The "Blah-Blah" that is My Life

So, as a gamer with a particular love of the survival horror genre, I was very disappointed that Nintendo canceled their planned release of Fatal Frame IV for the Wii. The first three games I've played on the PS2 and found to be exceptionally frightening, and I was looking forward to terrifying myself at late hours of the night with the fourth installment... then Nintendo was like "nah, ain't happening" - fuckers. What had happened was the game, like most Japanese games, was released in Japan first, where it had failed to captivate the consumer demand of young children, geriatrics, and soccer moms, and all those non-traditional gaming demographics that the Wii's mass appeal was supposedly such a hit with. Despite favorable critical reception, the game only sold some 60,000 copies in the first 6 months on the Japanese market, and as a result, Nintendo has since decided not to publish this game outside Japan. Now, keep in mind the Fatal Frame series (also known as "Project Zero" or "Zero" internationally) was originally a Tecmo Games series, so its quite baffling as to why Tecmo made the concession of allowing Nintendo to have any publishing rights or decision making voice with concerns to this game. Despite Tecmo's desire to publish this game outside Japan, they can't. This has left many frustrated fans of the series like myself sending Nintendo some colorful emails chock-full of four letter poetry.

Anyhow, to the original intent of my post - today I'm celebrating the near completion of patch for this game that will run on the Wii's SD card reader, working with the Japanese version of the game, to allow people like myself to play an imported version of the game by not only going around the game's regional coding, but also translating the game for English speaking players. The team responsible for this patch is comprised of volunteers, working not only to translate the games text, but also to replace some textures containing text with their appropriate English equivalent. They're also debugging this game and testing it to make sure it runs rights. I'm sure there's bound to be problems but I'm too much of a fan of the series and this rogue effort that I cannot pass this up. They're also making the effort to expand the credits to credit everyone involved in this project, as well as add extra features such as customized costumes, cultural notes, walkthroughs, fan art, cosplay photos, and soundtrack access. Hurray!! Now I just have to get my hands on a copy of this game.

I doubt anybody reading this cares, but you can find out more this at the project webiste, http://zero4.higashinoeden.com/media.php5. There's also a video which I'll embed right here below the post showing an incomplete version of the translation patch working with the game. Looks good enough to me. ^_^

I was checking RottenTomatoes out, seems like four movies I wanna see all get released this weekend, all getting relatively fresh ratings, which are Zombieland, Whip It, Capitalism: A Love Story, and A Serious Man. Sheesh, if I was dedicated, I'd take the entire Friday off just to see all these movies... oh god, I might actually consider it; and, I could probably pull it off if I can wake up before noon... guess we'll see if I got what it takes.

[checking showtimes]

Awwwww, A Serious Man isn't playing, limited screenings, dang, and I love the Coen brothers. Oh well, three movies in one day is still excessive. Luckily, they're all playing at Pacific Place, so I can roll with the same bucket of popcorn all day and get my money's worth. Also, they're all getting midnight showings Thursday evening, but I'm gonna need my beauty rest, and I need my beauty rest.



As for midnight showings, you all should go see Paranormal Activity (check the trailer in the hyperlink). I was very skeptical that the trailer was misleading promotion material (because if you haven't watch the trailer it's one of those showing audience reaction and advertising itself as the scariest thing ever, all that good stuff that's usually to good too be true), but it's exactly like it advertises itself, hella freaky!! I got my brother and sister to go see it with me (which is entirely another story in itself, as my brother and sister haven't been talking for ages, but I digress...), and the only showings for this film are midnight showings on Friday and Saturday at the Neptune theater in the University District. This really helped pack the theater full at every corner, which was just the right environment for contagious emotion caused by such a massive audience, full of ooooooos and aaaaahhhs you can't help but completely empathize with. I suggest you not pass this up, it won't be the same on video.

Went to the Halo ODST midnight launch. Rob and I nerded out in front of the store for 2 hours while we waited for our copies, then went home to play with our like minded friends on Live. Also picked up a copy of Katamari Forever, which I'll get to playing later. And I even found a good sale on DVDs next door at Barnes & Noble, which is surprising because their DVDs are so marked up to begin with, but I felt it was worth it to pick up the 6th volume of Aqua Teen Hugner. Anyhow, while a nameless other and I were preparing for some online mayhem, over a sacred ritual of burning herb, we got quite a kick out of this clip...



It's funny, I never really liked this show for years until I was in the hospital in the middle of the night with a kidney stone, and while I was all doped up some kind of überawesome painkiller for bone surgery I got a little TV time; hence when I discovered the true genius of the show. It's amazing how they can pack so much humor into 11 minute episodes. Anyhow, this clip here was our stoner moment of uncontrollable laughter for the night, and I just thought I'd share the love. Anyhow, if you're on XBL, get Halo ODST, that shit is bananers.

My PS3 is almost all dried up of its remaining HDD space. Some of my games can take up to several GB a piece, and the many downloadable titles of mine are also pretty space consuming. I could just replace the HDD with something a lot larger, as there's plenty of videos on the internet showing how to do it, but I'm kind of reluctant as I might do something to harm it. And I'm gonna be pretty upset if I kill it, as it's one of the last fully backward compatible PS3s made using the Emotion chips, and I've a rather obsessive collection of PS2 titles I still like playing. Anyhow, I'm gonna have to do this sooner or later.

I still need to do more research, like I know I need a 2.5" SATA 5400 RPM HDD, and I know I can get like a 500GB, or maybe even a 1TB HDD, for around $100. But I don't know whether the HDD's cache bulk makes a different, like some HDDs seem to have an 8MB, 16MB or 32 MB cache bulk. But I'm pretty sure I can borrow one of my father's plentiful external HDDs he's got to back up all my files, so I got that angle covered. So once I get the HDD, all I've left to do is muster up the courage get it done. Wish me luck.

I thought this was rather funny when I saw it, unfortunately Contessa Brewer ain't hot shit like 5 - 8 PM EST commentators, so it's not on YouTube, but I found a transcript by Google'ing "Contessa Brewer" and "transparency champion". I'll have to settle with transcripts, thus...

00:37:22 One thing I will point out, president obama has this really bad habit of making false assertions and false promises in a lot of his speeches.

00:37:31 And he did the same thing in this speech today.

00:37:34 He made a false assertion about his own life.

00:37:36 I mean, he said -- >> okay.

00:37:39 So now we're getting right down to the bottom of it.

00:37:42 >> Hear me out.

00:37:44 >> My point exactly.

00:37:46 You are one of the so-called birthers, you question whether -- >> that is factually incorrect, contessa.

00:37:53 >> I have your words right here.

00:37:54 >> It is factually incorrect.

00:37:56 >> I have your words right here.

00:37:57 >> No.

00:37:57 That is not true.

00:37:59 I am a transparency champion.

:P oh, it's so silly, and I might as well post the transcript link, just to site my reference like a responsible person should

So why casually watching the TV before going to work, I saw an Aleve commercial on MSNBC. Though, something occurred to me at the time, something that I don't believe but I thought would make an excellent interpretation to send to somewhere like FoxNews to watch them get all worked up about. I can't find a YouTube video yet so I'll just have to narrate by memory what happened...

So three white people are standing around in the medicine aisle of the grocery store looking for arthritis medication. They're picking up all the red boxes of over the counter pain medication, looking at the back, saying stuff like - oh, you have to take 2 every 4 hours... that's like 80 pills a week!! Then comes down the aisle the sassy black woman, grabbing a blue box of Aleve, without any reserve and with a lot of confidence turns to the bedaffled white people and said something like - only takes two to get you through the day. Ummm-hmmm. I mean, do I really have to spell it out for you(?), it should be as obvious as the Pepsi-Obama logo similarities. After all, a majority of white perplexed people standing around a medicine aisle, confused, demoralized, and still unable to put down the red box, being shown up by the confident, self assured, minority black woman with the blue box.

Anyhow, I'm sending a news tip to FoxNews in hopes one of their craziest of pundits makes a big conspiracy theory fuss over this... but I shouldn't get my hopes up, I'm sure they get thousands of emails like this a day, and sadly probably from serious people.

Awww, he's so cute(!!!). I love pugs. But this isn't my family's pug, in fact I pulled this image off of Google's image search, though my family's pug is cute, and cute pugs all look the same. Our pug weighs in at 18.5 pounds, and we've had him now for several years. He snorts a lot less than many other pugs because we walk him a lot, feed him right. He's a territorial little guy, like most dogs. He barks whenever someone is at the door, and he loves running after strangers for their affection. He was named Rico, though I hate that name so I usually just call him Puggy. He loves to be baby talked. Anyhow...

I only bring this up because he's the subject of this blog post. Yesterday I was visiting my parents and moving some heavy stuff for my mother. In doing so the dog used it as an opportunity to escape outside, and upon making his way into the yard the dog noticed two people walking down the street. Of course, he did what he instinctually does and ran after them. Now, this is my parents neighborhood, the neighborhood I grew up in, and neighborhood I took many walks in myself throughout the years. Usually when an animal escapes into the street and comes barking at you, all you usually have to do is baby talk them into a cowardly excited submission until the owner comes to get them, the etiquette usually being them going "oh, I'm so sorry" and me going "oh, it's okay, he's such a cute little guy"... and blah blah blah and everyone goes their separate ways. I've been there countless times myself. But I digress... so the dog went chasing after these two people, husband and wife in their late 30s or early 40s, healthy couple getting their exercise. My first worry was that the dog was going to be hit by a car, and my brother goes chasing after our dog. So I couldn't see everything that was happening but I heard by dog getting very aggressive, and the guy was shouting profusely at the dog. I dropped what I was doing and ran out into the street myself worrying that they were beating on my dog, but by the time I could see what was happening my brother had picked up the dog. My brother, being the big hippie he is, gave a very sincere apology. However, my brother's ill fated nature about his kindness is it brings the worst out of people. In this case, the man went on a tirade full of f-bombs and insults at my brother in something like an asshole Jersey accent. That's when my mother came out into the street. She apologized herself, but she told the man he had no reason to behave the way he was behaving. It was quite amusing because he could dish out the insults but he couldn't stomach any. Anyhow, we were yelling at them for like 10 or 15 minutes. He later claimed the dog bit his wife, and him doing all the talking I asked her myself whether she was bitten and she seemed rather reluctant to say so, at best I got a maybe out of her that he may have bitten (at) her shoe. I asked if she kicked at the dog and she said no. I basically said like my mom did in a calm manner that I was sorry, but it's no excuse to be a dick, and with that they left.

Anyhow, what kind of pussy gets frightened by an 18.5 pound bundle of cuteness. My brother later told me when he was running after the dog, the guy was running away from the dog like he was utterly frightened. Maybe that assclown should be on the Maury Povich show with that lady with the irrational fear of pickles. In our argument with them the dickhead made some kind of comment about how he was being chased on county property, and some such comments that made it sound like he was going to bring up reporting this to some authority of some kind. In all honesty, I'd like to see him try. For starters, I've no idea where he lives, so no flaming bags of poo in the meantime; but that could all change if he files a report. Gotta love our system of transparency. Though, it will probably never escalate so far. After all, I can't imagine for the life of me that anybody anywhere with any authority whatsoever would respond to such a story about a vicious pug attacking someone so much so that they were injured or frightened in any reasonable sense. It'd be like calling the police because someone chucked a balloon full of air at you.

Anyhow, I gotta see if I can get myself a doggy costume like in that photo.

Saw this on Attack of the Show a little while back, though it was hilarious but haven't seen it around the net much, so just in case you might have missed it, enjoy...

So, President Obama spoke to school kids like many of the other presidents before him, stressing the importance of education and yadda-yadda-yadda. Though, I went a few days without switching the month for my Demotivation calendar, and thus found this as my September demotivator...



...and strangely, I find it kind of humbling.

Rob put HOT MALE YOGA on my Netflix queue; burn