nintendo stop wasting my time!

I actually bought NSMB for the wii.

I'm just insulted by the game on a regular basis. There's no save point where I need one, so I've spent the last few months staggering over and over again through the 2nd World. I've beaten every one of these levels, and any decent emulator would let me save where it makes sense, not where the designers decided to waste my time.

Every time I die, usually caused by some snot-nosed insult of a gap placed right where the designers engineered me to HAVE to land...they waste seconds of my time on their demon face deathmask animation AND then the absurd delay at the map screen before letting me pick up where I left off, at the last bullshit death the game built into itself.

I enjoyed NSMB for the ds. I wanted a direct port, or at least the option to play a direct port of that. Instead we have a seriously fucked up affair with multiplayer grafted onto the platforming experience like frankenstein's monster.

I appreciate Mario platformers with skill required, like SMW. NSMBw isn't NSMB. It's NSMB with 10-20x the cheap deaths and bullshit tricks to keep you wasting time in the death-penalty loop.

Weak.

bitching about bejeweled (among other stuf)

"going dark for a while." Love how they say that on 24. aka torture-porn or the jack bauer power hour, depending on the favorite references of your surrounding crowd.

Then again maybe I've been dark for a few weeks already, if this and nearby blogs are any indication. Dumping rough compositions, blog posts, reviews and other musings into text files between binges of consuming the very same stuff I usually reflect upon.

Multiplexing myself worked okay far as the sites go, I just need an in-home espresso machine and two or three clones, then each of them could take a different theme blog and run with it.

I lol'd to see a blogger writing month. I don't think there'd be any actual content in my posts if I posted everyday, unless I was reviewing a particular site, book, record, movie...

I've been churning the gears, tumbling over the inspirations and scraps of notes, feeling vital now that the temperatures I associate with summertime have come to our semi-coastal current city. Caffeine and temps above 72 get me up and about. Vacuuming the floor and the rugs, doing the dishes.

In fact last night I built a small speaker stand out of salvaged wood, probably an old futon frame, found near the dumpster a few weeks ago. But that's another lame story undeserving of a post itself until properly perfected, probably painted matte black.

---

I continue to be frustrated with the devolution of Bejeweled Blitz on facebook, what began as a truly skillful pursuit limited to a mere minute each game. Now it's a resource hog...not that in previous incarnations it ran even on a G4...but now it makes an intel mac whine.

Either my brand new mouse with brand new batteries is glitchy only when playing this game, or they've engineered all playability out of it entirely in the process of diverting users to chasing their 'coins.'

The same path that led Zynga to irrelevance, the tired purchasing of virtual credits with real money. Same tired capitalist model isn't gonna take root without resemblances to gambling, but the clueless chumps keep trying the same broken wheel in search of a smoother ride.

I once upon a time could lose 20 minutes at a crack playing Bejeweled Blitz, but now it's a chore getting through five minutes in a row. The pointer moves the wrong block, moves the right block but the wrong direction, or fails to notice its proper position entirely.

It would seem that in order to compensate for the performance issues, the flash app has been allowed to become more and more resource-intensive. Doesn't matter what browser, either. Mac os 10.5.x (whatever the current patches and updates are) on an intel mac with 2gb ram seems to perform similarly, as one might expect from a plugin, agnostic of browser.

I haven't honestly trotted out Opera, but Firefox, Chrome and Safari, all of which I updated to their recentest versions, including the goddamn adopey trash plugin itself, all hammer the processor and spin up the fan from the 1500rpm range to 2400-2600.

Weak...

swatted down to bounce higher

I'm limping in here after getting swatted down in a forum.

I posted about some guys I know in a couple different indie bands. Next poster listened, didn't like, said so. The wind is out of my sails somewhat.

Not really much, just enough to be reminded that there are people who criticize the sunset, and then those of us who either watch it or we don't and then we move on.

If their music works for their fans, their crowds, themselves...what else is there?

There's constructive criticism, never a bad thing, delivered by someone with personal involvement, invested in the outcome.

Then there's just lame-ass spitballing, shit talking and posturing.

If you don't play an instrument and don't sing, don't write...where the fuck you get off telling someone else their style is wack?

Critic is just a fancy-ass word for hater.

I think I just graduated from the realm where haters can fuck with me.

See you when you get there...

an unheard plea; etc processing thanks

Here we are again Memorial Day and everyone's stirred up their patriotic feathers, tripping and stumbling over themselves to thank veterans in the most ostentatious, visible way possible.

I really wish we could finally come to some sort of across-the-board agreement in America that we all support the troops. We all have differences with the government.

My hackles get riled up when some ignorant person spouts off that any veteran "gave" me my freedoms. I just wanna ask if they read the same history books and founding documents I did!?!?

I stop these misled people and speak: "say it with me now:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

I usually then - if and whenever necessary - ask "what part of 'by their creator' means any veteran who isn't my parent created me??"

It would really be great if we could just grow the hell up and get over the fair-weather patriots and the chest-thumping misled pride of the 'white' man. Whitey did plenty of foul deeds in his day and will reap what he sowed, not the least of which being eventual minority status.

I love my country, I love the land and the water and the sky. I don't trust the government, but they're a damnsite better than the corporations and the moneyaddicts.

I get an ever-increasing bad taste in the back of my mind whenever the boorish overly proud ignoramuses pretend that any sort of dumbed-down redneck lowest common wrasslin'-loving denominator is patriotic. Being dumb is anti-American, and as much as you'd like to hide from this fact, it is ESPECIALLY so if you are being dumb while caucasian.

Digression aside, have a good weekend!

I stand up in salutation of our veterans and the choices they made. I get choked up looking at the flag and thinking about the people who had every right I do to be here living this free life and died instead.

I personally choose to remember everyone who has died in my family, on Memorial Day. I think everybody pretty much does. When I was a kid it was a weekend to make sure that someone in the family had been up to the cemetary and brushed the leaves and grass back and away from the headstones of my grandparents, great aunts and uncles.

That's what all this is for. Thank a veteran for their service, NOT for giving you what your creator did. Perhaps for fighting to protect our way of life, then...

But remember whoever you've lost. That's what it's about. Spend time with everyone else, look back, look forward. Maybe light some fireworks, do some fishing, cook outside.

trolls and grief

I think I'm molting. Facebook is a coat I used to wear that feels weird now, and might end up in a box of stuff I'd donate to the goodwill.

Had a friend once who deleted her myspace every other week or so. Seemed she liked the "game" of making the page more than having or keeping one. I've considered dropping my facebook page entirely, or backing off to just IRL friends and family ONLY.

My experience with facebook has been less and less worthwhile, more worrying and regularly annoying. I've watched friends jump ship from myspace for lesser reasons.

I regularly get inundated by their suggestion-bot and added a bunch of "friends" who attended the same hi skool as I did. I just dumped the mafiawars app, despite having joined a "group" a few months ago and having tricked out my character.

I climbed past level 500 and mastered the 2x leveling every 24 hours "trick" that most of the wikis and howtos seem to think they invented. Anybody with a grasp of basic math can sort out how quickly those games are apt to get boring. Most people just don't bother thinking that far ahead about much of anything.

I don't think I've ever spent that long playing an RPG. And for all the opinion otherwise, it's just a stat-building RPG with an extensive PR budget. And millions of apathetic sheep toiling away, grinding down their code for them, chasing absurd phantoms.

I got an invite to join a group praying for the death of the President from a foreign "daily player" of MW. I replied that I thought he/she should be ashamed for the suggestion, and then un-friended them. I also quit MW on the spot, deleted all my "friends" who'd been added to pad the mafia size.

I'm not sure how I ever let this many potential-leaks into my friend list to begin with. I guess for a while I drank the kool aid even tho I knew better. I had friends IRL who played the damn thing and I felt obligated to stick around. Even had a measly few moments of actual teamwork vibes over the months I played.

Anyway, I dumped the fake friends, I dumped the app/game, I deleted all the groups related to such tripe, and cleared my account of that sporge and garbage.

I still seemed to have a troll in my midst. I'd post something about how the tea party is wack as fuck and some wiseass would reply with a limbaugh-ism. So I deleted his wiseassery and him too. I'm king wiseass of my shitty little mountain. Cross me at thy peril.

the myth of anonymity

I love how the most recent Bill Maher overtime perpetuates the myth of anonymity online.

Sure, there are degrees of anonymity available online. But anywhere with anything approaching a forum or a community, the anonymity is forfeit in direct proportion to any benefit reaped.

As we wring content and purpose from the online experience, aside from the distanced, methodical view of the researcher, we give up our anonymity to get anything, to get anywhere.

I resent the ongoing perception of the uninformed that participation in anything online is by default anonymous. More and more that is not the case, as anyone with an inkling of interest in digital forensics and networking can attest.

In times of declining anonymity, it's more important than ever that those of us with the conviction to defend our tools and our rights express the truth.

And that is, simply put, that the myth of anonymity is being perpetuated by the uninformed or willfully ignorant, and toward dubious ends, at best.

Being invisible, or even somewhat anonymous, necessitates an ever-increasing and vigilant effort. Has anybody sent you a link to the new "internet phone book" that attempts to link your address, name, social networking websites, and email addresses?

Is the myth of anonymity being perpetuated to lure the young and dumb into actions online that allow them to be singled out for reprogramming or eventual imprisonment? I know I sound a tad more Art Bell than Alex Jones here, but bear me out.

In practical terms, anonymity is dead. Every packet sent on the net has to know where its effing going, and that means your ip address, probably your individual device's mac address, and info on what browser or app you're connecting with, is part of that process.

The lengths one would need to go to in order to remain truly untraceably anonymous for any amount of time would require resources out of the grasp of most common folk. That is to say nothing of the logistics involved or the skills needed to perform most tasks one might desire to perform under such circumstances.

Most of the cyber attacks and viruses people gasp over at the water cooler are script kiddies and exploits. I think anybody who knows enough about this world and how the various parts of it really work, knows how difficult it can be to do anything big or important, even when working with the right people who could conceivably achieve a given goal.

Many of the best tools available for attempting true anonymity online are plagued with bugs and nefarious individuals who consider themselves "white hats" sabotaging the networks in the name of their unicorn gods.

I may have run my yap and babbled my coffee-addled brains out here, but I daresay I'm onto something. You can pick a username to hide behind, a sock puppet, a throwaway account, but everything's traceable someway somehow. Only fools dare imagine that the real world is gonna treat them otherwise for long.

another friday I'm not sure I deserve

Here I am seething about something, not wanting to rant at anybody in my physical meatspace, long since having exhausted my friends' ability or readiness to listen, and I turn to the net-as-dumping-ground.

Which is to say Welcome! Here is your unfriendly curmudgeon on his virtual soapbox wedged between the millions of others, each with their own megaphone even if they really don't have anything to add.

I know exactly why news of Sean Hannity's "charity" being a front for him to live like a total plastic movie star on donated money makes me MAD! Because my brother, over there up to his nuts in the sand of someone else's desert, is a true believer in Sean Hannity and how much He loves America.

Doesn't matter if I myself or hundreds of thousands of Americans can see through Sean, Glen, or the whole foxnoise brigade...they're still stomping their boot on my brother's face and he's essentially kissing them for it by continuing to tune in and listen.

Maybe this is one of those things about which it is proper to be mad. Righteous indignation generated by utterly disgusting displays of hypocritical behavior? Probably a just reaction, despite the fact that I'm left seething and Sean is rich and happy - like the politicians he claims to rail against. Insulated by his millions. Fat fucker.

In other news, California is kicking my ass. I don't know why but my head is a bucket of snot, or perhaps auditioning for the role of an as-yet untapped maple tree. I think it's allergies. The air quality rating has been moderate to high for tree pollen.

We're situated mere feet from one of the "nature preserves" throughout town. Which is to say that it's land they couldn't otherwise profit from, and "turned back over to The People."

I bet that the view of actual trees and not another apartment three feet from my window, which made me wanna live here to begin with, is now tormenting me invisibly with tree pollen. Thus my head is a swelled up balloon and I am mostly deaf, in addition to the 20/10 rating for my sinuses.

But enough, as they say, of the organ recital. Where and what has dear blogger been up to of late?

I've just about snagged myself a Wii to play with. More on that as it pans out.

a shadowy tea time of grumbles and epithets

So in November I "wrote" a "novel" and in December I conquered some Mario titles I hadn't yet seen through. January brought the scanning project back, and I drifted toward writing and tabled the scanning, with a touch of seasonal flu or cold, in Feb thusfar.

There aren't any words to do justice to the creakings and groanings of the mind. As we get older, the body begins to throw up signs of the impending end. I'm fairly sure nobody ever warned me that my body would develop a claritin dependency before 40.

A miasma of radio waves, high fructose corn syrup, industrial waste added to the drinking water, and laws against anything interesting - fiercely protecting the stupid, ignorant, helpless, all encouraging the laziest lowest denominator to get more inert.

I've noticed the gradual slide into insignifigance I'm making. I just don't know if I care anymore. Plastic teenage tragedies pumped onto the culture by republitard networks gushing bad production values and overspending on underwhelming talent...

I think I'm just fine turning into grumpy old bastard and constantly whittling down the amount of attention I waste on the newest latest greatest bullshit some asshole is selling today.

I usually wait till full seasons of my chosen few shows are available and then barrel through them in short order, miniseries style bursts.

I was raised by women who couldn't be satisfied with mere television, but had to supplement their boredom with reading a novel still facing the screen, or working word search and crossword puzzles at the same time.

I still recall Grandma's daytime schedule revolving around what she was gonna watch while she did it. Morning news talk and variety shows gave way to game shows, which turned to soaps and stories over the 10-noon block. More game shows in the afternoon before they ceased the tyranny and let me watch cartoons.

I can't get my head around the popularity of massive games like World of Warcraft or similar things. I may spend three minutes clicking buttons in mafiaspace every other day or so, but I can't understand RPG players. Reality moves at a slow enough clip as it is, why bother superimposing another layer over it that moves at its own arcane pace?

RTS games appeal a little. The starcraft variant of warcraft back inna day was somewhat amusing. I just can't get my head around a lot of the newest shit. I haven't even been interested. Sports games are for idiots, just like most sports.

I like actual futbol, rugby, MMA fights, and real sports with real stakes performed by real actual people. Fuck nascar, fuck the NFL, and fuck all million-earning assholes who play any "sport" known to man. Money ain't shit.

Parkour and skateboarding are honest sports compared to fucking golf and driving in a circle. Rally racing is a sport compared to drag racing - which is driving in a straight fucking line...probably the only thing stupider than nascar this side of a tractor pull.

I like demolition derbies tho. So I'm not dogging on all redneck American pasttimes. I have a low tolerance for dumb whatever the color or flavor, but I'm not prejudiced. I don't care what color you are or where you come from. If you're trying not to be stupid, you're okay by me.

I was struck stupid the other day out dining in an establishment with too many big flat screen teevees. Literally like one per booth. And they hand out the remotes to the customers, so this guy further from the screen than we were seated, cranked the volume up to 11 for nascar.

So all throughout my midafternoon breakfast I was subjected to the sounds of zooming rednecks in stupid formation trying to out-circle each other. Narrated by jimbob the toothless wonder and jethro the slack-jawed announcer in perpetual yawling drawl. Talking about how heroic and dedicated these fucks were for driving in circles.

This is not what we evolved for. Wasting fuel, practicing a futile and obviously mundane effort, labelled up like the corporate whores you are. Surrounded by masses gathered in big salivating mobs who swill beer and hope for a firey crash. All the while breathing high-performance fuel exhaust and rubber dust?

Does any other nation have this kind of rampant stupidity as a celebrated pastime?

(Press three to jab the author in his fleshy pink belly with a broken beer bottle,
press four to tell him he listens to too much george carlin and patton oswalt and needs to getta life. Press six to send him a nascar beer cozy.)

plodding along in my young old age

I could've sworn it was just a few weeks ago I heard about CDs. Obviously employing some hyperbole here, but groove with me on it...

I was still quite happy with the improvement of cassettes over records and 8-tracks, honestly. Tapes you could record...create with. Capture your own voice, snippets of the teevee, or your little brother scratching with your Sesame Street records.

I read storybooks, told jokes, and made my brothers laugh on those old tapes. They're in a box around here somewhere. You'd think I'd wanna listen to them, but any time I do the voices sound alien - like someone and somebody else. So I rarely listen to them anymore.

But there came a day when Grandma started to be reluctant to let me use her tape recorder. I chalked it up to the random moody nature of these adult things, and went back to watching Woody Woodpecker on the black and white teevee at the foot of her bed. And no cookies, either, or I'd spoil my dinner. :P

About two weeks later was my birthday, which for a kid of that single-digit-age was months away. But I got my very own tape recorder for my birthday. Which I then proceeded to wear out, leave running as I fell asleep, or push my fingers into when it was running without a tape in it. Mom and dad always wondered why we had to get it repaired so often. Yeah...we're all stupid sometimes...at least most of mine was back then, eh?

I've never been well-off monetarily. I've worked and earned and bought things that were on sale, spent wisely. I've never been able to afford the newest, latest, greatest tech. I usually have to wait till all the gaudy, stupid, classless people with the money and none of the brains buy, break, wear out, and replace the new shit.

So here we are in some year they all claim is 1020. ...oh, wait...2010. (Oops/same diff.) I have a collection of slightly outdated tech that serves me decently. A few key pieces are almost new, just a year or two old. But I still feel proud of my 3G ipod and my phat old pre-lite nintendo ds.

I have a digital camera, but it damn sure doesn't fit in my pocket. It shoots RAW and has other features I wanted, but it doesn't do HD video or anything. I got it cheap off craigslist. My spare digital cam, the one that does fit in my pocket...it's from savers and the battery has to be taken out after every shot or it drains quickly.

I found myself finally lusting after the Wii when I've seen all the "homebrew" independent software filling the gaps in the "legitimate" usefulness of the console. I couldn't really care less about it, despite the obvious lure of the actual Mario title Super Mario Galaxy.

So many false Mario games have come out in the last 7 years. These Mario Party things, the Smash Brothers BS...I've never understood those. Like taking Mario's face and slapping it on a ton of things. I have owned many nintendo titles. But the only ones worth keeping were the ones with actual Mario doing actual Super things. Not golf, not dancing, not board games, and not Rf'nPGs.

RPGs interest me about as much as steampunk. Like a cheerleader with a 40-year-old antique calculator keypad where her face is supposed to be.

New SMB for Wii took the game I enjoyed so much on that little tiny DS screen and lets it breathe on a bigger screen. Pretty much at the same time, nintendo announced a bigger handheld for those of us who could hardly play anything on their existing millions of kiddie devices. Our hands, fingers, thumbs and arms are not compatible with the twee itty bitty size of these things for long...no how.

It's worth mentioning that the most fun I had with the DS were doing two things. Playing NSMB until I got sick of holding the tiny system up to my face, and scratching samples with protein-ds.

I want a Wii. I've wanted to check it out since I played exactly ONE swing of golf during a micro-break at a relentlessly-aggressive media company's call center one day over two years ago. That's the sum total of experience I have with the concept, controls, any of it first-hand.

I use my xbox every other day or so, but couldn't care less about the 330 or whatever it is they're calling the new one. Linux and open-source hackers and freedom fighters created the useful part of the xbox for me, Xbox Media Center. I can't say enough good things about it, and if you've ever used it, you wouldn't be able to stop gushing about it either.

Seeing this level of functionality being achieved in fits and starts on the wii is inspiring me to want to pony up the loot and fetch me one. I'm not prepared to spend more than I have to. So maybe $120-150 for the console, all connections, at least one controller and one game. *shrug*

That's assuming I can find the deal, the pieces all look in good enough shape, and it's after April. I'm not in any hurry. I might be able to do tons of tricks with my xbox but I still can't get the damn thing to play N64 games.

I've seen the emulation for the 64 improving. Since the xbox thwarts my attempts and I have a couple of usb controllers, I'm gonna give mupen64 a try under an operating system or two. Last I tried to emu the 64 on the mac, the controller wouldn't map the sticks, just the buttons. Either the controller's borked or the mac's just an asshole!?!

I came over here - well-caffeinated as one might by this point assume - after seeing evidence in the chatter here and there that ye olde apple nee computer finally dropped their long-awaited "tablet" device.

I watched the video. I love how condescendingly they proclaim that it's "affordable" at five hundred fucking dollars. Maybe if I'm one of the artists whose music you use as bed under the video. I'm sure Ben fucking Folds gets a free iPad. I could - you know - actually use one. He's undoubtedly already got either an iphone or a widescreen kickass imac and laptop.

The world spins out of control and wobbles on its axis. These sorts of minor injustices bear my bleeding brain to spew them out here in the land of digitally volatile futuretext, where any old emp or rogue pulse can wipe them from the collective consciousness just like *that*?

I watch the carnage unfolding from Haiti. The statistics claim that anyone left in the rubble is dead. But they keep pulling live people out after 15 days. I can't imagine the horror of making it this far, perhaps even able to hear the rescuers but unable to make a sound...and having them pass you by because a statistician told them to!?!?

And all the aid workers getting hammered down there. Haiti wasn't a wealthy nation before. I hesitate to even think it...but how many of these hungry mouths, these homeless people were homeless and hungry before the quake? How many of them didn't have anyone even in their own neighborhood noticing their plight 90 days ago?

I digress...but with good cause.

I came here to whine about how the ipad might go on my list of wanted items. But not for the obvious reasons. No...for painfully few of those.

I'm not a cellphone user. I have one, but only a basic model that does just what it needs to, and charges me the least amount of loot to do it.

I once had aspirations of being a techological gadget man, up on the times and buying every new thing. I have long since abandoned such expensive foolishness. And I'm not even old enough to have any grey hairs, I just got wise.

If I had an ipad, I'd basically playtest it, see where it wobbled, where I could poke at the underpinnings, and what I could do with it to amuse myself that perhaps no one intended. I'd play games, I'd run apps, I'd learn a lot of what my friends and family have been getting from their iphones for years already.

I'd catch up and I'd run loops out ahead of many of the people using these things now. Or at least I'd try.

I'm still amused at recent news that someone busted the outermost ring of the onion that is no doubt the security features of the sony/fony pee-ess 3. I have been calling for the fall of sony for a long time. Their minidiscs were an abomination before logic and reason and the company's folly has only grown since.

I'd love to play the newest Ratchet and Clank games, but on my terms, NOT theirs. So the console can take a big leap until the price of admission is no greater than it would've been to buy another game for my PS2. I saw no need to upgrade, and won't pay to be forced to do it.

So that's it. I'm a cellphone noob, hate microsoft and fony, not so hot on apple's bloated app issues and phone phetish, want a wii, would gladly playtest and rigorously use an ipad - but it'll be at least a year and probably three before I could/would pay for the privilege.

(But go ahead, let commence the consumeristic stampede of blind sheep and early adopters. Don't let me stop you from blazing the path, stomping down the bugs, and selling me your used 1G ipad for $120 about 18-24 months from now!)