What You’ve All Been Waiting For…
This is probably not my best time to be writing anything, considering my self esteem has recently been punched in the face by exams. But, since I’ll receive my marks tomorrow which will eliminate any esteem I have left, I might as well say something about this.
And on the Seventh Day, Jobs rested
The blogosphere, and much of the Northern Hemisphere in general, has been compulsively shaking in anticipation of whatever Apple was supposed to announce on January 27. I have friends who were wetting themselves as they slept because of the hype for this device regardless of whether I dipped their hands in water.
In Short – Pick up an Actual Damn Guitar
On September 9th North America will finally have The Beatles: Rock Band, an instrument-based game hot on the lips of today’s pop culture. The Beatles have, through their final breathing members, finally agreed to put together a video game that would appeal to the masses through an iteration of the already popular Rock Band franchise. The obvious impression is that if you like the Beatles or music games you should buy this ritualistic birth, and bring it home to display in front of the family. When all is said and done, the three microphones, a guitar, and a drum set will be laid upon the home’s entertainment alter and used to deliver the divine into our hands. As expected, a sacrifice will have to be paid, inevitably spending an awkward sum of currency and living room liberty.
As another duplication in the most resented video game genre in the tertiary sector, The Beatles: Rock Band continues the trend of instrument-based games which occupies large amounts of retail and personal room, in an effort to improve upon the current viewable failures of the compact disk industry. In this way, September 9th represents the eighth release of rhythm games (without including any of the minor band exclusive game which only exist due to stubborn marketing executives, and children whose parents refuse to buy the songs online)with this degree of plastic physicality. They all carry instruments are
made to imitate but not replicate their real life equivalents. In fact the most recent Guitar Hero game was released hardly over a week ago to a stagnant audience, who merely walked to the store with the vague impression that they had been given more of what they wanted. Perhaps as an anecdotal awareness that consumers’ entertainment stations are being overrun by these mock guitars, drums and microphones, Guitar Hero 5 (their newest release in the series) now allows multiples of the same instruments to be played simultaneously, which is a contrast to their previous mantra which only permitted two guitars (rhythm and bass), one set of drums and one microphone to participate in a “full band experience”.
The irony is that like most intriguing toys, this near-reality consumeristic invention is not North American, as much as one would like to hail Harmonix (the original developer for Guitar Hero and the current developer for Rock Band) as the rhythm gaming emperor. Konami, a Japanese company, was the first to publish a game that simulated being a rock star within their Guitar Freaks and Drum Freaks titles. Unfortunately, as the first to create it they were hardly the best at implementing the series, limiting the release to arcades and a small home console release outside Japan, and even then it was poorly made and too complex to use. Yet, it could never inspire the riot the genre causes today, as it didn’t have many licensed songs, which meant playing it was like hitting a random string of buttons on the side of a plastic rod; the music being of complete insignificance.
What this history and mass deliberation of human consumerism brings us to is time. No matter how enjoyable the game is, it requires practice and effort to attain true ersatz rock godhood. After the game is brought home and placed in within the family temple, it must be studied and worked upon until one can whammy through plastic buttons, karaoke, and near effectively play a diminutive set of drums to claim a score that is worthy of the money you have allocated and the landmass that is now covered by different sets of imitation musical instruments. However, what encumbers all the time and effort taken to glorify one’s rock dreams could have been better utilized achieving them in some state of reality. What games like The Beatles: Rock Band tend to kill, and by no fault of their own (they merely seek to expand those who listen not new musicians), are potential players of music. If these games were a better simulation of what it was to play these instruments, and then there would be no issue as it would be an inspiration of creativity. Yet as it stands, Rock Band and Guitar Hero only seem to distract from creative endeavors due to the huge obsession and the unfortunate fact that real instruments do not have leader-boards.
OH GOD. NO. AWAY. AWAY.
This is what I had to face the other day. A full week before school school started I saw this. My school. From the bloody inside.
Do you know how horrifying that is? To know that not only will you be inside for another year but it will be your last. It’s bloody heartwrentching everytime I think about it.
This picture came from the end of the mentor program at our school. The grade 11s and 12s team up to show how awesome St. Francis Xavier i to all the grade nines. I decided to participate because it’s always fun to influence young minds into doing things. Like homework. Evil laugh, I shall influence them to do their homework. See how sinister I can be? I am pure evil.
…
Right. I can stop now.I make a pathetic villain. The most I would do is compell people to enjoy philosophy class, which is a true evil indeed.
I got a group of grade nines who unfortunately I have nothing in common with but they were nice guys, unlike how much of the other grade nines can be, so I let them in on a few hints about how the school runs. One of them came from my old elementary school and one of my sister’s friends. I knew her well enough and she helped keep some of the other guys in line. Although, it scares me how I’m now responsible for them. Almost makes me think I’m growing up. Oh, the horrors!
How I beat Joe Quesada in A Cage Match and Made Him Cry
I bet you wanted to punch someone tremendously hard before. For me, that person is Joe Quesada. And down at Fan Expo, things were getting pretty ugly between me and him. We both fought hard yesterday, but when it came down to it, Joe Quesada got his ass whooped by a high-schooler. He didn’t take it too well. Read the rest of this entry »
Fan Expo 2009 – Saturday AKA Marvel Day
Ever heard of Comic Con? If you’re reading this you should have, and these days everyone’s trying to get a little bit of the comic convention pie, meaning that as being one of the cultural centres of Canada, Toronto played host to one of the biggest conventions of its kind – in Canada. Which means that this weekend, the dreary painful weekend that occurs soon before school starts, is(was) Fan Expo. Now, as a little warning or point of reference, I attended for an hour or so on the Friday and for most of the Saturday, and to be honest that was all I needed. Also, I punched Joe Quesada. Mentally. Read the rest of this entry »
FANFIC TIME: Anything More – Part 4
I write Fanfic. Who knew right? Here’s chapter 4 of a BLEACH story I like to call Anything More. For Coherance sake, I’ll post the rest later.
Chapter 4: Midnight Waltz
“Miss Inoue,” Aizen said, pouring a liquid reminiscent of Earl Grey into a china cup. “Have some tea.” Orihime kept her eyes fixed on the drink as it travelled from the teapot to the cup. She didn’t want to see whatever expression lay on his face.
When the tea hit the rim, he immediately stopped, wiping his hands together before moving to the other end of the table. Orihime heard the chair move out and in, allowing Aizen to sit down. When he settled down, he made a small coughing noise to signal her attention. She didn’t look up, instead choosing to watch her swirling drink.
Aizen made another cough, louder this time. Orihime gave him a quick glance, hoping that would be enough to satisfy. She instantly felt that she had made a mistake. Aizen had that look, the one where no matter what you did or how you did it, it was wrong. And he could do it better than you. The man looked at her expectantly, leaning his head onto the back of his hands. Orihime’s fingers started to tremble. It isn’t supposed to happen this way. Read the rest of this entry »
Eureka Seven Madness – It’s almost a Review. I think.
Legend: normal text – On topic | [normal text] – Not on topic
[You know what I love? 3 am. Three AM is this magical time of the day that you can do anything and talk to anyone without fear of being reproached and told that your writing is messy, confusing or written in the wrong language, because if they do you can always respond I did it at 3am, jerk-wad and suddenly it all makes sense. They will be keen to admit that this is not your best work or the reason that you beat little Jimmy with a hammer was not because you're a psychopath. It's because you're a psychopath who works at 3am. And really if you're not going to go on a murderous rampage afterwards, why bother starting anything past 1am. It's just too much effort without the insanity.]
Wait. This was supposed to be about Eureka Seven wasn’t it? Read the rest of this entry »
G.A.M uPDATE 5
Okay, so here’s another one of these nightmares. I’ve been screamed at for a month to put this up to the point where I no longer even remember what it is about. So based solely on memory here’s what it is apparently about:
- Bleach movie in Canada October 20
- Appleseed Anime series on permanent hold
- Production IG to make computer animated film with Fuji TV
- Hellsing ends, Hirano is coming up with something new for next year
- Something about Evangellion
- Manga/Anime Releases for the month
- Funimation Juice?
Reviews: There will be more later in the week. This one was already getting too long.
So for the approximately four people who listen to these podcasts, I apologize for the extreme delay, but I have school and I don’t want to spend valuable sleeping time on the INTER-WEBZ. Also it will probably get down to twice a month at most.
Heroes Season 3 Premiere
Quite literally jumping from my seat to write this post, Heroes Season three has an awesome start. Again, these two episodes are better than the entire second season.
So for a quick run through (Warning Spoilers) :
- Peter shot Nathan
- Alright, Future Peter shot Nathan
- The future is a horrible nightmare where telling everyone about their abilities didn’t turn out so well. Thus Future Peter is trying to change that
- Future Peter traps Present Day Peter is in the body of a prisoner named Jesse in the Company’s Level 5 Prison (Astral Projection Perhaps?)
- Hiro gets a secret chemical formula from his father, who tells him not to touch it which he does.
- Instantly, he loses it to a speedster, so to find out if it actually was so important, he goes to the future and finds it to be a Godzilla remake where Ando can shoot power blasts out of his hands. (Future Ando kills Future Hiro). They chase after the culprit.
- Nathan survives, (thanks to Linderman?) and becomes a devout man.
- Oh and Linderman’s back…but no one except Nathan can see him.
- Mohinder gets Spider-Powers, thanks to discovering the true origin of these abilities (it’s the adrenaline) Then he discovers side effects like being horny and the shedding of his skin.
- Claire is at home when she shouldn’t be thanks to Future Peter, and is attacked by Sylar.
- Sylar not only gets her power but goes after the criminals in Level 5
- Matt figures out that Peter is not Peter, so Peter sends him to Africa where he meets an African guy who can paint the future.
- Mrs. Angela Petrelli tells Future Peter how much he screwed up.
- Tracy Strauss, who looks a lot (by a lot I mean exactly) like the deceased (?) Niki Sanders, hires Nathan to be the new Junior Senator of New York.
- Bob is killed by Sylar, who invades Level 5 attacks Elle, who retaliates by electrocuting everything in the vacinity.
- Sylar is captured, several dangerous villains escape, Elle is fired, and Angela takes over the Company
- Noah Bennett goes after said villains, and leaves the scarred Claire in the hands of Meredith, who responds by lighting a giant fire.
- Oh and Angela is Sylar’s mom.
Impressions (Also Spoilers)
This season has started off with nothing but promise. The writers have once again found a way to forcefully separate some of the characters. I enjoyed how they did it this season than last. In Season 2 they used the Time Skip to show how some characters were drawn apart or together; however the way they’ve done it this season seems more natural or coherent. They don’t thrust the fact that they’re apart again at us with no explanation, instead using the plot to put them in trouble again. Also several new characters have been introduced while giving them a purpose within the known story. This in comparison to last season where Maya and a couple others were introduce with little relation to the overall story. One issue that I am having with these episodes is how no one notices Matt is gone. He’s been away for at least a few days within the time line of the show and no one has even mentioned his existence. It’s almost as if as soon as they don’t need him, they dump him off and never bothered to ask where he went. Finally I’m not entirely sure that I like the whole, Angela is Sylar’s mom story. While it definitely left me in suspense, it would have been better if it had been foreshadowed earlier on in the story. Here it just looks like they pulled it out for drama’s sake.
Regardless, the first two episodes definitely left me looking forward to next week, where I hope we get a better look at the Godzilla future, and maybe a little more into Future Peter’s future (Oh God that’s a mouthful). They were both pretty vague about what happens except horrible things. Also, I’m wondering based on the fact that Hiro has been a jerk to Ando in these two episodes, that if Hiro was the villian and Ando was actually trying to help save everyone. Damn, I can’t wait for next week.
