Interesting night at work tonight.

First off, its the first major snow of the season, almost an inch and a half in four hours and no signs of stopping yet. I slipped and slided all the way to the restaurant tonight (I deliver pizzas fyi) and when I got there I was informed that we couldn't deliver anymore tonight due to the weather.

Well, I clocked in and started helping around the store as we were basically waiting for the regional office to call us and say "The weather is piss, you can all go home early". As it gets later and later I begin to get nervous, I just finally got a car last March (I'm poor) and have no experience driving in snow.

I asked one of the managers on duty if he'd let me leave early because I'd almost slid off the road a couple times just getting to work. He said it wasn't technically allowed but if I really felt I needed to he wouldn't stop me.

Well, after a bit one of the other managers comes up to me. This one has a bit of a history around the store as being very abrasive and foul tempered. Two weeks into my job there she actually took me and another newbie aside and told us that someone had said we'd been talking about her behind her back and if she'd heard that we were again she'd fire us.

Now, she was bluffing. She's a manager but this is a corporate store and there is a process that has to happen before someone can be fired (write ups, verbal warnings, repeated offenses etc). Delivery drivers have a notoriously high turnover rate and a pizza restaurant will do what they can to hold onto whatever drivers they get.

Ever since then however I've found she has a really horrible temper. I always go to another manager on the shift if she's around because I never know how she'll react to anything. This woman has no middle gears. She's either 'I'm happy and today is a good day' or 'I'll fire everyone because fuck you thats why'.

Fast forward to tonight and she's telling me if I leave a minute before it's time that I'll be fired. Later I'm talking with a co-worker about the weather and how bad the roads are getting and that manager comes up in our discussion, specifically what happened earlier. Well, another co-worker overhears us (we were outside taking the trash out and he followed us with some empty boxes) and he runs off to that manager to tell her.

She pulls us aside and it's a repeat of the first time. 'You've been talking behind my back and I should fire you for it'.

Well, I snapped. I stood up and said "Alright, thats it. <Name>, you are the ONLY thing I don't like about this job. I like my other co-workers, I like delivering pizzas, I even like working the prep room and dish room."

"I feel like I can never come to you with any problems because I don't know how you'll react. When you pull stunts like this I feel like you're abusing your power as a manager."

Her reply: "Well tough shit! I'm the general manager and that means I can fire anyone I want."

In response I tossed my badge on the table and walked out. Before I left I turned and said, "By the way, I'm calling corporate tomorrow and reporting you for harassment. Have fun with that."

As I punched out I saw her go up to another manager and whisper "Can I talk to you for a minute?" and looking pretty panicked. I think she realized she'd pushed me too far.

On the way home the other GM of the store called me and told me he didn't want me to quit, that he had no idea that she'd been behaving like this, and that he wanted me to come and talk with him about what had happened. I explained the situation, told him that if we were to talk about it he'd need to include my other co-worker because I knew he'd been getting the same treatment, and that we'd discuss it when we got the chance.

After I got inside the other manager, the one I'd been having trouble with, called to apologize.

So yeah, to anyone who is having a rough time at work... sometimes it pays to get angry. Angry gets things done.

Just a few highlights so far.

My old WoW latency was around 80ms(Home) and 100ms(World)... MS = the number of milliseconds it takes for the server and my computer to communicate.

THIS is what it is now: http://i.imgur.com/G4taW73.png and that's during peak, with youtube running on my iPad, and with my mother watching Netflix downstairs.

Also, I deleted and re-downloaded Sonic Generations to test Steam's speed with the new service. In under half an hour I've downloaded 2.3GB out of 7.8GB. With TWC this would have most likely taken all night.

So yeah, got a new job. Starting tomorrow I'll be driving delivery for Pizza Hut.

Well, not really. I just decided to start up a Deviant Art account because 'fuck it why not?'.

http://gamerlen.deviantart.com/

Go take a peek if you like.

So yeah, one nice thing this week after having to quit a job with Amazon.com over my old back injury... I got a beta invite for Blizzard's next soul consuming monster, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft.

However, I have some good news. The game is godsdamned awesome. :D

There are nine decks to get, one based on each of the original classes of World of Warcraft. As for why Monk and Death Knight aren't present... good question, but it is still a beta so maybe they'll be unlockable. Each deck is also represented by a major figure from WoW lore, who acts as your avatar while you use that deck.

The decks you get are...

Jaina Proudmoore, the Mage. Jaina is the archmage of the city of Dalaran, currently floating over Northrend. Her deck has a basic setup of creature cards you can summon as well as spells like Fireball, Arcane Missiles, and so on. Also, all heroes in the game get a 'hero ability' that they can cast once a turn. Jaina's is Fireblast, which does one damage to any creature or player for two mana. Not much, but useful for clearing out trash or injured monsters.

Thats the starting one anyways, to unlock the rest you have to beat those decks in a battle. The other nine are...

- Garrosh Hellscream, the Warrior. Garrosh is the current warchief of the horde (at least until the end of Mists of Pandaria and holy shit am I looking forward to smacking him upside the head in both games), a bloodthirsty warrior who wields a giant battleaxe called Gorehowl.

- Thrall, the Shaman. Former warchief turned shaman, Thrall helped to heal the rift between worlds in the events of the Cataclysm and was there to deal the final blow against Deathwing the Destroyer.

- Vallera Sanguinar, the Rogue. Honestly, I dunno who the heck that is. Never run across them before... They look like a blood elf though and I mostly play Alliance these days so that's probably why I haven't seen 'em.

- Uther Lightbringer, the Paladin. Uther was the leader of the Silver Hand, an order of holy knights made up of humans and dwarves. In WoW lore he's long dead, having been murdered by Arthas Menethil before he went on to become the Lich King.

- Rexxar, the Hunter. Rexxar hasn't done much since the Burning Crusade, but he is a Mokk'Nathal, a half-ogre who helped Thrall build the city of Orgrimmar.

- Malfurion Stormrage, the Druid. Malfurion is the leader of the Night Elves, alongside his wife the priestess Tyrande. He's also partially animal these days (antlers, feathers on his arms, paws instead of feet) so yeah... he'd fit right in here on FA. :D

- Gul'Dan, the Warlock. Like Uther, Gul'Dan is no more in the actual storyline. He died during the ending days of the first war between the orcs and humans, chasing after the Tomb of Sargeras. He was one of the first orcs to become a warlock alongside his former mentor, Ner'Zul.

- Anduin Wrynn, the Priest. A character I'm rather fond of, he's the son of Varian Wrynn, King of Stormwind city and crown prince. He's also been studying the light with the Draenai and their leader, Prophet Velen, so he's actually pretty strong in his own right.

Also, your decks level up. Apparently when I level Jania's deck I get a new spell... dunno if it's a card or a hero power or what, but I'll find out soon enough.

Battles are simple enough, you flip a coin to see who goes first and get three cards if you go first, four if you don't. Each round you get mana, your mana cap starting at one and rising by one each turn until you get to ten. You use mana to summon creatures, cast spells, and use hero powers.

There are three types of cards I've found so far:

Creatures: These are basically your minions, legbreakers, guards, slavering beasts, and goblins with unstable rocket packs. The stronger they are the more they cost to summon, and some come with useful abilities such as...
- Charge: Normally when you summon a creature it has to wait a turn to attack. Creatures with charge ignore this and can attack immediately.
- Battlecry: When you summon them they do something immediately. Summon more monsters, deal damage, heal you, etc.
- Enhance allies: Other cards you control get a bonus to their abilities. It can be specific (Grimscale Murloc gives +1 attack, but only to other murlocs) or for anything (Raid Leader gives +1 to all other creatures you control).
- Taunt: Enemies are forced to attack this creature before they attack any others (or you). It's worth mentioning that you can ignore your opponent's creatures and go straight for their throats... but if you're not careful they can whip up an army very quickly and overwhelm you.

Spells: Spell cards are one time things that cause damage, give you cards, and other effects. A couple examples from Jaina's spellbook:
- Arcane Missiles: Shoot three missiles for one damage each (targets chosen at random)
- Polymorph: Transform an enemy creature into a 1/1 sheep creature. (Great for taking out enemies with Taunt).
- Arcane Intellect: Draw 2 cards.

Equipment: Equipment cards allow your hero to attack directly, but have durability. They lose one each time you attack with them and when they run out the weapon breaks and is discarded. I don't have any yet but the last tutorial mission was against Illidan Stormrage who had his warglaves on him... that was one hell of a fight. ._.;


Lastly, the part I'm sure everyone interested in this game is wondering. How much do cards cost?

Yeah yeah, its a free to play game so we all know that 'freemium' is going to come in somewhere. After all Blizzard is a business and they need to turn a profit. Well, good news. You can buy single booster packs with gold (which you earn in game), but any more than that costs actual money... two boosters cost you about $2.99, seven packs will run you about ten bucks, you can get fifteen for twenty, and so on.

There's more too, quests you can do, unlocking and leveling up heroes, and so on... but I'm still new to the game so I don't know much more than what I've posted here. All in all I'm definitely hooked and looking forward to what else Blizz will come up with for this one.

First off, lets get this out of the way:
Gods DAMN you EA! You got another one of the companies I like and forced them into using paywalls and microtransactions! FUCK YOU AND EVERY ONE OF YOUR BLACK-HEARTED MONEY-GRUBBING BULLSHIT PUSHING CEOS! FUCK YOU ALL TO THE DEEPEST DARKEST LAYERS OF HELL!

Alright, now that that's over with, the game itself. Did Popcap still make a good title despite the interference of They-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named?

Well... so far here's how the game went:

The tutorial level was the classic front yard from the first game. At the end of it you find a bottle of hot sauce and, lo-and-behold, your old friend Crazy Dave shows up to claim it. He reveals that he still has the taco you found for him... four years ago in 2009... and that he's been waiting all this time for some hot sauce.

... must be a lot of preservatives in that taco.

Anyways, he eats it, proclaims it to be the pinnacle of Mexican cuisine, and then declares he'd like seconds. So what does he do? Why the only logical thing, takes you along in his RV-turned-time-machine and shoots you and himself into the past so he can eat his taco again.

He overshoots a bit, landing in ancient Egypt, where the game gets rolling.

Anyways, here's whats changed since the first game:

- New plants, this goes without saying of course.
-There's a little frozen pea (not a pea shooter, just a pea) that acts as a landmine. When a zombie steps on it, they freeze solid.
- A new plant is some sort of leafy green that punches the hell out of whatever comes close. Its best to have this tucked away behind your wall-nuts as it can't take a lot of punishment on it's own.
- Some sort of boomerang flower that throws it's petals into the oncoming zombies. The petals shoot forwards, then return back to deal two hits each. Slow rate of fire though.
Thats all the ones I've unlocked thus far.

- Plant food. Some zombies will glow green when they appear, kill them and they drop plant food which you can use to power up your plants for a short time. The powerups include:
- Peashooter: Upgrades to a Gattling pea for a few seconds, spitting a gigantic barrage of peas at all enemies infront of it.
- Cabbagepault: Throws several giant cabbages into the air which rain down on the zombies, doing a ton of damage to each (very useful, personal fave).
- Sunflower: Supercharges, the sunflower drops several sun orbs in one go.
- That new punchy-thingy: It shoots it's arms out in all directions, attacking any zombies within one square of itself multiple times.

- Powerups. You can spend coin in game to use the touch screen to do special attacks yourself. There are three different ones.
- Pinch: You pinch a zombie on the screen to pinch their heads right off their shoulders. Crush the enemy with your miiiiiiiiind!
- Swipe-smack: Swipe up to knock zombies into the air, swipe across to send them flying out of the area.
- Thunderfinger: Tap and drag your finger to electrocute zombies. Does a ton of damage and outright destroys weaker ones.
The powerups sound nice, but they cost a lot of coin per use and coins aren't worth as much as they used to be. Probably part of EA's desire to milk money out of this as you can buy them with real coins, and dollars, in their online store.

- Star Challenges. Before you can leave each time period you need to gather stars to unlock star gates. The number of stars for the one I'm on is fifteen and I'm about halfway there. When you get to the gate all the levels you've cleared on the map (oh by the way, there's a map) will gain star challenges. These are basically little trials that, honestly, do add some good challenges to the game. A few examples are:
- Keep the zombies from going past a certain point.
- Don't spend any sun for the first X seconds.
- You can only have up to X plants at a given time.
- Don't lose even a single plant.

- New zombies (c'mon, you saw this coming). Yep, the ranks of the undead swelled again, each time period offering new ones. Some are just redoings of old zombies (the basic zombie for Egypt is a mummy, the cone zombies wear cones with a gold asp decoration, etc) but there are totally new ones as well. The ones I've encountered in Egypt so far are:
- Ra Zombie. This one is a nasty little bugger. He carries a staff with the sun on it and whenever your sunflowers generate sun he'll try to steal it! He raises his staff, the suns turn red, and they get drawn towards him. If you're fast you can grab them before he pulls them in but if they reach him he'll hold them until he dies. When the Ra Zombie goes down all the sun he stole pops out of his body at once.
- Anubis Zombie. Remember those gravestones from the night levels in PvZ1? Well, now they act as wall-nuts for the zombie side. Your cabbage-paults can shoot over them, but peashooters and other plants have to break them down to shoot past them. What does this have to do with this zombie? He makes more of them! During a fight he'll cough up a bone and toss it onto a random square, wherever it lands a gravestone appears.
- Explorer Zombie. Oh good gods I hate these things. They're zombies in explorer outfits carrying burning torches. Why is this bad? Well, you're being guarded by plants, and they have fire, and if Pokemon taught me anything its that fire > plants. If he gets close enough to a plant with that torch then any plant, even wall-nuts, goes up in smoke instantly! This is where those ice-landmine plants come in. Put one in his path and, when it freezes him, the torch goes out. After that he's a normal zombie in fancy dress.
There's others too of course, but those are the big ones that stand out in my mind.

- Permanent upgrades. This one is kinda eh because I feel it takes some of the strategy away, but you can find (or fuck you EA buy from the store) little totems that'll power up your character. They are...
- Sun Totem: Start a battle with a little sun.
- Shovel Totem: When you dig up a plant it'll refund some of it's cost back to you.
- Plant Food Totem: Permanently increases how much plant food you can carry (you start with a cap of three).

So, in summary...

What I like:
- The new plants are creative and compliment the returning ones from the first game well.
- The plant food adds a new layer of strategy to the game. Do you spend it on sunflowers to get more sun quickly? Do you save it for a zombie swarm and use it on a cabbage-pault to take out half of them at once? Do you wait until a big one shows up and power up a peashooter to blow it away?
- The new zombies are neat and add some more fun to the game coming up with strategies to counter them.
- Star Challenges are interesting and some of them take some real planning and skill to get around. I haven't done many yet, but I like what I have seen so far.
- Crazy Dave is still funny.

What I don't like:
- Pay-for-plants. Seriously, fuck you EA. I'd have happily given you ten, even fifteen bucks for the full game. You don't need to do this shit.
- Powerups. They're neat, but it feels really out of place here. That and they cost a ton of coins and I get the stinking suspicion that EA just added them to milk some more money out of the players.
- Its an EA game now. Again, fuck you EA. This is the one exception to my 'No EA games' rule I'll make and only then because I loved the first game so much.


So yeah, in short, it's a fun game that really adds a lot to the old game's formula. I will admit that the paywalls aren't as big a deal for plants as only a few of them are 'pay or you can't get them' and the only one I gave up any money for so far was the torchwood, it just really irks me that EA went and did that because the game would be just fine without them and, again, I'd have no problem paying money to get it if they paywalls weren't there! The game itself is free to play, but you need to pay to get those upgrades or more coins so it's another one of those freemium games.

Final verdict: If you liked Plants VS Zombies 1 or if you're a fan of tower defense games (and you have an iPad since it's iPad only right now) then go for it.

So yeah, as a heads up to some people I know watch my page and don't like that sort of thing... I'm most likely going to start posting a lot more ABDL themed stuff in the very near future. I'll set up a warning thumbnail for your benefit, but I'm not going to hold back on posting such things.

If you have a problem with that and don't want to see such things then feel free to remove me from your watch list.

So yeah, for those of you who keep up with online gaming the MMO Rift has recently entered the realm of Free to Play, once again leaving World of Warcraft one of the only subscription-based MMOs on the market. Well, since the price is right I decided to download the game and give it a try. Here's a short list of some of the stuff I do and don't like about it.

Things I like:

Custom Classes: Okay, so there's four classes. Warrior, Mage, Rogue, and Cleric. Doesn't seem like much right? Well, each class has several subclasses (called souls) that you can mix and match as you please. The souls unlock different skill trees and abilities for each character and you can have any three at a time. You could have a paladin that can also summon animal companions for a warrior, a necromancer who also uses fire magic for a mage, or a cleric who can summon fae creatures as well as be a healer.

Its pretty fun to screw around with really and see just what you can get. Each class has about a dozen of these subclasses, so the replay value is really high. One mage will play totally different from another.

Crafting:

A few things for this one:
- Breaking down all items: Good god there is no way to say how much I love this. Lets say you're taking blacksmithing, specifically armorcrafting in my case, and you've used up all your tin or iron or whatnot grinding up skill levels.

Guess what? You can break those things down for parts! In WoW (lets face it, any MMO will be compared to WoW) you have to sell or auction off your leftover gloves when you're done, but Rift believes in recycling apparently. You can break down anything that you have the profession to make (like a weaponsmith could break down weapons from a quest that they didn't want or can't use) and each one will give you crafting materials that you can reuse.

- You don't need to have the item with you to use it: Another nice bonus here. Store your crafting materials in the bank and, when you go to craft, it'll treat it as if you were lugging them around in your inventory. This is especially important for F2P guys like myself since our inventory space is severely limited (you get up to seven bag slots, but four of them are locked until you pony up some cash).


Cross-faction mail: Blizzard take note: Making it so we can't send mail between our own alts if one is horde and one is alliance is a really really dumb idea. But in Rift, well, my Defiant Mage was able to send my Guardian Warrior a few crafting mats and some coin so he could get his armorsmithing up and buy a horse.


Mages actually use their weapons: This is a minor thing, but I really like it. In other MMOs, again WoW, a mage's weapon is basically dead weight. They cast spells with their hands and their staff is just a glorified walking stick. In Rift your mage will channel spells through his weapons rather than his hands. If you have a staff they'll focus on it and then raise it up into the sky to shoot lightning down on a target for example, or my warlock will hold his book open as the pages flip over to summon a skeletal knight, he'll also point his dagger at an enemy and use it to channel entropic energies into them.

Again, minor, but for someone who likes to get into their characters like I do it's a very nice touch.


Things I'm not thrilled with:

Three races per faction: Maybe I'm just being picky here, but I guess I'm just used to Blizzard's races having a lot more variety between them. The Guardians get Humans, High Elves, and Dwarves. The Defiants get the other Humans, Night Elves/Dark Elves/Other Elves, and large purple men. Mind you, we all know that if it had any animal-people in it I'd play those and nothing but so yeah. :P Just nitpicking with this one.

Auction houses are for loyalists only: This one kinda irks me. To use the auction house you have to have 'loyalty' first. Though I guess it's just Trion's way of blocking gold farmers, it's still irritating for new players. Mind you thats only to sell, you can buy stuff no problem.

So yeah, I quit my job at Speedway today.

I'd been gearing up to for a while anyways, it wasn't working out and, lets face it, I hated working retail... but last night kinda sealed it for me.

See, we recently got a new manager, we'll call him Dan, and his old store was out in a town called Hebron, which has much slower customer traffic and was much smaller overall. The one I worked at that he took over was quite a bit bigger, as in one of the busiest in the area. My guess is the change has him a bit overwhelmed and he's not adapting well, it'd explain why the recent incident happened.

First, a bit of backstory here.

One of my former co-workers, we'll call her Melissa (not her real name of course), and I didn't get along. By not getting along I mean that whenever I worked with her she'd wind up throwing a temper tantrum and had the shortest temper I'd ever seen working at a gas station. It got to the point where I had to move back to third shifts just to get away from this woman.

Well, the night before last we got a call from one of our morning shift workers saying she was too sick to come in. I told her she had to call back in the morning and talk to a manager since I couldn't do anything about it. Apparently she did not and Dan had to come in to fill her place. They tried getting her in and, well, didn't end well... or quietly... or cleanly.

Well, Dan was not a happy camper because of this, and he decided to explain to me that next time I had to call him personally if someone had to call in. Thing is he left at two in the afternoon, and I didn't come in until ten. Rather than call me or leave me a note or something, he had one of my co-workers play messenger for it.

As for who... well, remember Melissa?

Yep, the woman I got along with like a snake and a mongoose, the woman I refused to work an entire shift to avoid, the woman who was more or less guaranteed to cause a scene over it was the one he informed of what had happened and asked to relay the message to me.

And she did.

Loudly.

Infront of the entire store.

Told me exactly what a fuck up I was and how badly I'd screwed up and how angry the manager was.

Sooooooooooo yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah... I quit my job today! :D

Ever had one of those times where everything seems to be going better and then you find out 'whoops no it isn't'?

Apparently, despite thinking that I'm doing much better at this job, I got pulled into my manager's office today and got told there's been customer complaints about me being rude. Problem is while back at Shell I'd think "Oh yeah, that jerkoff. I told him to go to hell, but he told me a lot worse" and turn him into a Customer Disservice comic.

Thing is, this time I have no idea what in the holy hell he's going on about.

Kinda frustrating really, I thought I liked this place a lot more and that I was fitting in fairly well here... turns out that I was wrong.

So yeah, I'm gonna start looking around at other jobs and get the hell out of retail if I can. Its clear that it's just a bad fit for me.

Basically, I was out driving to class and had one of those giant 64oz soda mugs in my passenger seat... and when I turned to go down the street where my school is the thing tipped over. My immediate instinct is "grab that damn thing before sprite gets all over the seat!" and... well... by the time I realized what had happened I was halfway up a Ford Suburban's bumper.

Thankfully neither one of us was hurt, but my steering is a little off, my left turn signal is shot, and there's a crack in my windshield. Still, I got the easy one, the other guy... well... His SUV was a lot higher off the ground than my car and my front bumper went under his and right into his axel. I waved him over to a nearby parking lot so we could sort it out and when he went to turn his entire wheel came right off.

I took a bunch of pictures of both vehicles and I'm going to go sort it out with the insurance office tomorrow, but I wound up taking the night off classes (my teacher was understanding about it and extended the due date for any work due tonight) and I'm still a bit frazzled from the entire experience. x_x

So yeah, as a bit of advice to any other new drivers out there... If the drink spills then just let the damn thing soak the seat and shampoo it when you get home. ._.;;;

UPDATE: I spoke with State Farm, they're going to tow my car to a body shop to have it repaired and I pay a $250 co-pay. Assuming everything goes well with the other end of this and the guy I hit that could be the end of it.

UPDATE 2: Car is on it's way to the shop. Now its just a waiting game.

About seven years ago I got a job at a Sunoco station as a second shift clerk.

Five years ago I got promoted to their full time third shift guy after the former one took a spill down some icy steps and was unable to continue working.

Eleven months ago I quit working there.

Six months ago I got a job working at a Circle K at my brief stay in St. Louis.

About two and a half months ago I quit when I moved back to Kentucky.

About a month and a few days ago I got a job working for a Speedway near my home in Kentucky.

About half an hour ago I got off the phone with my supervisor and agreed to work third shifts starting on Wednesday.

I have come full circle. ._.;

Incase anyone was wondering after my latest comic ( http://www.furaffinity.net/view/10312316/ ), this is the list I'm referring to.

1. Graduate college. (Working on it, enrolled)
2. Move in with my mate. (Working on it, need money and means)
3. Summon an elder god just to see if I can. (Need necronomicon, can't find yet)
4. Beat up a sparkly vampire. (Completed, Champions Online)
5. Break up a KKK meeting with some form of ranged weaponry. (Completed, Bioshock Infinite)
6. Sissify Lunar in the real world.
7. Dump several hundred eggs on the head of a neo-conservative politician mid-speech on national TV.
8. Capture Arceus. (Seriously Nintendo, enough with the damn wi-fi events and shit, just put him in a game)
9. Find Jesus, then hide him somewhere else.
10. Beat all the Final Fantasy games before number ten when the series started going to shit.
11. Learn a second language, preferably Spanish because it'd help out a lot around here.


Its worth mentioning that things are added as I realize other things I'd want to do.

So yeah, below here everything can be considered a spoiler. I should be sleeping right now but after seeing that I doubt I'll find rest until I get these thoughts on paper... well, on something anyways.

So yeah, Booker defeats Comstock, saves the girl, and escapes... except not really... the girl gets Songbird, the giant mechanical parrot monster, to break the syphon that was stealing her powers and manages to open a massive tear that takes her and Booker to... well... a city on the bottom of the ocean.

Thats right, in the end they wound up at Rapture. Andrew Ryan plasmid splicer Somewhere Beyond the Sea Rapture. It was only for a little bit before the game took a turn for the surreal.

It was then that the game explained why Booker wound up in Columbia, how Elizabeth had the power to open tears, what happened to her pinkie on her right hand, and such, but in my mind it also went into an overreaching concept.

Stories, and how they repeat themselves.

Its no co-incidence that Columbia is so similar to Rapture in so many ways. A city above the clouds, a city under the sea... Sealed away from the rest of the world where only those deemed worthy can enter, ruled over by a man who some see as a visionary but others see as an oppresser. Columbia IS Rapture, the city's opposite but at the same time so very very similar.

Its more than that though.

Prophet Comstock and Andrew Ryan aren't just similar, they are the same man from different directions. The same with Jack (the hero of Bioshock) and Booker. The same with Finkerton and Frank Fontane. The same with Daisy, the leader of Vox Populi (in english, Voice of the People), and Sophia Lamb who preached "For the Rapture Family".

The same with Songbird, with his copper-colored body and glowing yellow eyes, and the big daddies of rapture... and the same with Elizabeth and her blue dress, and the little sisters who the big daddies protected at all costs.

The same with the Lion King and Hamlet, the same with Moses and Harry Potter.

The prince will always avenge his father.

The chosen one always loses his parents and rises to greatness despite this.

The princess (Peach, Zelda, Leia) will always be kidnapped by the dragon (Bowser) or the evil wizard (Ganon) or the emperor (Palpatine) and be rescued by the hero (Mario, Link, Luke Skywalker).

The details are different, the stories are the same. They repeat endlessly and only upon reflection do you see the connections. Bioshock Infinite was very subtle in this, I didn't make the connections until it all came together at the end and then, well, I've been trying to sleep for a few hours now, so yeah.

In both stories a man connected to the villian came to the faraway city, defeated its corrupt leader, and rescued the girl (or girls)... though in this case some details are different. Comstock was Booker, but from another universe. In that one Booker was born again after the war and found religion in a big heavy way. Its why Booker didn't know about a city beyond the clouds (in his world Booker never became Comstock and never founded Columbia, thus it didn't exist. A city in the sky is hard to miss after all), its why Comstock knew he was coming and why he saw him as a False Shepard (he WAS Comstock, from another world), its why Comstock was convinced Elizabeth had to take his place when he died because his line had to keep the throne of Columbia (Comstock was sterile, but Elizabeth was Booker's daughter, Anna, who he gave to the twins to cover his gambling debts).

Even at the end, with how the game ended, its hard to tell if Booker really did go to the city to rescue his daughter, or if he was just hallucinating all that happened and drowned himself in an act of suicide. I'm not entirely sure after all that.

I'm not sure if the story wasn't just one big metaphor, I'm not sure of anything about it... except that I want to play it again.

EDIT: Please do not post anything about what comes after this in the comments. I'm trying to avoid spoilers and I purposely avoided any posts on this before I got a copy of my own.

So yeah, thanks to my tax refund I was able to purchase myself a copy of Bioshock Infinite (the rest going to my college) and I was able to play through the first couple bits before work today. As always major spoilers incoming so if you don't want them go elsewhere now. You have been warned.

Story starts out very similar to Bioshock ironically enough. This time you're sent to a lighthouse on an island by rowboat rather than crashing a plane there, but I get the feeling this was an intentional nod to their old series. Rather than taking a bathysphere down into the sea however you're launched up into the sky to Columbia, a city that flies through the clouds. Its quite the contrast. Unlike Rapture, which was dark, shadowy, and felt oppressive, Columbia is colorful and vibrant, also not yet a war-torn hellhole like Rapture was when Jack first arrived. There's people everywhere, children playing, young couples out together, it looks like something out of Norman Rockwell, if he did his art in the 1920s and had a fondness for steampunk. It seems rather utopian until you win the raffle... and then things take a turn for the worse.

The 'raffle' is basically picking differently numbered baseballs out of a basket. The baseballs have numbers on them and the winner is given the opportunity to... well... this is where it goes bad. The curtain on the stage where the raffle is being held rises up and two people tied to posts are behind it. A young man with a star of david on his shirt and a black woman. Behind them a couple cartoon monkeys are painted holding wedding rings with a very very very overstereotyped cartoon of a black voodoo priest depicted peforming wedding rites. The winnner gets to throw the baseball at them... or do what I did and throw it at the guy holding the raffle.

Naturally I went with option B but before I could foul ball him the guards caught me and saw a brand on my hand that apparently marked me as the "False Shepard", who is going to ruin their little perfect white utopia. Well, after giving the guards the one-two and stealing their weapons I began my departure, which basically entailed to running like all holy hell as every cop in the area began to come after me.

During my flight I came across my first "Vigors" which seem to be basically plasmids, but in some sort of old-timey energy drink style. So far I have:

Possession: Allows me to take control of machines (and humans after I got the first upgrade).

Devil's Kiss: Similar to the Incinerate plasmids from Rapture, but in this case I throw hunks of flame like Super Mario.

The gameplay is very similar to Bioshock. Left hand is your vigors, right hand is for guns, though you don't need to select your melee weapon as your main one, just hit Y (I'm using my 360 controller rather than keyboard and mouse) to smack an enemy with your claw.

Anyways, I quickly found out that this place was less a utopian society and more a cult that has declared itself the master race and worships the founding fathers of the US, specifically George Washington, Ben Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson. Its like the Tea Party took over Laputa. (Screenshot of one of the images of Washington, go ahead and count the stereotypes!: http://i.imgur.com/gMYPJ8v.jpg )

Definitely like that as I soon found out when I came across a shrine in the city to Lincon, specifically his assassination. There's a statue in the entryway of John Wilkes Booth, paintings depicting him in a ray of shining light plugging Lincon in the head with Lincon painted as a shadowy demon (pictured here: http://i.imgur.com/tnHs65d.jpg ) and then one of my favorite parts in the game so far happened...

I found a meeting of what was essentially the Klu Klux Klan in the backroom... and by this time I had a machine gun added to my arsenal along with my Devil's Kiss power. One rat-a-tat-tat and some foom-kaboom later and I can check one more thing off the list of shit to do before I die! :D

Their leader buggered off before I could take him down too, but I managed to catch up to him quickly enough, though not before seeing him demonstrate his own Vigor on a hapless prisoner. Their leader had the vigor "Murder of Crows", which did exactly what it sounded like. It summoned a flock of flesh-eating ravens to peck out the eyes (and nose, and tongue, and lungs, and etc) from whoever he didn't like very much.

Well, after sorting him out good and proper I got his power for my own and before you could say "Fly my pretties!" the cops had caught up with me again. I tested out my new bird-summoning powers on them, finished the last couple off with my pistol, and then exited stage right... and thats when I noticed it was 3:30 and I had to get the hell out to work.

So yeah, thats how its gone so far. I'm enjoying this one immensely so far and, as soon as I post this, am hopping right back in.

So yes, I got my first direct deposit check from my new job the other day and decided to treat myself to the expansion to Starcraft 2.

My take on it can be summed up as follows:

"Holy fuck its four in the morning and I just now noticed."

That is all.

*collapses in a heap* x_x

UPDATE:

As of now I've completed the campaign mode. I won't post spoilers if I can avoid it, but I will say this. As short as it seems, I mean hell I got it on Wednesday, I have a burning desire to start a new game and play through it again.

There's been a lot of changes made for the gameplay in general. The controls have been streamlined for faster command input and a lot of the units have been changed or replaced. A good example of this would be the Terran unit "Firebat". He's gone now. Instead the Hellions, those dune buggies with the flamethrowers, have apparently been redesigned a-la autobots and now can transform between vehicles and fighters. In fighter mode they're indistinguishable from the old firebats in terms of combat. Their attacks hit a shorter range but aim wider for more damage.

A new zerg unit that I'm -really- enjoying is the Swarm Host. They don't attack on their own, rather they burrow into the ground and constantly spawn locusts to attack nearby enemies. They're basically mobile sentries that can travel around to wherever your defenses need shoring up. I tend to keep a small squad, about five or so, handy while I'm working on building Spine Crawlers when I play zerg.

I haven't gotten the chance to try Protoss yet, but I might do that tonight... or I might play some more World of Warcraft. I'm sure my new hunter is getting bored just laying around the inn in the Plaugelands. :P

I was in class the other day, we're doing Professional Development right now... basically the school to help students get used to being in class and studying again (a lot of the students at Brown Mackie are older) and the professor got on a subject that... well... rather hit home with me after certain events recently.

To summarize, it was this:

"Do what you want to do, not what someone else wants you to do.

All change should be because you want to do it."

It wasn't much, but it got me thinking about recent events... and it made me realize something.

As big a failure as me moving to St. Louis was, it had to happen for me... it was my wake-up call, the thing that made me realize that my life wasn't going a way I should be happy with.

At the same time, I wasn't doing it for the right reasons. Tryn and Ri were a lot of fun to hang out with and, really, I miss it... I do... but the reason I moved there wasn't because I wanted to live with them. It was because I wanted to run away from my mother and Edgewood. I didn't do the move because I wanted to go there, I did it because I wanted to leave here, and that's not the right reason to do something this big.

Also, I was being forced into changing things about myself that I didn't want to change or that I wasn't ready to change. This caused tension for both me and my former packmates. It wasn't their fault, the situation required the changes, but I simply wasn't prepared for those things psychologically yet. I thought that once I was out there life could continue as it had here and that's simply not the case, especially for someone who's social growth has been stunted for as long as mine has.

Because of this, and other issues since my return, I said some things that shouldn't have been said... and now I'm worried that someone I considered one of the best friends that I may ever have doesn't want anything to do with me.

I won't put names down here, if that person reads this then they'll know who I'm talking about, but... I just wanted to say that I'm sorry, I said things that I never should have been said. You were wonderful and patient with me, a lot more than I should have expected.

At the same time, I now doubt the situation wouldn't have worked in the end. Those changes, not the practical ones but the ones about my... interests... well, I've tried ignoring that side of me before and no good has ever come of it. Eventually something would have happened and I worry that it would have caused that situation to end a lot worse than it did. They're as much a part of me as my hands or my feet and amputation is not the answer.

That having been said... I miss you guys, but in the end I think we're better off being friends than anything else. Someday, I'd like to cook for you three again... and hell, we could even watch Netflix with dinner while Dawn attacks our feet.

For now though, I need to get my life in order. I'm working on that part, but it'll be at least two years before I get my degree. Still, I hope it goes well for you three, I really do. Part of me does wish that I could have been a part of it, but now I wonder if I really belonged in that sort of relationship. I'm introverted, I live through my computer, and I don't do well with other people. I think I just wasn't ready for what we were trying to do.

So, the other day I was taking the bus home from work and heard some guy in his thirties start ranting on about Obama. Its the usual stuff here. He'll take our guns, he'll take our jobs, he'll make us all pay for health care, yadda yadda big government yadda blah.

What amused me however is that during his rant he started going on about how 'the people' are going to rise up against him someday soon.

... the people? Um, does he mean the American people? Because last I looked we're some of the laziest fucks around. Oh sure there's guys out there who watched too much Rambo in their formative years who'll envision themselves the leaders of the glorious revolution, but thats about as far as it goes.

The people will rise up one day... then sit back down because their beer is getting warm, the game is about to come on, and the weather is kinda shit today anyways. I can't picture the majority of the US public standing up to overthrow the Burger King much less the US government.

Not to mention, who exactly are 'the people' anyways? I've been working with the public for over a decade now and in that time I've met fundamentalist christians and hardcore athiests, far-right wing gun nuts and far-left wing liberals, LGBT-rights activists and people who support 'traditional marriage', hardcore democrats who think Obama is the best thing since sliced bread and hardcore republicans who think Obama is the worst thing since the third reich, pro-legalization potheads with Bob Marley teeshirts and anti-legalization mothers with D.A.R.E. teeshirts, and everyone inbetween but I have never once met a member of 'the people'. Even if you could get the american public to get up off their collective asses and actually do something good luck getting them to agree on -what- to do, hell good luck getting them to agree on pizza toppings half the damn time.

Yes we got up and stopped SOPA and PIPA a year ago, but those events are few and far between. Not to mention that in this case we all agreed something actually was happening that needed to be stopped. Sure Obama isn't the golden boy everyone thought he'd be, but after Georgie Junior he's pretty damned good.

Ah well, just ranting before bed here. Kinda stuck in my mind for a while so I figured I'd post it and get it out of my system before I tried to sleep.

So yeah, a bit of an update of whats been going on since I got back to Kentucky.

- I start college on Monday. Going for an associates of Information Technology.

- I have a job interview tomorrow afternoon.

- My mate and I broke up. I still care for her a lot, but we're no longer a couple.

- I'm now with  lunarnio.

So yah, busy month. ._.;;;

EDIT: Got hired by Speedway. I go in for training tomorrow morning at 8:00 AM.

I mentioned a while back ( http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/3808331/ ) that I was leaving my childhood home to travel west to the fabled land of the Saint of Louis to live with two of my packmates,  trynity and  pearboi .

Well, today I moved back.

Simply put, I fucked up, badly. I was looking to find full time work out there, searching via the internet and applying around, but totally unaware of the truth of my situation until the week before last. Once I found out I was given an ultimatum, find full time work in two weeks or go back home.

Put away the pitchforks people, they were right. I should've tried harder and I should've known that I'd need to contribute more if I wanted to stay. I was half-assing it for most of the time out there and deserved what I got.

But y'know what else I got?

Six months of living with two of the best friends I'll ever have, some lessons and tricks for job hunting that I'll be using for a long time to come, and a chance to get out of Edgewood and try living as an adult.

Yes, I fucked it up and yes, it hurts. A LOT. But, well, thats what failure feels like. I went into it without being prepared and this is what I get. In truth, I'm lucky here. I had a place to return to and I had someone who'd welcome me back with open arms (mind you this same person is going to be expecting rent soon, which is where the aforementioned job hunting tricks are going to be getting a lot of use).

So yeah, I'm going to spend a couple days settling in and then, before the week is out, I'm getting out to get a bus pass and my mother and I are going to work out a schedule for me to do driving practice.

Before I move out again I'm going to do the following.

1. Get a godsdamn driver's license. I mean c'mon, I'm twenty seven for crap's sake...

2. Save up some money, five grand minimum in savings before I go anywhere.

I discussed job ideas with my mother on the way back to Kentucky and we have a few ideas. I'm going to look around at the local colleges to see if I can get some further education as well as a paycheck (she put herself through college back in the 70s by working their library and getting free tuition as a job benefit). I'm also looking at the local banks, after ten years of retail I can at least get in as a teller since I'll have a ton of money handling and customer service experience. We're also keeping our eyes open for data entry jobs. If the several hundred submissions on here aren't a hint I'm pretty handy with a computer. As a last resort I'll be applying at the local bookstores and electronics/video game stores. If I have to work retail it may as well be around something I like.

To Tryn and Ri, thanks for all the chances you guys gave me and for six months I'll never forget. Also, get your asses out here in May for Taste of Cincinnati or I'll put a voodoo on you.

Well, I know what I'm buying in nine months.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bIrWryFc7A

So yeah, I found out one of the major problems of quitting a job where you exclusively worked overnight for several years. I am having a BITCH of a time making myself diurnal again. I just spent the last few hours laying in bed tossing and turning and finding that no matter what I do I can't make myself fall asleep... and I have to be at work in about three and a half hours as of writing. Joy.

I think a lot of it is, even before I got my old job, I was always more of a night person than anything. Even back in high school I'd stay awake all night and usually wind up sleeping through all my classes (explains a hell of a lot when you think about it really).

So yeah, mostly just venting about how I have the sleeping patterns of a vampire here.

... but screw it. I've been following politics all year since the SOPA/PIPA crisis and I'm sick of it.

Yes Obama won, yes I'm glad the candidate I liked is president for another four years, but more than anything I'm glad its over. I badly need to detox from political news for a while. Here's my obligatory toast to Obama securing another four years and now I'm going to bugger off and play video games or something. Toodles.

... so I snagged it and gave it a try.

I gotta admit I have no idea why so many people beat up on this game. So far I'm having a blast playing it!

Maybe its because I'm a fan of both Tim Schafer (Psychonauts) and Jack Black (Pick of Destiny, Greatest Song in the World), maybe its because I went in knowing the game was going to mostly be silly, but I'm really enjoying this one. Yeah the RTS parts aren't perfect, but they're not horrible either and actually kinda fun when you get to the more fast-paced bits. Its also nice that unlike a lot of RTS games you can dive in yourself if the fight is going badly and help out your men.

The areas are all based on different genres of music too. The first one (and its boss) seemed to be Glam Rock and the old 80s Hair Bands while the second one (which I'm currently doing) is apparently Goth music and looks like it was designed by Tim Burton during a bout of depression. Its especially amusing to see the footsoldier enemies for that area all be goth/emo zombies who whine as they beat you with their shovels ("You don't understand our pain!" *BONKBONKBONK!*). The special attacks are fun as hell too. Basically you have Eddie (Jack Black's character) pull out his guitar and play a solo on it to cause various effects. Two of my favorites are Facemelter (truth in advertising) and one I can't remember the name of but which is effectively 'Summon Hindenberg' and drops a flaming blimp on my enemies for area of effect fire damage.

Also, the musician cameos are pretty neat too. The guy who upgrades your weapons, car, and so on is a man cloaked all in black with a thick british accent who calls himself the Guardian of Metal and turns out to be Ozzie Osbourne while one of my newest army members is the Metal Beast which is basically a firebreathing gorilla with Gene Simmons's makeup and tongue. That and the whole soundtrack is heavy metal songs which I'm probably going to wind up using as a checklist next time I go Mp3 hunting online.

But yeah, for six bucks this game is more than worth playing. I'm really enjoying it myself. Anyone else had a time where they decided to give a game with a bad reputation a try and wound up loving it?

Besides the obvious stuff, am I the only one who thinks this is awsome?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6m2SfSstJQ

Seriously.