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October 18th, 2009
08:27 pm - I am really sick of Stephen King
I've been reading The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson and I was reminded that it was one of King's favorites, which he talks about at length in Danse Macabre. It's kind of funny, but King is a lot more interesting and likable when he writes simply as a fan of horror, rather than one trying to be a part of it. No doubt he has been successful, but his shallowness and self-indulgence is really grating. I finally realized I'd had enough when I read (or tried to read; I got about halfway through) his awful newer book, Lisey's Story.
It's the story of a widow, who was married to a super brilliant, funny, spectacular writer husband, who everyone loved because how could you not love someone who is perfectly and clearly not a Mary Sue? The book makes sure to tell us frequently that the wife is stupid, and plain and didn't deserve him at all, but she was lucky to have known him, etc.
Worst of all, nearly every other word is some invented cutsey phrase (the kind King likes in all of his books, but at least used sparingly before this). He tries to justify it by saying that it's the secret language of their marriage and you just wouldn't understand, but it makes husband and wife seem like full blown retards. They use words like "smuck" in place of fuck, refer to insanity as "the bad gunky," go to an alternate dimension they call, for no reason, Boo'ya Moon, their catch phrase is "Strap it on whenever it seems appropriate," and they are both just delightful and clever and lovable. All of these phrases, of course, are invented by the brilliant husband, which is why you find them so charming.
The husband, endearing and adorable, says that he caught these brilliant phrases from the magical sea of words! and each time you mention the sea of words, you must add "Where we all go down to drink and fish." No, seriously, you MUST add that last part each time you mention the language lake (which happens about four times each chapter and never without the "Where we all go down to drink and fish" bit, because it's too brilliant to be used only once).
My mother recently checked out the audio cassette from the library, and it's truly embarrassing to hear a woman (Mare Winningham, if you're curious) attempt to say all this trite juvenelia as though it's NOT idiotic. But, hey, you do what you have to do to make money, right? And at this point, Stephen King could defecate on his agent's desk and they'd try to find a way to publish it, and by God, it would sell.
Basically, Stephen King's writing career has been a long and introspective journey, in the sense that it's been a journey so deep up into his own ass that he probably couldn't find his way out now even if he had a detailed map.
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September 19th, 2009
01:48 am - Best boss fight
I love boss fights. I don't know why or how this started, but it's always been one of the most important and exciting parts of a game for me. I guess it could lead back to my early days playing Wolf 3D and Doom, where diligent, patient exploration of ten or so levels would reward you with a unique enemy who was given his own lair, hulking sprite, and menacing presence (modern survival horror is not always as frightening as, say, running from a level boss in Wolf 3D, retreating into a secret area to fill up on health and then find that the boss monster has followed you in and you're trapped with it). Then came Blaster Master, with its giant, bizarre and fun showdowns.
Maybe it's becoming a thing of the past and I should let it go -- modern boss fights like those in Resistance 2 take the form of set pieces that are practically interactive cutscenes, requiring only that you stand in the right place and shoot the right thing with the correct gun, or the Halo series, which more or less does away with them completely and successfully -- but there's no harm in musing about what my ideal boss fight would be. So here goes.
Kill them with your mind and also bullets
The Zelda series has made item-based "puzzle" bosses fairly popular (a watered down version appears in Arkham Asylum) and for good reason: it's fun to use your new items in clever ways to take down a foe that seems to have evolved specifically to be destroyed by the one item it lives with.
While you do get to slash at the enemy with your sword after weakening it, these hits feel sort of beside the point and don't have any weight to them. The main weapon is the item and everyone knows it.
This works great for Zelda, but in my ideal game, it wouldn't be the end-all, be-all of the fight. There's something viscerally and satisfying about taking out a big foe in a suitably long fight using the weapons and techniques you've honed on lesser enemies.
It would bea lot more fun to chip away at an enemy's health, then use an item or environmental puzzle to bring the boss into the next stage of the fight. Oh, and speaking of which....
Multiple stages
If you're like me, you play a level looking forward to the inevitable boss fight. Sure, the game is fun, but the thing you're fighting toward is that big payoff with a major foe.
So it's a bit of a letdown when the fight is over in a matter of minutes. Look at Doom 3: most of the bosses are reasonably interesting looking, but they're all fought the same way and go down way too easily, then you're back to wandering through dark hallways and fighting the same imps over and over again.
Instead of a quick, simple and repetetive throwdown, how about a sprawling fight that takes the best of the "set piece" battles mentioned earlier, mixed with old school combat and puzzle solving.
Just as an example, imagine fighting a giant monster hanging off the side of a building that you're inside. The first part of the fight would be taking shots at its hands gripping the sides, while naturally dodging attacks, falling debris, and maybe some fodder enemies tossed in to gang up on you. After sufficiently weakening it, maybe it will lose its grip and fall.. while dragging part of the floor you're standing on with it.
The battle continues on the ground as the thing drags itself to its feet and stands at its full height, attempting to step on you or toss cars or other objects. To harm it, you have to wait until it lifts up a large car, and fire at the gas tank when it pulls its arm back to throw, resulting in a face full of fier metal.
While it's standing there, rubbing its eyes and picking bits of car out of its head, you're free to run behind it and shoot it to your heart's content.
Obviously this is a really simple and uninteresting hypothetical, but once you get the basic germ of the idea down, you can do so much with it.
That's new
Unless you're playing Uncharted or Grand Theft Auto, where the villains are relatively well established and loathesome on their own, it's not enough to have a simple, boring design for your boss fight. Make it something frightening, strange, cool to look at. This is the show stopper, so go all out. We've been fighting a bunch of clone enemies up to this point, so give us something to break up the tedium and give us the inspiration to keep going after we bring the thing down.
The Tomb Raider series used to be pretty good with this sort of thing. The first four games had arguably some of the coolest end bosses of the PS1 era: the giant, hideous torso, the dragon, the space spider affront to evolution, and, well, Seth, I guess, because I'm going to use him as an example even though he's boring, so whatever.
3, in particular, satisfies two out of these three ultimate boss fight criterions, because it's very cool looking (I mean, damn, that thing, man. It's a spider with a human head, giraffe neck, weird spider eyes on its back too, because why not, and then another head hanging off the side.) and it requires you to really lay into it with your best weapons, but also do a bit of rudimentary puzzle solving to defeat it.
To win, you have to blast the thing enough to cause it to slump over for a few seconds. This then gives you time to haul ass down one of four long corridors and remove one of these artifacts that is protecting it. Do that for all four and the next time you blast it, it stays down for good.
With how well that worked out, it's a shame that Tomb Raider 4 completely tosses it out the window. Seth, the evil Egyptian god you "fight" at the end, is completely impervious to your bullets. Your only option is to run from him, doing a bit of platforming to get to the top of the level while he takes pot shots at you. Tomb Raider has done this thing before and it's not terrible, but this is the big enemy the game has been building toward and since it ends in an anti-climax anyway (Seth is defeated by doing the ancient Egyptian equivalent of locking the screen door on him), they might as well have made this more interesting. Granted, Tomb Raider's combat is nothing special and most enemies can be defeated by side-jumping back and forth while firing, but if it was good enough for the last thirty or forty hours of gameplay, why not now? At least it would give you time to take in Seth's character design and appreciate the time some poor bastard spent on rendering it.
To keep with the theme, Tomb Raider Anniversary seems to have reached the happy medium between regular fighting mixed with environmental gameplay for their bosses. While you do spend a good deal of time picking away at one enemy, you also have to change up tactics near the end and lure her into rushing at you, doing a flip over her, then firing into the unexplained weak spot on her back. Then there's the T-Rex fight, which can be won by stubbornly unloading your pistols into it for about ten minutes, or by temporarily stunning the thing and causing it to run recklessly into giant spiked walls that were apparently designed specifically for this purpose (they break right after being hit, so this kind of wasteful, bizarre architecture might explain why the civilization that built the place is no longer around).
And much like TR4, it's a shame and a surprise that Underworld completely did away with these boss fights and went back to the boring non-entity bosses. The kraken, for example, just sits there, waiting for you to crush it with another spiked wall that, again, seems to be designed by an ancient and highly intelligent people specifically for the purpose of crushing a really giant octopus that one day might sit there and stubbornly never move while someone went through the tedious motions of dropping the damn thing. Maybe it was originally designed as a really elaborate, really compensatory nutracker, I don't know. That's conspicuous consumption for you.
Well, that's all I can think of for now, but I'm sure there are other things I'd add if I were designing my dream boss fight. There are just the three that are most important to me at the moment and that I'd like to see more of if I had my way.
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12:23 am - Writer's Block: What if calories didn't count?
No, and I would be pissed off at a genie for wasting both of our fucking time with something so stupid. The hell, genie? You got nothing better to do? Way to under achieve. I've got so many things I need a genie for and "making my calories not count" would not occur to me.
The hell scenario would lead to me meeting a genie who would even offer this kind of "magic?" Would he also tell me that if I order something from an infomercial within the next thirty minutes, the shipping is free?
This is so obnoxious. Instead of thinking about what I would or wouldn't eat, I'm just mad at a genie that doesn't exist and the person who came up with this question.
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August 27th, 2009
12:09 am - New Liberal Conspiracy?
I think I may have stumbled onto the newest hidden evil of the Obama administration and Democrats in general. Please share this with everyone you know who believes that Obama is not a US citizen or that health care reform involves death panels.
I give you... the shocking truth!
That's right. Nancy Pelosi, FAR LEFT ZEALOT, shares a very similar name to Pepsi, FAR OUT TASTE SENSATION, if you kind of smoosh the l and the o together to form a p?
Coincidence? I think not.
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August 18th, 2009
03:57 pm - Please don't suck.
Oh, man. Not since Fire in the Sky or, to a lesser extent, Signs (I'm not proud) have I felt actual fear in a theater, but when this preview came on before District 9 last night, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Here it is. http://www.thefourthkind.net/
Now, right from the start there's a bit of a red flag: Milla Jovovich. Has she ever been in a good movie? I say no. I didn't care for the Fifth Element and Ultraviolet was pretty much a crime against humanity. But even watching this preview, it feels like it's doing things right. That bit with the owl, in particular, was wonderful. The way the "patient" finally mutters in horror "It's not an owl..." is fantastic.
But as far as acting goes, I noticed a few highly competent and likable character actors in there, so that's a relief. I even caught a glimpse of one of my favorites, Will Patton!
Now, it looks like they're going a kind of Blair Witch path with this (Is it real? Maybe it's real. Oh, it's not real), but that's fine. Whatever works. And of course it's long since been decided by the scientific community that the abduction phenomenon is mainly sleep paralysis and meddling on the part of hypno"therapists," but that doesn't affect my ability to enjoy a movie like this. A story's a story. I don't have to believe alien greys are real or out to get me to find them frightening. And what I believe means a whole lot less in the middle of the night when the house is dark and you can imagine all manner of things watching you curiously from the shadows, little lanky creatures that could close the distance between you and it in a flash and then drag you back to.... Well, you get the idea.
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03:29 pm - Move over, Limbaugh. No, move a bit more. It's just.. you're kind of large...
I was driving my mother's car to the store today because, well, it's one hundred degrees out (no lie) and she actually has air conditioning in hers.
On the way, I heard a little talky segment on the radio. She has it permanently set to 88.1 FM, KGNZ and in between music, they like to do a little mini-talk radio thing, where James Dobson or some other sleaze will come on and talk about how sad America makes them today because it's not a theocracy and gays are allowed to exist, etc.
Well, today they had on some sad, world-weary sounding man from something called Crown Financial Group who was discussing, slowly and calmly, all of the "evils" about the Obama health care plan (which he would always refer to as "so-called... 'reform.'). Most of his talk consisted of reading the main plans of the bill and saying "Sure, that's true... but only for a little while! Then the government will take over and change things and make it bad!"
He ended with a complaint about how it would be trillions of dollars for this "so-called reform" and how "that's not good stewardship!"
Well, yeah, it's not gonna be cheap, but it's a worthier cause than, say, going to war in Iraq simply because Bush was sure they were harboring Gog and Magog. And you may be wondering, well, fair's fair. Did this man from Crown Financial Group complain about the cost of, well, ANYTHING during the Bush administration? Not that I ever heard and I was a Christian for most of his administration and had the radio set pretty firmly on KGNZ myself most of the time. No, they'd talk about how Bush needed prayer because the secular liberals were always hounding him or how he was sent from God, etc. etc. etc.
Are you surprised?
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August 17th, 2009
11:59 pm - Sea World is good and worth the fighting for. I believe the second half.
So, Sea World. Man. Walking around for ten or twelve hours in 101 degree weather and little shade was a ton of fun, wasn't it? My face is sunburned, parts of my arms and ankles are, as well. And my legs, hoo boy, they do not feel great.
I think, really, Sea World just doesn't have a lot for me. There's a shark/coral reef exhibit, but it takes about five minutes to walk through (we spent thirty minutes or more in there simple because there were benches and air conditioning, but you can only watch a bunch of sad looking sharks circle endlessly for so long) and then there's the penguin exhibit, which takes two minutes to get through and better air conditioning. As a result of this, there are no benches and a motorized walkway to keep everyone moving along. No loitering, you sweaty assholes.
Then comes the boring stuff: two roller coasters and two "huge drop to a big splash" rides. None of this does anything for me, thanks to a fear of heights and a concern over heart attacks. I may be young, but I don't see any reason to tempt fate.
So most of the day was me sitting in whatever shade I could find, waiting for my parents and others to get done riding rides. The stuff I wanted to do took about an hour total, which isn't saying much since we got there at 10 in the morning and left at 10 in the evening.
Luckily, my brain was a little too on fire to get overly bored and there were various distractions that come along with people watching.
The first and most troubling thing I noticed were girls my age, a lot of whom wore sunglasses or outright resembled Gracie*, an old TG "friend" from Gaia (yes, I used to go to Gaia). She's rare in that she's one of the few people to actually block me first and with almost no provocation. Just got tired of me, apparently. Can't begrduge her that. I've always been fairly bitter, though, that she was able to get on hormones and start transitioning with such ease. She basically came out to her parents and within a week, she's on her way. I came out, and my parents told me Jesus wouldn't forgive them if they helped me, I was super embarassed, half-assed a suicide attempt (chickened out), got sent to a Christian therapist who'd rather talk about god than the sexuality stuff and was given a signed audio casette entitled "How to overcome homosexuality through Jesus" for Christmas. That was awkward.
To this day, if I do something like act lazy or depressed or like a slob, my mother will be only too happy to say "Girls don't do that! you think you could be a girl? you'd never last! Girls aren't like that at all!"
Another thing about people watching is the discovery that the human foot is kind of a mess. It's not something you'd generally think about, but when you're staring at the ground dizzily and everyone wears flip-flops, you tend to notice.
The most disturbing bype of foot I saw (and there were several like this) had the shape and consistency of a lump of cookie dough. The toenails (always painted!) seemed pushed into the uncooked dough at random like little, awful M&Ms. I found this deeply upsetting and still do.
One thing to keep myself occupied was checking the infrequent giftshops for any stuffed octopi. It stood to reason that there would be one somewhere and I love that stuff. Finally we found some, very large and detailed. I picked it up and checked the price tag to find that it was SIXTY DOLLARS. I'm not kidding. I dropped that thing like it was scalding. At that price, it had better be made out of real octopus. Something should lose its life at some point in the process if I'm spending that much money on a stuffed animal. I'm sorry.
From there, we walked through the Clydesdale horse.. pen.. thing. Stables. One of the horses, Bud, had his monster horse dong out for all the world to see, which prompted my mom to pull out her camera and snap a ton of pictures in the middle of a crowd of people. When Bud started pissing (it looked suspiciously like Mountain Dew, so take that into consideration), she took even more.
Afterwards, she said "Brandon, now you know what it means when someone says they're hung like a horse!" Er.. yeah.
And the last thing worth mentioning was the axolotl we saw in another gift shop. Real thing in a tank just sitting there. He was adorable and it prompted me to try to explain -- unsuccessfully -- to my dad about mudkips.
"You see, it's kind of an internet greeting. 'I herd u liek mudkips.' to which the person laughs and responds 'u herd right.'"
He was bewildered. "Mudskips? Mudskippers?"
It was no use.
*Here's Gracie. http://www.gaiaonline.com/profiles/225392/
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11:54 pm - The Journey to Nowhere
As we were returning home from seeing District 9 (awesome!), this Christian radio show called The Journey was on. The host (I guess who goes by the obviously real name of Tom Dooley) was talking about the whole golden calf thing and how silly those people were to worship a false god. Hell, there's as much evidence for the golden calf creating the universe as there is for Yahweh. At least the golden calf occupied physical space in that story.
But anyway, eventually he got off on this talk about how facts simply aren't good enough and that "the heart" desires more, a deeper truth. Is this a surprise? Facts never corroborate religions and they often outright contradict them, so obviously they'll be no friends to facts.
But the alternative, this wishy washy fluff about how the heart desires a deeper truth is basically saying that it's all about emotions. Emotions and feelings of transcendence are the "real truth." This is the kind of empty noise that you'd hear from someone like Shivam Bhatt, a lot of woo signifying nothing.
One shouldn't put such a huge importance on emotion (especially when valuing it above objective reality). Emotion is fickle. Your emotions can be affected by the weather, the time of day, a weird mixture of chemicals going a bit wonky in your brain. Relying on that does not earn you any respect or credibility as far as I'm concerned.
Shame, since I was feeling pretty good after getting back from that movie.
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August 15th, 2009
11:46 pm - A beached whale without its beach is just a homeless whale.
So Sea World today, but I'll get to that later because I'm tired.
BUT, on the car ride back, as expected for some time in this trip, there was a huge argument between my parents. Both of them, as well as my cousin and myself were in one car and my brother and his wife were following in another. The trouble started before we even left the "park" with my mom wanting to stop to get food at Wendy's. My dad said that this trip had already put him in debt and we really couldn't afford it, plus we got free breakfast from the hotel in seven or so hours. My mom insisted and said "No, we're hungry now. I want Wendy's and so do they" indicating my cousin and her daughter.
My dad sighed and muttered "whatever," as if often the case.
So we get going and we're going through some nasty freeways with other crazy drivers and my brother doesn't know the way so it's important that he stay close behind us.. which he isn't. This causes my dad to slow down for his benefit, hoping he'll get the hint and putting him at risk with other drivers.
At about this point, my mom said "Um, are you looking for a Wendy's" and my dad frustratedly said "No! I'm trying to watch what's ahead of me and behind me for the past twenty minutes, hoping Justin would keep up and he won't. This is very dangerous and I--"
My mom interrupted at this point, saying "Well, they're hungry, too! " My dad said "What does that have to do with anything?" and she said "Weeeeeell, they're looking for a Wendy's!" in a tone of voice that basically said "You incredible moron."
So he said "whatever" then added an angrier "GOD DAMN IT" as my brother fell behind, so my mom testily said to me "GIVE ME YOUR PHONE, I'll call him!' and while I'm digging for my phone, she repeats "GIVE ME YOUR PHONE!!" while my dad tells her not to bother.
So she calls and as she does so, my dad tries to say "It doesn't matter now, we're almost there" but she cuts him off with a "Shut UP, Gary!" to which he replied, kind of stunned, "Fuck you!" and, my brother, being an asshole, flippantly said "Well, SOME OF US don't have the benefit of cruise control." My mom asked if my dad was using it and he said "No, I never use it in cities, but whatever." Now angrier than ever.
Never one to let up on something when there's still more needling to do, my mom took on a dissaproving mother tone and said "You really need to watch how you speak to me, Gary!" and he said "Look at the way you talk to me! You've been acting like this all ni--" "I was on the PHONE! " "Whatever. Fuck it."
So we finally get to the hotel and my brother and his girlfriend get out and he asks them what he wants them to pick up, and they say "Oh, we aren't hungry."
I repeated this so my mother would hear and, unsurprisingly, she didn't comment on it. Suddenly she was happy again, conveniently and joking around with my cousin. My dad was still in a bad mood so my mom whispered something that, knowing her, I assume was "sorry for Gary, he's such a grump!" which caused my cousin to bark out VERY loud laughter and further irritate my dad. She then went on to act goofy with my oblivious cousin, as though nothing had ever happened. This is pretty frequent behavior for her and it's confusing. She basically vents her anger or uses someone as a punching bag, then acts "normal" or "cheerful" as though nothing happened. Maybe she's crazy or maybe she does it to avoid having to admit she was in the wrong or apologize.
Things came to a head when we got stuck behind a guy going 25 in a 45 lane because he saw a cop there and was probably drunk. My dad, well and truly pissed off now, gets around him and says "Come on, asshole! This is bullshit!"
That's when my mom brought out her favorite trick, one she's used on me in the past: In a shocked and apalled tone she said "Gary! YOU need to take anger management classes!"
So yeah, that set him off and he tried to say again how she was not helping things, she's been a jerk all day (more or less true) and never sees what she does and to this, she huffed and said "Well, my WORD" in the kind of tone you'd reserve for a child throwing a tantrum.
So that was the end of it. He said another "whatever" and now we're back at the hotel where he muttered something about how it would really cheer him up if he died in his sleep.
My mom, on the other hand, is acting cheerful still.
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August 14th, 2009
11:41 am - Road trips suck
All right, then. I guess we're heading off to San Antonio today, Sea World tomorrow. I'm only goin' for the free food, since staying home would mean going hungry.
Luckily, the bookstore finally got in the copy of the Great Outdoor Fight that I ordered like a week or two ago so that should help. And there's still that damn House of Leaves that I haven't even made a dent in yet. When does this start getting good? Every chapter just seems to play off of some gimmick or other and it's getting to the point where I've stopped saying "Ok, that's clever," and just ignored them.
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August 13th, 2009
05:48 pm - Crazy man at mall talks about crazies at town halls.
So I went to the mall today with my mom and cousin and, while they waited for their watches to get fixed (not a euphemism), we wandered over to a store called Jimmy's. It's basically just a Jimmy Buffet fan store type thing, and the owner is the kind of aggressive salesman who makes you buy something just because you worry that if you don't, he'll think about you at night when he cuts himself.
So, yeah, he did that again and as we were making our painfully awkward exit, he suddenly said out of nowhere, "You know America's speaking up... Have you seen these town halls?" My mom shook her head. "America's speaking up! There have been four attempts on Obama's life, four that I know of, but the media won't cover it!" He said this in a weird way that sort of implied that he found this exciting. "Americans aren't gonna take it anymore! I've been writing KRBC (a local news channel here in town, in case the secret service wants to look into this, I don't know) and asking others to do it every day to get a townhall out here! This.. I've had tons of people come in here and say the same thing. This Obama plan, if this health care goes through, my mother -- she's ninety (give or take a few years, I forget) and under his plan, they're.. they're rationing health care, right? Under his plan, she'd be left to die, fend for herself! She'd have no chance!"
My mom shook her head and said "I believe it! I don't doubt it at all!"
So then he finished with "So that's why we've gotta look out for each other. If I recognize people, repeat customers, I help them out. Jobs are hard, I see lots of people being unemployed ..." (presumably this is also Obama's fault/part of some alien plot, I don't know. Health care, etc.) "....and so we've got to do what we can."
Then we finally made it out of there.
At no point did it even occur to me to try to talk to this guy or say anything. I was a little stunned that a guy who was only just recently trying to sell us seasoning was suddenly talking about the president of the United States in a hushed tone. He only glanced away from my mom once and looked at me while talking and I think he took my wide eyed stare as being appalled at what health care reform would supposedly do to his mother, because he kept on talking without missing a beat.
I even tried to say later that the stuff he said wasn't true, but it's difficult because my mother and cousin are both staunchly conservative (my mom once said Obama was "pure evil" and I have no idea what she bases that on) and my cousin once tried to get us to boycot the Golden Compass because an email that was forwarded to her told her it was anti-Christian.
Anyway, as to the, er, substance of the guy's complaints: don't insurance companies already ration health care? This is not something new. I'm not saying, "oh, trust the government more than a soulless corporation beholden only to the almighty dollar," but you know, an alternative would be nice or, heck, ANY option for people who otherwise couldn't afford it.
As for a town hall meeting here, it seems kind of pointless. I see very few people here with Democratic bumper stickers, but nearly everyone's still got "McCain/Palin" on there. I'm not sure what point a town hall here would really serve in this instance.
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