Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Happy Holidays!

We'll keep this short and to the point.

Merry Christmas, or happy holidays, or "insert appropriate holiday sentiment here".

Oh, and have a happy new year too.

Friday, December 19, 2008

On Unwanted Candy and the Consumption Thereof

As it's holiday time, all of the various organizations we do business with have been sending packages of goodies all week long. I've eaten gourmet brownies, scads of truffles and pecan clusters the size of a man's fist.

One box though was not so beloved. This was the box filled with some of the lamest candy I have ever seen. Did you know that the Willy Wonka bar was a real candy bar? It is. It consists of chocolate and graham crackers. Seriously? Graham crackers? There were also Charms. Do you remember Charms? They're like square, hole-less Lifesavers. The package looked to be transported from 1953. Sugar babies were also there, rounding out the candy hall of shame. I remember Sugar Babies, chocolate covered caramel balls for those not familar, as looking and tasting waxy when they weren't getting stuck in your teeth. Not exactly an ideal candy situation.

Most prominently displayed though was the huge Bit O' Honey bar. I haven't seen Bit O' Honey in years, and figured that they just got rid of it on account that no one ate it. I even joked with a coworker about it. However as the week went on, and the candy supply diminished, that poor candy bar, resplendant with a happy bee, kept catching my eye in the break room. "Why won't anyone eat me?" it lamented. I must admit, I felt bad for it. So I ate it.

Here are some things that I've learned about the Bit O' Honey bar. For one, it is less than 2% honey. It says so right on the label, and the taste reflects this accordingly. This thing tastes nothing like honey. Technically, pouring a little honey in a carbeurator would mean that is has a bit 'o honey, and I wouldn't expect it to taste like honey, so I don't know why I was suckered into it this time. I blame the bee.

Second, Bit O' Honey bars are segmented with each segment individually wrapped in what looks like wax paper. The entire bar is also wrapped in some sort of paper. Peeling the paper off of a bar of what is essentially, pure sugar is not an easy, nor pleasurable task. As you progress farther and farther with the bar, and your fingers get sticker and sticker, it becomes even less easy and less pleasurable as now you're battling not only the candy for the paper, but your own fingertips. It is as if your own body has rebelled against you, no doubt because of what you're trying to force into it.

Finally, Bit 'O Honey bars simply aren't very good. They don't taste like honey. They taste like a vaguely chemicalized sugar mixed with some slightly off milk. There are moments where things taste sort of alright, and then it changes. Plus, due to the consistency of the bar, it's impossible to bite a segment in half, meaning that you have to put the whole goddamn thing in your mouth, and chew it to a more workable texture, hoping all the while that you don't a) choke or b) rip your teeth out from their sockets.

Why I would continue to eat such a candy bar when the total unpleasantness of the task became apparent after the first segment is a mystery to most, but not to me. See, simply put, I am powerless to resist bad food. Don't get me wrong, there is plenty of bad food that I'll reject outright. Like liver, for example. That shit is disgusting. However if a food sounds interesting, or sounds so bad that it still has to be tried, I will try it, and, most likely, continue to eat it well past the time when every biological system under my command is blaring angry warnings of protestation. So went the Bit O' Honey experiment. After the first segment, I thought, man, I really shouldn't eat more of this. Then I did, until I had finished the whole thing. Now it sits in my stomach like a lump of malice. Where is my friendly bee now? Stinging my colon apparently.

Maybe some day I'll resist the urge to eat something that I know I should avoid. If I were a cave person, devoid of governmental agencies tasked with identifying poisons in the hopes of preventing their consumption, I would surely be dead by now, long passed from eating a flaming piece of tree bark, or a live wombat. Until such time as I grow an ounce of common sense, I can rest assured that soon the holidays will be over, and people will stop sending us boxes of third rate candy. In the mean time, I think there are still some candy necklaces left.

Prince of Persia: The Fallen King

My take on Prince of Persia: the Fallen King is up. I know, I know, it's like Christmas has come early.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Free and Clear

Today I finished writing my review of Syberia for the DS so I am now done with paid games writing until January. Whee! Nothing to do now but kick back and do what I want to do. Aw yeah.

Small problem with this idea though. I have no idea what I'm going to do.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still playing 360 games, dutifully chipping away at Mercenaries 2 so that I can put that one to bed, but what to do while watching tv? That's the conundrum.

I don't have a lot of magazines at the moment and if I did, reading them tends to put me to sleep.

I do have some graphic novels, having recently picked up the Brian Azzarello Joker book and the next TPB in the Marvel Dark Tower series, but see point A about falling asleep.

I have some Lego sets, but no where to put them once I put them together. In fact, with yesterday's arrival of Shadow Blade Megatron, I'm also out of room for my Transformers. This poses a particularly large problem as I picked up Cyclonus today and have four more toys arriving between now and the end of January.

I could finish playing Chrono Trigger on the DS and while I think this will be fine in the long term, the fact that I just got done playing a bunch of games makes me less than enthusiastic about playing another game, even if it's one that I enjoy. Curse you game reviewing for ruining all of my fun!

I could write, either for my site, or for Lungfishopolis, however I'm somewhat burned out on writing too.

That leaves either sleeping, or actually watching the TV show that we have on. That first one doesn't go over well with the wife, so that leaves paying attention.

Crap.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Monday, December 15, 2008

On Fronting

Last week I bore witness to yet another amazing spectacle of Nerdcore Hip-Hop as I attended a show with not one, not two, but three stellar MC's, including the godfather of Nerdcore himself, MC Frontalot. Along for the ride was MC Lars and YT Cracker.

If raw, house bringing down rap power was the fuel that could run our lives, let's just say that after this show, the world would never need for energy again. It was an amazing powerhouse of raw MC skills and mad nerdcore flow.

I was somewhat familar with MC Lars, and not at all familar with YT Cracker, and man, can these guys lay it down. YT Cracker, along with being an accomplished rapper, is also a l33t hacker, having hacked the NASA front page years ago to bring attention to glaring security holes in various federal web sites. He also may or may not have been a spammer, as indicated in his many songs with his first nerdcore rap group, spamtec. Spamtec is, indeed, the greatest.

MC Lars and YT Cracker recently collaborated on the Original Digital Gangster lp so they did the majority of their sets together. They both have a tremendous amount of energy and really get the crowd into things, lowering the microphones so that everyone can rap along with the choruses. Lars likes to rock the dual projectors for his songs to bring the multimedia aspect to the show which makes for some hilarious visuals to go along with the songs. Both MC's brought their A game and the crowd was eating it up.

Once Lars and YT Cracker were done and various sound issues were worked out, Front took the stage and rocked it as well as he always does. Front's latest album "Final Boss" is a real aural extravaganza, and I was disappointed that he didn't perform more off of it, but while Lars and YT Cracker rap to a mish-mash of a live band and a backing track via iPod, Front rocks only with the live band, making some of his newer stuff harder to do. He still represented nerdcore to the fullest and did many of my favorite tracks from "Secrets From the Future", his last joint. Unfortunately, the sound issues persisted during his set and his microphone was often drowned out by the keyboards, but luckily the guy behind me knew all of the songs, and rapped them all right in my ear. Oh yes, luck was certainly with me.

As great as it was to hear the MC's bring it with full force, the best part of the show, as with previous nerdcore shows, was being able to chat with the rappers beforehand, buy some gear and generally thank them for dropping inconceivably thick rhymes. All three guys were super nice and very cool to hang out with. If I hadn't been there for five hours already, I would have stuck around longer and shot the shit some more, but as it was, it was late, and I was exhausted as well as partially deaf. Between spending time with these guys at this show, spending time with Front at his last show and being able to chat a bit with Jonathan Coulton at his show, I can tell you that these guys are just super great to their fans. I hope that one day their fame matches their levels of fan awesomeness as right now, they are all super, mega, rope-a-dope awesome to their fans.

And now, crappy cell phone pictures!

MC Lars and YT Cracker doing a sound check.

The original digital gangsters.

Lars with Black Lotus on guitar.

24/7 he fronts the most.

The nerdcore rapper in his natural habitat.

Friday, December 12, 2008

Guitar Rock Tour

My review of Guitar Rock Tour is up. It's a Guitar Hero clone, but not a bad one, once you get past the bad covers. They can't all be masters, can they?

Sorry I haven't been around much this week. Been laid up with some medical stuff. Nothing serious, but nothing that lends itself to posting either. I'll be back on the regular schedule next week, which is no schedule at all.

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Lies, All Lies!

Remember when I said that there would be more later? Yeah, I lied.

What would bring someone to spin such falsehoods and half truths? What kind of man publicly proclaims that he will post more musings at a later time, only to not do so? What poor excuse for humanity would weave a tale of such obvious deception? It's hard to say, but clearly you're dealing with a monster, a man so twisted by perverted desire that he's but a bitter shell of humanity.

Clearly.

Hasbro appears to be putting out a last December push of toys before the holidays and I, for one, am thrilled all to pieces. I already picked up Animated Skywarp and Animated Shockwave and have heard that new Universe toys, namely Hound, Cheetor and Cyclonus are in the area. I managed to get Cheetor on the cheap (cheapor?) with a rare combination of free shipping and coupons at Hasbro's online store, with the only downside being that he won't ship until our stars burn to dust and our world is nothing but a lifeless husk. I sure hope UPS is still around.

Seriously though, I bought five toys including the oh so sexy Shadowblade Megatron (pictured) and while two of the toys ship at the end of this month, the rest won't ship until some time in January. It's a small price to pay for 25% off, especially considering that Target recently raised the price of the Universe Transformers, which are the main contents of my order.

So, Shockwave (pictured courtesy of Seibertron.com). Shockwave is cool for a number of reasons, namely that he's a quadruple changer. In the show, Shockwave is a secret agent who infiltrates the Autobots posing as Longarm. Seeing how he's undercover, he needs a vehicle form for both his fake Autobot persona and his true Decepticon persona. His vehicle modes aren't anything all that spectacular with the Autobot form being a crane and the Decepticon form being a tank. What's super cool is how his Autobot robot form transforms into his Decepticon form. The Decepticon form is particularly cool with the long limbs, sharp fingers and the quintessential single Shockwave eye. Even the head transforms between robot forms. Criminy!

Now, all is not perfect. His vehicle forms aren't all that much different, and a crane is pretty lame, especially seeing how you can't extend the crane arm at all. The biggest error though is that when Shockwave is in his Longarm Autobot robot form, there's a big, ol' honkin' Decepticon symbol right there between his legs, like some sort of Decepti-penis. Some spy he is, that he has his faction's symbol right there for all to see, on his robot junk no less.

Even with this glaring, very un-spy-like piece of robotic anatomy, he's a super fun toy, and even though he's sporting a seemingly drab color scheme, it works for him, serving to accentuate his single, malevolent eye quite well.

Skywarp is Skywarp. He's a repaint of Starscream, which works for me because a) I love the Starscream mold and b) he's purple and black. I looooooooove purple and black. It makes him look like a pimp. In the cartoon, he's the cowardly clone of Starscream, so I currently have him posed with his hands over his face like he's hiding. I'll have to get a picture at some point, along with all of the other toys, as I've amassed quite a few in the past months, so many that my desk has barely any room left on it, and additional shelving needs to be purchased. Such is the life of a toy collector. Nothing but cowardly poses and shelving purchases. That's why I gets all the ladies.

Holiday Mr. Binky

I'll post more later, but for now, my latest Mr. Binky is up. It's not my best work, but one does what one can when gripped in a post-Thanksgiving stupor (I wrote it over the holiday weekend).

Sadly, this may be the last one as Mr. Binky isn't bringing in enough traffic to warrant a monthly column. The final sentence hasn't been passed yet, but it's not looking good. If it does get canceled, I'll be bringing it elsewhere, most likely lungfishopolis, so don't worry, Mr. Binky will continue to entertain all three of you.

Thursday, December 04, 2008

On Movies and Keeping One's Mouth Shut

Here's a piece of advice for all you movie aficionados out there. If you fancy yourself the type of person whose movie recommendations are asked for, or even coveted by friends and family, it is imperative that you keep the more, shall we say esoteric, movie choices to yourself.

Say, for example, you see a movie called The Midnight Meat Train and you think to yourself, "how can I not want to watch a movie called The Midnight Meat Train?" Well, watch it, certainly. Enjoy it, but do not, under any circumstances, tell others that you spent your time watching The Midnight Meat Train. If you do, not only will those that used to respect your movie tastes no longer do so, but you will lose all rights to complain about bad movies afterwards. In fact, forever onward from the point where you divulge your watching of The Midnight Meat Train, any complaint you make about a movie will be matched with "What do you care, you watched The Midnight Meat Train. "

Now, this same rule does not apply to horror movie fans, as their tastes appear to be much, much broader, hence The Midnight Meat Train, but maybe to them, saying that you enjoyed Sideways trashes your credibility. I have no idea. All I know is that I told my coworkers that I watched The Midnight Meat Train and the mocking hasn't stopped since.

To my credit, I didn't pay to watch this movie, other than time spent watching it, and I spent said time working out, so it's not like I put aside a special block of time to watch this movie. Plus, and I can't stress this enough, it's called The Midnight Meat Train. I can't see how that doesn't spark curiosity in even the most closed minded of individuals.

For the record, the movie was just ok. Shocking, I know. It was based on a Clive Barker story of the same name, which I read after the watching the movie. The story was ok, and at less than 30 pages, wasn't able to sustain a 90 minute movie. Instead, they decided to fill the movie with things that didn't make sense and were never addressed. Horror movies need to be either scary as hell, like The Descent or creepy as hell, like The Devil's Backbone. This movie was just weird and gory. It didn't help that the killer was played by Vinnie Jones, of Snatch and Eurotrip fame, and as soon as I saw him, I laughed and said "It's Bulletproof Tony!" Better luck next time, Midnight Meat Train.

As a correlary to our rule, the same people who mock you about watching The Midnight Meat Train will be more than happy to discuss Onechanbara once they know that it's about a woman in a bikini who fights zombies with a samurai sword. They may even want to watch it. Go figure.

Wednesday, December 03, 2008

My Pizza, Let Me Show You It

Ok, ok, ok, here's the pepperoni pizza recipe. If it sucks, don't blame me. As a writer, I am given to hyperbole now and again.

Here's the ingredients that we use. Obviously you'll have to adjust things accordingly based on what you can get where you are.

Ingredients
1 pizza dough from Publix, thawed if previously frozen and taken out of the fridge for 2.5 hours
Classico tomato and basil pasta sauce
Kroger pizza cheese (This one is very important. Mozzarella isn't flavorful enough, so this cheese is a blend of five cheeses including mozzarella, parmesan, reggiano and other ones that I can't remember. Very important.)
Crushed red pepper
Boar's Head sliced pepperoni (This one is the second most important. For us, this pepperoni is over by the deli counter, not with the sausage and other pork products. Look for it and pay the extra. It's well worth it.)

1.) Preheat your oven to 450. Because we make two pizzas at a time, we have the racks positioned so one is a bit higher in the oven and one is lower. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that we'd do the same thing for one pizza so that at the end you can put the top of the pizza closer to the top heat source, thereby browning it nicely. Obviously, your oven will be different so position things accordingly.
2.) Roll out your dough for a 16 inch pizza pan. If you have a pan with a slight lip, use it. This will make the crust's edge a bit thicker, and thereby tastier. You don't need something as deep as a deep dish pan, maybe a lip of like half an inch.
3.) Once the dough is rolled out, spray your pizza pan with cooking spray and place the dough on the pan.
4.) When the oven is ready, poke the dough all over with a fork. This will keep large air bubbles from forming when the crust is baking.
5.) If you're only using one oven rack position, bake the crust for 8 minutes. If using two, bake it on the bottom rack for 4 minutes, and then the top for another 4 minutes.
6.) Remove the crust from the oven after 8 minutes. Spoon the sauce on the crust one to two spoonfuls at a time. I use a soup spoon, as in a spoon for eating soup, not one for stirring or making soup. It's very important that you just get the sauce, no tomato chunks. Use the spoon to smooth the sauce all over the crust. You don't want to over do the sauce. A little goes a long way. When you're done, the crust should look like it was painted with a light coating of sauce, not completely covered with it. Obviously you can put on as much or as little sauce as you want, but this is the way I do it and it's been working pretty well. It ends up being about 3 - 4 spoonfuls of sauce. Spread the sauce so that it comes up to about an inch from the edge of the crust.
7.) Cover the entire crust with cheese. I use almost an entire 2 cup bag, however you can put on as much as you want. Make sure you evenly coat the crust.
8.) Sprinkle a liberal coating of crushed red pepper over the cheese. Spice that bitch up. Trust me.
9.) Put your pepperonin on the cheese so that the pepperoni doesn't overlap, but instead touches edge to edge. Working from the outer edge of the sauce inwards, you should be able to get 3 - 4 rings of pepperoni, depending on the size of the pan, with a slice in the middle.
10.) Take another handful of cheese and sprinkle it all over the pepperoni. This may not sound important but it is very important. As the pizza cooks, the pepperoni will lose some grease. The cheese will melt and mix with the grease, so that when you brown up the top, it makes a really tasty mini-crust.
11.) Throw the pizza back in the oven for 10 minutes. 5 on the bottom rack and 5 on the top if you're going the dual rack way.
12.) After ten minutes take a look at the pizza, you want the top to be bubbling slightly with a slightly brown color. You don't want the cheese to burn, but you don't want it whitish either. You should hear the pepperoni sizzling slightly. If you're going with one rack position, take the pizza out, raise the rack, and put the pizza back in with the oven light on so that you can watch the pizza until it's ready.
13.) Take the pizza out, slice it up and enjoy. Be sure to have plenty of beverages on hand because between the pepperoni and the pepper, you'll need something to drink.

So there you have it. Enjoy! Maybe later I'll share my spinach, bacon and monterey jack pizza recipe. That one isn't a bad little pie either.

Guide Train Kept A Rollin'

Two guides today, both for Gears of War 2. The first is an achievement guide, the second is a collectible guide. Hopefully I won't have any guides for a bit as they're not the most fun thing in the world to write. Oh sure, I can inject some personality into them, but for the most part, it's pretty dry. They pay well though, so there is a strong impetus to do them. Plus, knowing how things go around here, they'll change their minds on them in another month and the gravy train will come to a stop. Milk it while it's worth it, I say.

In fact, other than the review I'm currently putting off writing and the upcoming Prince of Persia for the DS, December is in the books. I'm not killing myself this month and there's not a lot coming out, so once PoP is done, I'm taking the rest of the month off.

Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Most. Boring. Post. Ever.

So, back before the holidays, Greg tagged me with an internet chain mail thingy that tasked me to describe, in detail, seven interesting things about myself that few, if any people knew about. I was then supposed to tag seven bloggers that I knew so that they could do the same thing.

There are two problems with this particular situation, namely that I don't know seven people who blog that I'm comfortable tagging and, more importantly, I can't think of seven interesting things about myself that no one knows about. The problem there is not the "that no one knows about" part but the "seven interesting things" part. I mean, I am, quite seriously, one of the most boring people on the planet. I don't think that's a bad thing, as I'm quite happy with my life, but it certainly doesn't lend itself to writing long, interesting posts about one's activities.

As boring as I am, I'm certainly not one to turn down an opportunity to have something to write about so I'm here to turn this tag on it's ear and instead write the seven most ponderously dull things about myself. Insomniacs of the world rejoice, you're about to get served up a gigantically dull serving of sleepy time helper.

Greg, I'm so sorry.

Boring Item #1: I don't like bananas.
Seriously. Bananas are gross. When Gwen Stefani said "that shit is bananas" she was right, as the two share equal footing as unappetizing food items in my mind. It's not the flavor, it's the texture. Bananas have a disgusting texture, the very thought of which makes me want to gag. For some reason, I equate the texture of bananas with that of human brains, which makes my eventual zombification a win-win as far as I'm concerned. Either my unyielding, ravenous hunger for tasty brain flesh proves the impetus to finally overcome such a crippling texture aversion, or I can't get past my issues and I become the world's least threatening, and by extension, most boring zombie. Why my status as one of the shambling undead should be any different than my status as one of the shambling living is beyond me, so I'm voting for option number two.

Boring Item #2: I eat the same thing for breakfast every day.
Well, every week day that is. Yep, the same thing. One cup of All-Bran with Strawberries and 80z of skim milk. Even my breakfast is boring. Granted, compared to like Shredded Wheat, this is the culinary equivalent of snowboarding naked with one's hair on fire, but compared to most breakfasts, it's pretty fucking tame. Tame, lame, take your pick. Despite my overwhelming love of food, I can very quickly, and happily get into a rut about certain meals. For most of my school going career, I ate the same lunch every day: one peanut butter sandwich, three chocolate chip cookies, a granola bar, an apple and a cran-apple juice box. The granola bar would change, but that's about it. As for breakfast, I like it, it's easy to make and it gives me all of the fiber an old coot like myself needs. Oh sure, I have dreams of getting other things for breakfast, but as I'm lazy and easily guiltable, along with boring, I usually don't. Technically my tales of boring ass breakfasts and school lunches counts as two boring items, but you're not getting off that easy. Oh, no. Not by a long shot.

Boring Item #3: Upon coming home, I don't take my shoes off until I get in my pajamas.
This particular item of soul crushing tedium bugs my wife to no end. I don't know why, but for some reason, I won't take my shoes off until I get into my pajamas, an event that doesn't take place until the kids are in bed, or about to be in bed. Well, I know why. For me, the kids going to bed means that my day is pretty much over. Nothing left but some quality time with the wife and some quality time with the gaming console of my choosing. By the time the kids go to bed, all of the heavy lifting has been done, and it's time to take the shoes off. Silly, I know, and incredibly boring, but hey, that's me in a nutshell.

Boring Item #4: Even my job is incredibly boring.
Now, I'm not saying that I have a bad job. I have a great job. I work at a fantastic company, with great people, many of which I have become good friends with, and I am compensated well for my work, however none of that changes the fact that my job is boring. I test software for the mortgage industry. On any given day, I'm tasked with making sure things like "attribute value sets" and "lookup list dependencies" are working as they're supposed to. You may not know what those things are, but they don't sound interesting, do they? There are plenty of jobs where you can dress up boring tasks with interesting sounding names. Not this one. It is as boring as it sounds. Are mortgages important? Oh, sure. Are they interesting? Not so much. In fact, the only thing remotely interesting about my job is the fact that because it's directly tied to the mortgage industry, I may not have it next year. When the most exciting thing about your job is the prospect of losing it, you've got problems.

Boring Item #5: I don't like leaving the country.
I have left this country on five occasions. The first was a cruise to the Caribbean and Mexico with Linda. Occasions two through five were to go to Russia for the purpose of adopting our two kids. In all cases, I hated leaving the country. Granted, the cruise was a work cruise, so there were a lot of incredibly boring meetings but still. Also, it's not like the areas of Russia we visited were the most gorgeous places on Earth, but again, we both hated pretty much every minute of it. I like America. I am comfortable in America. I know how it smells, how people will treat me, what they're saying and how things like ketchup and Coca-Cola will taste. I don't want to smell new people, or not drink new water or find out that in Prague, a pepperoni pizza tastes like roasted iguana. I just don't. That's not to say that I won't visit other parts of this world, far from it, but when I do, I'm pretty sure I'll prefer to be home where I don't have to worry about everything tasting like pepper.

Boring Item #6: I am incredibly rigid.
You wouldn't know it about me, but when it comes to lots of things in my life, I'm quite rigid. For example, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday I get coffee in the morning at the QuikTrip. The day's don't change, the QT doesn't change and the coffee doesn't change. Five shots of cinnamon-hazelnut flavored creamer and the italian dark roast coffee, every day, a buck thirty-eight and I'm out of there. Every Tuesday and Thursday I make my own coffee to bring to work. Sure, I'll change up what coffee I make, but it's always Tuesday and Thursday. Saturday morning I always make the same kind of coffee, Sunday morning too. During the workday, I always have my morning snack at 10AM, lunch at noon and my afternoon snack and soda at 2. This is partly to keep the metabolism going all day, but also because it's my pattern. My soda is either a Vanilla Coke Zero or a Cherry Coke Zero. If it's 1:55 and I want a soda, I won't drink it. I'll wait. Sure, I can take some variation, but I like the schedule. I find it soothing. This is why games like GTA: San Andreas fill me with dread. The freedom is terrifying.

Boring Item #7: One of my greatest accomplishments is perfecting my pepperoni pizza recipe for Linda.
Every Friday night is pizza night at our home. I make one pizza that I split between Ben and myself and a pepperoni pizza for Linda. Over the months, I have perfected her pizza so that it is at the pinnacle of pepperoni pizza perfection. First I had to learn how to do the sauce just right so that there weren't chunks of tomatoes in it. Then I had to find the right cheese, a blend of cheeses, not just straight up mozzarella. Then I had to add crushed red pepper to the cheese before putting on the pepperoni. Finally, I learned that a sprinkle of cheese on top of the pepperoni allowed for a nice crust of melted cheese and pepperoni grease to form on top of the pizza. This is all without even mentioning how long to cook the crust, which rack, when to move, and so on and so on. The end result is one damn fine pepperoni pizza, and I'm not even a big fan of pepperoni pizza. I don't do a lot of interesting things, I don't do a lot of exciting things, so the fact that I can make a good pepperoni pizza for my wife is one of the best things I've been able to do. Boring as that might be, I'm completely ok with that.

I'm sure I could find more boring things to go on about, but that's seven and I'm not going to torture you any longer. I'm boring. That's pretty much it. I'm probably more boring than you, and that's just fine. Even if it wasn't, I don't see it changing, and the only thing I have in abundance more than unintersting qualities is abject apathy, so not only am I boring, but I really don't care. Maybe my next post can be the seven things I'm apathetic about. Oooh, exciting.

Call of Duty: World at War DS

My review of Call of Duty: World at War for the DS is up if you're at all interested in portable WWII shooters. And really, who isn't. Oh wait. I'm not.

Monday, December 01, 2008

More Reviews, Less Food

Ugh.

Man I ate too much these past few days, as I'm sure everyone did. I was very happy to work out this weekend and give my body something to do other than digest all of the food I shoved down my slavering maw.

Maybe it wasn't quite that bad, but it sure wasn't pretty. Hopefully I can work off the extra poundage this week as this time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is rife with extra work goodies.

And how was your holiday? Excellent.

In other news, my review of Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip is up. It's a very fun game, however only if you have the balance board that comes with Wii Fit. Strange that the controller would make that much of a difference but it does. I'm starting to think that I need to switch up my review style a bit as they get less and less entertaining to me as I write them. Maybe I'm just bored with the whole reviewing thing. I don't know. We have some new writers at the site now and they're really nailing these reviews, so whatever I do, whether it be a new style or tweaking my current style, I need to step my game up so that I keep getting the plum assignments. The check don't change whether it's a triple A title, or some piece of DS shovelware, but man can't live on shovelware alone.