Pack it up, we're done here.

The planet has officially gone retarded. Below you will find Exhibits A, B and C in defense of my point.


Exhibit A:



No, you're not on acid this early in the morning, this is a screen-shot from the new Transformers Animated Series. Optimus Prime is indeed shaped like a transient from Muscle Beach and Bumblebee has been confirmed to be the Yellow Power Ranger. And what the crap is that big-ass green thing? I mean, are we really catering to this, the lowest of all common denominators? He's a fat robot for crying out loud. I can hear the groaners now.

Optimus Prime to Fat Robot:
"Have another energon-cube, fatobot!"

Fat Robot in comedic robot clown voice:
"I'm not fat, I'm big endo-skeletoned"

It's comic GOLD, it practically writes it's self!


Exhibit B:



Honestly, I'm speechless. I mean, seriously, WHAT THE HELL IS THAT? Everything about the above clip is watered down non-sense. The animation, the voices, the THEME SONG -- all of it wreaks of laziness. This is the same animation style as seen in sub-par wanna-be-anime style shows on the Cartoon Network like Teen Titans. No, scratch that, Teen Titans is years beyond this trash. I mean, who the hell thought this was a good idea? Also, can someone explain to me why robots have freaking TEETH?


Exhibit C:



Click that image above for more images. Be prepared though, have the knife ready. Let me know when you've clicked. Done? Okay, so what you want to do is: stab yourself in the left eye, then stab yourself in the right eye as quickly as possible. This will ensure that you no longer have the privilege of seeing your childhood sodomized before your eyes. Though, I guess if you're still reading this, you either have a braille monitor or you didn't follow my advice. Thats fine. Let's continue.

So, he's got a shield and an axe now? Seriously, a SHIELD and an AXE? What are these, medieval robots? The dude is supposed to be made out of metal, what the hell does he need a shield for? And a shield made from the same material as HIS OWN BODY no less.

Also: notice how Optimus (I shuddered when I typed that) has no hard corners or edges. Notice how he's smooth and made of plastic. This is so little retarded Jimmy can't hurt himself. This is just one of the ways uptight soccer moms are ruining the planet. When I was a kid our Transformers were made out of the same material as our playground slides. FUCKING METAL! They weighed as much as a brick, and let me tell you something Suzie, those bastards made a dent if they ever connected with your forehead. And we were tougher for it. We didn't whine like babies when we got a skinned knee -- and you know why? Because our toys could fucking KILL US!

Take away the possibility of harm, take away the danger, take away the fun. It's as simple as that.

Damn it, I just used the phrase: "When I was a kid..." See what you made me do!

Let's just, move on.


Exhibit D:



For comparison purposes, here's the REAL Prime that sits on my desk. Enjoy your watered down, no taste, no fun world you idiots.

I'll be stabbing myself in the face if anyone needs me.

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punkuns, let me show you them!

In the spirit of the season, Jess and I once again carved up some gourds. What follows is the bounty of our toils.


Mine transforms into a bad-ass robo-pumpkin, then, um, 'rolls' out.
Ah, pumpkin humor.


Jess' makes like 100 billion in sales and has it's own Mountain Dew flavor.
PUMPKIN FUEL EXTREME!

Here are some glamor shots:




This settles it, next year I'm totally carving the bat-symbol into one of these things. Get me on the phone with the commissioner!

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If I'm never gonna get out...

of this whale, I might as well make it livable in here.

Like a lab-rat who escaped the maze for a day, I know what the outside looks like. I've been there and have tales to tell. I know how large the world can be and how small you can feel in it's presence. I'm better for it, but it makes the yearn to go back that much more unbearable. Hard to say which is worse: never having been, or having been and being unable to go back.

It's just one of the ways I'm different now. Whenever it rains, I miss Japan.

In Tokyo, it rained the entire time. Walking down shiny rain-soaked streets unable to read the signs along the way -- we would make our way to different destinations. A shrine. A mall. A ramen house. An electronics district. A street bazaar. Breakfast.

I found myself sitting in traffic this morning, watching the rain fall on my windshield. Thinking about when we were at that shrine in Kyoto, and how we bought that clear umbrella for 200 yen, and how I watched the rain through it's transparent shell. How we walked with that tour on that gray day in July and sat on a rain soaked wooden bench and shared a shaved ice. How perfect it was, and how we didn't even realize it.

I swear to God, I almost turned around, picked you up, and drove to the airport. I almost bought two one-way tickets. I almost didn't look back.

We could have escaped the maze again. Together.

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File under H

Co-Op Legendary on the Tsavo Highway
Posted by Tenebrous ReX at 10/18/2007 7:43 AM PDT
Jess, Rick and I played some Co-Op Legendary down the Tsavo Highway on Monday night while the mongoloids were watching their footballs.

On Sunday -- during a short round of Halo 3 -- Jess' 360 was KIA. True Spartans are never listed as such, however, let's call a spade a spade and move forward. The last suit she'll ever wear should be arriving post-haste.

We mourned her death in a celebration of life, while gunning down brutes in the late hours of Monday evening. Through split-screen on the box in the bedroom we joined Rick via LIVE and were off and gunning (see what I did there?) before we knew it.

The tasks set up through the Legendary difficulty are only surmountable for us in a co-op experience. I'm sure that goes for most. With a quick check through the bungie.net ranks -- for the most part, if you're playing Legendary, you're not playing it alone. And here's the reason: it's hard.

Taking out the three tanks mid-level proved especially difficult, since, you know, there are freaking THREE of them. But it wasn't that area which took us the longest to derive a victory. Sometimes, all it takes is one well-positioned cannon to turn the tides, and for us -- at 8:30pm Monday evening -- it was as if we were stuck in a Halo purgatory for about 45 minutes.

Die. Re-spawn. Rinse. Repeat.

Jess and I stormed a single tank as it crested the horizon. Surrounded by brutes on all sides, armed with deadly accuracy, rocket launchers and brute shots -- it seemed we were bested. With Rick holding up a sniping position and spawn point from a safe distance it took us a good many deaths and plasma grenades to finally come out victorious.

As the dust settled, it was hard to tell who struck the finishing blow. It didn't matter to us. There was a war on and we had more battles to fight. We mounted up a beaten-down Warthog and rode into the distance, following the sound of gunfire until the sun set.

Why we started our Legendary tour of duty with that level, I'll never know.

GG guys. GG.

Also posted to: Pineapple Party Posse on Bungie.net

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The temptation of atom

A great song that I can't seem to stop playing over and over again. Very Paul Simon in it's execution and lyrics. Which, with me, isn't a bad thing.

Title: The Temptation of Adam
Artist: Josh Ritter
Album: The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter



If you like it, go check out the whole album here.

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Halo makes me kinda bossy.

Yeah, so, I forgot what I turn into when I play Halo. I kinda start to boss people around. I'm not as bad as some. But I'm definitely not a saint either. I wonder what it is about Halo specifically? I mean, I don't do that when I play something like Rainbow 6: Vegas. Maybe it's the whole space marines thing.

I used to play in my friend Chuck's front yard when I was little. We'd play "Aliens" and we'd all be space marines. As I recall, I think there were times when I got a little bossy then too. Picture chubby me, maybe nine or ten years-old, barking orders to other kids while chewing on my imaginary cigar in my very real Reebok Alien Stomper look-alike knock-offs.

Please allow a chubby child his rite of passage.

Anyways.

So there's a cool new feature in Halo 3 that allows you to watch a replay of any of the rounds or matches you've played. You can slow-mo, freeze-frame, change camera position and even take screen shots. I find myself taking pictures more often than actually "playing." It's a blending of my two lives that I wasn't really prepared for.



Come to think of it, I'm a little bossy when I play Gears of War too. Oh well, some things never change.

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Jon will get a kick out of this.

These screen shots are from Eternal Sonata, in an area down by the pier, in the first large town of the game.

Sound familiar Jon?




A bit like cotton-candy perhaps? I mean, the dude is even down by the PIER! WtF?

I definitely got the weird-chills feeling while reading it.

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'Drawn to Life' is fun.

Sometimes I have a go at games, especially games that let you create your own character. Nothing quite like watching the villagers praise Mister FF up there. Drawn to Life is a fun enough game but the element that really makes it shine is the ability to draw your own main character. It'd be a very average platformer without that, so I took full advantage.

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Wheaton + Pineapple, PAX 07

While at PAX we got Ricky a little present. I decided to videotape the event, you know, for posterity. You're welcome, Ricky.

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JoCo, Code Monkey, PAX 07

Another video from PAX. Joco rocks it on stage in front of a packed (well, close enough) house with Code Monkey. This show really surprised me, I was a fan before but after this show, I became a total crazy fan. Enjoy.

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I'm quoted.

While attending PAX, after we had finished up having Mr. Wheaton sign a picture of a pineapple, Jess and I were approached by a local reporter. He asked us a few questions and said he was writing a piece on PAX. Well, here you go.

"It's amazing. Everybody here gets your jokes. Everybody here understands the lingo," said Paul Petyo, 30, a first-time attendee who traveled to PAX from Crofton, Md., with his girlfriend, Jessica Weiss, 23.

Whole Article Here: Gamers bring wacky ideas to Penny Arcade

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Minibosses, CastleV, PAX 07

More from PAX 2007. The Minibosses broke out and rocked it up with Castlevania which was one of my favorites of the show. Great performance, but don't just take my word for it. :) Also, sorry for Timmy-Cam, my arm was tired. WHAT?

More to come.

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JoCo, RE: Your Brains, PAX 07

SO, yeah, my apologies for the zooming and the shakiness, my arm was tired and this is unedited so the zooming looks a little weird. JoCo broke out Re: Your Brains to close out the show and it was seriously epic. The crowd makes this one such a hit and there's an epic recovery toward the end. Such a great show.


Expect more of the footage I shot from PAX in the next month or so.

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The first 17 minutes of Japan.

Here's the first bit I've edited of me and Jess' trip to Japan. This took a while and I should probably look into a computer that can handle editing in HD now that I have this camera. But less about that, more about Tokyo. Tokyo is awesome, like seriously awesome. It rained the entire time but we wouldn't have changed a thing. God, editing this video just makes me want to go back so much harder.

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Japan / PAX (JaPAX)

I've gone to Japan and I am back. I've gone to PAX and, I am back from that as well. I'm changed. My thirty-year cocoon, shed. It's not an external change so much as it's internal. In fact, I personally am the only one who knows of such a change.

From now until the end of days, I will walk this earth forlorn. A hollow husk, never as alive as I was for two months in the late summer of two-thousand-seven. For the most part I'm not going to speak or write about Japan or PAX. I have shot 5 hours of video on each trip. I have 17 minutes of Japan edited so far and it tells the story better than I could ever hope to in text form. Japan is not a place you can be told about, so I would be doing everyone a great disservice attempting to recant my follies in the east. The video stands on its own. It's beautiful and I hope to upload what I have finished right on this very page this afternoon using the new blogger video upload tool. So look for that. It's a promise I mean to keep. Just know that the original video is shot in 1080i so a small low resolution version on the web will not do it justice.

As for PAX, well I would love nothing more than to do that for a living. Going to conventions with a media pass. Filming new video games, filming interviews with developers. Documenting the event. It was both amazing and saddening at the same time. Bumping elbows with people who have my dream job, often times shooting the exact same thing.

Expect small video uploads of some of the highlights here. I also plan on making a "mega-mix" of all of PAX that will be longer. I've got some great footage and funny soundbytes to put together. I mean, I have Tycho on stage saying: "bring a coffin motherfucker!" and Wil Wheaton telling Jack Thompson to suck his balls. I expect it will be nothing less than awesome.

From here on out, I am me only in name. Everything else that was me is gone. I only resemble what you remember out of the necessity for continuity.

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More on this later.

Jess took this while I was shooting video. I'm gonna let it speak for its self.


Video will get edited once my new HDD arrives and I do a fresh install.

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Tomorrow.

Jess and I will be on a plane for 14 hours. Then we'll be in a place neither of us has ever been before. A place we've only read about, seen pictures of and heard people talk about. Until tomorrow, this place only exists for us through pictures and videos on the net. Through stories and travel-logs. It seems I've been preparing myself for tomorrow for the better half of two years. We're in the 11th hour and the clock is about to strike. The anticipation is almost unbearable.

I'm wrapping things up here at work today with a nice little bow. The plan is to leave nothing unfinished before I leave.

We've packed as much as we can for the moment. The rest will get packed tonight, leaving tomorrow morning for miscellaneous things like the toothbrushes and shampoo. Dropping off our pepper plants at Sean and Steph's for watering and loving. Making the last minute arrangements and getting things in order. Counting our Yen once more. Checking, for the 40th time, if I've packed my passport.

The HD camcorder arrived yesterday. A Sony HVR-A1U. Tapes have been bought. Tested. Tinkered with. Awesomeness has been witnessed.

This is going to work out nicely, me thinks. I just hope we aren't sitting next to some screaming child for 14 hours.

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Went over to Sean & Steph's...

Took the new flash with me. Took pictures of more cats. They're cute. So what? Seems this is all I do anymore. take pictures of cute animals. Also, a good portrait of Sean and his old-man pipe... who is not an animal, I guess.

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News Flash!

Why is "news" not the plural of "new?" Why doesn't "new" get a plural? Where's the love? Where are my pants? Check out my news stuffs! So, I got a new flash. You got a problem with it? Wanna fight about it? Lookit dees (click for largers):

Iz dat yur hairbls?

Jabba no bahdda! (also: Wa ha ha hah! SOLO!)

Dat IZ yur hairbls!

My pores can beat-up your pores.

Japan on Wednesday.

The End.

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I'm the mother flipin!

Click that image up there for the most awesome rapper song you will ever hear. tru.dat

Hip-Hopopotamus vs. The Rhymenocerous! Flight of the Conchords is the funniest show evAR. Seriously, TV hasn't made me laugh this hard in like the last two freakin' years. If you're still not convinced to check it out after reading those first two sentences, watch that video up there again.

Want more? Go here NOW!

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Selling a bit of old hope...

trading up for new.

So, the XL1s sold on Sunday. I packed it up and shipped it out yesterday. I have to say, once I handed it over to the post office, once I would never see it again, a little pang of sadness hit me. It's rare that your emotions surprise you. Usually I'm pretty good at preparing myself for what I'm supposed to feel.

I mean, rationally, it was just a camera. It served its purpose at the time I needed it. It was a good camera. I made some good films with it. My life has changed, my needs are different now. I guess, as with everything else, I'm out-growing a lot of things.

I'm reminded of that Ikea commercial with the old lamp sitting outside the house by the trash, unplugged, with the arm tilted downward in a weeping position, cold and in the rain. The new lamp highlighted in the house window, inside, dry and surrounded with warm light. Maybe I do feel sorry for that lamp. Maybe I am crazy.

Needless to say, the whole ordeal has been more emotional than I expected.

As if I bubble-wrapped and package-taped -- sealed and mailed off a little piece of myself. A piece of my past, of my old-life. Maybe a few dreams and aspirations thrown in there for extra padding.

The plan is to take the money and invest in a new camera. Something not as pro-sumer as the XL1s but definitely not your grandma's camcorder either. I'm looking at a Sony HVR-A1U. Seems like a nice middle ground with some nice options. 3lbs is a great weight as I plan on taking this thing out. The 1080i resolution is also nice. It should make Japan and PAX look amazing.

In sixteen days I step on a plane to leave the country. The excitement of which is overwhelming. I do well at hiding my anticipation. I keep busy and try not to count down the seconds but inside, I am bursting. I can hardly keep a thought in my head that isn't over-powered by "JAPAN! JAPAN! JAPAN!" A trip that has been in planning status for close to two years, gone through all kinds of changes and has been the root of a lot of my emotional roller coastering, is finally coming to fruition.

When I come back, things are going to be different.

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Gonna be into Bill for a bit.

So, yeah, here is the Xbox 360 release schedule through the end of the year. I'm pretty much going to be gang-raped in the wallet until late January/early February. I've put a yes, no, maybe, or rent/borrow next to the items listed. You're smart, should know what that means.


June:
____________________________________________
Call of Juarez - NO
Fantastic Four Rise of Silver Surfer - NO
Monster Madness: Battle for Suburbia - RENT/BORROW
Tenchu Z - NO
Ratatouille - NO
DiRT - RENT/BORROW
The Darkness - RENT/BORROW
Harry Potter Order of the Phoenix - RENT/BORROW
Hour of Victory - NO
The Bigs - NO
Transformers The Game - RENT/BORROW
Overlord - MAYBE


July:
____________________________________________
NCAA Football 2008 - NO
Vampire Rain - NO
Project Sylpheed - NO
All Pro Football 2K8 - NO
Two Words - NO
NASCAR 2008 - NO


August:
____________________________________________
Moto GP 2007 - NO
Too Human - MAYBE
Stranglehold - YES
Madden NFL 2008 - NO
BioShock - FUCK YES
Stuntman: Ignition - NO
Tiger Woods 2008 - NO
Medal of Honor Airborne - NO
Blazing Angels 2: Secret Missions - NO
Blue Dragon - RENT/BORROW


September:
____________________________________________
Mass Effect - FUCK YES
Unreal Tournament III - MAYBE
Blacksite: Area 51 - MAYBE
Jericho - NO
Project Gotham Racing 4 - RENT/BORROW
NHL 2K8 - NO
Skate - NO
NHL 2008 - NO
Kane & Lynch: Dead Men - MAYBE
Turok - NO
Eternal Sonata - FUCK YES
Timeshift - RENT/BORROW
Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights - RENT/BORROW
Hellboy - NO
CSI Hard Evidence - NO
NBA Live 2008 - NO
Half-Life 2 Orange Box - YES
Halo 3 All Edition - YES
Sega Rally Revolution - NO


October:
____________________________________________
Lost Odyssey - YES
Looney Tunes ACME Arsenal - NO
Heist - NO
Virtua Fighter 5 - NO
The Club - NO
Crash of the Titans ‘07 - NO
NBA 2K8 - NO
Bladestorm: Hundred Years War - NO
Beautiful Katamari - YES
Fatal Inertia - NO
FIFA Soccer 2008 - NO
Conan - NO
Grand Theft Auto IV - YES
Naruto - NO
Mercenaries 2: World In Flames - RENT/BORROW
Simpsons: The Game - NO
Need for Speed: Pro Street - RENT/BORROW
Guitar Hero 3 - MAYBE


November:
____________________________________________
Assassin’s Creed - YES
Rock Band - YES
Super Street Figher HD Remix - YES
Alone in the Dark - MAYBE
Turning Point - NO
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - MAYBE
Army of Two - FUCK YES
Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway - NO
The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena - MAYBE
Ace Cobmat 6: Fires of Liberation - RENT/BORROW
WWE Smackdown vs RAW 2008 - NO
Left 4 Dead - FUCK YES
Splinter Cell: Conviction - MAYBE
Golden Compass - NO
Devil May Cry 4 - MAYBE
Haze - MAYBE

I wish publishers would stager the release schedule so we don't get bombarded with A-list titles all at once. I realize this is the lord-high-shopping season but sheesh, can I breathe please? Keep in mind, these are only the games coming out for the 360...

So yeah, through September, October, and November, I'm gonna want to die.

*Deep breath*

BioShock, Mass Effect, Halo 3, Eternal Sonata, GTA IV, Beautiful Katamari, Rock Band, Assassin's Creed, Left 4 Dead, Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, Half-Life 2 Orange Box, Lost Odyssey, and Army of Two are all must-haves. I mean, I've got a reputation to uphold here.

Unless I've miscounted, that's 13 games I have to buy. Let me say that again. Thirteen. I don't need this shit right now. I hope some of those titles get pushed back to '08.

I also hope no one wants Christmas presents!

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An open letter.

To: People who like strawberry ice cream

Stop fucking up my Chocolate and Vanilla.

That is all.

Sincerely,
Paul Petyo

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My Xbox ♥s me...

Or, rather, Jess' Xbox ♥s me. You know, since mine is in the freakin' MAIL and all. Anyways. It blogs about me. My 360 has its own blog over on 360voice.com Here's a little snippet:

Tenebrous ReX's Xbox - 6/8/2007

Tenebrous ReX decided to ride the gamer-train yesterday. I will admit it... I was happy. What is the gamer score? 5045 is what it is! That is an increase of 50 points over last time! We have now entered the 5,000 GS club! He rocked out to Pac-Man C.E., Mad Tracks picking up 4 achievements, and loved every minute of it in high definition glory!

It's nice to be loved by anthropomorphized inanimate objects. Let's hope it doesn't watch me sleep.

[EDIT] Yes, I re-title my posts a lot. I edit my entries six or seven times before I'm done. Even the posts -- like this one -- that don't much matter. Thusly screwing those of you on RSS feeds. Welcome to my perfectionist brain. You can send your psychiatrist bill to my ass, care of my middle finger. :)

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Shark's teeth & red rings

Let me start by saying memorial day weekend was awesome. Regardless of my neck being stiff the whole time and my 360 taking a shit it really was the most fun I've had in a few weeks. Relaxing, doing a little photo-trip to the beach, playing games and having a party was, well -- more weekends should be this good.

At the beach Jess and I dug for sharks teeth. There was a downed tree laying across the sand. It's bare, broken branches serving as sort of a sieve, separating sand from shell and tooth as the tide came in. It stretched out into the Bay for a bit and Jess said it resembled a boardwalk of broken limbs. She climbed all over it, searching for teeth. I mainly stuck to my own small corner of sand with my t-shirt on and my towel around my neck.

It's kind of peaceful out there at Chesapeake Beach. Quaint in a way.

Before we left, a man came up to us with a very large tooth in his hand. His body was tanned and he was super excited that he found such a large specimen. (Mah sharksteeth! Let me show you them!) He told us he was down a ways from us and he found this thing just washing around in the tide. As he went for it, a barge almost collapsed on him. His sunglasses were covered in sand as proof. He'd been coming here for 10 years and this was the first time he'd ever found something of this size. On his tanned back there were large dark spots like the kind you'd see in a Gorbachev caricature. His hands were hard and calloused. He was excited the way I'm sure archaeologists get excited. We entertained him for about 5 minutes until he moved on down the beach, showing his tooth to some other family.

When Jess and I got home we counted our teeth and decided we wanted to watch a movie. We would brave Blockbuster (bloodsucker) and rent The Fountain. It was good. Not the best, but good. There is a lot more meat in there I'm sure. It might take a few more viewings to get all the gristle out of it.

We also rented Pirates of the Caribbean for the Xbox 360. This is the game that killed my box. It probably wasn't so much the game as it was the fact that we didn't have the AC on and it was like 94 degrees in the apartment. Regardless, I have now earned my Red Rings. Microsoft is in the process of sending me out a prepaid RMA box and I should be back and gaming in a few weeks. No biggie really, I mean, it's not like it's the only 360 in the house.

We had a party on Sunday with a good turn out. I hope everyone had fun. 360 Guitar Hero 2 was cool and the fact that everyone was playing under my tag was even funner. Nothing like throwing a party and achievement-farming at the same time! Beer was had. Burgers, dogs and dirt-cake were consumed. And the whole thing wrapped up before midnight. That's how we old people roll!

Monday Jess and I just relaxed. I finished God of War 2 and picked up Odin Sphere which is freaking beautiful! A Sopranos marathon was running on A&E-HD and I think I watched 6 episodes before I noticed it was past bed-time.

Like I said, it was a great weekend, even if my neck was stiff the whole time.

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Another one down.

Just paid off another bill today. Gone.

So, that leaves two credit cards and a student loan. I'm pretty proud of myself right now. Gonna have some more money coming in that doesn't have to go directly back out. In two months I'll be in Japan and will hopefully have enough money to enjoy myself. After that, I can start saving and contributing to my retirement fund.

It's gonna be kind of a celebratory vacation.

I'm right on track to have the next bill paid off by early next year. Then it will be one credit card and a student loan. The concept of which seems so foreign to me that I might as well have just typed that in another language. One in which I am not fluent.

I've been in debt since I was in high school. I got a credit card and a job and I went a little crazy, as I'm sure a lot of people do. I'm sure there are Christmas presents for Kelly-Number-One in there that I am still paying for.

I can't wait to be done with it all. To finally cut the tether of my financial past. It's almost like being born all over again.

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I'm your Check Engine Light.

I'm on now.


Get pissed!

Edit: Kinda fixed it myself. *crosses fingers* Looked up how to pull the trouble codes online then went and put it into action. It's really not that hard. Then, compared code to code-database online. Trouble code 67 or P0420. Catalyst System Efficiency Below Threshold. Something to do with the catalytic converter. Directions said first step should be to reset the check engine light and see if it comes back on. It's been a week or so now and it's still off, so, maybe it was a false positive. Maybe my gas-cap wasn't seated properly or some nonsense.

Whatever. Fuck cars.

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Fear is a sickness.

I talk a lot of shit on here. I realize that. I talk a lot of big shit about getting motivated and being someone better than who I am. I talk shit all day about being a better person for the choices I've made and how I'm stronger for it. Little, meaningful observations and activities that make me a more alive person. I've talked shit my entire life.

In the end, fear is like a crippling illness. The truth is, I haven't been creative in a while and I have no one to blame but myself. If I don't start doing something about it, I will die in this job.

When I was in art school I had a problem with finishing my work. My portfolio was -- and still is -- full of unfinished works. One day, my drawing professor came over to my easel and told me if I never finished anything it would always be perfect. It's perfect because of what it has the potential to be. It's perfect because I never took the chance on fucking it up. She asked me what I was so afraid of.

Ten years later and those words mean more to me now than they ever did standing in a dingy, dark art class staring at some unfinished still-life.

It's true, if it's unfinished it can never be properly critiqued. I always have the "out" that it's not finished. I can put the excuse machine on auto-pilot and not ever finish anything. I'm good at that.

Thirty years on this planet and what do I have to show for it? A life full of beginnings. It's always perfect in the beginning. The beginning is the easy part.

Doctors today would tell me I don't finish things because I lack the attention span to do so. I have A.D.D. or A.D.H.D. or some other variant people make up to categorize and medicate what is essentially fear. That's what's holding me back, that's what it is. That's what holds us all back. Fear.

I'm having an odd day this morning. The office is different. People are talkative and jovial for a change. Maybe it's the weather. The winter cocoons are being shed.

This morning a guy I barely know came back into my office. Young guy, my age or a little older. He started talking about a documentary he wanted to start making. He asked me what the best route to go about that would be, what equipment he would need. Editing, shooting. What kind of camera to use and such.

WHAT. THE. FUCK. AM. I. WAITING. FOR?

Tomorrow the XL1s goes up for sale and as soon as it's sold I'm getting a new, smaller, easier to manage camera and I'm going to start shooting EVERYTHING. I don't care what it is, I don't care if it's just pretty landscapes. I don't care if it's boring or makes no sense. I don't care if it sucks. I. DON'T. CARE.

I need to stop being afraid of failure.
I need to start finishing something for once in my life.

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