We’ll release more info soon.

1)  Purchasing the Ninja DLC for Dead Rising 2 allows for the possibility of redeadening zombies with glee as Dr. McNinja… though you’ll have to find the lab coat and shiny shoes yourself.

Dr. McNinja Rendering Your Argument Invalid

2)  Seeing as how I’m just about to finish the Brian Hebert/Kevin J. Anderson contributions to the Dune universe (which may be considered the analog equivalent to DLC, though actually WORTH the purchase price), here’s the most apt metaphor EVER between the disparate worlds of Arrakis and Catan.

...And if you get the "Cities and Knights" expansion, wood => paper => aqueduct => no longer having to trade with your jackass opponents => WIN.

It’s a celebration, bitches.  Enjoy yourself.

And honestly, who am I to argue with the universe.

UPDATE: OCT 21st, 12:06 AM (Hawaiian Time): Have decided to adopt a Dragnet format for what I’m pretty sure will be optimal hilarity.  Discovered an envelope containing New Vegas in my mailbox upon returning home from work.  Am not necessarily too tired to play, but attempting to do so would LITERALLY ENSURE I am still awake and playing when it’s time to go to work tomorrow.  History indicates this would be a negative development.  May try waking up a touch early tomorrow to get some time in before the hard deadline of having to go to work.  Also received Bully: Scholarship Edition for the 360, but this game will (naturally) be given a lower precedence.  Mixed a poor man’s sangria, got in two episodes of season 10 of Stargate: SG-1 and got my happy ass to bed, visions of VATS headshots dancing in my head.

OCT 21st, 11:15 AM: Managed to create my usual trifecta of characters for any alignment-based game: the Good-even-if-it-hurts jack-of-all-trades Guy (so, myself); the steals-and-seduces-her-way-into-riches-but-uses-good-works-to-throw-people-off-her-game Neutral Chick (so, Faye Valentine from Cowboy Bebop), and the kill-everyone-in-sight-ghoul/vampire-melee Evil Bastard.  I’m all about alts.  So far, like the little changes from the first game, particularly stuff like grouping weapons by ammo type and the Wild Wilderness perk, which turns regular wasteland encounters into bizarre and silly encounters… which makes for a nice change of scenery if you’ve played the first game way too much as it is.  And yeah, the American Southwest postapocalyptic wasteland looks pretty much like the American Capitol Area postapocalyptic wasteland, just with different landmarks… though there are a few little localization touches applied over top of models from the first game to make it southwest-y, and that’s good enough for me.  However, have yet to engage in combat with anything, as I’ve been too busy looting the shit out of the starting area… semper paratus, bitches.  I’ll see if I risk playing some more when I get home tonight.

OCT 22, 3:44 AM:  Yep, no sleep for me tonight, I see.  Neutral Chick discovered the remains of what I am certain was Indiana Jones in a refrigerator in the middle of damn nowhere; stole his hat, a “Suave Gambler’s Fedora” which conveyed nothing better than the [PER +1] she was already getting from her Pre-War Hat.  Good reference, but would have preferred a crystal skull instead.  Good guy helped the village of Goodsprings fend off an attack from a gang of escaped convicts looking to murderize one of their defected members; got shit for a reward, to include post-battle corpse looting, so a bit of a fail there, but his reputation with the village went from “neutral” to “liked”, so I’m sure Good Guy felt warm and fuzzy on the inside.  Downside: the Powder Gang now considers him “shunned”, so… what, he’s not invited to their birthday parties now?  Whatever, Guy stole a Powder Gang uniform off their boss, so he’ll just change clothes and get into character if they try to waylay him down the line.  …And Evil Bastard MAY have murdered the entire population of Goodsprings in their sleep, I don’t know.  Only (yes, this is her name) Sunny Smiles’ dog put up a fight, but then Evil uppercutted it right in the face.  At which point, yes, it learned to play dead.  (boo, hiss) (well, Evil Bastard doesn’t have the speech skill for a better one-liner.  He put those points into USEFUL things, like Maiming and Killery) (which should be, but are not, skills in this game)  Dashed off a pint of Crown Royal (not to be confused with Royal Crown, which does the OPPOSITE of put you to sleep) and headed to bed.  I’m sure I’ll have another update when I finally put the controller down around 6AM tomorrow.  *heavy sigh*

Demon’s Souls is a game that will make you into a man. A scrawny fourteen-year-old, after two hours with this game, will be grooming his muttonchops and ready to ship off on the next boat to fight the Kaiser. If you are already a man, it will make you into some sort of bizarre double-man. What’s that you say? You’re a woman? You don’t want to be a man? Too bad. Too bad. That’s the Demon’s Souls way.

You’ve probably heard that Demon’s Souls is hard. Pshh. Lots of games are hard. Some are even harder than this one. The difficulty is not the point. What sets Demon’s Souls apart is the way that it doesn’t just kill you, but also stomps on your genitals when you’re down. And it will make you realize that that’s what you needed all along.

It’s a lot like life. Sometimes in life you win, and sometimes the giant armored skeleton stabs your face off because the flying mantis monster you didn’t even see shot you in the back with a spike at just the wrong time. And when that happens in life, do you respawn at the same spot and carry on like nothing happened? NO, asshole. You go back to the beginning of the level, leaving all your hard-earned souls out there on the pavement, and you fight your way back. And you learn a lesson from the whole thing, because you should have been wearing your Thief’s Ring, now shouldn’t you? That’s life.

The trend in hard games these days is to unlock “Easy” mode for you once you’ve died enough times. Do you think Demon’s Souls does that? Do you think Demon’s Souls is so much as aware of the concept of “Easy” mode? NO IT IS NOT. If Demon’s Souls even knew we were talking about “Easy” mode, it would come over here and kick the shit out of all of us. And we would deserve it.

I’ll tell you what happens in Demon’s Souls when you die. You come back as a ghost with your health capped at half. And when you keep on dying, the alignment of the world turns black and the enemies get harder. That’s right, when you fail in this game, it gets harder. Why? Because fuck you is why.

Have I told you about the online elements? At any time when you’re in Body form, another player from anywhere else in the world can invade your game and murder you to regain his own body, or just to keep you on your toes. This happens when you’re in the middle of fighting armies of unthinkable monsters that are probably already three-quarters of the way towards killing you. And no, you cannot opt out of this feature! This is what you signed up for when you agreed to be a man.

When this happened to me — when a guy strolled into my game like it was Taco Bell and exploded my torso, costing me my body and all my progress in the level — was I mad? No, because I was too busy being in awe at how fucking hardcore the experience was.

Now, don’t let this dissuade you. Demon’s Souls is a pitiless master, but let it never be said that it is not fair. The game rewards handsomely those who stand up to it, and the greater the challenge, the greater the glory.

What the hell are you waiting for?

Consider the following: with the iTunes model, you are renting access to one particular movie or episode of something. If that rental turns out to be horrible, you can’t exchange it for something else; you’re now invested in that particular rental. At $0.99 per (which I guess is the median price for episodes), you can only view (as per the article) 9 rentals through iTunes for the same price one could spend on an entire month of Netflix viewing… and you’re still stuck with just a rental; a purchase through iTunes is a drastically different investment than a purchase of a full season of a particular show on DVD in a retail store.

With the Netflix model, you are renting access to an *entire library* of media, viewable as much as one wishes for the entirety of the month. If I see something in the Netflix library that looks pretty bad but still interesting enough to risk watching (scifi, horror and anime titles fit this description pretty frequently for me), I risk nothing but my TIME in choosing to view that title, as opposed to forking over a dollar to discover the movie sucks. In addition, I don’t have to watch the ENTIRE movie; my Netflix ratings are strewn with the abandoned corpses of movies at only 5-10% completion… so there’s literally no commitment to any particular title. I’m paying for the availability of the service as opposed to the (temporary) ownership of the given title, and I much prefer it that way… just as I prefer to pay $25 a month for relatively slow internet access without a data limit and would NOT pay the same amount for blindingly fast internet access with even a 100Gb limit… I probably consume more than that per month on Netflix (and The Daily Show) viewing alone.

So yes, from the consumer perspective, unless there’s one show in particular you already KNOW you like, Netflix is the much, much, much superior deal… particularly for grazers like myself. I use Gamefly for the same reason, especially since it allows me the best of both rental and retail worlds: I can rent access to the Gamefly library as quickly as I can return and receive new discs (so again, I’m expending my TIME more than anything else), yet can also permanently purchase games I feel I’d like to retain forever if they are offered at an acceptable price point. So I can try out stuff that looks potentially crappy or looks ok but has been rated crappy to see if it’s any good… and if it actually IS crappy, I can (and do) send it back the same day; I’m only out the time invested, as opposed to a set rental fee per rental.

So from the vendor perspective, it appears to me to take this shape: under the iTunes model, consumers are under pressure to pick their purchases wisely. If no one chooses to watch your show, you make NO MONEY; and since people are unlikely to choose to watch shows randomly (as per previous analysis of the $0.99 untransferrable investment) you only stand to make money reliably off people who ALREADY like your show… and I would suggest from my own watching habits that such fans of a show are more likely to purchase (or otherwise “acquire”) the DVD box set to be able to watch the show anytime, anywhere than pay $15 (for a typical 15-episode season) for a single viewing of the season. Pricing their “undervalued” episodes at something higher than $0.99 would seem to make them even LESS attractive to consumers; I myself would definitely just go buy the box set instead… or just wait for it to come out on Netflix.

And there’s the rub: Netflix pays a flat fee regardless of viewership. So if I have a show with low TV viewership, I still get paid regardless of Netflix viewership; indeed, my show’s popularity (and subsequent DVD/merch sales) can improve if people randomly graze to my show based on Netflix rating suggestions, as I myself did with Better Off Ted, Archer, Happy Tree Friends and the vast majority of Showtime, HBO, Discovery Channel, Food Network and Travel Channel shows, to my great delight… not to mention countless excellent documentaries and awesome foreign films. Even the owners of shows who worry about “undervaluing” their shows via iTunes should (and apparently do) prefer the Netflix model as Netflix income is assured and (depending upon subscription volume) steady, whereas iTunes income would come much more in spurts, assuming people didn’t just grab the season via DVD (or “elsewhere”) instead. Indeed, as more high popularity vendors sign on to Netflix, the quality of the library improves, increasing subscription volume and potentially allowing Netflix to increase their subscription costs, or even offer an “Instant Only” subscription… which would most likely allow an increased fee be paid to vendors.

So for all concerned, I would guess that the Netflix model is the way to go. The only thing I could see that would result in this NOT being the case would be a complete changeover of ISP structure from a pipeline system to a data balance system… in which case iTunes could become viable as each byte expended becomes precious… but on that day, I’d probably just grab the $5 “eMail-worthy” plan out of protest and keep renting DVDs through Netflix instead. Thoughts?

I was listening to and singing along with Richard Cheese’s first CD on my way home from work this evening.  Richard Cheese, if you don’t know, performs lounge-style covers of popular songs that are in no way even CLOSE to the lounge genre.  It’s really, really good stuff, mellow, dirty and uplifting all at the same time.  I was halfway through Buddy Holly as I exited my car and entered my apartment; I finished it upon getting inside, cracked open a beer, and then proceeded to deliver the following monologue totally ad-libbed out loud in my apartment in (what I felt was) a nearly pitch- and pacing-perfect Garrison Keillor voice.  It felt like a natural extension of the pitch of Buddy Holly, so I went with it, and it turned out pretty decent, though the timing is definitely from his older-school, more deliberate pace, the one with which I grew up.  I will admit some Eddie Izzard started to creep in around paragraph four, but I got it out by the end.  Who cares, I’ve got beer.

Here’s as much as I can remember; punctuation denotes vocal timing as opposed to grammatical correctness.  Try reading this aloud in your OWN Garrison Keillor voice, you’ll see what I mean.  And if you’re really, really lucky I’ll find a way to post an actual audio version of this soon.

“That was my, National, Public Radio, Garrison Keillor, Lake Wobegon rendition… of the song, Buddy Holly… as covered by, Mr. Richard Cheese.  Richard Cheese is a delightful individual, full of insight, wit, and mirth… whom I have the great and… dubious, pleasure of knowing.

“I first met Mr. Cheese one summer long, long ago, on the shores, of Lake Wobegon; at a little known, and secluded summer camp – a co-ed camp – called Lake… Kemoniwanaleiu, where Richard and myself, spent many a long, and… steamy night, softly singing sweet serenades… some smooth, sensual… smarmy strains; sure to surreptitiously secure… the surrender of, Sally’s… smorgasbord.

“And I remember many a time, when Richard and myself, left the warm, glowing embrace, of the campfire’s light, with one, and sometimes two, of, nature’s nicer reminders, of why it’s just really great, to be part of a species with two genders.  And Sally, and Michelle, and myself and sometimes Christine… would adjourn to the quiet, solitude, of my tent; to discuss high-brow matters of philosophy… such as: “how does one remove, a bra, from the front, with only one hand”… and “does wearing a thong… feel like you have an enormous wedgie all the time”.

“And I now, seem to recall… an equally, frequent, number of times… when, at about this point, in our narrative, one of the girls… let’s say, Sally… would pose the timeless… age-old question: ‘what are those, unearthly shrieks of delight… and forbidden pleasure found… coming from, the rough location, of Richard’s tent perhaps… us three girls, should go investigate… posthaste.’

“So quickly, do they depart, that I am left, protesting… to myself, rather pathetically, really… ‘Don’t go, oh… don’t go… we were having such a nice time, here, in my tent, and… Richard’s got three girls of his own, over there, already… surely it’ll be crowded?, I… go home tomorrow, I would prefer to, not be, burdened with… my virginity, at that time.’

“But I don’t bear a grudge, against Richard… for denying me, an, experience… that I’m now quite certain, would have resulted in my, breaking the cycle of reincarnation… and shedding my fragile, human form, for a body of pure energy and knowledge NO, no grudge… because despite the fact that Richard’s raw, animal prowess, in the sack… meant that, I, once again, spent an evening alone, crying… and indulging in, just, a little bit… of self-improvement… it was still nice, having Richard around… because it meant, that for the first time, in a long time… I, wasn’t the boy… with the silliest last name, in our peer group.

“So I dedicate that song… and this story… to Richard.  In honor of the fact, that he reminds us, everyday… of what Weird Al Yankovic would look like… if he couldn’t play an instrument, and had even, worse hair.  Mr. Cheese, I salute you… with what Sally, confidently assures me… is a much larger penis than yours.  Goodnight.”

See?  That’s why the quickdraw is so popular: it is the quintessential definition of initiative winning; the excitement comes from purposefully levelling the playing field and still just barely winning out.  That’s why the Klingons (etc.) in the old Star Trek were so unpopular; cloaking technology is sneaky, while a showdown in the bright light of noon is distinctly American.  Anyways.

Ask any old school tabletop gamer: in any battle where offensive capability vastly outweighs defensive capability, whoever has the initiative will win.  Hell, you don’t even have to find a tabletop gamer (they’re notoriously hard to find… I suggest checking strip mall game stores, local libraries, and your mom’s basement); ask any foul mouthed 13-year-old online gamer, they’ll tell you that most kills in a realistic first-person-shooter (FPS) like Call of Duty are made simply by getting the jump on another player and killing them before they realize they’re being fired upon.  (Halo, despite its attraction to fuckwads of ALL ages, is a case of defense catching up with offense in the form of personal shielding and… hit points.)

The rest of your typical FPS kills are made through intelligence (in the military “intel” sense, not the “I’m smarter than you” sense) or camping(which is just like real-life hunting, except classier).  In fact, in both a military and institutional sense, the response to situations where one cannot have the initiative is to employ both intel and camping; police cannot arrest people beforethey commit crimes (and thus cannot “take the initiative”) and so respond by increasing their investigative and surveillance (intel) abilities and creating a network of patrol routes in known high crime areas (essentially spawn-camping enemy territory).  In fact, the “stakeout” is a classic police example of camping that also provides intel functionality.

Entities in a defensive role are, by nature, effectively denied initiative and must rely upon intel and camping instead.  All of our security measures in this country are defensive in nature with the possible exception of the more black, CIA-esque programs… but these also require the use of intel (to find a target) and camping (to ensure mission success and bring the operators home) so as to create initiative.

The point is that, in a one-hit-kill kind of world, the person who fires first generally wins.  At this point you may be asking “Sean, where the hell are you going with this?  Are you just playing with a d20 and rambling?”  Close: I’m also drinking.  Where the question of initiative concerns me is on the topic of gun control.  I have very, very ear-bleedingly frequently heard the argument for less gun ownership restrictions boil down to the following: if everyone was required to have a gun, the country would be a safer place.  While I have also heard the “we need to be able to defend ourselves from our own government” defense of the Second Amendment, I choose to rebut that argument thusly: Spectre gunship.  Your militia doesn’t have one of THOSE, now does it?  Anyways.  Again.

I can understand the logic of the “everyone’s packin’ heat” argument: no one would dare use a firearm because everyone around them would gun them down.  If all the teachers in public schools and colleges were carrying guns, there would never be another school shooting ever again.  Bank robberies would be a thing of the past when every single person in line opens up on the guys in ski masks.  Sheer volume is the argument here; the Good Guys generally outnumber the Bad Guys in any typical crime-involving-firearms situation, so if all the Good Guys have guns, the Bad Guys will be too scared to commit crimes.  It’d be the equivalent of a posse on every street corner.  And everyone knows the posse always wins; just watch “The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly”.  Oh wait, you already did.  Did I prep you well for this discussion or what?

The problem with the concept of arming every American is one of initiative; the Bad Guys will have it, and the fact that all the Good Guys have guns too will just make the Bad Guys more willing to kill everyone so as not to get shot themselves.  Essentially, giving everyone a gun just makes the general populace an extension of the police force, with all the same disadvantages.  Leaving aside the question of vigilantism, the gun argument ignores the preeminence of initiative as the decisive factor in any situation involving guns.  I can understand having a gun for home defense; anyone invading your home is obviously not supposed to be there, and the fact that you actually have a gun gives you an unexpected (and surprising, initiative-esque) edge.  I can understand having a rifle for hunting; people need to eat and/or feel superior to animals.  But having a gun does not convey initiative, and therefore isn’t that much help.  I would say it can be more of a hindrance in that the presence of firearms increases the likelihood of a potentially non-fatal situation becoming decidedly less so.

So what is the best course of action?  Well, there really isn’t one.  The Second Amendment guarantees an ambiguous level of arms-bearing, so simply outlawing firearms is illegal.  Even if it was legal to do so, it wouldn’t work too well anyways without extremely severe penalties for the possession of a firearm… assuming the Bad Guys are crappy at hiding them.  You can’t give everyone a gun either, as having a gun does nothing to address the problem of initiative; to return to our tabletop RPG metaphor: if the main party of heroes is ambushed by a group of enemies with one-hit-kill weapons, it doesn’t particularly matter what the heroes were packing, they’ll all be dead or crippled before getting the chance to return fire.

My best-case solution?  Make firearms legal to own, carry, stockpile in your End Of The World Bomb Shelter, whatever.  But in conjunction with that, make the use of a firearm in conjunction with the commission of a crime punishable by death.  I’m serious.  This is what we do to separate the Good Guys With Guns from the Bad Guys With Guns: only one of those groups is committing crimes.  Using a gun to assist the commission of a crime reflects an intent to use lethal force if needed or desired; such willingness to take another person’s life to achieve selfish ends should, I feel, result in forfeiture of one’s own life in recompense.  I think this would be the most effective means of preventing Bad Guys from carrying guns at all as the fear of going from a 5-10 year felony stint straight to being executed may be enough to make the Bad Guys leave the guns at home.  If I myself planned to rob a liquor store and the difference between a potential death sentence and 10 years came down to whether I used a derringer or a rubber chicken… I think I’d avoid owning a pistola altogether.

Yes, the big problem with this idea (and the death penalty in general) is that the burden of evidence must (and should) be very high so as to justify taking a person’s life.  I also agree that getting pulled over for speeding and having a gun in your car should not merit death.  I’m not stupid.  The intent is, as always, the most important factor.  Simply carrying a gun is never grounds for arrest; using a gun, or brandishing one for criminal purposes, is what I’d like to curtail.  This topic will need more discussion to define specifics… but for now, the initiative factor undermining the “if everyone had guns, there would be no crime” argument is what I wanted to get across.  Honestly, due to initiative, everyone having a gun just makes it easier for criminals to carry out crimes, not to mention vastly increasing the risk of fatality in any crime situation.  And that’s not a world conducive to the idea of civilization.

A supposedly common fear of people using the Internet (or even people not using the Internet) is that they could miss out on potential employment or random social opportunities due to information available about themselves on the Internet.  While xkcd presented my feelings on this subject in the most ideal and succinct way possible, I choose to paraphrase: “OMG, don’t write anything you actually mean on teh Interwebs, someone could Google you and decide not to give you a job!”

This raises an interesting question for me: why does a person’s personal life have any bearing whatsoever on that person’s professional life?  Even on a small scope: most people work a given portion of the day and then go home.  When people get home, they tend to go through some kind of relaxation routine, be it something as simple as taking off one’s shoes or as complex as shooting terrorists in the face in any number of myriad video games.  I myself generally strip down to my boxers and grab a beverage of alcohol content higher than that of root beer.  None of these are acceptable practices at work (unless you have an unusually chill workplace; and if so, where should I send a resume?), where standards of professionalism are in force.  However, with the apparent exception of celebrities and politicians, NO ONE is expected to adhere to the same professional standards at home as they do at work… and honestly, any contract which required me to do so would not get signed.

So on that note: if you are a potential employer and you’ve reached this article (or any others I’ve written) through running a Google search for my name, I’m confident that you will recognise a post-work stress relief activity when you see it because you are, after all, a professional.  This kind of stuff is my way of mentally having a brewski after a long, productive day of being a professional.  A damn good one, too, as my resume will no doubt convey.  I would think that MOST people operate the same way: with firm divides between their work persona and their personal persona.  While I have seen some people discuss their work in some kind of internet context, it’s generally along the lines of “man, work was rough today” or “I had so much fun at work today,” not really anything you’d consider to be a breach of professional conduct.  Honestly, I don’t write much about my work because my work isn’t interesting, even to me, much less anyone reading the stuff I write.

And to be even more honest: any employer willing to deny employment to an individual based on things they do in their personal lives is not an employer for which I care to work.  Such a thing denotes a strong lack of integrity to me, and you guys all know (or SHOULD goddamn know) where I stand on integrity by now.  Practically: the only employers who should even conceivably be worried about what a person writes in a blog on the internet are political ass-coverers and owners of blogs.  That last group may even look favorably upon opinionated discourse.

So in summary: the person a person is on the web is nothing like the person a person is at work.  Attempting to project aspects of one onto the other is intellectually void at best and misleading to the point of libel at worst.  The social and business spheres are separate entities so that people can keep separate these two aspects of their lives which are mutually exclusive by definition.  Hell, the whole reason resumes exist is so people can present their professional qualifications to employers in lieu of employers having to go bug our friends for uninformed anecdotes about how good we are at our jobs.  I can understand looking up a potential hire to make sure he hasn’t been in the news lately for blowing up an abortion clinic; looking him up to discover he answers questions on Formspring every once in a while under the alias “DarianSentient” is kinda childish, really.  Going one step further and Googling “DarianSentient” to discover I post stuff at HuffingtonPost, arstechnica and cnn.com too is even weirder; finding my OkCupid profile and telling me I’m “f0ine” is borderline stalkery.

No, actually, it IS stalkery.  So quit it.