fires again

fires are threatening my house again so I wont be online for who knows how long. I have to pack up my computer right now. wish me luck.

FYI

Between actually doing homework and reading my brains out I've gotten back into WOW for a bit. I can now say I've gotten two char up to 60. My Shammy just dinged and omg it was too easy. I'm glad they're made some changes but damn I only died when I went balls out and took on groups of 4 or more. I remember outlands being crazy and awesome weapons right off the bat but really things seem a bit outta hand. I can go from battle too battle generating more mana and health than i know what to do with. Pretty sure I could still rock mobs with nothing but my daggers and undies.(picture not included) Anyways I'm kinda back up and on but still gotta get shit done these days (for another month!). Let me know any thoughts.

RUN!!! and shoot!

Hey all, how are things? Life treating you well? I'm here in my batcave writing me a program to blink some LEDs...sure, it's not fabulous, but still kind of amazing in and of itself.

Anyways, been keeping up with my gaming news and one in particular has come under my radar...

LEFT 4 DEAD

It's quite simple, you're one of four people who find themselves in a zombie apocalypse! I believe there are a series of four missions with different objectives in which you have to consistently beat the onrush of zombies.

Things become more hectic in that there exists this somewhat enigmatic figure called "The Director" which I'm not quite sure weather or not has an in game avatar...or if it's just an AI. Regardless, it dictates when / where the zombie rush will come and seems to know the right time to hit you and quite unexpectidely.

To add to the craziness, there are four types of "boss" zombies, which are playable in a 4 vs. 4 match where teams take turns playing as survivors or infected. Even while playing only as survivors these badies come up. Apparently, the infected act as griefers, dashing the hopes and dreams of the survivors. For example, when all is quiet and you've strayed a little to the left of your team, BAM! you get pounced on by "the Hunter."

Here's the intro clip:

Left 4 Dead 'Intro' clip

Left 4 Dead 'Tank' clip

If any are interested, the demo is up on steam.

I've been following the game via Rock, Paper, Shotgun (RPS). Here are some articles that really perked my interest in the game:

Walkthrough of the Left 4 Dead Dead Air campaign.
A narrative of the RPS team's adventures in versus mode.
Some first impressions of the game.

I'm planning on trying the demo out first, because I don't know if my hardware will take much of a liking to a zombie apocalypse. Luckily, the game is developed using the source engine which as we all know, works fairly well on some older hardware. Now let's see if def was able to download it, LOL!

A Warcraft Photo Essay

Humor dump...

It's monday! Yay! More work! Wait...wha?

Mephistopheles meets the EULA...

Makes me think that any of those "make a pact with the devil" type stories could have been easily solved with an EULA...remind me to carry one in my wallet...just in case...

It's surprising how years later, I can still watch a Matrix spoof and be entertained. Who would have guessed? So what would have happened if the Matrix ran on Windows? Screw that, I wouldn't want a USB device driver somewhere in my head to run the USB port...



Hope everyone had a great weekend and is having a good day!

Ducotte's sweet ride

Guess who got the big flying mount?





On a related note, guess who is completely broke now? Yeah... /sigh

Cupiversary!

In the Cup: bringing you shit in half full / half empty cups for 1 year! (Well technically this blog has been around since the 4th, but it didn’t take on its full cupness until the 9th, and I know it’s still the 8th, but better early than forgetting entirely…)



I think we can all agree that this has been an eventful year, and I know I’m glad the Cup was around to help us all share our adventures, writing, discoveries, marmots, etc with each other. Would the art form of pee-ku have ever been invented otherwise? I think not.

Back when we first started, I had no idea what to expect, but I definitely didn’t foresee us getting so much use out of this blog. I think it really has helped keep us all connected in spite of physical distance and hectic schedules. I especially didn’t expect the literary turn that it has taken at times, but I’ve really enjoyed getting to see Crow’s work, and this blog actually got me to try writing poetry again, which I highly doubt would have happened without a friendly forum in which to share it. In the Text was an interesting experiment that I think we should try again (maybe next summer when people have some time), preferably with a book I haven’t memorized this time.

And really, where else do you find blog entries labeled “Gollum-looking-mother-fuckers” and “Dan’s soul.” Good times. Happy birthday, Cup! Here’s to many more years of ray guns, shit, and of course friendship.

For all those my little ponies you have stashed away in the attic...

Ok, so they were technically your sister's, but I'm pretty sure everybody used them as ninja turtle mounts or attacked them with jurassic park dinosaurs. Anyway, best use of my little ponies evar:




There's also Batman and Joker, which looked familiar to me, but if someone already posted them here, I couldn't find them. Maybe it was Kotaku or something.

Opposition work in progress

Unforgiving concrete devours all the grass

Children laughing playing hopscotch on a familiar sidewalk

Insane heat rises off shit black asphalt, boiling our blood and stimulating violence

Cool ocean breeze,
swimming pools,
running through the sprinklers,
cheap plastic fans whizzing day and night,
relief found in the shade of a tall building.

Shotgun shots echo through the alley behind your house, a dead baby found in a dumpster, handcuffs being placed on another juvenile, dope fiends scratching imaginary itches, begging
for spare change in exchange for "God bless you"

Museums and universities crowded with eager minds,
Mom's quesadillas after church,
the freedom of skateboarding to nowhere with homies,
Grandmother's rough touch as she crosses your forehead and recites "God keep you"

Smog the color of cigarette ash robs the sky of it's blueness
and a generation of asthmatics are born gasping for clean in air in vain

Through the haze of the L.A. skyline a sunset becomes
an explosion of pigment,
a box of crayons melting in the sun,
restoring our faith,
reminding us,
we are home.

One Small Step for Man

So for the first time I went and worked the polls on election day. This picture is of the line at our polling place in the morning. People were already lining up to vote at like 6:30am! At one point there was an hour an a half wait.

Some people treated us like customer service workers with "I will have satisfaction" attitudes. More still were the people who realized that we were all volunteers trying our best to make things go smoothly. We got many thank yous for volunteering from people. One lady said she was going to go get us some cookies that she had baked. Within 10 minutes she was back with some tasty chocolate chip cookies for us. Another woman brought us cokes and bananas and offered to go pick up any food or anything we might want!

Everyone was expecting an after work 5pm rush to polls that never came. People made sure they voted absentee or early. So the last couple hours were a lot more relaxed than the huge rush of the morning. The most memorable moment of that time was when an excited flustered woman came in to drop off her absentee ballot. Her ballot was all crumpled up as was the envelope and we had to tell her she needed to put it in the envelope, seal it, and sign it, as she didn't seem to know what to do with herself. She asked us "you guys didn't hear?" We had all been required to be at the polls with no breaks from 5pm on so we said "no what's going on?" She said "He won virginia! McCain has to win the entire West Coast to even have a chance!" Needless to say we were all happily shocked blinking at each other and smiling ear to ear. When we were cleaning up after the polls closed one of the clerks said "hey guys want to see something?" We said sure and she showed us the screen of her iphone with a picture of Obama and little color coded bar graphs of the electoral votes: Obama 364 McCain 163. That was the happiest a graph had ever made me feel in my life.

And yet it still didn't sink in. I honked my horn with 20 other cars at MLK and University that night and it still hadn't sunk in. I talked with Adam late into the night, called my Mom, and went to sleep. When I finally woke up today it was because a group of children were walking by outside chanting "Obama! Obama! Obama!" It made me wake up with a big smile on my face. I went on with breakfast and the internet. I read on Crooks and Liars that people were standing outside the White House singing "Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Hey Hey Goodbye". Then I watched Obama's acceptance speech and was brought to tears several times. We did it. No third term for BushCo. There's a chance now for this country to flourish once again as a whole and not just 1% of it. Now he just needs to be the change we've been talking about for so long. We still have work to do and long roads to travel.