CJ

This will probably come as a shock to just about no-one, but if you're thinking about renting "Balls of Fury" in the near future, don't bother. I went in with low expectations, and was still pretty disappointed. I guess the writers couldn't figure out what sort of comedy they were going for. The parody bits, the slapstick, the lines...all pretty weak. Not even Christopher Walken could save it. Might be worth it if you can rent it REALLY cheap, but I wouldn't suggest it; don't want the writers behind the film to be encouraged, after all.

So, yeah, anybody complaining about Mario Kart Wii having horrible shoe-string AI really needs to go back and play Double-Dash to learn the true definition of cheap AI. At my brother's insistence, we played that today, against the computer, at 100cc, and regularly got passed without getting hit by anything and for no apparent reason whatsoever. I think I'll stick with playing the new version for the forseeable future. You may get hit with lot of random stuff while in first, but at least the AI doesn't shoot itself into first just because it feels like it.

Busy weekend. Doing set construction again, only this time being careful not to over-exert my back again. It's aching a lot already, but that's just because of the warm weather. Show is "Dames at Sea", which I'd be interested in seeing, since it's supposed to be a parody of "42nd Street", which I thought was pretty lousy, so this could be amusing. Went to the Lilac Festival today for Mother's Day. Good weather for it, at least by our standards; not cold, but not sunny, either. Found some of that mustard I saw there two years ago and didn't grab a jar of at the time, so I was pleased I was able to get some this time. Could've gotten a garbage plate, but the line for that was ridiculous, so I settled for a Red Osier roast beef sandwich, which was excellent. Found out later I could've tried a lobster roll at another booth, but what can you do? Kind of a shame we can't do much this Mother's Day, since our mother has to see the doctor tomorrow and needs to fast in preparation for some tests (they cancelled her original appointment and she had to re-schedule for tomorrow, which is a drag).

Visiting Damon in Colorado in less than two weeks. Should be a trip. :-)

Also worth mentioning about Mario Kart Wii...there are too many baby characters in the Mario universe now. The games they're in tend to be awesome, but it's definitely not due to their presence. Seriously, we now have Baby Mario, Baby Luigi, Baby Peach, Baby DK, Baby Wario, Baby Bowser (who's rather firmly replaced the Koopalings, which is TRAVESTY, I tell you), and now this Mario Kart brings in Baby Daisy. I mean, really? I can understand the desire to pad out the roster a bit, but it's not like the series is lacking characters that we need to create a baby version of a fairly incidental character. Kinda weak.

And I'll admit that I was bitter at the time that the Quizno's sponge-monkey commercials got replaced with this sort of thing, but do people actually like these commercials where an adult is doing voice-over for a baby? I haven't met anybody I've seen these commercials with that enjoyed seeing/hearing them, like, at all. Obviously appeals to somebody, they did make a few movies based around that concept back in the late 80's-early 90's. Still, if I have to pick one or the other for continued existence, I'd go with Baby "Number Not-One" Luigi any day of the week.

Saw Iron Man this weekend. If you've been reading reviews of it, you probably don't need me to tell you this, but it was pretty awesome. :-) Like, as entertaining as the first Spider-man. Or the second, if that's your favorite one, personally I wasn't a huge fan, but I'm in the minority here. I've also always preferred the first Star Wars movie to Empire Strikes Back, so you can see how skewed my view of the world is. Robert Downey Jr. seemed an odd choice for the role, but he pulls it off quite well. Not many fight scenes, but those few scenes are terrific, and the movie's still enjoyable when he's outside of the suit. I think Marvel learned something from last year; this is pretty much everything that Spider-man 3 wasn't, and is pretty awesome for it. If action blockbusters are your thing, highly recommended.

Also picked up Mario Kart Wii. Solid game, and I like using the new wheel control, but it does feel like we're starting to re-tread familiar territory. I kind of miss the character-specific special items from Double Dash, too. Nothing like sending a Giant Shell of Spiky Doom down a narrow corridor. :-)

So, remember how annoying it was when the only thing I'd talk about was Smash Bros? I'm guessing that's what I'll be going through hearing people talk about Grand Theft Auto 4 for the next week or so. So turnabout's fair play, I guess. Unless you have no interest in Smash Bros AND GTA4, in which case, I dunno, guess you're doubly screwed there.

To clarify, slashing across the main character with the stylus causes a bullet to fire in the direction of the slash. But given that the characters in this game are some pretty moody teenagers, that's still a setup for bad jokes.

So, "The World Ends With You" for the DS...you play an anti-social prick who wakes up in Shibuya, Tokyo (a cultural epicenter, or so it's described in various places), receives a message on his phone that he needs to reach a certain location in 60 minutes or "face erasure", has a clock appear on his hand, and is immediately assaulted by graffiti-frog monsters. Despite this, he's pretty resistant to the idea of teaming up with somebody who actually knows what's going on, because being erased from existence is better than cooperating with somebody, or whatever's going through this guy's head. But they do team up, and they share an HP bar, because it keeps you from killing off your character over the bone-headed decisions and remarks he makes during the early part of the game, even though that's probably what you'll want to do. If it's not apparent, I'm not a fan of the main character. Everybody else is fine, though. The villains (the Reapers) are so far the most interesting characters, actually. Vicious, but with style, and so far cooler than those wannabes in Organization XIII. And it's pretty easy to make fun of the excesses of Tetsuya Nomura's designs (Lulu's dress with 5 unnecessary belts and the overabundance of zippers everywhere in Kingdom Hearts 2 come to mind), but it seems to work well here.

There are two obvious main themes I've discerned at this point. Friendship is the first, based on how much the hero (Neku) seems to hate the idea of friendship and other people in general, and how many friendship speeches his current partner (Shiki) has made so far. The other is mass consumerism, similar to Pacman in this regard. Because the game is set in modern day Tokyo, instead of armor, you're granted attack and defense bonuses by the clothes that you buy. All clothing has special abilities that can be unlocked if you buy lots of items at a particular store. In addition, all clothing has a brand, which has a certain level of popularity in each area. You get penalized for unpopular brands, and bonuses for popular brands (or you can make unpopular brands popular by wearing them into battle). This also affects your attack abilities, which are generated by pins, most of which also have brands. So it's in your best interest to have lots of clothing and badges of all brands. Meaning, of course, lots of shopping. As a nice touch, the currency is Japanese yen, so you know exactly how much you're spending. Earlier today, I spent enough in-game currency to feed an in-game village in an in-game third world country for a month. I got a hat, some shirts, two CDs, and a pair of leather pants out of the deal. If it was real-life, I'd be inclined to feel guilty; on the other hand, they were some REALLY nice pants.

The battle system is...interesting. Fun when you're in complete control of what's happening, but that's rare. When a battle starts, Neku appears on the bottom screen and his partner on the top, and they face off against the same enemies. Like the heroes, enemies between screens share HP, so finishing off one in the top kills the corresponding one on the bottom. Neku is controlled with the stylus (ugh), and attacks using psychic powers caused by pins, which are activated by stylus commands, like the aforementioned slashing motions. There's a fair amount of variety of ways you can inflict damage, even early on; you can spread flame across the field, have ice pillars shoot out of the ground, shoot mind bullets (I can only hope there's a graffiti-yak monster later on), throw cars and signboards around the field with telekinesis...some neat stuff there. Your partner is controlled with the D-pad, and can attack with button combos aimed to the right or left. Fortunately, your partner can be auto-controlled if you're too busy on the bottom screen, which is almost a certainty, since movement by stylus is never fun, at least for me, anyways, and letting him stand still is definitely leaving him open for a beat-down. Which I'd be OK with, except that kills the partner, too, and then it's just game over. I still need some improvement with it, natch.

I think I'd give this a pretty good rating. Definitely worth getting if you want something different.

Been playing "The World Ends With You". I'll probably end up discussing it more later, but I figured I should mention something brief.

I don't know if it was intentional or not, given the context it's said in, but I find it awesomely hilarious that a character designed by Tetsuya Nomura would say, during a conversation about fashion, "In that case, I'd want to have more zippers..." :-)

So...I wonder which would be harder to come by...tickets to see the pope, or to see Hannah Montana?

Been...wow, almost four weeks since I last updated this. It's not that nothing's happened worth talking about, just haven't felt like writing any of it here. Was tempted three weeks back to rant about how much I dislike coupons. Also was thinking about debunking that whole uproar regarding the supposed Orphan Works legislation, but that's been done better elsewhere.

I've started playing Suikoden 5, and I kind of wish I'd played it through sooner. I guess Suikoden 4 put me off way too much. I don't have the stronghold yet, so I'm not sure where this fits in with Suikoden 2 and 3, but it seems promising at this point.

Also picked up the first book of the manga "Death Note", and surprisingly, it's actually kinda cool. The premise makes it sound like lame goth fantasy, and some of the character art supports this, but the real hook is the investigation that takes place, both by the protagonist Light with regards to his new found abilities, and his adversary L, who is attempting to track down Light based on the minimal and sometimes misleading evidence Light leaves during his crimes. I'm curious to see if the author can keep me interested in it for the rest of the series.

Apparently, there was an American-made Street Fighter cartoon that I completely missed out on during my childhood. Which, as it turns out, is a very good thing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGEJDKJdPGg

Also, I REALLY like the new Pontiac G8 commercials. No opinion about the vehicle itself :-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W29zZXiBsPw&fmt=18

Had a cold this week, and it was bad enough on Wednesday I took a sick day for it. Pretty sure that's the first sick day I've ever taken since high school, now that I think about it. Better now, at any rate.

I think I'm sick of Smash Bros for the time being. I think I was sick of it as early as Tuesday, but that hasn't stopped me from playing it compulsively. Did manage to play an online match, but it ended up pretty laggy. Not so much that it was unplayable, I did manage to get 2nd place on a stage I hadn't seen before using Mr. Game and Watch, but it wasn't especially fun, either. Fights are limited to two minutes, so I can actually see the argument for turning off items, or at least Smash Balls; four or five minutes is usually long enough for things to even out after a Final Smash, but not two minutes.

Got to the final boss of Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga yesterday, and yikes. Hello Shadow Queen. At least in this game, you can avoid the final boss' attacks, and for the most part that's not too hard. The part that I couldn't fathom was that Luigi for some reason was taking between 6-10 times the damage that Mario was taking on things I couldn't avoid. There weren't any status effects on him that I could tell. I figured it might be that I had somehow let Luigi's defense stat go to pot accidentally, but after resetting, I saw that they had exactly the same defense power after armor was included. The heck?

You know, you'd think the whole ex-Governor Spitzer thing would've seemed more important here in New York, but I never heard anything about it expect what was in the newspaper and the news. Never heard anybody talking about it. And more seemed to made of the fact that his wife didn't punch him during his press conferences. Then again, I'm not sure much more needs to be said about the guy himself other than, "Eliot, you dumb schmuck." Maybe I'm getting cynical, but I do find it humorous seeing editorials in the paper saying that we need to be more careful in picking our politicians in the future, as if there were scads of people who weren't completely blind-sided by this whole affair. Well, except for that one guy who said it should've been perfectly obvious this would happen, based on his pro-choice and pro-gay marriage stances (re: "HE WAS A DIRTY LIB-RUHL!"). Entitled to his opinion, of course, but the irony behind the remark made it quite amusing.

I should also probably say something about the fact that today's Easter. That should be good enough.

All I've got. Peace!

Oh, right...SPOILER: Samus Aran from "Metroid" is female.

( Game stuff, if you want to avoid. Smash Bros., which some people may REALLY want to avoid )
On a side note, I think "Hotel Dusk" is the only game I've played where you can get a game over from a conversation. A shouting-and-finger-pointing match, yes, but not a conversation.

Anyway, all I've got for now. Ciao!

Note to self: combining kimchi with cheese quesadillas produces MARVELOUS results. :-D :-D :-D

Ah, egg custard buns are delicious. :-) And the chicken wing soup came out pretty good, too. Just need to alter some of the ingredient ratio sums next time.

Well, five weeks into dieting, and I'm down between 13 and 15 pounds from where I started, depending on my scale's mood. Starting to be noticeable visibly, which is always a plus. Worth keeping up with, anyway.

( Videogame/movie info cut )

All I've got for the moment. Ciao!

Saw Enchanted at the dollar theater Sunday with the family, more or less on a whim, since we'd heard good things about it. And it was a good movie, for a predictable romantic comedy. Nothing I'd go out of my way to see again, but I'm glad I saw it at least once. That said, having seen certain episodes of Coupling, the full quote alluded to in the subject line was running through my head every time the female lead was introducing herself. :-) Even though I have no grounds to make this comparison, if you see a movie this year with a computer-generated chipmunk in it, this should be the one.

Finally beat the main game for Final Fantasy 6 on the GBA; haven't really touched the end-game content, which supposedly is difficult enough to make up for the fact that it's very easy to be over-powered by the end of the main game. :-) Actually made use of Relm and Gau this time around, having made the discovery that they're both really good characters to have on hand, and that Gogo and Umaro are actually kinda lame. Setzer ended up pulling his weight a LOT more with the Fixed Dice-Master Scroll (Offering) combination, and Cyan was pretty useful after having beefed up his strength to about 80 while trying to uncurse the Cursed Shield (and apparently fights with Gogo equipped with it did NOT count towards the 255 needed, which accounts for about 100-150 battles I didn't need to fight...blerg). Maybe because I wasn't using them exclusively during the game, but Locke and Edgar didn't end up being that useful compared to other characters. At least the final boss didn't provide any real problems...I remember how frustrating it ended up being with just the Celes-Edgar-Setzer team, even at Level 85-90. *shudder*

In addition to re-starting Final Fantasy XII (this time letting Basch be my main character, rather than the Tidus-wannabe they try to stick you with), I decided to give Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga another whirl. I started it last year, got bored after the first boss, set it aside for a few months, picked it up again, beat the second boss, and decided the game wasn't that good. This time, though, something must have clicked, because I'm really enjoying it...maybe even more than the Paper Mario games. Pretty far in, too; given that it's a Gameboy RPG and they tend to be quicker than the ones on consoles, 10 hours is probably at or past the halfway mark. Still, good times.

All I got for the moment. Peace!

D&D is much more fun when we stop over-planning things and start initiating combats. :-)

Ah, yes, now I remember why I never end up sticking to a diet plan or exercise regiment. Not because it's difficult and unpleasant, although those factors certainly do warrant no small consideration. No, it's the seemingly complete lack of cause-and-effect that always rears its head shortly after starting. Twice within the last week, I've seen my weight go up while sticking to the diet and exercising daily. The most marked loss in weight came after the weekend, when I was in Buffalo and not making any great efforts to eat healthy. Yes, I know, it's relatively small fluctuations, possibly explained away by scale inaccuracies. Still, if you're not that motivated to begin with, that's generally enough to make you cry foul and proclaim that exercise and dieting are BS and it's all glands or genetics or greenhouse gases or what have you. If you're curious, I was going for an alliteration thing there, rather than anything that makes sense. I don't actually know anybody gaining weight because of greenhouse gases. Unless you're the type of person who worries about global warming and tries to alleviate their worries by eating a lot. But I don't know anybody who even indirectly gains weight like that, so it's a moot point. With global warming as the root cause, anyway; if pressed I could probably think of some troublesome issues that would motivate certain individuals to over-eat. Not that I would do so in a public journal, simply from a purely hypothetical standpoint. Unless they requested it, I suppose, although I'm hard-pressed to think of a situation where one would want that. Maybe if they're unaware of the problem or want an outsider's opinion, like a professional poker player asking somebody else to identify their tells. Although, come to think of it, I haven't really ever heard of a poker player asking somebody else for that; it certainly hasn't ever happened to me. Not the sort of thing you can detect on your own, though. Do serious poker players practice in front of a mirror, drawing hands and watching for their own reactions? Maybe they use a videotape. Anyway, my point is, I'm still dieting even though scales suck and lie.

Went to Wegman's to pick up some sushi, since it's THAT time of year again, and made the discovery that they sell bubble tea in the coffee shop (and not the newly opened tea bar; kinda odd, that). Which is good, since the only other bubble tea place I've ever seen in Rochester happens to be in a not-so-good part of the city. But they only have two flavors, which is bad. But one of those two happened to be honeydew, which is my favorite flavor, which is good. Yet the boba in it was actually kind of unappetizing, which is bad. Ultimately, like most of the stuff the fancier Wegman's stores offer, while it's impressive that they offer it, it really is subpar compared to places

I'm worried; Clive Owen just might make me start liking gunplay in movies.

Watched "Shoot 'Em Up" last night. It's been quite a while since I've seen a movie so gloriously over the top in its action sequences. There's no doubt in my mind that this movie started as a series of gunfights and that the plot was added in later as an afterthought. And it's both hilarious and awesome for it. :-D Very violent; maybe not quite to the level of Kill Bill, but it's up there. You definitely can't go in expecting anything out of the storyline or any deep thoughts through the dialogue, and the action is often completely far-fetched. If you like your movies with any sense of realism or the characters to behave with some semblance of logic...well, that's a good reason not to watch most movies, really, but you should definitely avoid this one. But if you're in the market for a dumb action flick, this should very much satisfy. :-)

So, a little less than a week into dieting...holding up pretty well; I think the only time I've broken my range so far was Wednesday, but that was dinner at a friend's, so it was more or less unavoidable, and I may have gotten a good meatloaf recipe out of the deal, so worth it for that. Even with the Super Bowl, I'll try to restrain myself this evening. If the scale's accurate, I've dropped 4.5 pounds, which seems pretty likely; biggest drops in weight are supposed to happen in the beginning, or so I've heard.

All I've got for now. Ciao!

I'm not 100% sure what the official link is for this listing, but here's 1,025 Things Mr. Welch Can No Longer Do in an RPG. I've seen some links shoot this number up to around 1800 things; not sure if any past the first 250 are done by the same guy. But there are quite a few gems in there. Lot of D&D humor, but apparently quite a few other systems as well, none of which I'm that familiar with.

I still stand by my earlier sentiment that dieting is for chumps, but there seems to be an increasing number of good reasons to do so, so yeah, call me a chump, and a hypocrite, I guess. :-/ Trying to do the Weight Watchers thing again, which should work out better than last time since I'm more motivated (last time I tried was more or less for the sheer hell of it). Or I might wind up a joyless shell of my former self. Either way, promises to be good times, eh? ;-D Two days into it, not really having trouble keeping myself within the limits for my weight. Traded my lemonade at lunch for water, and using lower calorie bread for sandwiches, which gives me a fair amount of leeway for dinner. Got into an argument with my mother about how the guide book had to be total bunk, since 3 Buffalo wings count for 9 points (around 1/3 of the allotment for my weight), but 3 chicken drumsticks with barbecue sauce, which have arguably 4 times as much meat on them, only come out to 7. Didn't realize that Buffalo wings were fried at the time; that seems to make an alarmingly large difference. Ah well, prattling on about this too much. We'll see how things are in a few weeks.

FINALLY got the 255 battles need to uncurse the Cursed Shield in FF6. Now to actually finish the game off. Also started FF12 again to see if I can keep the momentum going to see me through to the end. I stopped last time because of the Marks; I thought you only had a limited period of events within the game to defeat each, and they very quickly ramped up in terms of over-powering difficulty, but apparently you can get them all later, so I might just go that route.

Hit the Amerks game last Wednesday with Eric; they're kind of in a sorry state, since all the good players are with the Sabres now and there was some falling out between the Amerks and Sabres, so we're no longer their farm team, meaning there's no good reason for talent to come to us at the moment. They played pretty poorly all night; most of the fans around us spent more time heckling the Amerks than the visiting team. On the plus side, I did get an excuse to finally go to Dinosaur Barbecue, which is THE barbecue place in Rochester. Got a combination platter; the ribs and brisket were OK, but the pulled pork was awesome.

I get the feeling I have more than needs to be included, but that's enough for now. Ciao!

Well, I've pretty much retired my desktop, moving it into storage. Kind of a shame; it's lasted me since 1999, although it hasn't seen much active use in the last 5 years. Never gave me any real problems, either, outside of the usual problems associated with being a good 6+ years out of date.

Still, needed the space so I could have room to work with the Macbook I picked up Saturday. :-) I'm still getting used to using it, and I'll probably still be using my other laptop for a lot of things; I'm guessing that, at least for a while, I'll be using this machine exclusively for game work. But it should be VERY good for that purpose. Main downside so far is that I no longer have a useful scanner; the only machine we were ever able to install successfully it on around the house was the my old '99 machine. Apparently it very explicitly can't be installed for a Windows XP machine, and I assume Mac's out of the question. Eh, minor setback, really, it's not like I've drawn too much worth showing off recently anyway. *shrug*

But yeah. I'm branching out! Awesome, eh? :-)

In further news, Mark and Gloria were in town yesterday, mostly to make sure I went out and bought the Macbook (I'm pretty bad about procrastinating when it comes to big expenditures). We were in the mood for dim sum, so we tried out a place I'd heard good things about. I think it worked out cheaper than Golden Port, and it's pretty close to my place, but the items certainly weren't all high quality. The meat buns and custard buns were great, and stuff like the beef ribs and dumplings were decent, but they had a tendency to stick shrimp randomly into items you really didn't expect it to appear it, like the leek pancakes and spring rolls. Which is fine unless one of the people you're dining with really dislikes seafood, which was the case here. Also, the "beef balls"...well, they pretty much looked like big wads of refried beans, and had about the same consistency...not very good at all. This place, Cantonese House, was VERY hit and miss with their items; Golden Port was consistently good each time I've been there. Ah well, can't find good new places to eat without stumbling across some lackluster locales as well.

...Apollo Justice is pretty cool, too.

http://www.ace-attorney.com/aj/

Playable demo, basically up through the first cross-examination in the first trial. Spoilers, for those who think it's likely they'll play through the first games in the series.