You ever been so angry you lose the ability to type? I hit that a few minutes ago trying to figure out this new posting format. I think I'm making progress.
My family is full of assholes. I'm not sure whether it's a genetic thing that started generations ago, or more of a viral craziness that just gets passed onto the offspring through contact with psychotics. I have a mother who is diabetic and hides and eats entire boxes of cookies, but if I want a cookie, I'm a pig, just for asking for one. I have an older sister who constantly needs to use my charge to purchase things, but when I ask for the money back, she asks me if I really need it. Of course I need it, I've been out of work for almost a year! DUH! Why the fuck do you even borrow the money if you have no intention of paying it back?? Completely despite the fact that she makes more in a month than I do in a YEAR. Seriously, if you are making that much and you need to borrow money from ME, you are doing it wrong. And my nephew... well he needs his own paragraph or three.
Now, this guy is on his fourth ex-wife, but hey, everyone has girl problems from time to time. He's paying out more in child support than he is actually earning, but I'm sure that's not all his fault. I mean, if you take his word for it, all his ex-wives are cheating whores! I can't tell you how many times he's come home from a hard day's work to find his wife in bed with another man! No, wait. I can tell you exactly how many times. According to him, that's what happened to him, four times. Yea, he uses the same story to explain his divorce every time. I'm not really sure if he believes that's what actually happens, like an alcohol-induced hallucination (he drinks a lot), or whether he's just not smart enough to think of another excuse, or whether he's just decided that if it worked the first time, he may as well use it again? I mean, I suppose it's possible that he picks just the sort of women who are going to be cheating on him within months of getting married, but if so, why is he then surprised when they actually cheat?
Now, if you didn't know my nephew like I do, you might be inclined to take his word for it, that he's just an unlucky sod who's had his wife cheat on him, the same way, four separate times (what are the odds?). But let me tell you about why I think he's just nuts.
When we were kids, he would aggravate me to the point of beating the crap out of him, and then duck behind an adult for protection. Yea, he's one of THOSE. And then he'd do it again. And again. And believe me when I say, I am really hard to aggravate. I'm a nice, easy going guy who understands that other people get bored, or are in bad moods, or are just too fucking stupid to not be a moron. Like someone once said, everyone is an asshole once in a while, just don't abuse the privilege. And he abused it. Oh, did he ever! But in case you're going "what are you on about? you were both kids, this was years ago!" Yes, I know, and I'm not angry about shit that happened when we were kids. I got even with him on several occasions in such a way that it still brings a smile to my face, and yes, I am petty enough to enjoy remembering how I outsmarted and beat him all those years ago. And don't give me that "you beat up your nephew?" look. He's only three years younger than I am and was a little SHIT when we were kids. What really annoys me is what he's doing now.
Apparently, and I only discovered this when we were playing cards one night with his latest wife, he's been telling everyone how I used to aggravate HIM when we were kids, and then I would hide behind an adult for protection. Now, before you go all "your word against his! how are we, your readers, to know who's telling the truth?" Well, when he first mentioned it, my older sister and I looked at each other like "did he just...?" Yea, she confirmed it afterwards, my nephew stole my childhood and has been telling everyone it's his. Apparently, either he's trying to hide what an asshole he is from everyone, or his guilt over being such an asshole has made him insane. I'm pretty sure either way, it confirms he's an asshole. lol
So how much of an asshole do you have to be, to steal someone else's childhood, to take the aggravation they suffered at your hands, and pretend the roles were reversed? Apparently, so much an asshole that your soon-to-be 4 ex-wives either turn to another man for solace or you make up a story about how your ex-wives have been cheating on you to... perhaps... cover up the fact that you've been cheating? Yea. Hey, if role reversal salvaged your conscience once, why not do it again, right? Hmmm. I think I've just proved to myself that my nephew is a cheating asshole. lol
Oh well. Not everyone's family is perfect, right? On to other things.
So I watched HBO's new show, Veep. Apparently it stars julia-louis-dreyfus (i may have hyphenated that wrong) as.. well, I'm not really sure. The vice president, apparently. And she looks disturbingly like sarah palin. So... apparently the show is about what might happen if whatsisface had got elected and sarah palin then became VP. Now, I am not politically knowledgeable, so maybe just the thought of this is so ridiculously funny that you'd laugh yourself hoarse through the whole half-hour show and completely miss any of the dialogue. Which is probably a good idea. They are really trying to sell the show, it was on every HBO channel earlier tonight. Including one channel where the premiere episode was replayed three times in a row.
Honestly, the show blows. I watched it for about 10 minutes and I'm not sure why. If it's supposed to be a serious look at politics, it's boring as hell. If it's a comedy show, it's boring as hell. If it was actually trying to be funny, which would make sense to me since it's starring well, someone who generally tries to be funny (and usually fails), then it is a failure. Maybe it's more of an inside joke thing, where you have to be politically in-the-know to get the jokes, but either way, I was bored. I watched her go to her office, do all the things some VP might do, even one supposedly playing sarah palin, and I wasn't amused. Didn't giggle, didn't chortle, not even a smile. And I'm a man who belly-laughs like santa claus. So, yea... I think HBO should probably cancel that one pretty quick. lol
Watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off, now. Classic. I recently read an article online about how Ferris was actually just cameron's alter ego, and doesn't actually exist. It's an interesting idea, but honestly, I'd just like to see a sequel. Cameron, Ferris and Sloane as adults, getting together for a crazy skipping-work-all-day-party kind of thing. Maybe at the end, Ferris just disappears entirely because he really IS just Cameron's alter ego? I would laugh my ass off at that. Come on Matthew Broderick! You're rich enough! Produce another bueller movie! Get Ben stein to come back as the teacher! Shit, you could even hire jeffrey jones as the principal again, I think he's out of jail now! lol
And now, let's post and hope the options I changed make my posting look all nice and pretty again.
Monday, April 23, 2012
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Fuckin Google!
SO i come online to post about some things, namely, reviewing the series Lilyhammer, and the "red Riding" movie trilogy. And Google changed it's posting format! Yea, they tried to change it before, and I was all like NO GOOGLE! BAD! I LIKE THE OLD POSTING FORMAT! And then it went away and I thought, that's better, I've made my preferences known, and google won't ask me again.
HAH! I am so naive. Google said FUCK YOU! And changed it's format anyway. I should have suspected. I mean, every time I try to check my gmail now, it's all "GIVE US YOUR ALTERNATE ADDRESS IN CASE SOMETHING HORRIBLE HAPPENS LIKE YOU FORGET YOUR PASSWORD! Completely despite the fact that I already GAVE them my alternate email address, and they actually have it fucking listed right there, they are still saying they don't have one on file. Morons. So i always click past that, and then they started asking about my phone number. WTF do they need to know that shit for? Now, I'm not an idiot, I know they sell information and the more info they have, the more money they get. But they don't even try and justify the shit anymore, they are just like GIVE US YOUR CELL PHONE NUMBER, BITCH! Wtf. Google is one greedy pile of shit-sacks. They can go fuck themselves about my cell, I don't even have one! HAH!!! TAKE THAT GOOGLEBITCHES!!!!
Now, with that out of my system, on to the reviews.
I had the pleasure of watching Lilyhammer on netflix recently. All 8 episodes, which took about 8 hours. Oh, not all at once, mind you, took me about a week. Starring Steven Van Zandt, if I am not mistaken, as a mobster who testifies against his new boss because the guy's an asshole and tries to kill him. See wtf, this is why i hate format changes, I can't even SEE the goddamn right hand edge of where I am typing. Fuckin Google morons! if the shit's working, don't change it! First rule of tech support, ya goddamn morons! Erm, anyway, so the mobster, one frankie Tagliano, known as frankie the fixer, enters the witness protection program and goes to lillehammer, norway. Over the next 8 episodes of this series, perhaps made by netflix itself, I am not sure, Frank embraces his new surroundings in the easiest way he knows how... he fixes things. Now, fixer doesn't necessarily mean violence, and what I like best about frankie is, he tries other methods first. And of course, being a newcomer in a strange country, and abandoned by the Witsec program because his testimony was beaten in court, frankie has to pretty much find his own way of getting things done.
I liked Lilyhammer. The show clearly showed everything that was going on, there was nothing contradictory, there were reasons why everything was going on and all the characters were clearly illustrated and quite entertaining. I found myself looking forward to each new episode each day and with supposedly the first season now over, I am wondering when netflix is going to have the next one start. The natural landscape of norway is showcased often, but it doesn't interfere with the characters and their development, and I laughed often and hard over their various antics.
Not so with the Red Riding series of movies, about a serial killer on the loose in england in the late 70's and early 80's. Basically, there were 3 movies done, each supposedly covering a year. One was set in 1974, one was set in 1980, and the final one was 1983, although all three movies were actually filmed in 2009, I think. So as far as I can follow, here's what happens. A reporter picks up on the fact that a number of children have gone missing, and there are similarities in the cases. The police already know about the serial killer aspect of the case in 1974 when the reporter goes to ask them about it, and then another murder happens and the case is given to someone else. Then the reporter is given a case about possible police corruption, and the whole series of movies goes downhill from there. Seriously. And the mayhem continues all they way through to 1983.
I'm not really sure why an entirely good subject of a movie like a serial killer is blindsided with a story about police corruption, but it is, and this theme pretty much holds sway for the entire 3 movies. Each movie feels different, and they don't really follow one another, even if some of the characters are the same. And i didn't care about any of the damn characters, except, first time ever, there's an actual lawyer who I gave a damn about! :-o Yes, I was shocked. So let me sum up the three movies, if I can, in a way that will completely confuse you, because it did me as well. So here's the reporter, and I don't know what happened to him because the movie got boring and I switched to watch Grimm. But apparently he was investigating the murders on his own, while investigating police corruption, and fucking up both investigations so badly that he ended up getting beaten up several times and probably killed since he doesn't even appear in the 1980 movie. What happens with the serial killer case? does he find out anything important? Who cares, there's corrupt police! That's more important!
So on we move to 1980, where the main protagonist (that's fancy writer-speak for "hero") is an honest cop brought in from outside the local department to investigate the killings. Now, all these killings are happening in an area in northern england, which apparently all falls under the control of one police department, or one main office, or something, and apparently, this office is controlled by a team of 5 or 6 corrupt police. The outside cop, while trying to investigate the killings, again stumbles on the whole corrupt police thing, and is killed for sticking his nose where it doesn't belong. But what happened with the murders, you ask? Who cares, there were corrupt policemen! That's more important! and goddamn you fuckin google, you have a SEND FEEDBACK banner right where i am fucking typing so i can't see SHIT now. Wtf, I'll give you some goddamn feedback, google, you are all IDIOTS! Does anyone actually try out their goddamn work anymore to see if maybe it makes things WORSE for those that use it? No? I fuckin thought not! But at the end of this movie, an arabic guy admits to doing all the killings. Which is a pile of BS because that makes no sense whatsoever. Especially more so once you see the third movie.
Now on to 1983, where a lawyer comes home after his mother's death, and is asked to file an appeal for the retarded kid they locked up for the killings. What's that, you ask? Didn't an arabic guy confess to all the killings in the last movie? Why, yes, yes one did, and that guy is GONE. Now it's a retarded kid who supposedly signed a confession. Now the lawyer doesn't want to take the case, but then, there's yet another missing child case. And the police try to pin it on the retarded kid's friend, and when the lawyer takes THAT case, the friend ends up dying in his cell before the lawyer can even talk to him. Suspicious, you say? No shit. Now the lawyer figures out what's going on, and how the police are all corrupt and shit. So he files his case representing both the retarded kid they still have in jail, who was supposedly the child killer, and the dead friend. But enough about police corruption! There's a serial killer out there! And all of a sudden, it's all about the serial killer again instead of police corruption. Which just totally fucking confused me. But whatever. So now, as far as I can tell, one of the corrupt cops, who in 1980 guns down the guy who is investigating the killings because he figures out there's some police corruption going on, has a change of heart and actually wants to catch the real killer now. makes no fuckin sense at ALL. But now HE'S the hero. Yea. Some fuckin cop who goes around killing people and covering up their deaths by killing other cops, is now the HERO! Wheeeeeee! Wtf. I got nothin. Insanest piece of bullshit movie writing I've ever seen. So they find out who the killer is, the lawyer finds all the previous missing kids (most of whom are now dead, but he manages to save the latest one), and the guy who went around killing innocents, civilians and cops willy-nilly is now the one who gets the bad guy, and the lawyer just wanders off into the hills with the rescued kid in his arms! And that's THE END!!!!
Wtf!!!! Nothing about police corruption, how that gets tied up, nothing about all those other people who investigated the corruption, NOPE, you want to know how all that worked out, well FUCK YOU. Not yours. What you get is a serial killer who barely showed up in the first two movies but makes a whimsical appearance in this one for no apparent reason except to take the fall as the bad guy. Not that there seems to be any doubt about it, mind you, I am pretty sure the right guy got it in the end, and I suspected him back when i first saw him because he was way too helpful, if that makes sense. I don't want to give away the ending or anything, in case you want to see all three movies to see how fucked up they are, but seriously... It just makes no logical sense. Except for the serial killer part, and who it ended up being, THAT made sense. Of course, we could have just wrapped that part up in one movie WITHOUT there being 5 and a half hours of people investigating police corruption and getting NOWHERE.
I mean, do the people who make these movies just want to hand money away for no good reason? Give it to me! I'll do something good with it! I'll spend it all on hookers and blow! At least that makes sense! Dumbass sonsofbitches. Wtf did GOOGLE write that series of movies? Get me frankie the fixer! I want my old google posting format back!
Sonofabitch there's not even a goddamn POST button, how the HELL do I post this on my blog now? goddamn morons.
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Friday the 13th
It's that time of year again, people!
No, not Halloween already. Friday the 13th! That's right, it's time for a Jason Voorhees marathon! Although, I'm not sure you could really call 2 movies a marathon, considering I only watched parts 2 and 7. Still, they were the beginning and end of my favorite string of Jason Voorhess movies. Let's recap the whole series, just so everyone is with me on this!
Friday the 13th, part 1 - A bunch of camp counselors are murdered by jason's mom, Mrs Voorhees. Jason's mom is all pissed because supposedly, Jason drowned while the counselors were off having sex and smoking dope, setting the stage for the entire series. Pretty much every victim in every Fri 13 movie from here on out gets killed while either having sex, smoking dope, or doing something they shouldn't be doing. I've never really thought about it until now but, Jason actually died before his own series of movies ever started, supposedly drowning as a young boy before this movie even began. Jason's mom, however, dies at the end of this movie, getting her head chopped clean off. jason makes a pseudo-appearance at the end, supposedly scaring the bejeesus out of a young girl in a canoe. But was he really there? Or did she just imagine it? because supposedly he's been dead since before the movie started!
Part 2 - Now here's where things get really confusing. This movie opens with an adult-ish jason stalking and killing the girl who cut off Mrs Voorhees' head in the first movie. But according to the movie itself, the girl disappeared a few weeks after the events of the first movie, and was never heard from again, and supposedly, this movie opens 5 years after the events of the first movie. This raises several questions. One, if jason died as a boy, why is he growing up? Two, if it's only been five years, and jason was a boy, wouldn't he only be in his teens now? Three, if his drowning never actually happened, why was his mom all pissed off in the first movie? Well, aside from all the confusion, this movie was pretty decent. Counselors get together to refresh their counseling skills at crystal lake, and a hooded Jason goes around killing them. Interestingly enough, a huge bunch of the counselors head into town and basically spend the night drinking, while completely avoiding the mass killings at the cabins by the lake. This goes against the normal routine, as everyone who was out all night partying in town actually lived, and everyone who turned in early got slaughtered.
Part 3 - This movie marked the first time jason put on his signature hockey mask. I guess the burlap hood was either getting too restricting visually, or it was hockey season. I haven't seen this movie in ages, so all i can recall about it was that it was in 3D, with lots of eyes popping out of the screen and so on. i once carved a pumpkin for halloween with the jason hockey mask on the front, just punching little holes into it with an ice pick and then carving out the eyes. it was a big hit with all the trick or treaters! But that has absolutely nothing to do with the movie.
Part 4 - jason runs into his arch-nemesis, Tommy. While going about killing the drunken revelers as he usually does, jason meets a young boy named Tommy (played by corey feldman) somebody or other, who chops jason into bits with his own machete. This marks the second time jason dies, or perhaps the first time he actually dies, or maybe the 4th or 5th time he's died, I'm not even sure. After this point, he stops growing, so I guess he never really drowned before the first movie, eh?
Part 5 - jason was not actually in this movie. Jason, apparently dead, spends the entire movie taking a dirt nap while an ambulance driver dons his hockey mask and overalls and goes around killing a bunch of mentally disturbed teenagers, blaming the whole thing on the jason legend. Tommy plays the lead role here, apparently taking martial arts to defend himself against any future jason occurrences, or maybe he's just messed up in the head, but he seems fairly badass despite being a mental patient. Eventually the copycat killer is found out, unmasked, and killed. He probably would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for those meddling kids!
Part 6 - An adult Tommy, trying to exorcise the demons from his brain, digs up jason's body in an attempt to finally destroy the body with fire and thus end his nightmares. unfortunately, he digs him up during a lightning storm, and jason's body gets struck by lightning, which actually brings him back to life as a zombie, which i saw coming pretty much from the first 12 seconds into the movie. Zombie-jason seems much stronger than the formerly living version, easily putting his fists through people's brains and ripping their arms off and beating them to death with them. Much more badass than previous incarnations, zombie-jason can no longer be killed, only trapped in crystal lake, which tommy manages to do, dying in the process. Also, tommy somehow manages to forget his martial arts training from part 5, his angry rage from part 4, and is a total pussy for the entire length of this movie. Frankly, I think a badass tommy/zombie jason fight would have been awesome, but it never happens.
part 7 - jason gets brought back from his Limbo-zombie state by a telekinetic chick whose father died in the lake. There's an epic battle between zombie-jason and psycho-kinetic girl, and eventually she revives her dead father from the lake, who takes zombie-jason back down into it's murky depths. this marks the last time crystal lake is featured in the films. no doubt the area is cordoned off, mined, and no one ever goes there again for fear of being bitten by zombie-jason and starting the zombie apocalypse.
Part 8 - jason joins a boatload of rich teens headed to new york city. he follows them around the big apple for awhile, killing them off, until he drowns in radioactive sewer water, or something to that effect, marking the second time he's supposedly drowned. Or maybe the third. You'd think they'd get the idea that it wasn't going to kill him this time either, but no. No, they didn't.
Part 9 - Jason is caught in a sting operation by the FBI, who apparently shoot him so full of lead that he dies of lead poisoning. HAH GET IT? LEAD POISONING??? HAHAHAHAHAA!!!! Erm. yea. anyway, apparently he reawakens at the morgue, takes possession of other people's bodies, and goes around killing again. Not really sure about the whole possession thing for jason. That's more a michael myers schtick, but whatever. When you're on the FBI's most wanted list, you have to be either really really good, or really really bad, and supposedly this movie is really bad.
Part 10 - Jason gets captured and cryo-frozen, since no one can figure out how to kill him permanently. However, he gets thawed out several hundred years in the future, after the earth has been turned into a toxic wasteland, and gets taken into space. After a little killing, he gets infected with nanites, who turn him into cyber-zombie-jason, who's apparently even more badass than zombie jason, who destroys an entire space ship and lands on a whole new planet. With lots of lakes! Wow and I thought part 9 sucked.
Yea, I don't know where you can go with the series after you've destroyed the earth, taken him into space, and turned jason into an undead cyborg. I pretty much think that was it for jason Voorhees except for a short appearance fighting freddy krueger, who's been vainly trying to recapture his popularity since Nightmare on elm street 1. But don't get me started on freddy. It's really hard for me to be scared of a skinny guy in a green and orange sweater with a slightly modified michael jackson glove. I think he even moonwalks someone to death in one of their dreams, or tongues them to death or something. Oh, so scary. (yawn)
And tomorrow, I will watch Saturday the 14th! ON saturday the 14th! I know, I'm living the crazy life! I loved saturday the 14th when I was a kid, but I caught it again years later and it just wasn't as good as I remembered it. Oh well. That one has nothing to do with jason voorhees, which is probably a good thing. Still, Saturday the 14th probably marks one of the first times the creature from the black lagoon became the Creature from the hot older sister's bathtub. Hey, if I was the creature from the black lagoon, and I hadn't had a movie gig since the 50's, I'd settle for a bathtub, too.
Well that's all for tonight! I feel like I been rode hard and put away wet, to quote someone else who hasn't had a movie gig since the 50's.
No, not Halloween already. Friday the 13th! That's right, it's time for a Jason Voorhees marathon! Although, I'm not sure you could really call 2 movies a marathon, considering I only watched parts 2 and 7. Still, they were the beginning and end of my favorite string of Jason Voorhess movies. Let's recap the whole series, just so everyone is with me on this!
Friday the 13th, part 1 - A bunch of camp counselors are murdered by jason's mom, Mrs Voorhees. Jason's mom is all pissed because supposedly, Jason drowned while the counselors were off having sex and smoking dope, setting the stage for the entire series. Pretty much every victim in every Fri 13 movie from here on out gets killed while either having sex, smoking dope, or doing something they shouldn't be doing. I've never really thought about it until now but, Jason actually died before his own series of movies ever started, supposedly drowning as a young boy before this movie even began. Jason's mom, however, dies at the end of this movie, getting her head chopped clean off. jason makes a pseudo-appearance at the end, supposedly scaring the bejeesus out of a young girl in a canoe. But was he really there? Or did she just imagine it? because supposedly he's been dead since before the movie started!
Part 2 - Now here's where things get really confusing. This movie opens with an adult-ish jason stalking and killing the girl who cut off Mrs Voorhees' head in the first movie. But according to the movie itself, the girl disappeared a few weeks after the events of the first movie, and was never heard from again, and supposedly, this movie opens 5 years after the events of the first movie. This raises several questions. One, if jason died as a boy, why is he growing up? Two, if it's only been five years, and jason was a boy, wouldn't he only be in his teens now? Three, if his drowning never actually happened, why was his mom all pissed off in the first movie? Well, aside from all the confusion, this movie was pretty decent. Counselors get together to refresh their counseling skills at crystal lake, and a hooded Jason goes around killing them. Interestingly enough, a huge bunch of the counselors head into town and basically spend the night drinking, while completely avoiding the mass killings at the cabins by the lake. This goes against the normal routine, as everyone who was out all night partying in town actually lived, and everyone who turned in early got slaughtered.
Part 3 - This movie marked the first time jason put on his signature hockey mask. I guess the burlap hood was either getting too restricting visually, or it was hockey season. I haven't seen this movie in ages, so all i can recall about it was that it was in 3D, with lots of eyes popping out of the screen and so on. i once carved a pumpkin for halloween with the jason hockey mask on the front, just punching little holes into it with an ice pick and then carving out the eyes. it was a big hit with all the trick or treaters! But that has absolutely nothing to do with the movie.
Part 4 - jason runs into his arch-nemesis, Tommy. While going about killing the drunken revelers as he usually does, jason meets a young boy named Tommy (played by corey feldman) somebody or other, who chops jason into bits with his own machete. This marks the second time jason dies, or perhaps the first time he actually dies, or maybe the 4th or 5th time he's died, I'm not even sure. After this point, he stops growing, so I guess he never really drowned before the first movie, eh?
Part 5 - jason was not actually in this movie. Jason, apparently dead, spends the entire movie taking a dirt nap while an ambulance driver dons his hockey mask and overalls and goes around killing a bunch of mentally disturbed teenagers, blaming the whole thing on the jason legend. Tommy plays the lead role here, apparently taking martial arts to defend himself against any future jason occurrences, or maybe he's just messed up in the head, but he seems fairly badass despite being a mental patient. Eventually the copycat killer is found out, unmasked, and killed. He probably would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for those meddling kids!
Part 6 - An adult Tommy, trying to exorcise the demons from his brain, digs up jason's body in an attempt to finally destroy the body with fire and thus end his nightmares. unfortunately, he digs him up during a lightning storm, and jason's body gets struck by lightning, which actually brings him back to life as a zombie, which i saw coming pretty much from the first 12 seconds into the movie. Zombie-jason seems much stronger than the formerly living version, easily putting his fists through people's brains and ripping their arms off and beating them to death with them. Much more badass than previous incarnations, zombie-jason can no longer be killed, only trapped in crystal lake, which tommy manages to do, dying in the process. Also, tommy somehow manages to forget his martial arts training from part 5, his angry rage from part 4, and is a total pussy for the entire length of this movie. Frankly, I think a badass tommy/zombie jason fight would have been awesome, but it never happens.
part 7 - jason gets brought back from his Limbo-zombie state by a telekinetic chick whose father died in the lake. There's an epic battle between zombie-jason and psycho-kinetic girl, and eventually she revives her dead father from the lake, who takes zombie-jason back down into it's murky depths. this marks the last time crystal lake is featured in the films. no doubt the area is cordoned off, mined, and no one ever goes there again for fear of being bitten by zombie-jason and starting the zombie apocalypse.
Part 8 - jason joins a boatload of rich teens headed to new york city. he follows them around the big apple for awhile, killing them off, until he drowns in radioactive sewer water, or something to that effect, marking the second time he's supposedly drowned. Or maybe the third. You'd think they'd get the idea that it wasn't going to kill him this time either, but no. No, they didn't.
Part 9 - Jason is caught in a sting operation by the FBI, who apparently shoot him so full of lead that he dies of lead poisoning. HAH GET IT? LEAD POISONING??? HAHAHAHAHAA!!!! Erm. yea. anyway, apparently he reawakens at the morgue, takes possession of other people's bodies, and goes around killing again. Not really sure about the whole possession thing for jason. That's more a michael myers schtick, but whatever. When you're on the FBI's most wanted list, you have to be either really really good, or really really bad, and supposedly this movie is really bad.
Part 10 - Jason gets captured and cryo-frozen, since no one can figure out how to kill him permanently. However, he gets thawed out several hundred years in the future, after the earth has been turned into a toxic wasteland, and gets taken into space. After a little killing, he gets infected with nanites, who turn him into cyber-zombie-jason, who's apparently even more badass than zombie jason, who destroys an entire space ship and lands on a whole new planet. With lots of lakes! Wow and I thought part 9 sucked.
Yea, I don't know where you can go with the series after you've destroyed the earth, taken him into space, and turned jason into an undead cyborg. I pretty much think that was it for jason Voorhees except for a short appearance fighting freddy krueger, who's been vainly trying to recapture his popularity since Nightmare on elm street 1. But don't get me started on freddy. It's really hard for me to be scared of a skinny guy in a green and orange sweater with a slightly modified michael jackson glove. I think he even moonwalks someone to death in one of their dreams, or tongues them to death or something. Oh, so scary. (yawn)
And tomorrow, I will watch Saturday the 14th! ON saturday the 14th! I know, I'm living the crazy life! I loved saturday the 14th when I was a kid, but I caught it again years later and it just wasn't as good as I remembered it. Oh well. That one has nothing to do with jason voorhees, which is probably a good thing. Still, Saturday the 14th probably marks one of the first times the creature from the black lagoon became the Creature from the hot older sister's bathtub. Hey, if I was the creature from the black lagoon, and I hadn't had a movie gig since the 50's, I'd settle for a bathtub, too.
Well that's all for tonight! I feel like I been rode hard and put away wet, to quote someone else who hasn't had a movie gig since the 50's.
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Hatchet 2
By some strange stroke of luck, I happened to watch hatchet on netflix, and reviewed it in my last post, which was like a couple weeks back. So now I catch Hatchet 2 on HBO! :-o
I'm pretty sure this was written by the same guy. Not only does the story pick up exactly where the first one ends, but they re-filmed the end of the last movie with Danielle Harris instead of the actress that was in the first movie! :-D
I'm watching it now, but there doesn't seem to be as much humor in this one. Basically, the plot goes, Marybeth (the only survivor of the first movie) manages to make it out of the swamp, but finds out her daddy was one of the three kids who started the fire that led to the death of Victor Crowley in the first place. So Reverend Zombie (tony todd, from Candyman fame), who knows the truth, organizes a hunting expedition at Marybeth's request to go back into the swamp, kill Crowley and bring back her family's remains. Reverend Zombie, knowing the identities of the three kids who started the fire that killed Victor, lures them back into the swamp along with the expedition so Crowley can finish them off and end his ghostly suffering by taking revenge on the kids who killed him.
At least, that's his theory. So far, Old Vic is going around killing people like he did in the first movie, and it's more of a horror/ghost story/slasher flick than a comedy at this point. Still funny at points, though. Like why the HELL do people just start having sex in these movies in the middle of a dark swamp at night while a killer is running around? lol Look, I know that whole "dangerous situations lead to excitement" thing is going on here, but in the dark in the middle of the swamp? Just forget about the whole hunting a killer ghost thing, just lay down the guns and go for some crazy anal sex in the swamp! YEEEHHAAWWWWWWW!!! Man, i know things get hazy when the hormones are pumping through your veins, but come on... Doesn't the survival instinct take over at all? :-/
And why the HELL does no one listen to Marybeth? She survives the first night, and everyone on the hunting trip just ignores the shit out of her! You'd think the whole "fought victor crowley once already and lived" would lend her some weight, but noooooo. Everyone in these silly slasher movies is stupid, that's why they all die.
I will say one thing for Danielle Harris. She's sexy when she's going psycho-killer on a guy. So yea, not a bad movie. Kind of short, but hopefully hatchet 3 will be better! :-D
I'm pretty sure this was written by the same guy. Not only does the story pick up exactly where the first one ends, but they re-filmed the end of the last movie with Danielle Harris instead of the actress that was in the first movie! :-D
I'm watching it now, but there doesn't seem to be as much humor in this one. Basically, the plot goes, Marybeth (the only survivor of the first movie) manages to make it out of the swamp, but finds out her daddy was one of the three kids who started the fire that led to the death of Victor Crowley in the first place. So Reverend Zombie (tony todd, from Candyman fame), who knows the truth, organizes a hunting expedition at Marybeth's request to go back into the swamp, kill Crowley and bring back her family's remains. Reverend Zombie, knowing the identities of the three kids who started the fire that killed Victor, lures them back into the swamp along with the expedition so Crowley can finish them off and end his ghostly suffering by taking revenge on the kids who killed him.
At least, that's his theory. So far, Old Vic is going around killing people like he did in the first movie, and it's more of a horror/ghost story/slasher flick than a comedy at this point. Still funny at points, though. Like why the HELL do people just start having sex in these movies in the middle of a dark swamp at night while a killer is running around? lol Look, I know that whole "dangerous situations lead to excitement" thing is going on here, but in the dark in the middle of the swamp? Just forget about the whole hunting a killer ghost thing, just lay down the guns and go for some crazy anal sex in the swamp! YEEEHHAAWWWWWWW!!! Man, i know things get hazy when the hormones are pumping through your veins, but come on... Doesn't the survival instinct take over at all? :-/
And why the HELL does no one listen to Marybeth? She survives the first night, and everyone on the hunting trip just ignores the shit out of her! You'd think the whole "fought victor crowley once already and lived" would lend her some weight, but noooooo. Everyone in these silly slasher movies is stupid, that's why they all die.
I will say one thing for Danielle Harris. She's sexy when she's going psycho-killer on a guy. So yea, not a bad movie. Kind of short, but hopefully hatchet 3 will be better! :-D
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Hatchet - Review
Spring Approacheth! Actually the bugs bunny quote is, the king approacheth, but I always use it for spring because, well, there's not too many kings around here. I mean, there's Stephen, but he's like, 4 states away or something (i'd have to check a map to be sure). SO yea, the weather here has been like 20 degrees above normal for like, months now, and this month, we've gone and hit 30+ degrees above normal for this time of year. What does that mean to you?
It means I am sweating my balls off as i write this.
Yes, that's right. I am a large man and we sweat a lot on the most average of days. Put the temp at around 85 (yes it is 85 degrees in my house right now, and that's in the cooler rooms), and buckets of sweat pour from my man-flesh at incredible rates. In my steam bath of a bedroom, it's probably around 95. I hope you guys appreciate the sacrifices I make to bring you entertainment. But enough about my sweaty arse.
So I figure... what to do on a dark and steamy night when it's around 100 degrees in my thong underwear and it's deathly quiet in my house? If you said "HORROR MOVIE!" you are the big winner. Give yourself a pat on the ass, no, go right ahead, I'll wait. What, you can't feel that? You've been sitting on your ass too long. Yea, I know, me too.
So I fired up old Netflix. Yes, I have like 400+ movies in my instant queue now. It's weird how it works. I go into netflix to watch something in my instant queue, and end up adding like 5 movies. So for every movie or two I watch, I add 5 or 10 new ones. I'll never catch up. On the plus side, 300 of those 400+ movies are horror. The rest are lesbian porn (and yes, the chick in england is hot, brando. Although I've never seen her and I don't know who she might be, I always picture Saffron Burrows when I think of her, the hot english-accented chick from Deep Blue Sea). So I think "Tonight's a good night for a slasher flick!" and i remember Danielle Harris, the lead actress from Halloween 4 and 5, and one of the supporting actresses from Halloween (the remake). I know she'd enjoy a good horror movie! So i tried to pick something she starred in (since I just saw her in The Last Boy Scout a couple nights ago playing Bruce Willis' daughter), and came upon Hatchet.
Now, a little background on the movie. Danielle Harris, who actually stars in hatchet 2, and the now-filming hatchet 3, is NOT actually in Hatchet. Yea, I thought she was, too. But no, apparently they recast the character of "marybeth" in the second movie as the heroine, and needed Danielle Harris to fill in. I did not realize this until way into the movie, but oh well. By that time, the movie had me laughing hysterically. I mean seriously, for a goddamn B horror movie, that is some funny shit right there, so I had to finish watching it.
Basically, there's some guys in New Orleans for Mardi Gras, and a couple of them decide to go on a haunted boat ride in the bayou. So they end up getting stranded in the swamp and hunted down by Victor Crowley, who is the local boogeyman. Old Vic used to be just a horribly deformed little boy (much like jason voorhees from the friday the 13th movies), but his dad, who had been taking care of Vic, accidentally took a hatchet to Vic's forehead while trying to free him from a burning house. VIc's dad (played by Kane Hodder, the guy who actually PLAYED jason voorhees in a couple of the friday the 13th films) just sort of died of a broken heart after that, but years later, Vic came back from the dead to go around killing people in the swamp.
Now a couple things about this movie. One, it's rather well done. Oh I'm not talking big budget. No, I mean just plain well done. There's some killing at the beginning to let you know what kind of movie it is, and then we cut straight to the boobies. And there are boobies. It's mardi gras in new orleans! And one of the chicks looked like someone I knew back in college. Her name was Vic too, come to think of it. She used to wear these transparent white pants so you could see her thong underneath. But this was back in the late 80's, when wearing transparent white pants was in style... Riiiight. Then right after the boobage, we come to the comedy part. Freakin genius, the comedy in this movie. Whoever wrote it needs to write for david letterman or something, cuz the boy's got talent. I don't often laugh out loud at movies, especially horror movies, but this one had me cackling like a rabid hyena all through the transition between the boobs and the actual horror. The interaction between the characters is just so goddamn spot on, I can't even tell you how hilarious that shit is. I will start giggling again just thinking about it. And then BAM we're into the horror part and there's still some humor popping up, but at this point it's pretty much back to your basic horror slasher type flick. But still funny! And gory and almost scary for a B-horror flick. So, all in all, pretty damn good.
I don't have a star-rating system, but I basically rate by whether I'd watch it again or not, and oh yea. I think definitely rewatchable here. Just for the boobage and the comedy parts alone. AND, you get to see what Kane Hodder really looks like under all that makeup. Yes, not only did he play the part of Victor (the growed up version), but he played Jason Voorhees and some other big ugly slasher villains, too! None of which come to mind right now. Oh, er, the Swamp thing, he played that too, i think. Anyway, he looks just like a normal guy playing Vic's dad! I was surprised! And no, I mean, I wasn't expecting Kane Hodder to be a big ugly misshapen mass of humanity under all that makeup, but... uh... come to think of it, yes. Yes, I was. But no! I was wrong, he's actually a big chubby hairy guy, pretty average looking, sort of reminds me of my brother in law in a backwoodsy way. Only, with more hair. Or like me. Only, less sweaty.
So yea, great movie, I hear the second one was even better, and they are making a third one! A whole goddamn series of movies! I love series! And boobs. I love boobs. And cookies.
Oh, and a quick note, I am not getting Diablo 3. Blizzard decided to not only charge $60 for the game itself, but they are charging for access to the in-game auction of items and stuff. Yea, from what I heard, they charge you a small amount to post an item for auction (charging real-world money, if only a small amount), AND they also skim a percentage of the sale price. SO blizzard gets paid for the game, you pay them every time you want to auction an in-game item (whether it sells or not), and IF it sells, they also get a percentage of the profit YOU made selling your IN-GAME item. So since every tom, dick and asshole just HAS to have the next Diablo 3 (because they buy blizzard's hype, not the game), they are going to make a fucking KILLING off this game. They will literally have so much money coming in that bill gates' eyes will pop out of his goddamn head. And it's going to do so well that EVERY company will then do the same goddamn thing, and in 10 years I'm going to have to pay out of my real-life pocket to buy myself an in-game sword and commit in-game seppuku just to protest this nonsense. And I can't afford that. So I'm stopping the madness NOW by not purchasing Diablo 3. Sure, I won't stop anyone else from buying into it. Because Blizzard's ads are MUCH better at convincing you that you NEED Diablo 3 than I am at convincing you that yet ANOTHER iteration of the "walk through yet another darkly-lit area fighting off millions of monsters in scripted wave after wave" is not going to be GREAT FUN! I mean, what, the first two games didn't clue you in? Christ, I played the demo for the FIRST game and got bored by it. I only bought the second because my buddy Rich wanted to see me play a half-naked amazon chick and run around in front of him with my spear so my amazon-kilt would fly up and he might see my 2d-pixellated ass. Apparently because doing it in real life just wasn't as much fun. So, uh, I sure as hell am NOT getting the third one, with all the strings attached. It's like having sex with a hooker you KNOW has herpes, crabs and syphilis, only to find out she also gave you aids and you have to spend the rest of your short sorry life paying for meds just to live out a miserable, lonely existence. But nobody realizes it! No, Blizzard just flops their big advertising boobies in the face of the public at large and everyone goes all googly-eyed and that's it! Then everyone's got STDs and your daughter's knocked up. I've seen it a hundred times. So go on! Buy Diablo 3. Enjoy the itching, scratching, pustulating sores and deadly fungal infections until you bleed out in a hospital bed, alone and untouchable. Just don't say I didn't warn you.
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
And please, Scrolls of Wisdom is such a long sobriquet, even abbreviated to SoW. Call me scribe. But maybe "sow" is technically more descriptive, with the man-boobs and all. Hmmm. Put me out in the sun for too long and I do smell like bacon. :-/
It means I am sweating my balls off as i write this.
Yes, that's right. I am a large man and we sweat a lot on the most average of days. Put the temp at around 85 (yes it is 85 degrees in my house right now, and that's in the cooler rooms), and buckets of sweat pour from my man-flesh at incredible rates. In my steam bath of a bedroom, it's probably around 95. I hope you guys appreciate the sacrifices I make to bring you entertainment. But enough about my sweaty arse.
So I figure... what to do on a dark and steamy night when it's around 100 degrees in my thong underwear and it's deathly quiet in my house? If you said "HORROR MOVIE!" you are the big winner. Give yourself a pat on the ass, no, go right ahead, I'll wait. What, you can't feel that? You've been sitting on your ass too long. Yea, I know, me too.
So I fired up old Netflix. Yes, I have like 400+ movies in my instant queue now. It's weird how it works. I go into netflix to watch something in my instant queue, and end up adding like 5 movies. So for every movie or two I watch, I add 5 or 10 new ones. I'll never catch up. On the plus side, 300 of those 400+ movies are horror. The rest are lesbian porn (and yes, the chick in england is hot, brando. Although I've never seen her and I don't know who she might be, I always picture Saffron Burrows when I think of her, the hot english-accented chick from Deep Blue Sea). So I think "Tonight's a good night for a slasher flick!" and i remember Danielle Harris, the lead actress from Halloween 4 and 5, and one of the supporting actresses from Halloween (the remake). I know she'd enjoy a good horror movie! So i tried to pick something she starred in (since I just saw her in The Last Boy Scout a couple nights ago playing Bruce Willis' daughter), and came upon Hatchet.
Now, a little background on the movie. Danielle Harris, who actually stars in hatchet 2, and the now-filming hatchet 3, is NOT actually in Hatchet. Yea, I thought she was, too. But no, apparently they recast the character of "marybeth" in the second movie as the heroine, and needed Danielle Harris to fill in. I did not realize this until way into the movie, but oh well. By that time, the movie had me laughing hysterically. I mean seriously, for a goddamn B horror movie, that is some funny shit right there, so I had to finish watching it.
Basically, there's some guys in New Orleans for Mardi Gras, and a couple of them decide to go on a haunted boat ride in the bayou. So they end up getting stranded in the swamp and hunted down by Victor Crowley, who is the local boogeyman. Old Vic used to be just a horribly deformed little boy (much like jason voorhees from the friday the 13th movies), but his dad, who had been taking care of Vic, accidentally took a hatchet to Vic's forehead while trying to free him from a burning house. VIc's dad (played by Kane Hodder, the guy who actually PLAYED jason voorhees in a couple of the friday the 13th films) just sort of died of a broken heart after that, but years later, Vic came back from the dead to go around killing people in the swamp.
Now a couple things about this movie. One, it's rather well done. Oh I'm not talking big budget. No, I mean just plain well done. There's some killing at the beginning to let you know what kind of movie it is, and then we cut straight to the boobies. And there are boobies. It's mardi gras in new orleans! And one of the chicks looked like someone I knew back in college. Her name was Vic too, come to think of it. She used to wear these transparent white pants so you could see her thong underneath. But this was back in the late 80's, when wearing transparent white pants was in style... Riiiight. Then right after the boobage, we come to the comedy part. Freakin genius, the comedy in this movie. Whoever wrote it needs to write for david letterman or something, cuz the boy's got talent. I don't often laugh out loud at movies, especially horror movies, but this one had me cackling like a rabid hyena all through the transition between the boobs and the actual horror. The interaction between the characters is just so goddamn spot on, I can't even tell you how hilarious that shit is. I will start giggling again just thinking about it. And then BAM we're into the horror part and there's still some humor popping up, but at this point it's pretty much back to your basic horror slasher type flick. But still funny! And gory and almost scary for a B-horror flick. So, all in all, pretty damn good.
I don't have a star-rating system, but I basically rate by whether I'd watch it again or not, and oh yea. I think definitely rewatchable here. Just for the boobage and the comedy parts alone. AND, you get to see what Kane Hodder really looks like under all that makeup. Yes, not only did he play the part of Victor (the growed up version), but he played Jason Voorhees and some other big ugly slasher villains, too! None of which come to mind right now. Oh, er, the Swamp thing, he played that too, i think. Anyway, he looks just like a normal guy playing Vic's dad! I was surprised! And no, I mean, I wasn't expecting Kane Hodder to be a big ugly misshapen mass of humanity under all that makeup, but... uh... come to think of it, yes. Yes, I was. But no! I was wrong, he's actually a big chubby hairy guy, pretty average looking, sort of reminds me of my brother in law in a backwoodsy way. Only, with more hair. Or like me. Only, less sweaty.
So yea, great movie, I hear the second one was even better, and they are making a third one! A whole goddamn series of movies! I love series! And boobs. I love boobs. And cookies.
Oh, and a quick note, I am not getting Diablo 3. Blizzard decided to not only charge $60 for the game itself, but they are charging for access to the in-game auction of items and stuff. Yea, from what I heard, they charge you a small amount to post an item for auction (charging real-world money, if only a small amount), AND they also skim a percentage of the sale price. SO blizzard gets paid for the game, you pay them every time you want to auction an in-game item (whether it sells or not), and IF it sells, they also get a percentage of the profit YOU made selling your IN-GAME item. So since every tom, dick and asshole just HAS to have the next Diablo 3 (because they buy blizzard's hype, not the game), they are going to make a fucking KILLING off this game. They will literally have so much money coming in that bill gates' eyes will pop out of his goddamn head. And it's going to do so well that EVERY company will then do the same goddamn thing, and in 10 years I'm going to have to pay out of my real-life pocket to buy myself an in-game sword and commit in-game seppuku just to protest this nonsense. And I can't afford that. So I'm stopping the madness NOW by not purchasing Diablo 3. Sure, I won't stop anyone else from buying into it. Because Blizzard's ads are MUCH better at convincing you that you NEED Diablo 3 than I am at convincing you that yet ANOTHER iteration of the "walk through yet another darkly-lit area fighting off millions of monsters in scripted wave after wave" is not going to be GREAT FUN! I mean, what, the first two games didn't clue you in? Christ, I played the demo for the FIRST game and got bored by it. I only bought the second because my buddy Rich wanted to see me play a half-naked amazon chick and run around in front of him with my spear so my amazon-kilt would fly up and he might see my 2d-pixellated ass. Apparently because doing it in real life just wasn't as much fun. So, uh, I sure as hell am NOT getting the third one, with all the strings attached. It's like having sex with a hooker you KNOW has herpes, crabs and syphilis, only to find out she also gave you aids and you have to spend the rest of your short sorry life paying for meds just to live out a miserable, lonely existence. But nobody realizes it! No, Blizzard just flops their big advertising boobies in the face of the public at large and everyone goes all googly-eyed and that's it! Then everyone's got STDs and your daughter's knocked up. I've seen it a hundred times. So go on! Buy Diablo 3. Enjoy the itching, scratching, pustulating sores and deadly fungal infections until you bleed out in a hospital bed, alone and untouchable. Just don't say I didn't warn you.
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
And please, Scrolls of Wisdom is such a long sobriquet, even abbreviated to SoW. Call me scribe. But maybe "sow" is technically more descriptive, with the man-boobs and all. Hmmm. Put me out in the sun for too long and I do smell like bacon. :-/
Sunday, March 18, 2012
What I Learned from Skyrim
So apparently I have lurking fans! I would say I was shocked, but come on... When you're this incredibly hot, you get used to that sort of thing. I can't even tell you how many times a week i get stalked, because let's face it, when you're this chubby, you can't see past the moobs.
As for Xbox vs Playstation, let me clear that up right now. I'm a PC purist! I had a Sega Genesis up until I got my first computer, and then I gave away my Sega and never looked back. This was back in the early 90's. The mouse on a PC gives you pinpoint accuracy, and the keyboard gives you a huge variety of options for buttons, macros, strategies, and whatever else you need. Sure, you could plug a keyboard and mouse into a console, but you can't browse the web, install new software, upgrade your components, and generally futz around any way you want to, like you can with your own PC. Plus, anyone can learn how to troubleshoot and repair their own PC. I work in tech support, so if I break my own shit, I can always repair it, or replace the parts myself. Once your Xbox or Playstation goes, you're screwed. You need to buy a whole new unit. I've heard some of the games for consoles are better than PC games. I say that's a bunch of BS. When you have to design a game to handle only a few buttons and a limited amount of control from a directional button, you really have to dumb down the amount of strategies you have to work with. And that's how they have to design the games, because despite being ABLE to plug a keyboard and mouse into a console, most aren't shipped standard with a keyboard and mouse, only controllers, which are limited in scope. Not even mentioning the fact that the age range for consoles is younger than PCs, so you're almost guaranteed a simpler style of play on ANY console, as compared to a PC, which not only opens the field for a variety of strategies because of the range of the standard input devices, BUT it also has to work on a variety of systems. Sure, this may hurt the graphics some in the long run, but honestly, fun and gameplay is so much more important than graphics, and I've never noticed a big difference between console game graphics and PC graphics anyway. PC gaming for teh win!
But, my opinion may be biased... as I said, I am a PC purist. :-) To me, having a console is like only being able to use your cell phone to make phone calls, not surf the web, play games, or anything else. It would severely limit the usefulness of the device, as well as the fun.
As for John Carter... I haven't seen it yet. I don't go to the movies much. From the previews, it looks like a Superman scenario. Instead of an alien coming to earth and having super strength, etc because of his denser body, we've just got a human being go to a slightly lighter planet and having greater strength because of earth's relative density and gravity. Nothing new there. Same concept, just reversed.
Now, on to skyrim! So, there's this one scenario in skyrim. There's a woman from hammerfell working in a tavern, and during the course of your early adventures, you find out there's some mercenaries from hammerfell who are searching for her. So when you mention this to her, she asks you for help. Now, here's where things get tough. You go find the guys who are after her, and they tell you that she's lying, and they are only there to peacefully return her to Hammerfell for trial for betraying hammerfell to the aldmeri dominion (the bad guys). So you're basically forced to make a decision on which one to trust, based on very little conflicting information.
Now, like any good gamer nowadays, I can't make a decision on my own. So I checked the forums. Apparently, most people sided with the mercenaries, led by some guy named Kematu. Mostly because, he offered them a set some of money up front, and he had a good story as to why they were searching for her. The woman, Sadira, I think her name was? Her name escapes me. Anyway, I sided with the girl. I didn't expect anything out of it, but I had plenty of good reasons, and I did try it both ways to see if one was better than the other. So here's my list of reasons.
(1) She was one woman against a band of highly trained mercenaries. If nothing else, the XP for killing a bunch of mercenaries has to be better than turning a woman in. Not to mention the satisfaction of slaughtering a bunch of heavily armed men is MUCH more emotionally satisfying. Then, there's that nagging guilt for agreeing to help sadira and then betraying her. What can I say, I have morals.
(2) The guy in jail. Supposedly a member of the mercenaries gets caught by the whiterun guards, and the rest of his buddies abandon him because he got jailed. This doesn't sound like the actions of very nice people. Also, if you look at things from a purely mathematical point of view, and assign the letter A to sadira's story, and B to the jailed mercenary, and then C to Kematu's story, you basically have an equation where A and C cancel each other out, since they are opposing tales. The only thing you're left with is B, which is the jailed mercenary's tale. The way he told it, you'd be slaughtered if you went after kematu, and that doesn't sound like the actions of a friendly group of mercenaries just here to collect a woman peacefully for trial. That sounds like assassins. Which tends to support sadira's side of the story.
(3) The "Big Picture." Let's face it, Kematu's story just doesn't add up. he says that Sadira went and betrayed an entire city to the aldmeri dominion, and the mercenaries were hired by the hammerfell resistance to track down sadira and bring her back for justice. Now, you honestly think a band of hunted fugitives, rebels in their own land, are going to hire the "best of the best" mercenaries to go to another country and capture some woman who betrayed them? Let's face it, if you have an entire dominion trying to take over your country, there's better uses for your gold than to hunt down a traitor. That sounds more like the actions of the aldmeri dominion, since tracking down an escaped rebel for public trial back in her homeland would be a stern warning to anyone in hammerfell looking to aid the rebels against the aldmeri. What good does it do rebels to track down a traitor? Save it til after the rebellion, when your lands are back in your own control. THEN hunt down those who betrayed your people. In fact, Sadira would have little reason to leave the country at all unless she did, in fact, speak out against the aldmeri, since they would now be grateful to her for supporting them, if kematu was telling the truth. Why leave a country where the aldmeri are mostly in control, for the province of skyrim, where the aldmeri basically have no presence whatsoever? She'd be throwing herself out of a safe haven into an entire country of people who hate the dominion, and that's just idiotic if you buy what kematu is shoveling. Also, he tells you Sadira's been using her sob story to get people like you to help her all along. If no one knows who she really is, then why are they helping her against trained soldiers?
(4) The hammerfell mercs are hiding in a cave with a bunch of bandits. There's basically only one reason for this. They aren't welcome in Whiterun/skyrim. Supposedly there was some vague "incident" in whiterun that led to them being shoved out of the city, but since there's no reference to what exactly the incident was, all you can assume is that the hammerfell mercs are actually agents of the aldmeri, and as such, would be hated by anyone in skyrim. Which is why they aren't welcome in town.
(5) Curved. Swords. As the guards in whiterun will tell you, the Hammerfell mercs have CURVED SWORDS. What's cooler than that? If you turn in Sadira, you don't get a curved sword. You have to kill the mercenaries to get that! Sure, I never used them myself (more a dagger in the back or spell in the face kind of guy), but they did look pretty awesome.
So let's sum up. Basically, I sided with sadira because, in my opinion, she was just more believable. Sure, she didn't have all the answers. She didn't really know why the mercs were after her, and she didn't know where they were. But Kematu's answers had the practiced ease of someone who was used to lying to people in such a way that they'd believe him, and despite everything he was saying seemed to make sense, it didn't if you gave it much thought. He reminded me of a politician, and as we all know, those guys make a living by lying their asses off, so they know how to make it sound like they are telling the truth, especially when they aren't. Unlike a person who actually IS telling the truth, because such a person isn't going to expect the lies to be more believable. They just tell the truth and assume the person listening is going to be able to recognize the difference. And most of the time, they can't. Which is probably why most people sided with kematu, and betrayed a helpless woman to a bunch of ruthless cutthroats... because kematu was a better liar. So sad. How do such people sleep at night, turning a poor serving wench over to a bunch of armed men for a few hundred gold?
So if anyone ever tells you you don't learn anything from video games, tell them they are LYING SONS OF BITCHES! You learned that liars are better at selling the lies they tell than the truthful people are at getting you to believe the truth! Who'd have thought there was such deep insight in an RPG, of all things? :-o
As for Xbox vs Playstation, let me clear that up right now. I'm a PC purist! I had a Sega Genesis up until I got my first computer, and then I gave away my Sega and never looked back. This was back in the early 90's. The mouse on a PC gives you pinpoint accuracy, and the keyboard gives you a huge variety of options for buttons, macros, strategies, and whatever else you need. Sure, you could plug a keyboard and mouse into a console, but you can't browse the web, install new software, upgrade your components, and generally futz around any way you want to, like you can with your own PC. Plus, anyone can learn how to troubleshoot and repair their own PC. I work in tech support, so if I break my own shit, I can always repair it, or replace the parts myself. Once your Xbox or Playstation goes, you're screwed. You need to buy a whole new unit. I've heard some of the games for consoles are better than PC games. I say that's a bunch of BS. When you have to design a game to handle only a few buttons and a limited amount of control from a directional button, you really have to dumb down the amount of strategies you have to work with. And that's how they have to design the games, because despite being ABLE to plug a keyboard and mouse into a console, most aren't shipped standard with a keyboard and mouse, only controllers, which are limited in scope. Not even mentioning the fact that the age range for consoles is younger than PCs, so you're almost guaranteed a simpler style of play on ANY console, as compared to a PC, which not only opens the field for a variety of strategies because of the range of the standard input devices, BUT it also has to work on a variety of systems. Sure, this may hurt the graphics some in the long run, but honestly, fun and gameplay is so much more important than graphics, and I've never noticed a big difference between console game graphics and PC graphics anyway. PC gaming for teh win!
But, my opinion may be biased... as I said, I am a PC purist. :-) To me, having a console is like only being able to use your cell phone to make phone calls, not surf the web, play games, or anything else. It would severely limit the usefulness of the device, as well as the fun.
As for John Carter... I haven't seen it yet. I don't go to the movies much. From the previews, it looks like a Superman scenario. Instead of an alien coming to earth and having super strength, etc because of his denser body, we've just got a human being go to a slightly lighter planet and having greater strength because of earth's relative density and gravity. Nothing new there. Same concept, just reversed.
Now, on to skyrim! So, there's this one scenario in skyrim. There's a woman from hammerfell working in a tavern, and during the course of your early adventures, you find out there's some mercenaries from hammerfell who are searching for her. So when you mention this to her, she asks you for help. Now, here's where things get tough. You go find the guys who are after her, and they tell you that she's lying, and they are only there to peacefully return her to Hammerfell for trial for betraying hammerfell to the aldmeri dominion (the bad guys). So you're basically forced to make a decision on which one to trust, based on very little conflicting information.
Now, like any good gamer nowadays, I can't make a decision on my own. So I checked the forums. Apparently, most people sided with the mercenaries, led by some guy named Kematu. Mostly because, he offered them a set some of money up front, and he had a good story as to why they were searching for her. The woman, Sadira, I think her name was? Her name escapes me. Anyway, I sided with the girl. I didn't expect anything out of it, but I had plenty of good reasons, and I did try it both ways to see if one was better than the other. So here's my list of reasons.
(1) She was one woman against a band of highly trained mercenaries. If nothing else, the XP for killing a bunch of mercenaries has to be better than turning a woman in. Not to mention the satisfaction of slaughtering a bunch of heavily armed men is MUCH more emotionally satisfying. Then, there's that nagging guilt for agreeing to help sadira and then betraying her. What can I say, I have morals.
(2) The guy in jail. Supposedly a member of the mercenaries gets caught by the whiterun guards, and the rest of his buddies abandon him because he got jailed. This doesn't sound like the actions of very nice people. Also, if you look at things from a purely mathematical point of view, and assign the letter A to sadira's story, and B to the jailed mercenary, and then C to Kematu's story, you basically have an equation where A and C cancel each other out, since they are opposing tales. The only thing you're left with is B, which is the jailed mercenary's tale. The way he told it, you'd be slaughtered if you went after kematu, and that doesn't sound like the actions of a friendly group of mercenaries just here to collect a woman peacefully for trial. That sounds like assassins. Which tends to support sadira's side of the story.
(3) The "Big Picture." Let's face it, Kematu's story just doesn't add up. he says that Sadira went and betrayed an entire city to the aldmeri dominion, and the mercenaries were hired by the hammerfell resistance to track down sadira and bring her back for justice. Now, you honestly think a band of hunted fugitives, rebels in their own land, are going to hire the "best of the best" mercenaries to go to another country and capture some woman who betrayed them? Let's face it, if you have an entire dominion trying to take over your country, there's better uses for your gold than to hunt down a traitor. That sounds more like the actions of the aldmeri dominion, since tracking down an escaped rebel for public trial back in her homeland would be a stern warning to anyone in hammerfell looking to aid the rebels against the aldmeri. What good does it do rebels to track down a traitor? Save it til after the rebellion, when your lands are back in your own control. THEN hunt down those who betrayed your people. In fact, Sadira would have little reason to leave the country at all unless she did, in fact, speak out against the aldmeri, since they would now be grateful to her for supporting them, if kematu was telling the truth. Why leave a country where the aldmeri are mostly in control, for the province of skyrim, where the aldmeri basically have no presence whatsoever? She'd be throwing herself out of a safe haven into an entire country of people who hate the dominion, and that's just idiotic if you buy what kematu is shoveling. Also, he tells you Sadira's been using her sob story to get people like you to help her all along. If no one knows who she really is, then why are they helping her against trained soldiers?
(4) The hammerfell mercs are hiding in a cave with a bunch of bandits. There's basically only one reason for this. They aren't welcome in Whiterun/skyrim. Supposedly there was some vague "incident" in whiterun that led to them being shoved out of the city, but since there's no reference to what exactly the incident was, all you can assume is that the hammerfell mercs are actually agents of the aldmeri, and as such, would be hated by anyone in skyrim. Which is why they aren't welcome in town.
(5) Curved. Swords. As the guards in whiterun will tell you, the Hammerfell mercs have CURVED SWORDS. What's cooler than that? If you turn in Sadira, you don't get a curved sword. You have to kill the mercenaries to get that! Sure, I never used them myself (more a dagger in the back or spell in the face kind of guy), but they did look pretty awesome.
So let's sum up. Basically, I sided with sadira because, in my opinion, she was just more believable. Sure, she didn't have all the answers. She didn't really know why the mercs were after her, and she didn't know where they were. But Kematu's answers had the practiced ease of someone who was used to lying to people in such a way that they'd believe him, and despite everything he was saying seemed to make sense, it didn't if you gave it much thought. He reminded me of a politician, and as we all know, those guys make a living by lying their asses off, so they know how to make it sound like they are telling the truth, especially when they aren't. Unlike a person who actually IS telling the truth, because such a person isn't going to expect the lies to be more believable. They just tell the truth and assume the person listening is going to be able to recognize the difference. And most of the time, they can't. Which is probably why most people sided with kematu, and betrayed a helpless woman to a bunch of ruthless cutthroats... because kematu was a better liar. So sad. How do such people sleep at night, turning a poor serving wench over to a bunch of armed men for a few hundred gold?
So if anyone ever tells you you don't learn anything from video games, tell them they are LYING SONS OF BITCHES! You learned that liars are better at selling the lies they tell than the truthful people are at getting you to believe the truth! Who'd have thought there was such deep insight in an RPG, of all things? :-o
Thursday, February 23, 2012
lol Four years of colds
So I read back, and my blog is now three years old!
In internet time, that's like an eon or something! So I read my first post, which was posted on February 4th or something, 2009! Over three years ago! And what was my first post about?
Being sick.
God I love it when things stay consistent, don't you? Good to know after 3 years, nothing has changed!
(laughs his ass off and goes to play more computer games while recovering from his nasty cold)
Happy 3-year anniversary, enlightened readers! :-) Shout-outs to Brando, some chick from england, maybe a russian opera singer, rich who moved to aussie land, and the flying spaghetti monster alone knows who else reads this tripe! Hope you've been enjoying it so far! I'll keep posting until I lose all the feeling in my testicles! Well... because once the feeling goes in THOSE, there's not really much point to living, is there? ;-)
In internet time, that's like an eon or something! So I read my first post, which was posted on February 4th or something, 2009! Over three years ago! And what was my first post about?
Being sick.
God I love it when things stay consistent, don't you? Good to know after 3 years, nothing has changed!
(laughs his ass off and goes to play more computer games while recovering from his nasty cold)
Happy 3-year anniversary, enlightened readers! :-) Shout-outs to Brando, some chick from england, maybe a russian opera singer, rich who moved to aussie land, and the flying spaghetti monster alone knows who else reads this tripe! Hope you've been enjoying it so far! I'll keep posting until I lose all the feeling in my testicles! Well... because once the feeling goes in THOSE, there's not really much point to living, is there? ;-)
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