I created a Facebook profile.  I sent friend requests to a few people.  If you’re not one of those people, feel free to send me one.  I’m not promising that I’ll use or update it any more than my MySpace; however, the fact that Facebook doesn’t look like the internet threw up on it makes me more likely to log in some as opposed to none.  Plus I think it’ll repost my blog posts from my feed, so that those of you who use Facebook all the time but don’t want to have to check this website (ahem) should be able to keep up with, let’s say, photos of Emma.

Bill Cosby has shown conclusively that kids say funny things.  But if you’re not convinced, here is further proof..  A few months ago we had some friends over, and they had their kids with them: Julia, going on 3 at the time, and Ethan, about 5 and a half years old.  When the kids got bored (very shortly after they arrived), they began looking for things to do.  Ethan very quickly found our DVD/video game rack.  He started looking through our games, with no regards to alphabetical order.  I suppose the fact that he can barely read at this point makes alphabetizing difficult, and it also makes identifying the game from the binder side nearly impossible.  He was drawn to the robot/cyborg looking character on the cover of the Metroid Prime 2 box, and asked to play that.  I thought the controls for a console first-person-shooter would be a little complicated for a five year old, but we let him try any way (sorry ESRB, I know you rated the game “T for Teen”).  I was surprised when he managed to pull off a screw attack, one of the harder things to do in that game.  He could have just gotten lucky with the timing while mashing the B button repeatedly, but I saw him do it more than once.

He ran around for a while, shooting stuff and turning into the morph ball and back, but he didn’t really know what he was supposed to be doing so he got tired of the game and went back to the rack.  Then I heard him say “Mario Paint Cleaner!”  By which he meant, of course, Super Mario Sunshine, which involves cleaning graffiti off of walls.  This was a game he had played before, but I was nonetheless impressed by this five-year-old’s skillz.  I saw him jump on a tight-rope, then jump off of it and use the hover nozzle in mid-air in order to reach another rope.  Not too shabby for a five-year-old.

Of course, I refuse to play him in Smash Brothers.  I don’t need to risk being humiliated by someone who was still in diapers when I started playing the game.

Dane Cook has a stand-up routine where he addresses the misconception that all men care about is sex.  As counter-example, he points out that every man in the world would like to be a part of a heist, running down main street with a machine gun yelling “Where’s the van??  The van was supposed to be here!!”  Even more than that, he says, every man wants to have a monkey.

This is all good, but there are other things that should be added to the list.  In particular would be to have someone break into your house, and then defend yourself with awesome ninja skillz.  (I heard in a movie once that girls like guys with skillz).  For that reason, I name Damian Fernandez, who waited in his bedroom for an intruder to enter and then stabbed him in the chest with a ninja sword, the coolest fifteen-year-old ever.

Note: you can follow this link to listen to the Dane Cook bit I mentioned.  But that link is not in any way an endorsement of the extremely not-funny-or-interesting Halo machinima.

The top ten best-selling video games of 2006 (as reported by NextGen):

10. Need For Speed Carbon
9. Fight Night Round 3
8. Call Of Duty 3
7. Kingdom Hearts II
6. Gears Of War
5. New Super Mario Bros.
4. NCAA Football 07
3. Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy
2. Cars
1. Madden NFL 07

Cars was the 2nd best selling game in North America of 2006.  Seriously.  I was surprised too.  But Madden is no surprise, selling two-and-a-half times more copies than Cars.  I don’t understand the drive to play the same game over and over again every year.  I know someone who didn’t get a new system last time around until they stopped making Madden on the N64, at which point he bought a GameCube (as it was the cheapest).  He will probably buy his next system when they stop making Madden for the Cube.  That makes no sense to me.  I’m also kind of surprised to see Gears Of War in the top ten, not that I’m implying it is a bad game, I just didn’t realize there were enough 360’s for it to be a top-ten game.  The full article is interesting but kind of long (16 pages long), so if you’re bored you should check it out.

On a side note, why do online news article insist on using “pages” anyway?  Nine out of ten dentists agree that webpages can now scroll vertically without negatively affecting their usability.

What does etiquette dictate that one do when someone uses the n-word in conversation?  When we were at the police station recently, the other couple there was present when the guys were brought in, and they mentioned to us more than once that the guys were a bunch of “stupid niggers.”  Another time a coworker (at another job) was talking about when he was in the Marines going after some “sand niggers.”  It surprises me that some people still think and talk this way, so I don’t know how to react.  I imagine most people wouldn’t say anything but would feel extremely uneasy..  At least, that’s how I what I did.  Is there a more appropriate reaction?

Jim: What did you just call me?
Huck Griffin: I thought that was your name.
Jim: That is our word! You have no right to use it!
Huck Griffin: Hey hey hey, I’m cool, I’m cool, no problem!
...
Huck Griffin: So, could you pass me the oar, n-word Jim?
Jim: Thank you.

--The Family Guy

Today marks one quarter of one century that yours truly has graced this planet with his presence.  In honor of this momentous occasion, I will now discuss things that I pledge, as an aging person, not to say in the coming twenty-five years.

The problem with America today is ...
I do not believe that getting older means you’ve suddenly figured everything out.  Do you know how many topics have been identified as the problem with America?  Seven hundred and thirty four different topics, according to statistics I just made up.  I think it is plain to see that the world is very complex.  I won’t let myself fall under the assumption that the world is constantly degrading.  If anything I think they are improving (despite what the news tells you).

Kids these days have it too easy.
You may have also heard this stated like this:  “When I was a kid I had to walk to school.  In the snow.  Barefoot!  Uphill!!  BOTH WAYS!!!”  It is a tired cliché, and old people seem to jump on it left and right.  Political candidates have used it to win votes for a very long time.  Yeah, technology is making a lot of things easier (and isn’t that what we want anyway?), but there will always be new challenges to kids that their elders didn’t even have to worry about.  Like how my grandparents didn’t have to worry about getting germs from black people when using a public water fountain, but my generation is constantly assailed with negro germs.

The last good band was The Smashing Pumpkins, the last entertaining video game was Super Mario 64, and the last funny movie was Happy Gilmore.
This is a big one, and I refuse—I repeat: refuse!—to succumb to the notion that somehow I happened to be fifteen years old when all the best bands, movies, TV shows, and video games came out.  I’m not sure what causes people to think this way as they age, but I think we have all seen it time and time again.  I’m not saying I will be one of those old people who tries to pretend he’s one of the cool kids (like that guy who graduated high school two years before you, but he would still hang out in the parking lot after school, and as far as you know he still does).  I’m just saying I won’t act like I lived in some kind of magical golden age where nothing sucked.  I guess people only remember the things they like, and they replay those things in their mind over and over.  When these memories—ripened into nostalgia by years of rumination—are placed against fresh, unfiltered new media...  well, there is no contest.  In the coming twenty-five years I will attempt to be conscious of the fact that things might not have been as good as I remember them.  I have already started this process.  For instance, as much I would like to, I will not assert that Animaniacs is somehow more sophisticated that SpongeBob SquarePants, or that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has a better premise than Pokémon.  I think only the eight-year-old me and a modern eight-year-old could take up that argument.  Presumably with nunchucks and Pokéballs.

Well there you have it.  Originally the list was longer, but there was a lot of redundancy.  Basically everything boiled down to “new stuff sucks” and “there is no hope for our kids.”  I will strive to keep these campaign goals, and in twenty-five years I will present a status report, evaluating my performance in achieving these goals.  Stay tuned!

Do not say, “Why were the old days better than these?”  For it is not wise to ask such questions.
—Ecc 7:10

The other day I somehow ended being the best available option for being The Person In Charge Of Games Time for the kids in Awana Club at church.  This is kind of unusual, since I’m at best something like tenth in line.  Somehow everyone else was sick or had car trouble or had to visit a sick relative or something.  Now I am the only man in the church who does not have children, so I guess they were pretty desperate.  So there I am, basically being something like a P.E. teacher for little kids who I have no idea how to control or relate to, and I only know the names of like three of them.  Daniel (who would normally be doing this) told me the kids pretty much knew the rules to all the games, and that I could do dodgeball or relay race.  So I decided dodgeball was really simple so I’d have them play that.  I found out that they don’t normally play dodgeball the way I learned it.  I always played where you divide up into two groups, one group makes a big circle, the other is inside the circle.  Those on the outside of the circle throw the ball at those on the inside, and if you get hit you become part of the circle (but hits above the waist don’t count...  so that they don’t take each others’ heads off).  So we played the way I knew the game.

First up was the older group of kids (as in, third through fifth grade I think).  This didn’t go so bad, because there were two other adults out there, and the kids understood how to play dodgeball after I explained the game.  For the most part they took care of themselves.  After about 25 minutes they went in, and it was time for the younger kids (K-2ish I think?) to come out.  This time, there were no adults to help me out, so I was left alone to try to manage twelve kids.  Well they didn’t take as well to dodgeball.  They didn’t understand the rules, and soon got bored and started running around, basically playing tag.  My efforts to keep them playing dodgeball had little effect, and I don’t know their names and most of them didn’t know me.  I could go on, but the point is that it went pretty badly.  But no one got hurt or anything so I guess it could have gone worse.  After only about 15 minutes of the 20-25 minute game time, I sent the kids back inside for their teachers to deal with. :)

While I was watching these kids, I observed a few behaviors.  One of the kids went off to the side and sat down.  When asked why he wasn’t playing, he said he didn’t get to throw the ball.  I told him he definitely wasn’t going to get the ball if he was sitting off to the side.  Then there were some other groups of kids that just wanted to chase one another.  There were some girls that really just wanted to talk to each other, having no interest in the game.  Then there were the more competitive boys, who actually had an interest in winning the game.  I’ll call it a microcosm of society.

Now that this experience is behind me, hopefully I won’t be in charge of little kids again for quite some time.

I’m on MySpace now.  I only created a profile because it told me I had to be logged in to read someone’s blog (but I don’t think that’s true anymore).  I was originally going to try to make it look nice, but then I lost interest and made it really tacky instead (much easier to do).  I even put up an extremely low-quality image to give it a finishing touch, which has been faithfully reproduced to your right (highest JPEG compression level Photoshop would allow!).

So.. let me know if you want to be my friend.. or whatever it is you do on MySpace.  So far I’m only getting friend requests from porn sites, so it will be a nice change.  Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t see how MySpace got so popular in the first place.  It’s like GeoCities was nine years ago, except now there are more ads, more idiots, and more people trying to sell you Cialis and consolidate your debts.  And some of the things you can choose to show in your profile make no sense, even if you think of it as a dating site—I mean, income??  Who would possibly list their income on their web page?  And it keeps telling me I need to list my school.  Maybe this is unusual, but I don’t go to a school anymore.

In conclusion, you’re welcome to visit my MySpace space.  Just don’t expect me to be there.

Recently a few friends of mine have posted their top 20 or top 25 favorite games of all time on their blogs.  Not to be outdone, I have compiled this list of my top twenty-six games of all time.  :)

26. Metroid:  Should I have included this?  I never truly played the game as it was meant to be played.  I just entered the “Justin Bailey” code and explored to see how far I could get.  This was how I would frequently spend several hours in the afternoon when I got home from school.  But this game was more or less my introduction to video games so I think it must be included.
25. New Super Mario Bros.:  I ranked this game kind of low because it is very recent and may not stand the test of time, but the game was fantastic.  It was a little on the easy side—I mean, I managed to get everything in the game without using any FAQs.  But it was great, and I liked that they resisted the urge to include elements like flying from SMB3 and SMW—you actually want to get fire flowers again!  What I’d really love to see next is New Super Mario Bros. 2, such that NSMB2:SMB2::NSMB:SMB.
24. Half Life 2:  Another one that might be higher if it weren’t for the fact that I am just now playing through it, but it has every indication of being a favorite.  With PC games I don’t mind waiting until they are cheaper and patched.  I consider any PC game straight out of the box to be more like a public beta than a final release.  But I’m a console gamer at heart.
23. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles In Time:  This may seem a little out of place, but it was a really fun beat-em-up game.  Not sure how well it would stand up now though.
22. Mario Kart: Double Dash:  This game was lots of fun as long as you played it the right way—two people to a kart.  I can imagine that I wouldn’t have liked this game so much if I hadn’t played through it with Garrison.  It suffered from the same problem as every other Mario Kart though: once you unlock every track you don’t really want to play anymore.
21. Goldeneye 007:  A classic.  Caverns and Frigate were my favorite levels.  I got all the cheat codes.  That was not an easy task—to get the last one I played the same stage (Facility on 00 Agent) over and over for like four hours straight!
20. Unreal Tournament:  The only FPS that I spent significant time on in multiplayer.  Morpheus r0x0r3d.
19. Donkey Kong Country:  The game that pushed the limits of 16-bit gaming to new levels.  I remember being on the phone with Peter as we tried to figure out where the last two secrets were, in order to get the coveted 101% rating.
18. Metal Gear Solid 2:  The only game for a Sony system that will make it on this list, this game was really cool.  I haven’t played MGS3 yet, maybe some day...
17. Super Mario Bros. 3:  What list would be complete without this game?  This was the upper limit of what an 8-bit system could do.  I have to confess that I never beat the game without Game Genie until I played the Super Mario All-Stars version much later.
16. Banjo-Kazooie:  3D platformers never managed to take hold like they did in 2D, but I liked them a lot, and this one was lots of fun.  I don’t really have a problem with collecting five thousand tokens in every level.
15. Animal Crossing:  I would be remiss as a list-maker if I didn’t include this game, even if it calls my sexual orientation into question.  Non-simultaneous multiplayer!  A game that you never really beat, you just sort of get tired of playing it!  Interesting sidenote: my in-laws love this game and have two avatars each.
14. Final Doom:  For those unaware, Final Doom was the Doom 2 engine, playing two complete, 32-level games (TNT: Evilution [sic] and The Plutonia Experiment).  I also loaded the “Ultimate Doom” levels (the original game plus a few new levels).  Anyway, I remember playing this when I was in high school.  Anytime I hear a song from Live’s “Secret Samadhi” album I think of this game, because I listened to it while playing for a while.  I also had a lot of fun creating a few Doom levels, and playing multiplayer with Garrison and Peter.  Of course, this was back in the day when you had to have no less than four phone lines to do a 1-on-1 death match: one for each computer and one for each person so that you could decide when your modem should call their modem.  Fun times.
13. Mega Man X:  I liked the X games much more than the main series, although I do have fond memories of holding “left” on controller 2 with my foot while playing Mega Man 3.  I remember X2 and X3 being pretty good too, but I never owned them, so only X1 is represented here.
12. Roller Coaster Tycoon:  Countless hours freshmen year of college were spent designing wicked roller coasters.  So much fun.  I’ve recently gotten Roller Coaster Tycoon 3, which is the same thing but 3D and you can ride the rides.  Only difference is I have less free time now.
11. Super Mario 64:  The first thing I did was climb a tree.  The second thing I did was jump in the moat.  So much freedom!  It was amazing!  I’d really like to see a remake of this game with modern graphics (kind of like Super Mario All Stars did with the original SMB games).
10. Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest:  The best of the DKC games.  Graphics were actually improved from the first game, and gameplay was expanded, and the difficulty went up a little bit to more or less exactly where I would like it to be.
9. Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem:  This game was amazing, with an unusually good storyline.  I went back through it two summers ago and still enjoyed the story.
8. Prince Of Persia: Sands Of Time:  An amazing game, with innovative controls that allow you to easily do things that look incredibly cool.  Unfortunately the sequel sucked.  Anyone know if the third one was any good?  I never bothered to give it a try..
7. The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time:  Link made a transition into 3D flawlessly.  I can’t wait to play Twilight Princess this year.
6. Metroid Prime:  Another great transition to 3D (despite what Ryan says).  This game really felt more like a first-person Zelda game than a first person shooter.  All the exploration from Super Metroid was still there.  I didn’t like the sequel quite as much because it felt much more FPS-y, even though it was a decent game.
5. Super Mario RPG:  This is the only RPG I’ve ever really played unless you count the “sequels” Paper Mario and Paper Mario 2.  Owning only Nintendo systems has made it difficult to play them..  I really enjoyed watching Garrison play Skies of Arcadia though.
4. Super Metroid:  I remember the day I got this game I played for like six hours straight without a Player’s Guide or anything, made it all the way to that big room in Maridia where you use the Grapple Beam to get across the top of the room to the door going up, and there’s a platform under the door and you can use the grapple beam to spin all the way around it.  I eventually beat this game with 100% in less than three hours to get the best ending.
3. Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island:  My favorite Mario game.  The graphics were a nice break from what everyone was used to, and the levels were really fun.  Too bad the “Yoshi’s Story” pseudo-sequels weren’t very good.  But now they’re actually making a true sequel for the DS!
2. The Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker:  A lot of people shied away from this game because of the cartoon graphics, which is really a shame.  This is definitely my favorite Zelda game.  I loved the exploration and the vastness of the world (even if it was all water).

Drum roll please!

1. Super Smash Bros. Melee:  The best game to have in a dorm, hands down.  Junior year of college was awesome because of this game alone.  Garrison and I even organized tournaments.  I put the tournament posters back up on my site today, in case you’ve never seen them.  I wonder.. will we still be playing this game thirty years from now?  The gameplay is perfect and I think the graphics will hold up (unlike.. say.. Smash for the N64).  I am concerned that Super Smash Bros. Brawl will be unable to live up to this game.  I guess time will tell.

Some honorable mentions go out to the following great games, left out to give the list more variety: The Legend Of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past, Metroid Fusion, Metroid: Zero Mission, Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong’s Double Trouble.

It is now year 20X5 of the history of the cosmos, and something terrible has happened.

Growing up, some people might say I was a little sheltered by my parents.  Looking back, I would say that I agree, but I don’t feel that it was a bad thing at all.  We didn’t watch all this garbage that is on TV these days.  Then again, I don’t really remember what was on TV back when I was growing up.  However, I do remember one thing that we loved to watch over and over again, and in my opinion this is what really kicked off the “Princess” fad.  My mother would go to library repeatedly to check out the Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre.  This was a series of the old faerie tales that we all know and love, but performed by real people, some of my more favorite movies being The Dancing Princesses, The Three Little Pigs, and of course, The Princess and the Pea.  I tell you all of this background because this past weekend, Kip and I were up in Raleigh visiting with friends and my little sister.  While we were there, Mandy and I watched her copy of Rogers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella.  This prompted me to tell Mandy that what I would really like for Christmas this year, was a copy of The Dancing Princesses on DVD.  She proceeded to say that it was totally awesome.  When we got home, I had to go to BJ’s to get new tires for my car, and while waiting I wandered around the store and found a DVD which was the complete collection of Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre.  Of course I immediately bought and have been watching the movies contained on the six disc set of movies.  For those of you that are unaware of the number of movies contained in the collection, I will quantify it for you; there are 26 faerie tales in all.  And they are all totally amazing.  Kip has been “watching” them with me, but doesn’t seem as totally enamored with them as I am, but he doesn’t seem to understand the awesomenisity of their awesomeness.  He doesn’t realize that growing up watching these movies and totally loving them then has caused me to not care how old they look, or how bad the acting is.  They are the movies that helped to mold and shape my young mind.  I will always love and cherish them for as long as I live.  What is even cooler is that the next generation of little Princesses is going to get to experience the magic of this series as well since my mother wanted me to get a copy of the collection for her to give Peanut (my soon to be niece) for her to watch as she grows up too!!!