If you knew, what would you do?

Uh oh. An album cover. Run for the hills, kids; it’s Band of the Month time!

This month we’re looking at The Living End, an Australian punk act. I may have first heard of them from Guitar Hero 2, and as “Carry Me Home” quickly became one of my favourite songs in the game, I knew that I’d have to search out more. As usual, I went around rounding up their various CDs, and all I have to say is “Huh?”

Okay, let’s start from the start. The sound quality in that video isn’t great, but you should still be able to make out that the song kicks a little ass. It’s all about rocking and rolling. I’ve listened to three of their five releases, and that isn’t really a recurring theme. No, The Living End, as it turns out, play out a lot more like what Green Day used to sound like (pre-Warning, AKA good), rather than ACDC or something that might just be trying to melt your face off. In any case, it’s good stuff. There’s a lot of quality punk sound here, with a little pop and some nice surf vibes scattered about. Big stamp of approval for that one. Oh! And there are even some psychobilly/rockabilly tones, which I especially like.

To keep it short, if you liked Green Day back when they were still respectable musicians, then you’ll like The Living End. If you like punk music in general, I’d say give them a shot. They might be a little more poppy than most die-hard punkers would care for, but they carry themselves well, and there’s a good variety of flavour in the music. Good stuff.

Also, it would seem that Canada rules.

Sharpen up your sticks

So I was woken up ever so rudely this morning (around 2AM) by a bright blue light emanating from my Wii. I was about to go smack my brother for sending me a message at such an hour, but upon checking it, it turned out to be from Nintendo. Turns out they were working on a top-secret Channel for the Wii, called the “Everybody Votes Channel.” Stupid sounding, yes, but basically it’s a channel made specifically for polls, so I’m all over that. Polls are my second favourite thing to fill out, second only to surveys. Add Miis into the mix, and you’ve got a winner in my eyes.

Okay, so it’s kind of dumb, really. But hey, it’s neat that they managed to sneak in a new channel without any fanfare at all. Hope that happens every once in a while. It’s nice to know what you’re getting ahead of time, but a surprise here and there is also nice. It’s probably also a welcome change to hear me happy about something rather than whining like a little girl.

Wish you were here

Bear with me for a couple paragraphs here, I really need to vent a bit. What about? Everything basically. I don’t know how it’s been for you, but 2007 is shaping up to be one really shitty year for me. The first week or so was looking pretty positive, but after that, things just started going wrong and it’s only gotten worse. Imagine a world where I, a man who can barely stand doing household chores, finds the only place where he’s even close to happy is at work. And lately, I’m not even there all that often anymore. I wouldn’t complain, but financial responsibility just crept up and hit me like a Thwomp, so it’s looking like I’m going to need a second job. Fantastic. I’ve tried a myriad of different sentences here, but I’m just not sure where to go from that… so let’s jump ahead a little and skip on a few choice details.

I guess having two jobs and working everyday, possibly even twice a day sometimes, would augment my income significantly, and that would be great. I’ve been entertaining thoughts of moving out a lot lately, and even if I had to struggle (and I know I would), it’s something I really feel I need to do. It’s part of this thing I’m going thorugh where I’m really focused on not needing anyone, and that comes from what might be my biggest issue: my growing anti-socialism. Lately it’s getting so bad that I don’t even want to be around my family anymore. There were a lot of people (percentage-wise anyway, I know like seven people) who I’d normally get along well with, even to the point where sometimes I’d wish they were around more often, but lately I’m just angry at everyone and try to be alone as much as possibe. I mean, I know that I’m the kind of person that’s going to have a lot of alone time (to put it nicely), and that doesn’t bother me, but it’s getting bad to the point where my civil nature is wearing thin. I’m not much for making friends, but the last thing I want is to make enemies, and this isn’t going to be helping that cause.

Of course, there’s always one exception to the rule, and mine is quite the horrid one. I know everyone has to sort this kind of thing out at some point, but I really feel like I should be above the “crush”. Seriously. It just feels so goddamned juvenile and ridiculous that I cannot stand suffering from it. I’m not fucking fourteen, I shouldn’t have to put up with this crap. Of course, I haven’t got anywhere near the proper people skills required to deal with something like this, and so like everything else, I just try to ignore it and make it go away. And we’re not even going to get into how well that’s working out. Hopefully ranting out a little like this will slow the burn a bit. It’s not much, but I know it’s out there where potentially anyone in the world can read it, so that’s somewhat comforting. Also, there’s no way in Hell I could ever directly talk to someone about it. That would make me feel like even more of a jackass.

Shit, I’ve gone on a little longer than I expected. Well, I guess I’ll wrap it up then. We haven’t even scratched the surface of my issues, but at least it feels a little better to get it out there. Some of it. There are a lot of things swimming around in my gigantic head that I don’t want to touch on even here. I mean, I know what all my problems are. I know exactly where they come from, and why they don’t go away or whatever. It’s not like I need a shrink to tell me why I’m so fucked up. I’ve heard that you’re only insane if you’ve got issues and you think you’re sane, so I guess I’m not crazy. Let’s give it some time though. A nuthouse might not be the best way to live, but damn, it would sure be a lot easier than having to deal with life.

Bring your attention to me

So Nintendo World Report is doing a big tribute to the GameCube this week. It’s a pretty awesome and extensive look back at all the great things about the lil’ purple box. The centerpiece of the tribute, though, is the Greatest GameCube Games feature. It’s nice to take a look back at some of the games that really helped the GC through its early/middle years. It’s just too bad it didn’t see equally good support near the end there. Solid list though. So far, anyway.

Aside from that junk, I don’t know. The internet’s been kinda boring lately. S’okay though, because I’ve been spending the past week or so absorbed in Hotel Dusk. It’s nice to see a really solid adventure-ish game on the DS. I mean, Trace Memory was good, but not “buy it” good. Hotel Dusk is totally a buyer though. It’s very seldom that I get so engrossed in the narrative of a video game (see Silent Hill and Tales of The Abyss), but then again, that’s about all Hotel Dusk has.

I think the thing about that is that when I like the story in a game, it’s really all about either the characters or the overall atmosphere. Recent Tales games have been full of really well-develpoed and often hilarious characters, rounded out with brilliant dialogue and high-grade voice acting. The Silent Hill series may be in rough waters as far as gameplay goes, but it’s never failed to present an immediate sense of dead and solitude. Oh sure, there are usually other characters around now and then, but they’re rarely there for any more than a quick jaw. Hell, even Killer7, a shooter of all things, presented a highly elaborate plot, yet it stayed enjoyable and never descended into complete retardation like, oh, let’s say Final Fantasy 7. It was really fragmented over the course of the game, but always remained smart and deep, ultimately tying into a thick, meaty plot in the end.

So yeah. All that nonsensical jabber to say that Hotel Dusk is really good. And maybe I place a little more importance on story than I’d previously assumed. At least when it benefits me.

The 2007 Christmas Gift Roundup

You might not have ever noticed, but back in January of last year, I never actually posted a big ol’ rundown of all the assorted junk I got for Christmas. I guess the main reason is that I felt a little bad about the sheer volume of stuff I receive for the holiday, despite the fact that I’m getting into my adult years. A 20-year old probably shouldn’t get quite as much as I did that year, and it seemed wrong for me to go and show off everything.

This year I had originally planned to keep the once-yearly feature buried, but then I saw Matt’s gift roundup on the X-Entertainment blog, and the fact that he got way more stuff than I did made me think that oh, maybe I’m not quite as spoiled as I thought. Given, I don’t have like a hundred siblings, but the point stands. My parents also had a little extra scratch this year, and besides renovating half the house, they also used it to shower us and themseves in Christmas gifts. And that’s basically why I’m running this feature right now, as late as it my be.

Now that the whole semi-related intro groundwork business is laid out I suppose it’s time we get to the down and dirty of this article here: the goodies. Though I’d like to remind you that while I use the term “good”, I can predict that some will groan at at least a few entries on the list. Oh, also like the X-E rundown, this will be somewhat more abbreviated than lists of years past. These kinds of things don’t really deserve two pages.

Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker : One of my fondest memories of classic Game Boy games is the original Dragon Quest Monsters. I spent weeks worth of time playing that games, and still didn’t even come close to finishing it. It was a hard freakin’ game, what can I say? I skipped the second (and third, apparently) installment of the series, but I figured that when they announced a DS sequel that I’d give it a spin, and it’s nearly exactly how I remember it. The idea of the game is obviously a mix between Pokémon and Dragon Quest, and I really can’t decide what franchise I prefer. Pokémon is 90% strategy-based, while DQM is pretty much an “accept button” masher, but offers a far more obsessive-compulsive breeding system. Though with the default battle option being autobattle, it’s nice to sit back and watch your team just massacre everyone. In any case, while it’s very DQ in the way that it demands a lot of level-grinding, I still love it.

Silent Hill Origins : Quite possibly my most longed-for PSP game ever, Silent Hill Origins is a bit of a mixed bag. I haven’t played too far into it as of yet (I’m saving it for when I finish with DQM), but I really like what I’ve played through. On the positive side, the atmosphere is perfect, being completely creepy and one of the the few horror-based franchises that actually frightens me. The less positive being that every weapon you pick up is breakable. And they break fast. It’s not a huge issue, because punching enemies to death works just fine (it just takes a little longer), and if you’re up against more than one enemy at a time, it doesn’t matter what kind of weapon you’re carrying: you will be murdered. Also, Harry would breathe heavily after running for a while in the original Silent Hill, which was a neat touch, but protagonist-man-whose-name-I’ve- currently-forgotten can actually only run for a while before he needs to breathe out or down an energy drink. I hate realism in games because it’s almost always inconvenient. All in all though, it delivers more than enough to be worth it, and I think I’ll really enjoy it once I sit down and give it more than an hour.

Futurama: Bender’s Big Score : Time has done well to Futurama. It may not be exactly what I was hoping for in a fifth season, but the first of however many of these “movies” they’re making sets a pretty good standard. I’ve watched it twice now, which is a lot, considering that I’ve almost never seen a movie twice in such a short span of time. The plot deals with a lot of time travel, which can cause some pretty perplexing plot holes, but as far as I care, the writing staff did a great job avoiding that kind of stuff and workied it out pretty well. One thing I noticed about Futurama over the course of it’s life is that it went from being just about funny to being funny and really fleshing out the characters and their relationships with each other. Bender’s Big Score continues down that road, albeit maybe not as much as the fourth season did, but there’s a good amount of sincerity along with the humour. The only thing I didn’t like is that they referenced like 95% of the old episodes, which is maybe a little too much. Self-referential humour is good and all, but freshness is good too.

Superbad : I saw a brief bit of this movie shortly after it came to DVD (“Do you know how many foods are shaped like dicks? All the good ones!”), and I knew that I had to own it. I do not regret this decision, but I also disagree with all the hype surrounding it. Maybe I just missed something, but I don’t think it’s quite as holy as the general consensus would like you to think. It’s a great movie, yes. It’s hilarious, no doubt. I just don’t really think it’s going to redefine any genres. Then again, I have yet to break into the second disc, which contains extras that might shine some light on exactly why I should think it’s pure genius. So we’ll leave the final word open for now, but it is totally worth buying.

Killswitch Engage – The End of Heartache : I was introduced to Killswitch Engage back in… 04 maybe? Anyway, they had a song on the Resident Evil: Apocalypse soundtrack, and it was one of the standout tracks on the disc (though most of them are pretty good). I downloaded like two more songs to see more of what they were like, and I was kinda apathetic about it all. Their latest single, “My Curse”, in in Guitar Hero 3, and that’s when I decided to give them another shot. I got The End of Heartache for Christmas, and I’m thinking maybe I should go and pick up their two other CDs. I’m not much of a metal connoisseur, so I can’t really say much about them, but I like Killswitch Engage.

HIM – Venus Doom : Yeah, I’m still listening to HIM. A lot of bands I’ll listen to obsessively for a while and then kind of forget about, but HIM is one of the groups with staying power. Their latest offering is quite good. I’ve only had it on in the background while I play video games, so I haven’t really sat down just to listen to it and absorb it, but I do realy like it. Maybe even a bit more than Dark Light, which I was ever so slightly disappointed with. I guess the reason is that I was drawn into the Dark Light hype, so maybe I was expeting too much, I don’t know. In contrast, I didn’t even know about Venus Doom until like a week before Christmas, so I was just excited that there was a new HIM CD.

Dethklok – The Dethalbum : Honestly, what haven’t I said about The Dethalbum already? I downloaded it the day before it was released, and I’ve listened to it probably about 50 times. Now, I own it. The Tall One had to venture to a mall on the other end of the city to find the stupid thing, but it was a trek well worth it. We’re both huge Metalocalypse fans, so either of us probably would have gone even farther to procure it. I’m just slightly disappointed that there weren’t any copies of the special edition available. The bonus disc is short, but the songs on it are totally worth however much extra money they charge for it. Conclusion: wicked CD.

Beetlejuice : I’ve seen this movie on TV so goddamned many times that I really don’t need to own it, but it’s a great addition to my collection anyway. Why wouldn’t you want to watch Beetlejuice? I wouldn’t buy the cartoon series though. It’s one of the few shows I loved in my childhood that I just can’t really get into anymore. Ah well. At least the toys were cool.

Trailer Park Boys Christmas Special : When this first came out maybe two years ago, I skipped it because I figured it would be included on one of the season DVD sets. I was dead wrong. Now I don’t have a Conky finger puppet because I waited, but I guess I’ll find a way to manage without.

Wii Points : Wii Points are a precious resource to me. I can never have enough, and I’m ever so slightly iffed that I only got one card for Christmas. Oh well. The Youngest One decided he would gift me a Virtual Console game as his present, but there was nothing I didn’t already own that I wanted on the service, so he gave me a raincheck. It’s been three weeks since Christmas and I still have that raincheck. Where are all the good VC games?

Nunchuck attachment : “But Ryan,” you say “when did you get a second Wii Remote?” the fact of the matter is that I did not. I just wanted a second nunchuck so that I could have one just to leave in the Zapper. Honestly, I back-and-forth with the thing a lot, and locking in and winding up the nunchuck, then undoing it all when I’m done is a pain in the ass. The annoyance of the process has on more than one occasion stopped me from playing anything at all, so you can see how Goddamned lazy I really am. Actually, I probably should pick up a second Wiimote just to leave in the Les Paul…

Lost season 3 : The thing between me and TV is that I don’t watch things on purpose. I can never remember when shit is on, or what channel it’s on, so when I find a show I like, I generally just go out and buy the DVDs to save myself the trouble. I don’t usually blaze through DVD sets so quickly, but I’ve already watched every episode from this particular season, and have started hacking away at the bonus features disc. I guess I wouldn’t really call myself a Lost junkie, because I’m not completely fanatical about it, but it is without a doubt my favourite show on TV right now. Season 4 is supposed to the be the end, and it makes me sad, but given the way 3 ended, I guess dragging it on any longer would seem forced. So yeah. I thoroughly enjoy Lost.

The Godzilla Collection : I’ll be honest here, I haven’t seen any classic Godzilla movies in their entirety. I’ve tried to watch a couple over the years, but since they were always on TV quite late, and I was much younger then, I always ended up falling asleep. It’s a lore I’ve always been very interested in though. I’ve played a lot of the Godzilla-based video games, and read up plenty on the subject on the ol’ Wikipedia. When I saw this box, my eyes bugged out and I knew that it had to be mine. And now it is. I still haven’t set aside time to crack it open yet, because I want to marathon it, but I fully intend to sometime within the next week or two. It contains seven movies: the original, and the six Showa series films. I know somewhere out there there’s a box of the Heisei series films, but I just haven’t found it yet. When I do though…

The Doors : This was kind of an odd one. My mom was looking for things for The Tall One, and she pointed this out. I surmised that he probably didn’t listen to the Doors, but that I did, though not really showing much interest. Christmas morning: BAM! You know what? Maybe it’s not something I would pursue under my own power, but it sounds like an interesting movie. I’m pretty sure it’ll be awesome. Because I think the Doors are pretty awesome. Now all I have to do is put aside some spare time in which to watch it. Maybe I’ll do that once I’m done with this stupid article.

Jerry Seinfeld Live on Broadway : It’s Seinfeld. It was a stocking stuffer. Again, not something I would really even give a second look, but ends up being right up my alley. Again, haven’t watched it yet, but fully intend to. If the standup bits on the show were representative of what his real acts are like, then I’m assuming that this will have me busting a gut, so to speak.

Trauma Center: New Blood : You know what’s pretty cool? The Wii Zapper works quite nicely with the Trauma Center games. Never would have thought so, would you? Okay, it hasn’t made a huge difference, but the little bit of extra steadiness helps. In any case, I only started this one up last night. I’m not quite sure if I ever finished the first one, but that’s besides the point. So far, the game is… well, exactly the same. The production values have gone up considerably, though I think the new TV does have a small role to play there. The fact that the entire game is voice-acted is great, because the VAs do a terrific job for the most part. It may not be anything particularly fresh, but hey, Trauma Center is wicked fun.

Whiskey : In the toe of my stocking, rather than finding the traditional orange (which, coincidentally, I’ve never gotten in my stocking), there was a small bottle of Crown Royal. Also, a shot glass with a Santa face on it. Huzzah. Both remain unopened because, quite frankly, I very rarely find myself in a situation where I require alcohol. Mostly because I spend my Friday/Saturday nights alone in my room. I’m not complaining, I’m just sayin’.

Sudoku TV : I’ll admit it, I’m hooked on Sudoku. I blame Brain Age entirely for this. So anyhow, I saw this gizmo at Wal-Mart one night while Christmas shopping with the “fam”, and decided to pick it up because I thought it would be good for a review at the very least. My mom said she’d buy it and told me to act surprised. So on Christmas morning I was treated to a huge box full of plug-n-play Sudoku. And you know what? It’s crap. I mean, it didn’t promise anything that it doens’t deliver, but the buttons are crappy and insensitive, the controls for playing Sudoku on the TV is completely asinine, and the little LCD screen just doesn’t suit the game very well. And I’m not even going to get into the other games that are packed into it. Ugh. It’s usable, but just barely. I will have to go in-depth with it though. It’s just that hilariously bad.

Gift Card Mania!!! : Every year I see more of these little things and it’s like: why don’t you just give me money? They’re not even all in the picture. I mean, I guess the only one I’d be unlikely to use is the one for Blockbuster, because I almost never rent anything, but still. And what’s with the two movie passes? Are you trying to say something? Are you that unsatisfied with me being single? I won five bucks on the Set For Life ticket though. Which is good becaue now I can go get another one, but bad because I know how addicting lottery tickets can be. I already spend way too much money, I don’t need those dumb things nickel-and-diming my bank account down even more.

And that about wraps that up. There are some other assorted thingers that I neglected to mention, mostly clothes and stocking stuffers, but those aren’t interesting in the least. That’s not to say that anything pictured is, but I’m not too concerned about showing the world a new pair of jeans or a pack of gum, you know? Yeah, so that’s the end then. I’m not sure exatly how to cut this off properly. I guess a clean break after the gift card paragraph would have been the best way to do it, but I’ve committed myself to this paragraph and I’m damn well going to see it through. To the end. Which is now.

I’d trade all the others away

I’ve had a lot of pets in my twenty years. At least six hamsters, a ridiculous amount of fish, a frog, and even a bird. But I never really cared about them. They came and went with little to no impact on my life, except maybe that I learned that I disliked responsibility. A couple years ago, we finally got a dog. He was a great dog, and I spent a lot of time with him. Sadly, only months after we get him, the vet discovered that the animal shelter had classified him as a basenji when really he was a pit bull, and seeing as pit bulls aren’t allowed in the city, we had to give him up. It was one of the hardest things I’d ever faced, but it was okay, because I knew he was just going to live somewhere outside the city. Soon after, we were lucky enough to get two more dogs, and life was good.

The last few days have been Hell for me and my family. It’s been all uncertainty and pain. Finally, today I had to say goodbye to one of those dogs. On Wednesday afternoon, I came home to find him far less chipper than usual. Slowly it became more evident to us that something was wrong, as he could barely walk, and couldn’t even get up or down the stairs. By the next night, the poor thing couldn’t move his hind legs, and he coudldn’t even wag his tail. My dad took him to the vet Friday morning and they told us that a couple of the discs in his spine had ruptured, and things weren’t looking good. We gave it a couple days to see if there would be any improvement, but my horible luck was working overtime this weekend, and it just got worse.

We all went down the the animal clinic this evening, and I can say without a doubt that this was the worst day of my life. Just seeing my little puppy there, quivering and helpless, I felt more pain and sadness than I’ve ever known. The worst part about it is that there was absolutely nothing anyone could do. Treatment had clearly failed, and surgery would only delay the inevitable for a short while. The little guy had no chance. All anyone could do for him is put him to sleep so that he wouldn’t have to suffer anymore.

I think that it goes without saying that I’m not taking this well. I’ve never had to deal with real loss my whole life, though you might say that an animal isn’t a real loss. But Harley wasn’t just an animal. He was one of my best friends. He was my confidant. He was family. I don’t know where to go from here. I don’t know how I’m supposed to act. My emotions are all so conflicted that I just want to go to sleep and not wake up so that I don’t have to deal with it any more. I don’t care about many things, but I cared about my dog. I loved him, and I’m gonna miss him for a long time to come.






Are you heartless?

Band of the Month time, yo. But I think an image of an album cover is enough to trigger the synapse that tells you that you don’t care to read this blog post. Fuck you.

Anyway, this month’s band is a relatively small-time group called The Main Event. I found ’em on MySpace (actually, they found me… spooky), and I’ve gotta say that they’re a pretty good act. I got a message from them a while back asking to vote for them on the Ernie Ball/Music Man Battle of the Bands. Why? So they could win a spot on the 2007 Taste of Chaos tour. As it stands, there’s a slim chance I might actually make it to Taste of Chaos this year, so that’s cool. I doubt they’re ahead (hell if I’m going to check), but I’m asking you to go vote for them too. I rather like them, and it would kick major ass to see them live.

Anyway, I also purchased their CD. It’s only six songs, which is really disappointing. And they’re not long either, so it’s not like Deep Purple or Dream Theater where they make up for few songs with long songs. The good thing is that it’s really good, and I heartily recommend it. It’s six dollars, so what have you got to lose? If you’ve got a Paypal account with six bucks, pop over to their MySpace page and click the “buy now” button. You can also listen to four sixths of the album on that page, so it’s all up to you. Just for reference though, the two songs that aren’t on their MySpace page are two of the best ones. Frankly, I think “Heartless” rocks all over the place, but “Neverland” and “Burning Inside” are each as good as their three other songs combined.

In summary, I like The Main Event. Best band I’ve found through MySpace to date (though that’s not to say that there weren’t any other spectacular ones). Big recommendation for them, and I can only hope their next CD is as good as Built From Scratch, possibly a little longer too. 23 minutes is just a little too short.

In other news… I dunno. Sketchbook… Tuesdays? Oops… Bruce Campbell in a sweet Old Spice commercial… It’s rerun week on Ugly Hill. With commentary!… Reason to get a 360? Oh yes… Yay new Wario!…

Put on your red shoes and dance

Okay. So my “10 best of 06” article is done. It saw a lot of drafting, but it’s done. I’ll warn you now though, that I can guaranteee that you’re not going to like some things you see there. And I’m not talking about game choice. Before you start, remember that I’m the guy who pretty much just shovels money into the furnace. You’ll be less surprised that way, but no less annoyed.