roflcopter_down

I have an Imperial Stout beer kit coming in on Friday. Also some tubing. So I'm going to rack my cyser and keep it hidden away until next fall (seriously).

Then I'm going to make my Imperial Stout which should be ready for bottling after Christmas and then ready to drink sometime in March. Great for St. Patricks Day except that it's a Russian Imperial Stout. I'm thinking of calling it God-Imperial Stout and making labels of The God-Emperor of Man on them. I need two, maybe three cases of 22 oz. bottles which will what I tell my friends to get me for Christmas.

I'm also thinking of making some bread on Friday to go with the meal I'm making for Kat once she gets home from Black Friday.

I'm all domestic and shit.

Ellis is pretty much my favorite video game character ever. Not only because he's hilarious, but because I know so many people like him.

I've been playing Gears of War the last couple of days. Catching up on games I've missed and the like.

Does anyone else catch the hints of epic bromance between Markus and Dom or is that just me? I looked in the acheivements and they're all things like "Dom-Curious" and "I Can't Quit You, Dom". Maybe I'm just reading into those too much, but Markus and Dom are practically inseperable, and even the AI makes Dom stick a little too close when the shit gets thick. Just about every time I've died in Gears of War, Dom's corpse is nearby and our chunky salsafied ragdoll bodies are thrown together in a grim mockery of intimacy.

Also, Markus seems to be flirting with Baird a lot.

Maybe none of this is intentional like it was in Army of Two, but it's making the game a lot more entertaining. Instead of a tactical shooter in generic grimdark setting #3, I'm picturing it more like The Rocky Horror Picture Show trapped in an action game.

When life gives you lemons, punch a motherfucker in the dick.

These are words to live by.

So last night before I opened the Eee PC but after grocery shopping, Kat discovered that there was a nasty-smelling mold growing out of a blow off setup from my mead. It smelled like duct tape. I poured it out into the toilet (which we immediately cleaned) and it filled the house with this astringent plastic-like duct tape smell. We had to burn incense to get rid of it. I threw out the blow off setup, which included my only siphoning tube. I'll have to get another one.

Let this be a warning, homebrewers. Clean your shit up immediately. Bad things will happen if you don't.

Part of me thought it was pretty cool to cohabitate with a rogue duct tape fungus, though.

I have an Eee PC. Its name is Caliban.

Have some Bolt Thrower.

I heard Dragon Age: Origins draws inspiration from A Song of Ice and Fire. Have you heard this? Have you read about this?

There probably won't be a sequel for a while.

Thank you, I'll be here all week. Remember to tip the waiting staff.

I used the US-05 yeast on the mead. It should crap out at 10% abv and remain sweet, which is exactly the point of using bread yeast anyway. US-05 foams up fast, though. I had to rig a blow off tube almost immediately. At least it should make a nice little cake at the bottom that won't stir up when I siphon it. There's major separation from the honey and the water, but it's fermenting just fine and it's nothing I haven't seen happen before. It should be fine.

The Left 4 Dead 2 demo came out today. I'm so psyched. Left 4 Dead is like no other game I've ever played. It makes zombies not boring anymore (I realize that in the past I have always been pro-zombie, and I do in fact love a good zombie flick, but christ zombies are overdone). Left 4 Dead always feels like you're just barely making it out of there. It is a master of manipulating the player into feeling a wide array of emotions that range from adrenaline to shrieking-8-year-old-girl terror. Between that and Kat getting me Beyond Re-Animator, it's like Halloween never ended.

According to Kat I NEED to make more mead. I've got a cyser going that will probably need to be racked in a week. That won't be ready for about a year. I need something quick, so I think I'll start another batch Joe's Ancient Orange Mead. My last batch is aging. We tried some at bottling and the spice was super strong. It should mellow out in a few months, but I'm super impressed with it. The only thing I don't like is that the bread yeast flocculates horribly. Ideally yeast should settle at the bottom of the vessel so that the liquid can be siphoned off easier. The bread yeast gets irritated easily, so I'm stuck with figuring out how to strain it out without oxidizing the mead or resigning myself to sedimentation at the bottom of the bottles. The only other yeast I have is Safale-05, which is mostly for beer. I don't really know how that can work out for mead, but I suppose I could give it a try.

Does anyone play DJ Hero? I've been having a blast with it.

Let me tell you, the mixes from that game, especially the 50 Cent Vs. David Bowie mashup have been in my head all day. Plus it has a whole section devoted to Daft Punk.

If you know me at all, you'll know that I regard Daft Punk as living superheroes who make the world a better place in their pyramid of music. Every night they fight the mundanity of the world by putting on their super helmets and rocking out in a contraption that is to the DJ setup as the Batmobile is to the automobile. Also, DJ Hero has Grandmaster Flash doing the tutorial. I squee'd like a little girl when he said "you're a natural!" even though I know it was just a recorded reaction.

A breakdown of how a mission goes:

Middle Manager guy: Yeah, you can work in my city.
Altair: OK. I've been pickpocketing and beating up hobos so I know how to kill the guy.
Middle Manager guy: Cool. Do that thing.
Altair: Hey, Assassination Target! Die!
Assassination Target: I'm not such a bad guy. I was helping people.
Altair: Oh my god, I've never heard of moral relativism before!

Repeat.

So against the advice of everyone I've met, I bought Assassin's Creed. It was fun to play while dealing with the yearly Swine Flu prank my body plays on me where it mimics the symptoms of Swine Flu, causing me to take off from work, go to the doctors only to be told I'm a fucking dumbass. Besides it was downloadable over Xbox Live.

For the most part, I think the hype about Assassin's Creed being horrible is mostly just hype. It really bad. It's backlash from all of the hype about how Assassin's Creed would be the most amazing game ever and you'd better buy it because holy fuck this game will change your life. This is what happens when you hype a game that much and then force players to spend a good half an hour (not entirely an exaggeration) wandering from town to town cantering on your fucking pony. You can't just run from town to town because soldiers recognize you as an assassin if you go too fast. So every time a soldier's around you have to "blend" in by cantering slowly. Except there are soldiers everywhere, so you're pretty much cantering the entire time. That's the genuinely shitty part of the game.

Other than that, shit gets repetitive, but free running across the rooftops of Jerusalem circa 1131 A.D. makes this history nerd happy in the pants. I'll try to beat it before AC2 comes out. I can't wait to stab a Medici in the face.

I have confronted them. I had to. I couldn't be a part of it anymore. I wanted to be able to live with myself. I couldn't do that and remain a part of that organization.

What would I say to them now? That it's difficult to tell exactly where their good intentions end and their reckless ambition begins. Are they good people who are unintentionally hurting people or are they power-hungry theocrats who don't care who they hurt? I want so desperately to pick one so that I can have some solid way of feeling about the whole experience. In truth, I know that it's probably both and maybe more. Whatever their reasons, they are ambiguous and complex. People can not be caricatures simply for my own peace of mind.

Finally, I'd tell them that being complicit in the pain of others is as bad as inflicting that pain yourself. I honestly sometimes can't tell if I obtained my set of morals because of them or in spite of them.

That is actually something I once overheard at a Gamestop back in the Playstation 2-era (I then hopped on my dinosaur and rode home in time to finish helping out with the completion of Stone Henge).

So I bought Borderlands yesterday. At Gamestop. I typically avoid Gamestop because I tend to not enjoy the experience. The people who work there are the type who do nothing but play video games, read about video games, blog about video games. It's a smart decision on Gamestop's part, and one that I don't blame them for. If all you do is sell video games, you want employees who know about video games. My thing is, I already know about video games. I read the same blogs and magazines as these guys, so I don't feel the need to deal with them. Every time I've bought something from Gamestop for the past year, the clerk has unfailingly made a comment about the quality of my purchase. It's as if every Gamestop employee believes that they channel the spirit of Ben Crowshaw while they ring you up at the counter. I know that No More Heroes is a great game. I've read all about it. Yes, I'm aware that my game is mediocre but I want to play it. Sell me the game and shut the fuck up. It's not just Gamestop (I had a Wal-Mart employee tell me why they hated Left 4 Dead as I was buying it, to which my reply was a polite version of "Fuck you, Valve games are awesome. Go watch All My Children if you want a fucking plot.") but if ever you're going to get a game snob cashier making snide remarks about a purchase, it's most likely to happen at Gamestop.

Last night, a miracle happened. I liked a Gamestop employee. He was helpful, cheerful, and didn't show any interest in my purchase besides the actual transaction. He asked me if I wanted to pre-order, and I asked him about Left 4 Dead 2 and he just told me when it was coming out, how much I could pre-order for, and what you get when you pre-order. Nothing at all about whether or not the game would be any good or better than the last one or stories about times he totally threw a molotov at a zombie and everyone lol'd. He ran my transaction and wished me a pleasant evening. This kid is a shining star in that company. I wish I could give him a commendation or something.

As for Borderlands, I have a level 11 Hunter named El Pollo Diablo. Gunslinger spec with one point in Rogue for the hawk loot. And I have a sniper rifle that sets things on fire.

A sniper rifle that sets things on fire. I'll let that sink in.

Kat got me an Xbox 360. Did I mention that I love my wife?

My gamertag is omfgTallface.

I have Left 4 Dead, Gears of War and BlazBlue, among other things that I think are singleplayer. Look me up and we can shoot aliens or zombies. Or you can kick my ass in BlazBlue.

I might get Borderlands, too. It sounds awesome. It's a first person shooter with Diablo-esque elements in a setting that's like Trigun with Mad Max-esque elements. In other words, frak yes.

I DARE any of you to have a wedding as awesome as mine was. If you missed it, you'll just have to go to your grave knowing that you missed the PERFECT wedding, and you'll never see its like. If you were there, you may thank me in the comments.

Actually, I should thank you. Thanks to everyone who could make it and to everyone who wasn't. You're a part of this crazy love story between two kids who first talked to each other in a Final Fantasy 7 RP chat room. We first met in person at Otakon. I was cosplaying Wolfwood from Trigun. I had a portable confessional and was panhandling in the dealer's room by telling people I'd save their soul for two dollars. She was having an incredibly crappy day, and she gave me two dollars. I gave her the sign of the cross and a hug. We later met through Tony, a mutual friend of ours. We became loose acquaintances until she started hanging out with Tony and I. We had our first kiss December 8th, 2004. We went our seperate ways after that. We both had our own crises to deal with. I asked her out a year later. Our second kiss was Christmas day, 2005. We had our first date two days later.

Now she is my wife. That this kind-hearted, wonderfully genuine and unique woman wants to spend the rest of her life with me blows my mind. I am truly blessed to have her as a companion for the rest of my life.

The Forever War

William Mandella is a peaceful borderline genius space welder who was conscripted into the military where he gets to smoke weed, say "fuck you" to his superior officers, and bang whatever random girl is assigned to his bunk that night (oh yeah, it's a co-ed military force). They are fighting against a race called the Taurans and travel at speeds close to the speed of light, which causes relativity to fuck around with time. Basically, what is months to him is decades to Earth, so by the time he finishes his training and fights (in what is an apparently pointless war where two races just kind of plink at each other in the vast depths of space) William and his girlfriend Marygay have to go back to a shithole planet. William settles down with his mother, who lives in Columbia, Maryland. He soon meets up with Marygay and joins the military again proving that a meaningless war in the cold, uncaring black of space is better than living in Columbia. He fights more completely retarded battles that basically involves both sides planting themselves on a planet then using technology to deny the other side their technology. This results in both sides fighting with technology that is only a little more advanced than sharp sticks. Meanwhile, so much time has passed for William that he is leading a platoon of people whose culture is vastly different than his. They are all clones, all of them are gay (originally this was forced on people to curb overpopulation but halfway through that's just what they got used to), and they all speak a version of English that is completely unrecognizable to William (though they have been taught William's "archaic" dialect). At this point you start getting the message that I think the author wanted to convey: War is stupid and fucks you up.

Aaaand to contrast...

Starship Troopers

You've probably seen the movie. Well, it's Juan Rico in the book, and he's from the Phillipines, not Buenos Aires. And he has no interest in Carmen other than "hey that's a pretty nice girl who's going to be a pilot." And there's no Neil Patrick Harris in the book, which was a severe oversight on Robert A. Heinlein's part. Now, if you'll think back to the movie, remember the part where all the kids were in high school and Michael Ironside is talking about how awesome fascism is? Stretch that part out a bit. Add a few more scenes like that to include classrooms once Rico has entered boot camp and after he enters officer training. Then intersperse a few of the details of live on the ship between battles to illustrate Rico's leadership style, and how he takes to the mobile infantry. And like, two battles. Oh, and remember Rico's dad, the one who didn't want him to go into the M.I.? Well, he actually lives and joins the M.I. himself. He meets up with his son and they spend half a chapter sucking each other off (not literally, but that would have been more interesting) because they're MEN now. Then Rico goes to class again. Then there's a battle. The end.

And now to address something that bothered me about the book. There's a creepy quality to Rico. He's not the strong-willed hothead that he was in the movie. As horribly acted as that movie was, the movie versions of the characters actually have more of a personality than their book counterparts. Carmen isn't even really a character, she's really just there to illustrate that women become pilots. Carl is just the eager kid who gets Rico to join and isn't heard from again. Rico himself has this blank slate "Beaver Cleaver" personality that seems to believe whatever anyone of sufficient rank tells him, and molds his own ideology to whatever today's lesson plan is (but only after offering a counterpoint to the teacher's statements, which are quickly batted down. It's clear that Rico's side of the argument is always meant to be the losing side). Rico isn't so much a character as a foil to whatever the author feels like using as a mouthpiece that chapter.

In a lot of ways, the movie is better than the book. If you just want a story with only a hint of dystopia, you can watch the movie and not have to deal with the crap from the book. If sociology is more your thing, and you want a lecture on the cost-benefits of an entire society based around its all volunteer army, then the book is for you. Each of them has its merits. The movie is mindless fun, but isn't going to win any awards. The book is thought provoking (even if you're like me and didn't agree with it at all) but gets pretty boring in parts.

Amid my various tasks before my wedding I got the brewing bug once again, so I started a cyser. It's an apple mead.

When I woke up this morning, ready to get a jump on the day, and when I decided to check on my pet boozahols, I saw THIS:

( Pictures below )

Rainbow's End

San Diego, 2025 (if man is still alive!). Robert Gu was an aging asshole poet until he got Alzheimer's Disease. Thanks to a miracle cure, Robert's still an asshole, just one without Alzheimer's and not even really a good poet anymore. Now he has probably another 50 years tacked onto his life so he's probably got to get a job, but the world is so alien to him now he actually has to go back to a high school level vocational tech school. Everyone wears computers now, and participates in Augmented Reality, a computer assisted overlay of information and objects on top of reality. Meanwhile, his family is having serious problems and everyone ends up getting caught up in the schemes of a diabolical Augmented Reality-based talking rabbit with a crazy plan involving the San Diego University Library. Can Robert Gu make amends with the family he alienated, save the world from a tacked on brainwashing device subplot (It's technically the plot but this book is all about showcasing Augmented Reality), find out what's going on with the rabbit and still get an A on his finals?

His Majesty's Dragon

Captain William Laurence is a Royal Navy captain who captures a French ship. The ship is carrying a dragon's egg, and Britain really needs dragons. William ends up taming the dragon, names it Temeraire, and is transferred to the Dragonriders of Pern Britain. His family pretty much disowns him because people in England don't really think dragons are as awesome as they are. He goes on a fantastic adventure where he humiliates Napoleon, sticks up for Dragon's rights, accidentally fondles his dragon's secondary reproductive organs, and still has time to bed a MILF.