Geek vs Life

What you do if you had one to seven friends over for dinner? What would you do after dinner and the resulting clean up? Would you go out to the bars? Would you put on a movie? Would all disperse like a riot, when confronted with tear gas? Could I offer a suggestion? How about a board game? How about a game called “Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot?”

Killer Bunnies is a strategic card game, when a player tries to get the Magic Carrot. This game should not be confused with a card collecting game ala “Magic: The Gathering” or its ilk. (If one has played a card collecting game, they will be familiar with the ideas of rounds, turns, and upkeep.) One starter box is all you will ever need to play the game. (You can get booster boxes, but more on that later.)

Summer is at its pinnacle; there are BBQ’s, booty shakin’ grind fests, and quiet parties wrestling with the dawn. What do they all have in common? They need music! Well this is a play list for these activities. You can find most of this music in legal avenues, like Emusic or iTunes.

The first thing in creating a play list is to know what kind of party it is. BBQ’s need louder music, with lots of different genres, and accessibility. It also needs to be fun. Rump shakin’ parties are easy. They just need a good beat. The quiet conversational party with occasional make outs in the background, need melodious music, which doesn’t overtake the party, but isn’t forgettable during the conversational lulls. (This should be every seven minutes or so.)

A challenge to my fellow geeks, can you name ALL the video games in the video bellow? This might require some research…

I’ve been a bus rider even since I moved to the fair city of Seattle slightly over three years ago. Some people complain about the system quite a bit, but I disagree, I usually can find my way to and back from nearly anywhere in the city. Most of the time with only one transfer. The fact that the buses always seem to be running late on the other hand, well, that’s quite an annoyance.

The Metro Website, http://transit.metrokc.gov/, provides adaquate information on how to get around quite well. It has been a standard in my favorites pretty much since I moved here

Until now.

My friend S was telling me about anohter site that she uses, I kind of scoffed at her. Google Transit… really? My first impression reflected the fact that Google already has its hands in providing me a all my search results, it is the only site I use when hunting images an it has one of the most user friendly interfaces ever with Google Earth. But what does the Californian company know about my city? Plenty apparently.

You know, I’m writing this as I’m watching Dateline NBC and their interview with JK Rowling (which is the same interview that was played on the Today show on Thursday and Friday). And I’m getting a crack out of it.

You see, I always have closed captioning turned on on my TV (mainly for when I’m watching music videos, so I get the lyrics). Now, as I type this (7:48 PST), the error has been fixed, but for the entire first part of the interview, whenever the word “book” was said, the closed captions read “boob.”

Needless to say, I’ve been completely amused, thanks to NBC, and I wanted to share my amusement with the rest of the world.

Here’s a list of this week’s Anime, Manga, and related releases, plus my recommendation for the week:

Note: DVDs marked with (D) means it’s dubbed (or English) only. DVDs marked with (S) means it’s subtitled only. DVDs unmarked have both audio tracks.

Anime (Released July 31)-

Beet the Vandel Buster DVD 2
Bleach DVD 5
El Hazard OAV Series DVD 2
Hand Maid May Box Set DVD + Extras CD-ROM (Limited)
Hikaru no Go DVD 9
Mushishi DVD 1 (also available with Artbox)
Naruto DVD 14 (D)
Ranma 1/2: Season 2 DVD Box Set: Anything Goes Martial Arts
The Third: The Girl With the Blue Eye DVD 1: Encounter

Manga (listed with release date)-

“The Stars My Destination” is a brilliant novel. It is not a story of a brilliant man. The genre is science fiction. It was written in the Nineteen Fifties by a man named Alfred Bester. It may also be one of the influential science fiction novel you haven’t heard of. It is also the most prescient.

This is a revenger story.  A man named Gully Foyle has been left for dead in deep space on a decimated ship, during war time between the planets. A ship comes by and ignores his flares. A plot spoiler: Mr. Foyle survives the deep space. He swears murderous revenge on the cruiser.  Some things you should know about Gulliver Foyle is of that he is of a “lower class.” He doesn’t have any special skills. He doesn’t have any education, in fact he  speaks in a gutteral patois. He is also very primal, and passionate in his emotions.

Hey Stop Motion Verbosity has a cool picture up.

It shows the mastermind wearing a T-shirt that exclaims “Han Shot First!” Lucas has denied Han Solo shot the bounty hunter, Guido, first for a number of years. In fact, he re-jiggered the special edition of Star Wars to show Solo defending himself, instead of being a cold blooded murderer.

I don’t know if Lucas is now agreeing with his fans, someone (humorously) gave him the shirt as a gift, or if he is just being sarcastic. It is pretty trippy (some may print ironic, but then they would then be misusing the word.) with him wearing the shirt, and speaking with Harrison Ford, whom played Han Solo.

The picture is from the set of Indiana Jones IV.

You can find the original image here.

A few months ago the latest iteration of the Pokemon hit stores for the Nintendo DS. It has two versions: Diamond and Pearl. For those that have missed the general Pokemon plot, it goes something like this: “Gotta catch them all!” The anthemic slogan from the show is the pretty much the plot of the game. Yes, there is some small details that go into the mantra of a game. For example, you have to collect badges to move into the next area of the game. You have a rival, who is try to do the capturing first and you must beat him to the capture. There is a slight plot of other trainers wanting to do nefarious things with their captured pokemon. And that’s about it.

Dear Homer, Marge, Maggie, Lisa, and Bart Simpson,

I hope I am not alone in wishing that this whole Simpsons Movie Mania would end? Out of my deep love for the you and all that you have done, I would like to see the movie come quietly and with the dignity that it entirely deserves.

But dang Holmes, you totally sold out.

The Burger King commercials make me want to vomit. The fact that 7-11 has re-done a bunch of their stores into Quick-E-Marts sickens me.

I was watching television at my friend’s house the other day, a rare occasion for me, and EVERY OTHER COMMERCIAL was a Simpsons commercial.

I mean, come on people. Why? You’re the SIMPSONS for crying out loud! You’re the longest running cartoon in the history of mankind. You’re a cultural icon. YOU EXISTED BEFORE THE WORLD WIDE WEB.

Ok, so I’m a little afraid. My friend Kristen posted this to her bulletin on Myspace, and well, it darn well deserves to be shown worldwide do to it’s total AWESOMENESS.

It’s an entire Filipino prison population re-enacting Michael Jackson’s Thriller. (There’s even the, er…, “girl” from the video. Eww.)

A few weeks ago at E3, Sony announced that it was going to drop the price of its PS3 by $100. In response to the news, Microsoft said that it thought that the price of the Xbox 360 was “competitive.” That was then.

Today at Comic-Con, Microsoft decided that a price drop would be a good idea, just not on the system. The $20 price drop will be on the 360 HD-DVD drive, bringing the price down to $179. Along with the price cut, customers will be allowed to chose 5 free movies from a pre-selected list of 15, which they can then receive by the mail. Here is the list of the selected movies: Apollo 13, Blazing Saddles, Casablanca, Chronicles of Riddick, Constantine, Dukes of Hazzard, Four Brothers, Tomb Raider, Perfect Storm, Rundown, Seabiscuit, Sky Captain & the World of Tomorrow, U2: Rattle & Hum, U-571 and We Were Soldiers.

Again from the Video Game Voters Network, here is their list of top ten gamer facts. Pretty impressive figures.

1. US computer and video game software sales grew six percent in 2006 to $7.4 billion – almost tripling industry software sales since 1996.

2. Sixty-seven percent of American heads of households play computer and video games.

3. The average game player is 33 years old and has been playing games for 12 years.

4. The average age of the most frequent game buyer is 38 years old. In 2007, 92 percent of computer game buyers and 80 percent of console game buyers were over the age of 18.

5. Eighty-five percent of all games sold in 2006 were rated “E” for Everyone, “T” for Teen, or “E10+” for Everyone 10+. For more information on ratings, please see www.esrb.org.

There is a battle going on right now on all levels of government, federal, state and local on what to do about video games. The Video Game Voters Network is one if not the largest association fighting to safeguard gamer rights in the nation. they have recently released a movie spoof-like trailer to inform people about the battle happening behind closed door. For some reason I am expecting it to hit the big screens by summer of 2008.