Sweet Video Games, How I've Missed You

For quite a while there (pretty much ever since I sold my 360), I was in a serious video gaming funk. I still rented games for my Xbox and DS, but I really couldn't get into any of them (mostly because they sucked).

However, for the past two weeks or so, I've really gotten back into gaming. Surprisingly, it was my DS that did it. I popped back in Phoenix Wright, after who knows how many months, and blew through the case I'd been stuck on. I'd forgotten how much fun the DS is. I knew I wouldn't be satisfied with just the Ace Attorney, so I went online and looked for some new games.

I'm now somewhat awash with DS and GBA games. I picked up Final Fantasy 4 Advance (aka FF2 on the old SNES) and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (unfortunately not the same game as on the old Playstation, but the same gameplay) for GBA, as well as Clubhouse Games (a fantastic party game with a shit-ton of card, board, and variety games) and Advance Wars Dual Strike (supposedly the best turn based stategy game on the DS) for DS.

Not to mention that I'd forgotten I had A Link to the Past for GBA, and I never finished Metroid Fusion.

Plus, my birthday's coming up soon, so that's the perfect excuse to treat myself to some other games I'm eyeing, like Final Fantasy 5 and 6 Advance (the latter aka FF3 on the old SNES), Metroid Zero Mission, Zelda: The Minish Cap, Metroid Prime Hunters, Phoenix Wright 2, and Hotel Dusk.

I think my DS is going to keep me busy for quite some time while I wait for the Wii to become available.

Tim Hardaway is a Dick

In case you haven't heard, Tim Hardaway, some forgotten basketball player, decided to open his mouth yesterday and spew bullshit. Let's take a look at what he said.

"You know, I hate Latino people, so I let it be known. I don't like Latino people and I don't like to be around Latino people. I'm racist. I don't like them. They shouldn't be in the world or in the United States."

But Tim, what if you had a Latino teammate?

"First of all, I wouldn't want him on my team. And second of all, if he was on my team, I would, you know, really distance myself from him because, uh, I don't think that is right. I don't think he should be in the locker room while we are in the locker room."

Ok, you caught me, Tim wasn't talking about Latinos. He was talking about homosexuals. But I thought it would be fun to insert something else that people have no control over, like national origin, and see if Tim's opinion looks any less stupid. What a shock. It doesn't.

But what Tim said about his feelings on homosexuality might as well have been about ethnicity. Or gender. Or any other dumbass reason for prejudice. It's all the same bullshit, and as much as we'd like to think that in today's society, those sorts of attitudes no longer exist, they do. They're more widely held then most of us are comfortable with, but we look past it because we don't talk about it. If we don't talk about it, we don't have to acknowledge it. And if we don't acknowledge it, we can pretend it doesn't exist.

So Tim, you're a dick. But I'd also like to thank you. I'd like to thank you for showing us that dicks like you still exist, and you're still as stupid as ever.

Why?

Sometimes I think the universe is just out to get me, like I've been targeted to get shit on.

I own all 7 seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD (not to mention all 5 seasons of Angel, but that's not really the point here). I've watched them all multiple times. However, I think the single most re-watchable episode of Buffy is Once More With Feeling. I got the urge to watch it tonight. I was especially excited because I've never watched any of the episodes on my bad-ass widescreen monitor.

There's just one problem. The episode wouldn't play. As in, it just sat there at a black screen. I thought maybe the disc had some dust on it or something, so I pulled it out and looked at it. Nope, pristine condition. No scratches, no dust. I put it back in, still no dice. At this point I had thoughts of putting my fist through the screen. But I resisted that urge.

Ok, let's think this through. Maybe the disc has some sort of weird copy protection that doesn't allow it to be played on PCs, like music CDs have now. I tried ripping it. There was a bad sector that I had to skip, but the disc finally ripped. Let's play it!

Yeah, the sector that got skipped was the Once More With Feeling episode. Goddammit. So here I am, with a disc I bought legally, and am trying to play legally, and I can't. Why? Who the fuck knows? I sure as hell don't. And it's just that one episode. The others play fine, no problems at all. But I don't want to watch the other episodes, I want to watch Once More With Feeling, mother fucker.

So I did what any reasonable person would do. I downloaded a torrent of the episode. I know what you're thinking. That's illegal. And you know what I say?

I don't fucking care. When I, as a law-abiding consumer who contributes to society, cannot legally access the content that I have purchased in a perfectly normal and acceptable fashion, what other choice do I have? I've already spent my money, it's only right that I get the content I paid for. So you can just fuck right off, you copy-protection anti-piracy assholes.

Colts Win!

The Indianapolis Colts are the Champions of Super Bowl XLI. That is all.

EDIT: On second thought, that's not all, because I noticed more bitching and whining and hatred being directed the Colts' and Peyton Manning's way. I already said a lot about this, but here's just one more thing.

Keep on complaining, assholes, because that's all you've got. Manning and the Colts are the champs this year, and you're not.

Better luck next year. Dicks.