Big Gaming Releases On 4/19

A bunch of different games are getting released Tuesday. The main two that are big names right now are Mortal Kombat and Portal 2. Now, there are other ones as well, but I believe these are the big ones that are going to be possibly the most popular. Both games have a following in the gaming community, and the other has movies based off it.
Portal hasn’t been around as long as Mortal Kombat, but whatever popularity and following it has it is well deserved. The game soon to be a game series well the sequel releases Tuesday. It all started when Portal was released in 2007. It was a different experience for gamers, who also got to experience it with Half Life 2 and Team Fortress 2 in the orange box bundle. Players used a poertal gun, which fired two portals of different colors, one blue one orange. Get in one, come out the other. They could be fired on ceilings and walls upon other places that might for quite an interesting experience. The one thing the new game is going to have that the original didn’t is a co-op mode with two robots as the main characters
Mortal Kombat has been around for many years. The series has many games, some that were kind of spin-offs. They are now kind of looking to go back to their roots in a sense going back to original fighting game side scroller fighting. A cool new feature with the new game is an x-ray. One of each characters moves is a gory attack that shows x-rays of where the attack struck. Cool right?

Friday's TV Pick: Supernatural. (Dur!)

So without further explaining Supernatural, since I am sure you've all ready my previous pickings and descriptions about the great series involving Sam and Dean Winchester and their epic battle against Heaven and Hell... and everything else in between. This week's episode looks like it's going to be pretty good - as most of them are. Though from what the spoiler scenes show, it looks like Ellen is alive. Though is this Ellen we know or from a different reality or a ghost? Let's find out tonight at 9 on CW!

Or if you miss it: http://www.iwatchsupernatural.com/2011/04/s6e17-my-heart-will-go-on.html

Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes

Ok, so I don't know if you all have seen the trailer, but the new planet of the apes movie is getting some buzz as the trailer is hitting mainstream. The main star is James Franco, who has played in many acting roles. Its odd, because they are not the apes that stand on two legs and look more like humans. Think silverback gorillas with this. Apparently, James Franco's character and the company he works for are developing some kind of medicine or chemical that can heal the brain. But they test it on an ape called Caesar. Great choice of name huh? He gets really smart, I mean smart! Need I say more? It's also gonna be a prequel.

The Format Has Changed...

And for the better. I am pretty pleased with my staff I have here and Ryan's weekly posts. It adds to the character and community of this. I mean, while this site started out to be strictly for Ghostbusters and the related aspects, it's obviously expanded into a new environment.  I posted Ryan's most recent article on my facebook account and, well, we've seen a civil backlash for it. But I will support the freedom of speech of any and all of my staff. I feel that he's entitled to have his right to write how he feels just as anyone else is entitled to their own feelings.

Ryan, thank you for your posts and contributions to this site.

May the Seventh be with YOU!

Every year, around this time, I get excited for something. It's the first Saturday in May. You know, why I'm saying that... It's FREE COMIC BOOK DAY.  Yesss, you know when you get those free reprint issues from publishers that are geared to entice you into reading their stories. Check it all here:

http://www.freecomicbookday.com/

The Hopeful Delusion

I don't believe in soul mates, and I don't believe in love at first sight. Many-splendored though it may be, love is, generally, a very poorly understood thing. It seems to have found a popular description as practically thaumaturgic, perhaps an energy or a power rather than a brain state, having less to do with hormones or action potentials than with fate or magic. I speak of romantic love here, as platonic love is rarely ascribed mystical properties. But the fact is, said the unapologetic pragmatist, that both manifest at the level of the brain and can be measured and explained by neuroscience. Romantic love is not something that can strike like a bolt out of the blue, because it requires intimacy and rapport to develop. Love is based on empathy, reciprocity, comfort, and trust, and those are things that cannot be attained spontaneously (except, perhaps, by the most gullible of us). Common interests also play a big part in the way we begin to love one another, and, while you may be able to deduce that you share a particular interest with another person from the circumstances in which you meet them, the best you should hope for in that instance is a superficial understanding. You can only really come to know a person through conversation and by spending time with him or her, and it's because of this that love also requires patience.

It is common to draw a distinction between "ordinary" love and "true love." The bond of true love is usually expected to be eternal; some even insist that it transcends physical death, which is a dubious conclusion to reach given the information we have (or do not have) about what happens to us when and after we die. Platonic love is less often described as permanent. We have all outgrown friends, and it is usually at least an uncomfortable experience. But romantic love can fail for all the same reasons that platonic love does. There is no reason to assume that any particular feeling of love is truer than any other or that love of any certain intensity should remain miraculously unchanged until your dying day. We should view all of our feelings, no matter how fleeting or powerful, through the lens of logic. Referring to any type of love as true seems to cast other love-like feelings - such as infatuation - as inferior and unworthy of much time under scrutiny, when it is very often these preliminary feelings that can lead to the feeling that many call "true love" in the first place. All feelings are true, even if they are disproportionate to their causes.

Love changes because people change. Our feelings do not exist extrinsic from our minds. As we live and associate with each other, we discover nuances of personality that we may dislike. Our interests evolve, and most peoples' paths will eventually diverge, no matter how close they are from the outset. The friends you had when you were 6 years old and had a whole world to explore and a self to find within it are probably entirely different people now with interests beyond climbing trees and rambling through wooded areas with sticks for swords. The imaginary foes of your youth are all defeated; they have been replaced with real foes, and your interests have likely shifted monumentally, leaving you virtually, if not entirely, incompatible with your comrades of old. We are like ice cubes dumped from an ice cube tray: two may start out in the same shape, but they will probably melt in completely different ways. This is why distance so often kills friendships - separated geographically, you are exposed to different influences and are more likely to develop incompatible interests. Romantic love works in the same way. People change. They grow. Even the truest of love, whatever that means, can dwindle with age. Love takes time, and this is why we cannot love instantly. But, with time, love changes, and this is why it is unrealistic to assume that we might love eternally.

Much emphasis is placed on falling in love and getting married. Romantic love is seen as a goal for which anything might be sacrificed, and those without it are often depicted as less fortunate than those who manage to find it. A lack of proper understanding about feelings of romantic attachment will lead almost certainly to sorrow, no matter what it may be popular to say about the power of love. My wife and I have been together for 11 years, and we've been married for 3. I can say that love and marriage can be wonderful and sublimely rewarding, but approaching any kind of relationship with your head in the clouds and unrealistic expectations of mystical eternity will lead to spectacular failure virtually without variation. Wait until you have done most of your growing to get married. Make decisions based on reason, and do not bet everything until you really understand the odds. Magical thinking in general is detrimental to any society's maturity; if we cannot break the bonds of wishful thinking, we shall be doomed to lunge forever at the shadow of perfection and to fall again and again into sadness and failure that are only made more terrible by our hopeful delusion.

Hop: the Movie NoBunny Should Miss.

I rarely touch kids movies, nonetheless ones that are not science fiction ones lately but... HOP was worth seeing. It had a great mixture of CGI and good live acting. The plot followed E.B. who did not want to grow up and be the next Easter Bunny. Various uses of candy made for great visuals and jokes. Overall a great movie! :)

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Max Headroom

So tonight I'm getting down with my bad self and I'm ingesting the shortly lived Max Headroom television series. Anyone else ever watch this 80's series?

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Back in the Saddle.

So I have today and tomorrow off. That's the good news. The bad news is is that my desktop is still running a repair program to get use of the data I lost for the site at the end of last year. After a fifth attempt of disk repairs, I am now seeing that I have to boot from the DiskWarrior DVD to attempt a better clean of the data. The problem is is that it'll lock me out of the unit until then so I might wait until the weekend to do so and use the damaged laptop I have during that time.

So tomorrow I will post about the TWO Ghostbusters I got in the mail from Mattel and also will write about INFESTATION. :)

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The Man Behind the Curtain

I recently made the mistake of getting involved in an argument on YouTube. If I've learned anything on the internet, it's that YouTube commenters are almost always either trolls or professional morons. I should have abstained, but something about this commenter intrigued me. His name is OneApostate, and his particular kink was denying that it is possible to be Jewish by decent. He asserted that only those who practice Judaism are actually Jews, and that there is no such thing as Jewish DNA. That rumor, he believes, was authored by anti-Semites during the long persecution of the Jews by the Nazis.

The debate began innocently enough, though I admit it was meddling in the affairs of others that got me involved. In the comments section of a YouTube video of a talk involving atheist authors Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, OneApostate was arguing that Harris cannot be a Jew because he is an atheist. He was arguing with someone else, but I felt the need to offer that Sam Harris was raised in a secular Jewish household and self-identifies as Jewish. He replied with the opinion that there are no such things as secular Jews, and the argument snowballed until we were exchanging personal messages. I offered him proof in the form of links to articles about Jewish ethnicity published by the New York Times and the National Academy of the Sciences, articles about genetic diseases that disproportionately affect those with Jewish ancestry published on Jewish websites and on WebMD, and a link to an article by Hitchens on SamHarris.org in which Hitchens describes Sam Harris as Jewish. At this point, I didn't hold out much hope that he would read any of this, but I hoped he would at least pay attention to such article titles as NAS's "Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations share a common pool of Y-chromosome biallelic haplotypes" and the NY Times's "Studies Show Jews' Genetic Similarity," but I was bitterly disappointed when he wrote back immediately to state, "There is no such thing as Jewish DNA period."
He had not read my message. He hadn't even glanced at it. That was how it seemed. How can one look at the web address "jewishgeneticscenter.org" and then say that there is no such thing as Jewish genetics? Things went downhill from there. He offered strawman arguments and challenged me to produce evidence for absurd claims. He constantly asked if I considered myself Jewish, hinting at a hypersensitivity to anti-Semitic prejudice. OneApostate was clearly trying to turn what he interpreted as an anti-Semitic claim back on me when he said, "Since you are related to every Jew on the planet [through Evolution], and you believe in Jewish DNA, I'm going to call you Jewish."
Eventually, I withdrew myself from the debate, telling him that I had a more educational discussion with a brick to participate in, but the argument still disturbs me. I have met people who denied mountains of incontrovertible proof and who clung to absurd beliefs before, but OneApostate's assertion was so utterly ridiculous and his rejection of the clear truth was so complete that I found myself fascinated. I knew that I couldn't get through to him, but I kept on trying. I kept presenting evidence even though he would just circle back to his initial assertion whenever I presented evidence he could not refute. I know he saw me as an anti-Semite, but I have suspicions that he sees just about everyone that way. He is likely someone who has been on the receiving end of anti-Semitic abuse - he actually claims to have been on his channel - and refused to engage with me rationally because he heard my claims as an indictment of Jewish people. But why engage me at all if he thought I was just a bigot? Why did I bother continuing the discussion with him?

I am left with naught but questions. This isn't a private belief of his; this is a personal crusade, and OneApostate probably surrounds himself with people who think just like he does. These delusional people are amassing somewhere, spreading their insipid lies even in the face of irrefutable proof of their insanity. When they are shouting from street corners or raging on the internet, we encourage one another to ignore them. What do we do when they are patrolling our cities in police cruisers, when they are drafting legislation as politicians, or when they are voting for Presidential candidates? When do we decide that rage-blind, anti-social head cases are not only obnoxious but dangerous, and how do we act when we do?

Agent 47 Returning In 2011

A new image has been showing up around the internet, after members of a hitman blog emailed a company responsible for an ad in the sundance film festival catalog. The picture in the catalog showed a doughnut box branded hitman with a barcode ending it 47. They were emailed back a new pic of a table with a pair of black gloves, what appears to be a script, and another barcode with the ending of 47. Apparantly, the random numbers in the barcode point to E3.

See for yourself-
http://i52.tinypic.com/3590enm.jpg

Then, this image was uncovered by another group.


Which just about guarantees a new hitman game in the works.

Superhero Movies, and Can Captain America Doom the Avengers Movie?

Ok, as I'm sure you all know, there are three major superhero movies being released this summer. Two from Marvel, Thor and Captain America, which will ultimately lead to The Avengers movie which is slated for 2012. Green Lantern, from DC, will also be out this summer. However, one can cause doom for the Avengers movie.
I'm referring to Captain America. As leader of the avengers, his movie should honestly be the one watched closely. I feel if this movie is a bomb, it could mess up things for The Avengers. If it isn't done right, it isn't going to seem like it is going to work right in 2012. However, recent trailers don't seem to be so bad, and the Thor movie is looking better too. I didn't care for the pictures that were coming out that showed a sci-fi looking Asgard.

A Man of Value

I don't remember when I started playing the piano. For a long time, I thought I had started at six, but I recently found pictures of myself sitting at my parents' piano when I was one. Whatever the case, I've been playing piano for more than twenty-five years as of this writing. I play entirely by ear, having learned (and forgotten) how to read music on more than one occasion. Whatever particular cognitive aptitudes I have for functional analysis and dissimilation, be they the product of nature (natural inquisitiveness) or nurture (the back of my mother's hand if I played a wrong note), seem to lend themselves well to musical improvisation. Thus, I became something of a trick pony in my youth, playing whenever there was a party and a piano. This boosted my self esteem at first, but not for long. After awhile, I started to feel like a circus performer. But I loved playing, and I loved being the center of attention when I was doing something I felt confident that I could do, so I never complained. It was universally agreed upon that I was going to be a musician when I grew up, and I saw no reason to doubt this when people said so. It became clear to me, at some point, that music was how I was going to make my mark on the world, and when I had reached this conclusion my attitude toward music changed. I started writing "career songs," if you will. I taught myself to play the guitar and started experimenting with grunge; its DIY nature made it seem as though anyone could be a musician. My father contributed a great deal of support to all my efforts at building a music career. And yet, here I sit, 31 years old and unemployed. My YouTube channel, where I upload original folk songs and covers, has had ten-thousand views in three years. Rarely do I get more than fifty views on a song. I've worked with A&R companies before and been burned; one of them withdrew $500 from my bank account illegally and only paid it back when I sued them for fraud. I have not become a professional musician. I have not become a professional of any sort, and I'm starting to wonder now about whether or not it's time to give up on my dream. I worry about how I shall leave my mark if not through creative endeavors.

Pontificating on failure has led to some interesting insights. Chiefly, I wonder where it is that we get the idea that we must leave something indelible when we die. There is pressure to make something of yourself, to contribute to posterity in a lasting way, but where does this pressure come from? How many people do you honestly know personally who have built enduring legacies? The truth is that most of us leave little behind when we shuffle loose from the mortal coil than grief and funeral expenses. This sounds bad, I know. It sounds like oblivion. Y0u live, you die, you do some stuff in between that most people won't even remember. It may sound like I'm trying to rationalize giving up or to make excuses for why I've failed at being any kind of artist, but if you look at the number of people who have left the world a better place in comparison to the number of people who have lived and died and been utterly forgotten, I think you'll see that there really is a lesson to be learned here.

Be what you are, do the right thing, and don't worry about leaving an impression when you die. No matter how much renown you achieve posthumously, you'll never get to enjoy it. Be good to yourself and try to make a positive impact on the people you love while you're around to reap the rewards - lasting relationships and peace of mind. To quote Albert Einstein: "Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value."

Blogged Down?

Sorry I haven't been as busy as I should have been on here. Just been dealing with a lot of more random side projects that I should have not let become my focus. March has never been the best of times for me. It's as simple as that. Look for better updates soon. Thankfully I have a really solid staff who has my back and picked up things while I dealt with this.

Your friend.

Jobbing Out to UFC

It's time for an admission. I am a fan of professional wrestling. I know it's not a real competition, I know the wrestlers are playing characters; these are the things many seem to feel compelled to point out to me when I reveal this fact about myself. "That stuff is so fake," they say. This gets my hackles up. Pro-wrestling isn't fake - it's worked. "Worked" is a wrestling term that means "staged." Pro-wrestling originated in carnivals, and there are still a lot of carny terms in use within the industry. Fans are "marks." Losing a match is called "doing a job," or "jobbing." The concept of acting to preserve the illusion that pro-wrestling is a legitimate sport with no works or angles is called "kayfabe," though kayfabe is only symbolic now, since Vince McMahon held a press conference in the 90s to admit that wrestling is fiction. I'm not an idiot; there's no need to point out to me that wrestling is unrealistic. That said, to call it fake is to imply that it doesn't take any skill, and that people who enjoy watching it are not wise to the fact that it's worked. It does, and most of us are. I'll also point out that nobody left the theater after seeing Avatar and said to their friends, "You know that was fake, right?" We know it's not real. Lots of things are fake. This is the criticism of someone who doesn't know much about what he's criticizing.

Within the industry, I would be referred to as a "smart mark." This basically means that I know the whole thing is a work, but it also means that I know a lot about the industry. I know about booking matches, and I know about high spots, and I read a lot about the part of the business that is not kayfabe. It's really a fascinating world filled with jock/geek hybrids and dominated by many egos that rate very high on the Sheen Megalomania Scale. Wrestling draws oddballs unlike any you will see anywhere else, and that is part of what I love about it. Could you imagine Randy Savage as a museum curator? James "The Ultimate Warrior" Hedwig has gone on to be a motivational speaker. This is mind-boggling. He also legally changed his name to Warrior; this name appears on official documents, and even his children are surnamed Warrior. The world needs pro-wrestling if only so that these singularly bizarre humans have a place to take out their weird hypermasculine/homoerotic aggression.

But there is another outlet. I have recently started watching UFC. Few are likely to describe me as a "typical male," whatever that is. Sure, part of me likes to see people getting punched in the face, but a larger part of me likes the strategic aspect of fighting - the technique. And this brings up an interesting point. Professional wrestling is worked. It isn't real. People really get hurt, but it's not a real fight going on in the ring (most of the time). Now that I've started getting into UFC, can I see why people would express disdain for pro-wrestling? Can I see how much more appealing in-ring fighting is when it's legit? Well, yes and no. UFC doesn't script outcomes. The WWE, the biggest wrestling promotion in the world for decades running, has full control over who wins a match; theoretically, they should be able to generate the kind of excitement UFC can generate on a much more consistent basis. But that hasn't been happening. Professional wrestling has become far less interesting to me than legit MMA. It's not because wrestling is fake. Wrestling and MMA are two completely different things. Wrestling has become less interesting because of egomaniacs who care more about having their private parts massaged than about generating product that can actually make money - so convinced are they that everything they produce is golden. Kayfabe is dead, but it lingers, and many people in the business book almost as if they still buy it. I'm sure that UFC is jammed full of huge egos and jacked-up manchildren, but it possesses a degree of legitimacy that the WWE cannot approach right now because, there, egos are allowed to run wild, brother. Whatcha gonna do when Vince-a-mania runs wild on you? I'm going to contribute to failing PPV buy-rates and watch UFC instead. It breaks my heart, in all honesty, to see big events like the Royal Rumble and Wrestlemania circling the drain, but it's not because wrestling looks weak in comparison to UFC. I know what wrestling can be - I lived through the Attitude Era, and I've been consistently amazed by promotions like Ring of Honor and Dragon Gate. But maybe it's time for professional wrestling in general to leave its carny mentality behind and take up its erstwhile crown. Fully functioning in a modern world and free from the tyranny of egos and backstage politics, professional wrestling can be, once again, what I say it is when I defend it from the people who tell me that it's fake: an entertaining fantasy.