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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