#8 – Fable: The Lost Chapters (Xbox)
Here's a classic. I just got this one last year because it was $5 and it was completely worth it. I'd heard others praising Fable back when it was released but for some reason I let it slide off my radar.
It's an action RPG, with a whole lot more added in to keep it from getting boring. It takes place in your average fantasy setting, it has a pretty storytale plot, and doesn't throw too many surprises. It works on getting you attached to your character. He doesn't speak, doesn't have a name (except Hero or whatever title you've purchased) but you're with him from birth to middle-age. Your choices determine whether he's attractive, scary, or good/evil. You can get your hair and facial hair styled, your stats influence how you appear, and you gain scars when you come close to death. You can marry, visit a bordello, own real estate, collect rent, gamble, trade goods, and so on. Everything beyond the basic action RPG elements are either minigames or just a matter of having cash on hand. I played a good character and though I never tested it, it felt like no one was off limits in terms of killing important characters. Certainly none of the mundane characters were off limits and more than a couple passersby and gawkers caught a whack from my sword while I was trying to defend them.
The game isn't very long, I think I finished at about the 15 hour mark. I did nearly all the quests but I didn't complete all the boring item hunts. I got my most powerful preferred weapon and enough experience to max out the physical stats, and put a healthy amount of experience points into the skill and magic stats and finished with the highest level of renown. A lot of the Lost Chapters content is integrated into the main story so well that I hardly noticed it. It was after I finished the main storyline and picked up on the Lost Chapters that I noticed it. And it is noticable at that point. The original Fable storyline has a definitive end and the Lost Chapters adds another area and about three more hours of capital S Story quests. It feels kind of tacked on and a little hokey but it's exactly what you can expect from an RPG expansion, more Fable.
All in all, this is one of those I'd wish I had picked up earlier so I could discuss it with more relevance but getting to play it at all is probably good enough. Looking forward to getting Fable 2!
Well then.
Two days ago, the server I'm hosted on apparently took a dump. Of course, this is perfect timing what with Memorial Day weekend and all. I wasn't even expecting this to be back up before Tuesday. Funny enough, I got an invoice for this month's payment while my site was down, before my hosted email even came back up.
Peeling
The scabs have begun to peel. It's worst on my tricep. There's a lot of thin little lines and they're all breaking and peeling and coming off. My forearm looks gross. It's broken a couple times and it's peeling so it's four shades of brown and two of pink.
Bald for a reason
Bald for a reason, originally uploaded by Nihilate.
I don't look happy, do I? I'm not. I've lost all my hair. One minute it was there, the next it's gone.
No one spends more time on their hair than my mother. She's losing her hair too. My mother has breast cancer. She's gone through surgery, now she's going through chemotherapy. Now she's unhappy. So since she's lost hers, I'm losing mine too.
Other people may say, "oh you're in the Army. You used to shave your head all the time. This is no big deal." It is a big deal. Before I shaved my head for convenience. Sometime in the last year or two I realized that that was exactly what the Army wanted. They wanted me to just give in and take the easiest route. Taking all your hair is one of those psychological measures the Army takes on new recruits to demonstrate how they're no longer people, but soldiers. It's a measure of control. So I stopped shaving mine. I let my hair grow till someone who matters says something about it. My ridiculous, thinning hair is my middle finger to the Army.
Maybe others will notice that I've shaved it all off and I can help raise awareness. Or maybe you're reading this and you want to help show solidarity with my mother and shave your head too. Either way I'm going to tell you about my fantastic mother and how she's fighting cancer and going to be okay.
Road rash.
Right Forearm, originally uploaded by Nihilate.
So this is what my forearm looks like after skidding downhill at 20mph.
By the way, if you're interested in seeing the full extent of the damages in the form of a not-even-nude picture, send me a friend request on flickr! Apparently my not even nude body is a little to risque for the general public!
Hey Fitty!
Hey Fitty!, originally uploaded by Nihilate.
Oh yes. $5 at Hastings!
Edit: I started it. I named my save "DJ Woo Boy". There would've been more O's but it had a really small character limit.
Bike Accident!
I'm an idiot. To make a boring story slightly less boring, I tried to hop a gap on a downhill gravel shoulder and made it across but lost it because my tires were slightly underinflated. It was probably my most spectacular wipeout as I was going pretty fast down that hill. I was wearing my helmet but it didn't do me a hell of a lot of good this time because my right arm took the brunt of the skid. Anyway, on to pictures!
Here's the shirt. It's rather thin, which is why I chose it because it's kind of hot out, but that didn't help me much in the fall.
Left hand. Just a couple scrapes. Not pictured: Right hand. Can you break the tip of your pinky? Because it felt bruised, now it feels numb and it's turning purple.
Right hip. I don't even feel this. I only noticed it when I stripped down to hose off.
Right leg. This kind of burns but at least it's clean.
My back and shoulder. It too kind of burns.
After I'd hit the ground, I jumped up because I don't trust drivers in the area I fell and I didn't want to become roadkill too. I almost wanted to complete my trip but after getting a good look at my right forearm I decided it'd be better for me to turn around and go home and hose off. I called Katie and she freaked out and yelled at me to go see a doctor. My medics weren't there today but I went to my assigned clinic and one of the medics there patched me up. The white bandage comes off tomorrow, it's not so bad. The tan one I'll probably take off Sunday night. It's the worst of my injuries. Pictures of both of those forthcoming!
Clarksville, TN in a nutshell
I was driving home at lunchtime last week on a very busy main road. It's spring, which is roadkill season in TN, so it's not strange to see something dead on the side of the road. This time, however, it was a dog. Some fucking asshole hit somebody's dog. It was in an area where it was nice and clear all around so it's pretty obvious that the driver either wasn't paying attention or it was intentional. It wasn't completely mutilated either, it looked like a dog on it's back, but it was clearly dead. I went home and was kind of sad and wondered who the fuck hits a dog and how long it'd be till the owner noticed.
After my class I was on the same route going home. The dog, which was almost off the road it was so far next to the curb, had been hit again. So now there was a half crushed roadkill dog right next to the curb. Fucking awesome, that's exactly what I want to see. So now that there's a mess, it's only a matter to time before the city comes along to clean it up, right? Or the owner finally notices and does something about it themselves? I mean, as hard as it is to think of such things, I wouldn't want any of my pets lying dead in the street.
The weekend goes by. It rains, hard, several times. It's more than a week since I first saw it. What's left of the dog is still there. A flat, unrecognizable mash of fur, bones, and dried entrails. The blood has been washed away by the rain.
Somebody killed someone else's pet and no one gives a shit. The driver didn't give a shit. The owner doesn't give a shit. The city doesn't give a shit. That piece of roadkill that (I estimate) hundreds of people, if not a couple thousand, see a day is going to sit there until it decomposes itself into nothing.
This is how this whole town operates. Clarksville, TN. No one gives a fuck. I've never seen such apathy in my life. If someone's car breaks here, they just ditch it on the side of the road. It'll sit there until the city decides to move it. I was driving home on the same ultra-busy thoroughfare on my lunch hour when I found myself in the middle of a street race. In broad daylight. Some fuckheads want to show off and swerve through traffic at 80mph in a 45mph zone. They can do this because the police don't give a fuck. When Chester got bit by a loose dog in the neighborhood and I tracked down the owner, he didn't give a fuck.
It is one hundred percent obvious to me that in this city, you are absolutely on your own and the solution is always get a bigger stick than the next guy. Clarksville, TN is an apathetic shithole.
#7 – Zeno Clash (PC)
If you haven't heard of this one, you're probably not alone. It won a few indie game awards but it has kind of been under the radar. It's also somewhat difficult to describe. To put it simply, it's a first-person fighting game that takes place in a very surreal environment. It's colorful, beautiful, and full of interesting creatures and people, whom you get to punch in the face. A story exists, the voice acting kind of suffers, and you spend a lot of time punching people in the face but the setting and variety more than make up for the shortfalls. There's enough interesting boss fights and ways that they make the game more than just fighting that make it enjoyable. It's only $20 on Steam, which was well worth it. It's left wide open for a sequel which I suspect won't come soon enough.
Updating my dumb site
I'm on what is basically a two month vacation from work. I'm in classes. Classes that are required for promotion. A promotion I won't be getting by my own choice. I don't think the Army gets much better than this, honestly. My hours are steady again and my schedule doesn't change every fucking day. I'm in this class with fifteen other people who do the same job I do and a couple of them are even worth talking to! I can bitch about stupid stuff that typically goes on at my normal job and these guys actually know what it's like!
Non-shocking fact: most of these guys did other jobs before to get to the rank that I would be getting promoted to (which is hard to obtain in my job), before they reclassified to my job. This is why my points for E6 are so high. All the E6s are reclasses. And what do you know, I'm far more knowledgable than they are at this job! This is another way the Army is fucked on promotions that I didn't even consider. It's easier to jump the ranks in a different job and reclass to computers than to come up the ranks, gain the skills and knowledge, and then get promoted to E6 in a timely manner. I just took my first test and a lot of what this first week is covered in AIT, which even reclasses have to go through, and it's almost surprising how many of them struggled with it. It may not be stuff we do every day but it is a perishable skill that needs periodic refreshment and these are the guys who've come out of training much later than I did.
I don't want to bash these guys though, they've done their time in other jobs and fulfilled the requirements to be where they are today. The system that put them here is inherently flawed. Some of them toted a rifle for most of their Army career, and now they're punching buttons. To put them in the same position of responsibility as someone like me, who's done the job for four plus years, says to me that the job is interchangable and that all that matters is the rank you wear. That's insane. If I were to be swapped with an infantryman at my rank I would absolutely lost, because I don't have the experience of doing that job that the responsibilities I'd inherit requires.
This wasn't supposed to turn into a rant, I swear.