Author Archives: Shadowtwin

Nirvana

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

I have nothing slated to write about today. There are a couple of subjects that I would certainly love to get into, yet I am inhibited by the fact that I do not want to name any names (or even imply them through description). If you are reading this post and wondering if one of the inhibited stories was about you, I can assure you that it was not. The inhibited stories were regarding people other than you, and stories other than the ones that you spoke to me. I am aware that the previous does not make for a spectacular opening statement, yet, I also know that someone, somewhere may continue to read.

• This is going to be a very unpopular post, I am sure. I am going to talk a bit about the band Nirvana. I can not find a definite link to an “official site” for the band so you don’t get one here.

I have absolutely nothing against the band Nirvana, I was one of the many millions of people that bought their album NeverMind when it was first released. My purchase of the CD was likely fueled by the constant airplay on MTV. They certainly did smash the Hair-Band type stuff that I was listening to into the ground. Nirvana was fresh, crass and angry. They were trying to piss people off with their music, and they did a good job of it. The more the parents got pissed off, the more the kids listened to it. Nirvana was like a drug that you would do in your basement when your parents weren’t home, just to get the fix.

I am the type of person that thinks that your name should only appear in the paper/local news at three times; Birth, Marriage and then Death. When Nirvana ‘hit’, it made me think that maybe there was a bit more to teen aggression than anyone had ever told me about. I followed Nirvana faithfully for the first few albums, I was paying to see shows as well as paying for albums and t-shirts, I was totally into the message that they spoke (whether that was intention or not).

The thing about it is that my infatuation with Nirvana only lasted for a couple of months.

Metallica, who had been releasing albums since about 1982, and who I had also followed pretty religiously, released the “Black Album” later in 1991. I was pretty damn sure (even at that time) that there were going to be no more glam/hair bands, but I was not sure which tangent of music to follow. I tried to get behind Metallica, since they had been keeping me in a cervical collar for the better part of a decade, yet the grungy sound of Nirvana stuck in my head. I do not mean to imply that the one was better than the other, just that I had been listening to the one while I was damn near in diapers and, as such, unlikely to change my musical views.

I went the way of the grunge only until everyone that I was hanging out with started to smell really bad. No offense to the whole ‘grunge scene’, but you can buy a bar of soap for like fifty cents, and in most cases you really should.

What happened next is that both Nirvana and Metallica started to release a bunch of crap that even my fireplace would not have. Is there something about success that makes you think that you can do anything you want, or do they just get so high that they think they are releasing stuff as powerful as their earlier stuff? The world will never know. The reason that the world will never know is that Cobain killed himself, if you can believe What you see here.

At least Cobain can fall back on the excuse that he is dead, Hetfield continues to write lyrics that are increasingly annoying, and less and less important to anyone. When Hetfield can no longer think of new lyrics, he rips off old songs like ‘whiskey in the jar’ or ‘turn the page’. Metallica then contiues to do horrible re-makes of the songs.

It is kind of funny, to me, that I started this whole thing with the intention of bitching about Cobain’s band Nirvana. Yet, as I write it I am talking myself into bitching about the later releases of Metallica.

At least Cobain had the good sense to get out while he was still a superstar, Metallica has gone the polar opposite direction from there. I will not be surprised to see Metallica playing show-tunes the next time I visit Vegas.

I know that I am no one to be bitching, I own only a piece of digital real-estate that is rarely visited, but, truth be told, if the Macarena had been released in 1991 it would have broken the country’s grip on glam rock. We didn’t need a Super-Star, we just needed an alternative. That is why, I think, we labeled all of the Seattle bands as alternative. They were the alternative to the crap that was on the radio.

Dogs; Dubya

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

The puppy problems persist. Well, I don’t think that the problem really persists so much as the puppy is afraid that it still does and is walking quite carefully on the recently injured appendage. I base this assumption on the fact that when I got home to let the dogs out, after they had been locked up in the arizona room all day (which most canine companions would consider a spacious abode at about 160 square feet…Hell I have stayed in smaller hotel rooms), Zelda was jumping up and licking just like she did before she had the injury. I am sure that she is still not completely healed, but she is certainly doing a heck of a lot better. As I said previously, she still does tread a bit lightly on the leg that has the injury, but now it seems that it is more to make sure she doesn’t hurt the still tender tissues as opposed to the inability of a couple of days ago.

The one really unfortunate side effect of Zelda’s malady has been in the interaction between her and Warlock (the older dog). Warlock has been our dog for a couple of years now, and is a very clingy sort of dog. He is a happy, wagging, in-your-face type of dog all the time. Having had Zelda as a playmate all these months, Warlock has been tiring himself out playing with her rather than being so needy of us (my wife and I). With the injury to Zelda, Warlock is not able to go outside and frolic like he would with Zelda. That has led to him being a bit (saying ‘a bit’ is a real stretch) hyperactive around the house.

Zelda is healing but is still in no condition to go out and play with Warlock in the faux death match type playing that they normally engage in. This leads directly to Warlock not being happy, and whining a lot. I have tried to take him out and do the whole throw a ball thing, but he invariably will just run out to the ball, then stop, then look at me and walk back. I know that he is thinking, “But where’s Zelda”. Of course trying to explain anything to a dog is much like trying to swat flies with a hammer, so I don’t even try. He seems to know that there is something wrong with her, but he is not in a position to understand that her condition requires much rest and no ‘Dog Wars’.

There is also the fact that we do not know what the two of them do once we leave the house. Sure we know that they are locked in that little room, but what happens while they are locked in that little room? They both seem to enjoy each other – as I began to write that line, Zelda just went ballistic on Warlock.-

Zelda is much smaller than Warlock, yet she owns him. Even in her injured state, Zelda just handed him his ass, and he walked away happy that she let him have it. This makes me think that she is certainly getting better but that she knows that she is not totally healed yet. I really must get a video camera before she makes it to 100% healthy, ’cause I bet she is really going to give him a thrashing for picking on her while she was injured.

• In other news, or what passes for it here. Does anyone other that Dubya think that he is going to spend four more years in office? Having read a lot of news sites, then a lot of blog sites, I am not sure that he has a chance. He has pissed off everyone that is remotely liberal, he has pissed off a lot of people that are staunch conservatives, he has pissed off the rest of the free world as well as pissing off the rest of the world who are ruled by dictatorships. Who, if sober and not doing it as the result of a bet gone bad, is going to vote for him? He (Dubya) is trying to compare the ‘War on Terror’ to WWII. While I can understand that he needs to drum up some support for his agenda, I still think that he should go ahead and take the blame for leaving the “War on Terror” behind when he left Afghanistan and started attacking countries with better oil reserves. I would like to blame this on the American people for electing him as President, but as you will recall he was never elected to be the president. Sure he got the presidency through some hundred year old loop-hole, but he was certainly not elected.

I sure hope that if he is re-elected has enough corporate backers to buy him in again, he will look at the world rather than looking at his own bank account. Of course I could site my earlier quote about trying to kill flies with a hammer, since neither will ever happen. This is going a bit too political for me so I will end it here.

• There is one other thing on my mind tonight, but I can’t remember what it is. If I remember by this time tomorrow I will add some info about it, if I don’t you should just cherish this moment.

Zelda; Diablo

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

I actually did write a post yesterday, and somehow when I saved it it just disappeared. I don’t know where it went but when I opened the index.shtml file again it was the previous day’s post. I could not find the other one anywhere on my local machine, and I know I didn’t upload it so I will assume that I have somehow mistakenly saved it as a different date in my archives folder. That assumption doesn’t make any sense for a lot of reasons, most notably that would require me to use the ‘save as’ command and also to verify overwriting an existing file, unless I just somehow invented a date for it. The real reason that this theory doesn’t hold water is that my ftp client allows me to view files by the most recently modified and I could not find anything in there with the correct date on it, I searched through all of my documents and there was nothing.

That all happened last night as I was trying to ftp the file to my server, I could have written a pretty good copy of it yesterday while it was all still pretty fresh in my mind, yet I didn’t. Today I barely recall the topics that I discussed. I know that I made mention of our puppy’s condition, then I talked a bit about diablo, after that I am blank. Probably better that way I suppose, since today I have no more to talk about than I did yesterday and the same two topics are still on my mind.

Our Zelda puppy seems to be getting better for the most part. She is able to walk in limited doses, though she does strongly favor her driver’s side leg while she is doing it. Whatever pain that she is feeling isn’t bad enough that it is causing her to shake and breathe hard like it was when the injury first occurred. I think her progress may have come along a lot more quickly had it not been for my mother and father in law stopping by the day the injury happened, which led directly to her getting up and running over to them since both of our dogs get really excited when they see new people. Then yesterday my brother in law stopped by to pick up an old dryer, which again made her get up and frolic more so than a dog in her condition really should. I can’t fault the relatives for stopping by, nor can I fault her for being a happy little puppy, I do hope that she can just get a lot of rest over the next couple of days and hopefully get better. I just took the above photo and as you can see the dog does not look particularly happy. As you can also no doubt see, we are in serious need of new carpet (though the stains are not nearly that visible to the naked eye. I think my digital camera may be just a bit too good for my purposes; especially considering that the image size is one third of the actual photo, and it has been compressed insanely to make it viable for internet viewing).

• On the up side I was able to expend a bit of my time in mindless gaming yesterday. Why that is an up side? I got no idea. I played a lot more diablo. Not that it was my intention to play a lot more diablo, more I was hoping to get through the first couple of quests in act 3. What happened after that is the strange Diablo Time Warp that I have previously discussed, only about ten-fold.

There have not been that many changes to the normal difficulty since the recent patch, at least not many that I have found, but the ones that I have found have irritated me on a lot of levels. Act 3 is the most univerally hated of all the acts in the game to begin with, so hated that few people actually waste their time doing it. Knowing this, Blizzard went ahead and made it ever harder and more mundane even for the beginner. WTF were they thinking?

I wandered out into act 3 thinking that I would do the first quest pretty quickly, that didn’t happen at all. When the first couple of super-unique monsters didn’t drop the jade figurine I assumed that this was to keep people from doing only that quest for the +20 to life and the getting turboed to the next act, which is a good idea I think. After I had been playing for about an hour and had mapped the entire zone, not to mention clearing the false spider cavern near the waypoint, I still didn’t have the figurine. When I went into the real cavern (I always get the names confused) the figurine was dropped by the super-unique spider that guards the chest holding Khalim’s eye. I grabbed the figurine and went back to town completely forgetting to get the quest item from the chest. This would have been a very minor problem had I realized it at the time, unfortunately I didn’t realize it until I had gotten the Gidbinn and cleared the Flayer Jungle as well as the Flayer Caverns, where I got Khalim’s brain.

The only reason that all of that was bad is that I had to map the entire Great Marsh before I found a way into the Flayer Jungle. I dropped many Town Portals along the way and when I finally got the part of Khalim’s Will from the Flayer Dungeon (or whatever it is called) I just ran as fast as I could into Lower Kurast, hit the waypoint, went back to town and exited the game so that I could write yesterday’s post, which is lost. When I logged back on after having written yesterday’s post I looked in my stash expecting to see two pieces of the Khalim’s Will quest, but there was only one. This meant that I had to remap the zone (from the waypoint) to get back to the real spider cavern and get the damn eye. Once I had done that I just quit for the day. As a matter of fact that was when I realized that something had gone wrong with yesterday’s post, that is when I just gave up on anything related to the computer for good.

I am likely going to play a bit more of Diablo tonight, still in the act 3 area, but if it starts to piss me off like it did yesterday I may just have to but a real sword so that I can straighten out a few programmers over there at Blizzard. –Not that a situation like that would be likely, since it was my own haste that made me miss my quest item in the first place, and it is possible that it was just a strange map that made me have to clear every zone along the way, but My Random Fluctuations of Time and Space (God, for the religious) that was irritating.

If someone happens to car-jack me tomorrow, I may have some content that is a bit more interesting. If that fails to happen, you should expect the same dribble that you are getting now.

Zelda; Drive-Thru commandments

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Well, as I predicted in my last update I was not able to do anything on the site for the last few days. Well, that is not exactly true, I could have done stuff on the site but I chose not to. When your options are sleep before working all day or staying awake to write something that no one reads the choice seems pretty simple. Most of the time anyway.

What is thankful/unfortunate about the few days of the absence of the bosses is that nothing really strange or catastrophic happened. That is good for me as far as their opinion of me, but bad for trying to think of entertaining little things to write. I have so little on my mind that I just might have to show a little nipple to make this one interesting.

•

Before I get into anything else, I must mention that we are having a problem with our little puppy “Zelda”. She was fine when I left for work this morning, running, playing, barking and otherwise just annoying the hell out of me. Sometime after that something happened. (Once again to note that the previous sentence is one of the worst ever written.) Just before I was to come home for lunch, my wife showed up at the store to say that there was something wrong with one of little Zelda’s hind legs and that she was not able to walk. What could possibly have happened to her (the dog) in that span of only a couple of hours remains a mystery.

I should mention that Zelda has never really quite been a ‘normal’ dog. She has what we call a “Roach Back” instead of being flat. She constantly looks like she really needs to just stretch her back out but never does, whether that is due to inability, pain or other we just don’t know. Possibly as a result of whatever the issue is with her back, lower back specifically, she has always walked with a bit of a limp. I had always assumed that this was probably due to an unusual birth that left her with a broken bone that just didn’t heal correctly. With this new problem she is having I am beginning to think that possibly it is something worse.

I am not going to go into speculation about what the particular malady could be as it is just to soon to do so. After all I do remember a time not so long ago when I could not really stand or walk and it just turned out to be a cervical strain. What is to say that she just didn’t do a little doggy version of a sprained ankle? She appears to be getting better as the day progresses, yet she is also on drugs, well aspirin if you really can count that. Being that she is a dog she probably doesn’t have any concept that the pain has gone away because of medicine, so she probably thinks that she is getting better also. I sure do hope that it is just something minor, it is amazing how attached one can become to a pet in only a few months time.

• Now for a drive-thru story.

I have certainly watched enough shows on the history channel to know that the drive-thru came into being for the purpose of making fast food even faster. One of the shows that I saw was saying that the goal of a drive-thru was to go from the order to the car leaving with the food in 90 seconds. I think that 90 seconds might be a bit hopeful, but certainly three or four minutes should be possible, right? Nope.

There is only one fast food joint here in town, well only one place to get food fast through a drive-thru. It is a Burger King, and while I don’t really like the food there so much that I would eat it if I had any real options, I do eat it once or twice a week. The drive-thru experience usually does only take a couple of minutes, though often times we don’t have quite what it was that we had ordered. If you lived where I live you would understand that the simple fact that we got the food from there at all is enough incentive not to bitch.

I have always assumed that the worst case scenario at a drive-thru would be that someone ordered a burger that was not yet cooked, and that would result in having to wait the two minutes or so that it takes to get one done. Boy was I ever wrong.

On Saturday I worked another split shift, while that left me with a three hour lunch break, I still wanted to be home within ten minutes or so in case the people left to run the store needed to call me. I decided that I would grab a burger from the drive-thru, unless there were more than two cars there in which case I was going to just buy a sandwich at a convenience store. It turned out that there were only two cars at the drive-thru so I figured the experience to be about six minutes at most. In some alternate universe it may have even happened that way, it sure as hell didn’t here.

I have come up with a short set of “Drive-Thru Commandements” based on my experience on Saturday. I will list those here while bitching about my particular experience.

Thou Shalt Not Exit Thy Vehicle

The second car up from me had to wait for a minute or so while the one at the window (which I was not able to see in my earlier two car assessment) was waiting for their food. During this period of time you could clearly see that the woman was talking on a cell phone. Once the car that was in front of her had left, she pulled forward. About thirty seconds after she had arrived at the window I saw her put her cell phone down on the seat. Then she got out of her truck. My first thought was that maybe her window would not roll down, we have all been there, right?

Thou Shalt Have Thy Coin Ready

When the woman got out of her truck she proceeded to spend about two minutes digging through the pockets of her pants, handing the cashier a bill or a coin each time she found one. There seemed to be bills and coins in every pocket of the pants. Must be some new-fangled accounting system or something, yet if you are gonna do it, do it right. Maybe One dollars bills in the front right pocket, fives in the front left pocket, tens in the rear right, twenties in the rear left, and use your imagination for larger denominations.

Thou Shalt Not Order So Much Food As To Confuse Astrophysicists

The woman was alone, driving in a mini truck (I think it was a Chevy S-10), yet she got enough food for an army. The drink count was five, as they came out one at a time they were easy to count, especially since she then had to get into the truck to secure each drink, one by one. After the drinks came the food, four bags total, four big bags.

Thou Shalt Pull Forward To Check Thy Order When Others Are Waiting

While holding her receipt in her hand (the receipt was longer than many a college thesis), she proceeded to go through each bag, one by one, and place a mark through each item on her receipt. When she had completed the fourth bag I saw her holding the receipt to the cashier, I am sure that she was saying something like, “Well, I didn’t get this one”.

Thou Shalt Dispute Orders INSIDE The Establishment

The woman then handed back all four bags of food and the receipt to the window person. Thankfully the drinks must not have been in question as they did not go back. There must have been some sort of an audit going on inside the building but we will never know. About three minutes later the window opened, once again, and four bags of food were again provided. Again the woman went through them item by item.

Thou Shalt Leave The Pick-Up Window Immediately On Completion Of Transaction

The woman then got back into her truck, thankfully. Yet instead of driving away she picked her cell phone back up and dialed a number. This particular sequence only took thirty seconds or so, but it pissed me off more than the rest of it combined. If you are buying food for half a dozen people you really should go ahead and go into the place. Especially if you are going to get out of your car and stand there for over eight minutes disputing the order and looking for cash.

Thou Shalt Put A Stone Through The Skull Of Any Person Who Has Broken All Of These Commandments

I will admit that I did not put a stone through her skull, but I had no stone you see…If I would have had a stone I would likely be making this update from prison. I do not know why anyone would try to make such a large order through a drive-thru. It would be one thing if you were doing all value meals or something (which was not the case here for sure), why would you try to order all of that crap, then continue to break all of these commandments?

Just as a ‘for instance’, the guy that was in front of me had his cash ready, paid the girl and threw the bag on the seat. Total time at the pick-up window, about 12 seconds. My transaction was even faster since I told them to keep the extra penny. If I had been in posesession of a Penny Gun like they created over there at MythBusters (they were trying to see what velocity a penny would have to reach to penetrate human flesh/skulls), I may be in prison also.

That is about enough for today. Take the “Drive-Thru Commandments” to heart or you may be the first victim.

Router issues; Awana=White supremacy?

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

First of all, on the work front my bosses just left town for a few days. This leaves me with a monumentally fucked up schedule until at least Monday. To the extent that I will be working eleven hour days until Sunday. Not like I am scheduled to work them, but that when I am at home for a break of any sort it is rarely more than for ten minutes before I get a call to go back in and deal with a vendor, customer, horrific fire, I never know what they are going to do in the few minutes I am gone. What this means to you is that I may not be able to post anything here during those days, of course it could also lead to me having a bunch of idiot stories that I really want to talk about. Which will be the case? Stay tuned.

• On the home front, I have written several times previously about getting a new computer, but keeping my old one. My plan has worked pretty well, as my wife has rediscovered the game “Age of Empires”. She really seems to enjoy playing that as I am happily typing away or reading news/blogs. It has worked out much as I had hoped. I am still thinking pretty strongly about trying to connect the two PCs through a LAN, as the new pc already has that capability, and a card for the old pc can be acquired for less than twenty bucks. The thing that I am not really sure about is the implementation.

If you are reading this, and you happen to know exactly how to implement such a situation, please Shoot me an email. I understand that there is a device called a “router” that must be used to achieve this, but beyond that I know nothing. I would assume that it would not be that difficult to do, but as I will be trying to make one machine with WIN98 work with one that has WINxp I am sure that it is not going to be a plug-and-play situation. I am equally as sure that I could figure it out with the old ‘guess and check’ method, but as I grow older I find that it save a hell of a lot of time and frustration if you gather some information so that you know what to expect going in.

Having just gone to check on eBay, I realize now that I wouldn’t have any idea what type of router I would need to buy anyway. There are some of them that are eight dollars and some that are a hell of a lot more. I certainly don’t need anything that is wireless, as the two machines are only a couple of feet apart. I also don’t have a cable or DSL connection, so the point of having one that either has or requires that capability is totally out the window. Both of the PCs have working modems and I do have two phone lines, so they can be online at the same time that way. I can not think of any reason why I would try to do anything with a Network card other than just playing a local game or possibly trying to swap some files. Perhaps in the year 2018, when they finally get a reasonably priced alternative to dial-up where I live I will think differently…Ask me in a decade and I will let you know…

• I mentioned, in a post that I can not find, that my parents had us enrolled in this group called AWANA, this was brought about after my Mother told me of finding the old uniform for the club. The group is basically like the Boy Scouts, only instead of teaching you stuff that you can use in real life, you get merits for learning bible verses and songs. I do remember loving it as a child, but my childhood memories are all a bit skewed by the fact that I don’t remember most of it.

I bring this up only because I recently remembered a little song that we used to sing at Vacation Bible School. The song went, and I will quote, “I’m no kin to the Monkey, the monkey’s no kin to me, I don’t know much about my ancestors, but mine didn’t swing from a tree.” I think I may have mentioned that particular song at some point also, supposing that I was being brain-washed against the theory of evolution. Every time I pen/type the lines to it I think that more and more. Yet the last time I thought about that song I was a bit troubled by the last line. The part where it says, “mine didn’t swing from a tree.” I had always envisioned monkeys swinging through the trees, yet as I think about it this time, I am wondering if there could be more devious reasons for the whole song.

Could it be about White Supremacy?

I was thinking about that song today, and thinking about how all of the elderly people that I knew in my youth would casually refer to black people as “porch monkeys” -something that I certainly do NOT do- when I realized that the song in question could have a completely different intent. Could it be that they were making little four-six year old children sing a song about hating black people? I would hope not, but then the line about “swinging from a tree” came into my mind. There were a lot of worthless idiots in the south, and they lynched a lot of decent people based on the color of their skin. The result of that would be someone “swinging from a tree”.

Now I am not sure if that song was trying to teach me that evolution was crap, or if it was trying to teach me to hate people based on the color of their skin. Whichever one is the truth, I hate them for it. The single reason that ethnic biases exist is that the parents and teachers perpetuate it in children. It is a really sick way to try to mold the mind of a child.

I am certainly not a racist, but I do admit that I get a bit nervous when I see anyone of a color other than mine dressed in ‘gangsta gear’. I am pretty sure that is just a conditioned response, as I can hold a conversation with the same person without apprehension after a simple hello and hand-shake. The mere fact that I am nervous for the first few seconds just goes to prove that the brain-washing worked, at least a little bit.

Why, then, do schools have mandates about what they teach, while ‘bible schools’ are able to teach bigotry and hatred? What country is this again?

Richard Simmons arrested

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Once again I let Diablo consume a lot of my time yesterday. At least I got the update done before that happened. Today will likely end just the same as yesterday did. I am not really sure why but it seems that when I play diablo I will do it constant for a couple of weeks and then just give up on it for a while. Perhaps it is just playing a level act 1 start to act 5 end that sates my desire, then I can wait for a while before I am in its clutches again. Who knows.

• I absolutely love this story from Reuters. It is short so I will quote the whole thing.

Assault Case Against Fitness Guru Simmons Dropped
PHOENIX (Reuters) – A judge dismissed an assault charge against flamboyant fitness guru Richard Simmons after he and the man he was accused of slapping in the face reached a private settlement, lawyers said on Wednesday.

Terms of the settlement, reached last week between the celebrity trainer and motorcycle sales rep Chris Farney, 23, were not disclosed.

Simmons, 55, famed for his frizzy hair, glittery tank tops and exuberant demeanor, was cited for misdemeanor assault in March at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.

Police said the charge stemmed from an altercation that began when Farney, a fellow traveler at the airport, recognized Simmons as he was signing autographs and posing for pictures.

Farney, a burly Harley-Davidson motorcycle salesman who stands more than 6 feet tall and competes in the martial-arts sport of cage fighting, angered Simmons with a remark poking fun at Simmons’ exercise videos.

According to a police report on the incident, Simmons responded by telling Farney: “It’s not nice to make fun of people with issues,” then slapped him across the face.

A Phoenix municipal court judge dismissed the assault case during a pretrial conference last Friday between Simmons’ lawyer, prosecutors, Farney and his attorney, based on a signed statement from Farney that “full satisfaction has been received for the injury inflicted.” That document was filed on Wednesday.

Simmons’ lawyer, James Nesci, said Simmons was “certainly pleased with the outcome. All he really was looking for was a just conclusion. He believes he got it.”

AP Photo/Tina Fineberg

As you can see, this “burly Harley-Davidson motorcycle salesman who stands more than 6 feet tall and competes in the martial-arts sport of cage fighting,” bit off more than he could chew when he pissed off Richard Simmons. Just look at that photo, does that say ‘vicious killer’ or what? We all know that the only reason Simmons is still alive after slapping the guy is that the guy knew that if he didn’t hit back there would be a monetary resolution. That is a sad statement about humanity today but one that is undeniably true. We will do whatever it takes to piss off anyone who is in the public eye and in posession of a decent amount of cash, then cry like a baby when they react. In this case, I am not sure if they would have found Simmons guilty of an assault anyway. He slapped a man twice his size across the face for poking fun at him. That is not really an assault, it is a suicide. The only way a jury would have convicted him would be if the jury had consisted of a bunch of burly homophobes.

The sad truth is that so many of the cases involving celebrities are utter bull-shit that it is hard to pick through them and find the one in a hundred that is real. Take the trial of Kobe Bryant for instance. Did he have sex with that girl, yes. Was it consentual sex? There are only two people in the entire world that know the truth. I personally believe that it was consentual when it happened, then the girl realized that if it was not consentual she would be able to file a civil suit against him and get a boat- load of money. I feel a little bit more strongly about this case (though I am not actively following it) than I do about others because the woman in question turned in the panties that she had been wearing that night, and they had sperm from three separate persons in them. I am not sure if that was allowed to be entered into evidence in the case, also I guess it would be possible to rape a slut, but that really seems to take away from the credibility when she is screaming rape.

Totally on the other side of the spectrum, Mike Tyson was convicted of rape. I am pretty sure that he did it. Beyond that, I am pretty sure that he probably has done it a lot more than just once and has kept the other women quiet through intimidation.

There really has got to be some middle ground. The fact that I truly believe that one of these athletes did actually commit a rape while I believe that the other didn’t makes me believe that everyone else has already formed an opinion also. When the person is accused of the crime it is on the news 24/7 for days or even weeks before the person is actually indicted. By that point nearly everyone has decided whether they think he/she is guilty or innocent. The news usually also releases a bunch of information about both the accused and the victim that is often not admissable in court. With that kind of coverage in the news there is no way that anyone in the public eye could ever get a fair trial. Unless the trial were held in another country.

I suppose the easiest way for athletes/celebrities to avoid this type of situation would be to quit fucking strangers. Of course we all know that is something that will Never happen. So the next logical step would be to assure the silence of anyone you did have sex with; offer them some cash to keep quiet. Yet, that could result in a scandal like Michael Jordan faced, where the woman that he had been paying to silence suddenly upped the amount of money she wanted to maintain silence. Then Jordan had to sue her for extortion and had to drag his own image through the mud. Maybe, then, the answer would be to kill anyone that you have sex with, as a precaution. That seems to be a pretty brutal way to deal with it, but it would solve the problem.

Thank the random fluctuations of time and space that I am not in the public eye, and, therefore, not rich, which leads directly to my ability to keep it in my pants.

Car; Diablo; Barber; Baby story

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Well, I skipped yet another post yesterday. No real reason for it, I just didn’t write anything. Sure there were external factors that controlled it, such as wasting my time in numerous ways, but as writing anything here is not really productive in any way it is hard for me to gauge which action would have been more productive.

I actually got off of work early yesterday, (well, I got of at noon, which is when I am supposed to get off, but it rarely ever happens) and after also just picking up my pay, I decided that I may as well go get the oil changed in my car. I did not know until I got to the oil change place that it had not been done in fourteen months, but that is another story. Anyway, after an hour, and dropping $105 dollars, I walked out of the local grease ‘n go joint with fresh oil and a flushed cooling system. It kind of made me grit my teeth to have to pay for them to do it, but I just did.

There was a time, say a year ago or so, when the thought of simply letting someone else change the oil in my car was laughable. I kind of let go of that foolish notion about the time that it cost the same or more to do it myself. That really only started to happen when someone decided that you couldn’t just dump used motor oil on the ground anymore, which requires that you haul your used motor oil to a place that has the facilities to recycle it, and you have to pay them. So, if you don’t buy the oil on sale (or if you buy a really shitty brand, the type that I wouldn’t even put into my neighbor’s lawn mower) you are out ten bucks for the oil, say five for the filter, then three bucks to dispose of the oil, add on the gas to drive the oil to the nearest recycling center and you are at about twenty bucks; that is assuming that you have all of the necessary tools to do it in the first place. When you can get it done at a shop for 25, without getting your hands dirty, and with the airing the tires and vacuuming and the such, I just no longer see the reason to do it myself.

The cooling system flush, on the other hand, was something that I really hated to pay for and wish that I had done myself. I believe that the manufacturers recommend that you get it done every 50,000 miles, though I could be wrong on that. The truth is that it doesn’t really matter all that much how many miles are on the car when you do it. If you have a car with 300,000 miles on it, and the water in the radiator is still clear, well, green Kool-Aid colored, but without a lot of rust or gunk in it, then you don’t need to get it done. My car has 105,000 miles on it, and it has never been done, so I went ahead and let them do it. I don’t know how they can charge you 60 dollars to do it with a clear conscience. I figured they would drag out some big extragavent device that would send little robots with scrub brushes into the motor to clean it out, but no, they did it just like I have always done it. Only they did have a machine that took out the human effort. All you have to do is run clean water through the engine and radiator. The way I have always accomplished that is to drain the radiator completely, then hook my radiator hoses to clean pans of water and let the engine run for ten or fifteen minutes, pumping the clean water in through one hose and the dirty out through the other. No real science to it, it sucks the water in clean and pushes it out dirty, when the engine is clean the water is pushed out clean. After that I would just use a sprayer nozzle to blow all of the gunk out of the radiator. Total time, about 25 minutes, depending on how dirty the engine is. The same amount of time it took them to do it, but for only the cost of water, Not the sixty bucks they charged.

• The other thing that happened yesterday that directly contributed to my not getting around to doing an update was Diablo. I hadn’t played the game since the last time I mentioned it here. I was worried that my on-line players may be getting near the termination date, so I logged them all on to make sure it wouldn’t happen. Then I noticed that I had a Paladin that was just starting act 2 in normal, I hadn’t played in so long… What could 30 minutes hurt, or so I thought. Radament was gone in ten minutes or so, so why not go get the cube? Of course since the map doesn’t save in on-line play, I also wanted to get the waypoints for the other two staff quests. About thirty minutes into it I had the cube, so why not just run and get the staff, I never have any problem with the worm pit (or whatever they call it). I don’t remember them having those lightning beetles in there before, but anyway, I mowed right through it. Might as well go ahead and complete the staff quest, only one item left. I found the temple, got all the waypoints along the way, and got the headpiece. I then stopped, since the rest of that act can be done as a stand alone. It only took me about forty-five minutes…in my mind…In the real world it had somehow just consumed almost three hours of time. That damn Diablo time warp is a very strange thing. I bet there are physicists out there that wish they could explain how it works and harnass the power…

• As for today, well nothing happened of note. I got up in the morning and went down to the barber. I have been in desperate need of a haircut for a couple of months. The barber shop was, of course, closed, so I came back home and jumped into the shower. –That is something that I have always thought was a bit odd. If you go to a barber they prefer that you have dry hair for the cut, while if you go to a salon they prefer that your hair be wet. I don’t have any idea why that is, but it is.–When I got out of the shower and looked in the mirror, my bangs were hanging to my bottom lip. That is way longer than I have had my hair for about a decade, so I took matters into my own hands. I have never used scissors on my own hair, at least unless there was a big wad of chewing gum involved, so I was a bit apprehensive. It turns out that it is not that difficult to cut two inches off of one’s own bangs, at least if they are long enough that cutting two inches off of them still leaves the hair pretty damn long. No one at work noticed, and it kept my hair out of my eyes, so it will do until I can find the barber shop open. Though I am now developing a theory that he hides when he sees me coming. He is the only game in town, and charges a flat fee for all haircuts. It usually takes him three times as long to cut my hair as the other guys that go in, so I can see why. Fear not, I have developed a new strategy. The barber shop has windows on only two sides of it. I normally approach from the main road, where he can see me coming. If I just use some of the back streets to get behind the shop, park in the alley and crawl past the one window to reach the front door I will be in! Though that seems like a hell of a lot of work and planning to go through just to get an eight dollar haircut that looks like an eight dollar haircut…

• Now a quick story about the least intelligent mother in Florence:

Have you ever seen those wide, white stripes that are painted on the ground next to stoplights? Sure you have. Do you know what they are for? Sure you do. They are cross-walks. Those are the places that are designated for pedestrians to cross busy streets. Now I am not sure how the laws work in all states, but in the state where I took my drivers test, “Pedestrians have the right of way in all cross-walks, marked or un-marked”. I take that to mean that you can cross the street anywhere you want to, and you will have the right of way, as it should be, but use some discression for your child’s sake.

In case you are really bad at picking up on fore-shadowing, there was an incident that happened to me today that directly relates to this all. You see there are only two stoplights in this whole town. Neither of them is ever very busy. Cars will usually stop for anyone crossing the street on North Main St., which is the historic part of town, regardless of whether there is a cross walk nearby. The thing that one must consider, especially one pushing a baby carriage, is that if you are pushing your baby across the street, behind a huge SUV, and only the SUV’s length from the cross walk. The driver, that is turning left, not being able to see past the SUV, is not going to see you pushing your baby across the street only 10 or 12 feet from the cross walk.

Follow me here. I had full view of the sidewalk on the other side of the street, there was no one on it. I had full view of the cars in front of me and no one turned down the street I was going to go down. There was no indication that there would be anything but clear pavement there. I made the turn and had to lock up the brakes when I saw an obese woman pushing her kid out from behind that SUV. Honestly, in the entire time I have been driving I have never seen anything like that. That was more like the scenario that they put on the driver’s education videos. Why didn’t she walk the additional ten or twelve feet to get to the cross walk? Why didn’t she wait until there were no cars coming? Why did she give me the finger after I locked up my brakes to keep from hitting her and her child, without even honking my horn?

I was not going fast enough at the time to kill anyone, at least I don’t think I was, but had I hit her and the little stroller, I would likely be going to jail for manslaughter. Not because I was drunk, not because I wasn’t paying attention, not because I was talking on the phone, but because this little fat mom pushed her baby into traffic only a few steps away from an intersection. Though I don’t suppose she got fat by walking all the way to the intersections.

I must note that had she not flipped me off, I would not be writing about this now. I must also note that had she not been wandering into traffic behind an SUV I would have seen her before I rounded the corner. I must also note that if it had not been be (or another responsible driver) rounding that corner (someone in an SUV on the cell phone, for instance) this would likely have a vastly different outcome.

Now the question. Would you risk the life of your child to save yourself taking three steps?

Stupid Bitch.

Meta blogging; Ozzfest

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

I spent some time today screwing around with the layout of my page. I came up with a couple of things that I kind of liked, but nothing that I was sure enough about to commit it to the internet. The thing is that without any advertising logos to put on here it just seems foolish for me to have it divided as it is, when there is so little information in the left column. I like the things that I do have over there, but on the occasions where I actually write a bit there is just a lot of dead space over there. Conversely, when I removed the left column the daily text stretched so far that it became difficult to keep the eyes on the correct line. That led to me reducing the size of the table, leaving about 40% of the screen as just background.

Once again I realize why I just ripped off this layout instead of coming up with something of my own.

Having written the previous, I went on to spend a lot of time looking for a few songs that I remember fondly, with hopes of updating my side bar. It turns out that the first three I thought of were absolute shit, and the one that I ended up placing there was not far behind. I guess that is why every generation hates the music that their parents listened to, considering that I can hardly listen to most of the hair band shit that I used to listen to. The one saving grace of my generation is that we have Megadeth and Metallica to listen to in a pinch. I don’t mean the horrible soap-opera-esque crap that they started putting out in the mid-late ’90s, I mean the real Metallica and the real Megadeth.

I am sure that every generation makes a stand like this at some point. Trying to defend the music that they grew up listening to against the new bands that are coming out. The thing that makes me think that some of the power bands that I was listening to when I was sixteen, Metallica, Megadeth and Pantera specifically, are better than the bands of today is the fact that they are being played on the radio in rotation with the new Metal. Perhaps that is just in the area I live, but the fact is that they are still being played, more than twenty years later. The only other songs that get that kind of air-play are oldies.

As I approach 30, I realize that I am no longer the kid that used to bang his head while listening to the old metal bands, but when I see kids half my age wearing ‘Master of Puppets’ t-shirts, I realize that some of the kids are still listening to it.

I had the opportunity to go to OzzFest last summer, thanks to my wife having an amazing job where she won V.I.P. tickets to the event. The one thing about that experience that really surprised me was the sheer number of old metal t-shirts I saw. I felt like I was damn near the oldest person there, but lots of the kids were wearing Metallica, Megadeth, Pantera, Anthrax, Slayer t-shirts, regardless of the fact that they weren’t even alive while those bands were in their prime.

I sure hope that by the time I reach say 50 I will quit trying to defend all of the metal that I listened to when I was a teen, but the sad truth is that there is just nothing coming out today that is as heavy and even tries to tell a story. Thunderous guitar riffs are pretty easy to come up with, the hard part is making something that will last. You can have the heaviest riff known to man, then have someone just scream, “keep on rollin’, rollin’, rollin’,” over the top of it and it will be absolute garbage. Put that next to the riffs in a song such as Metallica’s “Master of Puppets”, which is basically an anti-drug campaign, but it tells a story and it sticks. I am sure you can see the difference. If you can’t then I am old.

• The aforementioned OZZFEST was by far the best show that I have ever seen. There were so many bands there that I could not possibly list them all. The ones that played the main stage, though, were Chevelle, Disturbed, Korn, Marilyn Manson and, of course, OZZY. We wandered around the festival for a good five hours or so before they actually opened the entrances to the main stage. I was able to see a couple of bands, like Voivod, on the second stage that I had always wanted to see. There was another band on the second stage called MotoGrater that I mention only so you will know the name.

I don’t remember the exact date that the show was, but it was in the middle of the summer, in Arizona. Temperatures outside that day were over 110 degrees, which led to us using our V.I.P. passes frequently to get to the only area with a misting system, and the V.I.P. restrooms, which were the only air-conditioned place in the whole venue. It was there, the bathroom, that I met the guys from MotoGrater as they were trying to wash off the silly make-up that they put on before they do a show. An hour or so later, I met the bassist for Korn in the same restroom. Keep in mind that it is tough to try to talk to someone while they are pissing in the urinal next to you, let alone ask for an autograph. I briefly thought about shaking his hand, as we were walking away, but considering that neither of us had stopped at the sink to wash our hands, I thought better of it. And NO, I didn’t look at his Johnson. I stared at the wall just like I always do. I did ask him if he was in the band ‘Korn’ and he said that he was. Then he asked me who was on stage, I told him who it was (though I can’t remember at this point), and he disappeared through a door marked “NO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL BEYOND THIS POINT”. I didn’t try to follow.

I was absolutely blown away by Marilyn Manson. I do not care for their music, but won’t turn it off if it is on the radio, it is just the kind of thing that I don’t actively hate, or like. His (their) theatrics really stole the show. To the point that I was a bit disappointed when I finally got to see Ozzy (for the first time in my life). Manson certainly took care to stage a show that would shock and entertain you for his full set. The rest of the bands, Ozzy included, just did their songs. I will give ozzy a bit of lee-way on this one, since he is no spring chicken, but the other bands, like Korn, couldn’t they have done something other than just play their songs?

Manson had choreographed marionettes (they were actually people behaving as such) that did things for his entire set. He had a little tiered stage kind of thing that they would climb. It is difficult to describe, but it was an experience. The other bands just played their songs. If you want to hear the song, you have the cd, the sound quality is going to be a lot better, just listen to the damn cd. Marilyn Manson, on the other hand, really sold me the experience. Even though I do not like Marilyn Manson, I would be more likely to buy tickets to his next concert than I would be to buy tickets for the next, say, Korn concert…Even though I like Korn a lot more than I like Manson.

That is about enough for today. Feel free to email me if you agree/disagree, that is why I put the link down there after all.

Song remakes; Tawny Kitaen

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Well today was a really shitty day for me on the work front. Mostly due to having to work a hated ‘split shift’. If you are unfamiliar with the term, that is a shift of eight hours that really screws over your entire day. In my case I worked from nine until noon, then had to go back from three until eight. That doesn not lend itself to actually accomplishing anything other than just work, it sucks basically.

That being said, I was not able to accomplish anything today. Not that I usually do anything on Saturdays anyway, still I can at least blame it on work. It is healthier that way, right? So I just have a few various things to bitch about today. I will jump right to it.

• I bitched in one of my early posts about my disgust of artists remaking songs. Not just any songs, but songs that were over the top hits when they were first released. D.J. Sammy is a horrible offender when it comes to this practice, so horrible in fact that the songs get airplay for about a week and then simply go away. So I won’t bitch too much about him.

So who am I going to bitch about? Jessica Simpson (I was forced to listen to some of her ‘music’ for the sake of adding that link, so I hope you appreciate it). Anyway, this girl who thinks that Chicken is Tuna took it upon herself to remake the wedding favorite “Take My Breath Away”, which was first performed by Berlin, even though they did not write it, but that is quite common for movie soundtracks. So why do I feel the urge to bitch about it? Because she did it horribly!

I have nothing against Jessica Simpson, but I think that someone close to her should have mentioned, at some point, that her singing voice is really not all that great. Were she to weight fifty pounds more than she does there would be no way in hell that she would have a recording contract. Why would she chose to remake a song that is still in circulation on light rock radio stations all over the U.S., and do it so poorly? Sure she likes to sing it in the shower, but isn’t that the reason that god created the shower (then completely forgot to tell the human population about it for 1800+ years)? So that we wouldn’t have to listen to Jessica Simpson singing a song that still stands as one of the great love ballads of all time?

I know that I am a cynical son-of-bitch, but when I heard her “render” that song, And no, I did not mean ‘rendition’, which would imply that it was her own personal spin on how the song should sound. I meant ‘render’ as in what meat-processors do to the carcasses of dead animals, which I think far more accurately describes what she did to that song, I was sickened. That is quite possibly the worst ‘cover tune’ of all time, BAR NONE. Someone please take away her microphone, which is sort-of penis shaped, and give her a penis, which will hopefully keep her mouth full long enough to keep her from singing! Not that I hate Jessica Simpson or anything…

• Well, as long as I am ripping on women and the music industry, I may as well toss out a bitch about Tawny Kitaen. Sorry, I am crutched by a dial-up modem and thusly can not find an official page for her (and why is it that the ‘official page’ for a celebrity or band is always on like page nine?). If you do not know who she is by name, I will just say that Tawny Kitaen is a serious actress that has landed a lot of roles, most notably the role of rolling on the hood of a Jaguar in WhiteSnake’s video for the song “Here I Go Again” (which I also can not find a link to).

If you are like me, that being a child of the ’80’s’, you probably saw that video roughly 11,000,000 times in your youth/pre-adulthood phase. You likely thought that there would be no way that you could land a girl that pretty. It turns out that you were lucky to not ‘land her’, or have that same thing happen conversely.

That woman has had sex with every musician that ever lived. I am still a little unclear on how she had sex with the classical composers, but I have no doubt that she did. Exhuming a body would be a day to day operation with her. Hell, that is kind of how she was living at that point. I do not mean to dog Miss Kitaen for her actions, just to mention that she has had sex with every rock star there ever was. Sure, she started small with a member of the band RATT, long before they ‘made it’, but she kept the taste for ‘Rock Stars’.

The only positive that I can take about looking for information regarding her is that she did eventually go into rehab, break out and start to run amok through our cities. That is the purpose of rehab, right? She eventually did settle down, and, as I read it, is pretty happy now just being a mom.

I have a dollar in my pocket that says she probably really regrets ever doing the “splits on the hood of the Jaguar” thing that made every male that was near puberty hope for her. While that same dollar is saying that she wishes that she hadn’t given herself to anyone who could play an instrument at that same time.

If you are a little groupie whore, what do you expect to happen? History will change when you decide to settle down? Personally, I think it is a great thing that she has found a purpose (raising her children), but I still remember her as the groupie slut that let a nipple slip out while filming a video. Whether I am right or wrong about her past, I am certainly right about her present, best of luck to her in raising a family…Especially when those kids reach puberity, and start to say, “well, you danced naked on the hood of a car,” because what could her comeback possibly be…

That is all for today. Tune in the day after today to see a new post. Please, do not search for the word that means the same as the ‘day after today’ on google, it might skew my stats.

Mac OS X; Deadly Rooms of Death

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

It turns out that Flux over there at BlackChampagne (whose site layout I totally ripped off, btw) quoted part of an email that I sent him in his latest post. He linked to my site in the quoting of the email which was completely unexpected. The result of that is that anyone who linked through it would have seen one of my least entertaining posts. Unless those people enjoy reading baseball discussion. But with my current readership countable on one hand, even if the hand was missing a couple of fingers, I will take any publicity I can get. After all, had I known that he would be linking to my site it is not like I would have turned into a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist for a day. I write what I want to write in the way that I want to write it. That may have something to do with the number of readers that I have. Come to think of it, I should write what people want to read in the way that they want to read it. Being that I do not have the skill necessary for that sort of an undertaking, I will just continue to ramble the way I always have.

• There was one thing in the news today that I thought I would never see. Especially since I had made a mention of it in a previous post. I actually mentioned it in passing the day before the link that I posted, where I said; “So when is the last time that you heard about a problem with the security on a macintosh system? Is that a rhetorical question or does the Imac team just handle it a lot better?” Here is today’s headline.

Apple Says OS X Vulnerable to Security Breach
SEATTLE (Reuters) – Apple Computer Inc. (Nasdaq:AAPL – news), long considered to be relatively immune to the security holes and viruses that plague longtime rival Microsoft Corp.’s Windows, said on Friday a security hole in its software leaves users’ computers vulnerable to attack.

Mac, and its legion of enthusiastic users, have long touted the benefits of owning Apple’s Macintosh (news – web sites) personal computer, such as its ease of use and immunity from the computer viruses that plague users of PCs running Microsoft’s Windows operating system.

So it finally happened, right? They finally had a security flaw. Now let’s see if Microsoft jumps onto it as harshly as I speculated on March 11, where I said, in part;

I strongly believe that if a single OS X system anywhere on the face of the earth encountered security issues, Microsoft would be on it like maggots to rotting flesh. Macintosh has been a thorn in the side of Microsoft for decades and the thought of them not attacking mac if even one person ever had security issues is ludicrous. It would be in every Microsoft commercial and ad campaign from here until the end of time. If you are thinking, no, Microsoft would not attack them for something like that, since they have had so many problems of their own…Sober up…

I still believe every word of that. I really am curious to see if Microsoft is going to start doing ads about it. Not in a ‘better than you’ kind of way, but more in a ‘so they have security flaws too, now you are no different than us’ kind of way. Though reading further in the news article I saw one other line that sets the OS x security flaw apart from all of the windows security flaws.

“Apple takes security very seriously and works quickly to address potential threats as we learn of them-in this case, before there was any actual risk to our customers,” said Schiller.

That is going to be as opposed to what the quote would have read had it been from Microsoft where it would have read more like this.

“Microsoft takes security very seriously and works quickly to address potential threats as we learn of them-in this case, before there was any actual risk of me losing any money,” said Gates.

Keep in mind that the last quote was me spoofing the Apple quote, not actually anything that anyone named Gates, or anyone affiliated with Microsoft has ever actually said. But wouldn’t be funny if he/they did?

• After making a very brief mention of Deadly Rooms of Death yesterday, I decided that I would go ahead and play it on the new PC. Instead of just transferring game information over from the old machine I decided to play through it again. I don’t know, maybe I thought it would be nostalgic. It went pretty well for the first five levels or so, then I started getting back into the boards that really piss me off. I realize now why I like the game and why I don’t like the game.

The only reason that I like the game is that it is a puzzle game. I do enjoy puzzle games of all sorts. This one adds a bit to the idea of a puzzle game by making the components move in unique ways that add to the puzzle experience. That kind of thing can be appreciated when intelligence alone can solve a problem. When you must be intelligent and lucky it becomes tiresome. Perhaps I am reading into it wrong and every board can be solved with intelligence alone, but the boards that have multiple spawners on them are extremely difficult.

As I think about it I am pretty sure that each board can be solved pretty easily with intelligence alone. The guy who programmed each board probably tested them over and over again to make sure. The thing is that he knew where he wanted to start it and likely tested all of the boards based on that starting position. Most of the boards have three or four different starting positions (if it has only a single entrance) and if you enter on the wrong square it can be impossible to win without exiting the room and re-entering from a different square. That, in my mind, is not really using intelligence to solve a puzzle. If the game were modified to make the entrance squares to the board not count, so that you could move up or down a square (while still on the entrance tiles) and turn to get your sword facing the correct direction, that would definitely improve the game. Usually you are able to just exit the board an re-enter having done all that, but wouldn’t it be easier to figure out which would be the best starting tile and sword direction if you were actually looking at the board at the time?

I guess I really should quit bitching about that game. It seems to me that I have spent more time bitching about it than I have actually playing it. Maybe I should quit playing it too, but it gives me so much bitching material. Catch 22 eh?

That is all for today. Tune in tomorrow when I will feature an expose on self-circumcision, or not.