Zel-kun’s Words

What a week it’s been, huh?  Seems like death went and got himself in a big damn hurry.  First Ed McMahon dies, which wasn’t all too shocking to me.  Celebrities die, and he was old and in poor health.  Sure, it’s sad that it happened, but I’ll leave the mourning to those who actually knew him… or at least who grew up watching him on Johnny Carson, which was admittedly a bit before my time.

Then Farah Fawcett loses her long battle with cancer.  I’ve lost loved ones to cancer, it is a horrible illness, and it always touches a nerve somewhere when I hear that it claimed another victim, whether I knew that person of not.

Right on her heels, as though following her as some obsessed groupie, Michael Jackson leaves the world as well.  I’m really not the right person to comment on that, being as that nearly everything I’ve ever said about MJ has been negative.  Beat It was pretty cool though.

If that was it, that’d have been fine… but it continued, and took a more personal route as it did so.  My step-grandmother (my stepmother’s mother), whom I love as my own grandmother, passed away that night.  I knew she was in ill health, but we all thought she had at least a bit more life left in her.  I attended her wake yesterday, and paid my respects.  I find wakes oddly comforting, they show me that even when death rears it’s ugly head, there is still beauty to be found.

I met her before I even started high school.  She was energetic with a head of bright white hair, and definitely more tech savvy than a lot of older people out there.  She spent her days on the computer, and her nights crocheting… or maybe even the other way around.  She loved bears and I used to buy her some sort of bear-themed present at Christmas… like a statuette or something.  One year she crotheted me an ahfgan, which was perfect for summer nights when a normal blanket was just too thick.

Yesterday we gathered at the funeral parlor to mourn her passing.  I arrived significantly later than planned due to some miscommunication with the directions.  I headed in the wrong direction FOR OVER AN HOUR.  I had to drive back through Chicago during rush hour.  All told, at the three hour mark… I was right where I started.

I paid my respects and bagan talking to various family members.  Here we were, all brought together by the passing of someone whom we all loved.  We were there to comfort each other, to share stories, to laugh and to cry.  At a wake is the chance to see humanity at its finest, there’s no clamoring, no blackstabbing, no shouting or drinking.  There’s only tears, hugs, nostalgia, and even smiling and laughter as we celebrate this crazy trip known as life.

A co-worker, just a few days ago, claimed that hell was here on earth.  As someone who appears to be Christian, this really surprised me.  Sure, there’s quite a bit of ugliness… but there’s far more beauty, and that’s what life here on earth is really all about.

Unfortunately, death did not stop with my grandmother this week.  I hopped on over to Rodger’s website, and learned of a terrible event that happened earlier this month, but just came to light recently.  Two good friends of his were murdered in their apartment… shot execution style.  I’ll let Rodger pick up the rest of the story here and here.

When I read about this event, my stomach churns…  and these are two people across the country whom I have never met.  I can not even begin to imagine what Rodger is going through.  My heart goes out to you, man.  I can only hope that the perpetrators of this deed get what’s coming to them.

With that death came one more, although far more virtual in nature.  Rodger’s Carver’s Dog has gone gently into the good night, replaced by Carny Town.  I can only hope that with this new online iteration, that life begins handing you good news instead of bad, Rodger.

I guess death finally decided he was done for the time being, and on his way out he decided to take pitchman BIlly Mays with him.  You might know him as that bearded guy that sells the Oxy-Clean on the television.

Hopefully death keeps his distance for at least a little while…

Zel-kun out.

Spent a good part of the day driving to Joliet and back to replace a monitor.  One perk of the job is that the company vehicle has good A/C, so it’s almost like a bit of a vacation during the day.

Planning on looking at some houses tomorrow, hopefully we’ll find one with less… issues attached to it.

Zel-kun out.

Well, Summer has officially come to Chicago, with no warning.  We’re coasting along with 50 degree mornings and 70 degree highs, and everything is just fine by me.  Then overnight it changes.  Now the morning greets me with an 85 degree blast of hot air, and the commute home is accompanied by the sun greenhousing my car up past 100 degrees.  It’s not pleasant.

With the heat of summer comes the battle my wife and I fight constantly, and that is the fight over the air conditioner.  I start to sweat if the temperature goes above seventy, and my wife starts freezing if it drops below eighty.  Every night we go back and forth about how it’s too hot and too cold.  This is the very reason why I need my basement space in whatever house we finally buy.  That way, she can be warm upstairs, and I can be cool downstairs.

It’s a nice thought, hopefully it’ll come to fruition soon.

Zel-kun out.

“Go and get yourself some thick black frames, with the glass so dark they won’t even know your name.”  – Z.Z.Top

When I bought my glasses the other day, I purchased a pair of prescription sunglasses.  I didn’t think much of it at the time, only that on sunny days, the sun can really make driving difficult.  It was the first time since I was a child that I had a pair of sunglasses, and even then they were always the cheapies.

These are NICE.

I think there’s something intrinsicly cool about a pair of shades.  Why else would the coolest people in the world (The Blues Brothers) wear them?  Why else would the biggest douches (Bono) wear them?

Cool factor aside, I find there’s a definite psychological factor involved when you’re wearing sunglasses… at least for me.  I find myself being more bold.  Oftentimes, when I’m at a place and my eyes are wandering, if someone looks up and looks like they’re looking at me, I look away.  But now, with my eyes hidden behind the sunglasses, I don’t care.

Even today, when I picked up lunch at Chipotle, there was no Tobasco left at the condiment bar.  Normally, I’d just sigh and leave.  Today, I marched to the nearest table with a bottle of tobasco, and asked to borrow it.

Anyone else out there feel a bit more… confident with sunglasses on?

I decided to try Twitter.  I’m not entirely sure what use, if any, it has, but being as popular as it is I figured I’d at least look.  As far as the interface goes, it’s not bad, like MySpace with less ads on the page.

I like the idea of belting out a quick update from wherever I might be, although I need to be careful not to sound vapid.  A ‘tweet’ is very short, which means what you say should be somehow relevant.  If I go on and say things like, “I’m eating subway now, I like Bacon,” I’m not exactly saying anything anyone needed to hear.  Today’s technology makes it all too easy to display all of our thoughts to the world.  People need to know when that thought is best kept to yourself.

I’ve long indicated to my friends that I don’t think very highly of Twitter.  Then again, I’ll bet if you asked me in 2004 what I thought about blogs, I’d probably have told you they’re retarded.  So worst case scanrio in about a week or two I’ll forget all about my Twitter account and let it fade into oblivion.

If you want to ‘follow’ me, here you go: www.twitter.com/zelkun

Zel-kun out.

UPDATE: Rodger Jacobs is on it, so I guess it can’t be THAT lame.

I first saw Bioshock long before it was released.  Pete sent me a link to a video where the creator was explaining the concept while he played a bit of the game.  I remember watching it and thinking that it was going to be awesome.  I remember that I couldn’t wait for it to come out so I could rush out and buy a copy.

When the game finally came out, I was deep into my World of Warcraft addiction, and decided that I really didn’t need to buy the game just yet.  After all, it was just an FPS.

When I finally bought an X-Box 360, I saw it on the shelves for about forty dollars, and thought about getting it.  I considered it until my eyes wandered over to games like Assasin’s Creed and Lost Odyssey.  So Bioshock once again fell by the wayside.

Not too long ago I saw it on the shelves of Gamestop for only thirty dollars, and considered getting it.  At this point, the memory of the video I watched was nearly gone, and I overlooked it several times.

Finally, last friday, I stood in Gamestop, and was just looking for something interesting to buy.  I got the bad news about the house, I broke my glasses, and I had a particularly difficult last few days at work.  It was all in all a sucky week, and I needed something to help take my mind off things.  Some men turn to alcohol… I turn to a new video game.

Take that as you will.

Gamestop was having a buy two, get one free sale, so I couldn’t walk out of there with just one game.  I went in and picked up a copy of Assassin’s Creed for $19.99, to replace the copy I loaned to a friend and wondered if I’d ever get back.  I spotted Blue Dragon, sitting there one the shelf for $14.99, so I decided to give it a shot.  I looked at Bioshock, which took up a good three spots on the shelf housing about eight boxes, each with a little $17.99 price tag.  I decided it was finally time, and took Bioshock home.

When I first started it up, I was mildly impressed.  There were some very nice visuals and unique architecture as you descend into Rapture, the underwater city in which the game takes place.  I finally get control of my character just in time to see some poor sap get eviscerated by some crazy woman right outside of my little submarine ball.  She looks at me through the window and decides she wants to eat my face.

Queue several seconds of her clawing at the windows and the walls, and the submarine shakes and shorts out.  She finally gets tired and seemingly wanders off.  That’s when the door opens and you’re encouraged to step out into that poor man’s entrails.

Afterwards, there’s a bit of a tutorial that doesn’t really feel like a tutorial, and that’s always a good thing.  A word to gaming companies everywhere: If you want to increase the replay value of a game, eaither really downplay the tutorial, or make it skippable.

The game is essentially a traditional first person shooter, with some special powers thrown in for good measure.  The gameplay is decent.  not outstanding, but definitely decent.  Take into account that I generally hate first person shooters, and that’s a glowing review from me.

Bioshock’s true appeal lies in its plot and ambience.  The game takes place in 1960, and you’re some poor sap that found himself in the wrong place at the right time.  Your plane crashes in the middle of the ocean, and you swim from the burning wreckage to the lighthouse you conveniently crashed right next to.

Once inside the lighthouse, you enter a little submarine and enter the city, learning that it was built by a man who was tired of having his ambitions thwarted by the governments of the world.  He built Rapture, where each man is allowed to persue his own interests, unfettered by ethics and morality.  It was a city filled with artisans, entrepenuers, and scientists.

The city’s architecture and style is trapped in the early to mid 20th century, the kind of place you’d expect the rat pack to roam around.  Although when you see the darkened and flooded halls, and flickering lights, you can imagine any number of Lovecraftian horrors to be roaming around.

For a reason I haven’t discovered yet, the population of Rapture went off the deep end.  The promise of genetic perfection through the substance known as Adam has gone straight to their heads.  As you pass through the rooms, you stumble upon insane ramblings, crazy conversations, and more than a few people who can’t wait to kill you by any means.  Each room seems to have a story, and sometimes you’re lucky enough to find a recording of that story scattered amidst the debris.  As you wander through the city, you get drawn in, just as a game is supposed to do.

It’s a terrific game, and at $17.99, definitely worthwhile.

Zel-kun out.

I stooped down to grab some equipment, and my glasses fell right off my face and shattered on the ground.  Those glasses have seen quite a bit.  They were with me when I had my job at XSport…. when I landed my current job… and I looked through them at my beautiful bride on my wedding day.  Goodbye spectacles, you will be missed.

When I got my first pair of glasses, my eyesight was a bit sub par.  I was in eighth grade, and I don’t remember having trouble reading, writing, or getting around.  I do remember when I put them on I was surprised I was able to clearly read the signs along the road.

I found out when these glasses broke that I am pretty much blind without them.  Reading a computer screen is an impossibility, even if I put my face inches from the screen.  I can drive, so long as I know where I’m going, because I can’t read any road signs.  As such, my eyes needed immediate attention, or I would not survive the week.

I called up a few optometrists, but only one could provide me with glasses the same day, Lenscrafters.  My insurance considered them out of network, but there wasn’t a whole lot I could do.  I made an appointment and headed to the mall (eww) after work.

I went in and had an eye exam.  I discovered, much to my horror, that without glasses, I could BARELY read the second line on the eye chart.  Yeah, that line with the two large letters?  Quite fuzzy.  I also learned that I have very little depth perception.  Given my lazy eye, I suspected that.

Other than having the eyesight of an impaired bat, my eyes were healthy, which is good I guess.  It was then time to pick out a new pair of frames.

And I have this to say…  Frame-producing companies of the world, WTF?!

The frames I looked at are seven tiny strips of steel, with four welding points and two hinges.  There’s maybe a couple dollars worth of material here, and maybe took a skilled person five minutes to assemble.  Why do they cost more (by a consideral margin) than my cell phone with built in camera, web browser, and mobile television?  Hell, they cost more than the precisely crafted lenses that go inside them.  I’m not happy about paying over a hundred dollars for those two plastic lenses, but I understand that there’s quite a bit of prescision and science behind them.  You’re fleecing people for a necessary product that’s easy for you to produce, plain and simple.

Lenscrafters also had a deal on prescription sunglasses, eighty-nine dollars for lenses and frames, which is not a bad deal at all, so I got a pair of those.  I must say that driving on a sunny day is much easier on the eyes now.

So, Lenscrafters, while I’m not entirely thrilled with how much my glasses and exam cost… the service I received was impeccable.  From the person behind the counter to the doctor in the exam room, they were all extremely knowledgeable, and put up with all my questions, and answered them eloquently.  They actually explained to me just how the lazy eye affects my vision, and the lens they created for it is better than any I’ve had before.  I’m pretty sure they’re the first people to take my lazy eye into account when calculating the prescription.

Lenscrafters, you’re okay in my book.

Zel-kun out.

It happened.

The seller decided foreclosure was the better option for her, rather than sell me her house.

Time to start looking again.

I don’t really have much else to say.

Zel-kun out.

That’s what this whole house-buying thing has turned into.

A fiasco.

There’s just no better word.  Apparently the seller is considering dropping out of the deal and sitting on the house until the bank forecloses on her.  She figures she’ll at least have a few more months in the house that way.

But, I have a terrific realtor and an attorney doing everything they can to make this deal work.  But I give you the line my attorney said yesterday.  Keep in mind, that this is a REAL ESTATE attorney.  This is what he’s been doing for years and years.

“I have never seen anything like this, it’s astounding.”

That’s right, I have the case that professionals in the field of real estate have never seen.

That’s fantastic.

Zel-kun out.

When I was wandering around Gamestop looking for something new, I was pretty excited to have stumbled upon Too Human.  After all, it was by Silicon Knights, who made one of my favorite games for the Gamecube: Eternal Darkness.  With it’s use of shadows and runes on the cover, and a name like ‘Too Human,’ I just knew it had to be another dark look at humanity, and how it might rise up against something malicious and far greater than it.

Well, I couldn’t have been further off the mark.  In fact, I struggle to find the meaning in the title at all.  Too Human is, in fact, Norse Mythology in a Sci-Fi setting.  This setting is, in fact, awesome.  I have, in fact, used the phrase, in fact, too often at this point.

The plot was decent enough, and the storytelling was done in a way that melded into the game without breaking the game play too much.  I especially enjoyed the character design of the Norse gods, and it was obvious a lot of time was spent polishing the graphics.

The best way to describe the game type is that it is your basic hack-and-slash dungeon crawler, with a bit of sci-fi thrown in.  Despite it’s unique setting, and beautiful scenes, there’s nothing particularly revolutionary about going through long dungeons, hacking and shooting through long dungeons, levelling up, and collecting oddly-named loot (Elite Metal Boots of Anger, Somber Broadsword of Empathy).

The battle system is unique in that you use the right-analog to attack.  When I discovered this fact, I groaned and went straight to the control menu to change it, but I couldn’t.  But I soon learned about ’sliding.’  Basically, when an enemy enters your ’slide range’ (about 20 feet or so), if you push the right-analog towards that enemy, you rapidly slide towards it and slam it with your weapon.  If you’re surrounded by enemies (and you ALWAYS will be), you end up richocheting across the battlefield like a crazy Norse pinball.  This is fairly entertaining and is one of the key factors in living just a little longer in battle.  So, when you’re not dying, battle is actually quite a bit of fun.

But that’s when you’re not dying.  And you will be dying.  A lot.  The first time you die, you see be-winged metal-clad sci-fi Valkyrie descend from the sky in a pillar of light, scoop up your corpse, and take you to Valhalla, and you will think that was pretty cool.  You will then appear back in the room you died in, with all the enemies you killed still dead, and all the enemies that killed you still alive.  There was no progress lost, so no matter how bad you are, you will beat this game.

That’s a nice idea, it is, but it’s implemented poorly.  The developers essentially said to themselves, “Since there’s little penalty for death (other than a bit of damaged equipment), we can make it as hard as we possibly can.”  And they do just that, they make the game frustratingly difficult.  And each time you die, you watch that Valkryrie scoop you up and fly off.  You’d watch that non-skippable Valkyrie look at you somberly a moment, and then slowly fly off.  The sequence takes about twenty seconds from your death cry to your eventual respawn.  And this can happen every minute or so if you’re not careful.

“Oh, you just don’t know how to not die,” you’d say.  You’d say that because you’re a jerk.

That is somewhat true at first.  There is definitely a learning curve.  When I got past the beginning part of the game, I began dying constantly.  Everything killed me.  I could respawn and maybe not even kill one enemy before I died again.  But then I learned how to zip around the battlefield, to roll out of the way of attacks, and to build up combos and unleash area attacks.  By the time I reached the last level (two days after I bought it), I could normally clear a room without dying, and if I was lucky enough to find some health-ups in the cleared room, maybe even clear the next one.

I defeated three out of the five bosses in the game without a whole lot of difficulty, and they were pretty fun battles.  The other two are built from the same template it would seem.  The ‘teleport around the screen and pelt you with ranges attacks’ template.  During these battles, I spent far more time watching the death sequence than I did actually playing.  I even unlocked the ‘Die 100 Times’ achievement.  No joke.  An achievement for dying one hundred  times.  Because you WILL.

Despite that, I really enjoyed the game.  I think if it was released for the PC, a couple user patches to tweak a few things could have made this a truly outstanding game, much like the modders did to Oblivion.  Seriously X-Box, you should really consider putting some user-created content out for download for your games.

As an aside, I set out to find out why the game was titled ‘Too Human.’  What I read most often goes something along these lines:

The gods of the game, the Aesir, are cybernetically-enhanced humans.  Baldur, the hero, is insufficiently enhanced, and is looked down upon by the other gods as being ‘Too Human.’

Really?  That’s the reason?  Because I didn’t really see any of that in the game itself.  And here come some spoilers.  If you don’t want to see the spoilers, stop reading now.

At the end of the game, we find that before the game began, Baldur was shot in the face.  He was killed, and as per custom, brought to Hel’s fortress.  As I watched the scene where he was shot, he didn’t even have those blue lines in his face, which seems to me that he didn’t have ANY cybernetic enhancements, leading me to question if being cybernetically enhanced is what divides the humans from the gods.

Now, if the other gods truly looked down upon Baldur as being ‘Too Human,’ they would have just left him being dead, right?  No, they raided Hel’s fotress and reclaimed Baldur.  He was then resurrected through cybernetic enhancements.  Granted, he lost a bit of memory, and the other gods weren’t entirely truthful to him about what happened, but that was because they didn’t want to piss him off and make him go on a rampage.

But it seems to me that these are things you wouldn’t do to a person if you looked down upon him for being ‘Too Human.’

Thoughts?

Anyhow, it’s a good game, and if you can find it for $19.99 like I did, not a bad idea to pick it up.  It’ll keep you entertained for at least the weekend.

Zel-kun out.