Saturday, February 21, 2009

X marks the box in the hole in your head

The weather's kinda lousy today
So what oh what oh what'll we play?
- "Guitar Hero" by Amanda Palmer

My family's first video game system was a Sega Genesis. Man, we looooved that Sega Genesis! (Still do!) My siblings and I spent countless hours playing Sonic the Hedgehog 2. We also played a whole lot of Sonic the Hedgehog 3, but we, like everyone else in the world, got stuck on that godawful barrel in Carnival Night, and lost interest. We also had Vectorman, Madden '9something, a Toy Story game, and some stupid Kirby game where he kept slipping on a skateboard and dying in the first minute of the game.

When we upgraded to N64, it was a big deal. We got it as a Chanukah present, and it stands out in my mind as the most excited I'd ever been for any Chanukah present ever. (Though not quite as excited as N64 kid.) Our first three games were Goldeneye, Ocarina of Time, and Buck Bumble. Goldeneye is still my favorite FPS (though I haven't played all that many.) Despite having the Ocarina of Time guidebook, my brother and I got stuck in the water temple. I think we used a key in the wrong place or something. Buck Bumble was about a bumblebee with sunglasses and guns who flew around shooting evil mutant bugs in the garden. It would have been pretty unremarkable were it not for the kickass theme song. We got a whole bunch of other N64 games as time went on, mostly my brother's sports games, I think. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater stands out because it had an awesome soundtrack. Alas, N64's biggest weakness, in my eyes, was that it had no Sonic games.

Enter the Gamecube. The Gamecube was (is!) an awesome little system. My favorite Gamecube game is Sonic Adventure 2. I love it. I would only embarass myself to go into detail about how much I love it. I also have Sonic Adventure DX, Sonic Mega Collection, and Sonic Heroes. Those were pretty much the only games I ever played on the Gamecube, though, again, my brother had more.

Then came the Wii. I bought myself a Wii two years ago. It was the first gaming system that was mine. The main reason I bought it was because of this video. I think it's hilarious, what can I say? I started off with Wii Sports (of course) and Twilight Princess. I bought Sonic and the Secret Rings, and was sorely disappointed. But I didn't give up on Sonic and bought Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games. It's more fun watching people play that game than it is to play it. I got Wii Play for the extra wiimote. I also bought the port of RE4. Disaster struck at the end of last spring semester, when my wiimotes, charger, carrying case, and RE4 were stolen right out of my dorm. I still haven't replaced everything that was stolen. My next Wii acquisition was Smash Brothers Brawl. Now THAT is what I call a video game! (Sonic is my character of choice, naturally). Unfortunately, I kind of suck at it. My friend stopped playing it with me because it got too boring for him.

Then there was a lull. The video games I wanted (Left 4 Dead, Mirror's Edge) weren't for the Wii. Was the Wii's accessability, the very thing that made it so popular, also it's biggest drawback? My Wii sat mostly unused. Until last week.

As a birthday present for myself, I bought House of the Dead: Overkill and the Nyko Perfect Shot gun attachment. This. Game. Is. Awesome! It's a rail-shooter - like the arcade game. The graphics are really neat, as is the whole grindhouse motif they got goin'. It's totally over the top. I've had it for less than a week, but it looks like it will have plenty of replay value. And best of all? It's kind of easy. I like games that I can beat. In Overkill, the challenge isn't in getting through the game as much as it is in achieving certain goals - high accuracy rate, long combos, collecting all the golden brains, etc.

The Perfect Shot gun I got was defective, but Amazon sent me a replacement the next day. It's a little big for my hands, but I like it a lot.

It looks like there are a bunch of games coming up for the Wii that should appeal to a more adult gaming set, such as Mad World and Dead Rising.

Friday, February 20, 2009

Skincare takes smarts!!

Sarah Haskins' latest installment of Target: Women is relevant to my latest post! Hurrah!


Saturday, February 14, 2009

So Vain

I just managed to spend about $50.00 at CVS even though they didn't have what I went there for.
I hate going down the aisles at places like that because it makes me feel like there's so much I should be doing to make myself look better - all these creams and serums and whatnot. I did need some anti-frizz stuff. But not only are there about a dozen different brands of hair products, each brand has two or three variations on each line of anti-frizz products in order to take up more shelf space. And even though I know that there isn't any significant difference between them, I'll still spend some minutes debating which product to buy.

While I was in the store, Carly Simon's "You're So Vain" was playing. The chorus, "You're so vain, I'll bet you think this song is about you" is mind-boggling to me. Is it about that person or not? It's a paradox!!

Did I mention that I woke up before 7am today? Yeah.

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Derrida? More like Derri-duh!

I just finished the Derrida reading that I was assigned to read for tomorrow. I started Monday. I read 30 pages every day. I rapped the last four pages aloud to myself. Here is a list of the words I had to look up:
invagination
exergue
ternary
lemmatic
stela
mediacy
copula
hypotyposis
Dasein
callistics
architectonics
prolegomenon
sachem
supererogatory
quoins
equivocity
aleatory
syntagm
appurtenant
striction
involution
involucrum
conceptacle
embouchure
cise
sublation
irruption
noumenal

Spell check does not recognize most of them.