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It’s politics, bitches. Get over it.

This is going to be one of those posts in which I start talking about something serious, but then might possibly sort of drum down to video games. I’m not a serious person and I really don’t have adult, serious conversations. So while this may start out sounding witty, don’t hold your breath on it remaining that way.

As some of you may be aware, last night was the first and only VP debate. Now, first of all, I’m confused as to why that is. Maybe it’s something that’s only happening this election, I don’t know. I’ve never really kept up with the whole Presidential BS, and so this is the first time I’ve ever watched them. I guess I sort of got a bit interested in this running for the following reasons:

1. My roommate is living/breathing this running. It’s all she does: Read about politics. Which, you know, hey. That’s great. If you want to keep up with the times, more power to you. It’s nice having someone in the house that I know I can go to and question, if I have something I’m curious about, in regards to the political/economical state of the world right now.
2. This country, as we currently know it, is in a state of remarkable disrepair and I, personally, blame GWB for that in it’s entirety. From our economy to our current foreign relations, this guy has screwed us royally, and this will be his last year in office. The new President that’s elected will, hopefully, change the way shit works, and we can get this country back on it’s feet.
3. While I do it in the utter privacy of my own mind, I am a patriotic person. I understand in full the countless people that have died so that this country can have the freedoms that it does. While I am discontent with the current situation of this nation, I am proud to be American and I am eternally grateful to the men and women, of every race and color that came before me, that have sacrificed as much as they have, to see to it that I live with the freedoms that I do.
4. This is a sort of ground-breaking running: We’ve got a black man, Barack Obama, running for President, we HAD a woman running for President, Hillary Clinton, and we now have a woman on a ticket for VP, Sarah Palin. This is one of those elections that’s interesting in that it’s a lot of ‘firsts’ for this country.
5. The woman on the ticket for VP, Sarah Palin, has proved to be a complete moron, and there’s nothing I love more than someone being a complete idiot, with the passion that she does, on public television. God, it’s great.

So last night, the roommate and I sat down to watch the VP debates. I didn’t know much about Palin, outside what little research that I’ve done, including watching several clips of the interview she did with Katie that made her look like a box of damned rocks. I knew nothing of Joe Biden, going into watching the broadcast. Absolutely nothing, which was actually a good thing, IMO. This isn’t a review, but more of an opinion of what I saw, while I was watching.

Joe Biden: This man came off as remarkably polished, professional, and yet personal.  He was articulate, well-spoken, intelligent, and yet not so intelligent that I didn’t understand him. Sure, when he started getting into the policies and big political words, I didn’t always follow him. Otherwise, he struck me as experienced(as he obviously is!), and yet understanding of many parents out there in the world, both single or married, with children who worry about what the future holds. I think he might have stumbled here and there, but when he found his footing, it was rock solid beneath him and he didn’t waver for a second. That reassured me in a lot of ways, that this guy not only meant what he said, but knew what he was talking about. This is the kind of guy that I would not hesitate to walk up to, and ask questions about politics. I know he would give me straight answers because he’s ridiculously experienced and yet I know he could explain things without baffling me. That’s a good thing.

Sarah Palin: To be honest, I really expected this woman to just stumble all over the place. While I have to say that she didn’t–she managed to get out complete, whole sentences, you see-that didn’t change my opinion of her. She seemed to have safety zones; Areas that she stuck to, no matter what. There is a word in the political world called ‘pivoting’. What that means is how smoothly one steers a conversation in the direction they want it to go, from topic to topic.  Sarah Palin ‘pivots’ as if she were driving a sportscar that runs on blocks instead of wheels. There were several of the questions asked that she simply didn’t answer. Either she directly ignored them or didn’t understand the question, or went back to a previous topic. I think I was most horrified when, after being asked what her ‘achille’s heel’ was, she pointed out her strong points. As if she didn’t know what an achille’s heel was. Part of me wanted to laugh so hard and yet the other part was absolutely terrified. This woman might be the Vice President–and let’s face it, John McCain has cancer. He’s 72 years old. There’s a big chance that he might die during his term. This woman will become President. That scares the hell out of me.

She also tried to pull her folksy, Goofy, “Well, gawrsh” sort of talk, and I personally found it a little insulting. You can explain things to people in a simple way, without making people feel simple. That was the vibe I got from her, that she was trying to talk up her ‘hometown nature’, and in the process, kind of made it sound like she was, in fact, saying, “I’m not smart like everyone in Capital Hill because I come from a backwoods town, so don’t expect fancy words from me.”  That totally rubbed me the wrong way.  Does that mean she’s saying that people from small, backwater towns can’t go to school, bust their ass, and learn how to talk like the big boys? I cry bullshit! Maybe I just read into it the wrong way, but that’s how it felt to me.

At one point she even stated, point blank, that she didn’t want to talk about something. When asked about global warming, she stated that she didn’t want to discuss it’s cause. I was beyond myself. Look, princess, if you become VP, there are going to be times where you’re going to talk about shit that you’re not comfortable with. Sorry, but it’s true. Not answering people when they have questions, no matter how controversial or taboo the subject may be to you, is not going to endear you in people’s eyes. If nothing else, there were FAR better ways to have handled that than just shooting it down utterly.

The whole business of her winking at the camera just made me want to slap myself in the forehead. This was a televised, live event. This wasn’t some commercial for make-up.  I don’t want a cover-girl in office. I want a responsible, professional, mature person there. This wasn’t a beauty pageant and you’re not supposed to act like some moron in a bikini. She often made comments that sounded like they’d belong more on a commercial than anything else. Like..slogans. “This is who I am and this is what I care about.” I felt like I was watching Ray Zalinsky in Tommy Boy. I understand that as a VP candidate(and as a VP, should that come to pass), she’s supposed to be behind her running mate all the way and that’s great, but I often felt like her methodology was cheap and rehersed.

Maybe I’m being too hard on her. Maybe, in my distinct lack of knowledge, I’m not looking at this from all angles. Part of me hopes that’s the case–because if it is, it means I might be wrong here. It means I might have no clue what I’m talking about and thus, this woman might be okay.

Unfortunately, according to my roommate and every other political blog I’ve been reading up on doesn’t seem to agree with me.

…Well, shit.

The Witcher: Extended Edition. AKA, o hod, he’s hot.

About a year ago, I was pretty quick to snatching up The Witcher. I’ll be honest in admitting that my reasoning behind it was highly ovary based, because Geralt of Rivia was one of the hottest hotties I’d seen in a while. I am of the firm belief that if I’m going to sit down and spend copious hours on a game, there had better be an incentive, a reason for making me want to keep going. In this case, it was Geralt.

(I understand that the above statement might sound a bit..I dunno, shallow or petty, meaning that I’ve missed out on great games due to a lack of hot–but you ever notice how the really great games have hot? Castlevania? Final Fantasy? Chrono Trigger? Yea. Shut up.)

The first thing I noticed was the load times. Then, the mind-boggling dialogue. Followed by an iffy combat system and a horrendous inventory.  But you see, I didn’t see it like that. What I saw was:

A bit of a loading time, but considering the graphics and the machine that I was running it on, no biggie. A hysterically FUNNY dialogue. A combat system that, while not great, was certainly not the worst I’d ever played, and the inventory didn’t bother me that much at all, as I’m not terribly used to playing RPGs like this. I didn’t know better.

However, with the release of the 1.4 patch, it’s now turned into:

A much, much shorter loading time. They’ve really paired things down in that department. The graphics are still beautiful, though they’re now much sharper, clearer. The world of the Witcher is a drab sort of place, post-war, so there’s a lot of gray, but where there is color, it really pops out at you, which is nice, particularly in clothes.  They’ve recorded hundreds of new lines of dialogue, and it shows. Now, when everyone talks, it sounds much more natural. Things are explained better through dialogue; There were parts in the original when I was very confused, as what I was supposed to be doing–or why I was doing it!–was not explained very well, if at all. So points there. Some of it still sounds a little funny, but now it sounds more intentionally amusing.

Unbefuckinglievable.

The combat system…mm. In my opinion, it still needs work. The repetitive clicking on a mob, just to attack them? It gets old. I would rather mash a button that swings my sword than have to click on my opponent over and over again, but…You take what you can get. The inventory system? Oh, NOW I see why everyone nagged over this one. It’s SO much better, now that they’ve cleaned it up. Glorious, I would go so far to say.

All in all, the Extended Edition patch is awesome. It fixes so many issues of the games, as well as adds a little new content(2 new missions, hooray!). Best of all, if you bought the original game, you can DL the EE patch for free, which is just kickass.

So! If you played this game at launch, and were not impressed with it? Give it another go. It’s worth a shot!

Spwned? (I know, corny)

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, if you’re into the gaming world at all, you’re aware that Spore came out on Sunday. As I am a big player of the Sims, I’ve been keeping up with this game for a while. When I first heard about it–nearly 2 years ago, at that–I was fascinated.  And why shouldn’t I be? This game boasted some very awesome features, an amazing, revolutionary game play and possibly a new take on simulated games.

On Sunday, I started playing it and boy, was I disappointed.  Let’s take it step by step, shall we?

First and foremost is this whole DMR issue that everyone has their panties in a twist over. As of today(five minutes ago, to be exact), there were over one thousand 1-star reviews on Amazon for Spore. Why? Because people are pissed about this DMR.

I’ll dumb it down for those who don’t know what that is: A DMR is a tiny bit of software attached to another bit of software that installs itself in the background when you install the big bit of software. It leeches resources off of your computer, but what it really does? It monitors how many times you install this big bit of software on your machine. For Spore, the limit is 3.

After three installs of Spore on a machine, you have to call EA and basically get a new CD key. That’s the basic gist of it.

So in other words, what’s being said is that I’ve got 3 chances to play this game; After that, I’ve got to call EA up and give them hard proof of where I purchased the game, when, using what method, all so they can give me a key to install a game that I paid over $50 for. If I bought the deluxe special uber edition, $80. In short, you’re not really buying the game. It’s more like you’re renting it–except you’re renting it for fifty dollars. Yea. Right.

Is anyone else surprised that this was already being downloaded and played here in America, before it even came out? That’s right, folks; While they installed a DMR, EA made a critical error in their thinking. The game was released in Australia before it was released in America. It was already on several torrent sites before it even came out on Sunday here in the states. Way to go EA.

With that aside, let’s actually be fair and get into the review of the game, shall we?

Like I said, I was a huge follower of this game. Which is why this is so sad because this game had the possibility to be really, truly impressive. But the reality of the game is nowhere near as good as the fantasy of the game. All of the wonderful things that could have been done were not present, leaving an overall sour taste in my mouth.

Playability: In terms of playing the game straight out of the box, Spore is pretty easy. I would go so far as to say too easy, because I often felt that the tutorial did all of the work for you. It prompted you practically every time something needed to be done, generally making this game far too easy.

Length: The length of a game is a big factor for me–I tend to sink my teeth into a game and continue to play it for hours at a time. The more days I get out of a game, the happier I am. I started playing Spore at noon on Sunday. I was at the last stage by about 7ish, maybe 8 and I wasn’t playing it on easy mode, either. I understand that not everyone is going to tear through the game as quickly as I did, no. Being used to the Sims series, however, which generally has no end, this was pretty disappointing for me.

Spore is broken up into different ’stages’ of evolution, which seems fair. But the stages are ridiculously repetitive or short. The first stage, the cell stage(which was easily my favorite)seemed to go by in a flash. Which seems really annoying because as you advance through the stage, you can see deeper into the primordial ’soup’, and you never get to compare to some of the larger creatures you see deeper in! Which frustrated the hell out of me. The Tribal phase, in my opinion, was a huge waste of time because it felt so repetitive. Harvest food, kill your neighbors. There was no depth to it at all, it seemed.

Controls: Oh, the controls. In the Cell stage, they’re downright infuriating. Maybe it’s because you’re swimming around in water, but from the beginning, I was not impressed with the controls. They felt very sluggish and unwieldy. I saw other little cells just zipping around, where I was moving at a snail’s pace, despite what body parts I’d added to help with speed. Further into the game, that never really went away. It felt impossible to catch some prey items, even if I had wings. In the Civilization stage, vehicles moved remarkably slow as well, I thought.

The controls themselves are your typical mouse and/or WASD. I found that using WASD was the best to control your creature, using the mouse to control the camera angle–which is your only option in that regard.  While the overall control scheme could have been much worse, I also think it could have been better–but some people may not mind them at all. I admit that I like an absurd amount of control over a game, so maybe that’s just me.

Graphics: The graphics of the game were pretty nice, for what they were. I found that I could turn them up all the way and still run the game without problem. Mind you, they’re graphics for a Will Wright game, so they’re not the graphics of say, comparatively, Crysis, but they’re still nice to look at.

Sound: Like the graphics, the sounds are about what you’d expect. It was interesting, to me, to hear all of the different animal sounds, the work that was put into them, but other than that, the sound is pretty average–nothing spectacular, in my opinion.

AI: The AI of this game? Disappointing. I thought that, seeing as this was Will Wright, I could expect the opposing factions to maybe throw me for a loop here or there, but that never occurred. I think part of the folly here is that in even in as early as the Cell stage, you always knew what was going to attack you. There was never any mystery, any surprise. I never ‘felt’ like a Cell, swimming about blissfully, unaware of what was going to happen. I knew who to run from, who to eat. The same happened in the Creature stage, as well. There was very little guesswork here, where the AI was concerned.

Replay value: I played my copy single player only. I didn’t get into the online thing, and maybe that’s where the game really shines, but I found little to no replay value to it at all. Maybe it’s because by the time I had gotten to the Space Stage(the last stage), I was already bored with the game.

I’m the kind of player that likes to figure things out on my own, you see. I rarely read manuals when I play games; I either figure a game out on my own or I let the in-game tutorial show me. If I can’t figure something out, only then will I rely on the manual. As I’ve mentioned above, Spore’s in-game tutorial really kind of turned me off to the game and this happened a lot in the Space stage. I wanted to do things on my own, but the game forces you to not really have that option.

So by the time I had gotten to the Space Age? I didn’t want to finish it, much less replay it. I had had enough of having the game shoved down my throat.  It didn’t feel like you were given that many choices in the actions you took. Sure, you customized the way the creature looked, but even that stopped after the Creature phase. So you have three phases of customizing the way your creature physically appears. In the Tribal phase, you can add little bits of clothing and whatnot. Big woo hoo there. The part of the game that seemed to carry the most interest for a lot of people–creature customization–is cut remarkably short for a species that, according to my span, lived over 10 billion years.

But even as a species, your possibilities of how you interact with the world around you is remarkably simple. You are either herbivore or carnivore. Be nice or be mean. Persuade or take over.  I didn’t feel like there would be much else to do a second time around–and I’m not saying that there’s not more to do. It’s just that the game didn’t give me the feeling that there was much else, you see.  After playing it start to finish, I didn’t feel like I could go back into it and do things all that differently, because the game didn’t give me the feeling that there were many other options. For a Will Wright game, that’s pretty sad, given all you can do in the Sims 2.

Conclusion: It seems like what could’ve possibly been an awesome game wound up being little more than mediocre. Is it an amazing accomplishment? Absolutely–because the things that could be done with it are still there, still possible. But is it an amazing game? No. Far from it. Short, repetitive stages, combined with a bossy, overbearing tutorial system made this game almost like a chore to play. Once the newness and the novelty of it wore off, I realized I was no longer having fun, per se–but just pushing through it, hoping for a light at the end of the tunnel. I never found one, unfortunately.

A lot of sites have given the game an eight out of ten, and in my opinion, that’s far, far too generous. To me, it ranks more of a six out of ten. I had hoped for so much more out of this game, but the technical issues(DMR), in combination with a very lackluster game, makes me disappointed and sadly unimpressed.

I’d like to take a moment..

To talk to you folks about something that I feel is relatively important to me.

That something is reviews. I love reviews. I love reviews on movies, games, products I buy, even the recipes I like to cook. I like hearing or reading about something someone has tried before, what they think of it. It helps me make a better decision, helps me decide whether or not I’m going to decide to bother with something. I mean, for fuck’s sake, I read reviews on the damned tea maker that I told my mother I wanted to buy.

As a direct result of this strange love I have with reviews, I have recently stumbled acros the dual-blog nature of a fellow who I can only assume is named Bob. Bob reviews two things I take very seriously: Movie, and video games. These two things are remarkably important to me. I watch a lot of movies and I am always on the lookout for awesome new games that are worth bothering with(because, let’s face it, a shitload of them just aren’t worth bothering with these days).

Moviebob, as he calls himself, often writes small reviews about movies or games that he’s seen/played recently. It’s even better, however, when he posts the small movies he writes, reads, directs, etc that are reviews and/or gripes about the movies he’s seen or the games he’s played lately. He takes it a step further with the games, extoiling virtues or pimpslapping the issues that suck, where games are involved.

What one has to understand is that I take my video games even more seriously than I take my movies. I like to consider myself someone who, at the very least, tries to keep my finger on the pulse of the gaming industry and where it’s going. So to have stumbled across this fellow by the help of my good friend the Fu, has been a bit of a godsend. He is witty, intelligent, and brutally honest. He is forward and blunt and does not beat around the bush. He doesn’t sugarcoat shit, with is awesome. I hate shit that sugarcoated. Even cookies.

Moviebob is–you guessed it–the blog in which he talks about movies.
Game Overthinker is the blog in which he discusses video games, their shortcomings, their awesomeness, and why people should love/hate them more.

So I implore you. Please take the time to go visit Moviebob. Watch his videos and read his blog. Embrace his wit, his awesome nature, and his love of big words at considerably inopportune times.

Ahem.

The next few posts are going to be posts in which I discuss some of the people on my ‘blogroll’ which is completely RIDICULOUS sounding word for links. I suppose we can’t all be perfect in life and I changed that rather ridiculous sounding word to catagories which suit Her Royal Skankiness to a much better degree. Also, in the near future, there will be a picture with a pan of peanut butter fudge that turned out to be so insanely good, that there are currently cavities forming in my mouth as I type this. :j Thank you, and have a nice day.

Software: Or, o hod, what is that again?

So, I’m a geek. As a geek, I use different things on a day to day basis, with my computer, that make my life a thousand times easier. That might make me a sell-out, yanno, taking the easy path. But I love software the way I love computers. I am shiny geek. I like programs that streamline things. So I’m going to post here about some of the stuff I use, both software and web-base applications, why, and what makes it so friggin’ awesome. Here we go.

Trillian
This is my IM program. While it has a lot of great little bells and whistles, I think the best part about Trillian is the fact that not only is it skinnable a thousand ways to Sunday, it allows me to use various chat services at once. It also allows me to have more than one SN on at once, which is great because I have IMs for OOC chatter as well as IC RPing. That is a beautiful, glorious thing.  Trillian has been around for several years now and I’ve used it, religiously, with little to no problem. It’s a great program and I highly recommend it.

Photoshop and GIMP
Photoshop is pretty much the be-all, end-all image editing software, for me.  However, it is a bit cumbersome and sometimes you just want something fast, easy, and light to use. Not to mention cheaper. I’ve found that using GIMP saves time and resources on the laptop. Photoshop is a bit more professional grade, I guess you could say.

Firefox
Firefox is, to me, the manditory web-browser these days. Nothing really beats it. It does everything. Great tabbed browsing and dozens of great add-ons/plug-ins just make it simple yet vercitile. I don’t think there’s anything I really can’t get Firefox to do for me.

Bulletproof FTP
You know, after fighting with several different FTP programs(Including the FireFTP add-on for Firefox), I went back to Bulletproof, which I used years ago when I first started this site, even before it found it’s own domain name. Back then, it worked like a charm. To my delight, it still does. You have to pay for it’s full usage after so many days, but I have to say, it’s well worth it. It’s simple to use, easy to navigate, and even when I told it to load up the shared music folder, which is over 800gigs worth of music? It didn’t freeze up. It took it about 3-4 seconds to process the request and bam. All set. That? That makes me ridiculously happy. FireFTP would bog down, and even FileZilla couldn’t handle that.

WinAMP
Ah, what list could be complete without good ol’ winAMP? I’ve probably been using it for well over seven years now, if not longer. Even though I have occasionally tred off the beaten path, I have always wandered back eventually. I have tried a few other things, but never found anything that suited me in a way that I liked. The only one I did like, Mediamonkey now no longer works on my computer–which is a shame, because I found the sound-quality to suit my liking much better than winAMP. I understand that winAMP is ridiculously overrated and I wouldn’t say no to replacing it but, for the time being, it’s my staple when it comes to playing music.

AVS
When it comes to watching DVDs or movies on my machine, I always use AVS. Simple to use, nice format, and I like how easy the screen is to manipulate. Also free to use, which is nice.

MediaMonkey
I mentioned this in my winAMP post and while it no longer works on my machine, it’s worth giving credit to. If you have a huge collection of music, this is great for organizing, renaming, re-tagging, the works. It’s simple to use and can handle large batches of files at a time.

OpenOffice
When you just don’t feel like paying a ludicrous amount of money for an office suite, consider open office. While it is a bit of a resource hog, it’s perfectly free, and works very, very well. I use the Writer program for all of my document needs.

While a small list, these are definitely my favorite programs, the ones that I use on a pretty much day to day basis.

What do you guys use? Are there any programs out there that you just cannot live without?

Opinions: Or, o hod, why can’t you handle this?

( Note: The following post does not target a single person. It is not an accusation. It is nothing more than a collection of observations that I have made over the years of living on the Internet. This is not me blaming anyone, or pointing the finger. This is not some personal vendetta hate letter. However, should you feel, while reading it, that you are guilty of some of the thoughts expressed here, perhaps you might want to sit down and think about a few things. Lord knows I have. Thank you. )

Opinions. They are everywhere. And, as a 25 year old female, born and raised in the U.S., I am still under the obviously delusional perception that people are still entitled to having an opinion. I don’t know where I get these ideas, I swear. I am, however, also under the perception that people are still allowed to disagree with opinions. I believe that not all opinions are bad. I believe that sometimes, people can have good opinions. Rarer still, I believe that occasionally, someone can disagree with an opinion in a mature, adult fashion, and it can often lead to interesting debates over who’s opinion(or disapproval) is more interesting.

However, let’s face it. This is the Internet, and while there are people out there who make valid opinions, more often than not, they are not taken seriously. So let’s get into the nitty gritty of this problem. The biggest reason why most opinions are not taken seriously can be summed up in a simple, pseudo-mathmatical equation:

normal person + anonymity + audience = asshat

There you have it. That’s the first reason why most opinions just aren’t taken seriously. But, let’s be fair here, and add to that:

When you take the time to put your opinion on the Internet, whether written like a 15 yr. old teenage girl texting on her cell like an idiot OR, a mature, reasonable, intelligent adult, you put it out for the whole world to see. You make it public and thus, run the risk of asshats finding it, exploiting it, tearing it apart, chewing it up and then spitting it out. And to that, I say, “You should’ve known this would happen.” Keep this paragraph in mind. We’ll get back to this.

On the other hand, by making your opinion known to the general public, there is the slim, random, but totally possible chance that unlike the idiot 15yr. old, you’ve put it in a place that will be read by like-minded peers. Which is a good thing, because that now means there is the possibility that someone intelligent will read it. You’ll now have the opportunity for someone to either agree with you, disagree with you, and there might be some great, adult debate.

Now, I said all that to finally say this: I may not be Einstein, but I like to consider myself a person of reasonable intelligence. As a result, I like to surround myself with equal intelligence. Most of the people I talk to on the Internet are people that are capable of not only well thought-out opinions, but of responding to opinions they disagree with in a mature, adult fashion. That’s great, because as a person of relative intelligence, I love a good debate. I love to sit down with smart people, discuss things, agree, disagree, and agree to disagree occasionally. I am an adult, and I can be level-headed that way.

So you can imagine where I might be a bit confused with how, lately, I’ve been noticing lately that some people just cannot handle that. Why is it that people cannot seem to handle it when someone gives them a disagreement of opinion. I am referring to these latter types of disagreements, by the way. The well thought-out, politely offered disagreeing opinions.

Now, when I say ‘opinions’, everyone is going to get into an uproar about “Oh, I have the right to my own opinion, blahblahblah”, so let me go ahead and just call a spade a spade, here. When you get down to brass tacks, an opinion is, in many ways, nothing more than constructive criticism.

Someone draws a picture. The angle seems a bit off. I offer my opinion of it. It’s criticism. Can we all agree on that? Good.

So, back to the topic at hand: What is it lately with people just being unable to handle a bit of polite, non-flaming, well-meant criticism? Why do people seem to take such offense? Especially when they, themselves, are the one who put their initial opinion out there in the open, for people to read, consider, agree, or disagree with? More importantly, why is that people will put out an opinion, be criticized(in polite fashion, mind you), and just say nothing? They will not agree, they will not disagree, they will not defend themselves, nothing? Read up there, people! Anonymous! It’s safe to argue reasonably over the Internet. Hell, as we’ve seen, it’s safe to argue like an ass over the Internet, too! What’s the point of putting out your opinion, if you’re not willing to stand up behind it? That’s the beauty of an opinion: It’s yours. It’s your thoughts, your feelings, your outlook on a topic. Be proud of it!

Every time I see that happen, when I see that following silence, I suddenly wonder: Do people not have the conviction to stand behind their opinions? Do people feel they don’t have the right to stand up for what they think? I can understand, to a degree, why you might not do this in person–because God knows it’s hard to stand up to a real person, face to face. (That’s not sarcasm, by the by.)

If you don’t want people to pick apart your opinions, you shouldn’t make them available. Mind you, I’m not saying you shouldn’t have an opinion! People have the right to think what they want. Everyone has the right to have an opinion on things. Really though, if you’re going to take the time to make them public affairs, that anyone can see, you should really be prepared for the possible repercussions of doing so.

Or am I just insane? Am I just being too optimistic in a world where it’s common-place and a source of entertainment, shooting down what people think and making fun of them at the drop of a dime?

It bothers me to think that the beautiful anonymity of the Internet is turning into the weak-minded fear that we have to deal with in the real world, where people are afraid of saying what they think because they fear persecution. This is the Internet. How’s that meme go?

Anonymous does not forgive. Anonymous does not forget.

I believe in that, because it’s true. When you are anonymous, you can do and say whatever you want. But that doesn’t mean that you have to be some 4chan fucktard to abide by it.

Take your Internet life by the horns. Say what you want. Put your opinions out there in a polite fashion. If someone disgrees with you? Debate. Be intelligent. Don’t be afraid to say what you think and what you feel. Don’t be afraid of fucking anything. Say what you mean and mean what you say.

Story Time.

No, not really. But part of me is sorely, sorely tempted to maybe make a page that has stories on it.

Before I turned this into a blog(something I’d wanted to do for quite a while, but never quite knew how!), this was just a standard, run of the mill webpage that I had used to host stories and my pathetic attempts at fractal art. And while I can say with some honesty that there were a few good stories here, it just didn’t quite …I dunno. I guess, as my own worst critic, I was never satisfied with my own writing. So, now, this is a blog, a place where I can bitch about the things I don’t like, scream about the things I hate, laugh at the shit that amuses me, and cry about the stuff that makes me sad.

Oh. And headbang to the insanely kickass music I find.

However, sometimes I miss some of those stories I wrote. Sometimes, I’ll reread one and be like, “That wasn’t so bad.” And so now I’m trying to decide if I want to make a page for them here, or if I want to start posting them here at all. And I’m just unsure.

And God, my head hurts.

Tea: Or, o hod, that’s obviously too weak.

So, I just made tea. Now, what you have to understand is that I love tea. I am Southern. As a result, I do not have blood, no. Sweet tea courses through my veins. And, again, obviously too optimistic, I’m going to explain how I make tea, how my mom makes tea, how we have made tea for years and years, so, obviously, we must be doing something right.

I use Lipton tea, personally. It’s what Mom always used, so it’s what I use. Of course, we’re making black tea, here. And seeing as I make tea by the pitcherful, instead of by cup, I go ahead and use family sized teabags.

My pitcher is a simple, 3 quart pitcher that I bought at the grocery store. It’s got a snap-shut lid so tea doesn’t get everywhere, or spill easily.
I am fortunate enough to have a measuring cup that will hold a liter’s worth of water. This is what I use to cook my tea in. Any microwave safe pyrex bowl, for example, that will hold that much water will do fine.

First, I fill up the measuring cup with HOT water. I’ve learned that, sure, you can use cold water, but it’s just not going to steep as well. I put 2 family sized tea-bags into this water, and go ahead and put it in the microwave for 4 minutes. While that is cooking, I grab my tea-jug, and put in 3/4s a cup of sugar into it. Any more, and it’s way too sweet for my tastes. Any less makes the tea too strong for my tastes. Obviously, you can play with this around to your liking. Around now, the microwave SHOULD be done. I usually give it another 4-5 minutes or so to cook in it’s own heat, before pulling it out and pouring the contents into the jug. Leaving the teabags in the measuring cup, I refill it with warm water(not TOO hot), and set it aside for a few minutes. While it’s doing it’s thing, go ahead and grab a long wooden spoon and stir up the liquid and sugar in the jug. This dissolves all of the sugar into the mixture, which is good. As a kid, I often made the mistake of going ahead and adding in my cold water before stirring, and then the sugar wouldn’t melt, collect at the bottom and thus, yucky tea.

Once the sugar is good and dissolved, I grab the measuring cup. I swish the teabags around a bit, lift them out, and literally grab them in my hand and squeeze the everliving tar out of them. Get them as squeezed out as you can without, of course, breaking the teabags, because who wants tealeaves in their tea? Go ahead and dump those, and pour the warm water in to the jug. Another good stir, refill the measuring cup one more time, this time with COLD water, and pour that in as well. Usually, that’s enough to fill up the jug entirely. I make sure the water is all the way to the 3qt. mark.

One more stir for good measure, and then into the fridge it goes. I usually make my tea at night, and I let it sit overnight before drinking any of it. It’s usually not good until it’s REALLY gotten cold, in my experience.

So, there you go. Sweet tea in about 10 minutes or less.

Food

Food. I love food. And it shows. Mind you, I’m not huge, but I’m not a small girl, either. And over the years, I have acquired new tastes, and lost some old ones. I no longer drink milk, for example–which isn’t good, because as a woman, I need calcium. I’m going to have to start taking vitamins more, to make up for what I don’t get. I don’t like jelly anymore. I don’t care for anything gelatinous, really–except Jell-o, bizarre as that is. Like cranberry sauce. Won’t touch it.

However, I have come into a mad love affair over pancakes, after moving up to Maryland. I didn’t really care for them too much in my youth–mainly because breakfast, as a kid, was kind of like, “Lol”. Mom did not have the time to make breakfast for us, so most of my youth was taken up by chocolate poptarts.

Anyway.

Now that I’ve gotten older, I have come to respect the pancake much more. In fact, I have also become remarkably talented at recreating the pancake, as well.

I also had a wonderfully good dinner last night, created very simple through this recipe which was the only one I could find for Sauteed Mushrooms that did NOT require either A) an entire stick of butter, good God or B) an entire pound or so of mushrooms. I just don’t have that many mushrooms, and I’m certainly not going to cook them with an entire damn stick of butter. That’s just rediculous.

So I made that last night, and then, looking upon the very lonely bowl of mushrooms, decided they desperately needed a companion. I snatched the leftover carton of rice we had from chinese earlier in the week, and threw that into the pan that I had cooked the mushrooms in with a bit more oil. Didn’t want anything to stick. Then I tossed some soy sauce onto it, stirred it up good, got it hot. That was poured into a bowl, and then the mushrooms were applied to the top. It took me practically no time to make, and was insanely good.

A Confession.

When I was between the ages of…oh..I’d guess 4-6, I lived on Lake Bowie, in South Carolina. What few memories I have there are fond. We lived right on the lake, and I can still remember my dad chasing ducks in the yard–as they were there, frequently. They’d come up out of the lake and we would feed them.

Due to this, I have, and have always had, an absolute love for ducks. I think they are probably the cutest thing on the planet. Even despite how loud they are. I have always found baby ducks just absolutely adorable.

Especially when they do this.

Fractals!

So, after a lot of mental arguing and more debate, I have decided that I want to once again start making fractals. And I want to start putting them here. Why, I don’t know–maybe because they were the one thing I could do on my own, graphically, and be proud of. They are not the best fractals in the world, but they are my fractals, made with my own two little hands, and my own computer. I will probably put a photo gallery function here, and start uploading the ones I have already done, with new ones. Keep your eyes peeled for them.

So today–yesterday. Whatever.

So not only did I admit to my own screwups, and fess up to them, no matter how hard they were, I also sat down tonight with my roommate, and built my resume. I then proceeded to apply to 3 jobs. I am nervous and excited. I am proud of myself, as well.

If I want to be a better person, I’ve got to start admitting I’m wrong.
If I want to be a better person, I’ve got to start making changes in the person I am.
If I want to be a better person, I can’t put it off until tomorrow. Tomorrow might not be here.

I am sorry to the people I hurt. But I am thankful that they’re understanding. I couldn’t hope to know better people. It doesn’t get much better than this.

GOD, DOES MY HEAD HURT. ::TODDLE.::

IN SURROUND SOUND

Poker: Or, o hod, you did what? from Lauren Hasty on Vimeo.

TODAY

I did nothing. Except sleep, of course. Not that I meant to sleep all damned day. But that’s exactly what I wound up doing.

I made a video yesterday, and I’ll try to get it posted up here tonight.

There is also a package of mushrooms, in the fridge. I would love to do something with them, like sautéed them, but one stick of butter, to do that? Thaaaaat’s just a bit much there, thanks. And olive oil is not exactly cheap, either. I’ll see if I can’t find a recipe or something to do with them. I also need to try out tea eggs! That wouldn’t be too bad together, actually.

Also: 5 minute cake, while good, seems a bit …bland, to me. Not sure if there’s something missing. I mean, for a 5 minute cake out of the microwave, it’s good! But it’s just…eh. I dunno. I’m used to very moist pudding cake. That’s part of it. Seemed very dry, imo.

A REPEAT: In Video

Buttons: Or, o hod, TOUCH EET from Lauren Hasty on Vimeo.

O HOD

O SHIT

O FUCK YES. This was posted in Geen’s LJ, and I’m posting it here now. I can only hope that this can be taken literally, that they are porting the original Chrono Trigger to DS.
Chrono Trigger was a pivotal piece of my youth. It was the first jRPG I ever played, along with the first RPG as well. It was the first video game that made me sit up until nearly 5 in the morning, in my mom’s boyfriend’s living room, playing his youngest son’s SNES. I had rented the game from Blockbuster because the cover art looked kind of interesting.

That game changed my life.

Had it not have been for Chrono Trigger, I would not have become as interested in video games as I did. Had it not been for Chrono Trigger, I would not have gotten interested in Role Playing, as well. Had it not been for Chrono Trigger, I would have never met my roommates, never moved to Maryland, never met most of the people I know now. In short, Chrono Trigger paved the road to who I now am.

When they re-released it for the PS1, I was ridiculously excited–but then disappointed by the horrendous load times. Instead, for years, I have played it on emulators on my PC.

So to find out that it might be re-released for DS just fills me with joy–though I do have small concerns that they might botch around with it, given DS’ interface and methods on control.

Don’t do it, guys. You have a perfectly good game. Maybe up the graphics, but don’t screw with it. KISS.

I am SO fucking excited, though.

Ugh.

So, this weekend turned out to be a complete and utter waste of space. I did not get my hair hennaed. I did not do much of anything, actually, outside of sit on the laptop. –Okay, correction. I started playing poker on Pokerstars.net which was pretty much the biggest mistake EVER because I could play poker for hours.

When I woke up Sunday, I just generally was not for sitting around for 6 hours with my hair atop my head. I didn’t feel good as a general rule at all, in fact, so there you go. Maybe I’ll give it another shot this weekend instead.

Also: The second I become a super genius, the first thing I’m going to do is make a pair of fucking glasses that automatically clean themselves. How damned cool would that be?

30 Days.

30 Days. Okay, more like 28 or something like that, until I can sign up for PayPerPost. The blog has to be at least a month old. Fine then. I can do that.

I do believe that tomorrow will be a henna day. My hair isn’t quite as bright as it was. And I’m starting to miss the smell of the stuff, that wet hay/lemony smell you get after hennaing your hair. Which, of course, means that I’m going to have to find a way to entertain myself tomorrow for, oh, I don’t know, SIX HOURS? I foresee a lot of movies and console gaming in my future tomorrow.

Which is great, because I still haven’t sat down and beat Silent Hill: Origins yet. I also managed to grab copies of both Predator 1&2, which makes me so unbelievably happy it’s not even funny, as I’ve got a serious thing for Predators. Awesome, awesome, awesome.

Work in progress.

So I’m still working and building on this thing. Despite the issue that I’m having with the whole link category BS, this is still my favorite layout. This is the one I’ll be sticking with, I think.

Over the next few days, links and whatnot will start appearing here and there. I will still be making some changes and things will go missing along with appearing.

I have also made the decision that while I will not have comments turned off, I will have them screened. Now, before anyone says anything, let it be known that this is not because I have anything against comments and the like. But I want this blog to be a relatively clean slate. Not only that, but these are comments made to ME, not to everyone else reading. Part of this is because I am a ridiculously private person. The other part is that the last thing I really want is to have some flame war starting on my blog like some other poor people I know, who’s poor parent got drug into it too. How sad.

That said, every comment made here will be read. And if I feel that the comment made has legitimate points on the post, I will allow it to be read by others. Otherwise, it will stay in my screening box.

Some people might think that this is close-minded of me–or counter-productive to having a blog in the first place. Nor does this mean that I do not want comments, and do not appreciate the opinion of others. That’s not true at all. I would just rather keep the comments of others made to me for me. If that makes me selfish, so be it.

To note: I am a selfish bitch anyway. WTF do I care?