Assorted things and junk and things.

Tomorrow I am finally getting my tooth taken care of...hopefully...barring some major catastrophe or Wrath of God kind of shit. So seeing as how I'm gonna be out of commission tomorrow I figured I'd give you guys a good chunky post of fun stuff.

• Thanks to our friend Jenna for this wonderful and revoltingly cute video of kittens. Just watch it.
• There's a new review up on Hooligan Youth Reviews Movies. I realize that there haven't been many reviews on there lately but due to budget constraints movie going has decreased significantly. Hopefully after this Fall School rush we'll be able to see the newest bumper crop of horror movies.
• Email me for a copy of the picture of a chick in a bikini and an Imperial Stormtrooper helmet hula hooping. I shit you not.
• There's finally a poster up for This is England upstairs from work and it makes me very happy whenever I see it. I hope it plays here sooner than later.
• Carcassone has gotten a second River Expansion. It makes for a bit more complicated game.

That's kind of it for now. Hope you guys have a good weekend.

Impressions of Bioshock.

If you own a XBOX360 and haven't played the Bioshock demo then stop reading this crap and go download it and play the shit out of it. If you don't own a 360 then make someone you know with a 360 download the demo and watch them play it.

What 2K6 says about Bioshock:

• Going beyond "run and gun corridors," "monster-closet AIs" and static worlds, BioShock creates a living, unique and unpredictable FPS experience. After your plane crashes into icy uncharted waters, you discover a rusted bathysphere and descend into Rapture, a city hidden beneath the sea. Constructed as an idealistic society for a hand picked group of scientists, artists and industrialists, the idealism is no more. Now the city is littered with corpses, wildly powerful guardians roam the corridors as little girls loot the dead, and genetically mutated citizens ambush you at every turn. Take control of your world by hacking mechanical devices, commandeering security turrets and crafting unique items critical to your very survival. Upgrade your weapons with ionic gels, explosives and toxins to customize them to the enemy and environment. Genetically modify your body through dozens of Plasmid Stations scattered throughout the city, empowering you with fantastic and often grotesque abilities. Explore a living world powered by Ecological A.I., where the inhabitants have interesting and consequential relationships with one another that impact your gameplay experience. Experience truly next generation graphics that vividly illustrate the forlorn art deco city, highlighted by the most detailed and realistic water effects ever developed in a video game. Make meaningful choices and mature decisions, ultimately culminating in the grand question: do you exploit the innocent survivors of Rapture...or save them? [2K Games]

Let me tell ya I am buying this game ASAP. It's been a long time since I've felt gob-smacked by a game. Bioshock could potentially be the best single player FPS I've come across. More news to follow.

New demos! Rawk! Heroes!

The Bioshock demo came through last night. I meant to download it but got wrapped up in playing Overlord. I found out that the demo for Beautiful Katamari is downloadable today. This brings me joy. I was hoping to watch Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon but I guess if I have to play demos then oh well...what's to be done?

We watched the Bioshock trailer/gameplay the other night and it looks...well...it look fucking chaosome. Seriously it looks really bizarre and for some reason I got impressions of Myst that is if Myst was an insane sci-fi/horror/FPS. I hadn't really been paying attention to it but now I'm hooked. I'm sorti of itching to get home and play the demo. At this rate I'm going to have to buy a bigger hard drive just for demos.

Oh yeah and Lt. Uhura is going to be in the new season of Heroes.

John Rambo is back and holy jeebus is he pissed.

Some of you have probably seen this trailer already but if you haven't the check out - John Rambo. Sure you may scoff at the Rambo movies but if you're in a certain demographic Rambo movies have a special place in your heart. First Blood is just a great movie but the II & III. Oh hell yeah. I know I for one will see John Rambo in the theater - hell it has pretty much everything I wanted to see in an action movie.

Thanks to Mark for the link to the trailer.

Overlord...the rental.

A while back I posted a trailer for Overlord and played the demo and it was good but didn't make me want to run out and buy the game. The demo was just the beginning of the game -getting used to controls and all that good stuff - so there wasn't too much to do.

I got about two hours of play in last night and about a half hour this morning and hvae to say that it's a pretty satisfying game. The camera is taking a bit of getting used to since the minions are controlled with the right analog. Sounds a bit wonky but it works out pretty well actually. The camera can be reset with the left bumper so it's not really a big deal.

The real fun - so far - is terrorizing peasants with minions. Looting, burning, pillaging, urinating, riding sheep, smashing, and wearing pumpkins is a lot of fun. This is a game that allows you to just terrorize your subjects.

I will write more as I gain further impressions. Here's another trailer for ya.

Looking for some temp employees.

It's that time of year again. I need some temp employees for my store so if you or someone you know wants to make some extra skrilla between the end of August and middle-endish of September. It will consist of shelving/sorting/stacking books and dealing with the book buying public. The pay is good for grunt work.

If you're competent or at least marginally functioning then give a call 512-499-1559 or stop by the store or give me a call/email/smoke signal.

Damn the Japanese have cool stuff.

Once again the Japanese prove that they live thirty minutes further in the future than the rest of us: chameleon furniture. Apparently it's covered in sensors and when you put something on the furniture the sensors read what color the something is and changes the color of the furniture to match. That's not cool enough. What's really cool is if you sit on the furniture the color will pulse in time with breathing. The whole idea is:

"Dreamed up by Shinya Matsuyama and colleagues from the Studio Mongoose design company in Japan, the Fuwapica furniture draws on the country's ancient notions that gods inhabit every manmade artefact, be it chopsticks, dishes or tables."

Hells yes whatever that means. I'm totally buying some of this furniture...in the future...when it's sold at Target. Sigh.

Folding a Crane Part II.

About a million years ago I watched True Romance. I probably watched that movie several hundred times more than I should have. Early on in the movie Alabama - Patricia Arquette - is watching some crazy action movie on tv. I guess I always just assumed that it was something awesome that was filmed for the movie to be something awesome to be shown on the tv.

Fast forward a couple of years and I meet Mike who proceeds to show me practically every worthwhile HK action movie. During the end of Better Tomorrow II well there's the sequence that was featured in True Romance.

Fast forward another million years and here I am pretty much jaded and rundown on HK movies. John Woo hasn't made a decent movie since the 90s. Chow-Yun Fat, well, I still love him but I haven't really seen him in anything I've liked. He was great in Curse of the Golden Flower but he's turned into the go-to-Asian Harrison Ford. I still throw in the classics now and then but more or less have shelved the genre.

Playing the demo for Stranglehold last night reminded me how much I used to love HK action movies. In between hollering, "Holy Shit! I'm Chow Yun-Fat!" and na-na-na'ing the theme from Better Tomorrow II and just having a grand old time I realized how much I genuinely miss those movies and the fun and excitment that went along with seeing them.

Nostaligia aside Stranglehold is - from first demo impressions - a blast. The interaction/slides/dives/stunts are controlled with the left trigger - shooting is controlled by the right trigger. What's kind of interesting is what they are calling "Massive D" - special actions triggered by pressing in a direction on the D-Pad. However there's a meter you have to build up in order to use each skill. You build up the meter by pulling off awesome & fancy shots i.e. shooting a sign that drops on the head of a foe...in slow motion. The first D skill is a health restore, the second is a zoom-in - the hit location animation is great and at times wince inducing, the third is a kind of beserker fire mode, the fourth is going to useful when swamped by enemies - it's the Chow Yun-Fat spin and shoot. Sure we've seen it a million times but it still rules.

It looks like it's going to be a really fun game though I don't understand why it's not in Cantonese with English subtitles. I also get the impression that Stranglehold is going to be a really short game than relys on multiplayer to beef it up. We shall see.

"Who will fold a crane for me when I am gone?"

Right out of the gate:

• Stranglehold has a demo up on X360. Hacha-cha-cha. I know what I'm doing when I get home.
• This August on Live Arcade they are releasing: Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix - which is quite possibly my favorite puzzle game of all time and yes I play as Felicia, Space Giraffe - billed as a "psychedelic shooter", Hexic 2, and some game called Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords - a puzzler with RPG elements. Huh.

In other news:

• Orneryboy was particularly funny today.
• Robocop is one of my favorite movies ever made period. I didn't see it in the theater but I saw it soon after it was on VHS. To quote Cartman, "It warped my fragile little mind." On August 21st the 20th Anniversary Edition is being released with the theatrical and extended cuts and bonus goodies and awesomeness.

There have been updates to the other sites though I am considering combining all of the sites into a mega-site maybe...possibly...any input from you fine folks?

We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver

I picked up a copy of We Need to Talk About Kevin at work the other day. It's the story of a high school mass murderer told from his mother's perspective via letters to her ex-husband/killer's father. Wether the letters are meant for the father to read doesn't really seem to matter much.

It's not a bad book or poorly written and has made me consider the fallout of school tragedies in a way I hadn't considered before. That being said I don't think that it's particularly good. It just hasn't particularly grabbed me. This might be because I have no real point of reference with the character - a middle aged woman teetering on the breaking point of sanity. The writing gets a bit dense at times. There are moments when I've reached the end of the page and I realize that I haven't listened to a single thing that the character has said.

I'll give it another fifty pages or so or until I find something I want to read.

RE5 is racist, MLB2K6 rules, and assorted junk.

Kind of been/will be off the radar a bit for the next couple of days unless something really interesting comes up. I get to have a tooth yanked out of my head on Friday - huzzah! I might be able to get some movie watching in so there may be new releases reviews coming up. I'm also checking out AA meetings and getting that part of my life in order so that takes up a good amount of the thought processes needed to churn out posts. I'm also kind of tired of internet bullshit. People - including myself - are getting worked up over completely pointless issues.

My god, have I turned a corner? Will I become accepting of other peoples' views as valid and worthy of careful consideration? Are there feelings to consider? Pfft I hope not.

In assorted news:

Some poster on Black Looks is all bent out of shape about Resident Evil 5 being set in Africa - says that it's racist. Yeah, stirred up a whole hornet's nest. You should read the article just to get good and annoyed.

Looks like there's an adaptation of Jonah Hex coming out by the guys who put together Crank.

In MLB2K6 I have managed to rack up a decent run 13-3. Last night was one crushing defeat against the Mariners 11-0. Then the last game against the Mariners was a battle until the 9th inning when I managed to scrape together a few runs. Next up is another four games against Oakland. Last time I kicked their asses but I don't want to get over confident.