I’ll have to cop-out: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The crowd works, and I’m not usually fond of crowd sound effects on studio albums. Is it “Limelight” by Rush that has a crowd sound inserted after a break? “Right Where It Belongs” by Nine Inch Nails is another. Both are used appropriately but somehow editing ina cheering crowd always struck me as indulgent. Anyhoo, the opening guitar and drum track to Sgt. Pepper pulls me right in and goes into a song (two, really, since I wouldn’t skip “A Little Help”) that really kicks ass. The whole arrangement is probably one of my top three Beatles arrangements. “A Day In The Life” being up there with it. Makes me feel kind of stupid for not having a copy of that album.

“Zooropa” by U2 is a really close second, but the inspired layered radio samples and artful guitar “moment” go into a pretty pedestrian song.

Are their any albums intros that you remember standing out?

I really wanted this to be praising this game, but there were… complications yesterday.

Getting a copy wasn’t a problem, the local corporate game store had PS3 copies left and I grabbed one of those, foolishly assuming Gamestop down in Austin would have hooked Pieter up. The Local Friendly Game Store I pre-booked my 360 copy with hadn’t seen his shipment yet, but as I had a copy I wasn’t going to sweat it. I managed about 10 minutes of play before I hooked up with Piet and Erik on old Vegas 1 for some hilarious Presidio hunts for most of the night.

True enough, you earn points for your PEC offline as well as online, and to add some life to Single Player Terrorist Hunts you can go in with a two-man AI team to watch your back.

• They don’t watch your back. They utter, “Engaging hostile.” while they in fact only watch said hostile shoot the aforementioned back.
• If you should have the misfortune of playing an hour of successive Terrorist Hunts on the same map and the game crashes, you lose all the rank progress you earned in that hour. That happened to me fucking twice last night.
• Old bugs from Vegas 1 are still there, like the sound dropping and causing the game to crash (see above) when the match finishes.
• Getting an SA-80 (L85A2 as it’s called in the game) takes more than 1000 Marksmanship ACES points, which is more than 1000 headshots. I was a lot more angry about this until I realised how steadily ACES points pour in.
• However, Cadpat becomes the first time you rank up. It’s unfortunately a little bright.
• The Blue Ray the games printed on is sickeningly sensitive. A single fingerprint can cause the game to crash every time. See above…
• The Friendly Local Game Store never got back to me. I have a sinking feeling the beaten handwritten spiral-bound ledger he keeps his pre-bookings in isn’t as well organised as it appeared.
• You can shoot through cover, or more specfically the computer can see through solid walls and shoot you through them. Clearly the whole penetration thing is going to take getting used to…

Because China is so well known for its temperance and compassionate responses to… anything… From where I’m reading the 15 year old teen has every reason to be terrified; Although it’s not like she didn’t bring it upon herself by committing a crime in a country that napalm’s issues that threaten it’s civil stability right down to World of Fucking Warcraft.

Here’s a tip to prevent these harrowing adventures in the first place: Don’t fucking steal shit.

Michael Fay is rolling in his grave.

To make being a vinegar-drinking cynic worthwhile, I can be a sentimental schmuck at heart. I cried at the end of “King Kong” for goodness’ sake. So while I don’t blame Mr. Hajji for his creative way of proposing I think he’s missing the deeper message here:

“Now she is refusing to speak to me until I get her a new ring.”

If that’s the extent of her sympathy for a stroke of bad luck, I think it was Fate intervening to warn him she’s not worth it. I might be sentimental, but I’d rather more than a third of my annual salary went into a down-payment on a good home for us and our kids, not a loop of metal with a rock stuck in it. Only De Beers and Hallmark will tell you a symbol of your love has to be expensive. Just ask Teddy and Brenda.

Run the fucker over. You can’t tell me an animal isn’t able to perceive the inherent danger of wandering into the path of a bunch high-speed multi-ton objects. Clearly the little blighter had lost its will to live, and its request for release was quickly obliged. Notice Ms. Peardon (and to an extent the sensationalist news writers) jumps to the conclusion that the driver meant to hit the bird and not that s/he wasn’t even aware that white clump on the road on a snowy day wasn’t just more snow.

The CityNews.ca staff wrote, “After examining the injuries carefully, veterinarians determined that the bones were too badly damaged, and they were forced to put the beautiful white creature down late Monday.” Clearly if they’d hit a raccon, skunk, pigeon, seagull or any of the ugly animals, Ms. Peardon would be dismissed as the mewling, whiney, hyper-sensitive prat she is.

“Somebody has to care,” she said.

No, we don’t.

I don’t get what happened with this game. I’ll admit to being disappointed because the phrase “adaptive AI” was bandied around willy-nilly in every preview of Army of Two only to deliver the usual gomer of a computer-controlled partner. Otherwise I’ve rather enjoyed another in the long line of testosterone shooters so pervasive to the industry. It’s a violent tale of two guys that can decimate a regiment of enemy infantry because they wear goalie masks (which as I understand should look more like this to work), put their backs together and spin around while shooting. This is not Home of the Brave we’re talking about here.

I wanted to praise the game’s thoroughly enjoyable co-op gameplay and eye-candy but I’ve been struck by the strange reaction this game has stirred up. Penny Arcade’s admittedly funny comic about it swaps the words “killing” for “murdering” and as such placing a dark significance on their work as professional soldiers. Joe Dodson of Gamespot was hung up on the apparent poltical subject matter of the game in his brief, inexplicably tardy review. What the fuck did EA do with this jock schlock to imply that it was some kind of deep social commentary?

I’ll mention this again: Two guys in impossibly effective body armour adorned with skulls and diablo flames annihilate legions of enemy troops using such brilliant tactics as putting their backs together and standing out in the open, shooting a lot, throwing the occasional grenade, shooting again and getting in close to pitch the enemy soldiers like baseballs. The plot is laughable, only different from Call of Duty 4 and Rainbow Six in presentation because they have the balls to actually use real locations and conflicts. Call of Duty 4 is far more loaded with prophetic warnings and pro- and anti-war sentiment than Army of Two, but its story was praised. Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon pick on the fucking Mexicans of all people. Army of Two even manages to have a war story that doesn’t end with the last-second disarming of a Weapon of Mass Destruction…

Grand Theft Auto IV will feature human trafficking as central to the plot, and will unlikely score lower than 80%. God of War started off with a sex mini-game and was considering by most reviewers to be one of the greatest games ever made. Assassin’s Creed was a stellar game about murdering people in a plot drenched in religious subject matter and slipped by with a 90%. There’s a level in Iraq in Army of Two and an Eisnehower quote, and Army of Two get tarred and feathered.

I think everybody’s just in a bad mood because of that pathetic puppy-tossing video.

I was in braces for four years initially just to treat a crossbite, and after wearing a retainer for only 3 months the orthodonist told me to leave it out for a couple months and see what happens. Naturally, my damned teeth shifted out of place and I went back on braces for two years. After that he claimed I didn’t use the plate retainer properly and gave me a mouthguard retainer I only had to wear to sleep. It gradually became more painful to wear, with no sympathy from the orthodontist, until I just stopped going.

That was highschool, and I haven’t been to any kind of tooth specialist in more than a decade. Partly it was that I hated the idea of getting the usual “you’re doing it all wrong” lecture and other attitude from them. Also, it was a matter of health benefits, as only with this latest job is any dental work covered. Enough times of hearing that mom’s dentist (the inheritor of our family account) kept writing “Michael is way overdue for a cleaning” on her forms, I decided with my Friday paycheque I’d book a cleaning and get started on all the other work that’s waiting.

Sure enough, Sunday night I’m brushing my teeth and the toothbrush emerges red on every part that was in my mouth. I start spitting gobs and gobs of blood and there’s strange black chunks in the mouthwash after I gargle. None of this hurts, but damned if it’s not scary looking. I booked Monday off work and made an emergency appointment with mom’s -and now once again my- dentist, expecting the worst. The good is it’s nothing that needs immiediate work. The bad news is its an abscess as a result of a partially emerged molar being held up by a wisdom tooth. I’m going to to have to consult with the dentist and an orthodontist as to how the surgery and work is going to proceed.

I was hoping to start off light and work up to wisdom tooth removal and some fillings. However it seems I waited just a bit too long. Although more good news was there isn’t nearly as many, if any, cavities to treat.

Good times on the consoles these last couple weeks. Erik and Pieter acquired PS3’s of there very own and copies of Rainbow Six Vegas. The damned game is more than a year old and me and the guys still kill off hours hunting terrorists in Co-Op. I was more than willing to buy a PS3 copy so I could join more people in the hunt. The PS3 version is a little quirkier than the 360, and only its more frequent crashing is truly frustrating; Especially since it tends to lock up during the missions that are going well.

Army of Two showed up a couple days ago and will be a great time filler until Vegas 2 comes out. Maybe longer depending on how replayable the missions are. The bot hunting multiplayer maps really do wonders for the longevity of a multiplayer game. Although the “Pimp my Firearm” options in Ao2 are satisfying, the pacing, noise and intensity of the firefights really make it a fun trip.

Hopefully Vegas 2 will step up a little bit, as Call of Duty 4’s single player game has all kinds of fireworks that I missed going back to Vegas. It’s just too bad the CoD4 multiplayer is a mutation of Halo’s beer-bong, jockish, run-and-gun twitch-fests. Blech.

I may not know much about the man, or even really liked D&D (the later incarnations at least). But I cannot deny how much what he created means to me.

1938-2008

As unpleasant news as I can wake up to.

This makes me realise I didn’t appreciate his work as much as it deserved. I also have such respect for his optimism and will.