I have Friday off!  And *I* have Friday off.  Not the office, not my team.  Me only.  Perhaps this is because I haven't taken a day off since I started work, but I've been relishing the simple thought of having the day off.  I think I'll actually finish that book I borrowed from the Library and renewed three times.  Go Zizek, and go undiscovered floating holidays that need to be used up by the end of the calendar year.

So I've really been exhilarated by the thought of starting a video game blog.  Truth be told, I started my livejournal as a video game blog (and as a way for me to relate to this friend I had a huge crush on).  Now, I'm not excited at the prospect of having throngs of readers hanging on my every word, granting me the power to reduce entire servers to smoking craters with a single hyperlink.  I also don't think that I'll magically be discovered by Hilary Goldstein at IGN and be offered a dream job as a video game journalist.  I actually expect the blog to go largely unnoticed, with perhaps a handful of readers and the only true dialogue being between Matt and I.  Unless, of course, we find a way to have a joint user blog at talkingaboutgames.net or ign.com, granting us access to an already unified gaming community, and even then I don't expect to be nothing but a pebble in a quarry.  What excites me is the prospect of having a space to voice my opinion about games and the industry and having a person who will actually respond and contribute in a meaningful way.  I want to talk about games, and while many of my friends are gamers, we don't usually engage in deep conversation about the industry, either because they don't follow it as closely as I do or because we're too busy fragging nubs.  I'm excited to talk about games, even if it's just to one other person.

I'm also excited at the prospect of writing about games.  I really like writing.  It's what attracted me to my current job, what keeps my job worthwhile and interesting (other than my wonderful boss and great team).  And, if I were to go into education or library studies, it is what I'd miss most about my job.  I just like writing.  I'm excited to begin serious recreational writing, the kind that involves rereads and edits and actual planning.  Don't get me wrong, I like writing in my LJ, but it's just not the same because I never actually craft these posts.  I just type and hope that what comes out possesses some form of cohesion.  I miss attempting serious pieces of writing, even if it will simply result in missed deadlines and unreadable blocks of characters.

Anyway, I'm off to sleep.  Matt, thank you for agreeing to get involved with this, and thanks for tolerating my 1+ voice message long calls.  You do not know how psyched I am.  As I said, I may crash and burn in a month, but I'm glad I'm at least attempting liftoff.

I've come to a somewhat startling, albeit not-all-that-surprising, revelation: I eat, sleep, and breathe video games.  I came to this realization this weekend while playing Fallout 3 and noting that, despite having a fiancee and a full-time job where I work at least one hour of unpaid overtime every day, I've logged almost 60 hours into that game since I purchased it in late October.  I then realized that I wasn't listening to the low whistle of winds over the irradiated DC wasteland or the clever quips of Three Dog's radio show, but instead to one of the several gaming podcasts that I download regularly each week.  I then realized that I managed to do all this while still finding time to play Halo 3 for hours every weekend with Adam.  I THEN realized that most of my conversations and even relationships are based around video games, and that I have only a handful of friends who do not share my passion for gaming.

Then it dawned on me.  I live, eat, breathe, and probably shit video games (at least, if I had a Playstation 3 :P).

Now, this poses a bit of a conundrum.  Gaming has permeated all facets of my life to the point where I cannot imagine my life without it.  And I'm not referring to simply playing video games.  I'm referring to keeping up with industry news and developments, listening to authorities discuss game theory, EVEN BEING INTERESTED IN HOW THE GAMING INDUSTRY IS WEATHERING THE FINANCIAL CRISIS!  JESUS CHRIST!  Finances, in my book, are NOT FUN!  SINCE WHEN DID FINANCES BECOME INTERESTING?!  When finances started affecting the amount of coins in Mario's purse.  Mama mia.  Let'sa go.  But I digress. 

Conundrum time.  Break it down. 

I'm trying to figure out what the fuck I want to do with the rest of my life.  Now, there are a great number of things that interest me.  I'm interested in the challenge of explaining concepts like addition or story composition to small children.  I'm fascinated by my perhaps idealized perception of life of as a librarian.  I'm moved by the thought of devoting my life to the study of religion and philosophy.  But... do I have any passion for these things?  Up until now, I've taken a very mercenary view to employment and careers.  I enjoyed my past jobs, and I enjoy my current job, because of the challenge presented and because of the satisfaction of developing certain skills.  But I've never had a passion for grants management or urban forest restoration.  Instead, I've been passionate about writing in a style different than what I've encountered before and in having a non-traditional work environment.  The only thing aside from video games that I can say I have a passion for is the study of philosophy and religion, and I still feel an overwhelming urge to combine them into an academic glance at video game theory, philosophy, and ethics.  So really, the thing I can say that I truly possess a passion for is gaming and the video game industry.

So, what to do.  I like my job, and I actually like how busy I am (though I sometimes wish it would calm down just a tad), but I don't think I can keep up my mercenary attitude towards employment.  I just don't have the passion for the industry that I need to truly get where I would want to be (i.e., at the very top, because I've found that I can't stop myself from looking at what's next once I reach any particular point).  I fear that I may need to actually pursue my passion in seeking employment.  This sounds mundane, I know, but I assure you that this is an alien concept for me.

Long story short, I've decided to try and break into the video game journalism industry.  I don't know where this path will lead me, and I don't know if I'll actually succeed in this, but at the very least I would have tried and I will have developed skills that I did not have otherwise.  And hey, I'm only 22.  I have time to screw up, and at least the early stages of my play will allow me to screw up while still maintaining a full-time job.

I'm going to cut this short, seeing as it's almost midnight and I didn't sleep nearly as well as I wanted to last night as well as the fact that we're babysitting my 3 year old nephew tomorrow after work so my dear sister can go bowling.  But I'm genuinely energized and excited about the prospect of at least trying to break into this industry and doing something new with my passion.  That's gotta count for something.

Stay tuned for my step-by-step, multi-year plan of how to break into the video game journalism industry, coming whenever the fuck I get around to it!  Yay!

I have a new plan for stopping myself from consuming so much junk food at work: every time I have a compulsion to purchase candy, I will put away that dollar and save it for a new game.  I bet that by Christmas, I'll have lost a couple of pounds and have a new copy of Call of Duty: World at War.

It is ze midnightz.  You knowz where childuns arr?

Yeah, sorry about that.  Odd, random mood.

So Fallout 3 is happily nomming at my soul.  To say that the game is a work of art would be barely doing it justice.  The post-apocalyptic wasteland that Bethesda managed to create is simply stunning.  Sandbox RPGs have always been about exploration, about motivating you to do shit.  In the past, this has usually been quest-driven, much like MMOs.  Morrowind had its various guilds and noble houses.  Oblivion, following in Morrowind's footsteps, was also guild-driven for the most part, but managed to break from that somewhat by making the player more mobile using mounts and a fast-travel feature (amazing how much more willing one is to explore that tomb in the ass end of nowhere when one doesn't have to manually lug loot HALFWAY ACROSS THE WORLD).  Fallout 3 shatters the quest-driven model of yesteryear.  Sure, there are a plethora of quests available to the player.  Hell, there are so many quests that they often just walk up to you and ask you to remove the bomb strapped to their chest.  Sometimes, they even walk away moments before the bomb strapped to their chest explode, leaving you slack-jawed and bewildered, your lips twisting around the beginnings of a 'WTF?' But the amazing thing is that I want to go out and explore even without the quest motivating me.  Hell, I want to go out and explore simply because I happen to walk by a place that becomes marked on my map.  The world is simply THAT DAMN WELL MADE.  It's amazing, terrifying, and awe-inspiring, and I could sit here all night talking about it.

Fable 2 is similarly addictive, but in a different way.  Some of you might recall my excitement at the prospect of such a light-hearted game.  Though I've put it down for Fallout 3, and have no plans to return to it until I finish my first run-through of Fallout 3, I'm still thrilled at having such a casual game.  With so much of the gaming industry having been focused on the "hardcore gamer" for the past few years, the emergence of such a satisfying casual game has really taken many by surprise.  Well, perhaps I am wrong.  Mayhap I simply find it more noticeable because I'm now not just a college-aged gaming enthusaist but, instead,  a true gamer-with-job and significantly less time to play.  But it is nice to have a game that does not involve much actual challenge and encourages simply fucking around (sometimes literally).  It is a great breath of fresh air.

Back to the real world, work has been going well.  I've had a really stressful couple of weeks  (as I may have told some of you), but that seems to be behind me for the moment.  Unfortunately, it also has pointed out to me that I may have a problem.  1) I have a fear fo failure and 2) I am much more prone to anxiety that I had previously thought.  In college, if I fucked up then it was just my ass on the line.  In the real world, however, if I fuck up I fuck up a ton of other people.  I'm... still getting used to that.  Well, that and the fact that if I fuck up, it's not the end of the world.  It's amazing how easily I can freak myself out about something only to have my supervisor laugh and say "yeah, that's okay, we should just do XYZ and push beta to thursday and that should work."  The real world is a strange place...

Well, I'm out for now.  Time for some midnight wanderings through the Capital Wastes.  Join me for a Nuka-Cola?  Sorry, no Nuka-Cola Quantums.  I'm saving those to make grenades :D

P.S. Jason, did you ever get yourself a 360?  What games?  Gears of War 2 by any chance?  Trying to resist the purchase but looking for every temptation to do so that I can...

There's something oddly profound about office jobs. It's something that I wouldn't have thought about if I hadn't taken an office job. It doesn't revolve around me feeling like a cog plugged into some infernal entity endlessly assimilating my being into its nefarious plots of... well, what do libraries plot? World enlightenment? Free expression and access to media? Cookies? I don't feel like some peddler of dark tomes, pulsing with the harvested souls of demon kin and dripping with the blood of the damned. I LIKE my job. I raise money for the fucking BRANCH libraries. I can go into one of the local libraries here, look at a small child reading Where The Wild Things Are, and know that his enjoyment of that book is a direct effect of what I do to pay the rent. Instead, it's the MACHINES involved with the process. The machines and their mindblowing CONSUMPTION.

Perhaps I should put this into some context. I just sent a 1000 page document to print. It's for a mailing going out on Monday. Now, said document is LARGE. The shitty little 500mb RAM computer that sent the print job could BARELY RUN THE DOCUMENT. It took 5 minutes just to SEND it to print. Mind you, it's almost 7PM, with NO ONE in the office but me, so it's not exactly peak hours. Even at this time, this lost hour usually sandwiched between actual, productive, compensated work hours and actual, restful, home hours, my computer had to sit, digital maw agape, and contemplate the magnitude of my command. At least its ignorance spares it the knowledge of the 3000 page attachment print-job coming on Monday.

Now, the only sound in the office is the steady drone of the copier/printer contentedly tending to its dark task, metal mandibles constantly drawing in what I only assume to be the remains of the Ent-wives. And I can only stand in awe as it devours ream after ream, moving only to place more offerings of tree folk in its waiting maw.

If there are Jedi out there, this print job must sound like a death metal concert to them.

My fiancee is currently in the kitchen making me pancakes after wasting most of the morning cuddling with me. I hope life continues to be this awesome.

Well, even with work starting on Monday, we can still do this on the weekends :D

You know an angry email's ended on a good note if it ends with "bunny looking at a rancor."

So! I have a plan! It's middle-term, but it's a plan!

So, AM and I move to NYC, get jobs, etc.

In a year's time, we decide if we're happy (with jobs & progression, locations, salaries, etc), then we'll stay in NYC doing our shit. If we're not, however, we'll move up to Rochester and I'll join up with the RCPD!

Meanwhile, over the next year, I'll train up to their physical standards (just need to meet the 1.5 mile run) and take Aikido lessons. At the very least, they'll be good for my health and personal use.


Also, HI! I'm alive. And stuff. Haven't been on LJ much, so sorry if I haven't been keeping up with y'all. I'll try to post more but it's thesis time so time is short.

Much love!

Quoted from my English 216 syllabus: "As an incentive to do really well on this project: the strongest of these projects will be presented at the A&S Symposium at the end of the semester. I'll invite a few of you to give a talk or a poster session about your projects."

I WILL get this. Even if it crushes me, I WILL get this.

Hey, question:

I'm looking to purchase Firefly for Anne Marie and myself. Should I purchase it on iTunes as a digital download or from Amazon.com as a DVD boxed set? It's cheaper as a digital download and I can put it on my iPood but there's something... solid, grounded, concrete about having the physical medium. Then again, DVD's a dead format with Blue-Ray now. Any thoughts? Can I burn it to DVD after I buy it on iTunes?

Sorry but the Format Wars are making me confuzied.

The NY Times ran this article about the response provoked by that "psychologist" lady on Fox who ranted about Mass Effect's "explicit full body sex scenes!!11!!!!1!!" Let's just say that justice tastes good. Somewhat like Teriyaki-flavored Maruchan Yakisoba microwaveable ramen...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/26/arts/television/26mass.html?_r=3&ref=arts&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

This is bullshit. I'm pissed that when gaming finally begins to come into full maturity as a form of art, cinema, and storytelling, people who HAVE NEVER PLAYED THE GAME jump on it as the next form of pornography and societal sexual degradation. I just thank the gaming gods that there are mature gamers out there who engage these fallacious claims with the maturity and sense that the attackers of video games apparently lack.

I mean, seeing women as purely objects of desire? There's an ENTIRE section of the game devoted to addressing this exact societal issue through a race comprised entirely of females that are, according to Liara T'soni (the blue female alien shown in this video), WRONGLY viewed as purely sexual objects! Have sex with any female, picking exactly what you want to happen in bed, and being exposed to full-frontal nudity? I didn't know that a fully-scripted cutscene that shows, at MOST, an ass and the side of a breast constituted a fully interactive sexual adventure. I think the "Have you played the game? HAHAHA no," says it all.

Here's my bottom line. The art of video gaming has evolved from the days of the Sega Master System or the SNES. That's what happened to Atari, Pong, and Pac-Man. They grew up. They matured. They're no longer the quarter arcade games you would play for an hour after school in the local mall. They're now on the cusp of becoming a new form of cinema, a new form of art, a new mode of storytelling. It's not that they've been corrupted for the hormone-saturated male teen mind (fuck, I know more girls than guys who play and love Mass Effect). It's the fact that they're now able to address complex stories, themes, and issues in a way not possible twenty/thirty years ago during the 8- and 16-bit eras. "Experts" need to realize this and actually take a long, hard look at the media genre instead of using it as a scapegoat for poor parenting and societal ills that, in reality, stem from a sexually repressed culture that has fostered through its philosophy and religions an unrealistic view of sexuality, gender identity, and gender power relations.

I roundhouse kicked someone during Martial Arts and knocked the wind out of him. Well not completely but enough to give him pause. Up until the end of last semester I've been unable to throw a proper roundhouse kick and I just got the form down right before orange belt trials. Now, I'm apparently starting to throw ones with power!

Yay!

Also, I'm trying to pick between Safari and Firefox. Safari's faster but its Macified drop down menus don't work well on some sites (like they block text or appear in locations somewhat skewed from their actual locations) while Firefox is just a bit boring. Any preferences?

I just played Halo 3 with a bunch of friends from grade school (and kicked their ASSES)... Halo 3 on Xbox Live is fucking AMAZING!

If only a certain psi_philosopher would SIGN ON!

P.S. We're reading World War Z in one of my classes... fucking KICK ASS!

Um... why is it 75 degrees in December?

I don't understand how I can struggle to be awake in class and not be able to fall asleep at night.

I don't understand how I can be almost too sleepy to climb a flight of stairs up to my room after cuddling Anne Marie to sleep and not be able to fall asleep when I actually get there.

I don't understand how I can continue getting this little sleep and NOT BE ABLE TO FALL ASLEEP AT NIGHT!



This is becoming bullshit. Literally. This is becoming the excrement of an adult male bovine. For the past two days, I've been getting decent sleep. I've gotten about 7 hours of sleep, give or take. Probably a little less. Maybe more like 6.5. Usually, that's enough for me to survive on. However, for some reason, that's not the case anymore. So tonight I'm actually exhausted enough to say "okay, fuck everything, I'm going to sleep" at about 10:15 after I cuddle Anne Marie to sleep. So I set my alarms and all that shit. Then I notice that Kim called. Now, I haven't seen Kim in ages, so I figure that I should call and see what's up, that it was probably something short, and that it wouldn't take too long. We end up talking for an hour. So finally we finish and I climb into bed with Harry Potter 7. I read a chapter, then try to fall asleep.

Aaaand here I am. It's 2AM, I can feel the tiredness, and I can't fall asleep. I have an 8:15, and I can't fall asleep. I just don't understand it. I don't think my conversation with Kim really woke me up. I mean, it made me wake up to the extent that I moved from half-cognizance and probably grunted replies to being moderately able to carry on conversation. But I don't think that woke me too much....

Gah, I don't know what to do anymore. I can't sleep and I get angry and that makes me more awake. I'm off to blow off some steam on Halo, seeing as the adrenaline's already in the system.

Someone tranq me...

So I've been a long time fan of the TV Show Metalocalypse. Naturally, I was intrigued when the band who does the soundtrack, actually an amalgam of metal musicians from different bands, came out with the album of the fictitious Metalocalypse protagonists Dethklok called the Dethalbum. Well, I goinked it on iTunes and ZOMG it's AWESOME! It's a weird mix of dark comedy and solid metal with some truly amazing songs. For example, Detharmonic, a song that Dethklok performed with the London Philharmonic in Metalocalypse (or at least started since the Philharmonic was sliced in half by a haywire laser light show machine), is actually a really beautiful song that combines epic orchestral music with Dethklok's already amazing metal and lyrics about not wanting to pay income tax. It's fucking GENIUS! Anyway, if you guys like metal or comedy (or hatredy even), check it out.

Btw, here's a sample of their lyrics. It's a song called "The Lost Vikings" and it's their attempt at adventure metal.

Riding, and riding, we search across the land
The snow, and wind, has frozen hearts of man
But we ride
We ride

Many days ago we left our homes
With swords to ride into the night
Fighting side by side to destroy our foes
And leave them without life

We stop, consider the land that we travelled
Our map's at home, direction unravelled
But we ride
We ride

Many days ago we left our homes
With swords to ride into the night
Fighting side by side to destroy our foes
And leave them without life

So much time has passed since we left our land
That we've become concerned
And we'll never find the battle
That we should have fought and won

But we won't stop searching

Lost but still we ride
Search until we die

We ride
We ride

Hungry and tired the frigid plain yeilds little
We trudge on further, eating pride and snow that's brittle

We ride
We ride

We come upon a witch who takes us in
To let us share her mighty fire
She asks of us our story and we lie and say
We ride around for hire
She asks us if we'd like to have her map
And points us in some direction
But we are far too proud and strong so we keep silent
And ignore her suggestion

Lost but still we ride
Search until we die
All the fault of pride
The gods weep in the night

Lost but still we ride
Search until we die
All the fault of pride
The gods weep in the night

We ride
We ride