A Short Treatise on Football Players and Comedians

Jay Leno == Brett Favre

They’re both old fucks who don’t know when to give it up.  The End.

WIZP

And now for my semi-random feature: what is Zach playing. Once again my games plate is overflowing. I’m switching back and forth quite a bit…

1. Jay got me a copy of Darksiders for xmas– I think I’ve gotten too used to carebear tutorials in new games because the first stage of this game kicked my goddamn shit.  The story, graphics, and everything else are awesome, but I’m still wary of games that have so many actions that important ones (that I need to use to survive) are mapped to things like: Use left control stick towards enemy and right bumper while pressing X.  All that means is that when I need to do something important my dude spazzes out while I try to figure out the button combos.  Then he usually dies.  I’ll report back more when I’ve played it.
2. After much, much prodding and watching Jay play it a million times I started to try to play League of Legends.  It’s like eleventy dimensional chess; 5v5 fights on a (deceivingly) simple map where you choose from one of 40 champions or so.  All of them have different abilities, all of them work differently in different team-ups/match-ups, and as with any competitive internet game is filled with arrogant douchebags.This a video where someone explains how to control spacing fer christs sake.

3. Patch 3.3 of World of Warcraft dropped in early December when I was in California.  They added a mechanic for doing cross-server grouping for dungeons that is real easy.  Match that with the fact that they buffed those dungeons to have awesome rewards and I’ve been running at least one a day.
4. Playing a lot of Defender Chronicles on my iPhone when I’m just siting around.   Awesome game.
5. I got to the very end of Dragon Age: Origins but didn’t finish it; I just petered out in the last dungeon for whatever reason.  Maybe I’ll finish at some point.
6. Almost forgot! Steam was having a sale after Xmas and I was able to get Torchlight for $4.99, which is just a Saint Vinnies bargain for what you get.  A really cool simple dungeon crawl game.

Lots of deadlines at work this week, and wwhazz/belly are going to be on vacation.  Cal’s new year enthusiasm will have to carry us through on its own.

Also, for those that read down this far on my posts: wiki.whazzmaster.com

Thank You Jay

This is really good. You should watch it. Happy New Year. Also, I’m a-cookin’ a-somethin’ up. I’m just waiting on some tech support issues to be resolved.

My Saturday

Today I spent an hour at Garys Hobby Center and then ate a sub from Lee’s Deli. All in all a great experience!

The Door’s Almost Shut

We’re approaching zero hour on 2009 and I couldn’t shrug my shoulders harder if I goddamn tried.  Work is busy and I’m attempting to purchase trinkets for everyone I know by next week.  Me and spacebee and belly and wwhazz ate at Pedros-Pedros-may-keen-mayx-ee-can the other night after a night of shopping.  It was a grand ol’ time, especially that deep-fried Snickers bar for dessert.

Not much goings-on elsewhere so I’d like to frankly discuss the 1964 classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.  Thusly: it’s not entirely clear to me just what drugs the creators were using, but I salute them and their efforts.  In a story ostensibly about the titular reindeer the spotlight instead falls upon (a) an elf desperately seeking a career in dentistry and (b) a north woodsman with a revolver hanging from his belt that clearly has mental problems.  It seems to me that the writers wanted to craft a different story entirely but were forced by the General Electric corporation to adapt their lunacy into a framework descended primarily from a one minute Christmas tune.  I don’t know whether the coercion took the form of ducats or whippings– the result is the same.  Also: everyone really hated that fucking Rudolph.  They just shit on him and shit on him until he saved the goddamn day.  He should have pooped in Santa’s mouth.

For those not on the spacebook, my concise review of How the Grinch Stole Christmas:

Zachery Moneypenny feels that the grinch was right to hate those whos- did you see the lunatic instruments they endlessly played?! How bout this: I’ll buy your downstairs neighbor a musical abomination consisting of a bowling ball, a huge metal pipe, and CHIMES and we’ll see if a steampunk xray machine detects any heart shrinkage on YOU.

I have nothing else to say about that shit.  Let’s all get together some Thursday night and watch star trek dvds.  I have one season on dvd (five, I think?) and can provide whiskey.

Everyone else out there: HAVE A GODDAMNED MERRY XMAS!

SNOW!!!1!WATCHOUT

Yo ho hello there go to San Ho and do a show there.  I picked an excellent week to fly hither and yon around the country as Wisconsin is currently experiencing some heavy snowfall and all-around miserable weather.  I’m sitting high and mighty in the comforts of the Palo Alto Crowne Plaza, sipping Crown & Cokes and watching Sportscenter on the ridiculously lavish 25″ old-timey, non-flatscreen tee vee. I feel BAD for my betrothed; she’s shivering in the cold while I’m chillin’ out maxin’ relaxin’ all cool.

Madd:  Saturday? I haven’t heard from you yet.  We could galavant into San Francisco and take Cal hostage on the N-Judah.  Stick your finger in his back and whisper menacingly “I’ve got a knife” and then march him down to McTeague’s Steam Beer Saloon and fill him full of spirits.  Flossie can come too.

Old Posts, New Friends.

BREAKING BREAKING BREAKING MUST CREDIT WM.COM

Exciting news!  I’ve been officially added to another Enemies List! More details as they become available…

Cal is a Weenis

My dude is on the left

So you don’t like my post titles, eh Cal?  Then become one, wretch!

Yeah, it’s been awhile– lots of great games came out over the last month, plus I’ve been sick since last Tuesday.  Thanksgiving was tony-the-tiger grrreat but would have been way better had I not been sick.  Say lah vee.  My whole family came into town and we aprtied at our place.  Highlight: dinner at The Old Fashioned with my parents.

So as I said the games have been a flowin’. Last week I beat Assassin’s Creed II and then mopped up the last few items I needed to find to unlock secret endings and all that jazz.  AC2 was an awesome game and I’ll still go back to play it just to run around the rooftops of Venice.

I also laid the final beatdown on Borderlands two weeks ago, so now I’m max level with two playthroughs and a shotgun that deals in hot death.  I bought the first DLC that came out last week and my review: a solid meh.  The problem with it is that I’m max level, so it doesn’t progress my dude much.  The only thing left is MOAR LOOTZ and even a few hours into it I haven’t found a single usable drop from an enemy yet.  The problem with a game that has 17.5 million different guns is that it’s extraordinarily difficult to find one you want.  Once you get a really good weapon (like my 257×9 shotgun) it’s almost impossible to find anything better.  The story is ok, with some humorous parts and a good flow so far, but it’s not holding my attention very well.

Which leads us to Dragon Age.  I got my new computer hooked up so I can finally play it (and it looks goddamned beautiful), but it kinda sat there for awhile.  I went through the opening tutorial/get-the-story-kickstarted part and immediately got fucking murdered by a ton of really hard enemies.  I played that part (and wiped) five times and then I just set the difficulty to Easy mode and got on with my life.  The story is REALLY great and absorbing, but my biggest problem is that you will spend upwards of 15-20 minutes having dialog wars with other characters.  My biggest peeve is that you have to sit through 60 seconds of cinematic dialog just to talk to a damn shopkeeper to buy some health potions.  A lot of reviews have ranted and raved that they’ve been playing for 25+ hours and are still addicted; it’s easy to see why when you’re still in the tutorial stage at hour five.  I do understand what they’re saying, though, since even as I complain I want to hop back in and keep moving the story forward.

I’ll be in California next week, and fuddruckus suggested a re-edit of Cinnabar/Bee an’ Jeezy.  Maybe the night of the 12th? I don’t fly out until 7pm the next day. HOLLLLLLLAR!

Tromboneulous

I have nothing to say, more or less. Got switched to a new group at work, and the year (and decade) is coming to a close. Poo poo pachu. This weekend I’ll be at the Wisconsin/Northwestern game down in Illinois, and next week is Whazzgiving.

The soup club is on: I delivered a white chicken chili and chemical burned my hands for, like, the millionth goddamn time.  Here’s what to get me for xmas: plastic gloves and a sign that says “USE THESE WHEN CUTTING CHILI PEPPERS YOU FUCK.”

In video game news, I finished up Borderlands this week (though the first DLC drops on 24th and I’ll be getting that) just in time to grab Assassin’s Creed II.  I’m a couple of hours into AC2 and so far it’s fucking great.  Also, my new gaming compy is coming on Monday and then I’ll be able to start Dragon Age. Woo!

That whole Golden Tee thing is a bummer, but I have faith that we’ll get a replacement eventually; and hopefully when we do we’ll have somewhere to put it.

Union. Reunion.

Rain Check

Attended Spacebee’s 10 year high school reunion last night down in Illinois.  It was a pretty fun time; I met a lot of her old ‘pals’ and had some Jameson.  Mandy’s awesome pa bought us a round of drinks via the token system at a local bar afterwards.

To follow up on the previous post, I beat Borderlands last week and started the second playthrough to try to get to level 50.  I started Dragon Age: Origins on my Macbook but it crashed every time I shut it down so I decided to wait on really diving in until I get a new gaming rig that can handle the game in all its glory.

Finally, a heads-up to wwhazz that this looks like a good solution for the project we were talking about.  I checked on costs and depending on how long it ends up being, we’d be looking at no more than $300 to publish plus $15-$20 per copy to purchase.  That’s incredibly doable– let’s get it started.