Late Afternoon Video: Charlie Brooker's Gameswipe

I completely forgot about putting up a video last week mostly due to still being locked in a brutal knock-down, drag-out cage match with my white whale desktop, which spent the weekend BSODing whenever I gave it a glance it didn't care for. Apparently, after replacing almost all the hardware, a new problem arose and this time it was with Windows 7, meaning I had to once again burn my hard drive to the ground and start anew back with Vista. One of these days I hope to use my desktop for something other than a mechanical frustration inducer. Anyway, here's an amusing special on video games from British TV presenter Charlie Brooker:






-K.

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An Explosion of Useless Information

Even though I've got a link to it off to the side, I thought I'd throw it up here that Giant Bomb has officially launched. They're going to be another news and reviews site, but the bigger portion of it is an interesting sort of video game wiki or IMDb equivalent, with pages dedicated to games and then breaking off into locations, concepts, character, developer and individual pages. It's run by a quartet of ex-Gamespot editors, notably Jeff Gerstmann, who you may recall, if you're a nerd, was the longtime editor who got fired for giving Eidos' Kane & Lynch a bad review. They've got an entertaining podcast as well, so if you like video games it wouldn't be a bad site to check out from time to time.

Also, Chris bought Call of Duty 4, and we played it online before (and after) attending the midnight showing of Alien at the Tivoli (Which was awesome, but hot). That reignited the spark and I went out and bought it yesterday, and spent about two hours shooting guys in the face with an M60 and also screaming in frustration at the TV. Thanks a lot, Chris.

I'll just edit this in here, the complete series of Spaced finally came out on DVD here in the States today, I saw it advertised on Best Buy's site for $40 and I highly recommend picking it up.

-K.

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The Never-Ending Cycle

So a few weeks ago Travis, Tim and I went and fired guns so we could feel like big, strong, manly men. Since that time the bug had bitten me once again to purchase a new firearm and consider taking shooting as a serious hobby. I really wanted to get a H&K USP since we fired it there and I was looking at pricing guides and combing through GunBroker and browsing through gun shops for hours. Earlier tonight I went back to that same range to try out the USPs they had, once again, in three different calibers, racking up a bill of about $70, and afterwards I had this sort of "full" feeling. Much as the same one I had after I had purchased my big stupid revolver and took it out for the first time and didn't touch it again for two years. My hunger high-velocity ordnance had been sated. Maybe it's just more fun when you're with other people, and I'm sure the urge will return once again, though this time around I escaped its explosive grip without making a large purchase.
On my way home I stopped at PetCo because my cats were completely out of food, so I grabbed a large bag of their usual brown-ish food pellet things and threw it on the counter, ready to make my purchase and leave when the young, red-haired cashier behind the counter asked me if I had a PetCo Pals discount card. "No," I replied. Pause. "Would you like to sign up for one?" She asks, calmly. "No, thanks," I respond, level-headedly. "You know you'd save ten bucks if you got one," She counters, gently. "No, that's okay," I verbally parry, evenly. I was perfectly happy with this convention of cool we had established, and usually this is where a dialogue of this nature should end. "BUT IT'S FREE AND YOU WOULD SAVE TEN DOLLARS," she explodes into a fit of not-cool.
Now, I worked at Spencer's for two years, that's more retail experience that I would like to have had. I wasn't in it as long as many others have and will remain, but I knew I had enough when it was over. We had a similar program at the store, a free discount card, and I would occasionally ask people if they would like to sign up. During my short stay there I quickly learned that when a customer says "No, thanks, I'd rather not," 99.999% of the time that actually meant "No, thanks, I'd rather not." At first I thought she was just being pushy in that kind of not-serious, funny way, but after several refusals I realized that this was just push in that kind of serious, not-funny way. I was surprised I was able to leave without one, but after the police hostage negotiator talked her down I was able to make my purchase and feed my starving pets.
Though before that, seeing as I had not eaten since noon and it was fast approaching 8:30 I was getting a big hungry myself, so I made my way to the closest Subway. I had to go to three different Subways because the first two had decided they would close a full half hour early, one of them locking the door but allowing friends of theirs to come in and get food and sit down and eat them. When I made it to the third Subway, getting stuck behind vehicles moving ten miles below the speed limit, an old man with a chest-length beard entered before I did. He asked for a po' boy, which the people behind the counter had never heard of, because they did not serve it. Every question posed to the old man afterwards about what he wanted was answered with "Everything." Judging by appearance, I don't believe he's ordered a sandwich since before the war. I am of course referring to the War of 1812. After several minutes of trying to talk the old man through his order of "Everything" and eventually crafting a reasonable sandwich for a human being to consume I was able to get mine, which upon consuming I notice some of the lettuce had an odd creamy texture which I don't think is usually a quality attributed to the vegetable.
Ironically, after all that, I wanted to shoot something.

-K.

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