The Llama’s Lair

Vikings fighting aliens. There’d better be a translated version of this headed our way, or else I will be a very angry llama.

Okay… gaming market.

Up until the last two months, I could count the number of worthwhile releases on the “current gen” (360, PS3, Wii) systems on one hand. Now we’re hit with Prince of Persia, Farcry 2, Fable 2, Dead Space, The Force Unleashed, Mirror’s Edge, Fallout 3, and a bunch more I’m probably forgetting about.

What the heck? Now I have exactly zero cash and all of these amazing games are either hitting the market, or are about to.

Even the Fable, Farcry and Fallout sequels didn’t have the decency to suck so I could feel good about not being able to play them.

I heard this song a long time ago listening to the Kingdom of Loathing radio station and I’ve been trying to track it down since. And today Marein randomly posted a Youtube Link to it.

Well my father is expected to fully recover! Though he might need some therapy! Thanks to everyone who’s been thinking and praying for him.

Also, I wanted to make everyone aware that The Mysterious Geographical Explorations of Jasper Morello is now available for your free legal viewing pleasure on YouTube.

Okay, it seems that every time I post a link in a chatroom these days, people refuse to click it because they think it will be a rickroll.

So let me be clear here, Rickrolls stopped being funny six months ago. I will not rickroll you out of the blue, however if you are being obnoxious, I will direct you to this little gem of a rickroll that Coolgamer showed me. Which is by far the best rickroll ever.

Honestly, Rickrolls stopped being funny about six months ago. This whole MTV thing is stupid. It’s a meme that’s gotten just too far out of hand.

Hi blog people on the internet.

!Usual spiel about how long it’s been since Iive posted goes here.

Let’s see, I last posted on the fifteenth of September, what has occured in my life since that date?

I nabbed the collector’s edition of Warhammer Online and I’ve been playing that. If anyone wants to play with me, my main is on Dark Iron, but I’d be willing to roll a level 1 to quest with someone on either Destruction or Order. I’m thinking the game is pretty darn solid. It tries to improve on a lot of things that WoW does, and if you like story, it has a system where you can unlock various bits of backstory from exploring, just like in Mass Effect. And Mythic is actually serious about keeping spammers out of the game and keeps cracking down on them and making it easier for players to report them.

I picked up a second job working for my old school, doing as an assistant director on the fall play. Which is going over well so far, I get to work with some creative young minds. And the head director and student director get along with me and each other very well so it’s just a blast to head to practice every day.

I celebrated my 21st birthday by seeing Kamelot live in St. Paul with my sister and a good friend. By far one of the best birthdays in recent memory.

My father went off to and returned from a humanitarian aid mission in India.

I’ve ordered a new computer, which should be arriving in the next couple of weeks.

I’ve been working on getting my driver’s liscense again. Been driving with my parents whenever I can. Want to try to take the test again in a couple of weeks. Still need to work on my Parallel park and my 90-degree backout.

Yesterday day my father had surgery on his ear… But there was a complication, and they drilled too deep into his head… Now he’s having trouble remembering some words and is having trouble reading… All of this was told to me today… My father’s always seemed so tough, like a shaved bear… I was going up to see him today, but he said he just needed rest. I’m really quite worried about him and would appreciate any prayers/thoughts/warm feelings directed at him and my family in the next couple of weeks. We don’t know if this is just temporary damage or if it might be something permanent. They performed a cat scan on him, but we don’t know the results yet.

I just shavebrated away my lovely goatee because it is Beardvember.

My Digital Photography class has been going well, and I’ve learned a lot of fun new photoshop techniques.

So, yeah, that was my last month and fifteen days. I’ll try to blog more often, I’ve been busy and uncreative lately. Farewell!

take a picture of yourself right now.
don’t change your clothes, don’t fix your hair…just take a picture.
post that picture with NO editing.
post these instructions with your picture.

Ye gods, I need to tan, I look like a vampire… with crooked glasses

Recently I enrolled at a community college class called “Digital Photography with Photoshop”. The first two weeks have gone fairly well for me, and last week’s lesson was on how to take sharper photos. I decided to put what I learned to the test and take a quick break from work.

I left my family’s humble shop and walked around the old Wal-Mart that used to be the staple of the mall I work at. It was closed down about five years ago in favor of a Super Wal-Mart that opened on the other end of the city.

Rumor has it that Wal-Mart still owns the place and that a few businesses have looked into moving in there, but Wal-Mart hasn’t allowed them because they’d rather continue to pay rent to the mall than allow potential competition into our city.

Good god, if these have been lying here since the store closed, they’re in damn good condition considering they weathered five or six Minnesota winters.

Saruman was here.

And here’s an unrelated pretty sunset that I captured earlier in the month.

Same tree that’s in these pictures.

I’m not even going to begin to deny that this blog post wasn’t inspired by this guy. In fact, I was trying to dig up a photojournal he made a while ago about his expedition to an abandoned Wal-Mart a while back.

Woo, another one of those three-hours-of-sleep nights before a day that I have to work. But I found one thing to make it all better. I just found out that the grocery store in the mall has a breakfast menu.

And on that menu? Biscuits and Gravy for under $3.

You see, I’ve always had this thing for breakfast. My friends have never quite understood why. Kinda borne out of some of my younger experiences.

Back in the days of my youth, my father used to make breakfast for me every day before I left for school, french toast or pancakes, with a strong backing of orange juice and milk. And every morning with my delicious meal, I would take a little pill called Ritalin. Ritalin has a side-effect of suppressing hunger. I was put on it during regular school hours. So lunch was never really a big deal for me, I was never really hungry for it, and because of the quality of school lunches, never really cared. So breakfast was the only thing I had to look forward to each morning before drugging myself up to get shuffled off to the oppressive social nightmare of being an awkward overweight child in a small rural midwestern school.

But seriously, hot breakfast is the best thing ever. Woo.

I’ve been gaming a lot more recently. Audiosurf was on sale for $5.00 this weekend and I picked up a copy. Surprisingly fun and more than worth it for the free Orange Box soundtrack included. Very addictive little game. I bought it just last Saturday and I’d already put 12 hours into it by Monday. I also finished Bioshock, which was just as amazing as everyone said it was. Nearly finished with Psychonauts. Excited for Spore coming out in a little over two weeks. Thinking of picking up Overlord or Thief: Deadly Shadows on Steam for something to play in the meantime. Been playing a good deal of games with variations of Pheener, Edrick, TW, Vaaht and GS. With them, I’ve played Garry’s Mod, Ghost Recon, Unreal and Team Fortress 2. The new TF2 updates are sick. I haven’t earned any of the Heavy achievements yet, but I’ve loved what I’ve seen. Been playing a lot of Soldier and loving it now that I’m getting the hang of it. Arena rocks, though I’ve only been able to try one of the new maps.

I haven’t blogged in two weeks, sorry about that, haven’t really had much going on.

I’ve been playing through Bioshock, Pyschonauts and Supreme Commander. Haven’t really done anything creative recently. I’m looking to take some classes at the community college around here.

Also, I wanted to post a link of this conversation on reddit because I find it (and the incident that sparked it)hilarious.

Laboratory tests aboard NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander have identified water in a soil sample.

EEEEEEEE!