NewSc2

Does time slow down when memories are created?

If so, I wish I could bottle up more days like yesterday.

I woke up around 11am and found out my car was missing (my dad took it out). So I hit up Andre to ask for a ride to the bank and Subway. (5 dollar footloooong — goddamnit no, shut up, shut up)

Went for a solo, 3-mile run afterward at the usual stomping ground (Back Bay).

Realized my hair was getting too wild, so I got it cut around the corner. Picked up a Turkish Latte at Kean’s after that (my stylist, Back Bay, and Kean’s are all within a few blocks of each other), and read a few chapters of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs.

I got to Klosterman’s “23 questions I’d ask a girl to figure out if she’s my type” (or something like that), and came across this one:

You’re walking around downtown Chicago. A wizard stops you, and tells you he can make you more attractive — relative to a dollar amount that you’ll pay him. Of course, you don’t believe him. So he points at a man walking across the street, and says “I’ll make him one dollar more attractive,” and waves his wand. The man’s appearance doesn’t change, but somewhere deep inside you, you realize he’s a tiny bit more attractive. He’s undeniably a little sexier. Now there’s one catch — you can only pay the wizard once — you can’t go back to him after the deal’s done, and he will never bless your looks again. How much do you pay?

This was just one question among between twenty two others, but it stuck with me a little longer than most.

Just how much would I pay? I ended up settling on $400 — an amount I wouldn’t feel too bad losing if the wizard was BSing around. But a few hours later I realized that question had many other caveats. It never details how much money would raise your looks by, say, 1 point on the ubiquitous “Scale of 1-10″, so it breaks down your answer to: 1) how much disposable income you have, 2) how much you value physical appearances, 3) your trustworthiness of strangers, and 4) plastic/cosmetic surgery.

Anyway, I dwelled on this, and several other questions, for a good half hour or so, stopped by Hi-Time Wine Cellars (also only a couple blocks away), didn’t see anything interesting, and went back home.

There wasn’t much on TV, so I channel surfed and came across the beginning of a replay of Muhammed Ali vs. George Foreman (the “Rumble in the Jungle” fight in 1974). I’d never seen Ali box an entire match before, so I made some noodles and settled down. It was amazing, easily one of the best boxing matches I’d ever seen.

Ali vs. Frazier III, the “Thrilla in Manila” was next, so I hit up Will and Andre and asked them to come over for some drinks and TV. Will left around 11 (he had work the next day), Andrew Chang came on by, and Andre left for a couple hours, only to return to Silky’s later (that’s a whole ‘nother story, which I won’t get into here).

So Andrew and I walk to Silky’s, get a couple drinks, hang out there for about an hour, and Andre shows up at 1:26am. Seriously, exactly 4 minutes before closing time. So… omg… we need to get more alcohol –

Three Matadors, Ernesto!

Okay, now take our picture Ernesto:

Why is everybody dressed up in caballeros y vaqueros outfits? Oh, there’s a chili cookoff tomorrow. Hm, whose hat is this? Oh well, Andre — take a picture!

The two of us (Andrew and me) stumble back home, and Andre parks and joins us halfway. We end up sitting outside my house, indian-style, and talk… about… I forget. Andre has the video. Stan comes over (his car’s backing up in the picture), and by now the delicious matadors are settling down. We are all jibbering about something, and Andrew keeps making me laugh:

Now that Stan’s here, we go inside to play some Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix.

SSF2THDR.

Andrew continues to be hilarious. We’d devolved into speaking Mandarin (wait, actually, just Andrew), so Andrew kept saying (in Chinese) — “I’m gonna kick-kick-kick-kick your head! Wait, how do you say “fierce” in Chinese? Oh, I remember. I’m going to kick you! I’m going to use my forceful kick! My leg is made of stone! See?! Kick-kick-kick! Aha I’m so strong!”

Okay, so that picture probably didn’t capture the emotion, but the exchange should be on video too.

3am rolls around, and tacos beckon. We stumble outside, and Andrew runs up to my lemon tree, grabs a lemon, and… just… bites it. “My mouth is so sour!!! Your oranges don’t taste good Tony… =(”

I think he ate the lemon peel:

And so we get to the last picture. March 1st, 2009, 3:16am, in Santa Ana, CA, on the corner of Harbor and Hazard, at the Taqueria de Anda. 3 lengua tacos (mine), various carnitas and carne asada tacos (Stan, Andre), and a Carne Asada burrito (half me, half Andre):

Total bill for the entire day? Not including the haircut or game, or the bottle of wine I dug out from the cellar: 1 Five… Five dollar… Five dollar footloooonnnggg…, 1 $3 cup of coffee, 1 round of drinks ($11 + $4 tip), and $6 at Taqueria. Not bad.

*PS — Thanks Andre, for sending over the pics~

One of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. It’s pretty much a full replica of the ride, down to the sound bytes, the holograms, the scenes, and the music. Even the ending is pretty much spot on — Beware.. of hitchhiking ghosts!!!

srsly?

Inspired (and angered) by a post on the SlickDeals forums, where Oblivion is currently selling for $30 for 360 and $20 for PC…

TravisOwens: I put 90hrs into this game on my Xbox 360. I don’t even play RPG games (well it’s heavy adventure too), this game is amazing, if you haven’t played it, buy it, you won’t regret it.

I’ve never met a person who didn’t like this game

…I decided to reply (and rant):

I’ve never met a person who liked the game.

I bought this game a few months after it came out. I love RPG’s (Diablo, WoW, Zelda) and JRPG’s (Squaresoft). I even kinda liked Lost Odyssey, and tolerated Fable.

I’ve had discussions with my some of my friends, and while we disagree over almost everything under the gaming sun (Halo vs. other FPS’s, Madden, JRPGs, music games, WoW, etc.) we all were in agreement on this game. It sucks and it’s a chore to play. I think I made it furthest in the world, putting about 8-9 hours into the game before finally giving up.

I HATED Oblivion. It never felt natural, and I hated the first-person aspect of it. It felt like a very bad FPS with fantasy elements thrown in, but with no guns, very bad controls, and a completely unintuitive world. It’s like an incredibly bad version of Half-Life 2, except HL2 had a story, had tight controls, had… well… okay Oblivion isn’t even worthy of comparison to HL2. Calling Oblivion an RPG would be like calling Ninja Gaiden an RPG. And Ninja Gaiden is way more fun.

There really is no story to make you feel connected to the world. Half the time you’re trying to figure out what you’re supposed to do, because somebody mentioned it in passing and you have no idea what they really meant. I don’t like looking up GameFAQs, but I was forced to because I honestly had no idea what I was supposed to do almost the whole time in this game. I’d visit an area, rescue some soldiers, and then I’d have to look up GameFAQs otherwise I’d wander around forever.

On top of that, there were way too many actions and the graphics are pretty subpar for how graphically intensive the PC version seems to be. There were many times I’d be walking around caves and getting hit from nowhere because I couldn’t see anything. I have the same complaint with Halo (some rooms you just keep walking around until you find the exit door you thought you already passed by) but there’s actual drive in that game. You know what you’re supposed to do — Cortana’s blurting it out to you or you’re getting radio calls.

It seems like most people preface their love for this game with “I don’t usually play RPG’s, but…” so maybe I’m looking at it from a jaded point of view. Like Yahtzee (Zero Punctuation), I never felt immersed into the game, and not really from the people’s blank stares or the stupid dialogue, but because I’d played the game for a week and I still had to look up the manual or read GameFAQs to figure out how to do certain things.

The game turned me off enough not to even consider Fallout 3, which I’ve heard better things about.

EDIT: God, I could go on and on. Bad memories are coming back. The inventory system is very crippled, and there’s no easing into the game — right after the intro sequence I had the most horrible time trying to kill an enemy at some monastery. There’s no tutorial, there’s just a click and hopefully you’ll hit something. It’s like trying to beat HL2 with only a crowbar. And then there was stealing, which I never got the hang of, and conversation, which I tried to avoid as much as possible because of the pointlessness of it all.

To be honest, my complaints above aren’t true for the entire game. There were a few times when yes, I did know that I was supposed to teleport here (even though I had a horse) and kill the boss, but I did it begrudgingly and didn’t really care or feel like the time I wasted dying and using potions and trying to kill flying things was worth it.

In the end, I’d sum up the game as a huge chore. I must admit I don’t finish most of my games because they hit that chore point towards the end (when you need to grind or when you know what the ending is anyway) but this game was a chore from the beginning and I always had to force myself to play (because of all the good reviews, and the comments saying the game needed a few hours to fully appreciate).

[Video Placeholder]

Ugh, for some reason the video above isn’t working. I don’t have enough time at work to figure it out, so here’s the link: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/75-Oblivion

Saw this while I was at Fry’s picking up Final Fantasy IV DS. It was $3.45, which is a lot more than I’d like to spend on a non-alcoholic drink, and it’s really small (50ml, 1.7oz.), but I stopped to look at it too many times to let the opportunity pass.

Above is a half-drunk sample of the energy drink. It’s since been all-drunk. I guess it’d be good for gamers, but it really didn’t give me a big “buzz.” The product’s website says it wasn’t made to kick you in the face, but instead give you a calm, jitter-free alertness to continue your fragging and raids. Jitteriness is bad for mouse-clicking. Each 50mL serving contains twice the caffeine of an 8 oz. Red Bull, and is supposed to give you 5-8 hours of +160 mana benefit.

I only drank half the bottle each time (it was late), and it did pick me up for at least an hour or two, and probably more. The concept is so cool nerdy that I’d be down to buy a few more for the next LAN party I go to (next year?).

It tastes like Blue Otter Pops — kinda tangy, decently sweet, and got a little sour bite to it. I can’t really compare the energy lift to anything, because I’ve never had those 5-hour Energy Shots, and Red Bull (and its kin) aren’t 1.7 ounces. The Mana Energy Potion gave me a slight noticeable boost right after drinking, and about 20 minutes later I could still feel the initial bump. It apparently has digestive enzymes in the concoction blend to speed up digestion of all of the Doritos you’ve been eating at the computer, and help break down those processed carbs into energy.

That’s pretty much all I can say.

I mean, what more do you need? It’s blue, it’s small, it’s convenient, and it’s a freaking mana pot. Potions like these used to cost 500 gold pieces, and mages would stock their 16-slot Summoner’s Belt of Knowledge full of these.