Did I mention I’m part of an anime podcast?

Because I am.

I know I said so three years ago, but this is my feeble defence against charges of laziness during my blogging hiatus.

See, I was doing other stuff: I tweeted! I edited! I edited audio! I even blogged! I did not just play video games until I put my health at risk!

Also I did kickboxing and took up indoor rock climbing and whatnot. But yeah,  I did podcasting also. Check it out.

He’s Back

Yeah, I’m back. I actually haven’t spent the last 6 months playing Skyrim. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve spent a lot of time playing that damn game – yesterday I was icing my thumb thanks to mild tendinitis from playing for eight hours straight – but my disappearance is due just as much to technical problems I’ve been having with the blog. I kept saying I’d figure it out over the weekend, then before I knew it several months’ worth of weekends passed.

This is really too bad as I’ve had all kinds of hot takes I’ve been unable to share. Remember Wonder Woman? Remember Black Panther? I’ve written paragraphs on both on other places online but I wasn’t able to put them up here. Ah well.

Anyway, it’s just as well since I’ve been wanting to revamp the blog once again. I’ll keep tweaking it, but for now, thanks for coming back. I promise I’ll be bloviating again before you know it.

After the war

I saw that Force Awakens movie a while ago.  I don’t know if anyone has made this observation yet, but I thought Kylo Ren was basically the personification of the whole movie: he’s a reiteration of an original product that’s neurotically obsessed with whether he’s as good as the example he’s copied from.

He’s good enough, which is kind of my feeling on the movie as a whole. I thought it was decently entertaining, though it’s kind of interesting to see the Marvel blockbuster formula being used for something other than superheroes.

See you later, boy

This weekend I realized I’m too old to play Jet Set Radio. I thought it was fun when I had the Xbox version quite a number of years ago but I never finished it before I sold my 360.

That’s why I snapped up this game when it arrived on PS+, but I’d forgotten how much reflexes count in this game. I did the tutorial and was fumbling like a jackass trying to make my cool sk8er boi do his sick tricks. Finally I gave up and uninstalled the game. I think I could have gotten my old skills back but I don’t have the time to be practising and I don’t really want to finish the game that badly. Ah well.

By the way, this is the trailer for the HD re-release in 2012, not the original trailer from back when.

Karma chameleon

I logged on to the Dragon’s Dogma website for the first time since August. Apparently one of my characters essentially won a beauty contest and was featured on the game newsletter by Capcom. On the one hand, yay me. On the other hand, that particular look is being copied by other players, judging from the screenshots being submitted.

What the hell, people? Get your own look. It took me hours to coordinate that outfit, not to mention the time I spent picking the hairstyle and fine tuning the bone structure and body type for that character. And I don’t want to think of how many goblins and bandits I had to kill for that cape.

Anyway, I’m thinking of playing this game for a third time and getting all the trophies. There are only three left and they don’t look that hard. One quick run should do it.

Morituri te salutant

I bought Dark Souls 2 over the weekend, and I’ve been playing it every day since. It’s quite fun.

Among many in the video game community, the Souls games are held up as the pinnacle of difficulty, with a typical playthrough resulting in at least hundreds of deaths for the player. I don’t really see it, though. My failures are the result of my miscalculations and are essentially just part of the learning process for a new player.

I do want to share my favourite story so far, which is about the first time my game got invaded. Other players may enter your game to help or hinder you, as they wish, and one such person did so to me. I was just minding my own business when someone glowing red showed up in my game. I bowed to him, since it seemed the polite thing to do, then he bowed back, then I stepped forward to get a closer look at him and he shot me in the chest with a crossbow. I didn’t know we were supposed to be fighting. He was classy about it and messaged me saying "Valar morghulis", so of course I replied back "Valar dohaeris" since no one is outdorking me.

Anyway, I also discovered this list of player names banned from Dark Souls 2. Players may choose the names of their characters, and if you’re familiar with certain parts of the Internet then you’ve already guessed that most of the banned names involve sex acts or are various synonyms for genitals. It’s kind of awe-inspiring that so much human creativity is expended on slipping obscenities into a video game.

Cool summer

The weather this summer has been unseasonably cool in Hogtown, much like there hasn’t been anything that hot in this season of anime. And yeah, I’ve been watching Aldnoah Zero every Saturday morning, but normally I’d have more than one series occupying my viewing.

My malaise has been somewhat allayed, though, since I just saw that a new episode of Monogatari has come out. I think I’ll let the episodes pile up a bit before plowing through them, but I’d forgotten how much I liked this show. Yay for capitalism’s demand for constant production.

Breaking news

There is a karaoke music video of the song Take My Breath Away from the movie Top Gun.

Next on Youtube’s recommendation is the song Danger Zone, also from the same movie. Then Another Day in Paradise by Phil Collins. If anyone wants me, I’ll be time travelling to the 80s for the next few hours.

Back to cat videos

More thoughts on His Girl Friday. The dialogue zipped and zinged, fast and furious. It was obviously adapted from a play. I forgot how paranoid the middle and upper classes were about a Bolshevik/working class uprising in the early part of the 20th century. I do recall Hitler was trying to get the Brits to join him for a crusade against the reds before things fell out the way they did. Also, who were those speakers in the park mentioned as driving Williams insane? It sounds like they were union organizers or some kind of socialist agitators but would like to know more.

And the guy on death row killed a coloured policeman but no one seems to feel bad about it. It’s all about poor pathetic Williams who wouldn’t hurt a fly (but apparently he would kill a black guy).

Anyway, I just had my Internet finally hooked up last night. During my hiatus, when not checking email on my phone like some starving Eritrean I’d been watching highfalutin’ movies and TV shows I’d been planning to get to like His Girl Friday, Another Earth,and The Borgias. I have weeks of brain rotting to catch up on so I may need to take a sick day to watch all those Youtube videos I missed.