Rainbows and Cookies

Not that my life is a typically a My Little Pony picture book or anything but lately it's got some pretty good stuff. Yesterday I was coming into the parking lot after that big storm when I looked up and spotted one over my apartment. I have only seen maybe three or four in my whole life so a rainbow is a pretty big deal for me. Shared a few "Double Rainbow" references with my friend and enjoyed the sight for as long as I could.

We also baked some pretty class-A cookies. Chocolate chip of course. I learned once that they are an American invention, chocolate chip cookies. The operator of the Toll House Inn was the first to cook them. The same Toll House that lends its name to the Nestle brand of cookies today. Nestle bought the recipe from the woman who invented them.

Hopefully this rainbow is a good omen of things to come

Insufferable

There's air conditioning in my apartment. I have to suffer this heat until the central air kicks in for everyone. Of course when I open a window, no breeze comes in at all. In addition to this, I have to endure the torment of my Econ 002 class.

The class meets once a week. Three weeks ago the teacher cancels class for that week and the next week. Two weeks ago he changes it and says there is class this week at the last minute and I don't hear about it until the next day. This week he schedules class, doesn't show up and assigns an essay through the Angel website. . . It's enough to drive me nuts.

End of the Year

It's hard to believe another year has run away from me. As always, this time of the year is extremely messy for me. Dishes pile up, things are left undone, I'm scrambling towards the mad climax of finals and then set adrift into the lulling seas of summertime. I'm looking forward to one thing more than any and dreading another.

May will bring pool season, my absolute favorite thing about summer. Swimming in my pool will be a daily activity for me as soon as it opens up. There's no better way to beat the heat as far as I'm concerned. And I love the color my skin turns from weeks of slow, natural exposure to the sun. For me it's an entirely different experience than sunless fake tanner. I would never use that stuff. It seems strange to me that anyone would make such an obvious faux pas.

However this coming month brings with it a great trial for me. And unfortunately I mean that in a most literal sense. I'm going to court. I can only ask for leniency, since my future at college will depend on the verdict. It's a serious topic. But I could not follow it with a foolhardy one. I'm quite frightened actually. Among other things I could be stripped of my license. It's impressive how much trouble one can get into from so little. Wish me luck. It's the same day as the final I need the most.

Nice Weather

It's great out there, today. I'm so glad it's almost summer. I've been waiting for this for a long time. Shame I've got so much paperwork to do. I'll be stuck inside doing this for a while. Got to fill out my FAFSA, have to apply for an apartment, have to file my taxes which I already had to get an extension for. And today of all days I had to be sick!

So much to do now and all I want to do is go outside and play! It'll be a miracle if I can get everything done that I have to get done. Now time for some coffee.

Rewatching:

A good movie is one worth watching more than once. One you can see again and again and continue to find meaning that you missed before. A movie like Fight Club is highly rewatchable because the second time you are watching scenes you've already seen in a new light. The light of knowledge which says "he's not real," which changes the events of the movie completely of course. 

Not long ago I watched "On the Waterfront" again. The first time I saw it was for my High School's gifted program. It is one of my favorite movies of all time without a doubt. This time around I caught not one but two pieces of symbolism that were hitherto mysterious to me. Now, I will try to describe them without spoiling anything for those of you who have not yet seen the movie. But the way Joey's jacket changes hands seems to be highly symbolic of a chain of responsibility when it comes to standing up to the mob. And also the imagery of pigeons and hawks. Marlon Brando's character's concerns for the safety of his pigeon coop seems highly symbolic of his concern for the longshoremen. It is easy to imagine the hawks as mob men and the pigeons symbolic for the longshoremen. Stuff like that drives me nuts! I eat that up. Imagery and symbolism. That's the kind of writing I love. To me writing is absolutely one of the most important aspects of film-making.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

I watched Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for the first time last night, it was a movie I wanted to see for quite a while and I really loved it. It seems to me that it was based on a very good book. The parts where Johnny Depp's Character breaks off into internal monologues sometimes made into soliloquies by being heavily drugged, are some of the best parts of the movie. They remind me of other films based on great books, such as adaptations I've seen of the Great Gatsby. I really am quite interested in reading this one now. I'm making a mental note to do so this summer.

Cherry Blossom Festival

So Yesterday I went into Philly for the Sakura Japanese Culture Festival at the Horticulture center. It was a very nice place, and I must say I enjoyed being there. There were a lot of people, some dressed as anime characters, and a lot with dogs, too. The trees were all very beautiful, they gave me a chance to get some great shots too, take a look!

NOM.

I love flowers and plants. I always take time to walk past the flowering dogwood by the Springhouse building because of the sweet-smelling flowers. There are lots of different flowering plants on our Campus. Purple lesser periwinkles grow in front of the Lares building. Between Lares and Springhouse there are grape hyacinths. Trout Lillies grow in the wooded places beside the stream, and everywhere that is damp one can find the little celandine blossoms. I'm really glad it's spring again because I love trying to identify as many plants as I can.

Me and Jessie in the Horticulture Center

After we left the festival my friends and I went to Taco Bell, which is normally not a noteworthy experience, except for the fact that my friend Josh had never been to one before. It was pretty interesting to see someone curious about something that seemed so ordinary to me.

Allons-y au Cinéma

This weekend I got to see the films Sucker Punch. I'm going to give you a brief run-through of what I thought of this film. From the director of films like 300 and Watchmen I think it's safe to say I was expecting a display of visual effects and intense action and the movie did not disappoint on either front. Whereas while 300 owns it's stunning effects and flaunts them proudly like a red Spartan cape over the nearly-naked bronzed body of a beautiful but essentially rudimentary story, and Watchmen's character-driven, complicated, non-linear story strains at the seams with fountains of action and showiness leaking through the holes in it's silver screen rendition. This time all bets are off, the film is a helpless crash test dummy thrown into the hands of a mad scientist equipped with fight scene generators and lots of TNT. The result is a mixed bag. The story walks the line between the two movies, it's less intricate than Watchmen but the shifting between the world-views of the insane asylum inmates and the factual reality of their world causes it to quickly lose the elegant simplicity of 300 and makes the movie slightly confusing. The acting ranges from Oscar Isaac who is a perfectly sinister and devious character, to Carla Gugino who manages but struggles to act with an accent, down to Emily Browning as the main character who is good at looking sad and badass with extremely limited in between emotions. Of course it would be a crime to omit a mention of the soundtrack from a Zack Snyder film which is of course inspirational, songs from artists like Massive Attack make some of the action sequences little short of thrilling to watch. These portions of the movie are also hit or miss, the WWI battle and the fight at the Japanese temple are some of the best I've ever seen. But the later two, the dragon, and the train full of robots might be a little less exhilarating if not for being worse, then just because at that point my capacity to be wowed has diminished. The movie is almost entirely concerned with action and the sexiness of the girls, if you like that then you will enjoy this film but don't watch it because you're expecting a brilliant story. The two things Zack Snyder needs, simpler plots would make him a great replacement for James Cameron who likes simple stories with pretty pictures but doesn't have the same cinematic deftness and excellent taste in music that Snyder can execute. Two: if action is the main point of your movie, make us want the action, not get tired of it. It's not hard, a little buildup is all I ask for. One of the major successes of Watchmen is that fight scenes are precious few and far between so when we see them they're quite exciting to watch.

Minecraft

My latest addiction in the world of gaming is the smash internet hit Minecraft. The game is independent, not produced by a major game company. And it is described as a "Sandbox" game which is a word that is new to me, but I interpret as "you are allowed to build what you like" and indeed you can create some remarkable stuff in Minecraft.

The basic premise of the game is that you start out with nothing and have to make everything you need to survive in an empty world. The trouble is, the undead and spiders will spawn every night to come trouble you, so you need to make some safe shelter at least. From there the game is pretty much open to play how you want. The maps are huge, the precious minerals like diamonds and gold are jealously guarded by more monsters deep in the earth. There are rare items to find and build with and you can craft even more interesting objects.

One of the most popular features of minecraft is that you can build complex circuits using a specific item in the game (Redstone Dust) as a wire, coupled with buttons, doors, switches, repeaters, pressure plates, etc. Thes can be very complex and someone even went so far as to create a working computer using input and output.

Minecraft is pretty amazing for having such blocky graphics which at first sight turn a lot of people off, but it's popularity is a testament to its very enjoyable design. Proving the point in the days in which game design companies fight to produce games with the best graphics and leave their gameplay woefully complicated or redundant, that the most important thing for a game is for it to be fun.

Since there's not a lot more to say about this relatively simple game, I decided to include a video to demonstrate the awesomeness:

Recovery

Well it's good to be back, finally not sick but still have a lot of phlegm and pretty bad breath and typically still wake up in a puddle of my own drool. So needless to say, I feel like a real charmer right about now. I'm here today to talk to you about something that was already blogged but is definitely worth reblogging:

This man: Hideaki Akaiwa

During the tragic Tsunami that struck this month in Japan, 43 year old Hideaki put on scuba diving equipment in order to get into his town which had been covered by the tsunami and rescue his wife and mother. This is some impressive shit right here.

“She is very important for me,”

Is one of the few quotes given in the remarkably scant news article that really stretches what is quite clearly a brief encounter with the man who immediately returns to search for more people.

The story can be viewed here: Thestar.com World News

The Bahamas

During the last week I went a lot of places with no internet connection and thus am posting here again for the first time since I left. The island nation of the Bahamas is the eighth that I have visited outside of the United States. This trip was my first by boat and I tried many things that were new to me.

At our first port of call, Port Carnival, a Norwegian cruise line stronghold in Northern Florida I saw my first wild dolphins from the balcony of our stateroom. There is little to do at the port itself and Norwegian reaps a great deal of profits from the excursions here which include trips to Disney World and Sea World for the day. My friends and I chose the Kennedy Space Center instead, since it was less expensive. after a short bus ride we were deposited on the doorstep of the headquarters of the American space exploration program. It was a surprisingly chill day and a cool breeze shook the palm trees. March was a month too proud to be ordered about by climactic expectations. The Shuttle storage building was draped with an enormous American flag and the great square building erupted from the flat boggy Floridian earth with every intention of containing an object powerful enough to escape the planet that created it and wise enough to come back. It made me sad to think that the shuttle launch program will soon come to an intermission for an unknown length of time.

Great Stirrup Cay will probably always be the location at which I became the most sun-burnt. A merciless Norwegian encampment, the private island is owned entirely by the company. There is a small swatch of beach developed for sunbathing and swimming, and a buffet building open to the air and intrepid beach flies. There is a restroom, a pair of pavilions full of picnic tables, a collection of shacks full of sunscreen and beach towels and coconuts carved to look like pirate heads presided over by Bahamians who haggle much better than I do. I was not much interested in the fact that the island was home to the world's largest inflatable water slide, tellingly named the "Hippo Slide" which periodically shook violently as overweight young women in expensive bathing suits paid $20 for the brief exhilaration of rocketing towards a beach full of sand and bouncing safely to a halt, dripping wet and laughing wildly. I spent as much time as I could making use of my rented snorkel gear to explore the shallow reef around the island which was a very rewarding decision. Although most of the bathing areas offered little in the way of fish, a short swim into the waters around the "Off-limits" portions of the beach offered a rich variety of marine life. Parrotfish, angelfish, butterfly fish, grouper, snapper, squirrelfish, and colorful varieties of wrasse were present in abundance, alongside many soft corals and some sea urchins. The rest of the rocky island, untouched by Norwegian bulldozers, had been left to the lizards and mangrove trees.

The third day at port brought us to Nassau, capital city of the Bahamas. Here we rented mopeds, an experience I found far more thrillingly dangerous than being prisoner on an island fun camp with six dollar sodas and no sun screen. We navigated Bahamian left-driving traffic successfully, or at least passably enough to remain alive and ate lunch at the fish fry near Andros Cay. The restaurants here serve delectable conch, grouper, and snapper, seafood being unsurprisingly the main delicacy of the islands. From there we explored the ruins of fort Charlotte, a fort built during the age of imperial European power where nothing note-worthy happened until the Bahamas gained independence from Britain there in 1973, an event which also included no battle of significance. From there we took the ferryboat to "Paradise Island" home of the Atlantis Resort, and the beach properties of Nicholas Cage, Oprah, and Tiger Woods, among other celebrities. One of the tour guides on the ferryboats soliciting cash from a captive audience was thoughtful enough to inform us that the island was formerly known as Hog Island due to an abundance of wild pigs. Now that it is home to celebrities and wealthy vacationers, I fail to see what necessitated the name change.

Top Six Free Flash Games

Flash games have been popular since the dot com era in the mid 90's. I remember playing them constantly on the Nickelodeon web page as a kid when there was not a lot for kids to do online. Back when "Ask your parents before using the internet" was a warning I ignored on a more regular basis than the Q-tip classic "Do not insert into ear canal" It was a good time. Since then I've played more flash games than I care to remember, here are a few that stuck in my memory.

Number Eight: Fancy Pants Adventure

Play Fancy Pants Adventure

The highest number on our countdown but certainly not a bad game, Fancy Pants Adventure from Armor Games is set in a Dr. Seuss-ish landscape backed with some funky music and a cute sketchy art theme. The hero has huge orange parachute pants and the last boss is an angry penguin. But the most awesome part of this game is obviously the ease with which the animations of the main player character flow from one into the next. He rolls, braces himself after jumps, pushes against the wall if he runs into it, does backflips, runs upside down and makes it all look effortless. Not to mention the baddass hair. This game is all around awesome but it's short, and there is not a lot of replay value as there are no upgrades or rewards that you can unlock that really help.

Watch out for those spiders

Number Seven: Rainbowsphere:

Play the game here

Controlling a ball doesn't sound very exciting, but the primary-color-heavy "Rainbowsphere" from Gamecubicle is actually a great platformer. You can only touch gray blocks and blocks the same color as you to get to the portal at the end, and of course you can change colors. It's got clever puzzles and a good challenge to each map. The controls are not hard to master and once you've perfected them you'll be able to see how complicated this unassuming game can get. The reset after death is instant, which is one of my favorite parts of the game. It can be frustrating and difficult but it's still a classic for me. The fact that you have to change colors so frequently means each puzzle is actually many in one.

A complicated early level in Rainbowsphere

Number Six: Fishy

Play some Fishy

The little wet piece of silliness from Xgen studios is a simple adventure game, a very simple adventure game actually. You're a fish. you eat smaller fish to grow bigger, but don't let bigger fish eat you or it's back to the beginning! Fishy looks cute and charming but it's quite a challenge. You only have one life and there's nothing stopping bigger fish from gobbling you up. On top of that a lot of momentum can make it hard to change directions, but the reward for beating the game is quite amusing to see. I always had this game up every time I was in the high school library. Easy to fail but hard to quit.

Another one bites the dust

Number Five: DICEWARS

Can You Handle It?

From a Japanese website called GAMEDESIGN, this game is sleekly simple and wordless. But deceptively challenging. It's a lot like a very boiled down version of Risk. You try to take over all the spaces by beating the AI players and conquering their land. At the end of each round you receive additional dice based on the number of spaces you have touching each other. But don't spread yourself too thin or the enemy will easily retake your squares with too few dice.

The beginning is the most crucial part

Number Four: Vertical Drop Heroes

Try it here

This game is fun. Really Fun. The upgrades, the level design, the head nod to classic RPGs and platformers alike. and the great (and adorable) character art make Ninjakiwi's "Vertical Drop Heroes" easily one of the best on this list. The objective is simple and the game is not hard, but you could still find yourself playing it for a long time. The objective is simple, reach the exit at the bottom of each map without dying to get a key to rescue the princess from a temple level. My favorite is the shadow clone barbarian and the a couple of the archer upgrades.

I love everything about this game

Number Three: QWOP

Do you have the patience?

It's barely a game but it's still impressive and encouraging, reset is fast, the music is inspiring and they don't taunt you for failing, which you'll do, and you'll do a lot of. "You are Qwop, our nation's sole representative at the Olympic Games." The game tells you. Unfortunately, as it says, the training program was underfunded so it's up to you to control Qwop's legs. using the Q, W, O, and P keys you are supposed to make him run 100 meters. Good luck with that by the way, it's nearly impossible but hilarious to try with friends.

You'll fall down a lot.

Number Two: Pixel Purge

Try moving around the board in a slow circle.

It's fun, it's addicting, it's well done, Pixel Purge is one of the best games out there but it's nothing new. The gameplay is based on a precedent game but that doesn't make this any less fun. The enemy design, the short storyboard, and the cool sounds and upgrades make this game very addicting. This is another hit from the people at Armor Games who are always making something good. They continue to impress me with their work.

Don't let them catch you.

Number One: Grow Cube

The end result is worth the effort.

All the games over at Eyezmaze are impressive. But this game is one of the best. Grow Cube is curious and extremely unique. It's also really really hard. It will take you a long time to figure it out but doing so will make you feel really accomplished too. Much like a complex puzzle box, it's really fun to do with other people. Just add all the objects to the cube, the trick is you have to do it in the right order to make everything work. But can you remember all the combinations you tried?

Of course I won't give away the ending!

In my internet forays I came across a website with pictures from 1910 depicting how they believed life would be in the year 2000.

In this picture, students in school are learning from textbooks being dropped into a machine. . . Not sure how the artist thought it would be that advanced and still dumb enough that the machinery would require a hand-powered crank.

Here an architect is constructing a building remotely. The strange part is his control panel appears to only have twelve buttons at most. That certainly must be difficult to imagine.

This one dumbfounds me. They aren't hair styling machines, they're shaving machines. How anyone would get close to that is beyond me. And the decision to put them behind the face seems like an unnecessary handicap.

Considering how much the French love their scooters, I'd say this is the most spot on depiction of the set. However the riot shields are an interesting choice. Seems like it would make it hard to detect things coming at you from a front angle.

Not sure what's happening here, notice it's uncommon to think of an invention to replace things recently invented, I.E. no concept for speakers in 1910 because the Victrola already made this drawing look high tech.

Took me a second to figure this out, but the man from Curious George on the left and his family are shocked by seeing a horse. I wouldn't say he nailed it but it's more accurate than the classroom.

Fireplace replaced by divine light. Where can I get one of these?

I love that in the future we all have snazzy flying machines. . . Oh wait.

Seriously, still waiting on these things. What the hell future? You are disappointing.

"Wait! I have to write you a ticket but I can't stop flapping!"

Is it me or are they about to collide? It doesn't look like those gliders can hover.

It's an interesting picture of what the world would be like, that's for sure. Very 1910 and very French, too. It would be a lot of fun to write a story set in a world like this, and maybe write in some really extreme tech to make the absurd stuff possible.

Concerning protests in Bahrain and the aftermath of the Tunisian uprising

I can't be sure what to think of the string of protest marches that have been happening in many countries throughout the Arab world after the toppling of the Tunisian government. It seems as though the political figures being opposed are rather dictatorial, and power-hungry. But I have no idea what is going on for the most part. It is tactless to write about the fact that I don't know things but I am distrustful of the news that is shown to me, and I yearn to see things first-hand.

It is inevitable that all human thought possesses some bias so, news that first has to leave these countries in Arabic for the most part, and then filtered through the internet or through our news networks seems like it would be possessed of twice as much bias and I wonder how warped the picture we are seeing is. With the violent military reaction to protests in Bahrain seemingly the big focus today, which like Egypt is backed by the American government, I sincerely wonder how I can get an accurate account of what is happening. I'm not even sure whether, as an American, I should be anxious about the sudden shifts in power or relieved.

As a human being my heart goes out to all those involved in the struggle for peaceful political reform, but my lack of understanding has been made more evident to me and I'm anxious because of this.

 

This picture of a protester in Bahrain poses a good question. What are the United Nations doing to help in this conflict? And who are they helping? My outsider perspective makes it difficult for me to understand but I wish I knew where to look to learn more.

A Very Underrated Film

The film Tokyo Godfathers written and directed primarily by Satoshi Kon (Also known for directing the highly acclaimed animated movie Paprika) is one of my favorite animated films of all time and one hell of a great story.

Set in Tokyo Japan it follows the story of three homeless people during the Christmas holidays: a teenage runaway, a transvestite, and a middle-aged bum. within the first few minutes of the film they discover a baby that has been abandoned in a trash heap with a mysterious key. Touched by this cold act of abandonment Hannah vows to return the baby to its mother. From this simple plot is woven a great story full of surprises.

While a baby-finding, three-way character foil may seem an awful lot like the first Ice Age I'd like to assure you that Satoshi Kon's written a significantly more powerful story full of symbolism, dynamic characters, great drama, and magnificent subtlety. I'm torn between a desire to praise individual elements of the film and to not spoil the surprises of the story. Each of the three major characters seems to be touched fatefully by their chance discover as the trail of the infants parents leads them each to some family of their own. The themes of family and abandonment are prevalent in the tale set in the beautiful scenes of the city in winter.

With Miyuki, the youngest girl, we see a sarcastic, irreverent teenager who is seemingly afraid to return home. Hannah, the transvestite, behaves like the baby's mother through the story. Gin, apparently modeled after a samurai, is gruff and tells a story of noble suffering. Each character's story has a number of twists, including the foundling infant. As the story of its parents unfolds a final surprise makes the climax of the movie a powerful scene.

Overall Tokyo Godfathers is a prime example of fantastic writing because of the way the characters are artfully wielded through the story.

Why Lizardman is my Favorite Soul Calibur Character

Do you want to know why Lizardman is my Favorite Soulcalibur Character? Because he never says anything pretentious, ostentatious, boastful, tactless, ignorant, or cocky. That and the fact that one of the weapons you can unlock is a bone with meat on it. Compared to the rest of the Soulcalibur characters, this guy is practically about as smart as they come.

The Lizardman

I think I really noticed it for the first time a couple weeks ago. It was just after sunset, the sky was still gray and had been all day. I was sitting in my living room with three friends, my TV, and a couple of smoke clouds and we were playing Soulcalibur III for the PS2. Soul Calibur is my absolute favorite fighting game title for any system. Normally I don't play Lizardman at all. But we were playing, my friends and I. And up in front of me was a big screen full of people looking at me. I'm browsing through all the characters I can pick, trying to choose something I can play well. And down there in the bottom right corner of the selection screen is the little green head of Lizardman. He uses an axe and a shield, kind of funny since he's supposed to be a monster. All the other monstrous characters like Astaroth and Nightmare use great heavy slow, crushing weapons. Things that would do a huge amount of damage and would probably smush you or I right away. But Lizardman, not so much, rather than a great wild blade, his axe is clenched tight in his hand. It is clutched there almost fervently unlike Ivy and Tira who are loose with their weapons (and tight with their clothing (some metaphor there I wonder?)). And he bears a small round shield on his right arm. The only other characters in the game who use shields are two girls, blonde, attractive and young: Sophitia and Cassandra. It's an odd, and seldom chosen group those three: the shield-users of Soul Calibur. It is two third's babe, and one thirds reptile, a woman who is snake from the waist down.

I pick Lizardman. The fight begins. My opponent is using a two-handed sword he is hot off consecutive shut-outs against the other two people present. He's feeling pretty confident. His character is Strife, the unlockable story-mode character from Soulcalibur III's built in MMO style game. Strife has probably the most absurd Prince Charming haircut I've ever seen in my life. It's so bad that it's nomination as the number one worst video game haircut by Game Informer magazine is listed on the main Wikipedia page for Soulcalibur.

Strife Astlar Grandall from Soulcalibur III is ranked first on Game Informer Magazine’s list of The Top Ten Worst Hairstyles with the basis of: "A unaimous shoo-in for the most dubious position on our list, Stife isn't a happy looking lad. For good reason - appointed ruler of his father's empire at age 10, Strife apparently never thought to update his pageboy hairstyle. Perhaps he was too busy slaughtering family members and losing his grip on reality. The hair alone is reason enough for the permanent scowl."

 I have included a picture of him alongside someone you might know for emphasis:

Okay, so maybe his winning streaks have me fired up a bit, maybe I kind of hate Strife for being such a tool because for some reason I really wanted to kick this guys ass. Then the face-off screen comes up and I'm reminded that I've picked Lizardman, who is not exactly my forte. It's the screen just before the battle and this is the pivotal moment of the story. Because of this I'm showing it to you here with a couple characters demonstrating the mimicry powers of Soulcalibur's character creation section. . . Striking resemblance. 

My friend has discovered that pressing the Square or X buttons at this point causes your character to yell a random taunt, moving his mouth but keeping the rest of his body frozen the excitable battle theme music also pauses here momentarily while the game loads. And this is why I love Lizardman. Every other character in the game will yell some absurd catchphrasey snippet. "Scream!" being one of the memorable ones. Does screaming the word "Scream" constitute metascreaming? Other uninspired cries include "Fear my wrath!" and "The likes of you could never stop me!" Strife cries something similar out immediately. My friend turns to me and asks "What does Lizardman say?" I press the button and the TV emits a gravelly growl that lasts barely a second and stops abruptly. We all pause for a second as Lizardman stares at scaly us full of the earnesty of what he has just said. And we laugh. We all laugh because the sound is so silly and the realization that Lizardman doesn't talk. He is a beast.

The battle commences and I'm out of the shoot hard, I hit the ground running and withing minutes I have three straight wins agains Strife. I'm feeling good about myself. The answer to the question "What does Lizardman say?" is that he doesn't say anything. And because he is the only character on Soulcalibur who doesn't, he is the one that retains the most dignity. He doesn't need to talk, talk is cheap, Lizardman is a manlizard of action; action is all he needs. Strife weilds his huge sword and Lizardman his little axe and shield and trounces the knight thoroughly. Of course it's me at the controls. But Lizardman channels my desires for righteous ass-whooping silently and obediently. He does not boast when he wins, he does not complain when he looses. He gives no ground and conveys emotion with movement only in the cutscenes. He is stoic and mute and that is why I love him

Other characters in the game are not as impressed by the fact that he's mute. If Killik defeats him at the end of the round he will often say "Could you please [awkward pause] speak more. . . normally?" 

But I know him better. He has more charisma than any of the characters with prescribed battle cries because I am free to invent the inner monologue of his lizard mind. He never says anything that makes him look vapid or cliche. He doesn't repeat himself mindlessly. If Lizardman came downstairs and found the living room from "A Child's Christmas in Wales" full of dissolving snowballs and smoke and firefighters he would probably say "Would you like something to read?" 

Because he says the right thing always.

China Town

Yesterday I took a trip down to China Town with my friend Justin. He's enrolled in an Asian studies class here at Penn State Abington. His teacher asked the class to take pictures of themselves in Philadelphia's China Town district during the Chinese New Year. China Town is a lively place, but I can't imagine what it feels like to someone from China. The gift shops, the restaurants, quaintly foreign for us but to Justin, who is from Taiwan what is it like?

As we sit at the table of Banana Leaf, a Malaysian place next to the Trocadero theater a young man with an attractive date is watching us eat. "Hey buddy, what is that?" He interrupts a cutesy chopstick sword fight with the blonde woman and points the utensil coolly at our appetizer. My mouth is full of peanut-butter squid so I let Justin answer. "Squid and watercress." He says calmly. It takes me several minutes to finish the act of masticating the boiled squid flesh which has been texturized to something between gummy bear and bouncy ball. "Is it any good?" I avert my eyes, carefully extracting a piece of the watercress. It hangs limply from my chopsticks, dark green like spinach. "Yeah," says Justin. His answer is either quite sincere or he lying well. I avoid the squid for the rest of the meal. The stranger questions us again when our main dishes arrive. Again the same two questions seem to keep his eyes straying back to our plates instead of looking at the girl he must have hoped to impress with this sophisticated choice for lunch, "What is it?" and "Is it good?" Once more I'm silent, this time pulling tails off of tasty, but slightly over-cooked shrimp. Justin doesn't seem phased by the questioning. The curious man dons his jacket and baseball cap and him and his date disappear out the front door into the condensing crowd outside the Troc in the fine lite rain that feels like the spritzers in the produce isle at the grocery store only much colder. Outside everything is stratus gray and wet and a far cry from the Indo-Pacific Islands. Justin walks in the direction of the hair salon he wants to visit. We're having a discussion about investing and business. He's very interested.

At the hair salon I'm the only white person. They must not get many of us either because conversation stopped when Justin and I enter together. The place is lively and charismatic but my presence seems almost chilling to the people who resume talking uneasily as I move to take a seat while Justin gets what he came here for. I'm full of egg noodles and hot shrimp broth and it takes him a long time to get his hair cut. I'm nodding off until one of the stylists trips over my outstretched foot. We both apologize rapidly and from then on my feet stay hidden under my chair. I keep making eye contact with a woman who is sitting stone-still, draped with a hair-deflecting orange poncho, in a chair with her back to me. She blinks at the mirror. It is dark by the time we leave.

The thing that fascinates me about China Town are the gift shops. They sell paper lanterns, ninja swords, snacks, tea sets, driftwood furniture, and jade Buddhas. Are there Chinese people who buy this sort of thing? None of the students I know here at Abington do. Is it just to make money from gawking Westerners? Or are there Chinese people who wear the red silk clothes around like there are Americans out in Texas that get married in cowboy hats? Where does the culture end and the cliche begin?

Meanwhile in Canada. . .

In Canada, as of right now, you're not allowed to view more than 25 GB worth of material on the internet. Not unless you're willing to pay an additional $2 per gigabyte.

You might not know it but ISPs in the United States have these usage caps also. Comcast, however has set the limit to a staggering ten times that of Canada's preset limit

"As of October 1, 2008, data usage above 250 Gigabytes ("GB") per month per Comcast High-Speed Internet residential customer account is considered excessive." -http://customer.comcast.com

So what's the big deal? Could American companies potentially levy the same charges? I certainly hope not. $2 per gigabyte is an outrageous fee. This picture puts it into a good perspective:

The website that is listed at the bottom of this picture is receiving so much traffic that when I attempted to visit it, I was redirected to an alternative address. The site explains that Stopthemeter.ca had anticipated heavy traffic. They are hosting a petition which can be signed in protest to the strict regulations on Canadian internet usage.

With the simultaneous occurrences underway in Egypt this might not receive much notice. But limiting a countries ability to use the greatest information tool available seems like it can only do harm to all parties involved.

Amanda Schaffer

It's March 2010. I'm standing before the prehistoric ruins of Stone Henge. It has been a long, cold, trip. Julian Richards, a well known archaeologist and author is explaining things about the stones. We've been walking for hours all over the cold windy plains of Salisbury England. My shoes are smattered with sheep droppings and I am not dressed warmly enough to be outside for so long. By my side, wrapped in a vibrant, green, plaid, English Heritage blanket she purchased at the gift shop, is Amanda Schaffer.

Amanda is the type of person you could say "Hey, let's go to England for Spring Break!" and she would do it. Her purple hair whipped in the wind as we examined the rocks which emitted an aura of proud indifference to our presence. The suffering ruin ignored us. There had been a long flight, several clubs, and a good deal of alcohol and drama between the day we packed out bags and set out to cross the pond and become scholars of the neolithic for a week.

As the rest of the students huddled with us around the Penn State Abington banner for the umpteenth time I reflected on everything that had occurred so far. Amanda sticks out a lot, she will always get noticed. Now this is a truly neutral state of being, but a highly catalyzed one. Good things and terrible things often happen to people who naturally receive a lot of attention, Amanda is no exception. There were no shortage of men and women who were very interested in her everywhere we went. Women in a feminist rally took a liking to her and marked the locations of the best gay clubs in London the first morning we were there. She was very happy about this. At the first of these clubs Amanda had been talking to a tall, and stunning blonde girl who was only there because her friend had dragged her for all of about ten minutes before they were making out. Her punk rock style and her mow hawk and her facial piercings were seemingly irresistible to other members of her sex, but it was enough to make our teachers more than wary. Perhaps it was not an unfounded concern, Amanda getting into spots of trouble was certainly not unheard of, but it always seemed unjust. Over dinner one night another student on the trip had lashed out viciously towards Amanda seemingly out of nowhere. The silence that followed seemed to morph the whole social dynamic of our group, heat and pressure melted our network like stones in the earth's mantle. And we all knew that when Amanda took off, facing forward, walking quickly, totally silent, that everything would take a different shape by the time it cooled. The girl who had made the remark went after her. I hoped things would work themselves out. But when she came back empty-handed, I knew trouble was brewing on the horizon like thick clouds over London. It took us a while to find her. She was upset but not as much as I had been, worrying that she was lost as we paced the streets of Salisbury by night. When the teachers got wind of things it really went downhill. And next morning the discussion of the nights events before breakfast was rather uncomfortable for all parties involved. I felt bad, I knew Amanda hadn't done anything to deserve this, but I couldn't stop other people from suspecting that she had. I became very emotional myself, I was defensive of her.

But the thing I liked most about her was that Amanda would absolutely always be friends with people who were good to her. She didn't care what you looked like, or what you were into. She was above such judgement. To me this made her one of the absolute best people in the universe. Someone you could be completely open with. When I first came to this school I had practically no friends. Amanda was one of the first people I talked to and we hit it off immediately. It felt like we were already friends as soon as we started talking. There are so many stories I could share about amazing times I had with Amanda but I chose the one I did because I think it reveals something about her character. Amanda is my best friend, but she is her own person too. And she is the type of person that things -happen- to.

Snooki and the Booki.

If the New York Times has anything to put on its best sellers list in 2012 that isn't a microwave oven instruction manual, the only people they could possibly blame are Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi and her ghost writer for discouraging English majors, and literate individuals the world over from ever writing again.

Ms. Polizzi's novel has earned (and I use the word tentatively) a spot on the New York Times best sellers list. While I cannot speak for the quality of the novel first hand I was struck hard by one particular line from an otherwise positive review of A Shore Thing on Amazon.com.

"[T]here are a few lines that do not make any sense (like when she refers to Ellis Island Immigrants coming off the Mayflower...you get it) but the story is actually quite intriguing."-EnglishLitLove

This is a disheartening thing to read if you are one of those individuals possessed of the opinion that hard work, study, and a deep appreciative understanding of the English language will make your writing popular and successful. Of course, many people have long accepted that sometimes very absurd people can become popular, or under the public eye at least. Snooki's meteoric rise to fame as the flagship of Italian American stereotypes along with her first mate Jwoww and the rest of the Jersey Shore crew is not something I begrudge her. If all our celebrities looked like Steven Hawkings, or had the personality of Steve Jobs the world would be significantly less enjoyable. But the point is Snooki's book is having as much trouble staying shelved as a Tequila-loving Guidette in heels has staying on her feet. People simply cannot get enough of it. I can attest to this by the many other positive reviews on the Amazon website.

So people really burn to know what life is like for Snooki, since that is pretty obviously what the book revolves around. If her picture on the cover and her name inflated and prominent atop the title, a stacked and tanned chest pushing at her birth name and the edges of the cover like a tight, low-cut dress, are not enough to convince you that her "Giovanna 'Gia' Spumanti" is the Stephen Dedalus to Snooki's James Joyce then a short perusing of the book's summary ought to convince you.

"Giovanna “Gia” Spumanti and her cousin Isabella “Bella” Rizzoli are going to have the sexiest summer ever. While they couldn’t be more different—pint-size Gia is a carefree, outspoken party girl and Bella is a tall, slender athlete who always holds her tongue—for the next month they’re ready to pouf up their hair, put on their stilettos, and soak up all that Seaside Heights, New Jersey, has to offer: hot guidos, cool clubs, fried Oreos, and lots of tequila."

 So sayeth Amazon. Snooki is such an easy target that it is almost unfair to mock her, but in this she has overstepped her bounds. Being dumb and famous has been debated in the past, but this is something worse. Snooki is dumb, famous, and published. I do not fault Snooki for concocting these 304 pages of silliness, her image is infinitely larger and more potent than her as a person. And her image is what people are buying. It is the people, curious, desirous, envious who purchase this novel who are at fault. They could have bought any air-headed novel but they chose this one because it came from the mind of Snooki as though possessed between the lines of it's dialogue was some secret code, some phantom glimmer of information needed to become famous.

Meanwhile people seeking something bigger than the perfect tan are out there writing as we speak, in vain, hoping to be discovered, hoping to be acknowledged. Many will never even be published. Pinpoint13 of Reddit.com phrased it excellently when he said,

"Somewhere an English grad student deep in student loans, eating Ramen and trying to get published is slitting his wrists."

  For those of you who are desperate to read the vacuous mind of someone accidentally famous just hoping to find out what special kind of dim-wittedness she possessed that allows her to do whatever she wants, now including dominating the world of literature with an idle bit of fluff, you will only be disappointed. I don't particularly care if you enjoyed the book. There are a million other bad romance novelists who need your $14.40 a good deal more than the star of a hit MTV reality TV show.

Snooki is, of course, terribly pleased with herself and expressed this on Twitter to the further cries of dismay from her would-be writing competitors left long in the dust of academia and cup noodles.

Congratulations Snooki, you did one thing that probably everyone who went to school with you felt pretty secure in saying you would never do. That at least is commendable. The fact that it seems to have been done with very little real thought or effort only makes it more so. Just as to why it happened I am still at a loss to say. For those of you struggling to get your writing published and wishing you could vent your rage on the Guidette kissed by fame and serendipity I have included below a gif of a particular scene that could not be aired on Jersey Shore.

So yes it's true, officially, what we suspected after Palin's book. Being a best selling author does not require any real talent or penchant for the craft of writing. But Snooki may have had a few things to teach the writers of history, namely that living life may be more important than writing about it, which is part of America's fascination with her and her friends. I shudder to think how a night at the beaches and clubs of New Jersey
may have changed the life of John Keats, but at the same time I can't help but think: "Here is a man who could have used some mixed drinks, fried oreos, and a night spent dancing." It's distinctly possible that with a habit of agitating muscle-bound juiceheads that Nicole's life will also not be overly long, but let it be known at least that she lived it fully, passionately, and sincerely. I do not defend the book, which is at best ridiculous, or the people tragically enthralled with the decadent lifestyle, but the girl writes shamelessly about her own life almost to the T. And those who cannot abide to see someone living their own dream are truly unhappy.