Rock Band

I have a vague sensation of wrong-ness. It's as though I've forgotten something, or that something has changed without my realizing it. It might be something that I've just found out: the vocals in the game Rock Band don't require the singer to actually say the words; the game only checks your tone. I have to say, I'm a little disappointed. I'm particularly surprised about this since the game has songs that don't check your tone at all. All you need to do is make a loud noise into the mike at the right time.

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Now playing: Little Richard - Good Golly Miss Molly
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Best Of Year, 2007: EGM is wrong

EGM gave Bioshock Game Of The Year. I have no idea why. The AI is lame, the dialogue repeats itself often, it's less than 20 hours long, and the ending was lame. Worst of all, it had a near-fatal glitch that caused the game to suffer frequent bouts of intolerable lag. Apparently, it doesn't happen on every machine, but I've heard of it happening often enough that Bioshock loses some points. (Full disclosure: I did get that glitch, and it was enraging.)

Anyway, I haven't played all the games that would be contenders for Game of the Year, so I don't feel that I can declare for one. Here are some of my nominees, though:

• Halo 3
• Call Of Duty 4
• Rock Band
  
• Super Mario Galaxy
• Orange Box

I do have one definitive winner: Team Fortress 2 wins Best Graphics. "Good Graphics", for many, seems to mean "realistic". I vehemently disagree with that idea. Graphics for video games are like art in any other form. If realism was all we were looking for in art, we'd only take photographs. Anyway, TF2 looks beautiful.

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Now playing: Beck - Nausea
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Obama Vs. McCain

Well, I was partially right. Although I didn't predict the structure of the nomination correctly, I did correctly call the presidential candidates, assuming that Obama sweeps up the remainder of the delegates he needs.

Regardless of who wins the nomination, this election will be choosing a candidate of change. You may think that McCain can't be much of a change. I'd point out that McCain is a representative of the absurdly old. If he's elected, he'll be the oldest president in history by 2011. This is probably my only real issue with McCain, actually. After all, Reagan was elected younger, and he was suffering from Alzheimer's while still in the White House.

Social Security and Medicare

For some reason, there seems to be some grand conspiracy to group Social Security and Medicare together. I can understand why Republicans do it; they want to end both, and Social Security looks bad when it's attached to the much less stable Medicare.

Even the biggest alarmists over Social Security say it will "go bankrupt" (which isn't an accurate term) in decades, not years. Medicare is much more fragile, since it isn't funded in the same way. The Republican description of "Social Security and Medicare" facing a crisis is rather like saying "My housing bill and Medicare are in crisis". While technically true, (my housing fund cannot pick up the slack in a federal program), the statement is essentially a lie.

So it's clear why Republicans talk that way. The thing that mystifies me is why the "liberal" media uses the same terminology. Not that I think the media is secretly a Republican operating system, I just think they're lazy.

Anyway, I forgot what I was trying to get at with all this.

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Now playing: The Beatles - Mother Nature's Son
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Shakespeare: Romeo And Juliet

Like I said earlier, I tend to root for the underdog. This naturally predisposes me to be against something as famous and popular as Romeo and Juliet. With this in mind, I don't care for Romeo and Juliet. More precisely, I don't care for the popular view of it today.

First of all, I don't care for the love story, or at least how it's perceived today. People seem to believe that it's the greatest love story ever told. I personally believe that it's about two rather stupid kids who let their hormones get the best of them. At the beginning of the play, Romeo is madly in love with one woman, then he falls in love again upon seeing Juliet. If this were a story of true love, I don't think there would be the bit about Romeo already being in love. Also, the characters specifically allude to how silly this all is: Juliet points out that they haven't even said one hundred words to each other, and oh, is she ever in love.

Anyway, I think there's an interesting story in there about two feuding houses, but the romance angle has blown that out of the water. This brings up an interesting conundrum: would you rather be famous and misinterpreted by the lowest common denominator, or would you rather be forgotten by most everyone, but understood by those who know you?

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Now playing: Lynyrd Skynyrd - Sweet Home Alabama
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Writers' Strike, RIP

Now that the writers' strike is over, I thought it was my chance to weigh in. As a perennial supporter of the underdog, I have to say that striking is always good, and that the owners are always bad. I have no data to support this, it's just an emotional reaction to the underdog.

Political Prediction: Superdelegates

As you know, I like making political predictions. I've been saying that there's no way that the Democrats could have a brokered convention: after all, the only candidate who earned delegates other than the Big Two was Edwards, and he got less than .5%. The odds that Hilary and Barack are going to stay within .5% of each other are absurdly low. (However, this is what happened in Super Tuesday.)

Anyway, I've been ignoring a crucial fact: of the 4,000+ delegates, about 700 are Superdelegates, who get to vote for a candidate at whim. Depending on how cautious and cynical these Superdelegates are, the odds that Clinton and Obama could fail to get enough delegates by the convention drastically increases. It is well known that some Superdelegates have already cast their votes -- notably Ted Kennedy-- but they can always change their minds.

Anyway, this means that we can still hold out hope. I could punch up some numbers to calculate probabilities and margins, but that would be both difficult and pointless.

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Now playing: The Jackson 5 - I Want You Back
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Political Forecast: I Don't Know

Super Tuesday is over, and I was half right. McCain is essentially the automatic nominee at this point. Unfortunately, I was wrong on the Democratic side. Somehow, it's still essentially tied for Barack and Hillary.

The nice thing about predicting things is that no one remembers when you get things wrong. I have a new one: Clinton and Obama fight it out until one of them wins. I think this one is pretty safe.

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Now playing: DragonForce - My Spirit Will Go On
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Caucusing

I'm going to the caucus tonight. I have to say, voters are idiots. According to a news report, the number one issue for Dems is "change". Change? THAT DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING!

Are you saying that you'll vote for someone based on how they aren't the current president, or the degree to which they aren't the current president? You'll vote for a dolphin, then; that'd be a big change, you idiots.

PS.
NPR mentioned that Giuliani has bought the most expensive delegate in American history: $59,000,000+ to win a single delegate in Florida. I hope it was worth it.

Why couldn't he have won Florida? Doesn't he even care about the chance of getting a brokered convention?

Political Update

With Super Tuesday tomorrow, I thought I'd update my political predictions. Since Giuliani has dropped out after buying the most expensive delegate in American history, I don't think that either side will go to the convention.

Current Prediction:

Obama either wins the nomination Tuesday, or gets enough delegates as to make it inevitable, and so does McCain. Obama wins the election at large.

Stupid English: Love

English is a stupid language. Here's an example that irritates me: the word love.

English uses it for almost every concept concerned with positive emotions. A man "loves" his country, his wife, his children, his local sports team, and a ham sandwich. Unless he is deranged, this is not the same emotion.

Anyway, That's all I got.

2 Years!

The blog turns two today. Instead of having one post that's got twice as much, I think I'll just have two posts that are twice as bad.

...

That was easy.

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Now playing: Archie Gates - Don't Know Why (It's My Favorite Gun)
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Little Update And Some Star Wars

I haven't updated in a while, sorry about that. The thing is, I've been doing this crazy thing called a 40-hour work-week. It's a crazy thing that weirdos do. Anyway, it's very tiring.

A little update on the Star Wars RPG I posted about earlier: I'm in a game right now, and my plan didn't work as well as I had planned. The d20 means that everything is crit-happy, for both good and bad crits. When I get to level 5, I'll do better, since I can return shots to the enemy.

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Now playing: Rush - Red Sector A
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