July 2004 Archives

I'm a Pennsylvanian. I'm a Republican. I'm voting Kerry.

I've voted Republican in every Presidential Election since I turned voting age. I even went through a phase where I was in the Young Republicans and helped local candidates campaign (including Rick Santorum, now a PA senator who has turned into a homophobic asshole.) My allegiance to the Republican party was born mainly from the Reagan years, not from any family history or even from any actual deep knowlege of platforms and issues. I suppose it's a little like being a Steelers fan just because you live in Pittsburgh. And yeah, I listened to Rush back during his zenith Clinton era.

I voted for Bush in the 2000 election. Not that my single PA vote mattered, but I was relieved when the Florida tally came back in Bush's favor. Gore was boring, Gore was too firmly attached to the embarrassment of Bill Clinton's sex life, Gore had the video game-hating Leiberman on his ticket.

And now I'm disgusted by my choice. Bush lied to us about Iraq's military, weapons, and the country's relationship to bin Laden. (When confronted with the "lie" issue by Michael Moore, Bill O'Reilly said that it wasn't a lie, just that Bush acted on faulty intelligence. Bill, the US President does not get to invade an entire nation based on faulty intelligence. Faulty intelligence that was debunked less than a year later. And we have to expect that somebody has to take the fall for that, and it ought to be the jerk who okayed the whole plan.) With no cause but a wrong one, we destroyed Iraq's infrastructure... an infrastructure we and our allies helped build back when the Ayatollah was the World's Greatest Enemy. Now we have guaranteed the instability of the entire region, as exploding trucks take out 30 people a day... as every US-backed government official finds a shiny target on his back... as desert bandits pick apart our own forces... as al Qaeda continues to operate and threaten.

Had we centered our operations in Afghanistan instead of following Bush's huge red Hussein herring, we might have silenced bin Laden by now. It would have meant even more damage to Afghanistan, probably more damage to nearby nations as we tracked him over borderlines... but no country in the world could have faulted us. Because we were not the aggressor, we didn't ask for this. And we will bring bin Laden to our justice.

But instead we hung a fateful u-turn and invaded a country that nobody - not even the Bush squad - continues to believe was involved. Sure, Hussein was a despot. But there are despots everywhere. The only despots Bush is interested in deposing are those that sit on "our" oil reserves. (Why can't we spend our resources on developing alternatives to oil? We should all be in electric cars by now. Dick Cheney, go fuck yourself.)

And then there's the fact that one-time fratboy drunkard George W. Bush is a Jesus-pumped born again Christian. Thanks to his religion-based policy making attempts, we're finally seeing just how deceitful and close-minded Christianity is. Sure, America was once a home for everyone regardless of faith, creed or color - as long as you adhered to the Christian mindset anyway. We've always been a Melting Pot in name only. Now that non-Christian population segments are large enough to demand the same rights and privileges, the supposedly loving and welcoming Christian America has turned them out. Homosexuals should not be allowed to marry. An athiest will never be elected. It's a child, not a choice. They are all hopeless sinners and their continued existence should not be allowed to sully the Christian States of America.

As some of us have always known, Christianity is a facade for an exclusive club where the rules are strict and the minds are closed. This is exactly why the Founding Fathers wanted the church separated from the state, because we should not have religious dogma dictating our nation's policies.

I happened across one of those horrible religious programs yesterday, where it's hosted by some god-loving married couple and they interview someone that any other interview program would label a "nutjob." Well, it's always the man who interviews and the woman sites on his right and nods ferociously at every ill-presented point.

On this particular program, they were "interviewing" a Jewish gentleman - and they went to great lengths to point out how similar they all were, despite the Jesus problem - and one of his main points was to decry homosexual marriage. As is always the case, the chief complaint was that it will ruin the foundation of marriage in this country. Exactly how it will do that was left unsaid - the horrors of homosexual behavior obvious enough - but for the grandiose statement that it will invariably lead to group marriage, incest and pedophilia.

Aside: we had a manager at work make this same claim this week. He said he was opposed to homosexual marriage because then two men could adopt a young boy and molest him. He is, naturally, a flag-waving card-carrying Jesuphile. It escapes him that a heterosexual couple could molest an adopted child. It escapes him that he, as a male attracted to females, could molest his own daughters. It escapes him that homosexuality does not equal pedophilia. He's simply a close-minded asshole.

But back to that stupid TV show. Not thirty seconds after encouraging the audience (which I can safely assume, as a broadcasting professional, consists exclusively of people over 60) to pester their elected officials to come out against giving gays the vote, as it were - not thirty seconds later the male host (the only one that ever matters, right?) launched into a diatribe about how much Christians love everyone. Everyone.

Everyone like them.

And Bush is right there with them, parading his religion as if it's the only thing that matters in this country.

So I hear that Pennsylvania could shape up to be an important state in this election - which is why both Bush and Kerry have stumped us a hundred times each. You know, I watched some of Kerry's speech at our capitol building last night, and it was the same annoying government-speak I don't buy from any party. Freedom is not free, America can be great again, blah blah blah. So it's not Kerry's talk that is swaying me (he's purposefully not talking about the homosexual issue so as to woo more votes from morons.)

It's Bush's actions that have turned me against him. I'm a lifelong Republican. I'm a Pennsylvanian. I'm voting Kerry. I hope there are more like me.

This is crazy awesome. There is now a Fatal Frame 4D movie attraction at certain Japanese theme parks. As expected, Beyond the Camera's Lens has the links and details.

It sounds exactly like the "Honey I Shrunk the Audience" and Bug's Life attractions at DisneyWorld. Sit in theater, wear 3D glasses, chairs vibrate, fog machines and water spritzers. Only you're in Fatal Frame 2. Which would be incredible. I'm on MapQuest right now trying to find a route from Pennsylvania to Tokyo.

Man, imagine that. Broken Necks floating toward you, Chitose blackouts, little puppet girls grabbing at your ankles. And a Crimson Butterfly fluttering just out of reach.

In other FF news, Japan is also getting a Fatal Frame cell phone game. It probably works with camera phones, a natural tie-in. You can collect ghosts in the game and then add the ghosts to your real pictures. I wonder how much exorcismal power my cell phone has...

Of course, there is Zero chance of any of this hitting the US. Although rumors persist of a Fatal Frame movie, in the suspense-horror tradition of The Ring and Blair Witch. But in the meantime, we'll have to occupy ourselves with Fatal Frame cosplayers, a direction I fully support.

Again, it's all covered at BCL, a website which seems to stand on the unexpected precipice of Fatal Frame news lately!

We took a shot and bought those crazy plastic cat nail cover things. Zoe is just too nuts right now, and I figure if we can get through these early months, we'll hit the period where she settles down into the feline routine of sleeping 23 hours a day. Right now, she's scraping up Annie's back pretty badly during the fighting - which is a bigger problem than anything she could do to furniture - so we had to come up with something to cool it down.

I was all for the press-on-claws concept in theory, but when we received them (mail order) I quickly grew skeptical. It's easy to look at this and say "That is never going to work." Because you are literally super-gluing little plastic sheathes to your cat's claws. That made me nervous during the application process, because one overgooped cap could bond her little phalanges together. So you have to be careful.

Turns out, they work surprisingly well. We only did her front paws, and we skipped that separate thumb-claw. Zoe can retract her claws as normal, leaving an incongruous swatch of cherry red visible. So far, she hasn't paid them much attention at all, although the packaging warns that cats may try to chew them off until they get used to them.

Look at that! Pretty cool looking. Very classy. Although I might suggest a first-timer go with the clear ones, because you're supposed to fill the damn things 1/3 of the way with the glue... and it's deucedly hard to gauge 1/3 of an opaque miniature claw cover. They last about 4-6 weeks, if I remember correctly.

Zoe's new claws have passed several tests. They have lasted overnight. They have endured the regular scratching post activity. The best part is when she takes a swipe at you... now you just feel these blunt plastic knobs hitting you.

If only they made something for her fangs.

Movies I've never seen but now know the ending thanks to VH1's "I Love the 90s."

- Armageddon (Bruce Willis stays behind)
- Blair Witch Project (psycho standing in corner)
- Fight Club (Brad Pitt and Edward Norton are the same guy)
- The Sixth Sense (Bruce Willis is dead)

"I Love the 90s" doesn't have the power-packed nostalgia of the previous installments, but it does continue VH1's new marketing strategy of taping obscure comics and C-list actors doing quick bits on whatever the die rolls.

It reminds me of a comedy version of A&E's "Class of the 20th Century," which was completely stupid for two reasons. First, it ran in frigging 1991 or 1992, which was nowhere near out of the 20th century... although I suppose they had to rush production so we could get Julia Child's memories of pioneer days before the inevitable occured. Secondly, they put the damn thing in a time capsule, not to be opened until the year 2099. Good luck finding somebody with a working VHS deck in the year 2099.

I was thinking of where I was during the notable events of my lifetime... the linchpins and ripplepoints, if you will. This will be boring for you, I'm sure, but invaluable when I am senile and looking for something to trigger happiness. Or anything.

March 1982 - Death of John Belushi

I was at my grandparents. It was on the news. It may not have been the actual day his body was discovered in that seedy hotel room, but it was definitely during the resultant media coverage. I distinctly remember the shot of the Chateau where they found him, framed by my grandparents' living room. I don't remember Elvis or Groucho or Lennon dying, but I do remember Belushi. My first big media death.

January 1986 - Challenger Disaster

Coming back from lunch during sixth grade. Even by 1986, shuttle launches were so blase that we no longer watched them live during the school day. When we got back in the room, my pal Josh was already there (he ran) yelling "The shuttle blew up!" We saw the replay a dozen times, and we all figured that the Challenger Disaster would be this generation's JFK assassination.

September 1997 - Death of Lady Di

I was playing WarCraft 2, in our first apartment. Rhonda was flipping around and stumbled onto the news... Tom Cruise was talking about paparazzi stalkers and it took us a little to figure out what the hell was going on that Tom Cruise would be doing a phone interview on CNN.

April 1999 - Columbine Rampage

At work. The best part was one of the phone interviews - while we all watched rows of kids being directed out of the school - when some unnamed student proclaimed on-air that the "Trenchcoat Brigade" was "a homosexual group." It takes pure sand to toss a homophobic insult towards the nutsos currently painting the school library in blood.

September 2001 - 9/11

I didn't know what had happened until I got to work that morning and saw a small gathering of people watching the Today Show on the TV in the lobby. Just as I walked in the door, one of the sales execs ran in and said "Did you see another plane has hit it?" to the group. I headed down to my office and enjoyed those brief innocent minutes when we all thought it was a terrible, tragic accident.

I guess we can officially call the eReader dead. The last few Pokemon card sets have slowly weaned off the "E" dotcodes... the third and fourth Super Mario 3 sets have dropped off the face of the earth... and where's the long-promised Game & Watch series?

Looking back, the failure of the eReader should not have been a surprise. I was really expecting the Pokemon TCG connection to sustain it, but I suppose that came several years too late... the legendary Pokemon card game is still chugging along, but its nowhere near the popularity levels of the late late 90s. If the eReader had existed circa 1999, Nintendo could have bought Key West and renamed it Isle Delfino.

But at least it was different, in a flashback-to-punch-cards sort of way. I loved it, mostly. But the catch is: I like collecting things. Here's my overview of the entire line:

Good:

- The Pokemon TCG eCards were a mixed bag. Some cards had secret attacks (which were probably never made tournament-legal), some had little sprite cartoons, some had passable mini-games... and then others would have some kind of dippy music generator thingy. The best feature was the customizable NES-style Pokemon platformer. I would love to see every component of that collected as a bonus in some future cart, because it's stupid hard remembering which cards provided what parts to the game. The saga of the Pokemon-e series is a visual indicator of the eReader's market success. At first every card has two strips... then only some cards have two strips... then only some cards have one strip... then they're gone.
- The Animal Crossing eCards were the secret to my success in AC, yielding up lots of items for my in-game collection. And it was the only way to get Ice Climber and Mario Bros. Plus you got bizarro letters from the AC cast and some great Nintendo texture patterns.
- The Mario Party-e card game was fun, a genuine card game with occasional eReader-scanned minigames. Again, it was different... not the most amazing card game ever, but a unique novelty.
- The SMB3 stuff was great, probably the fullest realization of the concept ever, with extra levels and powerups on each scan. Mike and I spent a night re-living old SMB levels, heavily assisted by scanned-in powerups. Of course, Nintendo took a beating in the Fanboy Press over this, because the scan content was viewed as something they actively removed from the game proper just so you were forced to buy an eReader + card sets. That's a cynical view that ignores the notions that A) collecting cards is intrinsically fun and B) the extra content is completely superfluous to the original SMB3. But there will always be those who hate to spend money and think everything should have a free download, so you can't let them get to you.

Bad:

- The classic NES game packs were pretty awful. Neat concept: scan five cards and play an original NES game. But it was a pain in the ass for a pretty lousy reward: scan five cards and play an original NES game. At least the eReader could save one of them even after being turned off, but who wants to scan cards just for a pickup game of Donkey Kong?
- The Pokemon Battle-e sets were terrible. I must be in the poke-minority, but I don't need more damn battles. There's plenty to be had in the game itself. Scanning in additional battles - battles that do nothing for your pokedex or experience - is not worth my time. Then there was the rare Berry cards... but you could never hold more than one rare Berry type at a time, making collecting a complete Berry set impossible. Strange.
- Pokemon Channel came with a couple line art eCards. Scanning them in would give you another b&w page to color in the game. I never bothered attempting this, since Pokemon Channel is one of the lowest points in the franchise.

Then there's all the promo/preview cards, the Pokemon EON Ticket, Manhole, the Kirby slide puzzle, Air Hockey-e... Nintendo should have released more of them. If every major video game mag had a different eCard pack-in for several months, maybe they would have created more interest in the hardware. Of course, since every major video game mag slammed the eReader right out of the gate, Nintendo probably didn't feel obliged to do this.

They tried. Notice how Nintendo tied much of the eReader product into a known card success: Pokemon. The biggest problem was all the gear involved, especially if you were scanning eCards into another game, not just the eReader itself. Then add to that the fallout coming from the gaming l33t who saw it as a money sink and/or a ripoff. In the end, the eReader will become a minor footnote of this generation, probably never to be duplicated.

Zoe's final vet appointment was the day after we returned from Origins. Our big concern was the feline leukemia test... which came back negative. So we opened the door on her quarantine room and removed the baby gate (not like that ever stopped her) and allowed Annie and Zoe to meet face to face.

Immediately they both made little chirpy meows and touched noses, thereby vindicating the several weeks of isolation... feline leukemia spreads like crazy over cat to cat contact. And just as quickly Zoe attempted to play, and Annie attempted to avoid playing. It's been much the same since. It looked much like this:

For a couple days we returned Zoe to the lockup at night and while we were at work, and this proved terribly trying for all concerned. Zoe, of course, having tasted freedom, was incredibly confused at the regular return to prison. And being suddenly set free around 6pm every evening, she would fly into a tornado of activity, the brunt of which was directed at Annie.

Since we had a long holiday weekend, we sprung her on Friday night to see how she does on the full release, and have kept her out ever since. It's calmed her down considerably, although she still has kittenish phases where she goes after Annie. As we had hoped, Annie is maintaining her dominant role; she has no qualms about tossing Zoe onto her back or chasing her off with a hiss and a yowl. We've only noticed some small alterations to Annie's routine, which is good because I feared that Zoe's continuous presence might push Annie off to hide. We've even had a couple touching moments - Zoe licking Annie's head, the two sleeping within three couch cushions distance - but Zoe's tendency towards spastic attacks makes it rough. Once she grows up a bit, things look like they will be fine.

We even moved her litterbox to the basement already, and bought her a completely new one a couple hours later... but Zoe took to the new poop plan with no trouble. Only once I caught her in the old litterbox location, sniffing the floor and whimpering... so I carried her to the new one and she used it right away. Not long after that, she followed me downstairs and bolted right into the new box, almost as if she wanted me to watch her use it.

We still have to be watchful of her overdoing the fighting with Annie, but she will scatter if I yell (although Annie usually thinks I'm yelling at her too, and gives me a pained "what did *I* do" look.) Cords are also a troublesome distraction, so Nintendo's full-blown wireless Revolution can't get here fast enough. (The Wavebirds have long been a Fourhman staple, but linked-up GBAs for Four Swords is a kitten disaster.) So far, Zoe hasn't been too bad with the claws, but we do have to continue to work on that, because we'd rather not declaw.

And she has no idea what her name is.

I was having a really great time playing Spider-Man 2 until I reached the Mysterio boss fight overtop the Statue of Liberty. allow me to describe the scene.

The Statue has a forcefield around it, which looks to be casting an illusion to make of look like the Statue of Mysterio. Floating above it is a platform with eight spokes, an energy orb on the end of each spoke. Mysterio's controls are in the center of the platform, protecting by a floor-mounted whirled blade. Around the base of the statue are hoverbots; if you web a hoverbot, it will fly you up to the platform. The plan here is to ride a hoverbot to the platform, attack all eight orbs, then jump for the center brain and knock it out. But here's the trouble:

- the long ride up to the platform (the Statue is in real-life scale) makes the camera go berserk, so you usually lose a few seconds and some of your webswinging momentum while you re-orient your view
- the spokes rotate, and not all the hoverbots are close enough, so it's easy to miss your chance at an orb
- Mysterio's platform appears to be Spider-proof, so you can't just wallcrawl up and out to the orbs
- once you whack all eight orbs, you only have a minute or so to laucnh yourself over to the brain before all eight orbs regenerate

This is the sort of thing that I can't imagine made it through playtesting. It is atrocious. I have spent far too much time missing jumps and falling to the Statue's base, endlessly looping around the platform because I can't get the angle right to swing up to the orbs and/or platform, and wasting time doing both so that the goddamn orbs regenerate back anyway.

Other than that, it's been lots of fun... but now I feel like never playing it again. Totally hit the wall.

Oh, Tobey Maguire is an awful voice over artist. I think his acting style requires you to see his face to complete the image, because his voice is this dull sleepy monotone... I didn't mind him as the movie Spidey, but he sucks as the video game Spidey. The overall experience would have been so much better as an MTV Spidey series tie-in, even with Doogie Howser doing the voice. Would have looked better too.

All things must pass, even great games. I've played AC only sparingly for several months now. I'm still missing an obnoxious list of catalog items and I suppose I'll have to make peace with that... but the long honeymoon is over. I've seen every special event, I have all the NES games Nintendo is willing to give out, I'm positive I got more out of this game than 95% of everybody else who owns it simply because of the real-time == real-life attitude I had when I played it.

The last couple times I visited Adamsvil was because we have a couple friends who just got into the game, so we all travelled to see each others' villages. Two of these friends happen to be under the age of 13; I always like to see kids embrace video games. Not just simply playing them or hunting down cheat codes... I mean embracing them. Talking about the characters outside the gameworld, sending artwork to Nintendo Power, and, in Animal Crossing's case, making rock-solid appointments to return to the game on Saturday night because K.K. is in town.

And about my stalk market study: I now believe that the notion that your town will always hit on certain numbers is crap. It's random. If you play it often enough with multiple characters and multiple towns, you'll come out ahead... but anyone who tells you there's a pattern or a science to it is just parroting internet heresay. I have the notes to prove that I missed on X one week, and then hit on X three months later.

Another revision: my treatise on how and why animals move. It has occurred to me that I overlooked one important variable: the receiving town's beauty level. If the receiving town is in bad shape (as defined by the Wishing Well) then it is less likely that tagalong animals will move in. This seems awfully obvious to me now, but since my town was rated Perfect for almost forever, I tended to forget about that and so I didn't mention it in my big theory.

Does this mean the end to the Animal Crossing Log? Perhaps. At least, I doubt I'll have the gumption for semi-monthly updates. But I am very excited for Animal Crossing DS. Several questions immediately come to mind: Will you be able to carry over some aspect(s) of your existing character / town / items? How will it take advantage of the DS's online capabilities? And, most importantly, will it actually ever come out? Not to suck the life out of you, but it's entirely likely that AC DS will fizzle out and remain an E3 '04 tech demo.

But if it does come out, I guarantee I will be first in line, and the Animal Crossing Log will live again. See you then. Maybe even in person.