Diary of A Sane Man

I was browsing Taylor Mali slams today when I discovered the following video. I thought it was great and needed to be passed on.

Incidentally, if you haven’t peeped any Taylor Mali - do so. He’s amazing.

-=Grim=-

I almost wept with joy. The Holmes haitus is over?

-=Grim=-

I found an article that says something I’ve been ranting about since the early ’90s, only the author is much more articulate and less prone to vulgar language than I could ever be. Sorry, cuss words aren’t taboo to me (they really aren’t). Seriously, quit being a whiny, partisan asshole and just read the article, then tell me what you think. Keep in mind that only the weak-minded or ignorant believe all revolutions to be bloody wartime affairs. Ever heard the term “bloodless coup”?

How bad does it have to get before you people do something about it? How long until you decide that enough is enough and stand up for yourselves? “United we stand. Divided we fall.” Mean anything to you? The whole “Red state v. Blue state” thing is a very clever way to keep the People united and non-partisan, and thus we fall further and further away from what we should be (and could be) and more into a stratified, impotent society. Yay for us.

I hate pointing fingers at specific groups, but the Evangelicals are a serious setback to the country. With 1/4 of the voting power in America, they’ve done a lovely job of helping to sell us out to Big Money, people who claim to be Christian traditionalists, but then reject everything Biblical except in name. Good job. It’s nice to know that some Bronze Age religion calls the shots in a country that is supposed to be progressive. And by “progressive” I don’t mean Liberal. Don’t get me started on Liberals or Conservatives either. They’re the other assholes screwing this country left and right (ooooh pun!) with their partisan politics. A country runs on compromise. Polarization and the inability to compromise is a great way to stagnate the political machine.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not naive enough to think that America *was* something more than it is now. No, it’s always been a walking mess. We’re only 200 and change years old; we’re infants compared to the rest of the world. I’m bitching about what we could be.

Tsk. Whatever. I’m done ranting. Keep watching American Idol people. Keep arguing over useless divisions of paradigms. I hate to sound like a Pinko Commie (I like saying those two words for some reason), but it always has been and always will be about the Haves versus the Have-Nots, and unless you’re hitting up the Bohemian Club you’re a Have-Not, trust me. Hrmm, maybe I should check the news to see what Rights got signed away today?

-=Grim=-

This past Saturday my friend Mike and I did a whirlwind attack on New York City: We drove down at 3pm Saturday, saw Skinny Puppy, went to the after party at Club Pyramid, and then drove home, arriving back in Albany around 7:30am. It was a grueling trip. But the trip isn’t the part that annoyed me (it was actually fun). No, what annoyed me is the fact that Skinny Puppy needs to break up and move on in life. ARGH!

Here’s the deal: the lead singer is what pulls peoples’ attention to the stage. Failing that, the guitar players. The drummer and keyboard could have all the presence in the WORLD, but it won’t matter: the stage will seem empty if the guitar players and lead singer can’t pull it together. Skinny Puppy, being Skinny Puppy, didn’t have any guitars on stage, so the whole thing fell to Nivek Ogre. Many people consider him a titan of industrial or something, so he should have been able to pull it off, right?

*sigh*

Wrong. Want to see what I had to deal with?

That’s right: Ogre was behind a fucking sheet the whole time. The stage seemed really empty and devoid of energy. Sure it was nice and artsy at first - “Ooooh, look at the cool shadow play when he sings.” But the keyboardist looked bored and the drummer looked like he’d rather be somewhere else, so it really was up to Ogre to pull this shit together. Of course he didn’t. My friend Mike thinks he was on some serious drugs and too wasted to sound like Skinny Puppy (seriously, he sounded like shit). I think he just needs to call it quits for a while. His voice sucked and his presence wasn’t there. BORING. The whole damned band wasn’t there, mentally or emotionally. I felt like I was watching some crap high school band or a geriatric ward slowly die of old age, not Skinny Motherfucking Puppy! The thing is, once in a while Ogre would come dancing out from behind the sheets and start singing to the crowd. Then there was a noticeable surge in crowd energy; they went from zombies standing there looking confused by the bright lights to something resembling insomniacs trying to dance. The latter was an improvement, trust me. But I don’t blame the crowd at all. You can’t get into a show that isn’t there. Even when Nivek came frolicking out from behind the curtains to scream in the crowds’ faces it still wasn’t anything to get excited over. Sure he *looked* cool, but image only goes so far.

This is boredom:

To make a long story short, Skinny Puppy was a waste of money. Mike and I left before the set was even over. We just couldn’t take it any more. The after party was fun though, but I admit that we mostly hung out outside with my other homies that we met there. Gnargh! Friggin’ Skinny Puppy. What a let down. But like I said, what we did before and after was cool, but that’s all for another blog.

-=Grim=-

Jon Stewart said what I’ve been thinking. This arming of insurgents is rediculous. Aw, did we make them say they were sorry before handing them a crate of AK-47? Those weapons *will* be turned against us. They are not our friends and most certainly not our allies. Oooooh, they reject the Al Qaeda. Gee, thanks. Have some hand grenades, but promise you won’t use them against us. Notice in the article they drop a nice veiled threat too. “America, this alliance lasts as long as it takes to oust the Al Qaeda - then you better be gone!” Fuck that. We just armed the same chumps who were blowing us up last year.

This whole things reeks of the administration having no fucking idea how to fix the problem they got us in to. “So uh… we’ll arm these, uh, insurgents and they’ll fight with us… and stuff. Right? We’ll retinal scan them and… um… hey we can keep them under our thumb, right?”

Christ. We just ousted a tyrant that got his start the same way. The supposed mastermind behind 9/11 was trained by the CIA. These Muslim “enemies of our enemies” make *great* allies. Yea.

-=Grim=-

The Albany news is claiming that the chaos outside is “vicious rioting in the downtown area”, but those aren’t looters pounding at my door. Looters don’t eat your neighbors. I used to be an atheist; now I can not ignore the God-given apocalypse standing on my doorstep. Christ I wish Val hadn’t gone outside to find the cats. I haven’t seen her since and she isn’t picking up her cell phone. If anyone does manage to find her, living or dead… or “undead” for lack of a better term to describe these things… call me. My phone is still working, but who knows for how long. Why won’t Val pick up her phone? Christ Val, just answer the fucking thing!

I tried putting the radio on to drown out the ever-present moaning of these things. Hundreds of dead things outside, thousands in the city, all moaning at once… it’s maddening. I almost welcome the sporadic screams of those caught outside, the gunfire in the distance (I knew I should have moved into the ghetto; it sounds like they’re making a stand), the breaking glass, whatever. The radio didn’t work. It only made me more insane. Fuck the Emergency Broadcast System. Does anyone have any real news? Last I heard the nearby shelter was overrun. Before that I was hoping Val made it there. Now I dread that notion. Where *is* she? Why won’t she answer her goddamned phone!?!

All I have is a few kitchen knives and one boarded up door between me and oblivion should these things break through into the building’s lobby, and there’s not much preventing them from doing so. I mean really, what shitty Albany apartment complex is prepared for “rioting”? I refuse to use the “Z” word. I’ll just keep trying to pretend that they’re looters and drug-addicts. Anarchists. Terrorists. Whatever. I can’t count on the Feds to protect me. They couldn’t even handle a friggin’ hurricane and one war overseas. The news this morning said that this rioting was a social pandemic throughout most major cities in the world. Yea, right. Who am I kidding? The Feds won’t be the cavalry coming in to save the day. They’re holed up in some underground bunker that will serve as their living tomb.

No one is coming to save me. No one is coming. Not even Val.

-=Grim=-

…at least don’t look like a basement-dwelling World of Warcraft dweeb. Yea, sure, whatever. I’m a callous prick or whatever you want to call me. But this shit had me cracking up:

I mean COME ON. What, were they out of Black Metal drummers in Norway (or whatever Midwest town this group is from) so they had to ask the high school marching band snare section to come lay some tracks with them? Look at this guy! They even gave him sad clown makeup instead of corpse paint! *sigh* It really ruins a band’s image when people like this try to do the rock n’ roll pose for photos. I don’t give a fuck if you’re gutter punk or some other anti-establishment band, image is everything (the gutter punks would have the image of “we don’t need an image!”, usually the standard punk image, i.e. “We really do have an image, but we like to think we don’t.”). For Black Metal image is about eating babies, skull-fucking the pope and destroying all things pleasant. You can’t pull that off when your band has that one weak link in the photo. Look as bad-ass as you want, the weakest link is the image presented. Yo, it’s even funnier in the unmarked photo:

Holy D&D dork, Batman! He probably goes by the name Zamoth Gar, Bane of Light. Why couldn’t they give this guy a mask or something? Some mean looking thing with rusty nails and fangs or whatever is this years trendy thing in the Black Metal scene. No, they give the Chess Club looking guy sad clown makeup. Whatever, I’m an asshole. Bite me.

Christ…

-=Grim=-

P.S.: For the record, the band is called Emaciation. I have a feeling there’s another 30 Black Metal and Death Metal bands with that name, probably meaner looking too, but whatever.

Note: The Template for this blog FUBAR’d some of the pictures; they don’t look this poor in real life.

A few weekends ago a new addition to the family entered the house. It is a wellspring of joy and fulfillment, and brought Val and I even closer together. The cats don’t know what to make of it, it probably keeps the neighbors up and we had to really shift things around in the apartment to give it a place of its own.

What? A baby? Screw that! We’re talking about a Nintendo Wii! We got the last one at the store after being laughed at at five other stores. The Wii comes with the sweet sports game, but golfing and bowling with the controller gets old fast. In order to combat such a thing from ever happening, we nabbed Super Paper Mario and The Godfather: Black Hand Edition. Here’s the kicker - I already own The Godfather on the PS2. Why would I waste one of my only Wii purchases on a game I already own? Har har. Stand back, heathen, and be enlightened!

What follows is a list of the features the Nintendo Wii version has over the PS2 version. Perhaps you’ll understand the edge these give over the older version that I already own and you’ll understand why I would upgrade. Perhaps you’ll understand that the PS2 version was like regular radio and the Wii version is like satellite radio… a little bit more expensive, but worlds beyond what you had to made do with. This list is more for people who have already played the PS2 version since its a comparative blog rather than a real review, but even if you haven’t played the older version you might still learn something.

1. The Wii Controller: When I purchased the game I was afraid that the game was going to be just another port, one that didn’t utilize the abilities of the Wii. I was way wrong. This game uses the Wii remote to its fullest potential. When you beat the crap out of people, strangle people, garrote ‘em or toss ‘em out of a window, you use the Wii “nunchuck” in an appropriate fashion that mimics the move. Aiming the gun is much easier too. In both versions you can shoot people in certain areas of their bodies to get a certain response. For example, shooting a person in the arm might get their to drop their gun, while shooting them in the head is an instant kill. The PS2 controller was a little sketchy when it came to performing precise aiming like this, but the Wii-mote is spot on.

2. There’s More To The City: The original game felt rushed out the door in a lot of ways and the city suffered in that regard. The PS2 version had every single type of store stuck with the same exact layout; every butchers shop was the same interior, every bar was the same interior, every warehouse was the same interior, etc.. It felt cheap. The Wii version doesn’t have that problem. Each building is unique inside and it makes a big difference. Hell, there’s even outdoor markets scattered around the city (this little detail made it seem more like the time period it’s supposed to be). Another thing that bothered me in the PS2 version was that each crime family lived in a perfect clone of the Corleone Family compound. The Wii version fixed that glaring “cheat”. Now the families live in unique compounds with their own style of architecture and layouts. Now storming a compound is a helluva lot more fun since you don’t automatically know the layout.

   And there’s some rooftop action stuff. No, really. Throwing a mobster to a 40-story death is rather satisfying. Hell, in one mission you can go outside and see his body splattered on a car that was passing by. Mmmm.

   

3. There’s New Skill-Trees: Instead of one skill tree there’s now two, basically giving you two “character classes” (Enforcer and Operator) with the ability to cross-train. Unlike the PS2 version there’s also abilities to unlock in each of the two “classes”. After putting 15 skill points into a class and then 30 skill points you unlock a class ability. For example, the Enforcer gets unlimited ammunition after you place 30 skill points in the class. I thought these abilities were nice incentives to focus in one of the careers over the other. The new skills are pretty sweet too: they’re more specialized at each dot and there’s new things to get that the PS2 version didn’t have. I wish I hadn’t scattered my skill points between the two careers though… I’ll never get to the level 30 ability in either at this rate. Meh, there’s always next time.

   

4. New Game Play (esp. Favors): There’s a lot of new game play on the Wii. Some of them are new Hit Contracts and these new ones have more style and story to them than the originals; they’re also a bit more complicated. Then there’s Favors. Certain events unlock Favor Missions, little side quests that people need done. Sometimes you can’t muscle into a business without doing a Favor for the owner (usually to prove that you can protect them, since that’s what you’re “selling”: protection). I’ve also witnessed a few scripted events that I hadn’t seen in the PS2 version, but since they’re meant to be fun little surprises I’ll keep my mouth shut.

5. More Things to Break: There’s a few new cars and civilian skins, some neighborhood specific, to add some flavor to the city. I see them as new things to break with your fist or shoot with your Street Sweeper shotgun. There’s also some more breakables in buildings too.

6. Weather: Finally, some weather. If I remember correctly, it didn’t rain or storm in the PS2 version. I might be wrong as I haven’t played the PS2 version since getting the Wii version.

7. Henchmen: You’re no longer a lone wolf in the Black Hand Edition. Now you feel like a member of a criminal organization instead of some solo street thug that occasionally meets up with other people. You have two options for backup in this game and both have their uses: Crew and Hit Squads. You can go to certain places in the neighborhoods, sometimes a bar, sometimes a warehouse, whatever, and hire some henchmen to come travel with you. This type of hireling can shoot out of car windows (you alternate which side by hitting the + or - buttons on the Wii-mote) which is really nice on some missions (and a Bonus on one Hit Contract). As you get more and more powerful throughout the game you can hire better and better henchmen like this. The more powerful ones can really help in a fight.

   

   The second type involves a meter at the top of the screen that slowly fills up. When it is full you can choose to call in some real muscle - you whistle and wave and a mean Corleone Hit Squad shows up and sticks with you until they’re dead or you dismiss them. The Hit Squad meter fills slowly so I use it sparingly, but the level 30 Ability for the Operator doubles the speed. The Operator also has some skills that make your Crew

8. Cleaned Up Graphics: The game just looks better. Building interiors look less generic/blocky and more realistic and flavorful. The city has more

9. It’s On The Wii: Niiiiiice.

   
   

The game isn’t perfect though. I’ve run into some Draw Distance problems but the PS2 version had them too. I can’t tell which has them worse. The Wii fluctuates: sometimes the Draw Distance isn’t bad and then other times it is really noticeable. There’s also a severe lack of lighting effects in the game, but I suppose that was a sacrafice made for having such a huge city with NO load times. Still, those are my only real beefs with the Wii Godfather game. I recommend it to anyone that has a Wii and is old enough to play M-rated games, even if you already own it on the PS2. Actually, I recommend it especially if you have the PS2 version, and you’ll fully appreciate the changes to the game then. The Godfather on the PS2 isn’t a finished game. I’d even go so far as to say it is only half baked. The Wii version is the complete game - and it’s awesome.

-=Grim=-

I… I can’t stop. I borrowed The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess from my friend Kyle and I’m pretty sure it’s one of the best games I’ve ever played. Ever. And I’ve played a lot of video games (my first system was the Odyssey 2, but I was down with my homies Ataris before that), but man this one takes the cake. The Wii-mote is what makes it the experience that it is; sure the gameplay is friggin’ outstanding, but swinging my sword for real is always a bonus as far as immersion goes. The game is HUGE and there’s so much to do. The “meaningless” dungeon crawls made me feel like I was playing Hackmaster and the bug collecting reminded me of Animal Crossing - with death involved. Overlaying it all is a fantastic plot and beautiful graphics.

Whenever I need a break from Zelda I play The Godfather: Black Hand Edition on the Wii. Or Super Paper Mario. I have to steer clear of Wii Sports a lot of the time because of my nerve pain. That’s the only real strike against the Wii in my opinion: sometimes it hurts to play if you’re already in some form of pain. I’ve also been playing Hotel Dusk: Room 215 on my Nintendo DS. Thus far it’s been pretty awesome: nice graphics, great dialogue and a deep, mysterious plot. It plays out like a detective novel (you even hold the DS sideways like a paperback book) and uses the stylus for everything.

And last but not least, Resident Evil 4 for the GameCube rounds out the video games I’ve been playing. I hate that game. I mean, I love it… but I hate it. It scared the shit out of me quite a few times and ARGH! It reminds me a lot of the movie Dagon, only there’s no Deep Ones (I hope).

-=Grim=-