My brother and I just scored 3424 on Oregon Trail. He didn't want to start as a carpenter because they have no money, but I wanted to because they can fix things. Case in point- an axle broke and we fixed it. Booyah! And being a carpenter means that your score is doubled in the end. We lost one member of our party, a poor sap named RED SHIRT. His name was in all caps because the Apple IIe emulator defaulted to caps. This poor soul bought it while crossing the second river we came to. Since this was a watery demise, we didn't have to bury him with a clever epitaph. He probably just floated out to the gulf of Mexico. It's just as well, though: he kept eating all the hard-tack and he kept telling us all that he was the Les Claypool of the jawharp. We continued on westward at a strenuous pace, stopping on occasion to hunt. My years of bragging about what a mighty hunter I am went up in smoke when I only brought back 75 lbs of food. Then Michael tried and killed a bear. Another time, he got stuck walking around when he ran into a pixelated cactus. We ate well. Further along, we came across a tombstone from the previous owner of the game. It was a simple affair with this curious etching: "Here lies andy" next line: "peperony and chease" (misspelled pizza references suggest that this person probably should never have left Independence, Missouri). EDGAR was bitten by a snake, and MICHAEL came down with cholera after we let some strange Shoshone Indian help us cross a river. The stupid jerk didn't know what he was talking about- the wagon tipped over and we lost two spare axles. I should have known something was up when he requested two sets of clothing as currency for his services. Everyone lived through their particular ordeals after that, and we made it to the cool part where you have to guide the wagon on a flatboat down a river, avoiding identical rocks as you float by. This is where I made up for my inadequacy as a hunter. I deftly maneuvered the wagon down the river, past the three arrow signs to the trail on the shore that marks the end. We made it, in fair health but good spirits.

Summer is an odd time here. You’d think it would be easier to get around in a college town during the summer when the population around campus clears out, but it actually got worse. The amount of road construction around here has made everything inconvenient.

I went out to dinner with several of my classmates last night to the local Mexican restaurant. It’s not quite on par with what I’ve had in California or Fort Wayne, but the cheese enchiladas satisfy the monkey on my back just fine. We talked about all the things you might expect- Star Wars, the Office, David Sedaris- stuff like that. Then, much to my foundation-rattling shock, I was asked about doing some freelance animation. There’s a lab here on campus that I can use for such a project, and I’ve been looking for an opportunity to ply my trade. Sometimes I feel like I haven’t used Maya since it was installed on a UNIVAC. The project is a promo video for a company in Indy that makes gigantic lawnmowers. The kind of mower that causes a noticeable decrease in oxygen output from the grass it mows over. The big selling point is something about how the blades move, so in lieu of holding the camera three inches away from a six foot span of gas-powered spinning blades (ostensibly blades of death), a CGI shot will serve just as well to show the process in detail. That’s where I come in. I do hope this pans out. There has been an offer of money, but before I give a quote I need to know exactly what sort of shot will be needed. The way it looks now, there will be modeling the under side of the mower, animating the action, match-moving the model to live footage, and compositing the video- which might be done by somebody else, I’m not sure. Ye Gods it feels good to talk about this stuff again.

I’ve been meaning to blog my feelings about Revenge of the Sith for some time now. It'll be long-winded and geeky, and probably meandering, so skip this unless you really care about Star Wars. Obviously, spoilers abound, so stop reading if you haven’t seen the movie (then find the nearest available geek and explain your situation- we are available 24/7 to remedy this problem). I have a new perspective on the Jedi and the Old Republic now. I always held the belief that the Jedi that kept order before the Empire were wise and just heroes, and above all that they were independent of any governing force but virtue. This is the model set by Ben Kenobi in IV, and this paradigm endures in every other piece of supplemental material. In this movie, we see the Jedi in a different light. Their ties to the Senate are so complete that they can’t fathom why the Chancellor should ever be considered a threat until he kills four Jedi right in front of Mace Windu. Anakin enters at the Shakespearianly awkward time of seeing Master Windu about to kill the Chancellor, and suddenly everything the council has said about justice and fairness is called into question by the wrathful expression on Master Windu’s face. But why should Anakin even listen to him? The Jedi council made it abundantly clear that they didn’t like him even when he was just a grubby little kid from Tatooine. Anakin represented a break from the status quo. He wasn’t an adorable little youngling waving a lightsaber around in Yoda’s intro to laser blocking class; he was a sweatshop mechanic from the ass-end of Hutt controlled space. Anakin’s tenure as a Padawan learner the academy on Coruscant was difficult as well, even though he possessed natural ability. Obi-Wan was the only Jedi who didn’t regard him with disdainful eye-rolling, but it was several years before he saw Anakin as a friend and not an awkward inheritance from Qui-Gon. Anakin persevered out of a desire to promote justice in the galaxy. Strictly speaking, this desire is against the Jedi code. But Obi-Wan, one of two surviving Jedi when all is said and done, points out "only a Sith Lord deals in absolutes." Yoda, by contrast, persists in advising Anakin to go against his natural instincts. Anakin is constantly caught between the opposing viewpoints of those who seek to maintain or create some kind of order after their own design. The one good thing Anakin had going for him was Padme and the possibility of becoming a father. In less turbulent times, when he would have time to think rationally, Anakin may have realized that this was his way out. He could move out to a little chateau on Naboo, raise twins (surprise!), fix up a T-16 with Luke and Leia, learn to talk to his wife like a grown-up, and grow old bullshitting about podracing with the old men in the village. What would be the alternative, really? If he had allowed Master Windu to kill Palpatine, the Jedi would be pariahs. As we all know, even the most self-serving weasel can attain unparalleled popularity if he manufactures a war against beings that look different to boost his career. The Jedi were too close to the senate to see what was going on, all the while preaching a life without attachment. Alas, the Last Temptation of Anakin ends as expected. I blame the Jedi council for what happens to the galaxy. Yoda takes a different tack with Luke on Dagobah, much more straightforward than he was with Anakin. No more platitudes about avoiding the dark side- he sends Luke into the cave to face his dark side before he ever learns of his heritage. That's the Yoda I remember- not the CGI imp acting as a general in the clone wars, but the wise old master preparing a farm boy to save the universe by showing him what he will have to overcome.

There it is. Most of you shouldn't have read all of that. If you did, well, on your own head be it.

I've finally ended my self-imposed boycott of all music published by RIAA-affiliated record labels. I still don't like them as an organization that takes money from artists and files massive scattershot lawsuits, but my big reason to stop buying their music was that they wouldn't endorse a legal download alternative. That was the case two years ago when I started my self-righteous stand. Now you can't go anywhere on the internet without finding somebody who will sell you digital music- even walmart is trying some sort of download system. The classic litmus test for when a technology has caught on firmly is when the yokels get access. If wallyworld is digitally offering their brand of sanitized pop and rock music to the hilljack masses, then it appears that digital music has caught on.

My first purchase? The new System of a Down album. It rocks quite a lot. If you could imagine a huge truck full of rock with big letters on the side that spell “ROCK” speeding down the highway on fire, then you'd have a good idea of what is on this CD. The second track contains the oft-repeated lyrics “why don't presidents fight the war/ why do they always send the poor.” If there is one good thing about corporate music, it's that the desire to sell music and make money trumps the right-wing pressure to quash dissenting material.

One other thing is worth blogging: on my way back to school, I almost hit a deer on the interstate. I saw one run across the street just in front of my headlights so I slowed down, and then a second apeared on the road. It saw me coming, got scared, and ran straight across. I pulled over on to the shoulder and avoided it by probably ten feet or less. My reaction saved us both. All the deer did was panic, crap on the side of the road, and run. Yet again, thank you violent video games. The deer and I would have been in serious trouble without the reflexes I've developed during countless nights fragging zombies and terrorists.

Done.

"The next time you see the homie and his rims is spinin',
Just know my mind is workin' just like them (The rims that is)" (Jay-Z, 2003)

The time before finals week that some refer to as "dead week" is truly a magical time. Long stretches of desperate productivity punctuated by periods of sitting perfectly still to wait for my head to stop throbbing and my vision to clear. This is the time when I prove that I've retained a semester's worth of learning by going through a week that, due to sporadic nourishment and restless sleep, I will not remember when it's over. I'm living on sandwiches from the atrium, tomato soup cups, and horse-pill multi-vitamins. I'll go on record as saying that grad school is a terrible idea, and should only be attempted by people with the willfully stubborn chutzpah to ignore the good advice to stay away. Thankfully, I get that ability from both of my parents.

And yes, I cited Jay-Z according to my AP style manual. I'm only being mildly sarcastic there.

T.S. Elliot was absolutely, prophetically right when he wrote "April is the cruelest month." The weather was great a week ago, and then on Friday the temperature dropped along with every form of precipitation possible. Last night at 11:30 it was snowing as Gerry, Tom, and I worked to unload a couch and an entertainment center from a moving van. It's a bit of a long story, and I'm tired and hungry right now, but suffice it to say that you find out who your friends are right quick when you need people to help carry an overstuffed sofa down a slick, snow-covered ramp, across a wet parking lot, up four steps, through two doors, up a narrow flight of stairs, and (somehow) through an awkwardly shaped entrance to an apartment. For whatever reason, nobody wanted to help us, so the three of us worked out the problem through trial and error involving angles that no furniture should ever be in.

Operating Instructions:

1. Connect the spoon to the handle.

2. On the base of the handle, push the black power switch toward the spoon bowl to turn the power on.

3. Push the red button on the top of the handle to activate the spoon light.

This poetry adorns the transparent bag that formerly held my newest tchotchke, a light-up lightsaber spoon. Gerry and I were at walmart earlier to buy food and examine the summer movie promotion swag. Naturally, it's all Star Wars stuff, especially the cereal. Menacing portraits of characters from the third prequel mugging over bowls of milk-soaked cornflakes for the length of the aisle- it's quite something. We stopped to admire a box of crispix with a mail-away offer for an R2-D2 bowl that makes character-appropriate noises when acted upon by some outside force, such as the weight of cereal in the bowl. Gerry and I deliberated over this and determined that the cereal would indeed be a worthwhile purchase with the offer of a bowl resembling an astromech droid. How can you go wrong? A few feet from this was a box of apple jacks emblazoned with Anakin Skywalker. I'm not sure the cereal company meant for me to associate their cereal with the character responsible for the wholesale slaughter of nearly all of the Jedi in the Republic, or the personification of Campbell's archetype of evil, but the important thing is that the box contained the lightsaber spoon. I don't eat cereal, as it doesn't work to carry milk and cereal in my cupped hands as I walk to work. Gerry is more the cereal type, so we agreed that I would buy the cereal and he would eat it, but I get the spoon. For just shy of three bucks, I'd say I got a good deal. I opened the box and the prize was right there on top. We could hardly contain our enthusiasm as I struggled through the layers of plastic packaging to assemble my new utensil. I deliberately avoided pressing any buttons to save the surprise of the color of light that would soon illuminate the plastic spoon and every bit of food I will ingest for the next few weeks. I assembled the item according to the instructions above, moved the small black switch up, and pressed the power button. Gerry and I both gasped audibly as the spoon lit up blazingly red. It looked even cooler with the light out- my kitchen was illuminated by a spoon. It's worth waiting for the sun to go down to eat with a lightsaber spoon, in case any of you need a little extra incentive for Passover.

I'm in the library doing research in the journals and publications archive section right now. As I was returning what I needed, I found a collection of book-bound issues of "The Illustrated London Press." I opened up the January-March volume 1937 to peruse the old European art-deco advertising that I like so much, and I found a big article from February 6 with photos of Nazi Germany. One line from the article jumped out at me: "...the Chancellor declared that the Versailles Treaty was now at an end, and that, Germany having attained equality, there would be no more "surprises."" Hmm. Surprise! I'm always fascinated at how the world kissed Germany's collective ass when it was kind of obvious from the photos of their army marching in the street with rifles that they weren't done causing trouble. Folks were simpler back then.

So, what did everybody else do on Saturday? I worked on homework, saw Sin City, and later in the evening Gerry and I watched Rudy with one of his co-workers who may or not be my best friend in the whole world, I don't know. She left around 1:30, and Gerry and I hung around for a minute. He gave me a comic to read, and as I was leaving we both heard a strange buzzing noise. It wasn't in the kitchen, it wasn't the computer; curiouser and curiouser. The noise was louder in the hall and up the stairs, so we went to investigate. The smoke alarm was going off in number 10 upstairs. Being the noble Jedi that I am, I pounded on the door, but received no response. The next logical step (courtesy of Gerry) was to check the doorknob for heat a la the method demonstrated by Dick Van Dyke in the old filmstrip we all had to watch every time the fire marshall came to the school, or the cub scout den visited the fire station. No heat, but no answer at the door either. So, though I am loathe to use the phone except to call Gerry or a relative, I dialed 911 and tried to describe the abstract concept of theoretical fire through a locked door to the bleary-eyed third-shifter at the other end. She said that she would send someone out. I waited at the window for the truck while Gerry bravely brushed his teeth in preparation for dealing with the firemen. Dental hygiene goes a long way with our brave civil servants, after all. I waited outside in case the driver had trouble finding an apartment complex on the third busiest street in north Muncie, and my phone made a noise. It had made a little chime when I dialed 911 the first time, so I looked to see if I had missed a call. There was no evidence of this, so as near as I can tell the fire department pinged my phone to triangulate my location from the tower. In short, very cool. The truck arrived shortly, all lights and sirens like a bat out of hell. I went out to meet the firemen and to explain the situation. Gerry and I tried to reach our landlady and got her voice mail. The firemen climbed up a ladder to the third floor window and determined that the alarm was going off even though there was no smoke. The truck left, and Gerry said that I could post this from his room. He's trying to sleep right now, so if I may I'll speak on his behalf: "Loyal, get the hell out of my apartment. It's two damn thirty." Well said, fool, well said.

I've felt pretty good lately, despite a newly acquired sore throat from one of several germs that have hit half the campus recently. I was a little concerned earlier this week when I came home expecting to find a package from Amazon and all I found was a note saying the box was on the floor. I looked down, and much to my disappointment, there was no box. I didn't pay Amazon thirty bucks for a nice note of intent from UPS, so I set about searching the area for my stuff. It wasn't in the other building, and it wasn't on the other two floors, so I immediately assumed that my box had either been mistakenly picked up by another student living here, or that it had been stolen by some grubby little neighborhood coke addict. I hoped it was the former option, so I could get my stuff back without going to a pawnshop, but I also secretly hoped it would be the latter, because in my mind that scenario ends like the “stuck in the middle with you” scene in Reservoir Dogs. I got back from class later and found the box by my door with a nice note from #9 saying that she had picked it up without looking at the address. The funny thing is that the box was meticulously taped back together with scotch tape over the packing tape. Funny because the box only had to go two flights of stairs down to me, and because that means that the accidental recipient opened the box to find the new Dropkick Murphys CD and the latest book by Sarah Vowell. I'm sure that she didn't expect that, but it would be great if it was a coincidence because that would mean there was somebody really cool living here. I'd have someone to talk to without having to walk across the parking lot.

I have the CD on now, and I love it. The second track is a cover of “Fortunate Son.” It rocked on the live CD, and this studio recorded version is just awesome. Picture a skinny cracker standing in front of his computer speakers rocking air guitar and mouthing the words. It's funny. There's also a cover of a song by Motorhead. Dropkick Murphys doing Motorhead is the best combo since black and tan.

The book in the box was a surprise. It isn't actually supposed to be released until next month, or so I thought. The computer at Amazon wasn't going to ship my order until the book was released. I wanted my CD as soon as I could get it, so I set it to ship the items separately. The package shipped that day, and the invoice said that the book was included. Yadda yadda, now I have the book.

I got another CD that I ordered in the mail recently as well: Carla Bruni. I can't spell the title, and I'm looking right at the CD case. It's something foreign, probably French, and about as far removed from drunken blue-collar punk as one can get, but I like it. I heard a song from the album on WBNI (Fort Wayne public radio) while driving south of Hartford City a few weeks ago, and it really stuck with me. I couldn't write down the artist's name while driving in the dark in the middle of nowhere, so I just chanted her name like a lunatic for about five miles so that I would remember what to look up on Amazon. The CD is about to be released domestically, but the new edition will be on V2- a subsidiary of Virgin, a member of the RIAA. Luckily, the import is from some European label that the RIAA Radar site said was safe. I paid a little extra, but I can sleep soundly knowing I did the right thing.

Just a quick note to welcome Tom to the blogosphere. He brings a wealth of knowledge and raises the bar for personal hygene among the people that I link to.

I've added more links to the list on the right. It's "Drawn," a blog devoted to graphic design from all over the place. It's an RSS feed too, for those of you cool enough to care. I'm also adding Penny Arcade because I read it and enjoy it. I put boingboing up there too, since I get almost all the interesting stuff I post or forward from there.

Break is going well, as breaks go. That is to say, I haven't done anything strenuous. I've gotten some reading done, visited my alma mater, and played video games. Any of these could be worth blogging about, if I had the accumen to do so anymore. I've lost that bloggin' feeling. I don't plan to quit, but I'm not all that happy with my blog writing of late. I think I wrote better when I was miserable and unemployed a year and a half ago. I had more time to sit and think, rather than constantly running around without time to think. I am quite a bit happier now so I suppose it's a fair trade.

It's been said by someone far more altruistic than myself that we should try to leave the world a better place than we found it. This is a lovely idea, but I think my fellow students and I may have blown it this past weekend. We shot a movie in an old building full of rusty nails, splintered wood, over one thousand various athletic t-shirts, bats, beautiful antique wood panels, and water damage worse than the Lusitania. It did not have heat, running water, or electricity in the traditional sense.

I started a post about this after the first weekend of shooting, but it occurred to me that the post would contain spoilers galore, and some of my blog audience will see the movie at some point. It's a shame, too, because there were some good stories involving me in the back of a cop car and a temperamental fog machine.

This past weekend was my second weekend working on the movie. The presence of feeling in my legs was a sign that the weather was better. We worked for over twelve hours a day both days, relying on flashlights to work where the work light didn't reach. There was a funny incident on Saturday night when an actor stepped into a dark hall and two bats swooped right over his head. He wouldn't go down to the other end of the hall where his next shot was, so I took my flashlight and the fog machine to smoke the bats out. This must have worked, because we didn't have a problem with bats for the rest of the weekend.

For some reason, many of the eating establishments in Hartford City do not take any sort of magnetic card payment. The first weekend we ate at a recently opened Chinese buffet where the young woman at the register claimed that they could not accept electronic payment because it was Sunday. I'm not sure what that meant, but we figured that since they had only been open for a few days that their system wasn't perfect yet. I'm also not sure what was significant about it being Sunday, but it would be funny if the bank owner was a burn-out turned born-again fundie who refused to let his computer work on Sunday. The next weekend we went to Subway and my order and my friend's order were half done when we learned that they didn't take cards either. This is a national chain, mind you. My friend commented that he and his girlfriend had paid with a card at a Subway in the hills of Virginia just a few months prior. Fortunately, Pizza King was up on current technology circa 1995, so we enjoyed mediocre pizza and luxuriously standard indoor heating.

It was a good weekend for me.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I will not be going overseas this summer. The cost of the trip is way above what I’m capable of paying for. This presents a problem, because I need some sort of “cultural immersion” to graduate. This can be done in America, according to the vague guidelines laid out by my advisor, so I’ve been looking for somewhere to go, some place to stay, something to look at, and some way of presenting it online. I know someone who went to Southeast Asia to work at an internship for a few weeks, and this sounds appealing. If I could get a month-long internship at some game design place it would definitely help me more in the long run, and maybe even pay a little to offset the cost. This is, of course, a best-case scenario. I may end up reading a Paris travel guide and building a web page with the photos I took a few years ago when I was there with the USF art department.

I sat down here in the library with intent to blog, and now I can't think of anyting to say. Spare moments like these are few and far between. I have a few minutes before work, and I can't think of anyting on my to-do list that can be effectively accomplished in twenty minutes or less, so here I am. With nothing to talk about. Maybe something interesting will happen later, like an armed peasant revolt from south Muncie, or something.

I haven't blogged in a while because I haven't done anything blog-worthy since my last post. My lack of leisure time coupled with weather patterns rivaling the last ice age have made any real activity impossible.

I went to a concert in Indy the other night. The main act is one of Michelle's favorites, which is why I was there, but it was the band before them that really caught my attention. They're called Spookie Daly Pride, and to try to explain their music in text would not do them justice. Most bands have that one guy who looks kind of odd, like he was raised by wolves. This band was four of those odd guys. The lead singer/piano player would play the piano with his feet, pretend to fly, and every time he finished a cigarette he would place it on an amp, and the guitar player would pick it up, take a drag, and stamp it out. This happened several times, like a ritual. I bought their CD before their set was over, I was sold.

Yesterday I assisted in taking a stray cat to an animal shelter. This may seem remarkable in itself, but it was nothing compared to the interior of the shelter. Cats. Wall to wall, floor to ceiling, everywhere. The odd mix of strays reminded me of the asylum in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Some were friendly, but all of them had their own unique neuroses. One of them had a thing for climbing on backs (I have little claw marks on my shoulder from that one.) One of them was the largest cat I have ever seen from being overfed by some old lady. Seriously, this cat was immobile. It was chapter one in the lesser known of T.S. Eliot's works, "Old Possum's Book of Impractical Cats." I can laugh at it because it can't chase me.

Tomorrow I'm going to a Halo fragfest with people from my classes. It ought to be fun, if the last one was any indicator.

My apartment has power again as of last night. I've had the heater on as hot as it goes to try to bring the climate back up to room temperature; so far, so good. The apartment above mine has had the heat on full too- when I got up this morning, the kitchen floor was cold but the air around my head and up to the ceiling was noticeably warmer. The refrigerator works, the hot water heater works, the clocks are all reset, and things are getting back to normal.

Much to my own surprise, I've been productive in the past few days. I drove back to my apartment to check my mail for bills and to make sure the possum hadn't figured out how to open the window from the outside yet. So far, so good. The place was cold, but the water wasn't frozen, so things seem to be okay. As I was leaving, I did see smoke coming from Gerry's window, but it was only a little, not the sort of thing that is really worth freaking out over. :)

The day before that my brother and I helped the new pastor at the church I'm most likely to attend when I attend such things move in to her new house. My brother and I hooked up her computer and fiddled around with her TV, VCR, and DVD player with some degree of success. I assembled a couple of TV stands, which made me quite happy.

Today I did actual work. My brother and I rented a "Rug Doctor" carpet cleaner from the local grocery store in order to fill our grunt work quotient for the month by steam cleaning parts of the carpet here at home. When I was about four or five, I wanted to get one from the store because of the little cartoon Rug Doctor had arms and a face, so I thought it was a robot. It turns out that Rug Doctor is, in fact, not a robot at all. Instead, Rug Doctor is a moderately heavy red plastic shell with a water tank and a vacuum motor. The instructions are printed in a peculiar fashion on several surfaces of the machine. Ideally, this is so the operator can refer to them while standing behind the operating handle (provided that the operator is no more than 4'5'' tall). It worked well enough, and now I'm waiting for the carpet to dry so that we can put the furniture back where it belongs.

All time before this week was spent resting and recovering from the semester. The best way for me to do this is to read, watch TV, and play video games. This provides a serviceable segue into me listing the media that I've enjoyed and why, as I am prone to do now and again.

Books:

• Superman/Batman: I started this one almost as soon as I got home because I needed a break from academia. Something fun, but still well-written.
• Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes: I've put off reading this series for years, even though I've heard glowing praise for it and I like the author's other works. I've enjoyed it so far- it's very subtle in it's storytelling method, (not at all like my normal comic choices) and almost perfectly diametrically opposed to the aforementioned Superman/Batman book.
  

yet to read:

• Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency: I got this one for my brother for Christmas. He thanked me, and then told me for the umpteenth time that I need to read it. I'll see how far I can get before I return to school.
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainance: I've found that it helps me to read at least one book that isn't required reading every semester, usually a little bit at a time in bed at night.
• Eats Shoots and Leaves: Because punctuation can be fun too.

Games:

• Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater: Periodically, I play a game that reminds me why I love new media so much. This game serves as a rebuttal to the crotchety old Philistines who see video games as digital playthings with no real value. The game takes place in a jungle in western Russia in 1964, where several people are vieing for power over things that could mean the difference between a prolonged cold-war and widespread nuclear war. A scientist trying to defect to America with plans for a nuclear capable tank, a huge unclaimed war chest pooled from the resources of several nations left over from World War II, a radical faction within Kruschev's army looking to seize power, and several other characters all play significant roles in the story. There really isn't a way to accurately describe the game, or to relate the impact the story had on me. The whole time I was playing, I kept trying to think of how to use this as an example in classroom discussions next semester. It's a shame that the nature of the game makes the story inaccessible to so many people, as it must be played in order to be understood. As the title suggests, the main character does in fact have to eat snakes. This means spotting them in the jungle, killing or trapping them, and eating them in order to keep the character's stamina up. Not just snakes, though: rats, birds, stolen Soviet rations, and eventually packs of ramen noodles found in a base supply closet are all required for survival. When the character is injured, he must tend to his wounds with medical supplies. For a bullet wound, the bullet must be removed with a knife, then the wound is treated with disinfectant and two different kinds of bandages. The level of detail is spectacular, and it kills me that I don't have anyone at school to discuss this with.

I head back to school this week. My classes are all in order now, and my schedule looks great. I have evening classes Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and a project that I can schedule whenever I want. This will make my work schedule so much easier to figure out- no more six-hour Fridays.

There's a new link in my list over yonder, a site my brother pointed me to. It's cartoons based on spam headlines. Self-published original content via RSS is the way of the future, according to my HCI final paper. That means it's true.

I'm done. My last final was yesterday and it probably went well. I felt like I knew what I was talking about. There was one question that asked if video games were character driven or plot driven. I said character driven because the player experiences the game through the avatar and any emotional impact comes from the character, but in retrospect I could say that games are plot driven because the story and the environment define the character's actions and are shaped to reach a specific end and there isn't anything that the player can do to change the conclusion. Yup. This is like undergrad in that I keep thinking "you're letting me major in this?"

Here are some highlights from the semester:

• Arriving for the first day of grad orientation and finding out that I get a kickass graphics computer with a monitor as big as all outdoors.
• Finding out that my friend and former high school speech duo partner is enrolled in grad school here as well.
• Being pounced upon by Michelle while waiting in the buffet line and learning that I would be seeing her in every class, thus beginning the Meyers-Briggs mayhem of my existence here.
• Living next to Gerry, which means that I always have someone to read comics with, watch movies with, and hold my spare key so that I can get back into my apartment when I'm locked out in a t-shirt and pajama pants a half hour before I have to be ready to go to the Wynton Marsalis concert. Not my proudest moment.
• HCI class, where I had the distinct pleasure of being among a disparate group of geniuses for a few hours each week, often followed by a post-class trip to Scotty's.
• The narrative theory class where we did an ideological criticism of GTA: Vice City, and I got to play as the whole class watched. As I meandered around the game, I asked how antisocial I should be, and Michelle called across the room for me to "punch a hooker!" Grad level class. The matriarchal amazon woman in the class who is a good deal older than I was horrified that it was possible to do such things in a game. The look of horror on her face when she asked me if I enjoyed the game was priceless.
• The Halo 2 party.
  

For now I need a rest. I can't think of anything more to say, and I have a stack of good books from my friends to read.