Reorganizing the Nerdery: A How To Clinic
Two nights in a row, I had vivid dreams. They were like two halves of a whole, and I never did see the ending. Oddly enough, I aware of what I was dreaming, and thinking to myself I wanted to see what was about to happen, but then opened my eyes and it was gone. The two-part dream mini-series began with me playing a soccer game and getting red-carded (ejected) for exploding on the referee for calling a corner kick when the ball went out near midfield (if soccer rules are confusing, I’ll simplify…this is impossible). So I’m going nuts on the ref, calling him everything in the book, telling him I’ll fucking kill him and all sorts of shit. Finally, they get me off the field, and I wind up at Will’s parents’ house. I’m sitting and watching video of the game (!?) to make sure I was right in being upset about the call. I remember telling someone (Will’s mom, I think) that the only way someone could make a call like that is if they were deliberately trying to steal the game from us. Part one ended with me outside some kind of arena, standing in a long line for tickets to…well, I don’t think I ever saw what. Part two had me watching the game tape again, this time with my dad, and asking him if all the profanities were on the tape, too. He laughed and said, "Oh yeah. All of it can be heard." Then I’m back outside that arena in the line for tickets again, when my mom pulls up in her old Grand Am (which she hasn’t had in about 5 or 6 years), and tells me there’s something important for me in the trunk…at which point I wake up. It’s still bugging me to know what was in there. But since that was two nights ago, I doubt I’ll ever find out.
About a week and a half from now, Tales of Legendia will come out for the PS2. I can’t wait. I’ve been at a loss for anything I felt like playing recently (until I stumbled into Makai Kingdom…awesome game). After beating Baten Kaitos finally (I played the shit out of it when I got it, and got stuck unable to beat the final boss), my want for a new RPG has risen ridiculously. Dragon Quest VIII hasn’t been doing it for me. The story is pretty lame. It doesn’t make me care about the characters, and the combat lacks variety. I may never finish it…of course, I said that about Star Ocean 3 and Baten Kaitos, so who knows. I’ve still never finished Final Fantasy X or X-2, either. But they were just okay with how well they grabbed me. For me, an RPG is all about combat and story. I’ve never been a fan of the classic turn-based thing. It takes most of the skill out of it. The only way to avoid getting hit is to be so much stronger than your opponents that you kill them all in one turn. But in games with an active combat system….skills matter. Tales of Legendia has active combat, as does Grandia III, so I’m told (which comes out about a month after Legendia…yeah, I’ve got ’em both reserved). Some games with turn-based combat are still quite enrapting because it’s done differently. In Baten Kaitos, it’s done in card battle form. You have a deck of cards with attack cards, defense cards, healing cards, etc., and you are dealt them randomly in battle. Makes it fun. Star Wars KOTOR and KOTOR II has turn-based fighting in it, but you’d never really know to look at it, because it happens in practically real-time, so you feel as if your skills matter. Chrono Cross had the attack-levels system, which means you had to build up enough steam with weaker attacks to use bigger ones at a high percentage. It works better than I make it sound. Chrono Trigger was pretty traditional, but featured tons of double team techs, which many games today still hesitate to implement. But even without the story (or characters to drive it), even combat is worthless. Though, I will admit…Star Ocean 2 had a pretty craptacular story. Almost unintelligible. But the battle system more than made up for it. It was the first RPG I ever played…and kept playing because I actually enjoyed it. Anyway…that’s my dorkiness rant for today.
Now Playing in Dave’s Mental Jukebox: "Stricken" by Disturbed (thank you, cell phone/alarm clock), "Whole" by Flaw, and "Isolate" by Paradise Lost
The weather is wreaking fucking havoc on my sinus cavities. It’s been the fucking weather yo-yo around here all winter long. We’ll go from mid-30’s for highs, to 70 degrees, back to lower 20’s for lows, back to mid-60’s, to snow (!?)….all in the span of a week. And it’s been some form of this literally since November. I hate it. Where the fuck is the actual winter I wanted? Intead, I just get watery eyes and a drippy nose. Fuck you, Ma Nature. I hate you so much right now.
I watched The Aristocrats last night, and it made me want to take a crack at writing my own version of the joke (as I’m sure it does pretty much anyone who sees it), so that’ll be coming at some point. I’d do it now, but it deserves its own entry, I think. If you have no clue what I’m talking about, either wait for mine….or rent the damn DVD. Hilarious.
I finally sat down last night and did The Reorganization that I knew was coming. Even a little purging, with more likely to follow. See, when I got shelves for my CD’s and movies for Christmas (or is it just "Holiday" still?…whatever), I just slapped everything up there. Well, it finally got to me last night. There was very little rhyme or reason to it, which just kills me. Stupid anal retentiveness. The CD’s were especially bad. Just thrown up there like vomit. So I took the time to put together artists I had multiples of, put those in alphabetical order, then put the single CD artists in alphabetical order, within genres. Oh, and there’s an ICP section and a Generic Soundtracks section (for movie and game scores, comedy CD’s…that kind of thing). I took my games and divided them up by console, then put them in alphabetical order. Much neater than the chaos I had going with them. The DVD’s were the hardest. There isn’t enough room on the three sets of shelves (!?) for all of them, so alphabetical was out. It would’ve excluded some favorites. So first I put all the Star Wars stuff on a shelf (nine DVD’s in all…six movies, one bonus disc from the box set, the two Clone Wars cartoon DVD’s). Next to them went the Japanese, then Chinese movies. Under all that went the kaiju movies (yes, apart from the regular Japanese films went the Godzilla and Gamera movies…shut up). Then most of the anime. The other shelf was where the problems were. What order to put the other movies in. I had about three and a half actual shelves to work with within two of the shelving units. Genre was out because it was too hard to catagorize a lot of stuff. Like I said, alphabetical was a horrible idea. So…I went with the most dangerous thing.&n
bsp; I ranked them by favorites. Yeah, you read that right. I took and put 98 of my movies in something resembling a top 100 list. Now, for reasons of spacing (not all DVD cases are the same size, double discs, box sets…etc.), it isn’t perfect. But, basically, it’s in order.
So much for just one dork-out per entry…
I think I shall now depart instead of shaming myself further. Not that there’s too far lower to go. But what the fuck do I care? It makes me happy, so fuck’ya. There, I said it.
Sayonara.