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This page is just so much damned fun. If you've never checked it out before, give it a crack... find your house. It's really cool.

Planet of the Apes
I saw POTA with Mike and Chad last night at the Wynnsong and I was pleased. I definately feel it was worth the money to go check it out, and I think it's a worthy remake of the original. The costuming and makeup was outstanding, and Mark Wahlberg did a great job, as did almost every actor/actress in the film. Estella Warren was delicious. It was just plain entertaining and fun. I'm glad I saw it.


Yummmm... Estella Warren....

I saw Rush Hour 2 with Jackie Wilke about six days ago. I thought it was pretty good... the fight scenes were well done, and it was funny (particularly the outtakes at the end!), but I just didn't feel it was anything special or amazing. It was worth the money, certainly, but nothing amazing, jaw-dropping, new, or inventive. However, for what the goal was (a combination action/comedy), it got the job done. Worth the $7.25, but easier to swallow if you just check out a matinee instead.

Oh yeah, if you do plan on seeing this, for the love of all that is holy, go to the freaking Wynnsong. I saw it at the Carmike and it was wretched. Honestly, the two-channel stereo sound at Carmike was just not acceptable for an action movie like this... you gotta head over to Wynnsong and take this in on a big-ass screen with DTS digital surround sound. There is no comparison. None. One would think that Carmike would've had this movie in one of their theatres equipped with DTS digital surround, but it's in a tiny one with crap Stereo.

John Stevens = Big Faggot

As of this moment I have not had one overnight this entire summer.

Some of you readers may already know the story, but for those of you who do not I will explain.

It was a saturday night I had a few people over to my house and we heard the Breeanna Stevens was having people over, so we said what the hell and went. Little did we know the night we get very interesting. You see we thought that Bree's parents were home, however they were not. And Bree overeacted thinking that she had too many people over and decided that we ( Me, Carl Protsch, Ben Johnson, Barb King, Nick Basile, Chad Tidemann, Rob Bruggeman and Zakk Brewer) were the root of this problem. So Bree (having no balls) sent her sister out to the back porch where we were hurtlessly listeing to Nick's Mr Lake impression, to kick us out of the party. So we were shocked and slightly pissed, but we got up and left with a brand new soccar ball. Then we started to plan....

PLAN
I went over to chads with ben to spend the night ( my last one ever) and nick went to zakks and carl and rob went home. Then we all got on AIM and started to plan. Chad had approx. 200 rolls of tp and Zakk had 100 so we planned to use it all. Carl said that he would pick us up at around 2:00 am.

Action
We were all ready at chads house then Ben Johnson fell asleep. Becuase we were already worried that carls car wouldn't have enough room, so Chad and I never woke him up ( auctually turned out to be for the better for his sake). Then Nick knocked on our window with his chimpanzee hands and we were off with 300 rolls of Toilet Paper in Carls Car. We parked down about two blocks and walked up with the tp in garbage bags. Zakk did not want to through the paper so he became the watchman as Me, Carl, Nick, Chad, and Rob went to work. By the time we were finished it was approaching 4:00 am and we needed to get going.

The Next Day
The Stevens opened thier door on a glorious Sunday morning in a great mood only to find our little suprise, the screams could be heard throughout the entire housing community ( okay so I really don't know what happened when they opened the door, but this is my story isn't it!) Chad and I awoke to a phone call from Carl to notify us that he had bull shitted his way out of it, and not to tell. But I will not go into detail about that senstive subject. We eventually ended up picking up tp for 8 hours and hearing John Stevens bitch at us, like we had violated his trust and his daughter. The truth is the guy was a huge ass about the whole thing. First of all I know that if I got tped regardless of many rolls it was my dad wouldn't call around and try to get someone there to clean it up. He would simply say, " Well they are YOUR friends, so it is YOUR mess" THings got worse when we were cleaning and Eliot Protsch got back from a hunting trip only to hear of this. When he showed up he pulled carl to the side and told him, "You are In the Worst Trouble of Your Life!". He then lectured Zakk, Nick, and Rob, " Fuck Guys didn't you learn your lesson from the last time when you tped horse girl ( Melissa)." Over all I am not sure that the experince was worth it. I really hate John Stevens!

My dad = king old saggy balls.

And maybe you should know the whole story before commenting, Swifty!

There wasn't ever a law passed, Swifty. It was just that after the Columbine incident, Congress and the White House demanded that the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) start enforcing the rules they already had on the books. It had been a rule for years that R was only for those 17 and older, unless accompanied by a person above age 17... but sometimes it wasn't enforced. Basically, it's enforced more now, but it's still not a law. Even after the Columbine incident, I still wasn't ID'ed. I bet you could get in Swift. Or... perhaps I'll become everyone's best friend tomorrow. Heh heh heh.

Blizzard Entertainment refuses to set deadlines. They release games "when it's done". That's fine. Sega took out ads in game magazines as early as the June issue of EGM and their webpage listed 8/1/01 as the release date as far back as E3 (mid-May). That's a public deadline, which was already upsetting to me to begin with. I felt that August was late and it sucked, but I was going to deal with it. Now as it stands, we're going to get this game one week before school starts. That's two weeks after a public deadline and is unacceptable. Imagine what would've happened if Tim Burton announced two days before Planet of the Apes was to be released that they were going to push it back one week. Then on the day before the new date, he pushed it back again. People would've been outraged (and rightly so, considering POTA advertised that specific date for months), and I feel this is the same situation here. If you announce a date, keep it.

World Series Baseball 2K2 Releases Next Week

Good God. This is getting ridiculous. Seriously. It was bad enough to have to wait all the way until August to get our hands on this game... now we have to wait a week before school starts? Baseball is the game of summer! By the time it's finally out, we'll get our hands on Madden 2002 and NFL 2K2, and who'll care about baseball then?

The article says that the rosters might be updated with all the trades from the trade deadline. If that is done, then maybe the latest delay is acceptable. If the rosters are still old, Sega, you'll be proving again why the Dreamcast went down the tubes. Gamers do not like to be screwed over... especially not twice. There is not one acceptable reason for this game to be THIS late except for updating rosters.

King Of Bad Away Messages

I hereby dub Warren Suess the King of Bad Away Messages. How many "your mom" away messages does the world need anyway?

* In case you can't tell, I'm just joking here. I don't mean any seriously insult by this, just poking fun.

Metal Gear Solid 2

Wow. This game kicks ass. After watching the 9 minute E3 trailer, I knew I had to play this game. Mike, Swifty, Chad, and I headed over to Blockbuster on Saturday and rented Zone of the Enders, just because it has the MGS2 demo disc included. Needless to say, I still haven't touched Zone of the Enders (which is supposed to be pretty cool in itself), and have played this damn demo over and over and over. It lasts about an hour the first time you play it (watching all the cinematics and listening to all the dialog), but you can easily rush through it in less than 15 minutes if you try to beat it as fast as you can.

This game is so cool, Swifty just laughed like a giddy little girl the whole time at how incredibly good it was. (Or wait... doesn't he laugh like that all the time?) The graphics are nothing short of amazing. The rain effects are without question the most realistic ever seen in a video game, and that's only for a part of the game that lasts a mere 5 to 10 minutes! When you switch to Snake's first person view, there are actual raindrop effects like when rain hits a camera lens. Awesome. There are points when the ship rocks and you can see walls of water falling off of the higher decks down below and splashing. In MGS2 you can now actually shoot in First Person View Mode. That makes a lot more sense. Sniping with your tranquilizer dart-armed Beretta 92F is loads of fun... depending on where you the hit the enemy affects how long it takes the medicine to take effect. A shot in the head drops 'em like a sack of potatoes into a deep sleep, but shoot them in the foot and you better hope they fall asleep before radioing their comrades. Of course, you can always just shoot the radio! Or you can throw a chaff grenade, which disrupts the radio communications. Of course, you can still break their necks. Just sneak up behind the baddy, flip 'em over, wait for 'em to get up and then go to work. Or you can take guards hostage and move through areas with 3-5 guards in them without much problem... they don't want to shoot their comrade!

More fun still is the fact that once you empty a clip on your gun, you get an empty clip in your inventory, which you can throw to distract guards. Nothing is more satisfying then tossing an empty clip and watching three guards wander toward it, then putting them all to sleep. Good stuff.

When you are shot, your health will slowly detoriate and you will leave a trail of blood (!) on the floor. That's bad, as the guards will follow it, and then shoot your ass again. That's where bandages come in, these wonderful things stop the bleeding and allow you to continue some silent ass kicking. Oh yes, and the guards that you kill don't just fade away after they die. Oh no. Their dead carcass stays right where you leave it, and if another guard finds it, you can bet they are gonna be mad (not to mention tipped off that someone else is around). But luckily you can drag the dead bodies wherever you want. If you're still outside, you can drag them and throw them off the side of the ship (or do it to drugged guards for an easy kill). If you're inside, you can hide them in a dark corner or perhaps inside a locker!

Which brings me to another point. If you want to run and hide, you can hide in lockers just like in the original. One thing that didn't happen in the original was getting the guards to ogle some fine posters on the inside of lockers! Case-in-point: open up one of the lockers with a hot girl poster on the inside, and hide in the locker opposite it. The guards will drop their weapons and take a fine look at the poster, which is the perfect chance to unload Snake's martial arts combo, which has been refined since MGS. Now it's two punches followed by a totally bad-ass roundhouse jump kick. After dropping both of 'em to the ground, put a tranq in each of them and move on.

But wait, there's more. Almost anything can be shot and destroyed in MGS2. if you need to hide, you can shoot out a couple of lights near a corner and turn it into a dark corner perfect for hiding. Or you can shoot fire extinquishers to distract guards, which makes them easy fodder to shoot from behind. Or you can shoot steam pipes. Or you can shoot bags of flour that get in the guard's eyes! There's one point where you can find the lounge on the ship which includes a full service bar, which would include, obviously, a bucket of ice. Shooting the bucket of ice sends ice all over the counter. Now here's the incredible part: the ice actually melts. Even more realistically, not only does the ice melt, but a bunch of three cubes close together melt slower than a single cube by itself. The amount of detail in MGS2 is absolutely mind-blowing.

I highly suggest you go to Blockbuster and rent Zone of the Enders to get your hands on this glorious demo. It is worth the $5.99 easily. Hell, maybe you could actually play Z.O.E.... it's supposed to be cool too!

Mmm. Sour Punch Cherry Candy Straws are sooo good. They're even better when they are free.

You know what game magazine really sucked? Gamepro.

d00d god totally sux0rz

Christianity

Well, lately I have been graced with the occasional Christianity vs. Atheism theories, and lots of personal experiences from both of the extremes plus the median on their ways of Christian life. With those being put upon me, I have taken a little time to think deeply about where I am in the whole mess. Personally, I consider myself a Christian, I got to church occasionally and sometimes pray and celebrate all the Christian holidays. But I feel that I'm doing it just because I have been fed the theory that Church + God + Common Christian Practices = a good life with maybe heaven at the end of the tunnel. Even though I am a self proclaimed Christian, I feel that religions are merely cosmetic. Because when I hear about Born-Again-Christians, and people that have found the light and constantly rely and trust that God will do what's right for you, I understand what they mean, but I don't fully believe the fact. I believe that you reap what you sow, and therefore you make your own future. For example: If God gave me the talent of making bread and intended for me to use my talent, but instead I spent my days playing video games because that's what I wanted to do, I would have never used my God given talent because I chose and I choose my own destiny. If you are dead serious about being a "freak" about christianity (for lack of a better title), all the power to you, go on with your strong beliefs and use them to the fullest. I don't have a problem with you and I have respect for your depth in Christianity, but I don't understand how you can rely your lifestyle to obey a belief that no one knows the truth about. I don't know if that makes me an atheist or what. I would like to believe full-heartedly that I am a true christian through and through, but when I hear of the extreme cases of people loving God with all their heart, and how they thank him for everything, I say to myself 'I thank myself for what I have done for ME, and God? Why did you have to do that shitty shit to me the other day? I mean, that really sucked" If you catch my drift, If I were to think in that perspective I would be blaming God for the unfortunate crap that happens to me, and since a good Christian boy wouldn't do that, I would much rather blame myself or the forces of nature for it. So in that circumstance I would be thinking more in the mindset that I am responsible for myself, not God. One thing I claim to believe in is Heaven. Maybe just because it sounds like a better deal than rotting in a casket for eternity, but if you think about it, heaven could have just been a made up theory just to scare the masses into living into a more conformed and righteous lives that actually caught on over time. No one has been to heaven and told me if it is really there or if it isn't, so why should I buy into the belief? Is it because an old book written by God knows who (no pun intended) tells me to? In the end I still consider myself a Christian even though I have some really big voids to fill and questions to answer. Even though I would like to live a christian life (when I say live I mean eat, breathe, sleep the belief), I still can't bring myself to believe everything whole-heartedly.

But now I will leave you with a little something that the great comedian, George Carlin said on Politically Incorrect (My absolute favorite show), "Hey, I coulda prayed to Joe Pesci and got the same results".

Signed - Christian Poser,
Nick