Fixed Perspective

Thankee sai, Blaine, you speak true.

Things like that have been flashing in and out of my head like near-dead light bulbs as of late. Lines from that incredible series that I'm only five books into just keep coming up. I was actually happy that I listened to a lot of the second book on CD, it gave me a voice to read Roland's lines in. And those four words that ended a chapter late in the third novel will forever be a holy fucking shit moment for me; "It was a door."




I guess that reading has been my main hobby this year; I think I've read more books this summer than I have in my whole life, if you want the truth. Usually my take in is about four to five books a year, if that. If that. I would be hard-pressed to get through a 400 pager within a month, really. This year I had a good job that allowed me to get some solid reading time in when things got slow, so I just decided to read. Life wasn't going all that well, anyway, so any other world was exceptionally better than mine. I liked the way the stories were told, and it made me read things differently. More closely, I suppose. Something about the way Stephen King divulges that crucial piece of information in such a way that makes it our little secret instead of this big blaring announcement that something has happened in the story.


What I like most about reading is how personal it gets. Have you ever read a book and somehow felt that you were the only one who has read it? It's just like hearing a good band and then not telling anyone about it because you want that band to be "yours". Same thing with books. There are two reasons why I hardly tell people what I'm reading: the first is that I don't really think they care unless they ask, the second is that I secretly don't want them to oh-so-happen know the book, and then tell me about a part I haven't reached yet--or worse, a part I've passed but didn't pick up on. So for example this Dark Tower series, which is extremely in depth and complex but at the same time quite simple. If someone were to tell me something about what's at the top of the tower, I don't think I'll really care, but when I finally get to that part I'll still feel a little deflated. Wouldn't you? The same wouldn't be true for a movie. Ruin the ending, I don't care. Films are designed to entertain you all the way through, not just some twist ending. That's why Shamalyamanaman's are so crap. With books (and for the sake of content let's just stick with the Dark Tower series), it's more about the ride. It's more about those finite details that make the setting leap out at you. That's why I read. That personal picture we all make of something is what's most special about reading. To me, Roland the gunslinger looks and sounds a certain way. And no, it's not the audio book guy, though I do occasionally think of his raspy voice when I read. I know it's not that voice anymore. What I do know is that it's like no one else's version, and that's enough for me. Roland Deschain, Eddie Dean, Susannah Dean, Jake Chalmers and Oy will always be superstars of fiction in my mind, and what's funny about that is that I was doubtful they ever would be.

Since this is sort of a rebirth for this blog, I figure I should get out of the way a few plans I have in store for it. I'd rather not review stuff anymore, because I find more often than not that I'm merely repeating what I read on the other review sites. So I'm going to stick to the simple what's-on-my-mind kind of ideal, and hopefully spout off something interesting enough to read. No stories, either, but I think I'll still discuss what I'm writing because sometimes I figure things out for myself that way. Also, video games and stuff I learned on the internet (an idea I stole from TV writer Mark Verheiden's blog, which I still read every day).

Speaking of reading every day, I was recently disgusted by the changes to Digg.com and am now without an interesting news site. Sean suggests Reddit, which I'm lead to believe is the biggest rival to digg. Perhaps I'll try it out, but I'm open to suggestions on the subject. I used to spend hours on Digg over the course of the day, now... meh, I'd rather be doing something else. Like reading on the balcony over the sound of light traffic. Last week I read "Suffer the Little Children" by Stephen King. It took twenty minutes, maybe thirty with a few smoke breaks, but it was a nice refreshing horror read. It's from Nightmares and Dreamscapes, a collection of short stories. I just bought it in hardcover for 3 bucks from the Thrift Store, what a steal. I gave my paperback to Sean, I think.

If there's one thing I've learned this year about writing, it's how to properly start a sentence. Okay, maybe not properly, but the change I saw most was that my writing didn't read like it was coming out of a Morse code telegram writer anymore. While reading, I try to take note of different ways to begin a sentence, as I've found myself continually trapped in the whole " " sort of formula. And if I'm feeling gutsy, then I would switch John turned the car around when he saw the body on the shoulder of the road into something like When he saw the body on the shoulder of the road, John turned the car around. The same sentenced, just switched around. It makes it look different but it doesn't really do anything. Sometimes it even makes it sound worse. Take this passage from Stephen King's Wizard and Glass: He went back to his clean up operations. Susan stood back watching him for a while, feeling uneasy and out of sorts with herself. Now that the note had been successfully been passed, she felt an urge to ask Sheemie to give it back, to scratch out what she had written, and to promise to meet him. If only to see those steady blue eyes again, staring back at her. "Now that..." and "If only..." are the two I would like to point out, obviously. The first one in particular is in the present tense within a passive structured narrative. I like that he uses that because it gives that storyteller vibe. Like someone is actually saying this to you instead of making it sound all high and mighty. But starting a sentence with One of them backed away... or These latter cries were heard the next room over... or Blood--along with a few drips of beer--began to roll down his cheeks... are all without the normal subject-does-verb agreement, and all are from a single page of the book mentioned above. One page, man. I think it has a lot to do with imagining the sentence and what it is actually doing. For the blood sentence, I think I would be tempted to write how the person felt the blood pouring down his cheeks, but the problem would be that a) it might not be from his perspective, so how would the perspective-guy know he felt the blood, and b) it requires that to be a feeling felt by the character, which there really isn't time for in a bar fight (scene was in a bar fight) or any other situation where blood might be pouring down your cheeks. Instead, King simply made the blood the subject of the sentence, and to splif with the guy whose face it was on! Reader should know that anyway, right? Worked out nice, I'd say.


I'm stuffed from an amazing thanksgiving dinner, so I think I'll relax and watch a movie.

Until next time, happy reading!

Even before the Falcon D9 fighter could reach the end of its dispatch tube, Morgan already doubted everything the flight simulator had taught her in training. Every angle seemed more defined, every bump was more severe, and the leveling was much more responsive. Not sensitive, but definitely more responsive. The ride through the tube lasted a total of six seconds, but the narrow tunnel made it seem like ages. She knew that he slightest nudge against the control stick could tilt the wing just enough to clip something and end the training run before it even had a chance to start.

    Somewhere else within that six seconds, part of her training came back to her and actually made sense; the lock function. She lifted her thumb and clipped in a small black button. The light that up to this point had been red now turned a bright green. A small screen that monitored her level beeped, almost in satisfaction, when the Falcon panned out right along a center line and stuck there.
The end of the tunnel was coming closer, but Morgan could only tell this by the red neon lighting that lined the top, bottom and sides of the launch tube. They blinked in a forward motion, and then dropped off at a black end. Morgan thought they looked like the individual strands creating the number on a digital alarm clock.
   Before she could have another thought, the Falcon burst out the side of the base ship with a gasping airish sound of the last oxygen escaping into nothing. Though crowded by the seams of the cabins windows, Morgan couldn’t help but stare at the vastness—as well as the emptiness—of space. It was, after all, her first live training-op. She had moments like these in the past, but they were all in the company of others or very short lived. She never had a moment to take it in for herself and now this was it, even if it lasted just a few seconds. Her eyes instinctively looked past the orbiting space stations, of which there were no more than half a dozen in her view, and into the incredible blanket of stars which shined brilliantly in never the same pattern. She understood now, above all other moments with the stars that they were indeed out of reach. Stars had a way of simultaneously being two feet and two billion light years away, depending on the way she thought about it. Now Morgan never felt so far away from them, and it was that thought alone that made her feel like the smallest and most insignificant spec in reality. 
   If her training had come to her in full, Morgan would have remembered to check for her training pilot on HUD ping navigation system; instead she twisted her head to her right and indeed saw her training pilot exiting his own launch tube. Morgan could see his confidence even in his flight, smooth and flawless. He broke slightly to get closer to Morgan’s D9. When he was good and steady, Captain Flynn looked over and gave a tilt of the head.
   “Not what you thought it would be, right?” Flynn said over the wireless, and Morgan could hear the smile in his tone. She could picture that smile very well, especially the way his scruff seemed to act as definition rather than rugged laziness. She figured it was that smile that made her say yes to the early training-op. Maybe not even the smile, maybe it was him. Captain Flynn and his convincing smile.
   “No, definitely not,” Morgan said, momentarily forgetting which button activated the intercom.    “Simulator didn’t prove anything, I just don’t want to be the next example, you know?” She giggled a little but made sure that her thumb was off the intercom button for it.
   “The simulator is a control hub with a video game plugged into it; I haven’t liked that thing since we installed it. Are you still locked in?” He asked, referring to her levelling function.
“Affirmative. Should I let go?” Morgan glanced at the bright green light.
“No, not yet,” Flynn said almost immediately. “In a few seconds, we’ll go together. You’re going to feel a pull when it happens.”
   “A pull?” Morgan asked, tracing back everything she ever learned about fighter pilot training but not even coming across the word. “From where?”
    A few seconds of silence passed, and with each of them Morgan wondered more and more if she had asked a stupid question. Flynn came to her ear again through a mess of static that calmed down after the first word.
   “When you level, the thrusters are constantly working to make sure you stay in the position you locked up in. So when you unlock, the thrusters stop. Once they do, you’ll feel like you’re being pulled in a direction. Bottom line is to keep moving forward to maintain level.”
Morgan nodded, half-knowing that no one was there to see it. “Unlock then go, roger that.” It was her first time saying something like that, and she smiled when she did.
   “On my mark…” Flynn uttered, “three… two… one… mark.”
Morgan clipped off the level lock and instantly began twisting to the right. If Flynn hadn’t already been slightly in front of her, she probably wouldn’t have noticed against the blackness. She gave the rear thrusters rocket a push, and it reacted like a sensitive gas pedal in a car, pushing her back in her seat with inertia.
   “Well done,” Flynn said as they cruised along together, banking slightly to their right and bringing into view the tail end of their base ship and putting out of view the orbiting space stations, which Morgan could now identify as botanical hubs. “So from here on out, it’s like that video game in the simulator.”
   “I thought you hated the simulator?” Morgan asked. As she looked to her right at Flynn’s D9, she could see the projectile hatches popping open, then sliding out to the side to make room for an over-sized launcher that looked too big to be a turret and too small to be a cannon.
   “I never said different,” he said, “but if you can simplify it down to a point and click interface, you’re sittin’ pretty. Copy that?”
   “Copy that, Captain.”
   “Now get in front of me a little, arm up.” As it came through the intercom, Flynn was already dropping behind Morgan’s field of view, but he wasn’t far off according to her HUV.
    The jitters had passed, mostly. That much she knew. Flynn was behind her and she was able at least momentarily regain some of her composure.
   “I’m going to fire out some drones. They’re going to jet out several clicks, acquire you as a target, and attack. They can’t kill ya but they can bang you up something good. I don’t have turrets on this Falcon, so I can’t help you. And even if I could, I wouldn’t.” He laughed. Morgan smiled. “Avoid, gain advantage, and eliminate, copy that?”
   Standard level 3 training-op, Morgan thought, something you’ve aced a million times… in a video game. She took in a breath, and started feeling the confidence she had in her hands not forty seconds before drip away.
   “Private Taul, do you copy?” Flynn repeated, and Morgan was all there again.
   “Copy. Fire when ready.”
    Without any hesitation or confirmation, Morgan saw Flynn release three drones from both of the oversized launchers, two from the right and one from the left. They popped out with a thunk, and then ignited their own thrusters and sped off into the distance.
Morgan couldn’t have followed them if she tried, they were moving almost four times her speed. She could, however, track them both visually as well as with her HUV, where the three drones appeared as blinking red Xs. She watched as the drones turned and changed direction, blazing their way toward her in a triangle.
   She opened fire. The first few shots were off target by an embarrassingly large margin, but she corrected almost perfectly in the ones that came after and obliterated two of the drones. They halted and exploded in a small flash that was gone almost as soon as it was there.
   The third drone she lost in those flashes, and for a second her heart was still with anticipation and fear, and then resumed its rhythm as Morgan spotted the third drone as it fired at her. The blue beams it shot were weak, that she could tell right away, but they were the equivalent of being hit with a hammer through a phonebook. She rattled in her seat as three streams of blue connected with the aft wing, letting out a scream she tried to stuff back down her throat.
   “You bitch!” She yelled, and somewhere in the back of her mind she thought of what Flynn might say if he heard that.
    Morgan and the drone blazed past each other, and Morgan pulled a huge file out of her training and commanded her D9 into a somersault and boosted her thrusters toward the drone who was now going the same direction as she. She fired as it started making its turn.
    Nothing.
   She looked to aft and saw the turret sparking off shards of light that hurt her eyes. She averted them and was met with a monitor that portrayed her wings as two red flashing problems.
   “Flynn, nothing’s working!” She yelled into the intercom. “Repeat, Flynn, nothing—ah!” Sparks flew on the inside of the cabin, for a split second shrouding her in bright capsules of fire. After the somersault she had decelerated considerably, and was now at relative cruising speed. She shoved the stick forward.  Nothing. She gasped, staring at the drone burrowing toward her. It was going to smash right into her.  This was going to be one of those accidents. She was going to be the next example. Flynn was in a miming panic, motioning something with his hands and mouthing words she couldn’t hear. She couldn’t figure it out, she was frozen. She wouldn’t know what he was saying if he yelled it in her ear.
    The drone was coming, it wasn’t stopping. They weren’t meant to stop, just be stopped. And the only thing that was going to stop it now was the window of her cabin. Then it occurred to her, the pull. She could even see it in Flynn’s silent words. The pull.
    She clipped in the levelling button, felt a jolt of steadiness, then unclipped the button. Her D9 twisted with the pull, but Morgan knew it wasn’t going to be enough, the drone would clip her wing at least.
    And it did.
    The drone bounced off the underside of Morgan’s wing and spun off and away, but the damage was enough to rupture its casing. The drone bled a red blaze and then vanished into a flash.
    Morgan sat there stunned for a few seconds, and then giggled.
  “Nice, Mo, smooth,” she said to herself, and burst out laughing.
    Flynn’s D9 ascended into view. He was giving a thumbs up, which Morgan as delighted to return. He held out his hand as if to ask her to get ready. Morgan watched Flynn’s thrusters push him forward into her, and when their ships intertwined, they moved as one back to the base ship.
   This must be the push, Morgan thought, and thanked Captain Flynn with her best impression of his convincing, safe smile.

I've never read a book over 700 pages in length. I came close a couple times with Bag of Bones, Dreamcatcher, and Duma Key, but on the whole I try to stick to the smaller books. Sometimes I think it has something to do with me holding the unabridged and uncut paperback copy of The Stand somewhere back in the fifth grade. Wait, was it uncut back then? Either way, the book was massive, and not being much of a reader back then, I think I only got through about half when I gave up. The bible-thin pages were enough to turn a lot of people away, to be honest. Like I demonstrated at a recent game-session with some friends, opening up the first pages to a beast of a novel is like standing at sea level with your head tilted up in a vain attempt to see the top of K2.

I read Under the Dome in stages. Seasons, if you will. Scribbled in the inside of the hardcover is a Christmas note from my mother, dated 2009. I don't think I read much of it right away, maybe the first few chapters to see what it was like, but the thinness in my left hand verses the weight in my right as I held the book was all the discouragement I needed. Later in 2010, I picked it up again and trucked through to about the four hundredth page. It was good. Very good. Right away it was clear that any similarity to the Simpsons Movie was almost non-existent. To think that I was actually afraid of that becoming a problem seems almost laughable now.

Through the reading, I kept thinking of the title. Under the Dome. It really said a lot more than those three words. Lately I've started to think more about what the story is about than what's in the story. Obviously not all the time, but sometimes seeing the forest instead of the trees can be helpful. I found myself always wanting to know what the people outside the Dome were doing. In the end I was quite glad not knowing about that kind of thing, and I reminded myself of that each time I thought of the title.

For a 1100 page monstrosity, the book had surprisingly little fat. Sure, some of the scenes could have been left out, particularity one of the town's riots and maybe a few confrontations, but even then it would be a hard thing to accomplish without stretching the tale too thin. Without re-telling the plot, the story revolves around the town under the Dome, mainly Dale "Barbie" Barbara and Big Jim Rennie, who are the protagonist and the antagonist, respectfully. Rennie is probably the only one in town who likes the Dome, as it's the only thing helping him strengthen his dictorial stranglehold on the town. As hearts sink and the body count rises, it's mostly up to a handful of townsfolk (the ones who can see through Rennie's beloved Christian demeanor) to put an end to it.

But what about the Dome? There was still this thing, this enormous invisible barrier between them and the outside world. What I liked about this part of the book was the mystery. The Dome is explained. Not completely, but it's explained. And take it from a guy who just closed the back cover not forty minutes ago; it's not what you think it is. Being a Lost fan, I'm always longing for a good sci-fi enigma, and this one didn't disappoint. Physically, we get a good sense of what the Dome is. Spray water at it from one side, a fine mist comes out the other. It's not air-tight, in other words, but it's damn close. Soon the environment takes a toll, and the Dome started picking up the fine film of life: pollen, smoke, pollution. Eventually, the stars and moon have a pinkish hue to them as they hang in the night sky. The mental side of it, or rather the rational side, is almost vacant. Almost. Personally, I don't mind, but there were a lot who wanted to know why the Dome was brought down, and where it came from. You get some answers, but like any good Lost episode we are left with that feeling of I get it... sort of. Maybe that`s just me.

I'm only a book and 50 pages into the Dark Tower series, but every time a number came up it always seemed to add to 19. How cool is that for all you DT junkies? I'm sure there is a lot more than just numbers lying around, as King's non-DT novels all seem to encompass at least a little from Roland's dreary wasteland.

I enjoyed my time with this book, and it's the first time I've ever read anything so late into the night. Like that anticipation we all felt before the finale of Battlestar Galactica, or that wrenching and twisting sensation in our bellies as we were about to find out who was in the Lost coffin, Under the Dome chimes in with a whole new feeling of awe. It really is that good.

A week with no posts, wow. I think we've all either been working or too busy playing Call of Duty to bother writing about TV shows. And besides, there was no Lost this week.

I ended up staying up until 3:30am playing that game with Rhee last night, ending with a match on Rust where I got a lucky CP and tore shit up as the Chopper Gunner. With Rust being such a small map, damn, that was a nice 30 seconds. Still, 3:30am rolls around and it's at that point where I remember that there was a new episode of The Simpsons that night.

Apparently Fox has been doing a week of musical themed programming called "Fox Rocks", but I had no idea when I sat down to watch--so you can imagine my surprise when the Kesha song "Tik Tok" replaced the usual Simpsons intro. The song was done with a unique music video that was pretty much the same as the regular one, except they add more scenes and the characters are singing the song. I gotta admit, at first I was a little peeved, thinking that this was an actual change, but it didn't take long for that to wear off. I love when the creators of the show care enough to go out and do something fun like that.

Anyway, the episode was my favourite of this season, and lately it feels like I say that after every new episode. I like new stuff, and since The Simpsons has lasted so long I'm always intrigued as to how they are going to make the episode fresh and not just have some re-hashed idea. I bet that sometimes they mask it so well, we wouldn't even know anyway. This one deals with that "big brother" aspect of modern surveillance after Homer leaves an unattended bag (with plutonium inside) at a train station, the town freaks out (in classic Simpsons style) and installs a similar surveillance system to Great Britain's, where virtually every spot in town is being watched over by concerned citizens, namely Ned. I use the word "virtually" for a reason, as Bart soon discovers a blind spot to the cameras and he and Homer open up a party zone to get away from the constant nagging of the goodie neighbour.

Meanwhile, Lisa is being ridiculed for her blonde hair at school. It made me realize that, yeah, the Simpson kids do have blonde hair. I guess I just never thought of it that way. Lisa ends up dying it brown to prove  point, but I felt a little shortchanged here. The Simpsons writers have a tendency to sell their B-story short if the A-story is strong enough to be funny and smart. In this case, I think Lisa should have had to do something more before she gives way to the lie of her new hair colour, but instead she does it during her first appearance with it. This almost makes it obvious that part of her story was cut to make room for the other one.

It made me laugh, and that was the most important part. It was the part that made me okay with having to stay up until 4:30am to watch the episode. I went to bed almost giggling in my sleep at some of Lisa's one-liners from the second act, and Homer's logic in the first. Looking forward to next week's, but not as much as Lost and Parks and Recreation.

While Lisa has had a few good B-stories ("Boy Meets Curl" and "Thursdays with Abie" come to mind here), the 21st season of The Simpsons hasn't really focused an episode primarily on the bright 2nd grader until Sunday's "The Squirt and the Whale". One of the more emotional tales, this one can be hailed as this year's environmental awareness episode. I don't even say that in a negative way, one of my favourite episodes of Futurama is "The Birdbot of Ice-Catraz", which actually deals with a very sticky plot in which baby penguins need to be hunted in order to save the species. The benefit of having Lisa deal with one of these types of situations is her youth. While she's smart enough to ask the right questions and come to logical conclusions, she's still a little girl who can get in over her head. 

In a likely attempt to focus on the emotional ties that occur in the latter half of the episode, the first act was chalk full of jokes and gags that once again find a way to be hilarious while still being relevant to the scene. Even the first scene, which begins with a random trailer for probably the stupidest movie in the world "Tic-Tac-Toe: X v. O", still ties in the plot by having Homer rip the plugs out of the wall before giving a rant about the inflated Hydro bill. So, off to the environmental fair to find a new way to power their home. I love when the Simpsons go to fairs, expos or carinivals, like in "The Twisted World of Marge Simpson" where she attended the Franchise Expo, some of the booths were so odd, like the picture straightener. This has a lot of the same while being completely different, my particular favourite being the confrontation between the Switchgrass Power and the Corn Ethanol tables--gotta love science fights. The Simpsons settle on wind power, and erect a enormous fan in their backyard. It even makes their power meter run backward.

The whale story crops up in the second act when Bart and Lisa go around town to see what kind of damage the wind storm did to the town (you can imagine what happened to the backyard fan). They trek down to the beach to find the beached whale. I like what happens here, where Lisa is overthrown with emotion and Bart is dancing around the blow hole, because it separates the two's different characters. I know it's a small detail, but its things like this that ground the characters in their proper emotional categories. Anyway, the episode is unique in that the B-story and A-story are not interwoven, but that's because they don't happen at the same time. The fan story and the whale story are the only two things happening, it's a narrative device that's hardly used, especially in 20-minute episodic comedies.

I was curious to see how they were going to deal with the disposal of the beached whale, because that can be something of a problem when the PETA gets involved--but I thought they did a good job. They don't make a joke out of it, but they still overlay the tragic inevitability with a nice veil of humour. Chief Wiggum again chimes in with a couple great one-liners.

I didn't much like the climb into the dramatic ending, where sharks and whales sort of duke it out. However, they did raise a good point when Homer tries to save the whales by killing the sharks by explaining the trade off between the two innocent creatures. If Homer did harpoon a shark, it would have sent the whole episode into that dreaded "counter-productive" territory.

On the whole, this episode stands out from the rest of the season not only for its environmental message, but also the writers ability to keep the same "Simpsons" spin on each and every issue addressed.

8.5/10

Lately I've found my interest in my current rotation of games is puttering to a slow irking halt, so I was thankful for Steam's Midweek Madness to include a 75% price drop on a game called Trine. For five bucks, I figured I'd be a fool not to get it. The graphics, based on the screenshots, looked alright, and I've been missing World of Warcraft now that a few friends have started playing again--Trine seemed like a logical baby step for the venture back into the fantasy world.

I started playing Trine at 2:30am in the haze of a half awake delerium, but it held my interest for a good hour or so before my body cracked the whip on me and I sauntered off to bed. I'll admit though, the intro was a great way to ease a new player like me into the game. The graphics are crisp, the controls are responsive and simple, and the overall feel is quite smooth. Basically, the story starts off with a thief entering this shrine to steal this crystal, but when she touches it, it freezes her in place. This same thing happens to a knight and a wizard (though they come to the crystal for different reasons), and once all three of them are there, they disappear. The intro lets you play as each of these characters as they get to the crystal, giving you a crash course in the character's specific abilities. The Knight can fight with the sword and block with the shield, the Thief can use a cool hookshot thing and fire a bow, and the Wizard can levitate objects, and create a block if you draw a square with your mouse (lol?). So it's like a tank, dps, and... mage, I guess, since you collect health from dead skellies.

The game has a Little Big Planet feel to it, mostly because of the way the terrain reacts to nudges and other forces your characters posses--but it serves as a nice touch when you're looking for an alternative route through a certain area. While there's always a way to get through, there is not necessarily a way for each of the three to get through. An example would be a time where I needed to make a jump as the Thief, create a block to stand on with the Wizard, then jump over as the Knight because there was enemies on the other edge. The game hinges on these sorts of obstacles instead of sending wave after wave of enemy at you while you jump your way to the other end of the side scrolling scenery.

Speaking of, I was really taken in by the graphics. The scenery is in 3D, sometimes obscuring my view but never at key times. There's a lot of nice detail to it, like little bugs flying from flower to flower, pollen reacting to being disturbed, even the sound gets more intense as a tree passes in the forefront.

Though I haven't played through the whole thing, I've played enough to know that I'll eventually want to get there. The narration overlays the gameplay, which at times makes it feel like I'm playing a extremely cool picture book. The story is admittedly simple, but I wasn't really expecting much. Besides, the amount I got out of this game for the price I paid is enough to trump any criticism. Okay, well the Knight's voice is pretty annoying. But seriously, I paid 6 bucks for some McDonalds last night and all I got from that was a depressing and greasy feeling in my stomach.

On a final note, the game has a multiplayer portion that I have yet to sample, so get on Steam and spend 5 bucks!

The great thing about The Simpsons is how the show is able to reinvent itself along with the times. One of the biggest changes I've seen recently is how the plots have gone from situations that we'd like to see, to situations that we haven't thought of. Since the HD revolution half way through season 20, the Simpsons universe has been modernized. More often now do we see cell phones, hand held games, HD televisions than we ever did when the definition was still *sigh* standard.

While you can't run a show for twenty years without repeating yourself, you can still find ways to tell the same stories with different characters and outcomes. Just as well, I really have enjoyed the writers efforts to keep the stories interesting to people by means other than storytelling--stuff like commentary on recent events, social fopas and the like. Tonight's episode, "Chief of Hearts" offers a stellar performance from unexpected characters while putting a new wardrobe on a well aged story.

The A-story is the strongest, and centers around a friendship between Chief Wiggum and Homer after our hero offers the Chief a free sandwich. I'll admit, I've made friends with people for lesser things, so I guess I can sympathize. I was hyping this episode in my mind these past few days because I've been finding a lot of the recent Chief Wiggum lines to be hilariously dumb, and I feverishly dig that backward and sideways logic that is bounding about the comedy world these days.

I didn't expect Wiggum getting shot, and it's a lot of the reason why I enjoyed this story. The writers, Carolyn Omine and William Wright, pushed the envelope a little and it actually worked out in the story instead of just being a quick fix after the act break. Wiggum falls into a coma and thus begins the whole guilt trip which eventually pushes Homer to a breaking point, balancing out the status quo once again.

Bart fills the rest of the episode with a less than impressive (I've used that phrase like three times today) B-story where he gets addicted to a combination of Pokemon and Digimon. Marge gets the wrong impression from Bart's secrecy and thinks he's selling drugs. So, yeah, another "drugs aren't for selling" campaign. It wasn't really that heavy, though, and served more as a Mother/Son bonding opportunity than it did social commentary. Still, the Homer/Chief story took up most of the episode and it was strong enough to keep the episode together.

There's a scene with Otto where he walks into the Principal's office and Skinner is dressed like a syringe, to which Otto delivers a creeped-out "...You." that made me laugh out loud. The random humour throughout the Simpsons is thankfully well weaved into the plot, and its that alone that makes it funnier than a cut-away gag. One of my favourite funnies is where Wiggum fires off a few rounds as he hobbles out of Moe's Bar a sobbing mess. Quite the moment.

6/10

These last two weeks have been good and bad. I got a new job, which I still haven't decided whether I should put it in the good pile or the bad one. The job is the same as last time, but it has new management so things might be better than they were before. I spent the last two weeks doing basically zip, and I loved each day of it. All my TV-watching habits were expelled out of my system in a wonderful week of nothing. This is the last day of this wonderfulness, so I thought I would start to get back on track.

I started watching Dexter a few years ago, mostly because I enjoyed Michael C. Hall's narration and the overall delicate style of such a ruggedly brutal show, but the solidity of the show comes directly from the evolution of Dexter's mind. From the first season to now, it's clear that things have changed for him. He has a family, is married, and has a thousand more responsibilities than he can usually handle. It's hard to make a sociopath grow as a character, in fact it's probably one of the most difficult character traits to try to develop. The main device of being a sociopath is not being able to register emotions. Imagine having to act as a character who has literally zero emotions (okay, that's changed a little too), but also has to fake emotions to make himself seem real. That's gotta be tough.

While I stopped watching mainly because there were no new episodes at the time I finished the second season, I think a lot of it had to do with finding a way to make a better season than that one. Season two was incredible in a million different ways. Doakes and Lila were perfect foils for Dexter, and their parts in the second season will always be some of the best conflicts in the Dexter saga.

Sadly, the third season was a major disappointment for me. Jimmy Smits plays the main antagonist, and I gotta say that I just didn't like looking at this guy's face. I didn't believe him when he was angry, and had no sympathy for him when he was sad, and whatever was in between wasn't so great either. I hate watching shows where a character that you start of not liking (not because he's an antagonist, but just because the character doesn't work) becomes one of the main people in the show. I really wished they dealt with him better than they did.

It wasn't just that, though, it was the general story. For the first time, Dexter let's someone into his personal world. This surprised me in its delivery more than its content. It felt like it happened way too fast, like I didn't know Miguel Prado well enough to have him actually take part in Dexter's killings. Then by the end, it doesn't really feel like a logical resolution to everything. Anti-climactic, if anything.

Truth is, I didn't even want to watch the fourth season. I had about six days left in my amazing week of nothing before I had to start working again, and I wasn't really up for wasting another couple days on a eventual waste of time. I did it anyway because of the raving reviews I've read on the fourth season. Thankfully, they were right. The fourth season had an amazing first few episodes, setting in motion the main plotlines for the entire series in brutal and shocking ways.

John Lithgow gives an amazing performance as the Trinity killer. Like a lot of other people, I laughed when I heard he was going to play a crazy murderer, but that's because I've really only seen him on 3rd Rock from the Sun and playing his guitar for kids on the Treehouse Network. As crazy as the guy gets, the scene I remember the most is one of the first ones we see him in where he murders a woman in a bathtub. Creepy shit, and I get shocks of pain thinking about that cut he makes on the ephemeral artery. Ick.

Though I've given away a few spoilers so far in this post, I refuse to give away the ending. The last 50 seconds of 'The Getaway" are a complete twist, throwing the series into a whole new direction. They even made several different endings as to not let a leak be anywhere near reliable.

The series doesn't pick up again until next September, so we have a while yet until we get to see how Dexter deals with his new predicament. In the coming weeks, expect to see more posts. Sunday's include a talk about the new Simpsons episode, Monday's will have a review of the latest House M.D., as well as a blurb on the new Parks and Recreation episodes that start airing again on the 29th of this month.

Recently I've taken a great liking to House M.D., which is actually surprising since I swore off watching the show ever again after the non-consequential sub-story with David Morse. I love the way he portrayed the detective investigating House's illegal Vicodin prescriptions, but the story was negated right at the point where a positive change could have happened. That was season 3, and season 4 was the 16- episode writer's strike season, complete with a new diagnostic team I really didn't have any interest in getting to know. That, combined with the formulaic progression for each episode, was enough to put me off the show for a while.

What pulled me back was the characters. Aside from house, I was curious to see the ways that Dr. Wilson would grow, and he manages to seamlessly weave his way in by the end of season 4 as the vessel for one of the main plot points. The mass job interview conducted by House to find a new medical team was also a joy to watch. The crowning glory of the season was the finale, which was a unique adventure into the way that House's mind solves puzzles, and the risks he takes to get an upper hand.

It was enough to pull me into watching season 5. The interesting thing I found about my experience with these two seasons is that I was a lot less interested in season 5 as I went through the first half or so. It lacked any major issues that could last longer than two episodes. The character development was very good, which in retrospect was the underlining issue. The fifth season was about people. The patients began to have a more profound effect on the main characters, and often caused them to change their minds completely.

House had a lot of moments where he shows true compassion, regret, or fear, which is a major change for the careless jerk that he usually is. Scenes with he and Wilson, even if they are only for a few seconds and overlaid with music, are among the best in the season.

The episodes took an unexpected change at a excellent time, having House hallucinate a dead character from season 4 right at the end of a rather uplifting episode. It really set a tone for the remaining episode, delving deeper into House's mind. As the hallucinations become more vivid, House takes another great risk to fix himself. Though he believes it to work, the last few episodes end up being one big hallucination, which amounts to an incredible twist ending that takes place in Cuddy's office. In that moment, Hugh Laurie shows us his best acting under the role of Dr. House, conveying several emotions at once. His shock over the uncertainty of his own life was completely believable.

The season ends with House being admitted into a mental institution after a silent goodbye from Dr. Wilson. The scene has a wonderful orchestrated version of The Rolling Stones' "As Tears Go By" playing as House hobbles toward the front door before the season cuts to black for the final time.

The sixth season started with a 90-minute episode that began with a completely new intro and song. The Radiohead tune "No Surprises" played as we are shown scenes of House in the institution that are actually rather hard to watch. Particularly one moment where House screams for help while banging on the door of his padded room.

The episode plays like a movie, not giving us any sign of his old co-workers (sans a two-minute call to Wilson), and providing us with an incredible new cast of characters. What's really amazing about it is the way it still retained the whole House formula, which I've actually taken a liking to, while not diving into medical jargon or what have you. The epiphany House gets comes in a much different way than usual, but it still makes for a great conclusion to a wonderful episode.

So what are the main problems I've heard people have about Final Fantasy XIII, or 13 if you can't count like a Roman. Well there's five main problems I can think of off hand, some of which kind of bleed together and they are as follows:

1) The story is just too linear.
2) The voice acting can be corny (more so in some characters than others).
3) The characters themselves aren't the freshest of personalities
4) The story lacks originality.
5) All I do is auto attack in the battle system

Alright, well I'm going to try to make this as spoiler free as possible so here it goes.


1) Firstly with the story. I understand we all want some freedom but I haven't seen people complain about having so little of it since Braveheart. Yes the maps tend to be long corridors with minor offshoots; you catch on quick that anything that strays from the main path is likely to hold a treasure sphere (why some asshole is hiding stuff in a big inviting globe that has no combination lock is beyond me but nonetheless that's how it works and I thank him for his ignorance or charity, whichever it may be). As you move down each corridor you inevitably come to an event marker which progresses the story in some way and then you move onto the next corridor, rinse, lather and repeat. I understand this sounds a tad limiting/repetitive and people with a strong fear of hallways probably hate this but I find free world games tend to be a little overwhelming. When I have an gigantic world map I want to explore it, I put story progression on the back burners and make sure I've explored every nook and cranny of the available map, do all side quests available and get some power leveling in for good measure so I feel like {more of} a god. What this leaves me with is 5 minutes of story progression and an hour of exploration/grinding, then another 5 minutes of story and more exploration/grinding; by the end I'm quite detached from the story and I usually end up moving another another game before I reach the end.

So really is it a big deal that we're stuck on a path here? You get a dose of fighting followed by a little story, there's save points everywhere so you don't have to worry about time management while you play. There's no more searching vast cities for some loser hiding in a back alley behind a crate that's holding the valuable piece of information you need to progress the story. The game still offers you a large free range area for side quests later in the game so really unless you're looking for an MMORPG where you're going to put 100s of hours into it exploring a vast world, just try to enjoy the ride.

2) The voice acting. I don't think the voice acting is that bad at all, at least not compared to the average. Some reactions/comments of characters are over the top or a bit hard to believe but then again the main party is meant to be a varying range of personalities. I mean there's plenty of people in real life I wish had better voice actors so to speak because the things they say just piss me off or their voices annoy me. I guess the point I'm trying to make is maybe it's realistic to have some angsty tween and an overly optimistic young woman in the party even if you find them annoying or don't totally understand why they said what they did. If everyone keeps complaining characters aren't sounding accurate or cool enough you're going to get any character under 20 being voiced by Haley Joel Osment and/or Dakota Fanning and anyone over 20 being voiced by Christian Bale (that includes female characters). I can't end this without admitting that yes sometimes voice acting in video games (including this one) can sometimes pull me right out of the story with an annoying quote or comment but then I remind myself I'm playing a JRPG, I should know by now what I'm getting into.

3) The characters lack fresh personalities. No shit, there aren't any new ones unless you want the protagonist to be an 80 year old woman with diabetes that battles a dark army of sugary foods with new and more powerful diabetes magi...medication. Yes the personalities are all stock now, as are the character models, character arcs, the conflicts, and the plot twists. This isn't just with video games it's with movies and television too. There are certain defined genres and each has a few formulaic plots where you just change or rearrange minor details. Back in reference to gaming we're always going to get some dark character with a cryptic and slowly revealed past that somehow ties to the current story, we're always going to have some over the top happy bastard/bitch, some character that would be really cool if not for some fatal annoying aesthetic flaw, a girl that shows off her breasts but has no hint of sexuality in her personality. If you keep asking for something new you're going to get a manic depressive accountant with one testicle and a past of tax fraud and I don't think anyone wants that.

4) The story lacks originality. D'uh. I think I covered this with complaint #3. I don't think Final Fantasy XIII is that unoriginal but it's not remarkably groundbreaking either. I haven't seen a fresh story premise since PS1 or maybe PS2 era consoles. People keep buying movie tickets to the same stories in Hollywood; you're going to keep getting the same in video games too. Really though I think what a lot of people mean when they say Final Fantasy XIII isn't very original with the story is that it's not Final Fantasy VII's story. I'm sorry but I think if the game designers focus on creating RPGs with Semi-Industrial/Magic based storylines we're just going to ruin the memory of Final Fantasy VII or at least cheapen it.

5) All you do in FFXIII battles is auto attack. Yep that's pretty well true. I'm a big fan of traditional turn based battles but really they haven't changed that much in this game. Instead of the focus being on entering commands (which you can still do manually if you want) the focus is on entering battle strategies constantly. Now characters are versatile in their roles and you constantly need them to switch to another one to get through the battle safely...are you really upset that the AI selects Firaga for you rather than you casting it yourself. Either way people are going to complain about battle systems...it's either the same thing and it lacks creativity or they change something and the game designers have ruined it by going away from what works best. WHAT DO YOU WANT!?

What I've come to understand is that people are always going to complain about things and I don't even think they know why half the time; sometimes it seems like people complain just so they can find someone else that agrees so they can feel like they belong; my advice would be to be careful with your complaining. I tend to listen to people that calmly list pros and cons but when people get whiny/preachy/outraged I lose interest/respect even if I would have otherwise agreed with their opinion.