"A man might be thought wealthy if someone were to draw the story of his deeds, that they may be remembered" - Buliwyf: 13th Warrior

I really never had any gaming counsels when I grew up. So I never really played any of the classics that people talk about, like the Street Fighter series, any of the Mario games, nor any ot the countless Final Fantasies. Which I get crap for occasionaly.  And so a couple years ago, I did finally pick an Xbox 360. For the most part, I’ve really liked the games I have purchased for it. The “meh” ones I only paid under 20 dollars for, so I can’t stay mad at that.
As of recently, I’ve been playing Final Fantasy 13. I picked it up because of the good things I’ve heard about the others. For one, it a great looking game. You can spend hours just running around looking at the scenery. But the game play is pretty linear, which is kind of a disappointment. I really like the soundtrack to it as well. I can’t really nerd out about it and get all the inside jokes because I haven’t played any of the others. I would recommend it to anyone.

The more games I play, the more I realize that the games I love are the ones that would probably be considered party games. Games that can be played by 2 to 4 people. Such as Rockband/Guitar Hero, First person shooters that have a good online mode, Fighting games and the random fun stuff like Dance Dance Revolution.
Don’t get me wrong, I really do like other games such as Oblivion, Grand Theft Auto, and Overlord. But the problem I’m seeing is that I do play those games when I first pick them up and really enjoy it, but after awhile they just end up sitting on my shelf. I do still really like those games when I do get a chance to play them, it’s just I never finish any of them.
There’s just something I like about the social aspect of multiplayer games that make them my favorite. Be it the smack talk, the sudden spurts of rage people go into, or the accomplishment you feel when you finish a rather hard co-op. To me, they’re just more fun.
And since I can’t think of a clever segue; I’m just going to force this in here at the end. I watched The 13th Warrior the other day. Great movie, that. Makes me think I should’ve been a Viking. But I digress. I just wanted to share this quote from the movie that I liked:

'Lo, there do I see my father.
'Lo, there do I see My mother, and my sisters, and my brothers.
'Lo, there do I see the line of my people back to the beginning.
'Lo, they do call to me. They bid me take my place among them.
In the halls of Valhalla, Where the brave may live forever.

'First Lord's Fury" brought to you by the Hallmark Channel...

The other day I finished reading a book that went by the name of ‘First Lord’s Fury’. No, this book didn’t have any religious connotations, and yes, this is another book review (well, more of a just my opinion and own rantings), so deal with it. All and all, I can sum up the book with one word: Meh. Yea, that’s right. Meh. And here`s why.
Let me start off by saying that a lot of endings to book series I`ve read don’t really stand up to what I expect the grand finale of a series to be. They seem to fizzle out with they ‘live happily ever after and the bad guys dead.’ Kind of like a wet balloon that suddenly goes limp from lack of air after the sudden gusto that it had for life. Granted these endings have great moments, but they don’t quite do it for me.
I want to have an explosive ending. Like when someone takes a pin to a fully inflated balloon. I don’t necessarily expect or want the ending of a series to be glazed over with happy feelings like a funnel cake. I don’t mind a little Happily Ever after, but I want them to pay for it. So I guess what I`m trying to get at is that I what a little bit more mayhem and tragedy in my endings. If the main character gets hitched at the end, I want him to be missing a leg or Hilary Clinton to be the Mother in Law. If they win the day, whole cities will have to have been laid waste to do so. I don’t mind the good guys winning. I just want them to have something bad happen to them so they learn something by the end.
To me First Lords Fury had some good qualities. It had pretty good pacing. Through the whole book there was a sense of being constantly being pushed back, to struggle to survive against a vast horde of enemies, and making shady deals with other enemies to help the cause against the enemy of all. But when the end came, and when everything was beginning to wrap up, the sugar coating started to appear. All the main characters survived. ‘Tis a shame I say, but what are you going to do? The last epic fight was just that until the last note, when it wasn’t. There was no limbs lost, no emotional turmoil they had to deal with for years. It was just done. All wrapped up in a neat little package.
That said, there were a few characters I really liked and connected with. Overall, the characters from the series seemed really human, and popped out. The series as a whole was pretty average with some great parts. I just thought the ending was kind of underwhelming. I’ll probably end up recommend the series to friends, ‘cause it was decent at the core. Now to find another series to take up my time.

We rode on the winds of the rising storm. We ran to the sounds of the thunder. We danced among the lightning bolts and tore the world asunder. - Crossroads of Twilight

I’ve been a fan of the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan for a little over a decade now. For most of that time, I’ve been a disgruntled acolyte of the vast and rich world that Jordan had created. By the time I picked up the first volume, The Eye of the World, half of the current 14 books had already been published.
I’m going to say the first 5 or so books are the best written of the series by far. Jordan gives us a world full of scope and history, with characters that you come to love and hate, and doing it all that very descriptive way that only can do. Then from about book 6 on is when the Train wreck happens.
At this point, it just seems like the story as whole just gets away from him. He throws in so many plots and subplots, that it just becomes a convoluted mess that takes books to sort out. Plus there’s the fact that major characters don’t even bother to show up in some of the books. At one point, I just kept on reading just because I wanted to see it through to the end of the series.
When I first heard the news that Robert Jordan passed away a couple years ago, I admit I was kind of angry, frustrated, and disappointed that he wasn’t able to finish the series. I know that was a little self centered at the time, but I got over it. Especially when I heard that he took some really detailed notes right before he died so that someone could finish were he left off. Enter Brandon Sanderson.
I’ve never have read any of Sanderson’s books, but from what I’ve heard, he’s pretty competent at what he does. And being a fellow Utahn, I guess I could support him. Sunday I finished the latest Wheel of Time book that came out last October, The Gathering Storm. It’s the first of three that Brandon Sanderson helped put together and that will wrap up the series. And I’ve got to admit, I really enjoyed it.
It still had the Robert Jordan feel and vibe to it, with a little Sanderson flair. I’m liking it because it didn’t have the sense of being bloated like the last few have been, but it had a sense of finality to it. Things are starting to wrap up. Plus, it just seemed to flow better as well.
If you were one of those people that became disillusioned with the whole thing, I implore you to at least read The Gathering Storm. It’s made me a believer again.

Life is not the way its suppose to be, it’s the way it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference.

I’ve been going to the gym for about six and half months now, and I’ve found one of the most boring things you could do is the elliptical machine. I do it, because honestly, I need a good bought of cardio if I want to lose weight. And being a larger fellow, I found it’s easiest on the knees. But I digress. I’m stuck on the torture device for about a half hour at a time, with nothing to really stare it. Well, I guess they have multitudes of TVs on different stations to mesmerize you, but you need a set of headphones to actually listen to them. I’m not a fan of having something covering my ears like that when I’m exercising.
So, at some point, I’ve come to enjoy a little something I call Gym Watching. I find it rather a rather interesting implement of observation. If you go to a certain place long enough and just watch your surroundings, like I have with the gym, you start to recognize the people who come and go on a regular bases, who they come in with, what they like to work out on, and a few of their idiosyncrasies. I think it’s fascinating to see how people create their own little bubbles to make themselves comfortable amidst strangers. I do realize that one stares at someone to long, it can be determined as rather creepy and weird, so I don’t observe for any long durations.
But I’ve come to find out that peoples personal little bubble fields extend only so far. For a few weeks, I tried to randomize which elliptical machine I used. I found that, unless it’s really busy and they don’t have a choice, when multiple people use the same type of exercise machine, they usually place themselves on every other machine to as far apart as they can get. I don’t know if it’s an ingrained sense of don’t talk to strangers that your parents whipped into you when you were young, or that people have a natural deep dark fear of that unknown stranger at the gym.
Don’t get me wrong. People at the gym, more often than not, are really quite nice and courteous. I have more than once witnessed people help others. There are the occasional gym rat douches that are just trying way too hard, but that’s not the norm. I’m just noticing that in large groups, people revert to an inner caution, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But that shouldn’t stop you from letting go.

Unless you believe, you will not understand.

There was an article posted by a friend the other day over on MTV Newsroom about something I never knew about; Wizard Rock! There was an apprehensive "Um, ok" moment while I read the article. Most of the bands they list at the bottom of the page, I’ve never heard of. Deciding it couldn’t hurt at all; I started to plug some of them into Pandora, the internet radio station.
As I listened to what Pandora brought up, I couldn’t believe I never heard of those glorious Heavy Metal Bands singing about epic fantasy and magic and warriors of might. For the last couple of days, I’ve been listening to it a lot. It makes me want to run through the fields, with the wind blowing through my hair and sword in hand, to do great deeds just so that someone might write a rocking metal song about me.
Granted, this isn’t for everybody. In fact, it might be for only a select few. But it appeals to my sense of awesome and greatness. Now to get the song “All Night Long” by Lionel Richie out of my head. Back to Pandora for another dose of Metal to help.

"There is no indignity in being afraid to die, but there is a terrible shame in being afraid to live." Alydon, in "The Daleks"; Doctor Who series

For as long as I’ve known, I’ve never really liked British TV Programming. I’ve seen a little hear, a little there, but I never really grew fond of it. I can’t pin it on a specific thing really, like the humor, or the production, but I never really got it. For awhile, I liked being the only Anglophobic out of my social group just too see my friends’ gawf at my antianglo tendencies. But recently (probably within the last year), my attitude has started to change a little. Through discussions of popular British shows and friends sending me clips of funny scenes, I’ve started to warm up a little too actually thinking about watching something from across the pond.
My first real experience was viewing one of the seasons of Top Gear, a show dedicated to cars. Needless to say, it was quite interesting. I like cars, but I’ve never really been into them so much to the point where I could tell the specific horsepower of a specific model gets or how many seconds it can go from 0 to 60 in. Top Gear will definitely appeal to those types of people. But that’s only half the show. The other half seems to be the Cast trying to implement “I’ve got a crazy idea; now let’s see if we can get a car to do it!” From racing different types of British buses, making a car able to float across the English Channel, to can they make an old p.o.s. car make it across an African desert. It usually turns into quite an ordeal, and then hilarious ensues. I’ve liked it enough that I need to track down more seasons of it.
Until I do, I’m watching the new incarnation of Doctor Who. I’m currently about half way through the second season, and I rather do like it. They have rather clever plot device where if the current actor playing the Doctor is no longer with the show, they can bring a new actor on board without a glitch of any sort. I’m currently on my second Doctor, played by David Tennant. As of the moment, I like the Christopher Eccleston (the first) version of the Doctor a little bit more at the moment. Don’t get me wrong, I like the job Tennant is doing. I don’t know if I just got use Eccleston as being the Doctor since he was the one they started with in the new series (I’m a big fan of continuity) or what. They both portray the genius and slight insanity of the Doctor rather well, but to me Eccleston has more of a solid presence on screen. The best way I can describe the difference is Eccleston is more akin to a rabid wolf and Tennant is like a cornered badger; both things you wouldn’t want to deal with.
I may yet grow to like David Tennant more as the Doctor (he’s in it for a couple more seasons) because he does do a rather fine job. Time will only tell. As long as I don’t overdo it, I think I may yet come to love British television as much as the rest of them. Just as long as it doesn’t involve me having to watch Red Dwarf.

"...London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained." - Dr. Watson

I recently had the pleasure of viewing the movie Sherlock Holmes in the theater last week, and I wasn’t disappointed. To my mind, it was rather well done. The dialogue was witty throughout without becoming overly cheesy. Robert Downey Jr., a rather solid choice, played a believable manic Holmes and I rather liked Jude Laws portrayal of Watson instead of the portly henchman he’s been played as before. Rachel McAdams character was rather underwhelming, and because of such, was usually pushed aside by the other greater performances.
I’ve heard that people didn’t think it was as true to the Character of Holmes that were in the books and there was too much brawling and explosions for its own good (and on a side note, I thought it really added something to the movie). I can’t give a definitive response to this because I’ve only read one Sherlock Holmes story, The Hound of The Baskervilles, and that was 10 years ago in High School. But one of my friendly acquaintances, who is an English Major and have read several of the stories, was of the opinion that this version of Holmes was truer to the one in the stories than any of the previous incarnations. If you have any qualms about seeing Sherlock Holmes in the theaters, it definitely is worth a cheap seat or two. 3.5/5 stars.
Update: I went and saw Avatar again, but this time in 3D. If you haven’t seen this film already, go and see it now I 3D! I might have to give it an extra half a star for being such a great looking film.