Month: September 2003

I have several good reasons:
1. Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow (Official Throne Room Book of the Month): I am on the first page. The first two words, if truth be told, but they were tough words to memorize, OK?
2. Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver: I currently have two copies – one I bought at amazon and another my bro sent me from amazon for my birthday. Unfortunately, I do not have two toilets so I cannot put them both to use in the pimpest way imaginable, that is, placing identical reading materials in multiple Throne Rooms. One copy goes to my brother I guess, although I suspect a conspiracy on his part since he knows I love Neal enough to go as far as playing CS for two years as “hiroprotagonist.”
3. William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition: My first Gibson on actual paper media. (Anybody who hasn’t read Neuromancer on-screen is missing the entire point. Although if available, I would buy a boxed set of all his works printed in silver solder on recycled circuit boards to appease my inner Otaku.)
4. Mark Cerasini’s 24 The House Special Subcommitie’s Findings at CTU: A novel that fills plot gaps and background in the first series of the TV show 24 (which leads into the other reasons I am a Lying Liar who Lies; see below)
5. 24, Second Season: Well, Nena was half the reason I liked the first season so much and I didn’t think they could top it overall, but the second season is pretty good too. Although I do have to say that the appearance of a cougar (factoid: In Japanese, cougars are called “American Lions”) was the most pointless bullshit this show has yet produced.
6. ALIAS, First Season: Not as good as 24, but fascinating in that I spent the entire time trying to figure out if Jennifer Garner (who plays the shi-roprotagonist, Sydney) is pretty in real life or not. No, I do not mean in magazines or on TV, but I mean in real life. My woman and I got a kick out of watching her character’s de-facto fight move (reverse jumping spin kick) in the fight scenes. Thug w/Glock? Reverse jumping spin kick. Multiple baddies with kung-fu grip shankin action? Reverse jumping spin kick. Asian torture dude with dental assistant aspirations? Reverse jumping spin kick. Yes, she is a kickboxer made for television. And the hallmark weakness of traditional kickboxing (lack of uppercut) is made very apparent in this series. In fact, barehanded combat is shown as very weak so far – I don’t recall anybody being taken out without some serious combinations being landed. This makes for flashy fight scenes (although Sydney’s partner Dixon knows exactly ONE effective move taken straight from the Green Hornet series) , but what ALIAS really needs right now is the Tiger Uppercut. If I were the producer, I would send the whole cast to training sessions at the CAPCOM/WU-TANG School of Fighting Prowress and Cultural Sensitivity and wouldn’t let them back on the show until they could defeat masters Dhalsim, Blanka, and ODB at the same time. I mean, I would basically like them to be able to show Van Damme what a Razor Kick is all about, ya know?
7. Battlefield 1942 – Secret Weapons of WWII: This is a better expansion pack for BF1942 than the first one, Road to Rome. I mean, the Germans have a (non-functional) UFO for chrissakes! The jetpacks and jet gliders are pretty fun, too, and the Allied flying wing-type jet mounts rockets instead of machine guns. Tight! On some levels, the engineers have really useful alternate weapons. The Allied engineers have (auto?)shotties instead of Springfields and the Axis engineers have rifle-launched grenades instead of potato-mashers. Oh, and knives can be thrown (and used up) now, although it seems like heresy every time I chuck my Fairbank Sykes at an unsuspecting Kraut. The maps for BF1942 are getting really sweet – this is still one of the best-looking FPS titles in the killkillkill/capture the flag category.
8. Counter-strike: Just plain ol’ CS 1.5; Version 1.6 is still down. That is to say, the Steam servers are blocked or down. No more FAMAS (25-round mag sucks but I really like how this gun sounds. Tri-burst setting is representative of real life, I feel – totally unnecessary. It’s all about trigger [button?] control.). No more GALIL (I like this gun but I find it funny that it’s so cheap in this game. Almost half the price of a bread and butter AK? Kewl.) No more Ballistic Shield (and accompanying Shield-fu CT moves). Wah! At least I played a good new map (de_airninja) as well as an old stand-by (starwars) on 1.5.
BTW I am contemplating starting a CS blog because I really like to contemplate doing shit for which I have absolutely no time. Or negative time, even. My projects start out in the red. And spiral down into lighter and lighter shades of pink until…POOF! For instance: I could take the time I’m not spending on my moblog and invest it on starting a CS blog complete with daily screenshots (i 0nZ j00!)… But I would eventually have to split stocks on that as well in order to fund my next project…
9. I am a lazy bastard.
Curiously enough, the reasons I listed above are either listed reversely in order of importance, or are listed completely at random. I finished #6 above, am two hours away from finishing #5, will probably never finish #7 or 8, and will get back to you about thoughts on #1 – 4 when I’m done. After all, I’m thinking of making various reviews my next project…

I am so tired of procrastinating… This weekend, I promise new entries and a bit of sitework too. Last night I got home before 10 pm for the first time in a month or so… So I spent it watching the first season of ALIAS, which came from amazon yesterday along with a couple books… But I will cover this in full this weekend. I promise.