ODST and general happenstance

Played it, beat it.


Overall?
A very.. lonely game in comparison to the rest of the Halo franchise.
Admittedly this changes towards the end, but man. A bit sad, not grim, but very different in feeling.

Enjoyable, though. Music and lighting changes were really really really well done.

The one thing I didn't like so much? As the game progressed I really did start to like the pair of new guns Bungie saw fit to give you in ODST, but there's no ammo for the things.
There's this map, an open world map where you can roam to the heart's content, find bits of story and whatnot, and I was evidently unlocking supply caches.. that I never once stumbled upon even after browsing the game's map for a while.
And ammo for the nice, and even touted on the game's cover art, gun is impossible to find past the occasional (that is, I think, twice in my first playthrough) corpse.

The music was a neat change. No moving choir pieces, but there was a few lines of that Gaelic-y business from the live action trailer.

Other news-
High School is going well, with straight As in all my classes.
Homecoming in approximately one week, on the 3rd of October. I had a date for a while, before it became clear that the band and color guard weren't going to be able to make it. At all.
Birthday's coming up.
I have homework to do.

The Miracle Worker

"The Miracle Worker" by William Gibson is an interesting piece. It is the dramatization of a segment of Helen Keller's life in play form. I suppose this makes it dramatic nonfiction in genre. To me, it read very much like a comedy you'd see on the big screen today. Or that one reality show, Supernanny. I say it reads like a comedy, even though it deals with a fairly dramatic and serious part of a very real person's life, because of just how absurd some situations become. Acts 1 and 2 are full of scenes where Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller wrestle about and fight, and these are exceedingly well written and fun to visualize. I would think these are meant to be very tense and serious, but it simply does not come across like that to me. I'm drawn to vaudeville style black and white stage fights, to that one scene out of Step Brothers where the two titular characters go at it in the most inane way possible.
That said, act 3 does not read like a comedy in the slightest. It feels like the downtime one gets in most movies, after a big event or change. A breather space. But that changes substantially around the last 10 or so pages, with the story going into an upswing and then reaching an end with two plot points settled neatly.

On the whole, I liked "The Miracle Worker", with particular regard for setting. It is not a plot point but dialog between characters like Aunt Ev, James Keller, and Arthur Keller do a nice job of fleshing a post-Civil War South out in a nice way. It uses stereotypes, but not jarringly so, and I thought it was a nice way to immerse a reader, or viewer, of the play.



For reference: this post is number 25 on the Summer Reading Project Directions and Requirements list for Pre-AP English 1. A direct link to this post is:

In regards to the last post: I made a mistake in reading some of the instructions on the packet, and this is the correct part of the project to be viewed. For those directed at my last post, be it from facebook or whatever, please comment on this one, and not Watership Down.

Watership Down

As I type this I've just finished Watership Down scarcely 10 minutes ago. My impressions of the book are generally positive, and it was by no means a bad read. But my one qualm comes from the way rabbits seem cast along the lines of good and bad. There is no in between that I can see. The one, that was to me jarring, example of this comes with the character of Captain Campion.
Both Bigwig and Hazel are reluctant to harm him, despite his working for their enemy and posing their biggest threat when it comes to their plot to raid Efrafa; the threat of detection. While most of Hazel's band seem to think being found is the one thing they cannot do, and indeed Hazel does order his expedition to attack any passing rabbit and ask questions later, both he and Bigwig show reluctance to harm Captain Campion.
It seems to me the only reason for this is because he is somehow good! But the reader is not given evidence of this at least until the very end of the novel, if one does not take Bigwig and Hazel's amiability towards him seriously.
If there was going to be one exception to this, I would have thought Blackavar's guard Bartsia to be good, and worth redeeming. He only treats Bigwig with some measure of respect and seems a very dutiful rabbit while Campion is only seen, at least by me, as a distant eye capable of bringing down the wrath of a warren's military arm on Hazel's band. But Bartsia is simply attacked and wounded in Bigwig's escape from Efrafa and left at that.

That one point aside, Watership Down is a nice piece of adventure fiction with an interesting perspective that casts humans in the same light as H.P. Lovecraft's unknowable Great Old Ones. As sometimes malign gods that have no real regard to what goes on as consequence to their actions. It is this indifference that I really did like, that had me smiling as I caught the odd parallel as I read Watership Down.



For reference: this post is number 25 on the Summer Reading Project Directions and Requirements list for Pre-AP English 1. A direct link to this post is:
http://talesfromtheglass.blogspot.com/2009/08/watership-down.html

School

It's winding down. Not so long 'til Summer vacation.

On the Subject of Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft is probably one of my favorite authors. While his work is around 90 years old, and his style of writing is time consuming in terms of comprehension, he's great to read when given an opportunity to laze around. And it isn't even a matter of buying his work anymore- it's all public domain, and all available (save a few poems he wrote in sonnet form at some point which I can't find). There are 2 sites in question that have the majority of his horror work:

http://www.eponymous.org/lovecraft.html
and
http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/

There is also
http://rca.vmk.zhdk.ch/lovecraft/html/
which has his work in general.

In that last one, Fungi from Yuggoth is probably the most worthwhile read.


In other news:
I beat Bioshock!
I beat HAWX!
I've replayed the Half-Life saga!
I have been playing Team Fortress 2!
In relation to the last item :


The internet is great.
(I play the one on the far left)

More gaming business:
I downloaded the Warhammer Online : Age of Reckoning 10-day trial. It is great fun.
[PROTOTYPE] comes out soon. I am excited.
Call of Juarez : Bound in Blood comes out soon, as well. It looks promising, in more ways than one.

Empire : Total War came out. Tried the demo, was not overly impressed. I think I actually prefer Medieval 2 : Total War for whatever reason.


Music!
Lustmord. It fits H.P. Lovecraft, I think.
I like ambient music, apparently.

Back to games.
Why is Call of Juarez promising? To me, it looks like maybe, just maybe, the gaming industry is getting off its World War 2 kick. The Civil War and the West are widely untapped FPS genres, and I'd love to charge Rebel lines with a Navy Colt and sword of some sort (officers used them throughout the Civil War, believe it or not. Pikes and stuff were around, as well!)

Charging Union lines wouldn't be bad, either. But hum.

World War 2 shooters have you as the Russians, British and Americans, but hardly ever as a German. Ever.

Would Civil War games have you primarily as a Union soldier? It could be limiting, maybe.

Also. Thought just occurred to me. Ironclads! The USS Monitor, the CSS Virginia!
Those were exciting, even if the Monitor was an awkward looking pseudo submarine in my opinion.

EDIT:
Just, unrelated, but oh man
SEA WORMS!
They look awesome.

And permanent numbness? If nothing else it could be my signature poison if I get into the assassination business.

Grand Theft Auto IV!

Hah!

I have beaten Grand Theft Auto IV, and I feel proud of myself. It's the first console game I've completed in a long while.

In any case, I took the path of revenge to beat the game, and I'm wondering what would have happened if I had chosen to strike a deal. Shame I can't do both. I can, however, use the marvelous internet to find out what does happen in the other ending.

I think I can guess, though.

Beyond GTA IV, if you happen to keep track of games, and what is in development, you may have spotted a game called Dead Space . There happen to be a few videos of the gameplay and stuff up and the moment, and it looks to be like Resident Evil 4- in space!

Space being one the best places ever for any kind of horror game, since near anything can happen in space, because it is huge huge huge.

Anyway, I think I'll try and beat Bioshock next.

Still More Summer Break

Summer has been alright, so far.

I'm really close to beating GTA IV and I've already been to a pretty swoo restaurant. Ton's Mongolian Grill is the home to some of the best food I've had in a restaurant for a good while. In addition to this, I recommend you use oyster sauce, even if not a lot, if you ever go over there.

In terms of movies, I've seen nil during the actual break. While school was still in however, I did manage to see Iron Man, a movie that raised the bar of what super hero movies should be for a good while, and Speed Racer, which will no doubt be under appreciated as a movie. If you get the chance, I'd recommend both of these movies, as they're all in all good stuff.

Anyways, books. I've been reading books. Specifically, The Dresden Files. All of the books, from novel number 10 to novel number 1, have been superb reads. They're all written in much the same format, and aren't overly long by any means. Each novel introduces something new, and the plot really does start to kick around in Death Masks, the 5th or so book. So, if you have time to kill, read away.