I’m pretty sure I’m not bipolar….

211,

Guess what.

211,

     When you work as a temp at the Department of Elections long enough, you tend to come across some very interesting names (ever met a guy named Fresh N Minty?).  Today however, I came across a disturbing last name for a guy.  The name as itself isn’t disturbing despite the fact that it references one of the most reviled creatures on planet Earth.  I found out today that some people have the unfortunate pleasure of having the last name ‘Roach’.  See.  Not that disturbing at all, but when you work at the Department of Election, you also get really bored.  So, my mind decided to have fun with that last name, and that’s when it hit me.  Let’s say a man, whose last name is Roach, and a woman is copulating, and the woman is not having fun.  Her mind starts to wonder, and she realized while she’s looking downwards that his last name truly is Roach.  Chances are she’ll start screaming and run out of the room in pure and utter disgust.  Can you blame her?

P.S.  If I have heard something, I wouldn’t have written this post now would I.

212,

"Good evening ladies and gentleman.  This is the 8:25 o’clock news formerly the 9:59 o’clock news formerly the 11:14 o’clock news, and I’m Vulla Krep.  You may be wondering why we were unable to broadcast the last couple of days.  It’s quite simple really.  We haven’t paid our power bill in over two months, but fortunately for us we were able to create a generator powered by a couple of our employees on an exercise bike.  But enough about that, without further ado we bring you to Tim Behr who is still covering our on going report on Hayward resident Karli Winata’s future.  Tim.

"Thank you Vulla.  As you may know, channel -83 is dedicated to bringing you news that matter to your daily life everyday, but today will not be one of those days.  I’m here with Karli Winata who still awaits a response from 1UP.com.  Hello Karli."

"Hello Time"

"Tell me Karli, it’s been over a week and a half since the interview and still you have heard nothing.  How do you feel about your chances of getting this internship?

"Right now I’m on the verge of giving up."

"You haven’t given up yet?"

"I thought about it, but I am not giving up until I hear something.  Until then, there’s still a sliver of hope left in me that I might get the internship."

"Have you attempted to contact them since the last time we spoke?"

"Yes I did Tim.  Last Friday I called up Sam Kennedy on both his office phone and his cell phone.  Funny story about that.  So I called up his office right.  I kinda practiced what I was going to say before hand and tried to anticipate what he might say, but instead, I had to leave a message.  My whole practice was built around me and him, not me and his voice mail recorder.  I sounded ok at first, but near the end, I started stuttering…bad.  I thought to myself that if he gets that message, he’s going to think that I’m some kind of mentally retarded person or something.  So I called his cell phone, but he didn’t pick up.  I didn’t want a repeat fiasco so I didn’t leave a message.  Yesterday, I crafted a message asking to know if they’ve reached a decision regarding me.  I sent it to both Sam and Mike, but since this is the weekend, I don’t expect them to get back to me anytime soon."

"I imagine you’ve been checking your e-mail constantly since our last talk"

"Let’s just say that in the last week, I’ve checked my e-mails more times than I’ve checked it in the past year…or two."

"Wow!  You must’ve checked it like a hundred times a day."

"No.  Just once a day."

"Oh…….kay.  Anyways, have you checked it today?"

"Yea.  Still nothing.  Now if you don’t mind, I need some sleep"

"but it’s only 8:47 PM."

"I know, but I’m really tired from work."

"Work?  Did you work today?"

"And yesterday."

"You worked through the weekend?"

"Yeah, and I think I’ll be working again next weekend.  Stupid election"

"Ouch.  No wonder why you want that internship so much."

"Definitly.  This whole election job thing is definitly getting on my nerves.  Worst part is going to be on election day.  Not because there’s going to be alot of work.  That’s a given.  I’m talking about the fact that they assigned me to the phones.  I’m going to be taking in calls from polling places to solve their problems!"

"That sounds like a recipe for disaster."

"That’s not eve the worst part."

"Oh?"

"I have to come in at 5 AM!"

"5 AM!  What for?"

"Damn if I know.  They’re going to train me later about that."

"Well Karli.  We’re going to give you the time to relax now."

"Thanks.  Listen.  I’ll give you guys a call when I get the e-mail ok."

"That’ll be great.  This is Tim Behr reporting live from Karli Winata’s room.  Back to you Vulla"

"Thank you Tim.  Channel -83 would now like to announce a retraction to last time’s story concerning the two dogs.  The owner of the brown dog took offense when the brown dog was described as big and fat.  We would like to appologize about that.  What we meant to say was enormous and rotund.  Thank your for joining us this evening folks.  Sorry to cut the news short.  Our employees are getting tired riding the bikes.  So here’s a quick rundown on tonights stories.  Stocks are down.  People dying in Iraq.  Bush’s ratings decline.  Celecbrity A breaks up with Celebrity B.  Jack Thompson declares Jihad against some other video game.  Sun will rise tomorrow.  Good night.

211,

"Gooooood Evening folks.  This is the 9:59 o’clock news formerly the 11:14 o’clock news, and I’m Vulla Krep.  We start today’s broadcast with a story that we have been following very closely.  Hayward resident Karli Winata was recently interviewed for an internship at the video game news website 1UP.com.  He was told to expect a reply via e-mail by either last Friday or this week.  Our field reporter Tim Behr was there when he checked his e-mail last Friday, and today he’s there again.  We join now with Tim Behr once again in Karli Winata’s room.  Tim."

"Thank you Vulla.  I’m here once again with Karli Winata who is about to check his e-mail for a possible reply.  Thank you for having us mister Winata."

"Please don’t call me mister.  It makes me feel old"

"I’m sorry sir.  What would you like me to call you"

"Magnificent Bastard?  Just kidding.  Call me Karli."

"All right then.  Thank you for having us Karli.  I see that you’re about to check your e-mail."

"Yes I am Tim."

"Tell us, how do you feel right now?"

"It’s hard to describe Tim.  I don’t know why, but I feel like I’m standing on a crossroad except I don’t control which direction I’m taking.  It’s quite unnerving actually."

"Are you afraid that if you don’t get this internship, you’ll never have another chance at getting into video game journalism?

"Yes.  That’s right.  This felt like my one best chance of getting in.  If I don’t get in…well… it feels like my dream will die right then and there.  I don’t know how I feel about losing the one dream I’ve ever had."

"Well surely you’ve had other dreams that you’d want to pursue."

"Well of course I do, but this is the only one that’s career related.  All the other ones are like ‘winning the lottery’ dreams or ’saving the world’ dreams.  I know that those are fantasies that will never come true.  This is one dream that I might actually have a shot at achieving."

"Well let’s not wait any longer.  Let’s open up your inbox."

"All right then.  Here goes nothing."

"Karli is now entering his password.  He’s clicking submit, aaaannnnnndddd….still nothing.  It looks like we’ll have to wait another day.  Say is that another interview?"

"Yeah.  I might have another interview lined up for me."

"Can you tell us more about it?"

"Not much to say really.  Mainly because I don’t know all of the details.  All I know is that they’re looking for people with Computer Science degrees and it’s entry level IT."

"IT?  As in technical support?"

"Yup.  According to their website, they’re some kind of IT consultant company.  I think."

"Sounds like a good fit for you."

"Yea I’m sure it does."

"You don’t sound to excited at the prospect."

"You know… every time someone brings up the subject, I get really uneasy.  I know that I have to be more active at looking for a job, but I just don’t want it."

"You don’t want to work?"

"It’s not that I don’t want to work.  I just don’t want to work in the computer field.  I told you all this before!"

"Oh right I forgot."

"I remember the times when people ask me what field do I want to work in.  I always shift around a little bit first, trying to make what I say next sound convincing.  When I tell them that I want to work in the computer field, I always felt like I’m lying to them.  The exact wording should be, "I am trying not to let over six thousand dollars worth of education go to waste."  I know it doesn’t sound like much, but every penny put into it came straight out of my pocket.  I have a certain pride for it."

"Nice!  Well Karli, it looks like today’s another bust."

"Yea it sure is."

"If you don’t mind, we’ll come back tomorrow and check up on you."

"I’ll see you then."

"This Tim Behr reporting live from Karli Winata’s room.  Back to you Vulla."

"Thank you Vulla.  In other news, a big fat brown dog was spotted sleeping with 3 bones in its clutches while a nearby yellow dog looks on wistfully.  More on this story after this."

210,

     Generally speaking, gamers are people who play video games consistently, but did you know that the gaming population has subsections to it?  Take sports games for an example.  Not all gamers play sports games.  Only a specific subsection of it does.  The sad thing is that it’s a huge subsection.  One day, I’ll get back to the reason why it’s sad, but for now let’s talk about one subsection to which I belong.  They’re called bathroom gamers.  As the name implies, they’re gamers who play games in the bathroom, specifically while they’re on the toilet.  They can sit there for minutes and minutes and not realize that they’re done.  When they do get up, they walk forward in pain as the circulation returns to their legs.  I remember one time I spent a good 35 minute on the toilet thanks to my DS, and when I got up, I couldn’t feel my right leg.  It was like a stump I had to drag around for about 5 minutes.  My left leg was worse off though.  It didn’t lose the circulation completely which means I get to feel the blood flooding back into the leg.  It doesn’t sound painful, but take my word for it.  It’s excruciating.  So there I was with a stump and leg that feels like its on fire trying to get my pants on.  Boy was that fun.  Bathroom gamers truly are a sorry lot.  They make something that normally take 3 or 4 minute tops and stretch it to an average of 20 minutes.  My excuse for being a bathroom gamer?  I just want to do something to take my mind off of the "activities" on a toilet.  I do find it strange that not everyone who owns a portable game system ends up being bathroom gamers.  I know of at least two people who should be bathroom gamers but isn’t.  One attest that he tried, but just couldn’t do it.  Different folks, different strokes I guess.  Are you a bathroom gamer?

210,

     Welcome to 4th and final week of the PS3 vs the Wii month.  After all this talk of what exactly these consoles are made of, it’s time that we get to the last and most important topic of the PS3 and the Wii, the games.  If we were to liken a game console to a human being, everything we’ve talked about so far has been about the body, but the games of a system constitutes the soul of a game console.

     Think of the games of a system to be the different events and actions that a person experiences through his or her life.  Each one of them shapes a person to the point where just by looking at someone’s history can give you an idea of what a person is like.  The library of games that game consoles have does the exact same thing.  If you play enough games on one system, you’d get the feel of a system’s "soul".  Like all of the topics before, the PS3 and the Wii once again is impossible to create any kind of comparisons.

     As I’ve pointed out before, the PS3 is simply a vastly more powerful system than before, and in turn, the games we’re getting ends up being very much more of the same as before.  About 21 games is scheduled to be released by the end of 2006, and 16 of them has a previous incarnation on the last generation of consoles.  This trend is nothing new in the video game business, but the only things differentiating them from their previous incarnation are better graphics, tweaked game engine, and possibly use the motion sensors of the controller.  The core basic game play will remain largely unchanged.  Call of Duty 3 and Resistance: Fall of Man, both highly anticipated launch title First Person Shooters for the PS3, are still just a shooting game.  NBA 07, Madden NFL 07 NBA 2K7, and its ilk are still just sports simulators but with updated rosters and tweaked game engines.  This list goes on and on making the library of games for the PS3 almost no different than the PS2 or even the PS1.  Yes, all of the games to be released on the PS3 will be mind-blowingly beautiful, but after that wears off, and it will eventually, what’s next?  PS4?  If there is one good thing about this strategy is that the games are all based on their predecessors.  I know I’m contradicting myself here, but working off of a predecessor means that you get to improve on it.  Call of Duty 3 has had 3 iterations before, as the number 3 tacked on at the end implies.  It is without a doubt that the people who makes Call of Duty 3 will improve upon what was in Call of Duty 2.  This can’t be discounted so easily because video game history is filled with games that tried to be original but failed simply because they had no precedent to work off of and improve.  The paradox in this situation is that after a while, you get right back to where you started.  Despite the fact that Call of Duty 3 will undoubtably be a success, what’s new?  When are we going to get that feeling of excitement that we felt the first time we played Call of Duty 1 all those years ago?  This predicament is true for all the other games in the PS3’s current list of launch titles.

     The Wii wanted no part of continuing this trend that they felt was slowly killing the game industry.  That’s why almost all of their games are basically new.  The names of the games may share some similarities with past games, but make no mistake.  The games are nothing like before.  Thanks in large part to the control scheme which puts a much greater emphasis on motion, Wii games share very little similarities to Gamecube games.  For that matter, Wii games share very little similarities to any games before.  Along with the hope of attracting new gamers into the fold, they also hope to change games in general.  Naturally, a great deal of Wii games are basically working from scratch, and as I pointed out before that carries with it a great deal of risk.  So much of the games that is trully original to the Wii is not much more than a collection of mini games.  The most notable of which, Rayman Raving Rabids, may be original and fun thanks to its great use of the Wiimote, but its also makes it relatively shallow to most veteran gamers.  Mini-games are usually considered as a kind of garnish to most video games.  It’s there, but it’s not the point of the game.  Game developers have no precedent to work on for games whose main method of control is motion.  Right now they’re doing the best they can with a very new technology, and the results tend to be somewhat shallow because of it.  Funnily enough, this shallowness to most of the games achieves the Wii’s goal to attract new gamers.  Nintendo believes that these games that requrires no background in gaming to play is exactly what they need to attract a new audience.  After all, how is anyone suppose to learn to play something like a first person shooter or an RPG without some kind of previous experience with the genre?  It’s almost impossible to break through the gaming barrier that’s been put in place by the evolution of video games.  Evolving video games in general was a necessary step in keeping gamers, but it left behind any hope taking in new gamers.  In a sense, de-evolving the games may very well be the next necessary step to keeping video games open to the world.

     I know that I took you on a very long and, if you’re not even interrested in the subject, very boring ride through the PS3 VS the Wii month, but what you should know is that all of this fascinates me.  To gamers, this is a very exciting time to be in.  For once we have absolutely no idea what the future holds for us.  Will we finally see innovation rising from its ashes taking its rightful place in gaming, or are will history wins out and bring another five of ten years of video games that’s almost indistinguishable from past video games.  I’m well aware that video games holds no real purpose in life.  Their nothing but distractions from the essentials of life like contributing to society or voting or starting a family, but I can’t help the fact that video games have played a giant role in raising me to be the kind of guy that I am today.  Everyone needs some kind of certainty in life, and aside from my family, I have one.  I am a gamer.

211,

"Good evening folks.  This is the 11:14 o’clock news.  I’m Vulla Krep, and you’re not… What?  It’s not like Chevy Chase has a patent on that.  Anyways, we will immediatley join our field journalist Tim Behr who is currently covering breaking news.  Tim."

"Thank You Vulla.  I’m currently outside Hayward resident Karli Winata’s room awaiting on when he’s going to check his e-mail.  Normally such events would not be reported, but only two days ago, Winata was interviewed by 1UP.com for an internship.  He’s been very anxious about the result and is hoping to hear something by today.  He’s currently employed as a temp over at City Hall of San Fran…Wait a minute, I’m getting word that he is checking his e-mail now.  Let’s go inside and see the result live as he opens his inbox."

"Good evening Mr. Winata."

"What the hell?!?!?  Who are you guys?"

"I’m Tim Behr, and we’re with the 11:14 o’clock news team.  We want to know if you have indeed been hired by 1UP.com."

"What?  11:14 o’clock news?  I’ve never even heard of that!  Just get out of my room!"

"Sir please if you’ll let us stay…"

"No!  Get out!  And turn that m*********r off!"

"You can’t kick us out, sir.  The public has the right to know!"

"I don’t care about the public!  For all I care they can eat dirt and lay eggs!  Now get out!"

"Sir please.  We won’t be in your way.  We just want to commemorate this occasion."

"Commemorate?"

"Yes.  That’s right.  If this is indeed the moment you get this job, it might very well be the turning point in your life.  Isn’t that correct?"

"Well…yeah.  This job is pretty important to me."

"Well sir, if you do get this job, this momentous occasion truly deserves to be told around the world, or at least for people who gets channel -83."

"Channell -83?  How the hell do get that?"

"You kinda have to make a very specialy shaped antenna made out of tin foil, but enough about that.  Mr. Winata, weren’t you about to open your inbox?"

"Oh right…uuhhhm… hang on.  You guys want something to drink or anything?"

"We’re fine sir.  Just go ahead and open your inbox."

"Alright…Here goes nothing."

"I don’t know if the camera can see it, but he’s openning his inbox…aaaannnndd it looks like he didn’t get any new e-mail.  How do you feel Mr. Winata?"

"Fine I guess.  They said they might know by today.  I guess I’ll just have to wait till next week."

"Do you know when next week?"

"No I don’t."

"Let’s talk about ifs.  If you don’t get this internship, how will you feel?"

"How will I feel?  I will feel despair like I’ve never known before.  I will feel sorrow like nothing else I’ve ever felt.  I gotta tell ya Tim.  If I don’t get this job…I…I’d… I don’t know.  I just don’t know."

"You are currently employed correct?"

"Yes, and if I don’t get this internship, I guess I’ll just stay with them untill the end of the election."

"Did you tell them about you applying for this internship?"

"Yes I did."

"What did they say?"

"They got worried about losing a pair of hands for their team, and I don’t blame them.  When they hired me, they asked me if I was willing to commit these months to them.  Being broke that I was, I just said yes.  This opportunity was way too good to ignore.  I had to go for it and try.  I promissed them that if I don’t get this internship, I would stay with them and not go on any other job interviews."

"Other job interviews?"

"I actually managed to land three other job intervies before this one, but none of them appealed to me in the least bit.  I graduated with a computer science major, but I can’t bear the thought of a career in that field."

"Why didn’t you change your major?"

"Do I look like Cassandra?  I didn’t know what it was going to be like!  At the time, I have zero, ZERO clue as to what I wanted to do with my life.  Even near the time of graduation, this prospect of heading into a computer science related career just gave me this…this…unsettleling…uneasy feeling.  It was as if I knew that this was not what I wanted to do with my life, but the thought of trying something else scared the crap out of me even more.  So I just stuck with it all the way past graduation."

"And that’s why this internship is that important to you."

"Yes!  If I land this, I won’t have to worry about what I want to do with my life.  I would have FOUND it.  I would pour my blood and soul into that internship!"

"Wow…That’s intense."

"But chances are I probably didn’t get it."

"Why do you say that?"

"I have this nagging feeling that I messed up the interview.  It has to do with how I talk to people, especially to people I don’t know.  Basically, I second guess everything I say.  Let’s say someone asked me where the bathroom is in my house.  To be exact, its the door with a cabinet right next to it.  I know that, but what comes out of my mouth is "Well…uuhhmmm…it’s that door across from the….uuuhhmmm wait…. well just go down that hallway and…uhm it’s the 2nd door…no wait uuuhhmmm….its the third door…..is it?….uuuhhmmm welll uhhhmm….ok…just walk down the hall way until you see that…uuuhhmm…what’s it callled…..uuuhhmm coat..no. jacket…no….clothes hanging brown thing…..What the hell is that called..uuuhhm…. ok scratch that…"  need I say more?"

"Wow, that was pretty bad."

"Ya think!  Imagine something like that during the interview, and you can see why I don’t think I did very well."

"Well maybe you imagined it to be that bad."

"I don’t think so.  I always come across as indecisive, fidgety, and just outright awkward when I know that I’m being judged."

"We’re running low on time here.  Just as a last question.  If you didn’t get this internship, what will you do after your temp job is over in November?"

"Probably just keep looking for a job in the computer science field."

"But I thought you don’t want that."

"Sometimes it isn’t about what you want more so than what you need.  I have a computer scinence degree.  Not a video gaming journalism degree.  I might as well use what I have."

"Well ok than, Thank You Mister Winate.  I wish you luck in your ventures.  This is Tim Behr reporting live from Karli Winata’s bedroom.  Back to you Vulla"

"Thank you Tim.  That was very informative and really depressing.  And that wraps up the 11:14 news.  If you feel like you have something to say about tonight’s story, please do so at Karli Winata’s blog.  I’m sure he can use all the encouragement right about now.  Thank you and good night."

211,

     Have you seen that movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?  I didn’t, but I really wish I did.  I only saw the trailer, and If the movie trailers reflected what’s in the movie, Willy Wonka said something to Charlie when they first met.  It was something like

"And you…Well, you’re just lucky to be here aren’t ya?"

     Instead of Willie Wonka and Charlie, imagine it was Sam Kennedy and me.  Instead of the Chocolate factory, imagine it was the Ziff Davis Media, the parent company of 1UP.com, floor.  After our initial greeting by the elevator, he took me over to his office which, luckily for me, was fairly far from the elevator.  We walked past the EGM section of the floor which was ridiculously smaller than I imagined it to be.  I saw EGM Executive Editor Shane Bettenhausen’s cubicle and saw that he was telling the truth about owning the most video game crap compared to everyone else on the floor.  I wished I stopped to take it all in, but from the glances I made, you can’t even see the walls of the cubicles or for that matter his desk.  I think I saw a computer monitor, but I wasn’t sure.  I was amazed that Shane could even walk into his cubicle let alone work in it.  I also passed by this sort of conference room where people were playing some DS game on a TV!  I’ve always suspected that there was a way to do that.

     We finally reached his office after passing by the 1UP.com section.  The funny thing about this "interview" is that it barely qualified as an interview.  From the interviews I’ve been to, they ask you about…well, you, but all he did was talk about the situation that 1UP is facing which brings up the reason that they need an intern almost immediatly.  He barely asked anything.  Whenever he wasn’t looking at me, I glanced around the room.  Usually, offices are the most boring rooms in the entire world.  I’m willing to bet that paint drying on a wall is more engaging than an office room, but then again, I’m not in just any ordinary office.  I was in the Editor in Chief of 1UP.com’s office.  Just about everything in the office captured my attention.  I saw a bunch of video game, some still in its shrink wrap, piled up in one corner.  I saw a TV which I’m willing to bet he uses to do reviews for games.  I saw a board with little notes scribbled on it.  Some of which says something about finishing Halo?  Just thinking about what that little note meant excited me.  Is this for some article that he’s working on?  Is it some internal event they’re working on?  I don’t know.  Fortunately for me, I was able to split my attentions without giving away the fact that my attention was split.  With what he was saying combined with my observations of his room, I couldn’t stop smiling.  As it turns out, the reason he didn’t ask very much was because he was going to hand me over to Mike NG the director of productions for 1UP.com who would be my boss if I’m hired.

     Mike Ng, as the title implies, is the boss of the production team on 1UP.  They are responsible for the creation and upkeep of the website.  Apparently, they’ve been under staffed for a while now and desperately need an extra hand to deal with the upkeep of the website.  He showed me the program that I’ll be using if I’m hired.  The strange thing about this was that he showed me the program in detail.  He showed me how to do nearly everything with the program.  While he was doing this, I was thinking to myself "Am I hired."  After he exaustively detailed everything the job entailed, we talked about how everyone can be categorized into one of 4 "departments", productions, design, editorial, and engineering, but people in one deparment can contribute to other departments.  For example, if Mike Ng wanted to draw the art for the next cover story for 1UP.com, he can.  This interchangeability fascinated me.  We also talked about what it feels like to just be there.  He said that if you stop and listen to the chatter in the office, you’re basically listening to the state of the video game industry at that moment.  Instead of watching the ball game from the stands, you’d be watching it from the dugout.  I know this to be true because while we were talking, Mike left the door openned, and I can hear editors talking about games.  I was tempted to tune out Mike and listened to them, but I knew better.  Besides, Mike closed the door after they got too loud.  Mike finally asked me some questions, but they weren’t what I was expecting.  I came to the interview prepared for the usual "Tell me about your experience at that company" or "Tell me about yourself."  The one I hate the most is "Tell me your strengths and weaknesses."  I never know what to say to that.  ("Well, I’m….very good at flipping coins.  I’m just not very good at guessing the outcome.")  Instead of these questions, he simply asked, "what parts of 1UP are you interrested in?"  I was taken back by this.  I wasn’t prepared.  By this time, my enthusiasm has grown so big that I feared it would make me look like a lunatic if I let it all out on just one question.  I toned down my answer and retained my composure.  As usual the stuttering came out on cue.  I really should do something about that.  It always makes me look like an idiot in front of strangers which in turns worsens the stutering.  He also asked me if I had anymore questiong for him.  Again I wasn’t expecting to be the one asking the questions.  So I just asked two questions.  What’s the pay, and what’s the dress code.  I couldn’t give a damn what the pay was, 11.50 per hour in case you’re wondering, and I already know what the dress code is.  At the end, he mentioned that he had two other interviews which totally sunk my hopes of "I’m already hired," and that they’ll reach a decision either by Friday or next week.

     As we walked out, I couldn’ help but steal a few more glances around the office.  It was my last chance after all.  We said our goodbyes, and I walked into the elevator feeling like I was on top of the world.  Just walking through the office made me feel like I found a place where I can belong.  I may not have been entrusted with the chocolate factory like Charlie, but I felt like I just did.

212,

     Ever since its inception, I knew that I will never want to get a PSP.  For a little while I was right, that is until Q entertainment decided to make Lumines exclusively for the PSP.  I’ll admit that I’ve never played it, but from everything I’ve heard about it, I should be.  Every game reviews I’ve ever read about the game have nothing but praise for it.  Lumines basically tested my paper thin will power, and I was about to break.  Fortunately for me, news of Lumines being ported over to Xbox Arcade got around, and I was relieved.  Now I can play this ever so elusive game without having to buy a PSP.  Its release date remained uncertain, until now.  Lumines will be released for Xbox Arcade at…(wait for it)…Midnight…today.  You know, when my XBOX 360 IS STILL BROKEN!!!!  One day I’m going to track down the being called ‘Luck’ and sit on its head and fart.  After that… I’m going to give it a kiss (that is, after the smell goes away).

     I got a reply from mister Sam Kennedy.  He wants to talk to me tomorrow!  (gets up and starts jumping and dancing on the bed, hits head on the ceiling, lie unconscious on the floor for about two minutes, got up, reaches over to keyboard).  goiottttta hggoo heassd…….,.,.bllllleedinng……wieishhsh llluckk.

213,

     Have you ever heard of that superstition about what happens when a bird flies into a house?  As I recall it was something like someone in the household dies.  Well, since the door to our backyard is open most of the time so that our dogs have access to their "bathroom", birds come into our house quite often.  Unfortunately, the superstition seems to hold true far too often in this house.  The two major deaths won’t be mentioned here, but I’ll named the lesser ones.  We had another dog before called Casey.  She died a year or so ago.  After that, my big screen TV died.  After that, my sister’s laptop basically died as well.  Now the superstition has claimed a new victim.  Last Saturday, my Xbox 360 died too.  Fortunately, I do know a "shaman" with the skills to revive it, but I’m fairly certain that it’s going to take longer than 27 days to fix.  Why the preoccupation with 27 days?  In 27 days, the most anticipated Xbox 360 game Gears of War will be released.  I already pre-ordered it.  That’s my luck for ya.  Always looking for opportunites to screw me over.  Worst part about this is what I think caused the problem.  About 3 weeks ago, I stopped by the CompUSA at Stonestown.  Apparently they were closing down and had everything on sale at almost half off, including a Xbox 360 faceplate I’ve always had my eye on.  I bought it and exchanged the faceplate on my 360.  After that I’ve only used it twice in small burst, but last Saturday, I was in the mood for some serious gaming with the 360.  That’s when it happened.  The screen would freeze the second I turned it on.  I called the "shamans" over at Microsoft.  I’m going to have to ship it over to them for revival, and I just know all this is going to take far longer than 27 days.  SIGH!!!!