The name of the game is...

...apparently drama. Ok so everyone by now knows I moved back from Japan. No big deal. The only thing I left behind was my 40 inch Sony LCD TV which I loved more than anything. The plan was to sell it to my good friend Kyle but since he was moving at the end of the summer semester an agreement was made between him and my Ex-roommate to keep it at the apartment until that time so that he wouldn't have to move it twice. Simple right? WRONG!

So just the other day I was thinking to myself how poor I was and how I should go ahead and stop being lazy and give Kyle the information to wire me the money. Another reason for doing this was because the internet was dropping hints that Jon (the ex-roommate) would be moving soon. Upon contact with Kyle I found out that Jon was demanding the money from Kyle for compensation.

Um... what?

With all the sudden confusing, I then send Jon a friendly yet questioning message on Facebook. Here's what the emails looked like...





So yeah... wtf? More to follow...

Death from above...

So yesterday I was woken up to the sound of flapping wings and loud tearing noises. I could only assume that this meant the birds in Japan had rebelled against the Japanese and was taking it back for their lord and savior Big Bird.

I apologize to Amy Luna because she already knows this story and so instead of being forced to read nothing, she is forced to read things that she already knows.

First to understand what led to this rebellion, we must first understand the events leading up to that faithful day. For the last couple of weeks, Jill, Jon's girlfriend had been visiting. The strange thing about people, is how they act when they are trying to impress others. For example, because she was visiting, Jon chose to foregos his usual dietary habits and act like he cooked all the time. Of course to the untrained eye of this equally clueless woman, time wasted inefficiently cutting vegetables and dirtying countless dishes in the process seemed to correlate to "I am a master chef". So while she was here the trash bags in our kitchen become increasingly filled with vegetables, leftover food, meat clippings and egg shells.

Over this past weekend, Jon had to film a project for one of his classes so since that day was not a trash day, he decided it was a good idea to grab all the trash and put it on the balcony. The movie was shot, and two days later the trash was still on the balcony. Now on this day is the day that the coup occurred.

Now in our story we flash forward to when I get out of bed to use the restroom, one of my many morning rituals. Upon exiting the restroom, I notice in our door's mail slot a piece of paper that can best be paraphrased as saying, "Hey, get your trash off the balcony. Everyone in Japan can smell your shit and the birds are attracted to it and spilling it on the streets yo".

Immediately after reading this last "yo" I grabbed a trash bag and ran to the balcony (Jon's side) to see the apocalypse which is the feeding of an army of birds. After scaring them away I proceeded to clean up the balcony thus cutting off supply routes to the resistance and ending the day of horror.

But our story does not end at this series of events. You see, war changes people. It changes the landscape of the earth. It changes the street underneath our balcony... Now I figured it was not my responsibility to clean up the small mess from the street. I had done my part cleaning the balcony and it was Jon who should clean the rest since it was his fault. Basically to make a long story short, he didn't even know that there was a mess on the street. Finally about an hour ago a sweet ol' Japanese lady came barging into our apartment to "very nicely" tell Jon to clean up the trash which he then did. She even then later came back with a home-made sign that she made specific to our dietary habits. (Monday-ramen cups... Thursday-beer cans...).

The moral of the story is 1)Japanese birds are not something to joke about, and 2) the shame projected onto you by a Japanese old lady is something no man should ever experience.

Imsomnia...

So I thought I was tired, but in fact, just had a headache. So continues day 9 of "erratic sleeping".

During the time spent not sleeping today, I decided to take the advice of a friend a watch the movie "The Mist". All I can really say about it is, watch it. NOW. It is a great movie and left me feeling accomplished as a movie viewer. From what I'm about to tell you now, promise me that you wont get turned off from the movie. Promise? Well, it was kind of based of a Stephen King book. Wait, where are you going? Don't run away! If it helps, its not exactly the story he wrote and the directer made his own ending so its not so lame anymore.

To all the people that actually like Stephen King as a writer, I do apologize.

It's really hard to talk about the movie, without... well, talking about the movie so I'll let you go off to your local video store, or library, or even a certain man I like to call E. Lee Gall.

Late night...

So it's 4:32 AM in Tokyo, and man do I wish I could go to sleep. I seem to have this problem going to sleep where I'll lay down and then all of a sudden I'll get distracted by something and then eventually be wide awake. I think to myself, "why waste your time trying to fall asleep when you could be multi-tasking and getting things accomplished while you're waiting to get tired and pass out only to wake up in a puddle of drool". Okay, so maybe I don't actually think all that, but the part about getting things done instead of wasting time sounds about right.

Since I've been getting pissed off at Dead Rising, I decided to switch things up and play Conan. Think of all those movies from the '80's with Arnold the Governator. Now forget about everything related to that except the barbarian part. That's the game we're talking about, except more nudity. See the picture? Imagine the other side of the woman he's trying to free. Let's just say she's got a big "personality".

Basically the game consists of Conan, being the barbarian that he is, knocking over some statue expecting to find treasure and instead passing out and waking up only to find all his armor missing only to be stolen by a powerful black wizard guy that's hell bent on taking over the world and in the process gave your armor to all these giant monsters that can't even wear them anyway yet they somehow give them magical powers. Wow, that last sentence is wrong on so many levels... Did I mention that the wizard guy gave magical powers to all these pieces of armor? You know, if I was the bad guy in this story I would have just FORGOT ABOUT THE ARMOR and infused magical power goodness in the monsters. That way, if they happened to lose to lets say... A FUCKING BARBARIAN, you wouldn't have to worry about said Barbarian traipsing (that's walking around, but more ghei) around cutting up your minions with added magical raping powers. But hey, that's just me...

In other news, or lack thereof, there are officially no good shows on TV. Sure I have Lost, but that's every Friday (Tokyo, remember?) and in between then I have "picking my nose" time. Seeing as how I use the internet to ... *cough* download anything I want, I decided to watch whatever the hell is on. So for the last couple of weeks I had taken it upon myself to watch new episodes of The Simpsons and recently King of the Hill. The Simpsons is pretty bad. I guess it's one of those shows they should have just stopped along time ago. They are trying way too hard on these new ones. Seeing as how I'm from Texas, King of the Hill doesn't really get old. I think the format is just too simple and they've got too many angles to play before it gets stale.

I unexpectedly heard some good TV related news today. I heard from a reliable source (friend who knows how to use the internet...) that Prison Break was picked up for a new season.
In case you haven't been watching it, season 3 was cut short due to the writer's strike and it was looking like it was being canceled after this season. So if you haven't watched it, then get in gear and download all the episodes. Legally of course... (I'm looking at you Amy)

Pretending to be sick...

So once again I did not go to school today cause I was "not feeling well". In truth I was spending most of my day being incredibly frustrated at Dead Rising for the Xbox 360. The game is in all honesty pretty good, but I think it can best be compared to wine. When its just starting out as a newly fermented grape mash, it sucks hardcore. Many upper class monocle-wearing Gentlemen will turn their cheeks at it and more than likely hire someone to spit in it's direction. But, the more time you give it, the better it gets until you can't get enough of it and eventually you'll leave your wife and kids and end up shooting yourself in the face with a shotgun in the bathroom of a seedy motel...

Ok, maybe that wasn't the best metaphor, but the point I'm trying to make is, the game at the beginning is kinda shitty. You wont actually gain any cool skills and have enough item slots till you've played through the game another time and some parts are just ridiculous. The game was based on this premise though so I guess after you've played through at least half of the first day and then became so frustrated you figured you would just start over with your status gained, it could actually be pretty playable and fun. On this note, I wonder if the first few levels and the PP required to gain those levels is a bit too high, but maybe I just suck and I should stop complaining.

In case you have no idea what I am talking about, in Dead Rising you play as Frank West. He's your typical freelance photojournalist meaning he's in your face and has a shitty personality, hence the freelance part. The story starts out as Frank is on a helicopter heading toward Willamette, Colorado where communication and all roads have been cut of. In photojournalist talk, this means something obviously is going on... From the helicopter, the town's population seems to be freaking out so what does Frank do? Well of course he slow-motion jumps out of the helicopter onto the local mall, because A) Malls are happening places, and if you want a story you have to go to the mall (small towns only) and B) you only look cool jumping and "woo-hoo"-ing in slow motion. All other times it just looks gay.

For anyone that hasn't played the game and prefers to live in a bubble, then don't read on cause minor spoilers are coming up in this paragraph. The people that have survived have all locked themselves in the mall though probably no one will admit that they were there on purpose... Everything seems safe until some dumb lady decides she misses her little dog so much that she has to open the goddamn door to let all the zombies in. Hence, we then get to play the recreation of Dawn of the Dead (Law suit pending). You pretty much have anything and everything at your disposal as a weapon. Lawnmower? Chainsaw? Kitchen Sink?! Hell yea, well maybe except the kitchen sink, but you get my point.

The game itself is semi fun though it reminds me of State of Emergency. I think maybe the makers of the game decided to switch all the gang members with zombies and add more weapons and this is what popped out. (This is kind of a stretch...)

I don't know why I complain so much about the game. Core-mechanics are there and it shouldn't be too hard this attempt. Basically on the first go around I must have took too much time killing a boss which limited my time later when I had to go fetch medicine for this black guy that got shot even though we all know I was doing it in hopes that his sexy partner would let me take pictures of her later. (You have a camera in the game...) Another thing I thought was not so great about the game is the face of the main character. All the other characters are in some way tolerable to look at, but this guy seriously looks like a "fugly" d-bag.

On that note it's time to get back to the game.