New 1337 Street Experience Is A Go

There's been another sighting of the numbers thirteen thirty-seven. Check it out at 1337 street.

One of many reasons I don't love you (the reader) anymore

I have other, more handsome, less successful blogs that are more fun to work on. I've turned over a new leaf though and plan to link other content I produce back here. Thereby giving the illusion that I keep up on this blog. Don't let on that you know the secret though, I mean, we all know David Copperfield didn't really make a train disappear but we don't get all up in his face about it. Usually.

This is a blog about things that say one thousand three hundred and thirty seven. These are magical numbers that mean things to gamers. It's called 1337 street (Pronounced leet street) and will provide pictures or screen shots I take of the eponymous numerals. The first post is up and saucy, get it while it's gettin'!

1337 Street

When All Other Lights Go Out

A couple weeks ago I got a demo on steam which I downloaded for no real reason other than the intriguingly nondescript name. Torchlight: what could it mean? It then sat there for the aforementioned couple weeks until I was bored with Left 4 Dead 2 one night. I started 'er up, all the time wondering what kind of game it even was. Shooter? RPG? Strategy? First Person? Third? Second? That game would be hard, you'd have to maneuver your character while seeing only through the view points of other characters or enemies. Someone with a lot of money to lose should make that. Anyway, back to torchlight. The game started up...oooh, I got to choose my class, an RPG then. I picked the Vanquisher because she had a gun in the picture for the loading screen. I wanted to have a gun. I picked which pet to have, a dog or a cat, cat naturally. I named it kittenkazoo after myself and jumped into the game. Apparently all was not well in the city of Torchlight and I needed to go into the caves and mines underneath to solve the troubles. I walked around a bit and talked to some people and skipped all of the tutorials because I realized the game was just Diablo with cartoony graphics. I wandered around more and realized with horror that the interface was laid out like World Of Warcraft. After some wanderings and battles I noticed the music even sounded like Tristram, what a load. Being a longtime devotee of the Diablo series I rankled at the blatant plagiarism of this little game. I was not pleased with it and it never did anything to change my mind. I didn't even finish the demo all the way, not because it was too bad but because it was too boring. It was just like playing another game I had invested hundreds upon hundreds of hours in but without the nostalgia or perfection of game play and atmosphere. I quit, deciding I had better games to play and don't intend to go back. In the end it's a guileless Diablo knockoff that resembles the freakish lovechild of Diablo and WoW. If you like those two father games enough you'll probably love Torchlight, but if you happen to loathe the latter then I would pass it up. It seemed like it was well made but not compelling or intriguing in any way. However, don't let my judgments on this somewhat lack luster RPG dissuade you from checking it out. Here's some media for those interested. Cheers.

Here's the original trailer.

And here are some screen shots.
A guy fighting a troll on what appears to be the bridge of Khazad-dûm.
A Vanquisher being all archer-y.
And a guy just apparently fucking up some ghosts or something.

-dudekazoo

A Work In Some Parts: First Part

1: Can somebody give me a light?
2: Yeah, hold on.
3: Hey 1, you think I could get a smoke?
1: Lessee..I got eight left. That means everyone could smoke one now, and then smoke one later when the time comes.
4: Don't say that!
1: What? You don't smoke?
4: That "the time will come". We're going to be okay.
3: Why do you think that exactly?
4: Everything always gets better eventually.
1: This is as bad as it's ever been. Did you ever think that it might be the kind of bad that doesn't get better? Just be prepared alright?
2: You know, I'd never even touch a cigarette normally.
3: Yet you're the one with the lighter.
2: I like fire.
1: Hey 4, you okay?
4: Yeah sure, I'm fine.
1: Come on man, I'm sorry. It's just that after all these years of this shit I've realized that at any moment my number could be up. So I'm ready to smoke one last cigarette and then go. Don't take it so hard.
4: I said I was fine.
3: I just wish we had some light.
2: I know! What kind of a household doesn't have any candles?
1: One that doesn't believe it will ever lose power I suppose.
3: 2, why don't we take that lighter of yours and do a little more snooping. We didn't really have a chance before it got dark.
2: Alright, but only a bit, I don't wanna use it all up.
4: Here, I found a newspaper over here. You can use it to make some torches.
3: Sweet, let me find my way over there.
4: There you go.
3: Alright 2, once we get these rolled up I'll carry em, you just give me the word for a new one and I'll light it off yours and you can drop the old one.
2: Fire hazard don't you think?
3: I'll stomp it out too.
2: Okay, you sure you don't want me to carry my own share?
3: Nah, this way you can concentrate on looking for stuff while I assist.
2: Cool, works for me.
1: Where'd you grow up 4?
4: Around the East Coast.
1: The whole thing?
4: My dad worked for an advertising firm so we moved a lot.
1: What kind of ads did your dad make?
4: Mostly print stuff. Although his firm was one of the first to try to market biospheric habitation communities and they ran tv ads for them, he was even in one of 'em.
1: Couldn't have been very profitable, those things didn't go anywhere until the early 80's.
4: Yeah, the firm dissolved not too long after that.
1: Go figure.
3: 4, 1, come in here! You won't believe what we found!

Very Tall Buildings

Jacek: If only we hadn't had to let Annabelle go. She was a looker. Oh, and Maria. You remember her?

Moldeen: Yes, I remember her.

Jacek: Hey, if you had to choose, who would you pick, Annabelle or Maria?

Moldeen: My entire world is literally crumbling around me and you're asking which woman I used to employ I prefer on an aesthetic basis?

Jacek: Yes.

Moldeen: Maria.

Jacek: Oooh, the dark haired type huh?

Moldeen: Yeah, sure.

Jacek: But Annabelle had those beautiful blue eyes.

Moldeen: I prefer green.

Jacek: But Maria's-

Moldeen: Or brown.

Jacek: So you like darker skin more than fair?

Moldeen: Yeah, I guess so. Darker than very pale anyway.

Jacek: I see.

Moldeen: Is this fun for you?

Jacek: Don't you think it's fun?

Moldeen: Not even remotely.

Jacek: Well then why are you doing it?

Moldeen: To humor you. I figure if I die doing something nice I miiiight get into purgatory at least.

Jacek: It doesn't count if you're only doing it for your own selfish desires.

Moldeen: For one, I don't think not going to hell is that selfish, and two I don't think the intent matters. A good deed is a good deed.

Jacek: Well I don't think it's nice if that's the only reason.

Moldeen: Fine.

Jacek: ............Sooo do you like girls that are slutty or like, all wholesome?

Moldeen: Wholesome.

Jacek: Is that some kind of kinky thing or-

Moldeen: It's because I'm wholesome damn it!

Jacek: No offense but what part of essentially becoming the villain of your own twisted plot makes you wholesome?

Moldeen: You obviously wouldn't understand.

Jacek: I like my girls to...know things.

Moldeen: I like my girls to not escape from the building without telling me the access codes to the panic room.

Jacek: Why the hell does your panic room have an access code anyway?

Moldeen: So people wouldn't access it.

Jacek: You mean like you?

Moldeen: Like unauthorized personnel you jackass.

Jacek: You didn't think that disaster might strike unexpectedly?

Moldeen: I didn't expect this disaster, this unexpectedly.

Jacek: Still, not a great contingency plan.

Moldeen: Aren't you suppose to have super speed anyway?

Jacek: You know that's bullshit.

Moldeen: Your death will be ironic to those who didn't know you, because your "super speed" will have availed you nothing in this circumstance. And ironic to those who did know you because you will have seemingly caught up with your reputation.

Jacek: What happened to you being nice?

Moldeen: I was thinking about how I've employed my time this last year and realized it wasn't even a long shot at getting into purgatory.

Jacek: I think I'm fucked. The bible said some pretty specific things about greed.

Moldeen: You? Yeah, you're totally fucked.

Jacek: It didn't feel like defrauding millions of people of billions of dollars at the time, but in retrospect it totally was.

Moldeen: Upper floors are going to collapse any minute now.

Jacek: Yep.

Moldeen: I feel like saying something like "It was good knowing you" but I don't want to die while lying.

Jacek: No problems with dying while being a dick?

Moldeen: None at all.

Jacek: I wish I had known it would come to this.

Moldeen: Really? Me too.

Jacek: I would never have fired Annabelle. I would have given her all of my money if I died.

Moldeen: Oh my god. Please stop talking about Annabelle. Also, I fired her.

Jacek: Oh yeah. I fired Maria. That was dumb too.

Moldeen: Not if you wanted to keep up your scam.

Jacek: I suppose.

Moldeen: My only consolation is that the money it will take to repair all the building damage might be really good for the economy.

Jacek: Like a dead tree feeds the ecosystem.

Moldeen: My mother would be so proud if she knew I had finally aspired to be the human equivalent of rotting vegetation.

Jacek: Yours and mine both pal, yours and mine both.

Moldeen: Don't call me pa-

The News

I don't claim to know what live-blogging is, or even if it has a hyphen, but I think I may be doing it now. As of 6:20 PST, I am eating a delicious turkey sammich.

Advert Warfare

One of my nightly routines of late is watching The Daily Show on these, the intarwebz. I love being able to watch it whenever I feel like it and for the most part avoid advertisements. There are short mini commercials sprinkled about the show like evil confetti but it's still a hundredth the volume of normal television. The only problem is that for a week or month or something it's the same ad every god damned time. I've seen this Black Berry advert like five hundred times. I know the ad isn't working because it doesn't entice me to buy the product, but it is working in the war of attrition the company is waging with me. I want to buy a Black Berry just so maybe, maybe the commercial will go away. I can't take it anymore. It's the repetition you know, it breaks down your will, it makes you submit.....it breaks everyone in the end........

Love Letter To The Mac-10

I don't really update this blog anymore, but damn it, I needed to say this! And please note, I'm only talking about the incarnation of the weapon featured in Counter Strike: Source.

The Mac-10 is the worst piece of shit that has ever been produced by mankind. It's so shitty that if there were a machine made of shit, into which you fed babies and from which was produced more shit, it would still be better than the Mac-10. At least the Baby-To-Shit-Shitmachine does what it's fucking supposed to do, turn babies into shit. Fuck the Mac-10, fuck anyone who says it doesn't suck balls, and fuck the guy who programmed the shittiness right into the game for us. FUCK.



Now that I've done that, I'll go play some more CS:S.

A Voyage Begins

I kept a travelogue and took a ridiculous amount of photographs when I went to Santa Cruz. I had planned on simply typing up the travelogue and linking in lots of pictures. I just could not seem to do it. I have opted for a somewhat more interesting and definitely more shoddy method of disseminating my travel writings. It's a slight revision of what's scribbled in my notebook but is nearly the same. Further entries will include the music I was listening to when I wrote them.

Here's to summer fun, cheers!


P.S. I live in Northern California, it was kind of engulfed in flames. My house was not literally burnt. I do not mean any disrespect to anyone who has suffered a loss due to these fires. The worst I've gotten is a black lung-esque cough from breathing all this shit.

The Shallow Shark Might Make A Mark

This may be an artistic travesty but I think it's an important piece. It is my personal opinion that not enough people read classic literature. It's also my opinion that when they do far too many feel obligated to think it's good. We don't want to admit we hated something that wordy types have been shrieking the praises of for centuries or more. It's okay to dislike old books, it really is. Just because a piece of literature has achieved a legendary status as a social commentary or psychological masterpiece does not mean it is going to enjoyable. I want everyone to go out and read one book regarded as classic or indispensable and be totally honest about how you felt about it. Start a dialogue, even if it's about why the book sucked. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Santa Cruz News

Greetings from Beautiful Santa Cruz folks and gentle ladies. Here for a good friend's orientation to the University we're making the most of it. I'm on her laptop at the moment in a hotel on Ocean Street. Lovely, absolutely lovely. I have to go now I have more pizza to eat, more poetry to write on the veranda and more Smash Brothers Brawl to play, so try not to miss me too much and don't be jealous bitches!






Travelogue and pictures out the ass on fri.....I mean on whenever I do it-day.

The Wages Of Sin

I have been very lax in my responsibilities of late, reprehensible, I know, but true. The tumult of my life has been soothed and I may now return to a schedule of posting.

I have been playing Super Smash Brothers Brawl a ton, I mean, a ton. Fellow gamers may understand how much gaming it takes to make me think it's a lot. I have slowly begun to realize the incremental poisoning of my mind. It finally became apparent about a week ago. I played through classic mode as Wolf. After the credits rolled a congratulations screen was displayed, nothing out of the ordinary there. On this particular screen the evil I was being subjected to was painfully obvious. Here we see the characters obviously engaged in a sexy game. "Oh no," Peach says in mock terror," It's the Big Bad Wolves! I hope they don't blow down my house and eat me." She's even dressed in her most alluring red dress and bunny ears. Could this be any more sexy? I think not.

Over the next few days I saw time and time again what this game really was. What was it?
Sexy. Terribly, terribly sexy.

In this game the perversion runs deep, it permeates your mind and turns you into an animal. "That's okay", the game tells you, "we're nice to animals". When the characters can't get their digital sex amicably they turn to force, a truly nauseating sight and one you see constantly. Everything a subversive could want is right here. Not even the children are spared.

Two of the characters are worse than the rest, some of whom appear to be innocent bystanders, Zero Suit Samus and Snake. Their voracious sexual appetites absolutely smut this game up.

If you play enough of this game you won't understand the damage it's doing to your psyche until your hard drive is full of anime porn and furries.

You've been warned..............

Oil On Canvas: A True Story

I have a story to relate. This is a story best served with a little history but I will not be providing it. That history is far too personal. Suffice it to say I have a "guest" in my home. Let me say that I completely fucking hate our "guest". It will be noted that this individual is in my home against my will. That should be enough setup.

This evening, late afternoon really, I became so distraught via my loathsome boarder that I slipped on my shoes and walked straight out my front door and into the street. I live in a sleepy, elderly, residential neighborhood and knew that a stroll would be calming. In the very least it would be a reprieve from my tormentor. As I marched up the street, which, coincidentally, is also up a rather steep hill, I was not really soothed.

Passing quaint, cozy house after quaint, cozy house I still fumed. As I passed the peaceful denizens of some I began to wonder if they could sense my anger. Could they see it in my movements? Could they feel it hanging in the torrid air around me? With these thoughts still on my mind I was nearing the next driveway when I nearly jumped. I had come very close to a young woman blending into the bright summer scenery and not even noticed. She stood a the edge of the street, straight and still, an eager expectation betrayed by her pose. She wore a pink sun dress and white heels. As I drew closer she turned, a little surprised herself, and said hello. She was pale but looked kind, her head wreathed in boisterous copper. She had a white motorcycle helmet clutched keenly in her hands. As I nodded and returned the greeting my anger evaporated.

A little further down the road I realized that I felt entirely calm. I reflected on the beautifully different character I had just beheld. It crossed my mind that I should return to thank her but I thought better of it. she had been a wonderful picture and would be best unaltered. I began to wonder just for whom she waited. I kept my eyes forward as I waited, would he appear? A moment later I heard it, a small engine. Speeding down the road toward me was a woman on a white scooter, wearing a colorful camisole and a silk scarf flying from her neck like a pennant. As she disappeared around the slowly curving road I laughed. It amused me to no end to see so obviously who it was that would meet the girl in the sundress. I thought it must be a relatively frequent event to necessitate her possession of a helmet.

As I drew up to my house again I felt collected, tranquil. I had a contentment in my soul after that glance into another life. I had been privy to a single point in space time, one to which no one else had borne visual witness. It seemed the dimmest telescope view of a distant star.

Episode 5: The Office

This comic premiered before The Office hit us here so just get any notion of plagiarism out of your horrible conniving head. The second and last comic inadvertently drawn on ruinous lined paper and the first to feature a different cover page this was a somewhat lengthy and dense volume. It had a (poorly) hidden message announcing a second issue of another comic of mine. This message can and should be ignored. I'm also just posting links because I still can't format the son-of-a-bitchin' things right.

Cover
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Episode 4: Attacked By Ninjas

Here's the forth episode of Halibert. I had started drawing Halibert on the go at this point and was using a college ruled notebook. This was a huge mistake for a few reasons. The most obvious reason was the black lines across the pages when xeroxed. The second problem was holes at the side of the notebook which I managed to cover up completely with masking tape. In a color scan, however, the tape is hilariously obvious. So please, forgive the episode its flaws and accept it like the bastard child it really is.

If anyone can tell me how to put these pictures on here the way I have been but sized to fit the post width I would be eternally grateful to them, and probably perform sexual favors for them. Just saying.

Episode 3: Sandwhich Of Fate Conclusion

Through a strange anomaly of google reader one may view a post which I authored and then deleted. It is not present on this blog but is present in the google reader feed for this blog. That post was Halibert: Stick Figure Of The Thinking Man Episode 2. If you haven't seen it:
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Now for the thrilling conclusion to Halibert's sandwhich themed odyssey:
EDIT: I apologize in advance for sloppy formatting.

Big Trouble In Little Blogtown

I've been trying to obtain a kazoo for a while now. Not really hard or anything, just keeping an eye out. I was at a music store and finally found one yesterday. It works really well and I'm currently annoying anyone within a block.

I'm having some technical difficulties and am currently hard at work on a novel. For these reasons I may have an extremely spotty update schedule. Since I know there are literally dozens of people who have read this blog I am offering up an alternative for trying to find some humor. You can watch full episodes of The Daily Show. So have fun with that and I'll try to get my ducks in a row and start producing mildly amusing material as soon as possible!

Download Day Is Go!

Today is Download Day. Firefox is trying to set a Guinness World Record for most software downloads in one day. The software? The new Firefox 3! If you love Firefox, Guinness, records or downloading stuff go get it buddy!

Metal Gear Soiled

I google'd "Metal Gear Soiled" to make sure I wasn't being too trite and repetitious. Turns out people just accidentally type solid wrong, a lot. I could see soild or sloid, which are just a matter of sloppy typing, like teh. Soiled requires you to switch the i to the wrong side of the l and throw an extra letter in there.

A couple of days ago I went over to a friend's house for a big Smash Brothers Brawl fest. I got back late last night. In the intervening period I played an obscene amount of the game. We got all the unlockable characters and stages and a large portion of other unlockable content besides. One character is of particular interest to me. Last year we found out, whilst impatiently awaiting the next Smash Bros. installment, that it would, much to our consternation, include Solid Snake from the Metal Gear series. I personally dislike Metal Gear and thought that it was a woefully irrational decision to include him. I have been persuaded to believe differently since then.

I'll start by saying that I think Solid Snake is a proper Bad Ass (capitalization denotes official status as opposed to an amateur bad ass). He always seemed like a steady spec ops type character. A killer, resourceful, merciless, a tool of nations. It's not very original but it's cool. Konami has made a ton of cash off this stale characterization. I didn't feel that he belonged in a game where goofy characters like Donkey Kong and Pikachu ran around fighting. Luckily they've proved me wrong. While retaining an air of badassery Snake comes off as sort of comical in Brawl. I suppose it's mainly the inclusion of his cardboard box.

I was really hoping that they'd at least let him break Yoshi's neck, alas it was not meant to be. He does, however, kick some serious ass when he's not blowing up shit with rockets, grenades, mines, RPG-7s, or mortars. This guy is packing some real ordnance. I have come to accept him as a Smash Bros. character, one that I really wish I could manage. It turns out he's too hard for a simpleton like me to control. It seems like a great deal of people can't use him to good effect either. You see, when connected to the Nintendo Wi-fi you can choose to spectate instead of playing. You get connected to a random game to watch. Before it begins you are allowed to wager the coins you have collected within the game. You place a bet of any amount 100 coins or less on whichever player, or team if it's a team battle, you think will win. If you're right you win coins and occasionally a "Bonus Chance' which can be in-game items like stickers or trophies or just double or triple winnings. It's actually more fun than online play if you ask me. The Wi-fi games are heinously laggy and just less fun than playing with a bunch of friends. This brings me back to Snake, don't bet on him. Most people will let you down while playing with Snake. Although one time I bet 100 coins on him and won back 380, that was sweet, otherwise he just lost my money.

My only foray into Metal Gear Solid was a coworker loaning me Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. Looks cool right? I struggled through a few hours of frustrating and confusing controls, cheesy anime-esque cut scenes and rigid, spastic combat before I gave up. I couldn't see the point. My natural inclination is not to sneak past a guy. My natural inclination is to run out there and fuck his shit up. Mario never tip-toes past a goomba! Did you ever try to elude a koopa? I guess the real progenitor of the stealth genre was Pac-Man. You had to sneak through the levels and avoid the guards at all cost. Then when you powered up and the time was right you would strike. I never really liked Pac-Man, I was too young. My first games were all NES titles. By then it wasn't "DO NOT TOUCH THE ENEMIES", it had become "STOMP OR SHOOT THE ENEMIES". Hideo Kojima must love Pac-Man. At one point in Snake Eater my character (whom I believed was Solid Snake) fell off a bridge into a raging river. He washed up on shore and the medical expert with whom he had radio contact talked him through the process of patching himself up. He had to apply some bandages and set some bones. It seemed cool, it's like when Bruce Willis had to pull all the glass out of his feet in Die Hard. It takes a pretty bad dude to pop his shattered bones back into place and then wrap 'em. The thing about it is that instead of a cool cutscene you have to actually perform these tasks. You listen to the rambling instruction, select the medical maneuver or item, select the part of your body to apply it to, repeatedly. In the end you're just playing with a child's toy shaped like a wounded special agent. What's the point? I couldn't just watch him follow medical advice and patch himself up? It couldn't be one of the seventy-billion cutscenes in the Metal Gear series?

Snake is so cool in Smash Bros. it makes me want to play Metal gear. If they'd made Roy or Marth that cool I would own all the Fire Emblem games. I did some reading last night and found out that Metal Gear Solid 4 had very coincidentally been released. I also found out that in Snake Eater I wasn't Solid Snake and it was a prequel. As if the plot wasn't already confusing enough I got started on a prequel. This was not the best way to start me on the series. Since I know that now I've decided to give the series another chance. One chance Hideo, you hear me dammit?!

This Is A Cop Out

I'm thinking about putting this on a shirt, I think it would be rad. Of course you're not going to agree unless you know who this is, but I'm not the kind to tell you.

In other news, there is no news! I've been writing rather prolifically lately and have been eschewing video games. I'm pleased with the results but I think I'm going through withdrawal or something. I've got headaches, my hands shake and sometimes I think I see Mario out of the corner of my eyes. It's okay though, I just drink enough vodka and it all works out!