Eight Brothers' Coined Horns

I think, if I was to go crazy, it'd be a bold new direction for my brand. Like, seething, bubbling, tics and outbursts crazy. Bad-theater-student-playing-crazy crazy. Muppet-slowly-electrocuted-by-a-car-battery crazy.

Yeah.

Exquisite Replica

I've been playing Harvest Moon this weekend. I can only play the SNES version; it's buggy, low-budget, and sparsely simplistic, but it's original. Every game after that feels like a copy, and then a copy of the previous copy, slowly in its atavism regressing past its own origin - the ur-shovelware.

Most games cloak their grind with monster-slaying, or car racing, or other unusual activities that one would assume to be innately fun. Thing is, Harvest Moon is labor, in the most elemental sense of the word. To get money out of a harvest, you must:

• Clear the field of rocks and stumps
• Till the land
• Buy seeds
• Plant the seeds
• Water the crops for 7-10 days
• Throw each potato/ear of corn/turnip/etc. into the delivery box

Which, all told, takes at least a couple hours. In Harvest Moon, you work the crops so you can start raising livestock, which lets you make money in the winter so you can enlarge your house and get married to one of the townie girls and have a kid.

Honest to god, after three days straight with the game, I can't figure what the carrot on the end of its stick is. Marriage, maybe? The dialogue is all sub-English, so achieving wedded bliss is about as satisfying as beating an NES game to glean a hearty "CONGLATURATION!!" and a pixelated portrait of a misshapen princess.

I don't think I've ever played a game of Harvest Moon to its completion. Maybe it's because of the motivation problem, but it's one of those games I enjoy taking a run at without feeling a need for completion.

I can no longer tell Red Bull ads from condom ads.

Today, on the train, some random guy punched me in the face, and my first thought afterwards was "I should blog this shit."

Man, I don't know.

Dr. Social

So, Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon.I've been playing it for the past few days, and it is a Fire Emblem game. It's a remake in the most regressive possible sense: imagine the plot and gameplay of an NES game, now on your DS! The graphics are ugly, and the game has large holes where modern innovations have been excised for nostalgia's sake.

Worst part is, I see myself beating FE:SD in advance of better, more deserving games. Fire Emblem is such a lazy game. It's in perfect rhythm to play while watching TV or riding the train. Each turn takes a couple minutes, and any sense of urgency dies when I inevitably need to repeat a level.

Fuck. I feel really bad about playing this game now that I've put all of this effort into trashing it. I did the same thing with Fallout 3, playing it for ten more hours after I realized I hated it. Bad Game Stockholm Syndrome?

I really want to write a story, like, actual fiction. Gotta get to it, figure out where to start, maybe hide my DS from myself.

Create

This night finds me agitating in my computer chair, still fuming about my lack of motion or direction. I've decided to do one of those things, the daily affirmation deal. You repeat your goal over and over until it becomes a mantra, and then until it becomes a reality. Scott Adams wrote about the power of affirmations in one of his books, and I've always been intrigued by how they represent a midpoint between the power of suggestion and the mystical spell.

A few years ago, my highest ambition in life was to own a 1988-91 Honda Prelude, just like my idol, Max the Car Thief. I employed a simple affirmation, many times a day: "I will get a 3rd-gen Prelude." So here, I'm going to do the same thing, partially for the gains outlined above, and partly as a mission statement. There's really no one I'll bore with this shit, since I'm pretty sure no one reads this anyway.


I am going enroll in a 4-year college, and graduate.
I'm going to get a decent job that pays well.
And I'm going to own a 3rd-gen Prelude 2.0Si, with 4-wheel steering, that's in Good condition.

The Triforce of Disdain

After finally tracking down a rental copy yesterday, I'm ass-in-the-middle of Mirror's Edge. Now, my greatest challenge: I am going to write my impression of this game without using the word "frustrating."

I constantly face situations where I'm stuck in a room full of people (who shoot me) and need to detect the exit before they're done shooting me. The game directs the player, early in the first chapter, to always avoid enemies. This is good advice, because Faith (the protagonist) can take about two hits before she goes down. Whenever I try to use the limited combat arsenal against more than two enemies, I die. But when I'm stuck in an enclosed space, being continually perforated by stormtroopers, it's often simply more expedient to kill them all so I can have enough breathing room to complete my jumping puzzle.

The jumping, sliding, and climbing are the best part of the game, but they're muddied by control choices and unresponsive environmental objects. Common scene: I'm running across the skyline, getting up to an exhilarating speed. I take a gigantic leap from one rooftop to another, aiming to catch a drainpipe and shimmy my way down to street level ... but, even though it looks like I've hit the pipe dead center, my character doesn't grab it, and I get to experience the very pretty death sequence yet again. I try the jump six more times before I finally get it right, but I throw the controller down and storm off ten minutes later when the whole situation repeats itself. It's really frustrating.

Whole Cloth

Sometimes I write just because I need to write. I see people in my extended peer group doing things that I'd love to, pursuing good jobs or schooling or relationships, and I get mad at myself. Anger turned inward can be a great motivator or it can wear you away. I feel very worn away. I don't know if it's serotonin, laziness, or a fierce desire to maintain homeostasis that keeps me from taking the minute steps necessary to improving my life. Left alone, I'd wait for a thousand tomorrows to come in hope that they'd bring me into a better situation and make me more of a person.

Well, I still need to write longer and more often. Then, expose that writing to more criticism than this little blog can draw.

Cataclysmic Pink

Covert videogame T-Shirts are my new obsession. You can buy a Mario shirt at any department store nowadays; apparel that says "I like games" has become devalued in its ubiquity. It's partially the snob in me, snarling at the thought that my niche pastime has become socially acceptable to espouse. Esoteric nerd merchandise acts as a hanky code for the high-functioning geek: a way to subtly communicate your interests without being the guy at the party who talks about his WoW character like new, starry-eyed parents talk about their children.

The T-Shirt itself has become this weird language of fabric semaphore, primarily for young men. Pants, jackets, skirts, and other items of clothing imply the traits of the wearer. Socioeconomic class, sexuality, gender, or political attitudes can be inferred from an outfit. But the T-Shirt is a Rorschach test emblazoned upon the chest: like the bumper sticker, it reveals a person's hidden tendencies, prejudices, convictions, and quirks.

In Just Seven Days, I Can Make You A Man

Burritos al pastor taste like Mexican sloppy joes.