Diablo 3 was announced…well, I don’t know when. I’m not a hard hitting video-game blog journalist, I’m a bum. Kinda like Hancock. What this means is that I have an opinion on things that interest me but like hell I’m going to do some original research into the matter. I’ll just sit at the bottom of the grape vine and complain loudly about whatever other people have said on the subject.

So Diablo 3 was announced. This is surely a reason for me to do the happy dance, but for now it’s beside the point. Long awaited sequel has been long awaited and at the end of the day all it means is that there is now a very definitive reason for me to get a new computer (unless several prayers are answered and they release it on a console.)

What’s got my goat at the present time has been reactions to Diablo 3. I guess it’s symptomatic of general nerd rage in response to anything being announced/previewed these days - the gamer/nerd community has such an ingrained sense of fatalistic (almost nihilist) world-weariness and cynicism that the automatic (possibly only available) reaction is to rage at the concieved slight against the fans. Or to get into a massive bitch fest about shit that nobody cares about; it’s like the concept of artistic prerogative or creative ownership has passed them by slightly. No, the ‘cool’ thing to do is to be immediately jaded and promise to boycott the game or movie.

Examples include the lead up to the Iron Man movie, people bitching about a lack of Tom Bombadillo in the Lord of The Rings trilogy (Best. Decision. Ever.) and more recently the outcry at the initial release of a few screenshots from Diablo3. Some people think it’s too ‘cartoony’ and that it’s going to be a WoW inspired/cloned piece of crap. Complaints include the graphics being too clean, the (as mentioned a second ago) look of the thing being too cartoony and the game looking too bright.

I’m no expert in these things, but I have a feeling that computer hardware and software design and implementation have come a long way since the days of Diablo 2. It’s all well and good going into a tantrum with a declaration of Jihad on Blizzard, but come on…do people really expect a third sequel for an ancient game being made for the latest generation of technology to look the same as the old one? Jesus Christ, people…half of the reasons they made Diablo 2 so ‘dark and grainy’ was probably due to the use of sprites and a simple inability to make it look good with any other technique. Diablo 3, from what I could see in the two screenshots I looked at (hooray for indepth research, right?) is using actual 3-D modeling, which means it has the ability to look better.

Short version; going into a massive sulk and bitch because the screenshots from the very early stages of a newly announced game don’t look absolutely fucking perfect is completely unreasonable. There’s still a shit load of development to be done and at the end of the day there’s the age old solution to the problem: don’t like it? Don’t fucking buy it.

In other news…Hancock sucked. Really badly. I’ll do a full write up next time, but you have my general opinion on the matter. What I want to do right now is go back in time, kill Peter Berg and wear his skin as a suit so that I can direct/re-write the movie from about halfway through. Ugh.

FG.

So I’ve been doing zilch writing and maximum house cleaning. Also editing a half-started, almost abandoned manuscript that a friend of mine realized they had. I’m all for encourage people and cultivating fellow authors, so I’m giving her as much help as I can at the expense of some of my own working time.

Regardless, though, I’m going to be back to normal fairly soon. I’ve been maintaining a house hold while my parents traveled around Europe for the last couple of months and Christ was it ever so hard. The real killer was that I also work at night, so theres no compromise. Although I suppose if I worked during the day the housework would have to be done at night…blah. But with my parents arriving home tonight, everything will be cool again. Coffee fueled rants will continue to blossom on here, I’ll get back to my novel second draft and other PPP projects.

In addition to that, I’ve taken over the stewerdship of Papal Petrol (the writing website R.T. set up.). Now when you post something, expect to have me editing any obvious typos you may have made, re-formatting if i hurts the eyes and approving/dissaproving any comments. Previous to now the site seemed to have zero activity - this was just because the comments weren’t getting through, so the contributers felt like they were being ignored and didn’t come back, etc, etc. That will all change now and you’ll find fairly soon that yours truly will be the number one contributer.

But enough business - now to the thing which relates to the clever title I bedecked this entry with. You may have noticed that I do stuff like that, relating the title to the entry. It’s clever. I like it.

In this case I’m talking about the upcoming game Battlefield: Bad Company - or rather, what some commentary on the game has made me realize about the gaming community. You see, I was reading a new entry of a popular webcomic and he was talking about the game and some stuff about downloadable content for the game costing money, blah blah blah. The promotional video was kinda cool - it was like a send-up of the unofficial Gears of War one which had Mad World set to it - this is why my title is a quote from that song, by the by.

What got my gears grinding, so to speak, was the fact that the casual reviews focus  was on the multi-player. This isn’t the first time this particular personality, representative of a large slice of the ‘gaming community’ has been guilty of this as well. Kane & Lynch he banged on about multi-player. Same with Halo 3. I didn’t even KNOW, based on what I’d read in various places (his website inclusive) that Call of Duty 4 had an extensive and well executed single player campaign. And once again it’s the same with Battlefield: Bad Company.

I was interested in the game, based on what I’d read - I might actually have a faster internet connection soon and start playing games that are online multi-player exclusively. I went to the wikipedia entry for B:BB and found that the main focus of the official entry for it was the single player campaign. This is a traditional game - multi-player is the side note, the little sister to the main show. With that in mind, what the hell is with everyone’s hysteria over the online aspect of the game?

I personally would never play online games for the reason I play video games normally. I play them for fun and relaxation, as well as the story aspect. I’m looking for a chance to dick around, or a challenge, I’ll go online at a friend’s house (where the internet is faster and the food has been paid for by others) to play the games that require other people in separate rooms.  It’s also the reason I don’t buy fighting/racing games very often - they focus exclusively on the game play elements and lately have a massive focus on online game play.  So what is it that makes everyone else seem to obsess over online game play?

Online, there are endless assholes. What makes that even worse is the fact that there’s nothing you can do - in real life if you go somewhere to have some fun and there’s an asshole doing what he does best, and you don’t particularly feel like leaving because of them, you can confront them to make it stop. Online? There’s fuck all. They can be a dick to their hearts content.

So, B:BB is going to come out and I’m going to buy it for the single player campaign, just like I did with Call of Duty 4; which, by the way, gives no indication of it’s single player campaign on the box even.

Extra, finishing note; when the hell are all those white trash idiots who go to watch Oprah Winfrey live, or any of her clones, going to learn to check under their seats when they arrive in the studio? Nine times out of ten the bitch is giving out cars, or drugs, or something, and it’s hidden under the damn seats. Every freakin’ time, she’ll announce happily that everyone is a winner and gets a car or whatever, and they’ll only then decide to look under the seat having been instructed by their overlord and master, Oprah.

Peace, fuckers.

FG.

*EDIT*
Check out our newest PPP member, dudes, dudettes and dudites!
http://www.macratlove.com
It’s also in the sidebar. As a rodent, I highly recommend it!
*EDIT*
It’s been one of those random lengths of time. I use that phrase in the sense of ‘it’s been one of those weeks’ or ‘one of those damn days’, but since the length of time I’m referring to doesn’t have a clear term of reference…I digress.

My parents are away on holidays, joining my dear sister over in the gloomy hellscape of Europe & the UK. That’s fine, I don’t mind holding the fort. But, it’s one of those things…take a late teens/early twenties male, alone in a house, caring for itself…things get rough. Haven’t walked out of the house without pants yet but it’s only a matter of time.

Resulting factors of my isolation have included a sudden load of house work that keeps me occupied during the day and the night job which pays me. Not to mention the full time mission of co-existing with Sugar the Black Labrador; more on her later, though. Essentially what I’m rambling towards is that with all this freedom-induced spare time, I haven’t had time to blog. Not in the literal sense, but more in the sense of not being able to work that unique frame of rage and boredom into an entry.

Also, as anyone who attends to the workings of the PPP with any amount of attention will know, things are starting to move and it’s pretty much all hands on deck, hands off socks/put on cocks (amidoinitrite?). There’s the book I pulled out of my proverbial posterior, as well as my normal furore of literary stuff, that occupy my attention - and now I’m also working on a project with Ratchet of Barista Girl fame, which promises to produce many an incident of people laughing out loud and using the appropriate acronyms to express the intended sentiment. So it’s hectic, hectic, hectic!

Twothings have managed to make their way into my frontal lobe as of late (today) which I will devote a paragraph to in honour of my readership (hah! Comedic genius!). There’s the aforementioned Sugar the Black Labrador and The Little Explorers and the Ensuing Disasters They Wreak. Onwards!

So, Sugar the Black Labrador is our famiy pet. A nine year old dog with no formal house training, an obstinately spoiled personality and smelly dog breath. Also, being a Lab, she is an uncontrollable idiot glutton - famous for once eating an entire bag of dynamic lifter and giving we the family piteous looks when the ensuing stomach pains arrived from there being three or so kilos of matter in there. Regardless of her background, she’s here, and has a messed up personality to match my wonderful family. Her entire day is devoted to a specific set of instances and events which follow one another as the family move through their daily routine. Being an animal, upsetting the environment in which she lives or changing the routine is the number one way to freak her the fuck out. So, of course, the two main players in her life (Mater and Pater Bell) leave for a six week holiday. Cue the garrison of Ian to look after the animal…meaning that the boy and the dog who have a mutual, unspoken bond of not associating beyond when she gets fed at 5 o’clock every day, suddenly are room mates! The entire daily routine is scattered to fuck and she’s suddenly associating with me 24/7 - which for a lot of that time I’m not home working, not home drinking, at home drinking or finally at home working. None of those activities fulfill her mental check list of things that ensure the sun is going to rise again the next day, leading to tantrums - not the least of which was her attempt to eat my ankle. We’re the odd couple, except I’m the drunken lout and she’s the one who wets herself and the floor around her if left at home alone for more then five hours straight, having drunk the entire contents of her two litre water bowl the very second that she feels like her tongue lacks moisture in a smooth continuation of her idiot gluttony - also, she demands to be let outside in order to devour fermenting fruit from our garden. Living alone with this dog just highlights to me the importance of proper training - the only reason she’s bearable under normal circumstances is because she gets her own way due to the fact it’s convenient for the at home members of the family to tend to her. For a single person occupied with big boy stuff for the majority of the day and the evening, it leaves her high and dry (apart from where she’s pissed herself.) So, welcome to my hell. Sartre fails again - it’s trapped in a house with man’s best friend.

Anecdote time!
Otherwise known as the Two Tales of The Little Explorers and The Ensuing Havoc They Wreak.

The first incident; yesterday (sunday) I was suddenly overcome by the urge to eat. It happens every now and then. So, in my typical male fashion, I analyzed swiftly all the food stuffs I had bought the previous Wednesday and discovered that for every potential meal combination I had purchased, I lacked at least one ingredient. Neanderthal frowning and a severe round of head scratching ensued. The decision was made to go to the Independent Grocers Association (IGA, a chain of non-independent corporate supermarkets and grocery stores) down the road to get pasta and grated cheese for the pasta bake I was keen on concocting. I left the house and went to my car in the garage, observing along the way that next door’s Little Treasures were collectively frolicking in every garden along the street but their own and riding bicycles around the sort-of-but-not-quite-because-it-has-two-openings-forming-a-corner cul-de-sac that my house is situated on. Kate, the owner of said Little Treasures, is looking on with a content ‘Aren’t they just the most adorable Little Explorers?’ expression that I have come to loathe, because said expression is sure to accompany the Little Explorer in question ‘exploring’ their way towards a venomous snake or expensive equipment, depending on the environment in question. We live in what amounts to a glorified symbiotic colony of the deadliest things known to man the size of a continent and labeled as such, but that doesn’t stop these crackpot parents and their Little Explorers. Regardless, it was none of my interest. I entered the side door of the garage and upon discovering the absence of my door opening remote, triggered the door manually with the switch on the wall. The door rumbles open, I back out of the garage whilst taking note of Little Treasures strewn across the landscape behind me. I stop the car, jump out and go to close the garage door, envisioning Little Explorers exploring their way into knocking over the shelving in the garage, piled high with things that were surely designed specifically to kill toddlers from a height or, worse, laying one of their grubby digits upon the sanctified surface of the Harley Davidson. They’re too young to understand the concept of a Bikie; too naive to imagine their extended family in flames. So I close the garage door and head back to the car. Kate is still looking on with a doe-eyed expression; despite the mounting evidence of my intent to blow that joint, she’s not ushering the small children out of the way. Perhaps, I consider, she’s got some ground breaking new theories on the concepts of high tonnage + velocity versus a toddler. I consider disproving her theory as I get in the car. Miracle of miracles however, as the Little Treasures spontaneously seem to gather by the side of the road; perhaps there is a minuscule amount of intelligence or survival instinct. I start to back out onto the road; chaos! Toddlers waddling around in blind spots, Little Treasures doing bog laps of the faux cul-de-sac and a suddenly alert Concerned Mother bearing down. I nearly have a heart attack for my own part and stop the car. I consider jumping out and putting the fear of God into the little shits I almost vehicular man slaughtered. I reconsider; any movement and attempt to engage in conversation with the Concerned Mother’s Little Treasures is a bad move, because clearly Strange Adult Male + Innocent Little Treasuers = RAPE RAPE RAPE!!! So the children are moved by Kate and she comes to the window of my car. I wind it down, expecting apologies and wonderment. Mistake.

Kate: By God, can you be careful please? My children could have been hurt!

(beat)

Me: I’m sorry?

Kate: So you should be!

[Kate moves off with her flock surrounding her. I stare bewildered for a moment then avert my gaze, lest I become guilty of that awful awful crime, VISUAL RAPE!

Suffice to say, my lesson was learned! Next time I’m out in my car, on the road built and designed for vehicles, I’ll be sure to stop every few metres and watch out for any little snot nosed bastards who haven’t got the good sense to stay clear of the large relativistically unstoppable force. Once I spot them, I’ll give them a good kick to the ovaries.

Second, less exciting Tale of The Little Explorers!

Was driving to mate’s house on Sunday night for fun and games. Decided to detour to get food, having been informed grandly by his younger sibling that he was cooking and I wasn’t having any of that; fair cop, says I. So, I take the back roads between my house and the local selection of take-away joints. It’s roughly six thirty at night, getting fairly dark. Travelling down the last road between me and my destination when I see a Family of Fools on their front lawn surrounding the Family Armoured Vehicle (otherwise known as an SUV or 4WD, dependent on nationality. I prefer to go with Landraider Prototype.) with two Little Treasures (almost old enough to qualify as human, however) doing their hyperactive thing. I’m trundling along at 50kmh, as is the law - however, my spidey sense starts skull fucking me big time. Ensuing idiocy is at hand. I slow the vehicle and watch as the Little Treasures make their way closer to the road as I approach - and yes! Yes, the ball that one of them has goes spinning off onto the bitumen and the Smallest Explorer goes chasing after it with narry a ‘tally ho!’, like he’s been shot from a freakin’ cannon. People; children are irresistibly drawn to bitumen surfaces and the attraction increases on a Fibonacci curve when the presence of the vaunted Ball is added in. So, suffice to say, had I not slowed to a slower pace, I would have been travelling through that space at 50 with no intention or reason to stop, leading to the snot nosed shit Exploring his way under my wheels in the most precious manner possible. Happy ending was achieved however, giving me 50 IRL credits and a bonus Man Point for avoiding the second case of Vehicular Manslaughter in a single day.

This post is unstrucured, unplanned and horrible. Our regular ranting and raving will continue ASAP. Don’t fear, I’m not out of materiel. Having a manuscript hasn’t somehow turned me into a sober, non-embittered human non-husk! I’m still the same miserable cunt! I’ve just been in a spot where the wonderful ideas for blog posts have fallen by the wayside. Blocked Pipe will live on so long as there are drunken authors in the world. And there are drunken authors with any culture civilized enough to develop language and art - sorry France and Scotland, you miss out AGAIN.

Burn.

FG.

Patient is suffering from boredom.

Prescription; Grand Theft Auto 4.

Side effects of treatment may include:

1. Loss of several hours of activity per day
2. A subconscious desire to stop using articles in sentences.
3. Tears of joy.

It should be noted that since I bought this game, I have singularly failed to rape or pillage in my local community. Cars remain where they should be, hookers have not been shot and if anything I’ve taken less drugs then normal (having kicked my echinacea habit.)

Anecdote time!

*Dancing girls start doing the MC Hammer shuffle in the background*

My pre-GTA4 excitement got the better of me on monday, when for some bizarre reason I came to the conclusion that  it was releasing on the 28th (instead of the next day, being the 29th.) With this in mind I drove all the way into Perth CBD to the video game store I had pre-ordered in the middle of last year.

Funny side note; when I pre-ordered the thing, all the way back then, I couldn’t drive. Thus public transportation was my way of getting around this stupid city. It was, conversely enough, easier for me to travel to a store damn near on the other side of the main suburban sprawl  then it was to go somewhere one suburb over. Crazy, no? With a license, though, driving is now my way. Thus rendering the city as far away. Like, insanely so.

With this in mind, I drove to the city. Having arrived, I paid exorbitant prices for parking and hiked over to the store. Needless to say, I discovered all about the release date and other such concerns fairly quickly, and headed back to my car.

It was whilst I was walking down the Hay Street Mall, a pedestrian-only street with shops built into the ground level of the older buildings along there and more modern single story shops and shopping arcades lining it that I saw a peculiar thing. There was an Asian girl in her twenties sitting on a bench. I could tell from her posture that she wasn’t Australian bred; if I was to hazard a guess at her origin, I’d say Singapore or possibly one of the more up-to-date cities in China. This is important; it suggests any piece of technology she would own is gonna be cutting edge. This isn’t racist, it’s simply an observation on the state of thing.

What she was holding, however, with ipod earphones leading from it to her ears, was a massive white block of plastic with a screen and what at a glance was an ipod interface. It was huge; big enough to hold a cd, if it had a cd drive, but larger then any cd-walkman I’ve ever seen. It was crazy.

I kept thinking about it during the 45 minute drive home. By the time I arrived, I’d come up with an insanely complicated plan…to steal music!

Let’s get this straight; this is based off sugar fueled musings and my sub-concious mulling over the problem whilst I concentrated on driving.  I’d also recently come into possession of a USB DVD drive, which is fairly cool. And using my most twisted, movie world logic, I personally think that downloading music illegally is stupid. If you’re gonna steal music, do it super-villain style. Improbable science, despicable acts of deception…that’s the go, know what I’m saying?

So, my evil plan to steal music;

Step one is to buy an Asus EEE PC. For $400AU, they are an absolute snatch.
Step two is to set up this EEE PC so that all it does is open iTunes (or a similar media player) when switched on. Similarly it must be configured so that if a music cd or dvd (or usb drive, even) is attatched to the EEE PC, it will load the music into the iTunes folder and add the music to the library, thus allowing it to be played.
Step three is to take the guts of the EEE PC out and put them into a compressed, cd-walman looking case with a dvd drive integrated. It does not need a screen, just buttons linking to the keyboard controls that do the equivalent of skipping, pausing and changing volume and a earphone jack port.

You now have all the equipment you need. Now, you can simply go to a music store and browse for a while. Having established your presence, ask a staff member (especially if they approach you whilst you study a cd case) if it would be ok for you to listen to the songs on your ‘cd-walkman’. They will happily agree, if all goes to plan.

The music is copied from the cd in the time it takes for one or two songs to play. One need only wait for the iTunes sound that indicates the music is copied, then eject the cd and thank the salesperson for their help. You can then leave the store - with their music!

Feel free to laugh in an evil fashion whilst walking away - be prepared for strange stares, however.

In the years 1899-1902, before we were even a nation proper, the Australian people sent forth their sons to fight in the Boer War in South Africa in an all volunteer force known as The Australian Regiment of the British Army, first serving as light infantry then as light mounted infantry as the war developed. Under orders from the British commanders, they committed several atrocities against the Boer farmers in the course of the guerilla war.

In the First World War, known then as the Great War, Australia once again committed a volunteer force of men in the year 1914, who served through until 1918 as the Australian Imperial Force. Comprised mainly of the 20,000 combined force of infantry and light cavalry, they were sent to the beaches of Gallipoli where their strengths were mostly wasted. They made landfall on April 25, 1915 - this day is now known and celebrated yearly as Anzac Day. Due to poor leadership from British commanders and botched orders, the stalemate on the Turkish shore lasted 8 months, after which the AIF was re-deployed and re-organized in Egypt. The AIF forces were consolidated and expanded, before the infantry was moved to France to distinguish themselves during several battles in that theatre and the cavalry elements returned to Turkey once more in a more successful and less wasteful war. The total cost in lives to the burgeoning nation of Australia was 61,859 men killed or wounded, a massive proportion of the tiny population which was felt all over Australia. To this day, even the smallest township in outback Australia is likely to feature an Anzac monument detailing their dead.

The Second World War came in 1939 and ended in 1945. Australian Army and Royal Australian Air Force units saw action in North Africa, Greece, Crete and Lebanon. During the Battle of Tobruk the Australian 9th Division distinguished themselves against Rommel’s German Panzer divisions, earning themselves the title The Rats of Tobruk. They held against the siege for five months in the searing deserts of North Africa against the most feared aspect of the German forces, their tanks divisions, until they were gradually withdrawn and relieved by British forces. During this time, Japanese forces were moving south towards Australia and northern parts of Australia, including Darwin, were bombed heavily by the Japanese. The Australian Militia, part-time soldiers reserved as the final line of defense for Australia were deployed to the Kokoda Track on New Guinea, just north of Australia, to resist the numerically superior Japanese forces. They were later joined by the conventional Australian military and the invading forces were turned back.

Australian forces were deployed in the Vietnam War during 1962 and continued fighting until 1972, a full decade later. Over the course of the war 50,000 troops from Australia’s combined forces were deployed, fighting alongside the U.S. forces against the Chinese and the Vietcong. During the Gulf War Australian forces played a heavy role in enforcing sanctions on Iraq following the invasion of Kuwait. Australian forces also deployed into Afghanistan and Iraq during the early 2000’s in support of U.S. forces during the global War on Terror. A large proportion of those forces are still deployed in the region.

During our 107 year history we have also participated in a large number of regionally local peace keeping operations along with many other across the globe. We can also only speculate as to the actions of our Special Air Service, our elite special forces units that are recognized world wide as the best of the best, in all this time.

Our fighting men and women have sacrificed their lives in the pursuit of the Australian values and way of life that we value so highly. They will continue to do so for many more years, bringing the spirit of the Australian forces to the corners of the globe whenever they are called.

Anzac Day, April 25th. Separately or together we demonstrate our appreciation of the efforts of our service men and women. Today, we true blue Aussies, we folk of down under, honour our dead and remember in our own quiet ways the sacrifice of the few for the many.

Lest We Forget.

FG.