Helghast
So far I've settled on Killzone as the game of choice. I had the horrifying urge to reinstall Red F(r)action but I don't quite hate myself that much. I almost did it though.
I don't really get what everyone crapped on this game for. It's got some awesome grittiness to it, the environments look good, it controls well. It's got some chop to it when things get hairy but that's about it. I've read that some thought it was repetitive and nowhere near the "Halo-killer" that it was hyped to be. These must be the same people who thought Halo's "Library" level was "fun". Then again I am only on the fourth level. Maybe I'll get bored with it later. I love the way the game feels though.
I apparently hate sleeping.
I got tired around 9pm tonight so I thought if I crash out early I can get some real sleep for a change. I get some sleep and then I realize I didn't set my alarm. I set it and see the time is midnight. And now I can't sleep.
Lost in the maze.
I think I've bored of Shadowbane already. Whoops.
I finished Shadow of the Colossus over the weekend. The ending was poetic.
If I had to hazard a guess I'd say I'm halfway done with House of Leaves. You see it's written like a research paper. It has footnotes and two appendixes and an array of exhibits and an enormous index. So between page numbers and what I've already read of the appendixes I'm probably about halfway there. It's a pretty unconventional book and there's parts that are boring but I get the feeling that those parts are boring on purpose. It's pretty clever.
I stacked up four PS2 games that I'm going to play this weekend; Drakengard 2, Dot Hack: Infection, Front Mission 4, and Killzone. Hopefully one of them will hold my attention.
Shadowbane
So quite a while ago Shadowbane went from pay-to-play to free. The servers were supposed to shut down but apparently they're still up and now I'm playing it. I've managed to find a guild (Nox Noctis Fatalis) and now I'm being powerlevelled. It involves me standing behind a rock in a group with a bunch of other newbies while a maxed out character nukes the bad guys around us who'd destroy all of us newbies singlehandedly. I'm even going so far as to try to get Ventrilo working so I can coordinate with these nuts.
So if you're totally bored I'm on Braialla server. Make a character, leave your name in the comments, and I'll message you or something.
This just in.
Katie's a big ho and won't let a sick man enjoy his ice cream. That is all.
Misery
I've caught some early Fall cold and it's plugging up my sinuses and making me generally miserable. Tomorrow is part one of my laser surgery, for reals this time. This means I have a week of further misery in my very near future. By someone's good graces I don't have duty this weekend either so I should have a pretty enjoyable four day weekend.
Books
About two weeks after I got home I went crazy at Books-a-million (worst store name ever) and came home with Chuck Palahniuk's Choke, Survivor, and Diary and George R.R. Martin's A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords. I did a ton of reading in Iraq so I guess I thought I'd be able to get through books just as fast here as I did there. Well not quite. I was already knee deep in Dan Simmons' Olympos and since then I've only finished that, read Choke, and now I'm about to finish off A Clash of Kings. Earlier this week something possessed me to buy more books so I ordered Penny Arcade Vol. 2: Epic Legends of the Magic Sword Kings and Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves.
Now Palahniuk's books are larger than standard paperback but only 200 something pages in length. I got them because they'd make good breaks between Martin's epics, which span around a thousand pages each of small print in standard paperback size. Now that I've got House of Leaves though, I think that'll come after A Clash of Kings. It's 600 pages and pretty huge but it's got some crazy typography (stuff printed sideways, near blank pages) and after reading lots of good things about it I'm really looking forward to starting it. Then maybe I'll follow that with one of Palahniuk's books before jumping into A Storm of Swords, which I'm told is the best book of the series so far.
Note how this whole entry is about books but not what the books are about.
Let’s look at the news!
I'm bored. Let's analyze today's news!
Reuters: Bush says pope sincere in apology on Islam - What? So the pope made some reference to crusader times islamic philosophy, the muslims get all rioty as usual, pope says he's sorry to have kicked off yet another muslim issue, and now Bush is giving the pope his official seal of approval. I'm convinced the pope has more global appeal than George W. Bush. The pope is supposed to be god's chosen on Earth. George W. Bush might have been elected by the people of the United States. And what happened to seperation of church and state? Who is George W. Bush to weigh in on such an issue?
AP: Iranian leader urges more papal protests - Well this is helpful. The leader of a country whose religion is primarily Islam, the religion of peace, is urging more rioting over what the pope said. Let's break it down a little here. Let's take this to a lower level. Do these people not have jobs? When a public figure deals muslims a black eye do they all drop what their doing to start riots? I suppose the country of Iran did not grind to a halt or else it's leaders wouldn't have to urge more rioting. What would happen if the catholic church were to take up a similar stance? What would happen if every slight to the catholic church started riots in the streets?
E! Online News: Shocking! Willie Nelson Busted for Pot - Even for E!, this is not news. This is like when they busted Snoop Dogg for possession. Somebody in the police department didn't fill their quota, saw old Willie, and knew he could make an easy bust if he searched him. Did they even get him with intent to distribute because they found a pound and a half on him? It's Willie Nelson. He's not selling it. He's smoking it. There's something hypocritical about how someone as public as Willie Nelson and Snoop Dogg can take such a huge pro-pot stance and no one really seems to care and then someone comes along and busts them way after the fact. If they were going to crack down of Willie Nelson's pot habit, shouldn't they have started decades ago? I don't think this is really going to teach him any lesson at this point.
I’m stuffed.
Katie made stir fry. Zucchini, mushrooms, fried tofu and some kind of morningstar farms chicken in General Tso's sauce, and white rice. I'm about to burst.
Strange turnabout
I show up for my duty bright and early at 8:50am. One of the higher-ups on Rear D (rear detachment, aka the guys who stayed here the whole time my unit was deployed) is in charge and I voice my opinion on being on the duty roster. He listens and gives me valid reasons why though I still don't agree with him. I resign to my duty and we're watching a bootleg of The Da Vinci Code when someone else on another duty fucks up. Long story short, I get let go for the guy and the idiot who screwed up gets to sit behind a desk on his Saturday.
This is common practice. When joe screws up (and given enough freedom and enough joes, one will screw up sooner or later) those in charge will usually stick him behind the desk and let whoever else is on duty off the hook, sometimes even when the guy behind the desk is the last guy who screwed something up. It's a punishment because sitting there all day, especially on the weekends, is boring and painfully restrictive. It's also a good way to keep the screw up occupied and a way for the people in charge to keep an eye on him. So here's hoping someone does something stupid next weekend too, if I can't find a way out of that shift either.
So with my Saturday returned to me more or less unharmed I went back to sleep. Katie wakes me up around 3pm and she wants to go downtown. We get there and there's some kind of craft fair. I'm horrified and start accusing Katie of setting me up but either she loves me or she didn't see anything that interested her because we didn't stop at any of the booths and only spent a small amount of time in an antique store. We did some more wandering around downtown Clarksville to discover that downtown Clarksville pretty much closes on the weekend. I had a pricey sandwich at a sandwich and coffee shop and Katie took any number of pictures of me eating and looking awkward in front of a shutdown fountain.
I'm stuck again. I can't play anything for more than 10 minutes. I'm going to try Descent 3. See if I can make it through the whole thing without the last level crashing on me.