Since I'm not what you'd call a "partier," and being of the Irish/cold weather human subtype I generally dislike 100+ degree weather, I spent a lot of my time here indoors. That means a lot of internet time, and I can share my findings with all of you.
First, on google maps I was looking at distances and routes to drive around the country from our new home in Eugene, and then I decided to see what it would say if I wanted to go to Dublin, Ireland.
Did you see it? Take a closer look:
That's right, Step 33: Swim across the Atlantic Ocean. Interestingly, it tells you to swim to France and then take the Chunnel from France to the U.K. Obviously Google has been taken over by the U.N. and their weather control machine conspiracy syndicate to force you to pay Euro-tolls. Listen here, Illuminati leader Juaques Chirac! I'll swim straight across the Atlantic Ocean to Dublin from JFK airport, and to hell with your Chunnel, thank you very much!
Sheesh. Ridiculous.
In other news, I found a severely kick-ass cartoon on Youtube called Korgoth of Barbaria. Its by Cartoon Network's Adult Swim and its basic premise is if you took Brock Sampson from Venture Brothers, put him in a loin cloth, and dropped him in the world of Thundarr the barbarian. It rules. Unfortunately embedding is disabled but here's the link to the first part of the pilot episode.
Extremely violent and ridiculously awesome. I hope they pick it up as a series.
Finally, for all of you who watched the incredibly confusing Russian horror movie Nightwatch, the preview for the sequel Daywatch is out, and looks just as confusing yet fascinating. As I try to recall the plotline to Nightwatch, I feel like I was drunk or on drugs while I watched it, but I know I wasn't. That's how strange it was.
Did he say the 'chalk of destiny?' I mean, what in the hell? I'll still see it though. I know Muncher's probably all about it.
Okay all you hip cats and tricks out there. What is this game?
Clues:
1) No matter what Travis tells you, this game sucked monkey nuts. He'll even promise it was great, and let you borrow it for a couple months to try to beat because its so "hard" ("hard" meaning "bad"), and your pride will require you to give it a go, but in the end the non-responsive controls and obscenely large but inaccurate bullets you shoot will make you quit video games altogether for a semester.
2) The game featured evil piranhas, and you could swim, albiet very stupidly.
3) This game did not live up to its previous incarnation on a separate console system.
So its my birthday! Kinda crummy to have your birthday on the opposite side of the planet as your friends and family, but at least I have the McLaughlin group to keep me occupied.
Even got some cards for my birthday over here! One from my wife and the other from Brando and Kimbo Slice.
Those are some adorable goddamn squirrels. Mary says I have more cards from folks waiting at home for me when I get back to the states'. Anyway, so how did I go about celebrating my birthday weekend, you ask? Well, I cleaned up my little apartment and actually did laundry, and then I went to the Night Bazaar and picked up my suit I got tailored for myself (Hong Kong Tailors). I figured I might as well cut out the middleman and save a couple hundred bucks while I'm here, right? I also grabbed copies of the movies Eragon and Pathfinder (more below).
Then I went to the mall and tried to spend money. Unfortunately I have some sort of defective shopping gene that just makes me annoyed whenever I go into malls, and the fact that I can't read much of anything just exacerbates my annoyance. It probably didn't help that I was listening to the Dead Rising soundtrack (get it while you can) the whole time and kept hoping zombies would bust into the mall. I did consider stopping into one particular store and loading up...
But then I figured I couldn't get anything past USA customs anyway. Its a shame, really, since in Oregon drugs that contain pseudoephedrine aren't even legal anymore (first ephedrine, then pseudoephedrine), so Oregon cold medicine is like 2 parts vitamin C and 1 part Echinachea (read: worthless). Here in Thailand lets just say the Thai-FDA is a friend of Rush Limbaugh. Though I think if you're actually charged with drug trafficing they lop off your hands. At any rate, I grabbed some Claratin for Mary and otherwise steered clear.
A lot of the shopping here is done outdoors at night because its cooler then, and they have little stages set up where they do fashion shows and occasionally wierd traditional dances (the fashion shows are actually wierder than the traditional dances). I took a picture of one just to prove that I'm still in Thailand.
I also took a couple pictures of Chaing Mai from the tuk tuks (3-wheeled motorcycle things) during my rides around the city.
Yeah, they have big pictures of the king all over the place.
For dinner I got some Som Tam (curry soup -- its good for real) from a street vendor and had some roti (fried bread with chocolate, bananas and coconut milk). Then I ate one of the bags of skittles my mom sent me while I sat down to watch some movies.
Eragon:
Holy pile of crap. Its like a 15 year-old director's son watched Attack of the Clones and Dungeons and Dragons (the movie) and said "Yes! I want to make a movie that is an exact combination of those two blockbusters!" and some coke-addled producer green-lighted the project during a speedball party. It was god-awful. I'm sorry I paid 50 Baht for the DVD ($1.50). And remember, I kinda liked 'D&D 2: Wrath of the Dragon God,' so I'm serious when I say Eragon is awful. Final Analysis: Attack of the Clones minus the lightsabers and clones.
Oh yeah, last weekend was Cullen's birthday! In honor of that, here's a little music video just for Cullen's birthday:
Go ahead and watch it again. I know you want to.
The second movie I got was Pathfinder.
You may not recognize the name because it won't be out in theaters until April 13th. Its kind of a 13th warrior meets Apocalypto. I've been wanting to see it since I saw the preview, but unfortunately the DVD quality was terrible and the sound was like listening to your next door neighbor's TV through the wall rather than watching a movie in front of you, so after watching the first 20 minutes with my face right up next to the screen and speakers, I decided I didn't want to spoil the rest of the movie and tossed the worthless DVD across the room. I figure that's the price I pay for trying to see into the future.
I still have another day of birthday time actually since I started my 'celebrations' on Saturday. I'll keep you informed if anything great happens. Tomorrow I am going to try to go see some elephants somehow, and if that falls through I'm reinstalling Baldur's Gate 2:Throne of Bhaal and playing through it as a lawful evil monk.
So I guess the USPS must have pretty much all the difficulties with mail delivery and customer service solved. This is what they are working on now:
Kristy (Firefly's #1 Fan) and I took a walk on Friday to check out the new mail box.
Turns out it is the same blue box but with R2D2 decals on it. Kristy commented that George Lucas doesn't deserve any royalties from using R2's likeness because he ruined the trilogy. You can check out whatever they are planning at uspsjedimaster.whatever.com if you want. I would include the link, but it crashed my browser.
"The person who controls the mail, controls information!" --Newman
Well, its been a while, so I decided to bring back the Illustrator NES challenge!
What is this game?
If you still need help, here's some clues:
1) The title of this post has nothing to do with the game.
2) Did not have as much gameplay value as the highly strategic "fat-vs-thin" market competitor to this game.
3) Shown above is actually a mini-game within the game, but the only part worth playing. In fact, hours could be devoted to just attempting to activate this minigame.
