The Devil's Advocate

I recently discovered a blog titled JammieWearingFool. These guys usually have a lot of funny criticisms and articles about the state of the political world. However, today when I was perusing their latest posts I came across this:

http://jammiewearingfool.blogspot.com/2009/12/oreilly-chugs-obama-kool-aid.html

This bullshit gets me so angry when people hate Obama so much that they instantly turn on anybody who has a positive thing to say about him. I posted a comment on that article which I've copied and published in this post. The thoughts that I expressed to them are the following:

I have to say I think you guys are being unfair to O'Reilly. He's not backtracking on anything. He has never slobbered over Obama. What people tend to forget is that O'Reilly is an Independent, not a standard bearer for militant Conservatism like Hannity or Mark Levin (both of whom I highly enjoy watching and listening to). As such he offers an Independent analysis of what's going on. Granted, he can be naive sometimes in his desire to be "fair and balanced", sometimes giving these people too much of the benefit of the doubt.

However, if you published the whole article and didn't selectively quote it to get your viewpoint across then people would see that what the article is really about is thanking Obama for being gracious enough, despite the White House's war on FNC, to invite O'Reilly. Being invited to the White House Christmas party is an honor no matter who the President is. Hell, even O'Reilly acknowledges in the article that he's surprised he was invited given the recent events.

I understand that to you guys Obama is the Antichrist. I don't like the fact that he's President anymore than you do. I think he and his hyper-Liberal cronies in Congress are destroying this country. But your eviscerating of O'Reilly for being a normal, rational person by accepting an invitation to a prestigious event is ridiculous. Saying a positive thing about Obama here or there does not a hypocrite make. Obama is a terrible President and extremely self-obsessed to be sure but he definitely comes off like one Hell of a charming, personable guy. Despite my intense ideological differences with him I sure as Hell wouldn't mind meeting him myself.

That doesn't make me a traitor to the Conservative cause and it doesn't mean all of a sudden I'm rooting for these people to be victorious. It means I have respect for the position of President of the United States no matter who it is.

By the by, anyone who wants to read O'Reilly's whole article and analyze it for themselves can find it here:

http://www.billoreilly.com/newslettercolumn;jsessionid=08CE4FF50FFA635391F3D9B17321046D?pid=28603

Double Take

A couple weeks ago I was perusing IGN for the latest video game news. I came across their list of the top 25 Xbox 360 games. Here it is if you want to check it out yourself:

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/104/1045042p1.html

Now as much as I enjoy reading IGN, I find myself disagreeing with a lot of their opinions and positions on certain things about games. Even so I was surprised at how many more than worthy games were excluded while there were several that, in my opinion, have no place anywhere near this list. So, combining some of IGN's top games and some of mine, I decided to come up with my own list of the top 25 Xbox 360 games...so far. I have to add "so far" because let us not forget that the 360 is still thriving and there's quite a large number of huge games that are coming out next year which could bump a lot of these games off this list in the future.

See what you think of my top 25 list compared to IGN's. Keep in mind that this is in no particular order:

• Mass Effect
• Gears of War
• Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 - Terrorist Hunts, combined with earning experience to rank up and unlock kickass guns and body armor for your character, give this game virtually infinite replayability.
  
• Dragon Age: Origins - Read about my obsession with this game in my previous post.
• Dead Space
• Resident Evil 5 - It's almost criminal that IGN omitted this game from their list. Not only is this one of the best Xbox 360 games available but it is also one of the best Resident Evil games ever made.
• The Darkness - One of the most emotionally affecting video games I've ever played. Rarely have I ever been so invested in a video game character's success and ultimate fate.
• Lost Planet
• Halo 3
• Gears of War 2 - Bigger set pieces and more variety in the campaign missions make this sequel bigger and badder than the original game. The only downside is that, in trying to improve the first game's horrendous story, the writers turned Dom into a whiny bitch and tried to force some awfully heavy handed emotional bullshit.
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
• Lost Odyssey
• Prey - One of the most creative, mind boggling FPS's I've ever played.
  
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
• Call of Duty 2 - The best World War II FPS that was ever made (I think).
• Halo 3: ODST - Firefight...'nuff said.
• Prince of Persia
• Batman: Arkham Asylum - Best superhero video game ever made.
• Fable 2 - Once again, how IGN left this game off their list is just baffling. It's one of the greatest action RPG's the gaming world has ever seen.
  
• Assassin's Creed - Honestly, I am not a fan of this game by any stretch of the imagination. I think it is a terrible game. However, there are a lot of people who lost their minds over how "amazing" they thought the game was and just because I personally don't like it doesn't mean that it's not an important game for the 360.
  
• Left 4 Dead - Yet another game that I'm not really a fan of. Still, the game pretty much revolutionized cooperative multiplayer. Plus you get to battle through the Zombie Apocalypse without being in any real danger and who in their right mind wouldn't want a piece of that?
  
• Bioshock - Played the demo but couldn't really get into it. The game does have a cool setting and the story is supposed to be pretty good. Critically acclaimed and loved by many means this game certainly earns it's place on the list.
• Borderlands - I haven't played this game yet but something tells me I'll be getting it for Christmas ::wink, wink:: Everything I hear about this game confirms my suspicions that it's basically an FPS version of Diablo 2 which means that it probably fucking rules.
  
• Fallout 3
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
  

The Game(s) of Life

Before the new year starts I am resolving to try and keep up with this blog a little bit more than I have in the past. As you can tell from reading there's looooong gaps of time between posts. It's probably Life's fault. Life just gets so damn busy and dominates my time.

Anyways, enough with excuses and onto what's what in my world.

One thing that Life has allowed time for is the discovery of mucho new music to listen to. My Pandora Internet Radio has introduce me to a lot of new bands I've never heard before and bands that I wrote off as major suckage but changed my mind once Pandora drilled them into my skull. Some examples that mayhaps will get you interested:

• Slayer (I was extremely anti-Slayer for years until Pandora showed me the error of my ways)
• Kent
• Gravenhurst
• Machine Head
• Nonpoint
• Primal Fear
• Karma to Burn
• Lyzanxia
• Nothingface
• Opeth
• Prong
• Placebo
• Queensryche
• The Fratellis
• The Kooks
• Thornley
• Hanzel und Gretyl
  

It's been a crazy fall/winter video game season this year. Four games in particular have been eating away at my free time since September.

It started with Batman: Arkham Asylum. It's certainly the best superhero video game ever made but I have serious doubts as to whether it beats out The Darkness as the best comic book video game. The Darkness, to me, was much more than just a video game. It was an action packed, emotional roller coaster ride that still sticks with me to this day. Still Arkham Asylum is certainly no slouch. Batman is a badass right off the bat. There's none of the usual watered down hero bullshit that most games would make you slog through before you finally grind away long enough to get the powers you should already have. Instead, Batman's skills are refined as you progress through the story. You earn new gadgets and combos to string onto your already impressive move set. Plus the Riddler's puzzles will keep you playing long after the story is actually over as you scour over every inch of the island trying to solve his devious mysteries.

Hours, maybe even days, of my life have been sunk into Halo 3: ODST's campaign and Firefight mode. Firefight's addictive gameplay grabs your virtual self by the throat and never lets go. After each match I'm always ready to go at the Covenant horde again, chomping at the bit to beat my score in the last battle. Firefight is fast paced, intense, and very nearly irresistible.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is a game that I waited two years for. I have to admit that I was extremely underwhelmed by the game at first. Maybe it was the long incubation of my anticipation and the major expectations I had. It was not long before I was doing the mea culpa because this game is simply amazing. There is nothing more adequate that I could possibly say to get my point across. The online multiplayer is better implemented than the first Modern Warfare (who knew this was even possible) with tons more weapons, perks, and rewards as your online persona progresses. And the co-op Spec Ops missions are the best thing to ever happen to the Call of Duty franchise. Every mission is different and challenging, taking your FPS skills and reflexes to the limit.

Finally, the game that I'm currently frittering away my hours with, there's Dragon Age: Origins. This game may just be the definitive Western RPG. BioWare has made some of the best RPGs of our time with Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect so it's really little wonder that Dragon Age is as fantastic as it is. I'm not even halfway through my first playthrough and I'm already thinking about what my next character is going to be. That is the beauty of having multiple origins for each of the different races. BioWare has given players the ultimate incentive to play their game over and over and over again. The world is expansive (to say the least). The lore and history of the world of Fereldan is fascinating. Your Codex is constantly being updated with the legends and historical backdrop behind your current quest to save the world.

Naturally Life steps in to make sure that I'm not playing games 24/7. There's spending 40+ hours a week at work trying to make as much money as I possibly can. There's the rigors of having a new puppy. And then there's keeping up with this blog. Most of the time (as you can see) the blog gets pushed to the back time and again.

I've been watching tons of movies since discovering the magic of Redbox. Renting movies for $1 a night is probably the greatest thing to happen to my movie watching life...ever. But this post has gone on for way too long and if you've made it this far I applaud you. I seriously doubt that by this point you're interested in the movies I've been watching and you probably just want the damn post to end. Honestly, I'm surprised Life has allowed me to go on for this long.

So that's that. Like I said all the way at the beginning: I'll try to keep the updates more consistent.

Not that you readers care because you don't exist!

Who the Hell am I talking to?!?!

Easy As Pie

Forgetting the fact that he's only been President for about nine months and hasn't accomplished anything good or noteworthy, let's focus on the fact that Obama was President for only ten days before the nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize had to be submitted. Unless he was God (which some people seem to think that he is) there was definitely nothing that Obama did that was worth winning this prize in that small amount of time. The reasons that the spokesman cited for awarding Obama the prize (stressing diplomacy, easing tensions with the Muslim world) are all things that happened well after that ten day window.

Never mind that his only contributions to foreign policy are to bow to the will of our enemies and abandon our friends (or in the case of the Iranian uprising people who wanted to be our friends), what this whole Nobel fiasco suggests is that, like his Presidential election, normal voting rules do not apply to Obama. Voter fraud occurred during the 2008 elections and that is a well documented fact. Then again there is the long shot possibility that Mickey Mouse is a real person and ghosts can somehow float on into a voting booth to cast their ballots without anyone so much as raising an eyebrow.

It can't be all bad, though. It just so happens that the Nobel Peace Prize is the same award given to Yasser Arafat, an infamous terrorist leader, in 1994. Given Obama's fondness for known, unrepentant terrorists and anti-American radicals I suppose he feels like he's in good company. Clearly Obama's not the first undeserving person to receive this award.

Judging by the new do-nothing standards I should be a shoo-in to win since I practiced defensive driving this morning. I saved myself a fender bender and an insurance headache. That seems far more Nobel worthy than jetting around the world and shouting from the mountaintops about what a terrible, horrible, no good place your country is.

Who knew that major lifetime achievement awards could be so easy to win...

What Not to Do

Note TO self FROM self:

Never, ever again get so excited because your baseball team gets off to a dynamite start at the beginning of the season. As soon as you start having those crazy hopes and dreams (not to mention writing about those crazy hopes and dreams), everything goes to damn Hell. Your team's hitting and pitching begins to fall apart. Only five players out of the entire roster haven't let you down so far: Nick Johnson, John Lannan, Odalis Perez, Lastings Milledge, and Cristian Guzman.

Lannan and Perez have been solid starting pitchers. When your team's starting pitching allows only the 2 or 3 runs per game that those two have, your team should win. But since everyone on the Nationals apparently forgot how to hit (excluding Johnson, Milledge, and Guzman of course) they haven't been able to break an 8 game losing streak that will probably continue today when John Smoltz tears the Nationals a new one.

Now you look like a stupid asshole for getting all excited before. From now on, you, be reticent of fortunes that any wins the Nationals get will foretell. If they win anymore games this season, as it were...

It's About Damn Time...

...that the baseball season is here again. Thank God because, while I am loving the Washington Capital's season and Alexander Ovechkin's superhuman hockey exploits, there's just nothing like spectating the epic clashes between two teams battling for control of the diamond. The Nationals got off to a good 3 (wins) 0 (losses) start but blew a 5 run lead yesterday to lose 8-7 to the Phillies. Although, even with a 3 (wins) 1 (loss) record they are still at the top of the National League East. It's still only the first week of the baseball season so I am constantly having to check my enthusiasm and high hopes. I'm just gonna have to see how the rest of the season goes but so far the Nationals are having a promising start.

Speaking of starts, Opening Night on Sunday was just amazing. I wasn't able to go the inaugural game at the new Nationals Park but I did watch the entire game on TV. I laughed (with and not at) at George W. Bush's high heat (as Joe Morgan so aptly put it) ceremonial first pitch. Then there was Jon Rauch's passed ball that scored from third and tied the game at 2-2 in the top of the 9th inning which got me steaming mad. And I cheered wildly, hopping around my apartment like a maniacal madman when Ryan Zimmerman hit his walk off home run (bottom of the 9th, 2 out, 1-0 the count) to win the Nationals very first game in their new ballpark.

God I've missed baseball. I just love the tense minutes of each close game as they tick by and thrive on the myriad of possibilities of what each new inning will bring. Baseball is a game where truly anything can happen at anytime (unless you're the Orioles because then you're pretty much guaranteed to lose no matter what).

Nick Johnson picked up right where he left off in September 2006 when he broke his leg and was out for the entire 2007 season. Ryan Zimmerman continues to establish himself as the most potent hitter in the lineup and the face of the franchise, having already hit 2 game winning home runs in just 4 games! Lastings Milledge, whom anyone that reads my blog knows I was rather unsure of, has proven that he can be a dangerous hitter when he's given the chance. Paul Lo Duca is a much better hitting catcher than Brian Schneider could ever be and his bat adds a much needed punch to the lineup. And last, certainly not least, Cristian Guzman is just on freaking fire. It seems like everytime the guy comes up to bat he ends up on base.

I cannot wait to see what the rest of the season brings. The Nationals may not be on top of the NL East for long (in all likelihood they won't) but I am going to enjoy their magnificent start immensely while it lasts. Besides, it's still early enough in the season where I can have the Washington Nationals at the World Series stars swirling in my eyes.

The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing But the Truth

There is a massive conspiracy theory afoot. A theory even bigger and more widespread than the 9/11 conspiracy all those certifiable nutjobs are banging the drum for. That theory is: Courtney Love killed Kurt Cobain.

But think about it. Does that really make sense? Why would she, of all people, murder Cobain? What did she have to gain from that? It's not like she is any more popular than when Cobain was alive (although Nirvana is a million times more famous than they ever would have been were Kurt Cobain not dead). She's still drug addled, mentally troubled Courtney Love. Nothing's changed for her.

So that means that Cobain killed himself, right? I mean if Courtney Love didn't do it then nobody did, right? Right? Wrong. I'll tell you who murdered Kurt Cobain.

Dave Grohl

It makes perfect sense to anyone who can see the evidence that's piled up over the years. Grohl was sick of being in the background of the band, probably the least known and most worthless member. He wanted Cobain's limelight all to himself. After all, who would suspect meek little Dave Grohl when Cobain had more drugs than blood cells in his veins at the time of his death AND was married to clinically insane Courtney Love.

Need more proof?

Barely a year after Kurt Cobain died, Dave Grohl formed the Foo Fighters and released a debut album with his new band. The curious thing is that the Foo Fighters started off (and for the most part still do) sounding EXACTLY like Grohl's former band, Nirvana. Suddenly all those kids sobbing and depressed over the death of Cobain (and Nirvana) could latch onto the Foo Fighters' unoriginal and uninspired sound because it was pretty much the same music. Now Grohl had all the fame and glory he so desperately wanted. And the best part (for him) was that all of the moronic conspiracy theorist fans believed that Courtney Love did it!

Can anyone come up with such a compelling (and entirely believable) motive for Courtney Love to murder her beloved husband? I think not. Why do you think that there has been such animosity between Grohl and Love over the years? Because she knows...she fucking knows. And now you know too.