Here’s the official site of The UK’s premier newspaper “The Sun“. You’re probably thinking something like “Why would anyone want to check out a site about a newspaper?”. The answer is simple: Page 3!. That’s why!
Couldn’t help myself. I read Mike’s post today and couldn’t resist a parody promoting boobs. Here’s more for those disappointed with that link (boring chicks).
It was just another day, and I was going about my daily routine. Doing the same old things like sleeping in, playing video games, cooking, and surfing the internet. Our story takes place during that last one there, surfing the internet. It’s a common thing I do, and I can never get enough of it. If I lost the internet, I’d probably shrivel up and die within a week.
So anyhow, I love the internet and like I said, on the whole, I never get bored of it. It’s got unlimited potential, you see. But I do get bored if I use it for too long at one time. See, I have my daily rounds that I check (Gorillamask, The Sneeze, X-E, etc.), and once I’ve visited all those sites, I’m kind of out of ideas. I know there are tons of other sites that I could check out for entertainment, but for reasons unknown, I rarely do.
Now every site’s got their ad banners. At least a good 98 percent of them. I click on these banners every now and again, assuming they advertise something I find interesting, they manage to really grab my attention, or I’m just bored and don’t really have a next cyber-destination in mind. You’ve likely seen the Mate1.com banners floating around. They’re nearly everywhere. Now, Mate1.com is a website that I would normally never visit. But on that particular day, at that particular time, I just couldn’t resist the underwear-clad girls in the banners any longer and I clicked.
Before I get back to the story, maybe I should explain just what Mate1.com is, for those unfamiliar with the ad (I assume everyone who reads this site has a solid understanding of the internet, but just incase…). Basically, it’s an online dating service. Meaning you fill out some information, and they find a bunch of other user who either have similar interests as you or that fit that criteria that you search for. People can also do their own searches and end up finding you. It’s not an original site idea, but as I said before, the banners are everywhere and every man is likely to give in at one point, because they all feature pretty girls in their underwear.
Now I’m not overly interested in normal dating, and online dating ranks even lower on my list of things to do, but upon seeing how many little things Mate1 has for users to fill in, I was simply overjoyed. Again, I don’t know why, but I love fiiling out forms. So I got to it, and spent somewhere around half an hour filling out little tidbits of information about myself. I didn’t care if anyone ever read it, but it all got filled out. I even uploaded a couple pictures of my handsome self.
After everything was filled out, I became less amused with the site and, as I didn’t much care for searching for other people, I left and went on my merry way to see if Wii Fanboy had any new updates since the last time I checked (which was likely about an hour earlier).
Night came and went, and a new day was born. I woke up towards noon and hopped into my computer chair (after a few other, less you-want-to-hear-about-them events), as I usually do not long after I wake up. I signed into MSN Messenger (appearing offline, of course), and then booted up Firefox. About an hour into my rounds, Messenger notified me that I had received an e-mail from Mate1.com. Intriguing! Well, I’m not one to ignore e-mail, so I opened up my inbox and checked it out. As it turns out, it was notifying me that some 20-year-old fox had send an e-mail to my Mate1 account. Eager to find out whether they’d be constantly spamming me like this or if someone was indeed showing interest in my humble being, I clicked.
Then “tragedy” struck. I got this:
After giving the Mate1 “give us your money” screen a good flipping-off, I left the site, intending never to return. But then they came.
Fortunately, all of Mate1’s search functions work just fine for free member, and even better, there was a nickname search! So I started copying screennames and pasting ’em into the search and seeing what happened. In the end, most of the profiles were either very legitimate or very well-faked. One person even e-mailed me twice, and based on my knowledge of past spam e-mail, that almost never happens. It looks like people are, in fact, trying to contact me. So to confirm this theory, I had to come up with a new plan.
My grand scheme was to place my real e-mail in my self-description box on my profile page, and if people really were reading through it, they would find that and then e-mail me directly, skirting around Mate1’s little tollbooth. A day passed, and there was no response, but I still got Mate1 alerts. I checked my profile to make sure I spelled it right, and low and behold, they had removed the e-mail address! to be fair, there was a warning saying that would happen, but I assumed that the admins were too lazy to follow up on it. Way to prove me wrong, Mate1. Way to prove me wrong.
My last bastion of hope was a tricky one. Since they wouldn’t let me directly write out e-mail addresses or links, I came to the conclusion that only one thing would work. I then proceed to suggest googling the words “Torrential Equilibrium” to anyone who reads the profile. To this day, the suggestion remains, and my plan… well I don’t know if it worked. If it has, nobody bothered to e-mail me after getting a brainful of my writing. I imagined that might happen.
So that’s pretty much how my struggle against Mate1.com has gone so far. At current, they’re leading about 2-1, but I’ll keep trying my hardest to find ways to get around paying them. Not that I really care about contacting anyone out there in internet world. I just really want to beat Mate1. You know what really drives me to it? The fact that women get to use all their services free. Yeah. That’s right. Chicks can send you messages all day, but they’ll never recieve anything in return because no man will ever pay money to use this service. Not only are they pissing off men around the globe, but they’re probably crushing all sorts of women’s hopes and dreams too by instituting a system where they’ll never ever get a reply to their advances. In conclusion, Mate1.com hates everyone.
But you know, now that I think about it, the joke’s really on them. I don’t have cheques or a credit card, so even if I wanted to pay them, there’s no way I could. But I’m not giving them a damn cent as it stands, so it doesn’t make a difference. The really fun part is that I jsut wasted like 20 minutes of your life making you read this dumb story that doesn’t go anywhere. That more than enough to keep me entertained. If ever I’m bored or sad, now I’ll just be able to sit back and think about how someone read through this entire article thinking it would go somewhere or be even remotely entertaining. Ah. Good times.
If you don’t appreciate this photo gallery (probably NSFW), get off my website now.
In other news, that kind of thing was long overdue here. Also, it turns out HAL’s cutting Mr. Game & Watch from Super Smash Bros Brawl. ‘Tis a sad day indeed. A couple others are getting axed too (Young Link, Ice Climbers), but I don’t care nearly as much. Besides, Young Link is being “replaced” by Wind Waker Link, and Ridley is now on board too (as well as Young Bowser, but that’s no more than a “meh”), so it kind of evens out. In the the end though, it doesn’t matter which characters are there, because the game is going to rock all over the place regardless.
I did a little shopping over the past week, and rather than talk about each item separately in the blog as I usually do, I figured I’d take a page from Mike’s book and do a mass review of the stuff I bought. It just seems so much easier that way, and you only have to sit through one boring article rather than four boring bog posts. Everyone’s a winner! Except you. And everyone but me. So in conclusion, I’m the only winner.
Now, many of you should know that I really love Boston. I mean, they’re a fricking sweet band, how could I not? In any case, most fans think that Boston’s releases went downhill after their second, Don’t Look Back. I’ll admit that Third Stage was a little weaker than I’d hoped for, but Walk On is awesome.
The disc is split into three parts. The first three songs are kickass, even if “Surrender to Me” was featured on Don’t Look Back. The second part of the disc is the “Walk On Medley”, a set of four songs that could stand on their own, but come together to make what could very well be the rockingest 12-something minutes ever recorded. The last set of songs is a bit weak and forgettable, but that’s forgivable due to the high quality of the rest of the album. Hell, the “Walk On Medley” alone is worth the purchase price (which was about $12). Seriously. It was basically the reason I bought the album in the first place. Also, I really love “Surrender To Me”. Score: A
The most expensive item on the list, totaling up to about $40, is a game I’ve been looking forward to for a while. Why? Well, to be honest, the DS doesn’t exactly have a great catalogue of fighting games. The only one I had before this was Jump SuperStars, and as great as that game is, it wasn’t going to last me forever and I don’t feel like importing Bleach and it’ll still be awhile until King of Fighters DS is released.
But now it sounds like I’m making an excuse for buying it. That would be because it hasn’t exactly been getting the greatest of reviews. they say it’s too far from the base GG material or something, but I’m not seeing what’s so wrong with it. Granted, my only previous GG experience is with Guilty Gear Advance, but I loved that game immensely. GGDS seemed like the next logical step. I’ve been playing it a lot since I got it, and I’m very much enjoying it. Of course, I’m pretty crap at fighting games (makes you wonder why I love them so much), but I’m even starting to get reasonably good at this one.
Basically, the game takes the base fighting game mechanics (think Street Fighter, but cooler) and tries to cross-breed them with Super Smash Bros. This ends up with multi-tiered stages, items, and up to four fighters. It’s a little more hectic than your run-of-the-mill fighter, but I’m convinced that it works. Word on the street is that Guilty Gear Isuka for PS2 works in a similar fashion. The only thing that they forgot to implement was Wi-Fi multiplayer, which is strange considering how long it was delayed for.
Aside from the fighting, there are a handful of touch-screen minigames, all of which are kinda dumb and/or hard except for one. Their only purpose if to unlock movesets for a single customizable character. And speaking of which, those would be the only unlockables in the game. It’s odd for a fighting game not to have a small warehouse worth of unlockables in this day and age, but I don’t think that the game suffers any because of it. Mostly because I’d never be able to get half the stuff unless it were time-released or something else not relating to skill. Score: B+
Have you read my Bust-A-Move article? That alone should really be enough to justify why I dropped $20 on BAMDS. I mean, why not? It’s portable Bust-A-Move, which in itself is worth even $30. Not to mention that the damn game has been out since December or so and this was the first time I’d seen it anywhere. A chance encounter is all it was, and I couldn’t have hoped for better.
So how is it? It’s friggin’ Bust-A-Move! Do I really need to tell you how it is? To be honest though, it is a little tricky to get used to. See, the D-pad is way oversensitive for Bust-A-Move, and there’s no control stick, so what’s a guy to do? Well duh, this is the DS we’re talking about. Obviously you get to aim with the touch screen, which works awesome once you get the hang of it, which takes maybe five minutes tops. Also it features 5-player single-card multiplayer. Top notch!
One odd thing to note is that both DS games I picked up were made by Majesco. What a silly coincidence. Score: A
I saw this game one time at Superstore and I was like “Holy crap! New Capcom survival horror game!” but it was like $35 and I didn’t feel like taking that chance. Luckily, while I was perusing the games down at the Best Buy, I found it for a meager $20. That was more like it! While it was clearly more of a budget title, I was pleasantly satisfied with Obscure, so my susceptibility to a cheap survival horror game was at it’s highest.
I haven’t played very far yet, but for what it’s worth, I’m very much enjoying Haunting Ground. If you’ve ever played a Clock Tower game, you’ll have a very good idea of how this one goes down. If not, here’s the lowdown: you’re a (rather busty) girl trapped in a big spooky castle being stalked by a big spooky ogre-man. The catch? No weapons. Unlike most survival horror games, Haunting Ground really emphasizes the survival bit by leaving you almost completely unarmed, save a few defensive items to help slow down your stalkers. Unlike Clock Tower though, you are aided by a friendly dog who will attack your assailants for you, but it’s still more of a run-and-hide game.
I probably just suck at it, but I’m finding this game almost as difficult as it is entertaining. That damn ogre-man is a lot more persistent than I need him to be, but it does add a good bit of fun to the game, as it’s always more rewarding to complete a difficult task than an easy one. The dog is also really cool. He’s animated really well, easily the best video game dog I’ve seen to date. Oh, and he acts like a real dog too, with the not listening to you when he doesn’t feel like it and all. The scenery is also insanely pretty too. If you like graphics, you’ll love this game to no end. If you like gameplay, you’ll like the game too, but maybe not quite as much. Sadly, the music is little more than atmosphere… And speaking of atmosphere, the game builds so much tension that lesser men will pop while playing it. Score: B
Hilarious: DS Lite review
Awesome: GBA/DVD Player
Sexy: Nicole
Brilliant: Real-life Mario Bros.
Tomorrow: Brain Age
So I had a “job offer” this morning. Didn’t do that at Timmy’s, so I had no idea what it would be. There, they just finished the interview and said they’d give me a call to tell me when I start. Turns out the thing was just a bunch of red tape, and it took less than half an hour, but I do have some light reading to do. Oh, and I officially have a job now.
Afterwards I went to McDonald’s to get some breakfast, and it wasn’t until I was done eating that it dawned on me that I had eaten breakfast before I left. Oops. Just thought that was kind of a funny little story.
Since I don’t have anything else important to say, I’ll just dump a few more links on you. I’ve been doing it all month, why stop now?
Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit 2006 site
Hilarious news report on a leprechaun sighting
Satoru Iwata’s keynote address transcript
Zelda: Phantom Hourglass trailer (check the right-hand sidebar)
All sorts of video game speedruns. Impressive to say the least
Can you see what’s wrong with the album cover below? Take your time, but I’m pretty sure it’ll pop right out at you.
You know what’s cool? This is almost perfectly accurate as far as what goes through my mind during a day. Especially the Lucky Charms bit. You have no idea how often I forget the Lucky Charms jingle and spent hours trying to remember it. And who would put Reese Witherspoon at #100 on a list of 100 girls you want to sleep with? She’s gotta be at the very least around 15 to 20. In any case, it’s kind of a relief to know I’m not the only one who has entire conversations with my brain.
I’ve been thinking about buying webspace lately. It’s become a serious thought, even though my site has no visitors and such a venture would end up being a huge waste of money. But first, I need a domain name. And while I’m currently drowning in options of webhosts and domain name providers, I have a much more troubling conundrum. What should I use as my domain name? I seriously have no idea. “Torrentialequilibrium.com” would be too long and hard to spell (sadly, many of my friends are horrible spellers), and I don’t really want to use my name at all. It’s a very important decision that will require much thought and many opinions. This would be a question well suited to be posted at a certain message board, but alas, said message board is long dead.
Hearts, stars and horseshoes, clovers and blue moons. Something about a rainbow, then a red balloon. I’m sure an internet query would solve my dilemma for good, but then I’d have one less thing to do with my free time.
In case you’re wondering about today’s slightly-more-random-than-usual post, I’ve decided to stay up all night, and anything that passed through my mind that I deem important will end up here.
To answer another question that may be floating around in your noggin, yes, I do actually have a day planner where I’ve written down what I should be doing with the site each day for a couple weeks in advance. Currently it’s just a text file, but someday I hope to acquire some piece of technology that will be able to perform a similar function.
I don’t know how this will go over, but I’ve come up with a new genius scheme to attract more visitors. It came to me a while back when I linked to the Sneeze and I checked my referrers page to see that he had visited my site from his referrers page. So for the next however long, I will be making regular plugs to various sites in hopes that their webmasters will check my own. This will work as long as you make sure to click on any link I post. And I promise that no more of them will lead to anything potentially scarring. Sheer idiocy, or pure genius? You make the call.
Lastly, I’ve signed up for a deviantART account… thing. It’s a lot easier to upload stuff there than it is to add to my handmade galleries. Oh, right. The link. There’s also one on the sidebar.
Another chapter in my life comes to an end that is both surprising and predictable. I stared my greatest fear in the eyes, and proceeded to do what had to be done. In the end, I’m still doomed to spend my nights alone at the computer writing about stupid things. But I have grown, and learned that sometimes, even when you have no courage, you just have to give ‘er. I also learned that the outcome wasn’t what I really cared about, but rather that I was out to prove to myself that I’m not as weak as I used to think. I’m not disappointed. I don’t regret my actions. I have no time for sorrow. I’m happy that I faced my fears head-on. I know that with a little more time and research, I could have avoided the let-down, but like I said, I have no regrets. I guess you’ll be happy too now that you won’t have to read about this anymore. Oh, and if you have no idea what I’m talking about, you might want to consider reading the last couple posts a little closer.
It’s taken me over a month to finally get down to business, but finally, I can proudly present to you the second annual Cristmas article. Maybe in the future I’ll have some more Cristmas-themed things to write about, but that’s a little ambitious for me. So yes, it’s taken me quite a while, and I would like to take the time to explain myself. If you don’t want to read the article lengthening banter that is my explaination, just skip right past the next paragraph. If you do want to see what paper-thin excuses I’ve come up with, continue on, my friend.
I had originally wanted to do something different for christmas this year, but as you’ll see, it didn’t fly. I was planning to do complete reviews on each major item that I received, and then wrap up all the smaller ones into a separate article. But that idea never got off the ground, as it required me to do far too much writing in too little a time frame (I’m really bad for productivity. To date, I still haven’t finished the Disney World logs.). So now you get one big one. Then as if technology itself were trying to thrawrt me, I had uploaded about half the pictures you’ll see in this article onto the family PC, where I used to do most of my site work. it promoptly crashed a day or so afterward. The files were on a separate backup drive, and it wasn’t until just recently that I got around to putting it into my PC. So as you can plainly see, the lateness of this article is due to my extreme laziness. Oops.
But I digress, it’s about time I talked about the Christmasy stuff. Oh, did you notice I put images in the title banner? I think it’s a nice touch, though slightly overbearing. I’d also like to voice my opinions on the parts of Christmas which are not gifts, but if you really want to know about that, you can go read the intro to last year’s Christmas article. It’s got all the deets, yo.
As I did last year and will for many years to come, I shall start with the stocking. But why the stocking? Ah, that has got some lore behind it. So gather ’round while I tell ye the tale. Every year on christmas morn, us chill’ens get up anywheres between three to one hours before the folks do. Rules denote that no present is to be unwrapped while not under the watchful eye of the parents, so we must wait in agony for them to wake. But back in nineteen-odd-something, we struck a deal allowing us to dig into the stocking stuffers so that we might have something to do whilst we waited. And to this day, the stocking is always the first priority when dealing with Christmas-related affairs. Other big words, blah blah. Let’s move on.
Anyway, if you can’t tell from the picture, here’s what’s there. And in fancy list form, no less.
Ye Gods! Wrong colour pens. Wrong flavour Tic-Tacs. Wrong brand deodorant. Kinda make me wonder if my paren- err, Santa, knows me at all. But all in all, not a bad bunch of stuff, but like I said before, the candy. But the one thing that really impressed me…
Among the more obvious items is a tube of toothpaste, good old Crest style. Crest is awesome. Aquafresh wishes it were as good as Crest. And then there’s the Juicy Fruit. When in stick form, it’s good stuff. But the peices are just worthless. The sticks have a good run of flavour. Heck, I’ve been chewing one all night and it’s still got some left. The pieces, though, they go for like 20 seconds and then it’s over. Kinda like your mom. Oh! Burn! …Did that make sense? I think that kind of joke only works against men… Maybe next year. What you don’t see in the picture is a scarf and a cheque for 50 smackers. Booyah. I love money.
Off to the right side, you’ll also note a roll of duct tape just barely in the picture. I got that for Christmas as well, but had forgotten up until I saw it in the picture. And that’s why it doesn’t have it’s own picture. Funny story. My mom was totally stupified when I said I wanted duct tape for Christmas. She thought it was weird to ask for, but got it for me anyway. OK, maybe it wasn’t that funny after all.
Oh, and while I’m on the topic of things that didn’t get their own pictures (mostly just so that I don’t forget to mention them later), I also got a couple other “strange” goods for the big X to the Mas. for one, I got a pie from my youngest brother. It was an apple pie. I was hoping for pumpkin or cherry, but he bought me a freaking pie, so I was totally impressed. Also, my grandma got me some cheesecake. Both of these items were actually on my list (I wasn’t gonna make one orignally, but my mom requested it), and my brother and grandma are cool, so they totally came through for me. It was truly the tastiest Christmas ever.
As I’m working on a PC with no program that can indicate the number of words in a document, I have no idea how far along I am word-wise, but I do think that this would be an appropriate time to go onto the next page of stuff. Going by paragraphs, this is about how far I got last year when I went onto the second page, and this two-pager deal should be tradition. It’s good for making me look like I write a lot more than I actually do. Crap. I’ve run out of ways to extend this paragraph. Oh woe is me! I have no ideas for filler! Oh well, to the next page!
[Pretend there’s a link to a Page 2 here. There really used to be!]
I’ll be honest, I didn’t think this year was going to produce a two-pager. But as it turns out, I might have actually gotten more stuff this year than I did last. I won’t bother to count, but feel free to do so if it bothers you not to know. This is really strange, because I figured Christmas wouldn’t be as great an occasion since now I’m an adult. But it was pretty much the same. Everyone still treats me like a kid, so I’m happy. But as much as things stayed the same, there was a lot of difference from last year.
The first thing, and most prominent for me, was our dog situation. Last year we had good old Mojo. I was forced to watch him a lot, so I got rather attached to the dog. But this year, we’ve got our new dogs. The whole season reminded me of Mojo, and gave me this strange sensation inside. I think it’s what you people call “emotion”. And then there was the fact that this year I only had two video games on my list, as opposed to the lists of years past that had only two items that weren’t video games. It could have something to do with the fact that this year I have a job and money, and I can buy the things I want. Lastly, this was teh first year where I eer had to actually go out to find things and buy them for my family. Previous years saw my parents doing my shopping for me, and it was different for me to have to do it for myself. But that’s enough reflection for now, it’s time we get back to the important matter at hand: showing off my material posessions!
It’s funny how deceiving the cover is. It managed to trick my mom into thinking that it’s some kind of horrible sex game. I was even kinda surprised that she picked up on the chromosome thing in the title. I guess it’s common knolwedge to anyone who’s finished up to grade six or so, but I never really though that people knew hat kind of thing. Just seems like a little reference that only smart people would pick up on. So even though my mom was totally against it, I got it for Christmas. I even tried to get her playing it, but she just kind of gave up, saying it was too complicated. Pah. It’s funny how some people are so stubborn and won’t even try new things. Excellent game. This and Wario Ware: Touched! are easily worth buying a DS for.
And that, my friends, concludes my 2004 Cristmas article. It may have come late, but I sure think it turned out better than I was assuming it would. You may feel a bit cheated that I gave you a single review instead of a handful, but.. well, yeah, you got screwed. Unless you hate my writing, in which case this is the best case scenario. Except for if I had followed my orignialest plan and just not done one at all. But nay is the case and now it is done. i wish I could think up some more stuff to say, for a conclusion of a single paragraph is barely a conclusion at all.
Ah, yes, that’s it. I’m quite surprised at how much stuff I got, considering that at 18 I’m pretty sure my gift allowance was to be cut in half at least. But it turns out that Santa is particularly nice to some adults. Heh heh. Yeah, my parents are great. I’m not sure what I’m gonna do that fateful year when they finally decide it’s time I grow out of getting a shitload of gifts. I guess by that time I won’t care quite as much as I do now. Or perhaps they’ll just wean me off slowly by giving me slightly less each year. It’s gonna be sad the first year this special isn’t a two-pager. I think that’s gonna be when I quit doing it. If the site lasts that long. But we’ve made it through two years of rambling filler, and I’ll bet I can make it to five, at least. I just hope somewhere along the way I can grow out of this Angelfire dirt. In any case, I hope you enjoyed. See you next article. Or blog post. Whatever.
