Thousands of years of civilization and human development washed away by our own technological advances. This isn’t one of those natural disasters or biblical myths, nuclear apocalypse is as close as the nearest insane administration with the means to commit to it. It hovers over us like a radioactive dust cloud. The technology exists and it’s waiting to obliterate worldwide society.

It’s this kind of thing that terrifies me. Not terrorists or hurricanes or the ebola virus, just everything disappearing in a flash of light.

Early Saturday, September 24th, 2005 I will leave for Kuwait to spend a year in the Middle-East.

So the 15th has past and I’m still here so technically my days are numbered. I’m seething with anticipation!

So I’m taking three gameboy games with me. Any other’s I’ll have Katie send me as these three will occupy a good chunk of time.

Riviera: The Promised Land is a CRPG without anything prior to it to attribute it to. You don’t directly control your character’s movement, just which area to move to and who to talk to. It’s very point and click. There’s no experience points, instead if you use a weapon enough times you learn a special attack with it. Each character learns different attacks with different weapons and some weapons only give special attacks to certain characters. Your inventory is limited, the number of times you can use an item or weapon is limited before the item runs out or the weapon breaks, and you can only bring five items into a fight. This lends a ton of planning to each fight as you have to decide whether you want to bring that sword you’ve used almost to the brink of destruction with the bad ass skill attached or if you’d be better off bringing a brand new weapon and learning it’s skill as you deal out less damage. Oh and you don’t decided which enemy you’re attacking. Each weapon attacks enemies according it’s type with spears generally attacking the Sound complex? It kind of is. This game is next to impossible to describe properly but it’s fun and I love the art style.

Rebelstar: Tactical Command has had a ton of hype already. Kind of cartoony, X-Com-ish, turn-based strategy game. It was supposedly designed by some X-Com creators and it shows. As far as I’ve gotten (mission 8 or so) there’s no base, no research, and no disposable teammates so when one of your characters dies, it’s back to the beginning of the mission which makes for some rather rough games the first time through. I usually die on the first time I try a mission just learning where the enemies are coming from and the nuances of the map. It’s fun and criminally cheap for being a brand new game.

Finally, I just picked up Sigma Star Saga as the third leg in my search for entertaining time-destroyers. It’s a more traditional action CRPG with random horizontal shooter space battles thrown in. I was almost blown away by the relative difficulty of the very opening of the game where you’re thrown into a space battle and swarmed with enemies and are expected to live. I died twice just trying to pass that first section but the difficulty really eases up after that. I’ve hardly started the game and I wouldn’t say I’m disappointed but it seems like this is a mediocre action RPG tied to a mediocre horizontal shooter with a competant storyline. But considering I paid $30 for it and $20 for Rebelstar, I got a much better value out of Rebelstar.

On my list of games for Katie to send me once I’ve beaten a couple of these are Super Mario World and Yoshi’s Story. I looked everywhere for a decent copy of either of them (as they are Mario games and children have a tendency to put Mario cartridges of all types in their mouths, or so the labels of them would appear) to either no avail or at ridiculous prices so Katie’ll have to find them on ebay while I’m gone.

So I survived “punch day”. I got a few good blows to the head in the first round (of three) but the second and third weren’t too bad. In the end I came out looking much better than most of the guys there but I did get a bruised rib that hurt like crazy all weekend. Imagine sharp, localized chest pain everytime you breathe in or out or talk and you have how I felt all weekend. Fortunately, there was a medic at punch day who had motrin and when Chris and Amanda showed up, Amanda hurt herself picking up Rufus so we both advocated the picking up of advil for the weekend.

So Chris and Amanda. We had a good time this weekend. Went to Nashville, did more window-shopping than shopping and didn’t destroy the bank account in the process, if you exclude Katie’s trip to the health food store that went on the credit card. There’s not a whole lot to say about it but as Katie pointed out, now that they’ve come and gone, the only thing between me and deployment is time.

I’m trying to spend this week not going insane.

So shit’s kind of building up and it sucks. It feels like the walls of my perception of reality are getting closer. And I can’t sleep and I have to wake up stupid early in the morning.

Senses Fail – Let It Enfold You (broken song link) (more…)

This morning I showed up for PT and one of the sergeants in my section told me to turn around and go to the gym for my combatives class. I get there, I’m late, I’m in the wrong uniform, it doesn’t matter because almost no one from my company showed up. We go on, go over the crap I already learned in basic and call it a day because someone else needs the gym that morning. So I get the rest of the day off (at 8am) and all I need to do for the rest of the week is show up in BDUs with a cup and a mouthguard and learn some martial arts. I don’t have to work and I’ll probably get out early every day. And then I’ll get to add Level 1 Combatives Certified to my Eagle First Responder certification for when I go to the promotion board. Not bad! And if I get my air assault wings in Iraq, I’ll be totally set for any board I go to.

So my birthday rocked. Knight’s was the perfect place for it. I never realized how fun waterslides are till this weekend. We went late (5, when the park closed at 7) so there were a minimal amount of children. They had this new slide that was just a giant V and you had to ride it in pairs and sit spread eagled so it was totally gay when Matt and I rode it the first time but the drop on it is so steep that for like half a second the tube you’re riding on is totally airborn. And since Matt and I weigh a combined 350lbs+, we almost went shooting over the edge and into the freeway on the return upwards. It was terrifying and great. Oh and we were all like twice the age of the half of the people there and half the age of the other half. There was NO ONE our age there.

And then we went to Chris’s and got pizza from Leo’s and watched my bootleg copy of the Family Guy movie. I missed most of it when I went to pick up the pizza but what I saw was pretty funny. Mike and Crystal (whom we invited for comedic relief) brought a third person and their child and ate a bunch of the pizza and then left without even contributing to the pizza fund. That was totally tasteless and they won’t be invited to any of my parties anymore. But then we all played Geist multiplayer games of Ghost vs. Host and that was insane fun. Definitely worth the cost of the game even if there were only 2 maps (at least only two that I unlocked) for GvH and ghosts are totally overpowered.

And I got some neat stuff out of it. Matt got me the Akira soundtrack. Lauri got me this INSANE looking knife. Mom got me nice new headphones and a titanium thumb drive and the first boxset of Gantz. Chris and Amanda got me some army figures as a gag gift and said their real gift was on the way and I’d get it this weekend when they come down here.

Overall this was probably one of the best birthdays I’ve had so thanks to everyone who was there and everyone who said happy birthday.

In other news, I got Killzone from Circuit City for $15 and it’s a weiner. It’s like they smashed sci-fi, World War I warfare, and World War II imagery into a competant FPS. The difficulty is kind of rough but that’s probably because I’m playing with a PS2 gamepad and not a keyboard and mouse. And there’s something about the PS2 controller that just doesn’t lend itself to FPS’s like the Xbox controller does. And I finished Zone of the Enders 2. I loved the game, don’t get me wrong, but the last three bosses (and they come one right after the other) were totally boring fights. I enjoyed fighting Viola eight times more. At least she had some variety. Kind of. Regardless, ZOE2 was awesome.

So tonight Katie and I went out to Gamestop and Hastings in search of something new for my DS (I bought a nintendo DS with birthday money my dad gave me) and I wanted Goldeneye: Rogue Agent but neither place had it so I was looking around the rest of Hastings and found a selection of used D&D books. It looked like someone had just traded in their whole collection minus the core books because I got out of it an Expanded Psionics Handbook, Complete Warrior, Complete Divine, and Complete Arcane and I left behind the Forgotten Realms source, Lost Empires of Faerun, Weapons of Legacy, Player’s Guide to Faerun, and Champions of Ruin. The books I left behind were all around $15 which isn’t terrible, and I paid $17.50 for the Expanded Psionics but here’s the real killer: the Complete books were SIX DOLLARS a piece. Those books retail for $30 each. I walked out of Hastings with over $125 in D&D books and paid only $28. Hopefully some of those Forgotten Realms books will be left once we get back from Springfield, I’d love to get a couple more of them. And you know the poor bastard only got half of their sale price in trade for them. I can’t fathom trading in a $30 book and receiving $3 in return.

Hats off to the schmuck who traded in a fortune in D&D books for what amounts to pocket change.