I'm Climbing Up Those Walls Again

Well, tomorrow I get on a plane at 11:30 am, UK time, and eventually, after a hop in Atlanta, will arrive in Myrtle Beach a little before 7:00 pm. I know everyone will be waiting at my empty house with cake and candy. My US Tour begins yet again. *Leans head back* Hahahahahahaha! 
  
On another note, I've finally written another GAMETALES! so check it out!
 
I hope my flight goes ok, take care and have a good Friday night everyone, hopefully I'll see you on the other side not too long from now. 
 
*Update* The Coheed and Cambria comic is now out! You can order it online but the S&H is expensive, anyone want to share an order with me?
 
Pull the trigger and the nightmare stops

I love British television. I was just flipping channels the other night, and on the travel channel I came across "The world's best nude beaches." I might note that after 9 pm, you rarely find anything censored on television over here.

This, of course, is both a blessing and a curse, for every nubile blonde the camera picks up, there are 2 old, fat men standing behind her. It was interesting to see that people still do regular things while in the nude, like play volleyball, or kareokee (well, less than regular).

So it got me thinking. Don't worry, this scenario doesn't involve zombies: What are things that, assuming you have to be in the nude, you'd rather avoid doing? (assume that if there are any other people, they also would be in the nude) I can think of a few:

using a blender
lawn mowing
sewing
belt-sanding (thanks to Seinfeld)
paintball (In Nevada, men can pay to shoot at naked women)
riding a bike
white water rafting
yoga
judo
deep-fat frying
reading poetry
hunting
rock climbing
racquetball
destructionball!
pole-vaulting
public debate (Sir, I may be factually wrong, but at least I have larger gonads!)
zombie-hunting

I've been boring and chosen mostly sports. If you can think of anything that you'd avoid doing if you were in a nudist colony, feel free to contribute.

I'm posting some of the songs I've written with MIDI - tracker, just in case I somehow lose them on the trip home. They are fairly basic and unfinished, but will sound much better once I run them through Fruityloops. Think of old shareware games when you listen to them (in fact, you should play that ninja game, N while you listen).

The Glory

First Level of Planet Taylon

Four days in the dark

Heartford +2

The Camp

Analogous

Enjoy

I've discovered a damn addictive ninja game called N. You can download a free copy here. It's a platformer that tests your ninja skills. You see, ninjas are awesome, but because they are so awesome they have an incredibly high metabolism, and so have a natural lifespan of 1.5 minutes. In this 1.5 minutes, you must play you way through an episode that consists of 5 stages.

Not only is there plenty of gold to collect in these 5 stages (since ninjas love gold) but there are plenty of anti-ninja robots, mines, machine gun turrets, heat-seeking rocket turrets, and evil platforms to search at and exterminate you. Luckily your ninja skills are awesome, as you can jump real high, jump off walls, skid down slopes, and basically run you ass off. There are about 5 levels in each episode and something like 30 episodes, so there is plenty of gaming fun in this shareware, so I recommend you pick it up!

Let me tell you about the world of The Mighty Boosh. It's this incredibly weird comedy show that comes on every evening on BBC3. It's about two zookeepers, Vince Noir and Howard Moon. Sounds simple enough, except that Howard is usually full of himself and Vince is stuck in the late 70s early 80s.

The conversation between the two is brilliant, usually because it reminds me of the sort of conversations I'd have with a friend: Pointless and inane, and endlessly poking fun at each other.



The set designs are always really good, and any animal they have looks awesome. The stories are always really fun, usually involving traveling somewhere and fighting with some really weird creature or animal. Also, every episode has a modern musical number, from rap to jazz to rock.

Just some quotes from the show that I can remember off the top of my head:

A conversation between Vince and a strange man he meets in the woods:

Man: "He is a giant green man, and very evil. Some say he is the devil himself!"
Vince: "Really?"
Man: "Others say he is just a man painted green, with special lighting."

----

Howard: "You just lost your book deal, man. How can you be so happy?"
Vince: "Cause I'm wearing a Mexican poncho! How could anyone be sad in a poncho?"

----

Anyway, hopefully this strange series will come to dvd soon, so I can share it with the Clemson folk.

I've been 'playing' the demo for a 'game' called Real Lives recently. I recommend you pick up the trial and give it a whirl. Basically it uses real-world statistics to allow you to live out the life of a person anywhere on the globe. You can either make up your own character and choose where they start out, or the game automatically generates a person and determines through probability where you are born (most of the random generated characters end up in China or India).

The game then uses various social and economic statistics from that country to determine the probabilities you'll get certain diseases, etc. You make all the important choices, like who you want to get involved with romantically, whether or not you want to go to school (Although you may not be smart enough). What sort of job you want, etc. There is a lot that is out of your hands though, and so the game has this great "Oregon Trail" feel to it.

I've lived out the life of Matthew Collins, an economist who never could quite get into an NGO, and so remained the head of an econ department before he was forced out because of ageism. He waited too late to have children, and eventually died a sad, poor old man at the age of 105.

I've lived out the life of Gilluiamo Hernandez, a Mexican policeman who was stunted at birth. He was arrested and jailed many times in his life for political activism and eventually died of an early heart attack.

I've lived the life of some guy in Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso. All I remember is he died pretty young.

It gets boring eventually, but is fun for a little while, and is good at showing the huge gap in quality of life and life expectancy around the world.




I managed to see Secretary, which is a movie starring Maggie Gyllenhaal, who is a young girl fresh out of the psych unit after a period of self-mutilation. She soon finds a job as the secretary of a strange young lawyer (James Spader) who is very commanding.

Spader becomes more and more dominant as time goes on, and one day, when Lee (Maggie) makes a spelling error one too many times, he gives her a spanking. She soon finds that she really really enjoys this, and so the two embark on a dominant/submissive relationship that is bewildering to the average viewer. It makes for an interesting twist on a love story, although I was annoyed to see they included the typical on-the-side boyfriend for Lee who just doesn't understand her, just so she can reject him at the end of the film.

I'd recommend it to anyone sick of traditional romantic-comedies, or who want to see what a dominant/submissive relationship is really like.