::Recent Aquisitions (12/7/03):: Did the Christmas shopping. I bought: Crimson Skies - fun Arcade flying game with Planes from an "alternate" timeline, set in the 1930's. I'm only on the first level, but its fun fun fun. Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure - Tony Hawk 4's awesome engine, only made playable by kids (and me) Skate as Disney characters or a "kid" that you can customize. Levels are huge and based on the Movies pertaining to the Characters you can "play". Again, fun, fun, fun. XBox Musix Mixer - Karaoke - boy does my voice suck... but if you're willing to pay for $1.99/sone, there's *tons* of songs @ xboxkaraoke.com, or upload your own mp3's and use the "hit n' miss" vocal stripping technology. It did work really well, however for Tenacious D's "Tribute". Now I have to see how it will work for ".... her Gently"... The music player and slide show features are cool, too. Midway Arcade treasures A steal @ $20, and now I can play Marble Madness, Paperboy, Smash TV again! (Ok, mame is cool but this kicks butt.) Old School!
::Library:: Aggressive Inline - Fun, but I suck at this game. To many combos to remember. Thank you, cheat codes... Great graphics/sound/music/environments.
Bloodrayne - Completed! Took a while, but had a blast the whole way through. Fun combat, and easy (too easy for some, but not me.) Some levels are long; repetitive.Remember: juggydancesquad
Dark Summit - Fun, but haven't played it much. Decent snowboard simulator, but not realistic. Fun atmosphere.
DOA3 - Classic. Awesome graphics - fun fighting game that I could even play.
DOA Extreme Beach volleyball - More sumptuous graphics - sets the standard. But, gameplay is not that enticing for me. Great depth if you care about gift giving. Its currently gathering dust.
Dragon's Lair 3D - Great revisiting of the old classic, now in 3D, and the game looks great. Camera angles can be a bit odd, and you have to be too exact, sometimes, making difficult jumps, grabs etc, almost impossible. Fun, but I've let this one sit idle for a while. Bonus features are cool.
Enter the Matrix - I just couldn't help myself.... Its not a *bad* game, its just repetitive, and it does nothing "really well" - just a couple of genres (fighting and driving) half-fast. It was soooo overhyped I felt a bit let down by it all. I enjoy the mythos, and look forward to "Revolutions."
Fatal Frame - Finally broke down and bought this game after reading/hearing so much about it. Yes, its scary, yes its creepy, and yes, its damn frustrating, at least for me. I'm still trying to play through the intro...
Finding Nemo - A cute game - The underwater environments are beautiful, and the voice acting is good (same actors from the film?) Younger players (as well as this older one) will get frustrated with controlling the fish, but its a fun game. Update 12/6/03: I'm still stuck on the @#$$@!&$! jellyfish race.
Frogger Beyond - Fun, if you like Frogger. Not played much but I'm giving it another go. The kids like it but it gets frustrating after a while - depth is hard to judge sometimes.
Futurama - Its fun, but repetitive. Levels are huge, but you can't save exept when you've completed a "block" of levels. I hate that. The game is funny, and features the original series' voices.
Disney's haunted Mansion - Now this is a great game. On easy mode, its even playable by me! Its a 3rd person shooter/puzzle game - you go through 24(?) of the rooms of the Haunted Mansion, collecting "souls" and preparing to do battle with the "bad guy". You are guided by Madam Leota, and will interact with many of the 999 ghosts from the disney attraction. Each room encompasses a puzzle to solve, some easy, some very difficult. To its credit, the game company tracked down as much of the vocal talent possible for the game, but to its detriment, I have yet to hear the classic theme, or the great atmoshperic music, particularly the song played by the organist, in the ballroom. I'm glad I bought the House of the Dead III - Great game, but a bit short - I completed it in 4 hours (but still haven't beaten the main boss.) A Mad Katz lightgun is mandatory. Also includes HOD 2, which is cool, and a preview of the HOD movie, which looks like a real dog.
LOTR: 2 Towers - Interesting idea blending DVD sequences with games ones. Great graphics, but I haven't played it too much. Controls get frustrating.
Nickelodeon Party Blast - The kids tire of this one quickly. I do too. I wanted to really like it, but can't. Xbox needs Spongebob & Rocket power games!
Outlaw Golf - Good golf simulator with a Great Attitude. In your Face! Funny characters and interesting courses.
Run Like Hell - Not too bad of a game - interesting surprises along with some frustrating puzzles. I thought it'd be scarier. The free soundtrack that came with the game is pretty good.
Silent Hill 2 - Puzzles, Puzzles, & creepy monsters. Played it all the way through and it kept me hooked at every new plot development. I even had to resort to an online guide for a couple of tough spots. Engrossing. The sounds constantly crept me out, especially when I hear sounds in my own house and I know no one else is home... Warning, there are long stretches of wandering around in the near dark...
The Sims - I'm having trouble getting into this game. I eat, sleep, pee. Just like real life, except for the kitchen fires.
Tetris Worlds - Hey its Tetris. My fiance wanted this one - but I like it too...
Tiger Woods PGA 2003 - I never thought I'd enjoy a golf game, but I really like this one. Mechanics are easy to master but game stays pretty difficult as you advance through the challenge.
Wreckless - Good game with a great arcade engine and great graphics. I haven't played this one much cause' I suck at it. But I keep it around for a rainy day.
Found @ Fark.com: Super-Pneumonia='s Super hype. Time Travelling Wall Street Wizard cleans house, gets busted. Offers Osama as plea bargain. China tells N. Korea to STFU. The practice of human sacrifice still alive and well in India. (No pun intended :-O ) Hoo-boy. N. Korea refuses arms inspections... Hubcaps of Mass-Destruction. Iraqis give food to hungry U.S. Soldiers. This Saudi should have quit while he was ahead.
Seen @ davebarry: Peace is athand. Well, so to speak. Employee of the Millennium! Relax...and just-feel-good. DEATH is fatal! (Well, duh.) The next Harry Potter replacer? Now you can be fashionable and safe from chemical or biological attack. For the record, giant rubber-band ballswon't bounce @ 32 feet per second per second. This is why I don't clean the bathroom so damn often. Can this help me stop procrastinating?
go on over to aprilwinchell.com, and check the "Friday Brown bag of crap". Its full of goodness.
Something Awful's Photoshop Parodies of Religious Toys. Call me sick, but my favorite, I think, is the "My First Jihad" Power Wheels. Hoo, boy. Ir, "Operation Faith Healer" and "Chi Pet" are quite funny.
Oh. I have too. I HAVE TO. Can you imagine how cool they'd be on a Blue Saturn LS? It'd be the Bomb.
I'm gonna have lunch now, and I hope you have a great day.
Man, am I pissed. I can't sleep, so I'm watching fox news while I'm preparing my lunch and dinner for work tonight. There is a briefing about the arab league of nations getting together to denounce this war. Whatever. I won't even go there. Fucking ungrateful bastards. We made that fucking part of the world... Those shitbags wouldn't have 3 huts, let alone all those goddamn palaces if it wasn't for the industrial age. So this fucking waste of space comes on and says that Americans have abused pow's in Afghanistan; Americans have executed pow's in Afganistan. Prisoners are "treated like animals" @ Guatanamo Bay. YOU FUCKING LIAR. Those shitbags get treated better than the average american. NOBODY BRINGS ME A FUCKING BAGEL EVERY DAY. I don't have any links for pow's in Afganistan, but here's some for Guantanamo:
From: politburo.com: -------------------- 10/30/2002 The War. PILGER'S LIES DEBUNKED BY TALIBANISTAS Remember John Pilger’s front page story in Britain’s esteemed Daily Mirror accusing the United States of a "human rights outrage" at camp X-Ray? The militant Islamists, representing a government who desecrated and destroyed non-Muslim (read Buddist) religious symbols, forced every adult female to shroud herself in the Burkah, routinely executed political and religious heretics, were being held in "barbaric conditions," the Mirror opined. The father of a Swedish detainee told the BBC that the conditions at X-Ray were "worse than Auschwitz."
Bagels, Korans, and a tropical breeze, the Auschwitz of the Carribean. "We have to make sure that the food is halal approved," said Gitmo’s Chief Petty Officer Colleen Schonhoff. "A typical breakfast consists of pita bread, rice, curried eggs and peas, milk and fresh fruit, or hash browns, pita bread, a boiled egg, milk and fresh fruit. A typical dinner consists of rice, pita bread, meat and vegetable curry, milk, fresh fruit and margarine. A variant is rice, baked fish, stew sauce, spinach, orange or orange juice, milk and bread and margarine. JTF 160 provides the lunch vegetarian MREs. We serve them two special meals per year. For example, we served them lamb stew, rice, loaf bread, baklava and tea at the end of Ramadan in April. The Joint Task Force tells us when to serve the special meals."
But, we were told, these barbarians are being treated barbarously. Imagine it!
Anyone remember the moral hand-wringing from our allies in Europe, zealously condemning the supposedly inhumane treatment at Guantanamo? Well the arbiters of decency in Brussels can now breath a slight sigh of relief; the farm league Himmlers lording over our persecuted Talibs comrades in sunny Cuba (no, not THOSE oppressed Cubans…decent folks don’t talk about them) have released a flood of detainees back to the squalor of of 8 X 8 rooms in Afghanistan. The rooms, I have been told, do not provide complimentary bagel service.
So what is to become of these lost souls, these agents of theocratic despotism? Under the misleading headline "Afghans Freed From Guantánamo Bay Speak of Heat and Isolation," the New York Times crack war crimes correspondent questions the Gitmo survivors—the Elie Weisels’, the Primo Levis’—about their treatment (did the Times do similar stories in 1945? Did they, overcome with humanitarian concern, track down Nazi soldiers and ask them if their stay in camp was comfortable?):
"He was asked if he was angry at the American soldiers who arrested him. "I don't mind," he said, his face brightening. "They took my old clothes and gave me new clothes." The monsters! The indigenous clothes of the fanatical Talib were replaces by generic American sweatpants—no doubt made by oppressed Vietnamese sweatshop workers. Call the Hague! Call Naomi Klein!
It gets worse: "The younger Mr. Muhammad still wore a bracelet that identified him as a Guantánamo Bay prisoner, and all three wore thick new American-made cotton sweatsuits and socks. They showed off bottles of medication, copies of the Koran and small American flag arm patches given to them by their jailers…Mr. Muhammad did not complain about the food or medical care, and he praised his American guards for respecting his religion. ‘When we were standing for praying they were walking very slowly to not disturb us,’ he said."
Sure, they received expert medical care, food approved by Allah and were overseen by diversity-trained GI’s, respectful of their religious ceremonies. But it was "hot and isolated"...and this concerns Mahatma Raines.
Palistine support for saddam. I guess money talks, and humanity walks. In Palestine, saddam sells. Link found on asmallvictory.net. "The Iraqi leader is popular in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, partly because of the more than $35 million he has doled out to Palestinian families who have had relatives killed in the armed uprising with Israelis."
So, yeah. this war is wrong. Riiiight.
If I paid people to blow themselves up and take as many [insert any ethnicity here] with them, would people protest when the Government gave me a cease and decist request? I don' think so. Hell, I couldn't even pay people to kill puppies along with themselves without the same "bullying" from the government. Why, then, is it ok to not stop saddam.
If you haven't seen the "protest the protesters" videos, click here.
Oh, a rerun of Friends drew more ratings than war coverage.
Quick question: Why is there so much violence @ anti-WAR demonstrations?
I love this protest sign:
While there are plenty of people in our own coutry protesting the war, have they bothered to see how those in Iraq feel?
How about some revelations from some of those who went over as human shields to protest but were shocked into reality? briefly:
told UPI the trip "had shocked me back to reality." Some of the Iraqis he interviewed on camera "told me they would commit suicide if American bombing didn't start. They were willing to see their homes demolished to gain their freedom from Saddam's bloody tyranny. They convinced me that Saddam was a monster the likes of which the world had not seen since Stalin and Hitler. He and his sons are sick sadists. Their tales of slow torture and killing made me ill, such as people put in a huge shredder for plastic products, feet first so they could hear their screams as bodies got chewed up from foot to head."
So was the guy fed a line of bullshit? Maybe, maybe not. If he was, well, we know there's more badness. If he wasn't, well, damn......
Mahmud Dhiyab, iraqi interior minister and official spreader of bullshit says that "surrendering iraqi soldiers" were not part of the country's armed forces. So far the count is 8297 that aren't members of the iraqi military. I wonder if any of them fired those scuds that iraq "didn't" have. How stupid does he think the rest of the world is? The sad thing is that there are people over there who belive these lies... Maybe only until *every* man, woman and child in the middle east, and everywhere can have uncensored internet access can the truth be known to everyone...
In other news, we're going to hell in a handbasket.
Oh, did you know that the french trained the iraqi army?.... at least 8297 (and growing) of them!
And if you don't know this already, Waffle House Rules!
Do you really know about the last 12 years, yes 12 years since iraq agreed to disarm per a U.N. resolution? You do realize that they haven't complied, right? Factual timeline of UN/Iraq/Coalition "misunderstanding".
Some thoughts...
We waited 12 years for Saddam to disarm. He hasn't. See the timeline. Even Hans Blix recently said that once coalition forces get to bagdad, they should look in the "basements" and look where the inspectors couldn't.
25 nations were originally with us. (Or was it 14? I dunno.) Now its over 40. Fuck France, Russia, and Germany. We'll still help defend you if needed - we're just cool that way.
Iraq said they didn't have scuds. They're using them now. Is it honestly likely that that was the only banned weapon (not just banned by us, but by the United Nations) that Iraq is lying about?
How many coalition soldiers are surrendering to Iraqi forces? How many surrendered in the Gulf War? Hell, 2 weeks ago Iraqis were trying to surrender. They know saddam is wrong. Why can't our own citizens realize that?
We are targeting military targets. Saddam, and other crazy middle eastern fucks, have called for the death of all Westerners. Big difference, in my opinion.
What would happen to a captured US or coalition soldier (or civilian for that matter)? Now compare/contrast with how we would treat them? I don't think that the US or coalition would kill them onsite and drag their body through the street.
Iraq has said that Bush is a criminal. How many protestors have been beaten or killed just for demonstrating? None. How many people has the Iraqi regime beaten or killed merely for demonstrating? Has our government killed thousands of American citizens with chemical weapons?
Go stand @ the Palace in bagdad (well, not right now) and burn an Iraqi flag. Exactly how many seconds of your remaining life can you be proud of your defiance? Compare/contrast with doing that as an (alleged) american in D.C.
Has ANY government official offered monetary renumeration for the death of any foriegn person?
Will our government ever call for civilians, including the elderly, women and children, to act as "human shields"? didn't think so.
Iraq is burning their oil fields. That is crippling the country's post war ability to recover. Would a regime that truly
If you were in Iraq and were opposing the war effort, how long do you think you'd be allowed to freely express your opinion? How long do you think you'd remain breathing?
Do you know the structure of the military in Iraq? You have the military - they fight us. You have the republican guard - they keep the military from fighting the government. You then have the "special" republican guard - they protect saddam and his high level thugs from the military and republican guard. How fucked are you that you have to have protection against your own military?
This is not a "war for oil." Do the math. Its costing us a lot more for the war effort than how much the oil is worth. This is an effort to remove a madman from power, and a message to other insane dictators. (can you say "North Korea?" good...) I would not stand by and let an innocent person get beaten by thugs, and I am proud my Country feels the same. Saddam is a clear threat, and he aided other threats. We are starting a trend that has to continue - advocate indiscriminate murder, and you will not be allowed to roam free.
Which brings me to Osama shitbag Laden. One small comment about remarks he made earlier today. He had mentioned something about westerners being slaves to the dollar. How many millions does this fuckwad have? How much money do they offer the families of suicide bombers? What a bunch of crazy hypocritical fucks.
That's it for now, I'm too pissed to think coherently now. Thank God for our troops.
