Prepare to be bombarded by my Wall of Text spell. Lots to talk about this week. To spare you, I'm going to put the comic up here, and not all the way down there.
Next week is the end of Chapter One, and the last strip before the hiatus. Remember during that time to keep your eyes peeled for links to the YouTube animatics on Facebook, and you could even be awesome and subscribe to the Super U. YouTube channel.
I'm not sure quite yet how long the hiatus will be... hopefully not too long. It depends on how long it will take me to get the comic established on those other sites I was talking about last week. But things will be slowing down for me at my real job pretty soon, and I'm sure the hankering to make new material will soon consume me.
So my PS3 bricked again. I wasn't too mad about it, though. The thing had been refurbished once before, and it was a six-year-old model and it saw a lot of use. Besides, it only had 37 GB of memory, and long ago I hit the point if I wanted to play anything new, I had to make sacrifices I never wanted to make to play it, uninstalling games and deleting saves and the like. So I picked up a new one. I had wanted to get the bundle with Uncharted 3, but they didn't have any, so instead I got the one with Modern Warfare 3.
I've never played any Call of Duty game. I'm not particularly fond of First-Person-Shooters, and I was always concerned that the learning curve would be too great for me to jump in at this point.
I was right. I played Campaign mode for over an hour, and I found the game to be too over-the-top, like the video game equivalent of a Michael Bay film. Beyond that, though, I found it to be thoroughly confusing. I spent the whole time shooting my allies in the head because I couldn't discern them from the enemy, or just trying to find the enemy at all while simultaneously being shot in the face. I appreciate their attempt at realism, I really do. No glowing icons over enemies' heads, a few hits and you're down, no heads-up display with red dots to show who to shoot, sort of thing. But not having those things made the game impossible for me to play. I can only imagine how pathetic I would be at an online multiplayer mode, when I'm up against a squad of pimply thirteen-year-old boys swearing into their headsets who have logged thousands of hours into the game already.
I'm not sure if video games need to be this realistic. They're supposed to be a leisure activity, aren't they? An escape? I don't know if I want to be prepped to be a soldier in WW3.
On a related note, my wife and I have been having this discussion, and I wanted to throw it your way. I think that an exciting time for video games is coming soon. We've achieved the point now where video games have achieved cinematic-like realism. Just like in the art world, that will mean that soon video games will transition into the "abstract period." What if Pablo Picasso was a game developer? I think, soon, people will no longer be able to claim that video games aren't an art form, because the stuff we're going to be seeing will be like Picasso paintings that you can play. Actually, it's happening right now. Check out games like El Shaddai or Closure.
This weekend I saw Dark Knight Rises. I won't spoil anything for you, don't worry. It's safe to say I looked forward to this movie more than most any other movie before. After seeing it, and digesting it, I can honestly say I'm not sure if I liked it.
For starters, I knew it wouldn't be as good as Dark Knight. How could it be? So I went into it with the mindset that it would be awesome, but not that awesome.
I found the pacing of the movie to really detract from the experience. There were too many points that slowed the movie to a crawl.
The acting was great, and Tom Hardy was gripping as Bane. At least I think he was... I could only make out about half his dialogue.
But what really let me down about Dark Knight Rises is that I don't feel like I watched a Batman film. I bought a ticket for a Batman film, but instead I feel like I sat through a three-hour commentary on the 99% / 1% issue that happened to (thankfully) have Batman in it. Dark Knight tackled some moderately heavy social issues, but I don't feel like they consumed the movie in the way Rises did.
I'm maybe being too critical on it. I'll let you know after I buy it on Blu Ray and watch it a bunch more.
Lastly it has to be said that with the tragedy now associated with this movie, it made a couple of the scenes hard to watch. Perhaps that in itself cast a gloom over my experience that I tried to shake off but couldn't.
The Left is trying to use the tragedy in Aurora to say guns are bad. The Right is trying to use it to say everyone should have guns, that way this won't happen again.
Wait... let me state that latter part again. They think, if we have lots more guns, there will be lots less violence. No really, that's what they think.
Being the hardcore moderate that I am, I have to say they're both wrong. First off, if we give up our guns, then guess what? The bad guys? They won't give up their guns. And then what do we do?
We have guns because our founding fathers were so determined to not become a monarchy that they let everyone be allowed to have guns, so if that ever happened, we could all rise up and shoot our corrupt leaders and start over. Guns are bad, but unfortunately, they're a necessary bad, and they will continue to be so until humanity can rise up beyond our idiotic primal natures.
If we all have guns, well, I hope you already know what would happen.
The problem, in my eyes, is that this asshole got all these bullets and an assault rifle, a goddamn assault rifle, by legal means. It is high time we question what sort of weaponry is available to civillians, and we stop being complete fools and doing things like selling crates of bullets on the internet.
In my opinion, no one, NO ONE, should be allowed to have anything beyond a single handgun and a handful of bullets.
You might make the argument that hunters should be able to have rifles and things. To that I say hunters are cousin-humping mouth-breathers, and fuck them anyways.
Sigh. And now there's this Chick-Fil-A thing. Look, Chick-Fil-A is a Christian company. Nobody's going to make you eat there. If they want to be ignorant and claim that gay people don't have the right to marry like everyone else, and that God would actually even care about that sort of thing, then they're cousin-humping mouth-breathers, too. Can we stop making a big deal out of this?
The bottom line? People don't agree with each other all the time. Get over it, and work to find the middle ground. Stop letting your personal convictions blind you to the potential of a future where Stuff Gets Done and Progress Is Made.
Next week is the end of Chapter One, and the last strip before the hiatus. Remember during that time to keep your eyes peeled for links to the YouTube animatics on Facebook, and you could even be awesome and subscribe to the Super U. YouTube channel.
I'm not sure quite yet how long the hiatus will be... hopefully not too long. It depends on how long it will take me to get the comic established on those other sites I was talking about last week. But things will be slowing down for me at my real job pretty soon, and I'm sure the hankering to make new material will soon consume me.
So my PS3 bricked again. I wasn't too mad about it, though. The thing had been refurbished once before, and it was a six-year-old model and it saw a lot of use. Besides, it only had 37 GB of memory, and long ago I hit the point if I wanted to play anything new, I had to make sacrifices I never wanted to make to play it, uninstalling games and deleting saves and the like. So I picked up a new one. I had wanted to get the bundle with Uncharted 3, but they didn't have any, so instead I got the one with Modern Warfare 3.
I've never played any Call of Duty game. I'm not particularly fond of First-Person-Shooters, and I was always concerned that the learning curve would be too great for me to jump in at this point.
I was right. I played Campaign mode for over an hour, and I found the game to be too over-the-top, like the video game equivalent of a Michael Bay film. Beyond that, though, I found it to be thoroughly confusing. I spent the whole time shooting my allies in the head because I couldn't discern them from the enemy, or just trying to find the enemy at all while simultaneously being shot in the face. I appreciate their attempt at realism, I really do. No glowing icons over enemies' heads, a few hits and you're down, no heads-up display with red dots to show who to shoot, sort of thing. But not having those things made the game impossible for me to play. I can only imagine how pathetic I would be at an online multiplayer mode, when I'm up against a squad of pimply thirteen-year-old boys swearing into their headsets who have logged thousands of hours into the game already.
I'm not sure if video games need to be this realistic. They're supposed to be a leisure activity, aren't they? An escape? I don't know if I want to be prepped to be a soldier in WW3.
On a related note, my wife and I have been having this discussion, and I wanted to throw it your way. I think that an exciting time for video games is coming soon. We've achieved the point now where video games have achieved cinematic-like realism. Just like in the art world, that will mean that soon video games will transition into the "abstract period." What if Pablo Picasso was a game developer? I think, soon, people will no longer be able to claim that video games aren't an art form, because the stuff we're going to be seeing will be like Picasso paintings that you can play. Actually, it's happening right now. Check out games like El Shaddai or Closure.
This weekend I saw Dark Knight Rises. I won't spoil anything for you, don't worry. It's safe to say I looked forward to this movie more than most any other movie before. After seeing it, and digesting it, I can honestly say I'm not sure if I liked it.
For starters, I knew it wouldn't be as good as Dark Knight. How could it be? So I went into it with the mindset that it would be awesome, but not that awesome.
I found the pacing of the movie to really detract from the experience. There were too many points that slowed the movie to a crawl.
The acting was great, and Tom Hardy was gripping as Bane. At least I think he was... I could only make out about half his dialogue.
But what really let me down about Dark Knight Rises is that I don't feel like I watched a Batman film. I bought a ticket for a Batman film, but instead I feel like I sat through a three-hour commentary on the 99% / 1% issue that happened to (thankfully) have Batman in it. Dark Knight tackled some moderately heavy social issues, but I don't feel like they consumed the movie in the way Rises did.
I'm maybe being too critical on it. I'll let you know after I buy it on Blu Ray and watch it a bunch more.
Lastly it has to be said that with the tragedy now associated with this movie, it made a couple of the scenes hard to watch. Perhaps that in itself cast a gloom over my experience that I tried to shake off but couldn't.
The Left is trying to use the tragedy in Aurora to say guns are bad. The Right is trying to use it to say everyone should have guns, that way this won't happen again.
Wait... let me state that latter part again. They think, if we have lots more guns, there will be lots less violence. No really, that's what they think.
Being the hardcore moderate that I am, I have to say they're both wrong. First off, if we give up our guns, then guess what? The bad guys? They won't give up their guns. And then what do we do?
We have guns because our founding fathers were so determined to not become a monarchy that they let everyone be allowed to have guns, so if that ever happened, we could all rise up and shoot our corrupt leaders and start over. Guns are bad, but unfortunately, they're a necessary bad, and they will continue to be so until humanity can rise up beyond our idiotic primal natures.
If we all have guns, well, I hope you already know what would happen.
The problem, in my eyes, is that this asshole got all these bullets and an assault rifle, a goddamn assault rifle, by legal means. It is high time we question what sort of weaponry is available to civillians, and we stop being complete fools and doing things like selling crates of bullets on the internet.
In my opinion, no one, NO ONE, should be allowed to have anything beyond a single handgun and a handful of bullets.
You might make the argument that hunters should be able to have rifles and things. To that I say hunters are cousin-humping mouth-breathers, and fuck them anyways.
Sigh. And now there's this Chick-Fil-A thing. Look, Chick-Fil-A is a Christian company. Nobody's going to make you eat there. If they want to be ignorant and claim that gay people don't have the right to marry like everyone else, and that God would actually even care about that sort of thing, then they're cousin-humping mouth-breathers, too. Can we stop making a big deal out of this?
The bottom line? People don't agree with each other all the time. Get over it, and work to find the middle ground. Stop letting your personal convictions blind you to the potential of a future where Stuff Gets Done and Progress Is Made.
Well said, bud.
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