OmniBlog

PSA: Rapture time! ... Or, Raptor time?

2011-05-20T22:11:00.000-07:00

So, I've recently been informed that at 6pm today, the Rapture is coming. Or the Raptors. I'm not really sure which, I wasn't paying attention. So anyway, the Rapture, or Raptor, is coming to us in about an hours time, so I thought I'd make a PSA about it, I know it's kind of late to do this, but I haven't had time to do it earlier.

From what I have been lead to believe, the Rapture is when all the good religious types ascend up to Heaven, leaving only their clothes behind. Raptors, on the other hand, will rip you apart and devour your corpse, so I have a plan for you all.
What we should do, around about 5:55pm, is get undressed, just in case. If it's the Rapture, then we will ascend to Heaven, but we won't have the messy worry about our clothes, as we will already be naked. If it's the Raptors, then it doesn't matter whether we're clothed or not, as they're going to kill us anyway.

The biggest thing that I would like to stress is to not panic, panic doesn't help anyone and you may be left behind if it is the rapture, and you may be one of the first to die if it's the raptors.

I may do a post rapture/raptor blog entry, to let the world know what it is like, after the rapture/raptor, provided that I haven't been raptured/raptored.

Web Comics.

2011-03-01T21:10:00.000-08:00

Recently, well, actually not very recently, more like since mid last year, I started reading a new web comic. Actually, it was more like early last year, so about a year ago.

Let me start again.

About a year ago, I started reading a new web comic. Hmm, maybe it wasn't that long ago, let me go check, I have a way of finding out.

OK, I'm far too lazy to find out when I actually started reading it, but lets say it was a year ago, so I'm going to start over from the start again.

So, about a year ago, I started reading a new web comic, my brother recommended it to me and I thank him greatly for it. The comic is FreakAngels, and it is brilliant. It's written by a professional comic writer and drawn by a professional comic artist. It's updated once a week, with 6 pages, and it is amazing. I've been reading web comics pretty much since I have had access to the internet, and this has been the best I have ever read.

I think what really sets it apart is because it's done by professionals, who really know what they're doing. Now, I'm not shitting over other web comics because they're not done by professionals, but I think that there are some web comics out there that I read that could learn from FreakAngels.

Let's take Looking For Group for example. It's another one of my favourite comics, the art is brilliant, and the story line is brilliant, but I can't follow it properly unless I don't read it for about a month, and then have a months worth of comics to read at once. This is where FreakAngels is superior. Since it updates with multiple pages at once, it's easier to follow, you have a weeks worth of comics at once. This is where I believe that LFG could be improved. If he updated once a week, or a fortnight, with multiple pages. It would make it flow better. As it is, I've been reading it every time it updates and it's just not flowing for me. I haven't been following the story for a long time and I am going to have to go back and reread a whole lot.

A couple of the comics I read have this problem, and they all seem to be the full page style comics, with large intricate storylines. There are other comics that I read that this wouldn't work so well with. Sluggy Freelance is one where it wouldn't work. Although this isn't because of the lack of large intricate storylines, because I assure you that Sluggy has these, but because of the style of it, and the layout. I would say that Sluggy is similar in style to a Newspaper comic, but with a better plot. When it first started it was a lot like a Newspaper comic, but it has evolved. It works well for what it is.

Another good example of a web comic that is done in the newspaper style of comics is XKCD. It's an extremely good example of a newspaper style comic because you can just jump in at any point and just read, there is no real storyline, and you don't need to know what comics have been to be able to read the new ones. Sinfest is yet another newspaper style comic. I haven't actually read Sinfest in quite a while, but from what I remember, and from what my flatmate has told me, you can just jump in at any point and not need to know what happened previously to be able to follow the story.

I'm not sure where I'm actually going with this blog post, but then again I never do, other than to illustrate what I think makes a good comic, or rather, what makes the comics I enjoy good. I should actually give a list of the comics that I read, and say why I read them.

FreakAngels: I've already explained why I like this comic, but I'll go over it again. It has a good storyline, and amazing art. When it updates it has multiple pages, which makes it easier to follow. It flows quite well.

Sluggy Freelance: I've been following this webcomic for the longest out of all of the ones I read. It's brilliant, and has evolved considerably. It started out fairly simple. It had a simple layout, not much of a storyline, but it has changed since then. Pete Abrahms, who writes and draws the comics, has gotten a lot better at writing and drawing since it started. It has action, drama, comedy, essentially everything that you could want out of a comic. One thing that I like about this comic is that every so often there's a recap comic, that says what has happened, and what is going to happen. Though these can be annoying when you're rereading the archives, but it's brilliant when you're reading the comic daily when it updates.

Looking For Group: This comic was originally based off of World Of Warcraft, but again it's another one that has evolved. It's not so much based off of WoW anymore, though it still has similar elements to it. It has a rather intricate plot and storyline, which I haven't really been following as it doesn't flow as well as FreakAngels. What I need to do is go back and reread a whole lot of the archives to really catch up to date in the story. This comic could be improved by either adding in recap comics every so often, or changing it's updating to be more like FreakAngels.

XKCD: This comic is just brilliant. Mostly it's just one comic gags, but there have been a couple of multi-comic gags. It's a very intellectual comic, and some of them have gone completely over my head, but on the whole it should be understandable by most. Very much like a newspaper comic, only better.

Multiplex: Based in a movie theatre, this comics gags revolve around movies and the people who work in the theatre. I enjoy this one because I am a movie buff, and it gives me ideas on what movies to go out and watch. There's a plot running through it but I haven't been following it that well. It's not because of anything bad with the comic, I just haven't been thinking about it, I check it when it updates, but that's it. I should make an effort to follow the plot.
Ctrl Alt Delete: A gaming webcomic. The reason I like this is because it's about games. Some of his plot lines are stupid and retarded, and the guy is a fucking sleaze from what I've heard, but I still enjoy the comic, even if just for the gaming references.
Manly Guys Doing Manly Things: I absolutely love this comic. The comics are always amusing, and it doesn't really have a long running plot. It's very good.
Oglaf: R18! This is mostly one comic gags, and it's brilliant. It's mostly based around sex and sex related comics, but it's fucking funny. It is very well drawn as well. Hmm, I seem to have changed what I'm saying about the comics as I've been listing them, maybe because I've writing this over the past 3 days.
Gunnerkrigg Court: This comic has a long running plot, which is really good. I've managed to keep up with even though it updates with a single page every few days. I would prefer if this one had an update schedule like FreakAngels, and I think it would be easier to follow that way.
theWAREHOUSE: Puns! SO MANY PUNS! This comic is one comic gags, which works really well. It's comedy is based around puns, so therefore this is one of my all time favourite comics. Some of them take a wee bit to understand, but ultimately worthwhile.
Exiern: This one I found from a banner ad on one of the other comics I read. It's another with a long running plot, but I've been able to follow it quite well, possibly because it's fairly new compared with some of the other ones I read. It might be better with an update schedule like FreakAngels, but for the moment I think it's fine. It does update infrequently though.
VG Cats: This used to be one of my favourite comics. It's full of one shot comics, and it's based around video games. It was really really good, but then it got updated less and less. It's lucky to get one new comic a month now.

Well, that's all the comics I read, and why I read them. I guess that's all I really wanted to add.
To be honest, I don't even know what I wrote at the start of this blog post, and I'm far too lazy to go through and edit it, it's been about three days in the making. If you like this post, then you like it, if not, then you don't.

That is all, thank you for reading.

It's not a good time to be a New Zealander.

2011-02-26T22:43:00.000-08:00

So in case you people didn't know, recently there was a rather large and violent earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand. If you didn't know, then clearly you must be living under a rock, because this quake has been on the news world wide.
Currently as it stands, the body count for this quake is 147.
147.
And it's looking to rise. I saw in a news article, by The Daily Mail I think it was, that to put it into a British perspective, in terms of population, we need to multiply that number by 20. That would make it 2,940, for a British perspective, in terms of population counts. Now, to put it into an American perspective, population wise again of course, we need to quadruple that number. That would make it 11,760. This quake has hit us worse than the San Francisco quake of 1906. It has hit us worse than Hurricane Katrina. Right now, it's hard to be a New Zealander, to see all this destruction, all this death.

I thought I'd give everyone a view of it from my side of it. I don't live in Christchurch, I wasn't in Christchurch, but you don't need to be at the moment for this to affect you. I may not be injured, I may not of even been there, but this is my story.

When I heard about the quake, I was at work. I was about to head upstairs to the staff room to have my break. I hadn't actually felt anything here in Dunedin, I know a few people did, but I wasn't one of them. Anyway, I was about to head up for my break, and one of my colleagues came up to me and told me there had been another quake in Christchurch, and it was a bad one. I shrugged it off to begin with, thinking that he was exaggerating, as he does, and thought nothing of it. When I got the staff room though, things were different. Everyone was huddled around the TV, I saw the damage, I saw the fallen buildings and it almost put me in a panic. I have a lot of friends in Christchurch, and my flatmate was there at the time. I simply turned to someone in the staff room, I can't remember who it was, and told them I needed to find a phone, I needed to call some people.
It wasn't an easy task finding a phone at work that could dial an outside line, they've limited this ability to us because, I don't know, it saves the company money? It's annoying and stupid, sometimes you *need* to be able to dial an outside line from the closest phone to you. Hell, you can't even dial the emergency services from the phones, but back to what I was saying. I was searching for a phone that I could use.
Normally, I would've just called people using my cellphone, but it was going flat. I hadn't charged it for a while and it had been constantly beeping at me through the day threatening to shut itself down, so in self defense I had turned it off to conserve it's power, just in case I needed it. I'm thankful I had turned it off, because if it had gone completely flat I wouldn't of been able to grab peoples phone numbers out of it to be able to call them. And it seems that my flatmate had sent me a text message at 12:55pm, only a few minutes after the quake. I don't think at that time she had even realized how bad it was.
I ended up grabbing a cordless phone off of one of my bosses. Using that, I dialed a few friends. First, I tried calling my flatmate. Disconnected tone. Next, a couple of good friends of mine who had recently, much to my protest, moved to Christchurch. Disconnected tone. In a last ditch effort, I tried calling another one of my friends who had also moved to Christchurch with his partner and child. Also, disconnected tone. The cellphone towers were out, due to there being a lack of power in Christchurch. Instead of trying to continue to call them, I texted them instead, asking if they were alright. As I said, I didn't have much battery life left on my cellphone at that point, so I only texted two people, hoping that I would hear from my other Christchurch friends once I got home and managed to charge my phone.
I texted my flatmate, and my good friends who had just moved there. My flatmate had her cellphone off as she was having similar difficulties as me, except her lack of cellphone charge was due to her forgetting to take her charger with her, so I didn't receive another message from her, which had me worried, but I did receive a text from my other friends, they were alright. I was happy.
Throughout the rest of my shift, I was worried about everyone, I came close to having a panic attack a few times, but managed to calm myself down. I hate having panic attacks at work, it really doesn't do good things for me. I managed to get through it OK though, and came home to immediately jump on the internet to check the news, and to check Facebook and Twitter.
I heard from a few of my friends straight away, some parts of the city still had power and cellphone coverage, the phone companies here made sure to get their services back up and running as soon as they could. There were a couple of messages on Facebook from my friends, and one on Twitter, which made me happy. I texted my flatmates mother to see if she had any contact from my flatmate, which she had. She called me and let me know that my flatmate was safe and sound and hadn't been injured in the slightest. Good news is always good to hear.
Arrangements were made to get my flatmate back home safe and sound, she got on a bus the next day and made her way back to solid ground. I still hadn't heard from a few of my friends, I did get quite worried about them, but now I have heard from all of them. I am pleased.

So that pretty much brings us up to date on what I have done. I feel a bit useless at the moment, as there isn't much I can do to help. I can't go the Christchurch to help as I don't have any way of getting there, and I have a job to go to. The only thing I can do at the moment is donate money, or supplies. I wish I could do more, I really do.
I've been checking the news every few hours, and it's hard. It really is. Each time I see that they've found more bodies, and they haven't found anyone else alive, it hurts. I don't like it. I've come close to tears a few times.
Right now the news website is saying "More than 200 feared dead.". It's going to be a larger figure than that. I have a feeling that this will be ranked at the top of the list of New Zealand's Worst Disasters. It's going to rank higher than the 1931 Hawke's Bay Earthquake, higher than the Mt. Erebus air crash. I don't think these people giving the figures actually realize how many people there are trapped around the place. There could be over 100 people in the CTV building alone, 20 odd in the Cathedral. That's just two buildings. That isn't including the PGC building, unless they've got everyone out of there, and all of the rest of the CBD. There's also all the residential areas where houses have just collapsed, possibly with people inside.

We've received a lot of international help, which is good. Help from Singapore, Japan, China, Australia, United States, Great Britain, and probably some more places I haven't listed. There have been countless celebrities tweeting about it, linking to the Red Cross website for people to donate, which actually crashed the Red Cross website. We've received messages from The Queen, The Pope, The Dalai Lama, Barack Obama. The international aid we've received has been phenomenal.

It is a sad time to be a New Zealander. This is one of the worst disasters to strike in our time.

Thank you for reading this giant wall of text. It's been a bit disjointed at points, and I've repeated a few things, but I'm far too lazy to go through and edit it all.

It's that time again.

2011-02-19T22:44:00.000-08:00

It seems to that time again, when I go to check in on so called friends on facebook, to find they have deleted me.
This seems to happen every so often, and with no warning. And it's usually by people who I considered good friends, there is never any explanation either, I've just suddenly disappeared from their friends list.
Of course, when this happens, I have a tendency to do a friends list purge of my own, so I've gone and removed all the people who I barely ever talk to, barely get along with, or just don't care about. I can't remember how many people I got rid of last time, but this time it was around about 20 people. Most of them co-workers, or former co-workers, a couple of old family friends that I barely know, and one or two people who just irritate me in real life.
I know I'm probably doing the same thing that these so called friends of mine have done with a purge of my friends list, but to be honest, I've only gotten rid of the people who I don't have any contact with at all. The people who deleted me were people who I contacted and chatted to when the chance came along and time permitted. It just depresses me.

So anyway, in other news, I managed to injure myself at work. The people who stacked the milk crates at their distribution centre decided to put a broken milk crate right near the bottom of the stack, so as I was crouched down, trying to count the milk, when I moved the stack it decided to fall down on top of me. Well, not so much on all of me, just onto my wrist.
Thankfully, there are no major injuries, but my wrist is rather sore. It's not broken, but I have damaged the tendons, and I'm not having much fun writing this out. And also, thankfully, I managed to not break any of the milk containers. It was a stack of mostly cream and that sort of thing, so it wasn't very heavy, but still painful.
I'm on light duties now, for a week, because of it. I even ended up having an X-ray. Something I've only ever had before at the dentist. Wasn't much different, except they were scanning my arm rather than my face, so no piercings had to be removed.

Students are back in town. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. The bad thing about it is that there's now an increased work load at work, and we're probably not going to get any extra staff to deal with it. Today we had 16 pallets left over from yesterdays load, which should've been worked yesterday and last night, and a further 19 pallets came in today, which is supposed to be worked today and tonight. I have a feeling that tomorrow we'll be going in to having a lot of left over pallets again. I'd be surprised to see yesterdays load completely gone.
The good thing about students being back is that now there's all new eye candy in town. I know this is awfully shallow and sexist of me to say, but meh. I'm male, I like to look. And when attractive young women come through with their goods on display, I feel as though I'd be doing them a disservice to NOT look.

That's all I really have to say at the moment. Thanks for taking the time to read this wall of text.

You are killing our bookstores.

2011-02-18T19:38:00.000-08:00

And so am I.

Everyone in New Zealand should've heard by now, but in case you didn't, here's a little bit of news for you.
Whitcoulls and Borders have gone into voluntary administration. Which, in case you didn't know, and I didn't know what it was either, is when a company is insolvent, or likely to become insolvent, the board of directors appoints an administrator, who is suitably qualified person for the job, to take over the business to try to save it, or if they can't, to bring in a return to the investors that is greater than they would of received had the company had been placed straight into liquidation.
Now, one of the decisions that the Administrator has put into effect is that when you redeem a gift voucher now, you have to also pay an amount equal to the value of the gift voucher. So, for example, if you had a gift voucher worth $20, you would have to also spend $20 of your own money to use it, which means you'd be spending $40 total. $20 from the voucher, $20 from your own pocket.
To be perfectly honest, I don't see a problem with this. I can see why people do have a problem with it, it does seem a bit rude, but they are perfectly within their rights to do so. Hell, they're perfectly within their rights to refuse to redeem vouchers entirely, so really you're getting a better deal here. And to the people who I know are going to point out that they shouldn't have to spend another $20 to be able to spend their $20 voucher, claiming that the company already has their money, did you really buy that voucher with your own money? Did you buy yourself a voucher? And if so, why the fuck would you do that? I will buy vouchers for other people, but never for myself. I'll just buy what I want rather than get a voucher and get what I wanted at a later date, so the company doesn't have YOUR money, they have someone elses. You will be spending $20 of your own money, and the voucher, which is $20 that someone else paid for, to get $40 worth of goods. Seems like a fucking good deal to me!

And now onto the main part of this blog, which is what the title is about. You are killing our bookstores. And so am I.

There is one thing that I am guilty of, and that's being too lazy to go down to the bookstore to get a book. It's cheaper and easier to get books online, and I have purchased many a book online. Sometimes because I can't get them in store, sometimes because I have to get the store to order them in, and sometimes just because it's cheaper. This doesn't really seem like such a bad thing, I'm still paying money to someone, and getting a book in return, where is the harm in that?
The harm in that is that I'm not spending the money at my local bookstore, of which I know many of the staff. I get along with all of them, and I would consider some of them good friends. Because of this, now bookstores are facing closure. There are many people now who are faced with losing their jobs because people want to pay les.
I can't really blame people though, who really wants to pay more for something that they could get for less elsewhere, especially when they don't even have to get off of the couch to order and pay for said item. The thing about bookstores though is that you aren't paying for just the book. You're also paying for the customer service that you get. All of the people at the Whitcoulls that I frequent, though I don't frequent it as often as I should, are nice and friendly people, always willing to help. If someone looks like they're looking for something, one of the staff will come along and ask them if they need assistance. This is why you pay extra at a bookstore.

It's going to be a sad day when there are no more bookstores, it will mean that people will read less as they won't have a store to just wander into as they're walking down the street, which would be where a lot of the sales come from. It means that book sales, even online book sales, will drop and that people will be less inclined to take up writing. Eventually noone will write books, because it won't be worth their time. Noone will be reading anything, because there won't be the local bookstore to browse for new books.
To me, there couldn't be a much sadder thought. I love books, and I love my local bookstores.

So to everyone out there, I implore you, go to your favourite bookstore, or even just your closest one, and purchase something, anything. It could be sometime small, like a pen, or something large, like an encyclopaedia, but please, go buy something. You never know, you might end up with a great new novel to read, or a new DVD to watch that you never would've seen otherwise. At least then maybe we won't end up with bookstores disappearing.

Thank you for reading this, I'm sorry it hasn't been one of my usual amusing posts, not that I have updated for quite some time.

Insert Witty Title Here.

2011-01-06T03:18:00.000-08:00

I couldn't think of a witty title for todays blog, so it doesn't really have one. This isn't going to be one of my fun filled ranty entries, or one of my interesting PSAs or movie reviews. Today I'm just going to be getting a few things off of my chest. Sorry if this bores you, but meh.

I've been depressed recently, as my previous entry stated, and I also said that it was because my friends are moving away. I have a lot of friends moving away soon, and it really sucks. I'm going to miss them all, and it means that I will have fewer friends around town than I currently have, and I don't have many friends at the moment anyway. I'd rather they didn't leave, but I would never expect them to stay if they have better prospects elsewhere, and it's led me to thinking about my current prospects and where I am currently in life.
At the moment, I am 27, single, and working a shitty dead end job. I don't study, I have no degree and I have no interest in going to university. My relationship prospects are nil at the moment as well, every girl that I have shown interest in has not shown any interest in me, and I'm just getting sick of even trying.
As I also said previously, I'm thinking of moving away as well, it's just that there is a lot involved in moving towns. Last time, when I moved here, I didn't worry as much. I had somewhere to go, and the job situation didn't bother me as much, as I had never really had a full time job. Now, though, since I have a semi-decent paying job, I need something to go to.
The not having a place to go to kinda sucks as well. I can't really look at flats without being there, and most of the flats that I have seen online don't allow pets, or are in areas that I've been told that I wouldn't want to live in. And the pet thing is the most important of all, I'm not going anywhere that won't let me take my cat with me.
I'd like to be able to have someone look at places for me, but no one who lives there knows me well enough to know what I would be after as well. And if I don't have a job to go to, I won't be able to live in a place that I would like, because it's expensive to live alone. And then there's the cost of moving all of my things there, which won't be cheap.
There's so many things to think about at the moment, and so many decisions to make. It's times like this where I wish I was a child again, and didn't have to worry about all of these things. I could just be happy playing with toys. Not that I can't do that now, it's just that there's other things that have to be done. Blah, I'm just rambling now, so I'll end this here.

Thanks for reading my incoherent depressive ramblings. Hopefully I'll be back on track soon.

I'm back, baby!

2011-01-01T03:27:00.000-08:00

Sorry loyal readers, but I took a brief hiatus from blogging. I decided that I couldn't be bothered for the week between Christmas and New Years, and probably won't be back to our regular schedule until next week, but I thought I'd make a post anyway.

So since I posted last... Wait, when did I post last? I should check that before I start to update what I've been upto...
OK, so, there's my past PSA, and my movie review, both of them were crappy, and then before that was a Minecraft post, and then about the heat we were getting. OK, now I'm up to date on what I have done last.

So since I last posted, I haven't really been upto much, been playing a lot of Minecraft, fuck that game is like crack. I think I'll be not playing as much now though, my interest in the game is waning, I do still like it, it's just that when I die and lose all my things, I don't feel like playing on that world any more. This has happened to me twice now, and I am sort of losing interest in the whole matter. Ah well, it'll leave me with more time for blogging and the such.
Christmas came and went. It was kind of a non-event for me this year, as it was last. I didn't have the money to fly home for the holidays, and my family can't really afford to fly down here. Such is life. I did get a phone call from my Dad though, which is good. Got updated with all the latest gossip from home, which isn't much and is mostly boring.
For Christmas I got $100 from my Dad, which is the usual present. It's quite handy as money is usually short at this time of the year, so I'm glad for it. And I got a tie with a Dalek on it, and tieclip with the TARDIS on it. Which is AWESOME! I loves it, and it will be my tie of choice when I go out wearing my suit now. Or when I go out wearing any sort of shirt that a tie will go with.
I saw my flatmate for Christmas, which is always a treat. I miss having her around when she isn't here, which she isn't very much. I spent most of the day at home playing on my computer, but ended up going around to a friends house in the evening and having a few drinks with friends, old and new.

Between Christmas and New Years I didn't do anything at all. I worked for three of the days, which was horrible, and then got another four day weekend. Which the last day of it is tomorrow, and I'm back to work on Monday. At 6am. Which will suck ass.
I didn't do anything for New Years, I was supposed to go around to a friends for a BBQ, and drinks, but I decided against it. I didn't really feel sociable.Mostly because I've been depressed again recently, which I'm not enjoying. I blame the fact that all of my friends are moving away. Granted I don't see these friends much, it means that I definitely won't see them much any more, since they won't even be living in the same town as me. Due to this, I have been contemplating moving cities as well.
Christchurch is where I'm thinking of moving to. I know that I'll be leaving a lot of friends behind in Dunedin, but I'll hopefully make new ones in Christchurch. And there'll be better opportunities there for me, job related and other things related.

Speaking of other things...
Sigh.
I saw one of my old old friends online the other night. I hadn't spoken to her for quite a while, so I messaged her and we started a video chat. I should add here that when I met her online years ago, I kind of fell for her. She is smart, and beautiful. The only problem being that she lives in the US and, well, I very much don't. So anyway, we start a video chat. She asked me if I would consider dating her again, which I told her that I don't do the whole long distance thing. It doesn't work for me, I've tried it before, heck, we've tried it before and it didn't work. Then she told me that she was looking at completing her doctorate in New Zealand. She might be coming to New Zealand. Of course, my answer then was yes, I would date her. I would love to.
Of course, at this great and happy news, you'd think that I would be all jovial and happy. But no, my brain doesn't work that way. For some fucked up reason, my brain sabotages all chances of happiness for me. I'm thinking that it's my subconsciousnesses way of not letting myself get my hopes up, by filling me with doubts and anxiety over the whole situation. Blaaaah.
But it does give me another reason to move to Christchurch, because that's where she'll be if she comes over here.

So that's been my past week or so. Filled with boring crap. I'll go back to doing my movie/DVD review and PSA next week, once I've settled back into things. These two four day weekends have been good, but they've messed up my schedule for doing crap like blogging.
My next PSA will be on Ninjas. So stay tuned!

Thanks for reading, and again, don't forget to click any ads that pique your interest, as it will get me money. And also don't forget to like the blogs facebook page! The link is still where I've been telling you it is.
Thanks again! Goodnight all!

PSA: MMORPGs

2010-12-23T15:45:00.000-08:00

So this week I will be talking about MMORPGs, and the danger therein of them. Firstly, I'll be talking about the different types of MMOGs, from browser based ones right to the big ones like World Of Warcraft, then I'll move on to what makes them addictive, and lastly I'll tell you how to break the addiction, or at least try to manage it

There are many different types of MMOGs, some of them being simple browser based ones, like most of the facebook ones, there's FPSs which you can play with many other people over the internet, and then theres MMORPGs, which are the most dangerous of the ones that I have listed.

The browser based ones are addictive still, don't get me wrong there, there was a case in USA where some woman let her child starve to death because she was too busy playing Farmville to take care of her own child. It's not so much a case of the game being at fault in these cases though, it's the person who is at fault. Sure, the game might prey on peoples ability to become horribly addicted, but there comes a point where you realize that you are addicted and need to do something about it.

The FPSs can be equally as dangerous and addictive though, I've known a few CounterStrike players, and some of them, if they're not playing CS, they're talking about CS, or buying things to make their CS experience more enjoyable. Again, there are people who get so addicted that horrible things happen. There was a man in France who lost a knife fight with another player in game, and spent the next 6 months tracking the man down and stabbing him in the chest with a real knife. Just goes to show that people are fucked up though.

And then there's the MMORPGs, and these days there are many. Theres Ultima Online, if it's still going, Everquest and Everquest II, City Of Heroes/Villains, Age Of Conan, Guild Wars, Aion, Eve Online, Warhammer Online, and then the big one, World Of Warcraft.

This category is horribly addictive. By becoming addicted to these games people have lost friends, family, jobs, educations, houses. I have heard of cases over in Asia where people have been killed in real life over items that are in game. People killing over virtual items. It's madness! It really is!

Sticking with the title of the article, I'm going to mostly focus on MMORPGs, because I know the most about them, being a former addict and all. And mostly it'll be focused on World Of Warcraft, but I think that it can translate into most other MMORPGs fairly easily.

What makes MMORPGs addictive. It's easy, and I'm going to steal some information for this off of a Cracked.com article, because they had some interesting and detailed information about what makes MMORPGs addictive. I'm going to write it from memory though, seeing as I don't want to directly steal off of them.

Firstly, and this is what got me addicted, there's the progression of your character. At the beginning of the game, you start off as a lowly level one. You can hardly do a thing other than wallop things with a club/sword/dagger/staff. But after killing a very small amount of enemies, suddenly you get to level two! You glow for a second, there's a nice sound to accompany your levelling. It's a fun experience, so you go on killing things and doing quests. Next thing you know, you're going up another level, and another level! Before you know it, you're at level 10 and moving to a new area with bigger and more powerful enemies.

But wait, each time you level up, it takes you longer to get to the next level, making it harder, more challenging. If it was easy to gain levels later on in the game as it was at the start, noone would play, because it would be too easy. It's addictive, the thrill of gaining levels, and each time you gain one, you want to gain another!

But also, to go along with the levels, there's the items. As you are levelling up, you are getting new and interesting items, and the higher level you are, the better items you can get, which makes the enemies easier to kill, so you go out killing things to get the items off of them so that you can use the items to kill things faster, so that you can gain levels faster, so that you can kill bigger things and get better items which will make the whole process easier! It's a vicious cycle it is.

In World Of Warcraft, there's also bosses to kill, instances to clear out. These require groups to do, well, most of them do, and there's even more satisfaction in doing the instances than there is just running around by yourself. There's the social aspect, if you get a good group of people it can be a lot of fun for everyone involved, and then there's the levels that you can by doing the instances, which you get faster than if you just run around by yourself, then there's the items that you get from the instances, and the quests that are involved, which are, again, better than you could get by running around by yourself, and then there's the bosses! Which you get another boost of satisfaction from taking down! Each thing gets you more and more addicted than the last. It's a very dangerous and addictive cycle.

How to manage your addiction, or how to not get addicted, or how to cut MMOGs out of your life entirely. My first suggestion is that if you have never played any of these MMOGs, then don't start. If you think that you might get horribly addicted to any of them, just avoid them. I know there are some people out there who can play these games on a casual basis, I think I may be becoming one of them, but there are also a good portion of the population who can and will become addicted to these games, and I was one of them.

If you are addicted, or are thinking of playing one of these games but you fear becoming addicted, then set yourself a schedule. Set an alarm or something of the sorts, and designate a specific amount of time for playing. Don't just log in and play for hours upon hours thinking 'I'll stop playing soon, just got to finish this first, and then finish that' because then it'll be 3am in the morning, you'll be unwashed, and unfed. And yes, this has happened to me.

If you want to get rid of your addiction, then get a friend to change your password and tell them not to tell you, that way you can quit cold turkey. I haven't done this, and never will because I've worked too damn hard to get all the stuff I have in World Of Warcraft, and even if I don't currently play it I still don't want to lose everything I have in the game.

If you have a friend who has lost themselves in the game, then please don't constantly pester them about quitting, this won't work. I know it won't work, because I've tried that, I've had people tell me to quit. It just makes you want to play more. And never ever ever say anything to them like 'It's only a game', because if you do, then you better be prepared to be stabbed in the face. A person has to want to quit, or want to manage their addiction. If they don't want to, then there's really nothing that you can do about it. Other than lock them in your basement until they have stopped playing for long enough that they have forgotten about the game.

Thank you for reading this PSA, I hope it has been informative and useful for you all out there. And again I am going to ask people to go and like the facebook page for this blog. The link is up on the right hand side of my blog. That way, you can be updated as to when I update the blog, as I always post on there. There's also twitter as well, because I also tweet all of my updates.

Have a good Christmas all!

Movie Review: Bridge To Terabithia

2010-12-23T03:05:00.000-08:00

I watched this movie first at the theatre with my girlfriend at the time, and thought that it was a wonderful movie, so I thought I would rewatch it and write a review of it, now that I'm a couple of years older, and more bitter.
Oh, also, be warned, there will be spoilers.

When I first watched the trailers for this movie, I went in expecting some big fantasy epic, as a few of those had been coming out at the time, and are still coming out. What I ended up with, though, was something completely different. Not to say that this was a bad thing, as I did enjoy the movie, but it just wasn't as I expected.
Bridge To Terabithia follows a tale of a Jess, a young boy, who lives with his parents and four sisters. His family isn't very well off, as is shown at the start of the movie when he is duct taping his sneakers together. He is bullied at school, and just seems to not enjoy himself very much, except in drawing and painting. A new girl, Leslie, starts at his school, who he ignores to begin with, but then warms up to her and they become fast friends.
Over the course of the movie, she shows him how to open his mind, so to speak, unleashing his full imagination. They travel over a stream via a rope swing to the magical land of Terabithia, please note, the rope swing is important. Over in Terabithia there is all sorts of magical beings and the such, but they aren't really important, this isn't a movie about the fantastical, it's a movie about friendship.

Ok, at this point, if you haven't seen the movie and just glossed over the part earlier where I said that there would be spoilers, please think carefully before reading any further. This movie is a good movie, and I recommend you go and watch it before having the plot laid out fully for you.

If you've seen this movie, you know what comes next. I'm going to describe how I felt briefly through this movie. First, this movie started to gently reach into my chest, and took a nice gentle hold of my heart, of course, I was thinking 'WTF are you doing?', to which the movie responded with 'It's OK, this is going to be all right, I'm just going to warm your heart nicely, everything will be fine.'. I thought this was alright, so I let it continue, and warm my heart it did. Then, suddenly, without warning, my heart is being violently ripped out of my chest and stabbed repeatedly. They killed off Leslie. THEY KILLED HER!
Here's how it happened, Jess gets a call from one of his teachers, Ms. Edmunds, played by Zooey Deschanel, whom he has a crush on, and don't get me wrong, who wouldn't have a crush on their teacher if she looked like Zooey Deschanel, and she invites him to go to a museum with her and her nephews, so go along he does. What happened to her nephews, noone knows, but they're nowhere to be seen, but that's not important, but it bothered me none the less, anyway, while Jess is at the museum, Leslie heads off to Terabithia, via the rope swing, which breaks and drops her onto a rock to subsequently drown in the river. He doesn't find out about this until he gets back from the museum, and is sent into a pit of despair.
Of course, the point of the movie is to show him moving past the grief, and remembering her in a happier way, and that he does. It ends on a high note of him taking his sister to Terabithia and showing her how to imagine it all.
So, overall, it's a good movie, I think. It really tugs at the heart strings though, and made me shed a tear or two (dozen) when Leslie dies. I think that any movie that evokes that sort of strong emotion is a good movie.
I probably wouldn't recommend this for children, or at least, not young young children, I'd not let anyone under about 10-12 see it. There is minor violence in the movie, but that's not why I'd restrict the watching, but rather because of the death of one of the very major characters. I don't think children would really understand the necessity of it for the learning purpose of the movie.

Hmm, this review has been kind of disjointed and crappy, but I'm kind of tired and feeling sad because I just watched the movie.

In closing. Watch the movie, even if you read through the spoilers here without seeing the movie previously (Yes, I'm talking to YOU!) still go and watch it, it's good.

Thank you all for reading, Hopefully my next post won't be as crappy as this one has been.

It's a brave new world.

2010-12-21T01:36:00.000-08:00

So, Minecraft Beta has finally arrived, and to celebrate its arrival, I have decided to start a new world in it, which I will chronicle here. I have started it on peaceful setting, so that I won't die as much, and so I can easily make things how I want them, without having to worry about skeletons, zombies and creepers messing things up for me.
Sadly, I didn't grab any screenshots of my unmolested world, but I haven't changed much yet, so here's some pictures of my world as it stands now.

This is looking out of my base, at where I spawned. This is also going to be the site for my quarry.

This is another shot from my base, looking almost opposite way to the previous picture. Up there is a mountain that looks full of coal, which is always handy. One day I will have a house at the top of that mountain.

This shot is from the other end of my quarry. It is 20 squares by 20 squares, and I hope to mine all the way down to bedrock.

This is looking down from above my base, my entrance is marked by a torch, as you can probably see, if I didn't have the torch there, it wouldn't be very easy to find the entrance to my base.

This is looking directly into my base. To get in, I have to hop over that piece of dirt that I am pointing at. This makes my base hard to find, hence why the torch is there. So I can find my way home.

And lastly, this is inside my current base. It's only small at the moment, but I will expand it, after I have mined down in my quarry.

So as you can see, I haven't done much to the map yet, I haven't explored it at all, other than travel up to the mountain to get some coal. I don't think I'll need to get any more from up there for a while anyway, there'll be some in my quarry.

Thanks all for reading, and I will be updating this every few days. Or maybe only once a week. I haven't decided yet.

Toodle-oo!

Fuck this heat. Fuck it right in the eye.

2010-12-20T22:21:00.000-08:00

It is far too fucking ... Hang on, that's the door... MY PIZZA IS HERE! Be right back...
OK, now, where was I? Oh, that's right.
It is far too fucking HOT at the moment. My desktop keeps shutting itself down due to the heat. I had it on for about 20 mins, and it went from room temperature (29 degrees Celsius at the moment) to 60 degrees Celsius. Fuck this shit. And I can't even play Minecraft on my netbook any more because Beta has made the lag unbearable on this thing! BAH! I want to play Minecraft!

So anyway, work wasn't so bad today. I had half the day off due to having too many staff members working in grocery today. It was good, it meant that I could come home and play Minecraft. BUT WAIT! I can't because my computer won't run in this heat! ARGH!
What happened to winter? I want it to come back, forget summer, spring and autumn, give me winter all year round. I think it may be cooling down now, which is good. I'm going to wait a bit before I try to use my desktop again though, as it may still overheat. And I'm watching Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (again), so I don't want to leave the TV.

Ok, so I don't have much else to say at the moment. The heat is sucking away my energy. I had a little nap earlier, it was good, but I'm still tired and want to sleep. Or play Minecraft.
Fucking heat.

That is all.

Bonus update! Minecraft! And its evilness...

2010-12-19T01:15:00.000-08:00

I've started playing Minecraft. I purchased it a few weeks ago, because it's relatively cheap, and I've heard that it is a good and fun sandbox game. I tried getting it to run on my netbook, with great difficulty, to the point where I said fuck it, and gave up. I decided to try again to get it working a few days ago, first on my desktop.

I got it up and running, and running fairly well, so I attempted getting it running on my netbook again, and it does work on there now. It runs slower than on my desktop, and I have to have the draw distance set to the lowest it can be, and it still lags a bit at times, but I actually have it running.

So anyway, I started a new world on my desktop, and didn't know what the hell I was doing, so I wandered around killing cows, sheep, pigs and chickens, and then it got dark, and I died. After this horrible experience I thought that it was best to look up a quick tutorial on how to actually play the game, since just trying to figure it out myself wasn't working at all.
The tutorial I found, on the Minecraft wiki, helped me out quite a lot, it showed me what to do, what to harvest first, how to combine things, and so on and so forth. In my second world, since I abandoned and deleted my first world, I went out and cut down some trees, made a mining pick, found some coal, and built a base. I messed something up in this world, I can't remember what it was though, but it annoyed me so I deleted and started over again.
At the start of this world, I noticed that there was a massive forest fire, which amused me. Almost every single tree that I could see was on fire. I found a corner of the forest fire and built my base there. This base was fairly good, I dug tunnels down underneath the base, and pottered around, then I died, and found that I was MILES from my base. It turns out that it's a bad idea to build your base after wandering around for half of a game day. Start over time.

So this would've been my fourth world. I started on a beach, which I liked, there were plenty of trees around, and there was a nice patch of desert not far away where I could build myself a quarry. Things were going to work on this world, I decided, I would get it right this time.
My base was built almost right next door to my spawning point, always handy, and just across a small stretch of water I had started building a quarry, which was getting me a lot of sand, which could be smelted into glass so that I could make the front of my base out of glass. This is useful, I've found, because then you can see out during the night, and can easily tell when daylight is coming.
There were about four floors to my base, tunneling downwards. I had built all of the floors out of glass as well, so that at any point from inside my base, I could see outside to see what time of the day it was. I had built a giant tower of stone on the roof of my base, which stretched into the sky, it had torches on it so that if I decided to go for a wander, I could easily find my way back home. There were plenty of trees around near my base as well, I had planted a few myself, some on top of my base, which were epic trees that I didn't want to cut down, due to their sheer awesomeness. I actually had plans to build a level of my base inside of the trees.
My quarry was epic. It was 20 blocks square, with a covered over glass roof. I built a glass bridge from my house to my quarry, so that I didn't have to swim over each night, and the bridge was fully lit, so that even during the night I didn't have to worry about anything when travelling to and from my quarry. I even built a small building at the top of my quarry that you needed to get into to be able to get down into the quarry, which made the whole place safe. After I had dug about 10 blocks down I had a wee side room built into the side of my quarry, as a sort of mini base, for when I couldn't be bothered travelling all the way back to my main base at the end of each day. At 20 blocks deep I found a large tunnel system, but there wasn't anything interesting in there, so I walled that off. On top of that wall I had placed a layer of dirt, upon which I planted trees. Yes, I had trees planted about 20 blocks down under the water level, and the trees were growing.

After getting about 25 blocks deep I was bored of digging out my quarry. It was hard work, I was digging day and night, I had plenty of torches so that at night I could just set them up in my quarry and not worry about anything ambushing me from the other side of the large area I was excavating. I decided to see how far down it was until I reached the bedrock, and couldn't tunnel down any further. I tunneled downwards, spiralling down and down and down. On my way I encountered some gold, and some redstone, both of which I had never encountered before, so I was pleased. Not far down I got to the bedrock, and wanted to explore. I picked a direction and started tunneling.

In this tunnel I managed to find more gold, and redstone, a lot of coal, and even some diamond, I was happy, but what I was actually seeking down in the lower depths of the world, was lava. I wanted lava so I could make myself a nice wee lava pit so that I didn't need to use my wood to fuel my furnace any more. And find lava I did. I tunneled myself right into a stream of lava. Thankfully I managed to wall it off before it could kill me. I found the source of the stream of lava, and a whole mess of tunnels. I was chuffed. There was coal veins all over the place, redstone, more diamonds, more gold, and iron. This place was awesome. Of course, I did managed to step into the lava, set myself on fire, and run screaming back down towards my quarry only to die along the way, but that's OK, all of my things were still there when I walked back from my spawn point.

So I explored the tunnels, dug out quite a lot of different minerals. I set myself up a work bench and furnace down there so that I didn't have to wander back up to my base to smelt the gold that I was finding, I had lit the tunnels up with torches so that nothing would spawn down there and kill me.

STOP HERE. Now, if you want a nice and happy story, please stop reading. If you want to think that I had a lovely time down there, and I get everything I wanted to and went back to my base all happy, as happy as Larry, so to speak, then feel free to believe that, but I urge you to not read on if you want to keep that image in your head.

Here is where tragedy struck. I was happily wandering around, when I heard the sound of a zombie. I looked all around, and couldn't see one, so I figured that he was in a tunnel along side the one I was in, and that he wouldn't bother me. Hah, I wish I was that lucky.
I was about to mine some more coal when I heard the zombie, and he was close this time. I turned around AND THERE HE WAS! He had snuck up RIGHT behind me! I hadn't expected this, so I panicked. I attempted to pull out my sword to attack, but he was coming towards me, I turned to run! And ran straight into a lava pool. A deep lava pool. Before I had realized it, I was sitting on the bottom of the pool, being all dead. With all of my stuff.

I respawned, and my heart sank. What would happen to all of my stuff, sitting at the bottom of a pool of lava? I raced back down there, so seek out my things.
They were gone. All gone. Everything that I had mined down there, all of my coal, my gold, my redstone... My .... Diamonds... Gone...
I felt like crying, I really did. I tried to continue playing that world, but I just can't. I know what I have lost there. I won't delete that world, but I won't play it again either. I have started again, anew. I have learnt my lesson, and that was a lesson of greed. I won't let it happen to me again.

And so, this was my tragic tale, of Minecraft, of finding fun and joy, and tragedy and heartbreak.

Thank you for reading this bonus update.

EDIT: Sorry, just had to add a happy ending onto this, sort of. This is on my new world, I started off with two trees outside my base, so I harvested them and planted more. This is the third tree to grow, and it is an epic tree.

Epic tree is epic.

Complaining about work, again.

2010-12-18T19:27:00.000-08:00

You'll probably notice a trend in my blog, and that will be me complaining about work, or work related matters.
It's not that I hate my job, I don't mind my job, it is monotonous, and kind of boring, but I get to display stock on shelves in a nice and tidy fashion, and I like doing that. The problem I have is my co-workers, and my bosses. Not all of my bosses, just most of them.

Like this, for example. One of my bosses came up to me yesterday, and pointed out that I didn't have a name badge on. Here's how the conversation went:
Me: "I told you on Monday, my name badge fell off in the storeroom somewhere, and I can't find it."
Boss: "So what have you done about getting a new one."
Me: "I told you, on Monday, that my name badge fell off in the storeroom somewhere, and I can't find it. I thought that you would get me a new one."
Boss: "So you haven't had a name badge in five days, and you haven't done anything about getting a new one."
Me: "I don't really notice when I don't have a name badge, this is my first day back from my weekend and the first day I notice I didn't have it."
Boss: "Well, as excuses go, that's a pretty weak one."

...

He still didn't go and get me a new name badge, I had to go seek out a different boss who got me one. He gets in moods like this when we have the royal visits. The royal visits being when the higher ups in the company come around to inspect the stores. It's funny though, when they do come around everyone gets in a frantic rush to clean everything up and have everything perfect for when they come and visit, to show that our store is nice and tidy. 'FUCK THAT', I say. Let them see our store as it normally runs, show them that we need more staff and that we're not getting by with the little we do have.
Granted we should be getting by with the staff we have, especially in my department, considering most of my co-workers are fucking muppets, who could be outworked by an untrained monkey. Ok, that is enough ranting for now.

In other news, I think that the bees are onto me. Each day that I've been walking since I posted my last PSA I've been confronted by no fewer than two bees on each occasion. They're trying scare tactics to get me to retract my statement about them. Well, I say NO, I will NOT retract my PSA about the bees! People need to be told what a menace they are, and that they must be stopped!
Also, I've decided on my next PSA, it will be about MMORPGs, and the dangers therein. Including the tale of how I became a MMORPGer, and the cycle of descent that MMORPGs caused to my life.

That's about all for today. It's almost Christmas time, I hope you people get to spend it with your families. Have a beer or two for me, I will probably be alone, so I'll have a beer or two for each of the people who read this blog. So I'll be having one or two beers.

One last thing. Follow the link to the facebook page for my blog, and like it. And then tell your friends to do the same, and their friends, and their friends friends. Maybe then someone who I don't know will actually like my blogs facebook page. >.<

Thanks for reading!

PSA: Bees, Death With Wings.

2010-12-16T15:50:00.001-08:00

Bees. A scourge to our existance.

In this PSA I will show you what a bee looks like with a diagram of its external anatomy, then I will go on to explain about how a bee will seek someone out, and what it does when it finds someone, and then I will tell you how to protect yourselves against bees, and what you should do if you ever see one.

External Anatomy of a Bee.

Now, lets go through the things that I have labelled on this handy diagram.

Fuzzy Exterior: The fuzzy exterior of a bee is an insidious disguise, a way to trick you into thinking it is a harmless little creature.

Face: It has a face, just like all creatures, but as you can see, the bee has a happy smile and big eyes, more ways to trick you into thinking that it is a harmless cute little creature.

Antenna: The bee uses its antenna to seek out humans, it can detect the subtle vibrations in the air that humans make as they move around.

Wings: The wings are used to give the bee flight, without these the bees would not be as dangerous and deadly as they are. One of the scary things about bees is that scientists are still unsure as to how the bee flies, given that its wings are not large enough to give it flight, which leads me to hypothesize that the bee flies using black magic of some kind.

Legs: The legs of the bee haven't shown up on this picture, which lends more credibility to my black magic theory. Anyway, the bee uses its legs primarily for dancing. I will explain more on this later.

DEATH!: At the back end of the bee there is a stinger, or as I have labelled it, DEATH!. This is where the real danger comes from.

Now that we've taken a look at the anatomy of the bee, we can delve into how a bee hunts, and what it does once it has found a human.

Firstly, the hive will send out some hunter bees. The job of these bees is to seek out unsuspecting people for which to bring death down upon. Using its antenna, it will sense the subtle vibrations in the air created by people. made by them moving around, breathing, and even just by they beating hearts. Once it has found someone, it will fly back to the hive to let the rest of the bees know.

Once back at the hive, the hunter bee will do an intricate dance for the other bees, a dance that is half celebratory, and half directions. The other bees will get the directions from the hunter bees dance, and then they will go seek the person out. When they have found the person, they will turn and all fly backwards towards him or her, trying to hit them with their stingers. This is a dangerous situation to be in.

If you see a bee, just ignore it to begin with, and continue what you were doing. If you are walking somewhere, just continue walking. When the bee leaves, change directions, or go somewhere that you weren't previously. Once the bee can't see you, it won't know where you have gone, and it can only tell the rest of the hive where you are and what direction you were travelling when it saw you last.

If you see a large amount of bees heading in your direction, you're fucked. Just run, run for your life. Try and get inside a building and shut yourself in, as bees don't have the ability to open doors or windows... Yet. If you're near a body of water, submerse yourself, as bees also lack the ability to swim, but we all know that could change.

At some point, you may come across a bee hive, where they live and plot out the demise of humans, if you do manage to find one, let the local authorities know where it is. They will know what to do.

So please people, keep yourself safe. And remember, even though they may look cute and fuzzy, bees are DEATH! With wings!

Thank you for reading.

DVD Review: Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World

2010-12-14T22:38:00.000-08:00

As a change from last weeks movie review, I'm going to do a review of the Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World DVD, as opposed to doing a review of just the movie.
To begin with, lets take a look at the case. Well, I'll look at the case, you can just pretend to see it because I don't currently have a scanner to scan it in, and I'm far too lazy to try and find an image of it. Ok, so it has a reversible cover, which is awesome. I love reversible covers, I've already reversed the cover. Well, thats all I really have to say about the cover at the moment.

So I've just put the DVD into my DVD player, and it doesn't have a stupid anti piracy thing, which is awesome. Instead, it has a big THANK YOU for purchasing the DVD. After that it auto plays a little trailer for Blu-ray, which makes me want a Blu-ray player, but that's beside the point, it is slightly annoying. Next it plays trailers for some up coming movies, which is also annoying, I'd rather they not auto play them and just have them in the extras, so I can choose to watch them at a later date.

As for the special features, it has a few. There's deleted scenes, outtakes, feature commentary, technical commentary, cast commentary and galleries. I'll list what each one is as I watch them, currently I'm just watching the movie so it may take a while to get through everything. You won't notice the time difference though, as I'll only post this once I've finished writing it all up, but if you feel like waiting for however long it takes me to look at each different section of the special features for an authentic feel of waiting between me writing each part, then feel free to, I won't stop you.

The first section I'll look at is the galleries, which won't take me 108 minutes to look at, only a minute or two. Hmm, this is taking me longer than I thought, just bear with me for a bit longer. HEY! It automatically goes to the next pic in the gallery after a few seconds, like a slide show, that's kind of nifty. There's a tonne of different sections in the gallery, I thought it'd only be a small few, like promo shots and that sort of thing, but there's a lot more than just that. There's 12 different galleries, and they all have a fair amount of pictures in them, it'd be interesting to go through them all, if you're into that sort of thing. I'm not really, but some people might be. Oh, it has an awesome Graphic Novel Comparison Gallery, which is nifty. It has scenes from the movie next to panels from the comic, showing their similarities. It's nifty. Anyway, onto the next section, and next I'll look at...

Deleted scenes! It has either with or without commentary, I'm watching them without first, then I'll watch them with. It's always interesting watching the deleted scenes, to see what they kept, and what they got rid of. They've listed the scene numbers at the start of each deleted scenes, which is also interesting. This section seems very interesting. Some of the scenes are without special effects, which is, again, interesting to watch. There are a lot of deleted scenes, I also didn't expect there to be as many as there are. This section is also taking a while to do. I can see why some of them were deleted, because they were a little longer than they needed to be, some of them having unnecessary things in them. Almost finished watching them, and I do suggest you all do the same. And in a moment I'll be watching the deleted scenes with commentary, which should add some insight into why they were deleted/changed. The commentary is fascinating by the way! You learn what the director had for breakfast one day. I won't spoil it for you, you'll have to watch them for yourselves to find out what it was and where it is, muahahahaha! And now on to the next section.

Outtakes! Outtakes are another section of DVDs that I love, they're always amusing. I'll let you know how amusing these ones are once I've watched them. Wait here for a second while I watch them... Ok, so they weren't as entertaining as I hoped, but still worth a gander.

Next on the agenda is the Trivia Track, according to the DVD menu, which I'm guessing is the Technical Commentary that's listed on the DVD case. It looks like it's just a subtitle track listing interesting information about the scenes, set design, props and costumes. It is interesting, and would be worth a watch, but I did just watch the movie, and it'd be like just watching it again without much extra, so I'm going to skip watching this and move straight onto audio commentary. Oh, wait, it does have three commentary tracks, they didn't just skimp out on me, there's an extra here that ISN'T listed on the DVD case, awesome.

Ok, so commentary tracks. I'm not going to watch all of them and then say which is better/worse, I'll just list here who does what commentary, and you can decide whether or not to watch them. So, the Feature Commentary has Director/Co-Writer Edgar Wright, Co-Writer Michael Bacall, and the author of the comic, Bryan Lee O'Malley. The Technical Commentary has Edgar Wright again, and Director Of Photography Bill Pope. Lastly, Cast Commentary. Wait, there's two Cast Commentary tracks? Wow, that's awesome. So there's FOUR commentary tracks. They're packing more and more extras into this as I write it seems! Anyway, first Cast Commentary track has Michael Cera, Jason Schwartzman, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ellen Wong, and Brandon Routh. Second Cast Commentary track has Anna Kendrick, Aubrey Plaza, Kieran Culkin, and Mark Webber. Looks like they'll all be interesting, I may come back after I've watched them and add notes here to say how good and/or interesting they are.

So overall, it is jam packed with special features, more than is listed on the DVD case it seems. I am extremely pleased with my purchase of this DVD, as not only is it an awesome movie, but again, it has a lot of features. Please, go out and purchase it, even if you do it just for the thank you that you'll get when you put it in your DVD player.

Thank you all for reading!

Just a random side note, my blog now has a facebook page, mostly because I was bored last night. There is a link to it over there --> at the side of the page, probably considerably higher than that arrow just pointed, its near the top... No, a little higher... Too high now, a little lower... There it is, click that, and go like my facebook page, please. I need more likes!

Thanks again for reading, you are all awesome.

Doovds

2010-12-12T23:51:00.000-08:00

I like DVDs, in fact I own hundreds of them. They're amazing because they pack so much into those tiny discs. Theres a movie, deleted scenes, commentary, and other random stuff! You know what bothers me about them though? The anti piracy messages at the start.
The anti piracy things bug me, because I've already purchased the DVD, I have already struck out against piracy, by purchasing the DVD. I know it's good to buy them, thats why I buy them, so why should I have to sit through some crappy little ad at the start of every single DVD, most of them that I can't skip or fast forward? Argh, it just bothers me.
I'm just ranting about this because I put a DVD in my DVD player and the anti piracy ad popped up and reminded me how much I hate them. Also, if I could download a car, I totally would.
Don't get me wrong, by the way, I'm not against piracy. I pirate things like the best of them, but I actually purchase stuff that I really enjoy... Eventually. If it wasn't for piracy, I would never of heard of Mindless Self Indulgence, or KMFDM. I would never have watched Zombieland, of half of the anime that I've seen. Because of piracy, I have purchased more things than I would have otherwise.

So anyway, thats all I really have to say at the moment. I am currently watching Sherlock Holmes, and playing silly little browser based games. I think I'll have a beer and then contemplate going to bed.

I've been drinking.

2010-12-11T04:46:00.000-08:00

So, as the title of this post states, I have been drinking this evening. It was a fun event, a couple of friends were having a sort of wedding party type thing for their South Island friends before their actual wedding up north. Was good, saw some old friends, met some new people. Overall it was fun. I even dressed up all formal like in my suit for the event.
I don't get many occasions to actually wear my suit, and I should wear my suit more often. It cost me a semi decent amount of money, and it hardly gets used. And by semi decent, I mean that from a low income perspective. I know to all the rich people out there my suit wouldn't even be worthy to wipe their shoes with, but meh. I like my suit, and I don't care about what other people think. I think it looks good, and that's all that matters really, isn't it?
Sorry, kind of got side tracked there speaking about how freakin' awesome I am. Anyway, back to the gathering of people. We migrated away from where the original party was located, went around to the couples flat for a wee bit, and then continued on to a karaoke bar. This is a decision that I came to regret, about 20 seconds after stepping into the place.
Now, I have nothing against karaoke, but that is a lie right there. I have everything against karaoke. If I had an awesome band, like some of the bands that their songs have been karaoke'd, and I heard people karaoke-ing my songs like some of these people, then I would actually murder them, like they murdered the songs. Maybe, just maybe, karaoke is good with a small gathering of friends, where everyone is already half cut. That way you don't embarrass yourself in front of total strangers, or rape their ear drums with your horrible rendition of whatever song you're trying to sing. Ugh.

I think that's about all I have to say about this evening. I'm glad I don't have to work tomorrow, because it is almost 2am and I haven't gone to bed yet. Good night folks!

PSA: Christmas Music

2010-12-09T14:33:00.000-08:00

I am sorry that our scheduled PSA about bees is not available this week, but I felt that there was something more urgent to have a PSA about, and that is Christmas Music.

Christmas music is the bane of any sane persons existance. All through out December they cheerily bleat out of every available speaker, are sung by almost every busker, and are hummed by random passers by. This, I think, will not do. I wish to get rid of almost all Christmas type music, but to do this, first we must understand our enemy.

We shall begin with a study the different types of Christmas songs.

Firstly theres the traditional Christmas Carols. These are the likes of Silent Night, Jingle Bells, and that silly drummer boy song. They seem to be mostly religion based songs, from early Christmasses, and their theme seems to be Jesus. These will be the hardest to eliminate, since they are so rooted in tradition that uprooting them may be impossible, but that shouldn't stop us from trying!

Next, would be the more modern version of the traditional Christmas Carols, and these would just be the plain ol' ordinary Christmas Songs. This category has songs like Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, and I Saw Mummy Kissing Santa Claus. They seem to be based mostly around the Santa Claus, or Father Christmas, mythos. These may be slightly easier to get rid of than the first category, but may also be difficult to get rid of, because of the children. The horrible, horrible children.

Next in my list would be the Christmas Power Ballards. Mostly this category is comprised of remakes of the earlier categories, but with the difference that every word in the song has been stretched out to an extruciating length, making a simple song seem to last for hours. I think that these will be easy to get rid of, as I can't imagine that there is anyone out there who would not be horribly annoyed by these songs.

And lastly, I have reserved a special category for this one single song, and I am sure that it has a special level of Hell reserved just for the maker of this one song. And that song is, Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer. This song is fucking horrible, and should be immediately struck entirely from human record. It gets ingrained into your head, boring into your brain causing irrepairable harm. If you think that you may hear even the start of this song, please, for the love of God and all that is Holy, please, just plug your ears and start running in the opposite direction.

Please note that I have not mentioned Snoopys Christmas, and I have a good reason for that. Snoopys Christmas is an awesome song, it is the only Christmas song that I deem worthy of being played during Christmas time. Well, that is a lie, there are other Christmasy type songs, but they wouldn't be allowed to be played in public places due to the lyrics, or the religion bashing that goes on in the songs.

My first order of attack would be to get rid of the power ballards. This may require hiring some hitmen to take out any and all music artists who decide to create a Christmas power ballard this year, just as a warning to the rest of them to not even try. Next, would be the Santa Claus themed songs, but this would require getting rid of the mythos of Santa Claus, and that would mean brainwashing every single person on the planet into forgetting about him. Next, and I've almost saved this one for last, but not quite, is the Grandma song. All I really want to do is find out who wrote the song, and horribly torture them. And lastly, is getting rid of the Christmas Carols. This would be the hardest, and would require a time travel machine, and those don't exist yet, so I won't go into details.

So all we can do at the moment is complain to the shop owners about the cheerful music, boycott stores and malls that insist on playing the horrible Christmas songs! The only other way to keep ourselves sane this holiday season is to plug our ears and hope that the music can't penetrate through.

Thank you all, and keep yourselves sane this Christmas!

Christmas tree!

2010-12-08T16:37:00.000-08:00

In the interest of being less Grinch like, and more human like, I've decided to try and insert a little Christmas cheer into my life. To do this, I decided to get a Christmas tree. And here it is, two pictures of it in fact:

Christmas tree, guarded by Keroberos, Guardian Beast Of The Clow Cards

Christmas Tree, guarded by Rei Ayanami, piloting Evangelion Unit-00

So, as you can see, my flat now has Christmas cheer!

Movie Review: Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day.

2010-12-08T03:25:00.000-08:00

So I've decided to try my hand at doing a movie review, and maybe this will become a weekly thing, like my weekly PSAs. This review won't be the greatest, as I only watched the movie once, and have since vowed to never put myself through that torture again, but yeah, here's an attempt at a review.

I watched Boondock Saints a long time ago, at the insistence of one of my flatmates at the time. He pestered me to watch it, and even played me a scene from the movie to show how awesome it was, and he was right. Boondock Saints was one of the best movies that I have seen. It has action, it has comedy. It is brilliant. So, of course, when I heard that Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day was being made, I awaited this movie with eager anticipation. Being the pirate that I am, I procured myself a copy from a friends harddrive, and sat myself down to watch it.

I'm going to pause here for a second and let this all sink in for you. I had watched an awesome movie, and was sitting down ready to watch what I had only hoped would be an awesome sequel. This could've possibly been the biggest let down since I found out that Santa Claus wasn't real and that the Easter Bunny doesn't really lay chocolate eggs, he just hides them, by the way, he has the eggs mass produced in China.

I really tried to enjoy it, I did. There were points in the movie where I just wanted to turn it off, I couldn't bear to watch, but I decided to soldier on and power through it. It had to get better, didn't it?
It didn't. To me, it seemed as though the plot was written by a fat fanboy, sitting in his mothers basement, where he inserted himself into the story as the bumbling, yet wise cracking, sidekick. It was weak.
The acting was... Well, let me put it this way, somehow, in the 10 years between the making of the two movies, almost every single actor who reprised his role lost their acting talent. About the only acting talent left in the movie was left to the big names. The three detectives were just horrible, it was like they'd taken acting lessons from long term out of work stage actors. Rocco makes an appearance in a dream sequence, and my God has the actor gotten fat. I'd imagine that he has spent the time between the two movies doing nothing but eating. They try to disguise, and fail, his weight gain by putting him in a trench coat, but it only serves to point out how much of a fat ass he's become. I seriously don't know what the fuck Troy Duffy was smoking when he wrote the script, or directed the movie, but that must've been some powerful shit.

There were points where it was similar to the first, but at some points it was too similar. It was almost a bad recreation of the first movie, like a reimagining, so to speak. A horrible reimagining, created in the mind of a mentally retarded chimpanzee.

This is how I remember the movie going. It starts off with a priest being murdered, in the same fashion as The Saints would do it, but it was only a hit to lure The Saints out of hiding so that the Yakavetta family could take their revenge on them for killing their leader fellow in Boondock Saints. The Saints travel back to Boston to avenge the priest, and on the way pick up a bumbling, yet wise cracking, Mexican sidekick. They take out an Asian gang, you have to make sure to get all those minorities in there, and mess up due to bad planning, as happened with every single hit in the first movie, apart from the very last one in the court house. The three stupid detectives are assigned to the case and immediately realize that The Saints are back in town. A new FBI detective is introduced, and she is Smeckers protege, who has since been killed off in between the two movies, and she also immediately notes that The Saints are back as well. There's a little bit of misinformation going on between the new FBI lady and the three detectives, they are both on the side of The Saints, but the detectives don't realize that the FBI lady is. It's supposed to make for comic relief, but it doesn't really work. More bad guys get killed, blah blah. Ok, I kind of tuned out to the story at this point. It was boring me, and it was just a bad movie. One of the detectives gets killed off, of course, El Duce comes back to Boston as well, of course. He has a whole back story right throughout the movie. I didn't pay much attention to it as it seemed as though it was tacked on at the last second to add some sort of sense to the stupid plot that was already there. Essentially it turns out that the big bad guy in this movie was a friend of El Duce from back when they were young adults. He had El Duce put in prison. In the end, El Duce gets killed, The Saints get arrested and put in jail. The two remaining detectives break them out with the help of the FBI lady. Sorry, I haven't put many names as I didn't care enough to learn them properly. Smecker was still alive all this time, and has a cameo at the end.

It's all just stupid, he has set it up for a third movie, but I really hope that a third movie never happens. This one was bad enough, I'd hate to see how much more he could screw things up with a third movie.
So, in my opinion, don't watch this movie, don't let your friends watch this movie. If you think you might enjoy this movie, then you may be brain damaged and you should seek medical attention.

Sorry, this review has just ended with me rambling. It was such a crappy movie that even writing a review of it is putting me to sleep.
Thanks for reading.

Bonus Update: A rant!

2010-12-07T01:12:00.000-08:00

I've been put into a ranting mood by my flatmate. We were discussing relationships, and this subject always makes me want to rant. Please note that this will be an angry hate filled rant, generally directed at females in general, don't take offence. I'm just ranting. And there will be a lot of foul language involved.
You have been warned.
So here we go.

I've been single for a while, as I always seem to be after things go south with the girl that I have been dating. It's been over a year now, since I've been in a relationship, and its not for lack of trying either! I've asked girls out, given my number out, I've tried, I really have, but I just can't seem to get things to work out. But I know what the problem is, and it isn't me, it's the way society is.
For example, to be able to start dating someone, I can't just go up to them and ask them on a date, or ask them out, or say in casual conversation that I like them or find them interesting/intriguing, or anything like that. Oh no, that would make said female flee from me instantly. I have to ignore her, I have to pretend not to like her, so that she likes me, because as we all know you can't like someone and actually pay attention to them!
This makes me fucking angry. Why the fuck can't I just tell someone that I like them? What is so fucking wrong with that?!? Why do I have to beat around the bush before taking interest in someone? It's just fucking retarded!
The only other way, it seems, to be able to find someone is to get drunk and fuck a random stranger. That seems to be one of the normal ways of finding a partner these days. This might be all fine and dandy if I had no morals and wanted to date someone with no morals, but I have too much respect for myself, and for women for that matter, to do that.
BAH! FUCK SHIT ARSE CUNT!
Anyway, what I'd like is to find someone, who I like. Someone who I can just say to them that I like them. It's not too much to ask, is it? I mean, I'm a nice guy, I'm not hideously ugly. I'm pretty awesome if you do ask me. I'm old fashioned, I believe in chivalry. And I hate feminists for killing chivalry, I'm all for equal rights and that jazz, but I was always raised to open doors for women, pull their chairs out for them, carry their stuff for them. I don't do this because I think women are inferior and can't do this for themselves, but rather, because they're superior, and why should they do it, when I can do it for them.
This rant has changed from being all ranty to being depressive and mopey.
Anyway, I'm off now, good night.

Christmas is upon us!

2010-12-06T23:18:00.000-08:00

Christmas is almost here, and I have decided to try and get into the Christmas spirit by purchasing myself a Christmas tree. It is only going to be a fake one, but I've never had a full proper tree set up since I was living back at home, and that's coming up seven years since I've lived there now.
I found a tree online that I wanted, and it was only $40! Plus delivery, of course, but only $40! And it was BLACK! I had found the tree I wanted! But, rather than impulse purchase, like I normally do, I decided to wait, and see how much trees were in shops in town first. I ended up talking to a guy at work about it, and he told me that at one shop in town, black Christmas trees were going for $200. Of course, I immediately thought to myself that its lucky I found one online for so cheap! I would have to go home and immediately purchase it! Little did I know that something would get in the way of my plans. Something that goes by the name of one day specials. The tree on that website is back up to almost full price. Oh, its still on special, but its a lot more expensive now. I have found another shop that sells black trees though, for a reasonable price, so I shall have to go procure me one, tomorrow. I hope they still have them in stock.
In other news, there is no other news. Today has been a non-event really. Weather hasn't been that great, but it hasn't been horrible either. Work was tolerable, we got everything done that we needed to get done. Wait. Oh God, oh crap. Tomorrow is Christmas Club night! Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck it's going to be horrible!
Please, wish for my sanity to hold until I finish work! I'll need it!

Another day, another dollar.

2010-12-05T19:15:00.000-08:00

Not much has been happening lately that is blog worthy, so I may be doing a few really boring updates. Work hasn't been bad, and I've stopped sneezing. My nose is still running at times, but the anti-histamines that I purchased yesterday seem to be working.
Speaking of work, my boss injured himself at work the other day. He hurt his back lifting, and I shit you not, lifting toilet paper. Yes, thats right, toilet paper. I don't know how he did it, but man is it funny. He came to work for a couple of hours this morning and was walking like someone had shoved a carrot up his ass.
The weather has turned colder over the last couple of days, which has been good, and helpful. It's not as hot so I feel better. I always prefer the colder weather.
There was a Christmas parade type thingee going through town yesterday, I was at work when it was on, which was good. It meant that even if, for some reason, someone decided to drag me along, they wouldn't of been able to. Not that anyone I know would drag me to a silly Christmas parade, but if they did, too bad. As I was walking home afterwards, and a man on a Penny Farthing cycled past me. It was awesome. He looked like he'd have trouble at the lights though, considering that you can't exactly stop easily on one of those things.
My cat came home the other night without her collar. This means that I have to purchase her a new collar (already done that though), and get her a new tag. I'm thinking of getting her microchipped so that even if she does lose her collar again, it means that I don't have to worry as much. I dislike her running around without a collar or tag. What if she gets lost or hurt? Then no-one will know where she lives! My poor wee baby.

Anywho, that's about all I have to say at the moment.
Oh, this weeks PSA is being changed, I have found something more important, and possibly more deadly, than bees to make a PSA about. Please stay tuned on Friday for a new PSA!
Thanks for reading all!

Too. Fucking. Hot.

2010-12-03T20:56:00.000-08:00

Today has been a lovely day, nice and sunny, clear skies for the most of the day. It's been amazing. BUT, I have one complaint.
It's too fucking hot.
I'm not a big fan of hot weather, I'll admit that. I really dislike it. It makes you sweaty, and tired. It's uncomfortable to go out and do things in. Give me cold weather any day. Give me snow any day rather than hot weather.
Flies! They're everywhere at the moment! Fucking little pests that they are. And other insects, they all come out to play in the hot weather. I dislike insects as well, silly tiny things. Always getting in the way. At least the flies get caught by the spiders, but then spiders are an entirely different problem in themselves.
And since it's summer, I have horrible hayfever. I was going to get some anti-histamines after work today, but the stupid pharmacy closed at 2pm because it's a Saturday. *grumble* *grumble*

Anywho, other than that, it hasn't been a bad day. Had work, but can't complain too much about that. Most of the people I dislike don't work today, which makes it slightly more tolerable than most days that I work. I shouldn't really complain about them, because its probably the best job that they can get. Ah well.

In other news, I am working on the next PSA, it will probably be out on Friday, I am going to try to get one out a week. This next one is about bees. Oh I hate bees so much, but I won't go on about them here, since thats what the PSA will be for.

Well, that is about it for today. I hope that I can sleep tonight with the hot weather. Wish me luck!

EDIT: Fuck I need anti-histamines! My hayfever is now triggering my asthma, so when ever I cough or sneeze, my lungs feel itchy. Yes, my actual lungs feel itchy. It's not my back, or my sides, I can feel the itchyness inside my body. It's my lungs.

PSA: Zombies

2010-12-02T16:29:00.000-08:00

Welcome to my blog! This is my second post, and I would like to give you all a Public Service Announcement about Zombies.

Now, I know that in my profile picture, I look like I am a zombie, but I would like to inform everyone that this is not true. I only look like a zombie to disguise myself, so I could infiltrate a zombie horde and better study them.

So here is what I have discovered:

Zombies are a herd like animal. They hunt in packs and relentlessly attack their prey and devour them. Noises will alert them to your presence, so if you think that there may be Zombies near, DO NOT make loud noises, unless you want to be eaten.

They are not picky with their choice of prey. A fat person will be just as appetizing to them as a skinny person, though they will become more docile after a larger meal, so if you think you will encounter Zombies at some point, travel with a fatty, that way if you are attacked by Zombies, you can out run your unfortunate fat friend, and while they are making their meal of this person, you can make your escape to relative safety, as they will be less likely to continue chasing after you.

While some people may believe that Zombies are stupid creatures, they are not. They are just ruled by their instincts. Though, I did manage to infiltrate their ranks just by looking like one of their own, and not doing much else. If they haven't eaten recently, and they can sense that you are around, they will relentlessly hunt you down, they will attempt to track you using their sight, smell, and hearing abilities.

The Zombie horde that I infiltrated didn't have a leader per se, but there were a couple of Zombies who were faster and stronger than the rest of them, who almost always ate before the others.

Zombies are not just rotting undead corpses, as is the common belief, but are living creatures. The undead belief comes from their smell, since they have no sense of hygiene, and that when they are wounded, they don't attempt to dress the wound, so it will fester and rot.

The only pain that a Zombie feels is hunger. If a Zombie horde becomes starved, without living food for a long period of time, they will begin to turn on themselves, killing each other for food. This leads me to believe that the simplest way to defeat Zombies and eliminate them as a species is to just leave them alone. Without us as a food supply, they will kill each other until there are no Zombies left at all.

Here are some simple rules to follow to prevent yourself being attacked by Zombies.

Never travel alone. There is safety in numbers, especially if you are in shape, or at least, more in shape than other people in the group. As I said earlier, travel with someone fatter than you.

If you suspect that you are coming into an area that contains Zombies, be silent. They will hear you if you make noise, and then you will be doomed.

If you do find yourself face to face with a Zombie, aim for the head. Take out the brain and the Zombie will bother you no more.

And lastly, if you are travelling with someone who has been attacked by a Zombie, and has been bitten, leave them. A Zombie bite is deadly, they will eventually die and be resurrected as a Zombie, sort of like Jesus, except with less healing powers and more death.

Thank you all for reading this, and I hope that you will keep yourself safe against Zombies.

Please stay tuned for my next PSA: Bees, death with wings!