Update: I still don't play the game.

In idle conversation there was some mention of games that weren't ever released in the USA. Given that I have an odd memory for various obscure stuff, I remembered a game that I was surprised wasn't released in the USA, given its theme and all. I can only guess that the theme was too American for America.

4:23 in: "I enlisted to do AMERICAN things!"

Was reading some news, and came across a piece on a father losing custody/access to his children due to his religious orientation.

Wow.

I just watched this trailer.

What the hell?

Galaxy of Terror makes you ask yourself questions.

Like:

Did he just punch it off? What's with the sound effects?

Is that Joanie from Joanie Loves Chachi? Why are these sound effects so hilariously bad?

WTF did I just watch?

Wow.

In the original, EVA-01 goes berzerk on Zeruel.

In Rebuild, Shinji goes berzerk on Zeruel.

Bioshock, it's (not really) just like Disney's the Little Mermaid!

Let's examine the similarities.

A magical adventure under the sea, with singing and dancing, villains and heroes. The protagonist is born under the sea to a ruler, who then spends time on land before returning to the sea. There are women concocting potions and magical-like effects that sometimes transform people. A strone theme is the desire to live on both land and under the sea. And the desire to go onto land, where the people are. And a cast of whimsical and sometimes racist charicatures under the sea.

The list of similarities goes on and on.

There's even a big ol' crab. And a big underwater castle/fortress. And girls having magical adventures in the company of watchful males who are supposed to be watching over them. And a villain who tries to use borth manipulation and force to try to take over the kingdom of the protagonist's father, but is ultimately defeated by the protagonist, etc.

See what further similarities/parallels you can come up with!

For the moment, my imagination cannot come up with a scenario with as much fail in it as the situation described in a recent news report I read.

I figured Spork the movie would be of interest and relevancy, for various reasons.

I would go into a long and boring bit of text here about people who are stuck between two or more predefined archetypes, stereotypes, templates, cultures or what have you, though I'm sure it's all been heard before.

I wish that I saw more interesting music videos on TV. If I did, maybe I'd actually watch TV.

Space fez FTW!

Reply to this journal and:

1. I'll respond with something random about you.
2. I'll tell you which song or movie you remind me of.
3. I'll pick a flavor of jello to wrestle you in.
4. I'll say something that only makes sense to you and me.
5. I'll tell you my first memory of you.
6. I'll tell you what animal you remind me of.
7. I'll ask you something I've always wondered about you.
8. I'll tell you my favorite thing about you.
9. I'll tell you my least favorite thing about you.
10. If you play, you MUST post this on yours.

Realized that L4D2 is available for purchase/pre-order now.

Here's hoping it's worth the money I spent on it.

Also, is it just me, or does L4D2 sound like the name of R2D2's retarded cousin?

I remember all these characters, and was amazed to see them again.

Though I couldn't place a lot of the other characters in the game. Amusingly, there's a fan made English patch for the game in question(Namco x Capcom).

See how many you can recognize without cheating!

Part 1 and Part 2.

Hahaha! At 1 minute in, it's Dig-Dug / Hori Taizo pounding on Satan.

And from the loooong running Super Robot Wars series, we have Gundam versus Evangelion.

It's a shame that almost none of these kinds of games will be officially translated into English, due to insane licensing agreements outside of Japan.

WWPD?

*grunt*

Mr. Ando of the Woods! (pero pero pero pero, pero pero perp pero, etc.)

Salaryman Man!

More insanity ensues.

Bonus!

Extra bonus!

After reading this, I can't think.

I don't want to think for a little while.

What's wrong with people?

The other night I went on a burger run. On the way to this all night burger stand I know, I passed by a park, and on a whim, I checked to see if my sense of balance is still crap. Turns out that it's not. I can actually balance pretty well.

So now I'm going to start training in... a certain activity that I used to indulge myself in.

Potentially relevant video.

I paid my rent a couple days late(oops), got a partial haircut, made some tasty sandwiches, cooked some food, picked a new book to read, and I was disappointed by someone.

Being witness to a few attempts at Internet drama, I opted to play Left4Dead instead.

All in all today was a good, calm day, just have to learn to dodge drama bags better.

I found out earlier today that Sobec killed himself.

http://www.musicalisten.de/sobec_ist_tot.txt

The long lasting cough I've had has finally seemed to go away. After an in-depth spirometry examination it turned out I was missing a significant percentage of lung capacity. Turns out there's some damage in there. So far I'm on a bronchdilator and steroid inhalant, which seems to gradually be returning lung capacity.

For the first time in over a decade breathing doesn't hurt, and I'm gradually getting less annoyed, less cranky, and more physically active. The side effects suck, though. My hands are really shaky, and the disruptions to my sleep cycle are a bit annoying, yet preferable to how things were before I started on the inhalers.

After a little discussion, things have been smoothed out with the recording studio and tomorrow afternoon, I'll be headed over there to set up my return to technician and recording duties there. Spending the last year and a half cooped up has really, really sucked. Fortunately, it looks like that's over.

Currently, I have to say that Second Life is the world's largest MMOLOL.

Most artists draw with only one art style, I've noticed.

Learning to draw in a number of different styles is important, and tends to improve one's capabilities as an artist by forcing you to use different forms of expression of concepts. Some of the styles I make stuff in are dependent on the tools I use. Although in general, lots of people I've shown drawings, 3D art, shading practice, etc that I've done haven't recognized the works as mine, if they've largely only been exposed to one of the styles I do drawings in.

Here on FA, I only post things done in a sort of stream of consciousness style where I use short, overlapping strokes and have only allowed myself a single instance of erasing. I only use subtle strokes, no bold lines, no resolute postures, no pre-sketching, blue-lining, nor refinement. Mostly just hastily drawn crap.

I should post something else, but I just can't bring myself to doing so, being fatigued from being ill.

Since I got my laptop back in October, it's had the Acer OEM version of Vista Home Premium installed on it. I've struggled, tweaked, and yelled in frustration in more languages and dialects than is healthy at that damned operating system.

I can't run any sort of productivity software on the machine at anything resembling tolerable performance. Second Life runs poorly, the I/O is atrocious, the networking has insane amounts of latency, sometimes giving me hundreds of milliseconds just to machines here on my local network. My old server made in 2001 running *ix works better than that!

After updating my video drivers, the OS shit itself and refuses to allow the Vista ATI graphics drivers to be installed, updated, or otherwise touched, leaving the machine without 3D capability. That, coupled with the lack of hardware support for my scanner and a number of other peripherals, I've found that I have to use XP and Linux on the machine.

So at the moment I'm backing up a hard drive image of the SATA disk over the network, thanks to an old Linux bootable CD and the magic of NFS and creative use of dd. Thirty gigs out of a hundred fifty is done so far.

After all this is done, I should be able to get a lot more productive.

The real bitch of it for me is that I ordered this thing with XP.