Google Image Search of the Day - July 30, 2009

IN WHICH HE FINDS HIMSELF READING TWO BOOKS AT THE SAME TIME

Today's installment is sponsored by Cat's Cradle. After purchasing the Kindle 2 a few months back for the express purpose of sparing my back from carting around Anathem, I installed the Kindle for iPhone app. It's kind of like the retarded cousin of the Kindle, so I almost never used it, generally preferring to shrug off my bag and extract the Kindle which, while portable, is not really a one-handed device. On a related note, I used to read/write tweets when I went to the bathroom [why am I telling you this?], and then I was like, "Dude, you could totally slide the Kindle in your pants and read part of a chapter!" But that was cumbersome and a little weird, even for me. The iPhone fits right in your pocket! And it has a Kindle app! So much easier, he thought to himself. Thus, I began reading Vonnegut while my Kindle is preoccupied with a children's series about demigods.

INDEED!

En route to the office this morning, I'm holding my iced mocha in one hand, iPhone in the other, and I'm reading Cat's Cradle. He used the genius phrase "irrelevant tomfoolery" to describe some changing traffic lights. Tomfoolery, indeed, says I! When was the last time you heard "tomfoolery" used? I guarantee it was not recently enough. So it is with a happy heart that I have chosen "tomfoolery" as the word of the day. And what a word! Google Image Search threw limitless options at me for use in today's post. So many that I thought perhaps I should break this into two. Let us sally forth.

tom·fool·ery

Pronunciation:

\ˌtäm-ˈfül-rē, -ˈfü-lə-\

Function:

noun

Date:

1812

: playful or foolish behavior

WHENCE COMES THE ELIXIR OF LIFE? FROM BOSOMS.

I find it all too appropriate to begin with breasts. After all, we seekers of enlightenment suckle from the Teat of Wisdom, the Teat from which the milky substance of dreams issues. Some men take their breasts far too seriously, but I always say, "If thou can't approach them from a place of tomfoolery, thou shan't approach them atall!" I wonder what jungle fruits that man used to build his lopsided bosoms...likely guava. This would be a great idea for a running photo gag. Travel the world and take pictures of yourself in front of various locales with fake titties stuffed in your shirt. Food for thought!

THE UNIVERSE IS CALLED INTO QUESTION WHEN IT IS REVEALED THAT DUMBLEDORE IS GAY[!?!]

Sometimes, it feels like the Wiccans are right and there's magic in this here world we all inhabit. Take a look at the sky right now (if you live in Boston/Cambridge), for instance. That's some freaky night during the day Benjamin Buttons shit right there and I think I like it. When you think magic, a whole slew of images and characters come to mind from the stories we have heard all our lives. Wicked witches, glittering faeries, voodoo priests, venerable wizards. But does one think of tomfoolery? One might!

This dude has got it going on. The 'More You Know' rainbow is spurting out of his floppy wizard hat, faeries are shooting stars at each other and some green butterfly is chillaxing by his ear. His facial hair is a bit wispy, though...I definitely don't like seeing his lips underneath that moustache. I suspect it's simply poor digital art skillz, but maybe they meant for him to be a sketchball. Also, his green eyes seem to be crying, "Help! These fucking faeries are buzzing around my head like infernal fruit flies! I can't take the stress anymore and may pretty soon use a fireball spell to blow myself apart, hopefully taking some of these goddamn faeries with me. I am dead inside." On the other hand, I could be projecting. But come on, he totally looks lifeless and frazzled. I like to think this is how Dumbledore spent his spare time when he wasn't tutoring Harry Potter or getting killed by Snape. In a word: Gay Tomfoolery. [Ok, two words.]

IN WHICH THE MAGICAL TOMFOOLERY CONTINUES WITH

...WTF?! I'm not quite sure what this is supposed to be. It appears to have a Dali-stache, a pirate eyepatch, hooked goblin nose and a powdered wig like judges and members of Parliament wore. It's not easy being green, so can you blame the big-headed lug for getting drunk with graduating college girls? I'm pretty jealous of that eyepatch though. This one time, I woke up with my right eye totally swollen shut and I thought for a minute I was dying or that I'd gotten a bit of lumber stuck in my eye while I slept, so I called out of work and went to Student Health Services. I waited around in the room while girls came and got pregnancy and genital wart tests, like you do, and finally the doc saw me and prescribed me an $80 bottle of glorified saline with which to wash my eyes. "No thanks, doc," says I, "I just want an eyepatch!" He looked at me like I was high (which I most certainly was not!) and said, "You didn't get anything in your eye, it's just allergies." I took a deep breath, got real close so he could smell the cabbage on my breath [ed. note - not true], and yelped, "EYEPATCH!" This gave him quite a start and he adjusted his glasses with one hand while holding his heart with the other. Usually he just had people cry when he broke the news to them that forevermore they would have herpes outbreaks because of that trick they brought home from the clubz. He wasn't used to demands for eyepatches. Did the clinic even carry them? Couldn't this strange boy just go to a costume store and purchase his own damn eyepatch? Why was he getting his cabbage-y breath all up in my grill like that? This mental litany of question took place in the same length of time it took me to blink my engorged eyelid. On the edge of my seat I perched, waiting, hoping that an eyepatch my way came. Alas! Tomfoolery was afoot and I never got that eyepatch. Still it burns me. I'm a man of good health, no chronic problems and rarely get sick. The ONE TIME I have a swollen eye and I don't even get to pretend to be a pirate for a day. What kind of fucking joke was this? I'll probably carry my rage to the grave, perhaps beyond, if there were such a thing. So I say to this goblin, drink on.

HIS RAGE DRIVES HIM CLOSE TO THE EDGE AND HE STARES INTO THE ABYSS OF SPACE. THE FUTURE STARES BACK.

And you thought those apes at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey were intense. Look at this dude! Sunken eyes: check. Big hairy ears: check. Long, downturned mouth: check. Business suit: check. Fucking pistol: double check. I wonder what's going through his head in this picture. He is clearly all, "Don't mess with me, fool," which is a stance I can appreciate, as it's one I give often myself. Just yesterday, I was browsing photos of people I don't know on Facebook because they came up on my sidebar (you all do this, so don't give me that look) and some peeps had pictures with monkeys and I was all, "How cool! I'd love to have a pet monkey!" I would train him to be just like Abu in Aladdin, a kleptomaniacal monkey who rides on my shoulder and wears a fez. But I'm starting to think my creativity didn't go far enough. Dream big, Jon! I could be the proud companion of a homicidal gun-toting ape! We could star in a buddy-cop film together. People would laugh and say, "He's not a person! He's an ape! HAHAHA! You two are a disgrace to the force!" But ah, Abu and I would get the last laugh. We'd take down the mob, the Russians, we take down all of them. And I'd pin that medal of honor to Abu's chest and we'd embrace, brothers in blood, the blood of those criminals we slew in the name of justice. For Aiur! Then we'd go blow up a creationist museum or something. Think of all the tomfoolery we could get up to! All I want is to turn that frown upside down, Abu.

AND THE PRIZE FOR WTF-IEST GOES TO...

...this dude. Where to begin? I guess his jaunty pose is supposed to be the source of the tomfoolery, but I find this to be a loose interpretation of the word. Also, this makes me feel uncomfortable. Anyone else? Is that just me? Why does he have knobby knees and elbows? Why are his toes and fingers different shapes and sizes? Is he a genetic abnormality? Is this trying to say that even freaks can be tomfools? Is tomfool a word? It should be if it isn't. Holy crap, it is! I'm definitely going to describe myself/other people as a tomfool from now on. Also, why is this monkey's tail shaped like a stinger? What's with monkeys and tomfoolery!? This hasn't even touched on the dude's hair. If I could grow facial hair in that manner, I would, yessir, I would indeed. And the sidepart! And the lighter colored eyebrows! There's something disturbing about this image, almost more disturbing than that creepy eyeless wonder from yesterday. To be quite frank, this is not a monkey with whom I would want to film a buddy-cop movie. TOMFOOL!

IN WHICH THE ALREADY MEANDERING POST FURTHER DISINTEGRATES INTO ITS COMPONENT PARTS--NAMELY, POO AND BUTTSEX JOKES

You knew it was coming. There's no avoiding that the height of tomfoolery is certainly an elephant trunking [neologism FTW!] another elephant. Maybe the one on the right (henceforth Rosa) did not chew her peanuts properly. Ezekiel over there smelled an opportunity and went for it: free nuts where you would least expect to find them. [ed. note -- we apologize for the bad jokes, sometimes we find that there's very little we can do to control him] I say, this seems like tomfoolery for Ezekiel, but I suspect Rosa's of a different mind. You never know, elephants might be freakier than we give them credit for. Or maybe not. No really, to be honest, Ezekiel is totally felching Rosa*. And Rosa seems to be taking one for the team. Well done, Rosa. That inexplicable image is an album cover for some band called Tom Foolery and the Mistakes (I think). Weird. I'm not really ok with this. I call shenanigans.

*credit to Jason for pointing out what is clearly happening in this picture. I was just thinking he was eating peanuts out of her butt.

MERE ANARCHY IS LOOSED UPON THE WORLD

And so our sad and sordid tale comes to a close, as tales tend to do. It may not always be the end of all things or the Second Coming--sometimes an enigmatic image is enough. A couple of pheasants [?!] walking along. Is it tomfoolery or is it a statement on the futile pecking we attempt on our scrambling climb to the top? Remember, only by dancing through life on the wings of tomfoolery can you keep the crushing emptiness at bay. Return tomorrow for another word, another dollar.

Google Image Search of the Day - July 29, 2009

WHEREIN THE STAGE IS SET AND THE REFINED FRENCH WHORES REPOSE

Greetings, children. Welcome to today's installment of "Google Image Search of the Day." I'm uncertain whether I should include the word in the title or not...maybe it doesn't actually matter. Originally, the intended word was "ribald," [is that right? comma before the quotation mark?] because I was thinking of a word that started with 'ri' and then I thought 'riffin' so I went to Merriam-Webster and searched for 'riffin' and then I saw 'raffine'. Raffine, of course, means "refined: sophisticated," which would have been a fine word, but it's French and you know how uppity Americans get about the French. (I love 'em, though. So much butter and fat and deliciousness.) So then I thought, "Hey, Jon. The French are slutty, right? There were whorehouses in Moulin Rouge, so they must be pretty RIBALD!" For a brief moment in time, "ribald" was the word of the day, but a quick Google Image Search of "ribald" turned up a lot of pendulous bosoms. This wouldn't usually be a problem, given that the subtitle of my blog is pretty ribald itself, but I'm at work damnit. Scribbling this off between emails is bad enough without having pictures of pinups on my computer screen.

After discarding "ribald" as a possibility, I naturally decided to settle upon "quiescent."

1 : marked by inactivity or repose : tranquilly at rest

2 : causing no trouble or symptoms <quiescent gallstones>

Besides the fact that the example phrase is "quiescent GALLSTONES," [WTF, Jeeves?] it seemed like a pretty innocuous word, one that skips through quiescent meadows hand in paw with bunnies riding on the backs of majestic unicorns. I actually got a bit excited to see what sort of images I might find. After all, how bad could it be?

CONSEQUENTLY, HE DISCOVERS HITHERTO UNPLUMBED DEPTHS OF WRONGNESS WITHIN THE INTERWEBS

Rather than delving directly into the mouth of madness, I shall begin with an image I'll ask you to meditate on for a few moments before continuing.

Drink in the peaceful stillness of the water, the sunlight shining through the trees. Sometimes in our bustling, empty lives of corporate greed, we need to slough off our doldrums and sip from a steaming mug of quiescence. Hold fast to your sanity.

WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?! I suddenly feel anything but peaceful and reposed, unless by reposed, you mean dead from murder by whatever the hell that thing is. Now I'm a pretty open-minded guy, or so I like to think, and if we were friends and you were like, "Hey, dude, I'm an artist and I'd love to show you my stuff," I would totally listen and give constructive feedback wherever possible. If, on the other hand, you showed me this, I might seriously have to consider ending our friendship ASAP. This lovely image comes to us courtesy of The Raster Group, whatever that is. The artist who submitted this also had two other images close by, one of which was titled "Happy Time" and was definitely a demon clown inside an insane asylum. I kind of want to shake Kaos' (the artist) hand. Well done, you sketched me the hell out. His/her pictures seem like the natural progression of this artist who hung his stuff at Ula Cafe for a while. They were photographs from inside abandoned Massachusetts Mental Hospitals and they were creeeeeepy. I think if the two of them got together and maybe tried making another Silent Hill Movie, they could be in business.

That's a sweet mask, bra. So I get it. Kid was wearing a crazy monkey mask, probably ran around creeping his parents out with some loud screeching and ooh-ooh-ahh-ahh noises, maybe even broke a vase or two. Mom yells, "Zachary Isaiah Plimpton! Cut that out right now. Time out in the chair, and take that damn mask off before your father sees it!" Zachary slinks over to the wall, subdued from being shouted at. He mutters, "ZIP it, woman!" and chuckles at his little joke. He leaves the mask on because he feels there is something shameful about sitting on black leather completely naked. If he can't be Simba, he'll at least be Rafiki.

Or maybe this is just an advertisement for Saw VIII. Creepy.

IN WHICH ANIME RESTORES THE DELICATE VEIL BETWEEN INSANITY AND GENIUS

And what post about "quiescence" would be complete without an anime inspired drawing! Don't ask how those two thoughts are remotely connected. Just accept it.

I don't even know who that is supposed to be, but she's wearing a schoolgirl uniform and asking me to grab her hand (with feeling)! I suppose her half-lidded eyes are supposed to be where "quiescence" comes from, but I'm starting to feel like the word is mostly used by emo kids for their art projects. There's nothing wrong with that, though. All words have their place.

And so it goes, and so it goes, our lesson has concluded, gentle readers. I trust you will return, and not sporadically.

Our Hero Receives A Calling

IN WHICH I PONDER THE MEANING OF LIFE

There's something magical about this world in which we live. It's not the smiling, yet filthy face of a child. It's not a shout in the street. It's most certainly not anything involving pregnancy.

No, friends, what I'm talking about is puppetry. I suppose on some level, I've always known puppetry existed, but in things like The Sound of Music or a little kid's basement. Or Sesame Street. Wholesome things, like The Dark Crystal. Ok, so maybe that's not wholesome, but you get my drift. Never did I think some genius would use puppets to enact fake scenes from Harry Potter, let alone that greatest of all Pop Culture monstrosities: The Twilight Saga.

First, let us observe the insanity that is over 65 million hits on YouTube.

HARRY POTTER PUPPET PALS



I've come to accept my place in the world as an observer and sometime chronicler of all things awesome. Once in a while, I think of a witty phrase in the spur of the moment and touch the smallest edge of that Hylaean Theoric World, but whoever created that surely put at least a whole foot inside. I mean, finger puppets and tomfoolery? How can one go wrong?



OH HOW WRONG ONE CAN GO

Though come to think of it, the acting by these stiff puppets was actually far superior to anything in the film. I hope someone does a puppet version of the fourth book and has a bloody puppet get chewed out of a pregnant puppet's stomach, because that is both what happens in the book and HOT. Hot, indeed.



Someday, I hope to have a sliver of the talent of these fine folks. I would like to say I'd use that power for good, rather than to make poo jokes with Harry Potter or used decapitated deer head puppets, but I'm certain that IS good. If anything, I'd tell the tale of Vivi the midget magician and his many accomplishments. Actually, I do have a large number of stuffed creatures on or around my bed (how is this possible at 25, you ask? WHO FUCKING KNOWS, just go with it, aight?), and a plethora of objects that could be used as ridiculous props. Does anyone want to create a video with me? I'm sure we could find a way to tie all of these things into a cohesive storyline!

IT WILL BE BETTER THAN THIS, AS THIS SOUNDS (AND LOOKS) LIKE RETARDED MONKEYS

Google Image Search of the Day - July 28, 2009

Today's Google Image Search is "excoriate". I'm going to try and Google one word/phrase a day and see what ridiculous stuff comes up, just for the hell of it.

On with the show:

First we have what looks like a demonic rug of some sort. As far as I can tell, the only connection to the word I was looking for are, I guess, its teeth. If it hadn't been taxidermied, I suppose it might be trying to excoriate its dinner. Dericious.

Photo 2, we have Bill O'Reilly on the body of a T-Rex. Um. There really are no words for this. One could wish Fox would excoriate BillO, but that'll never happen. T-Rexes are the Kings of the Jungle or something.

Inexplicably, Canadian Geese. I used to go to this time share my family has down in Williamsburg, VA (first Capitol of Virginia!) every summer in July. It was, cheekily enough, called Powhatan Plantation. Now there's something really American about taking an old plantation, naming it after the tribe of which Pocahontas was a member (aww!) and turning it into a pretty poor vacation destination. I even had a truly terrible buffalo steak in the old slave quarters. Charming! It was after that steak that I decided buffalo were my favorite of all the creatures native to America, and I refused to eat it...instead collecting stuffed animal buffalo, which I named Buffy Buffalo and Buffy Buffalo. (The difference is in the pronunciation. And hell, this was long before Buffy was staking vampires on our TV screens. That's me, ahead of the times.) So I vacationed as a "privileged" white dude on a planation, wtf, and my point is...there were a lot of geese. Like a lot, a lot. Hundreds would roam the streets like hungry packs of wolves. If small children wandered from their carriages or stuck their grubby little baby hands outside of moving cars, geese would flock towards them, razor sharp* jaws snapping furiously, anxious for just a little taste of baby flesh. (And can you blame them? So tender.) These huge groups of Canadian Geese were flecked with one or two Giant White Swans. I always felt like the swans were the leaders, and directed them towards their target. The goose propaganda machine would have you believe they eat grass and rice and other veggie shit. NOT TRUE. They eat people, damnit. This one swan freaking charged me when I was 8 and bit my finger like he was a doggie with a bone. For all I know, he was some sick dog that got reincarnated as a goose. Whoever's in charge of reincarnation has a weird sense of humor, you know? So these big swans ruled over the canadian geese, which begged 2 questions. 1) Why the hell are they called Canadian Geese when they are in Virginia? Not ok. I mean, this is America, damnit. Take your "french" fries back to Montreal, bitches. 2) How do bloodthirsty creatures like swans keep their feathers so white? Do they excrete bleach? Do they, perhaps, EXCORIATE each other? *NUDGE*? Whatever, I say. Scary creatures.

My final thought is, why are the three pictures I chose from google image search all animals. (Yes, Virginia, I'm counting a chimerical T-Rex as an animal.) What if that dinosaur is the missing link, y'all? What if Canadian Geese are being genetically engineered to start the bird flu in Virginia? Brace yourselves.

*I don't know if their jaws are really razor sharp. I suspect not, but just go with it. It makes imagining severed baby limbs that much easier. I mean...wtf?

(I'm going to go listen to My Chemical Romance and write slam poetry)

Hi Blog,

I love that after my last post, I actually went and downloaded the entire discography of Engima. Only listened to The Screen Behind the Mirror, as before when I had all their music, but ah well. I have lots of gigabytes of space on my computer and nothing with which to fill them.

Someday, I hope to be better about updating this more frequently and about intelligent topics, like those other blogs I stumble across in my travels through the internet. There are so many smart, eloquent people contributing untold wisdom to our culture, if only I knew where to look for all of them. Typically, I have nothing really to say in here, which sadly has become almost a theme for this blog. Maybe I should start over and do something useful, like blog about baking or something. This one feels weird to me, because it definitely does not feel like my old Livejournal from college, where I would spill my issue-of-the-hour to anyone who would listen, but whenever I feel inclined to write, that is typically where I'm at. So, I don't know where that leaves me besides confused.

I have my little paper journal that I write in from time to time, but it's just so much work to write it out by hand when I can type way faster. I despise when my brain operates dozens of times faster than my hand. Laame.

So anyway, I sit here bored on my old bed at home. I'm contorted in some folded up position, because the bed only fits about 3/4 of my body. The mattress feels like a ton of bricks beneath me and I can feel my back slowly breaking without even lying down to sleep yet. It will be a painful few days. Been retreating up here to avoid my parents, with whom I have nothing in common. Sometimes it feels not even our blood. Wah wah. Anyway. I decided that I am a really bad Buddhist, because I consider myself like...a half-Buddhist and that's pretty lame of me. I dig all the ideas and the logic and the positivity, but I am lazy and almost never sit down and meditate. I would say I suck at meditating, but that's kind of subjective and beside the point. So, I sat here for a while, I dunno, probably 15 minutes. Got to say, it was like the other times I have meditated, I ended it feeling super chill and relaxed. Of course, it did not magically make me happy, but I think I was already pretty happy the last few times I tried it.

So resolution or whatever for myself: meditate every day. I've only read Thich Nhat Hanh say it a billion and a half times, but it clearly has not sunk in. I just need to make a more concerted effort to pay freaking attention to my life. Especially lately, I've been walking around in some weird daze, listening to music and staring at the ground. It snowed for three days and I only spent maybe 10 seconds actually SEEING the snow. I remembered because...well, I guess because I remember. I actually paid attention to what was happening at that moment and it stuck. I get this weird feeling that I've been avoiding paying attention lately because I just can't bear to pay attention to feeling like shit.

I've had this really awesome thing happening lately where I go to my room to sleep, and end up curled in a ball crying hysterically. Clearly, I am right in the head. Clearly. No, but it really is not fun, as one might imagine. I've been trying to figure out why, since I don't have a shrink to do it for me, and I really think it's that psychotic irrational fear that no one will ever love me. Tell me how I spent the last year getting into Buddhism and yoga and self-discovery and all that jazz, only to be 14 again and think I'm unlovable. I mean, REALLY. How does that happen? So I sit there and think back to how it was over a year now since someone actually loved me (not that long in the grand scheme of things) and I can't help but freak out about whether I made some horrible mistake (I didn't). But I can't stop it, so I just mildly hyperventilate and wonder if all that last year broke me somehow. I'm not the same person I was then, and I thought this was good, it really is good, but then I also walk around like a zombie half the time. I guess professionals would call that depression, but blah.

I just don't get how this happens in my brain. I distinctly recall everything BEFORE my birthday being all zen and happy and athletic and healthy, and then everything AFTER my birthday has somehow erased that and I'm an antisocial shut-in who cries a lot. This can't be normal, right? siigh. I just feel really broken, or something, and lacking self-worth...attractive qualities, I know. Which should be a good indication of how I feel about this post... ugh

I'm just going to keep throwing myself into new/old pursuits: learning knitting and Chinese, reading better books than Twilight, expanding my cooking, meditating every single day, forcing myself to socialize more. I've got to believe that I will feel normal again soon.

Return to Innocence

Hello dear blog,

Alas, it has been quite some time since I graced you with my presence and don't think for an instant that I forgot about you. Every day, I've been plagued with the guilt of my abandonment of you. Every day, I keep wishing and hoping for some inspiration to strike, some flash of insight that will give me a topic to expound upon within your illustrious 'pages.' And yet, every day you weep silently to yourself...your creator has left you. He built you up from scratch and thousands of lines of html (which He doesn't write because Blogger does it for him) and then left you like some cheap hooker on the side of the road after having his way with you for these long years months.

Now you know how mankind feels about God. I mean, honestly.

Fear not, kind blog. I have returned, brimming with wit and charm, overflowing with depth and clarity into the trueness of the world around us. It is within you, of all the free webspaces in existence, that I choose to leave my mark on this cruel, cruel world. Much like a dog pissing on a tree, so I shall piss forth my wisdom unto you. I shall chronicle my triumphant return to the glories of my youth and spend the remainder of October 2008 honing my already razor-sharp skills in preparation for NaNoWriMo 2008, or The Year Jon Finally Accomplishes Something, Anything, For God's Sake Do Something With Your Life, Man!

No one knows, least of all me, what direction this blog will take. Most likely it will contain some parts Sarah-Palin hatin' and some parts Gastrointestinal Diary (or, why I am so very, very alone) and maybe some parts random shit that flies out of my head like a way less impressive version of Athena. Any which way you slice it, though, the world (of the Interwebs) is a better place for my being in it.

Perhaps someday a future people will dig up the bones of our civilization and discover my blog over all others (and pray to whatever you pray to that they don't find Perez Hilton first..).

This is a topic I'd like to return to, but for now, I must go download Enigma.

Yours, ever and always,
Jon

Impressions: Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth II

Here's an impression for you, loyal readers of this here blog: This game is shit.

I mean, really awful. So bad that you are literally (and figuratively, if that is even possible) better off renting Xanadu and dancing around your apartment like a freak on speed than renting this game and hoping for more than the easy 10 achievement points gathered from the first stage, along with a healthy dose of boredom. Ok, so I perservered through the second stage (in hopes of getting more Gamerscore), but while I held out through two (count 'em, two!) playthroughs of Eternal Sonata, I seriously could not bring myself to continue with this game. It was insanely laggy, as though I was playing online in a dial-up connection, even though it was single player and not online. And when the Xbox can barely run your totally mediocre game, something is horribly horribly wrong.

Beyond the lag that made my army stutter across the screen, the game was just plain boring as all hell. I was bored, my roommates were bored, even my Xbox360 was emitting a high-pitched plaintive wail, begging me to release it from the torment of running this game. Or maybe that was just the bastardized version of the excellent LOTR soudntrack, crying into its milk. At the end of the second stage, a "Watcher" rose up from the ground to assault my army. It was a giant squid thing (like the one outside of the Mines of Moria in the first movie) and apparently it summoned a lake with it when it rose from the depths of a snowy mountain. Riiight. Regardless, I was clearly meant to use archers to attack it, as it had flailing limbs that threw any of my foot soldiers across the screen if they got remotely close to it. Unfortunately, there was almost no way to tell the archers from the foot soldiers because the screen was so ridiculously jumbled, and even when I did, I am not sure there was even a way to select all of my archers to make them attack it. What I ended up having to do was move all my guys far enough away that the foot soldiers stopped committing suicide and the archers got bored and moved forward automatically to shoot the squid. Ghey. What's the point of me playing if I have to manipulate the AI to play?

So, I finished the first two stages, getting the achievements for completing all objectives for each stage, plus the one for buying my first power. 15 points and the game took 5 days to get to me. OMG GameFly, sometimes you make it so easy to hate you. I went and wrote a bad review of the game so that others are not suckered in by that 6.7 rating I saw. 6.7 my lily white ass.

Here's to the next game being better. Oh wait, it's DMC4 (for xbox 360 this time!!). Of course it will be better.

P.S. - My boss thinks I'm hot.