Thursday, October 28, 2004

More GTA

Ah, GTA has gotten even cooler. When you get far enough in the game (not that far) the map becomes color coded by gang. You can recruit troops from your own gang and invade a different gangs territory. If you survive three waves of enemies then the territory is yours. However you have to defend your captured territories as well. It's really cool seeing to large mobs of opposing gangs firing on each other. And when a gang war begins, the streets clear of civilians, and even the police won't interfere, even if you have a wanted level.

When you capture a territory more of your gangmembers began hanging there and help to defend, but they often need your backup for successful defense, and from time to time you will recieve a message saying someone is trying to take your land.

Another cool feature, is that you are encouraged to attempt to woo this girl you save from a burning building. As you go out on dates, her attachment meter grows and as it gets higher, nighttime dating activities change. So far i've gone from, grabing a bite to eat, to cruising around town, and now, to nightly dancing at the dance club (which is DDResque except you use the circle triangle x and square button instead of a pad).

-Brandon

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

GTA San Andreas

Bought it yesterday. It's awesome, of course. Same type of gameplay with new features added.

The game area is massive. The area I have the right to visit now seems as big as all of vice city, and according to the map it's maybe a fifth of the area I will be able to unlock. Granted, most of that area is countryside between cities, but it's still awesome. Bicycles are awesome. Police get motorcycles. You can now swim. You can burgle houses (at night with the right type of van). There are so many more cars. Combat has been enhanced. Now you can block, and you have two punches, a power punch (which is what you had last time) which is a little slow, and a fast bunch. You can also alter your attacks by your actions while hitting them. You can now target people when you carry a melee weapon, and civilians are a bit more aggressive then they used to be. Now they are aften packing weapons, and if you damage someone's car, it isn't rare that they will hop out and begin beating on yours. I have had people roof riding on my while beating my windshield with various weapons (golf club, baseball bat, shovel) a number of times.

One of my favorite new features is the respect meter. As you kill enemy gang members, complete missions, and kill police, your respect slowly (very slowly) goes up. when you get enough respect you can recruit ally gang members to follow you and fight with you. If you get in a vehicle, they hop in too. This allows you to perform fun driveby's while cruising through enemy territory. They won't hesitate to attack anyone who attacks you, including police that are chasing you.

There are actually a number of personal statistic meters. There is a stamina meter that determines how long you can sprint, pedal fast, or speed swim. There is a muscle meter that determines damage during combat as well as alter how you look. There is a fat meter, if it gets too low, you lose all stamina but if it gets too high you get fat, clumsy and slow. There is the respect meter, and there is a sex appeal meter, which seems to alter based on clothing, hairstyle, tattoo, and possibly fat and muscle meters. Stamina and muscle can be improved at the gym, as well as through consistent running and combat, but the gym is faster. You can also lower fat at the gym and learn new combat moves.

The plot seems alright. Pretty typical ghetto gangster movie. Violet swears that your family gang is modeled after NWA. I don't know enough about the rap group to say yay or nay. But one charecter does remind me of Ice Cube's performance in "Boyz in the Hood."

I discovered a neat thing yesterday when I was causing destruction and stealing people's cash. If you grab the right type of vehicle you can have "pimping" missions. You drive hookers to clients and protect them when clients get rough, and in exchange you get a share of the money. The more missions you do in a row, the more cash you get (300 x number of missions completed in a row). I went from not being able to afford a haircut, to comfortably wealthy pretty fast.

-Brandon

PS and one off topic thing I found. Apparently Matt Stone, in an interview with salon, has been quoted as saying that the uninformed and undecided should not vote or feel obligated to vote. Good for him, I'm happy someone else is arguing my point, especially someone as cool as Matt Stone.

Sunday, October 24, 2004

Terrorists made your fake Gucci!

link
Apparently buying cheap knockoffs of designer products supports terrorism. Yea, there is some evidence that some products might be connected to people who have possible connections to people in terrorist organizations. But who is making these statements?
"Members of his group, called the Global Business Leaders Alliance Against Counterfeiting, include: Procter & Gamble, Gillette, Unilever, BP, Philip Morris, Heineken and Coca Cola."
Ah, how convenient. The nations largest corporate manufacturers accusing imitaions of immoral acts. They couldn't be motivated by anything besides national security could they?


On a more serious note...

http://www.parachutingtrees.co.uk/rushmore.htm


I don't know why, I just find this incredibly amusing.


http://www.cheekybeef.co.uk/hexstatic/virata.html

Awesome little animation music video thing.

-Brandon

Friday, October 22, 2004

Martin Luther's Thinking "throne" discovered

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3944549.stm

Martin Luthers toilet has been discovered. Martin Luther chronically constipated. I love history.

-Brandon

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

"Get out and Vote" programs bad for country

Before I start I want to say that I think that different very intelligent people can reach differing opinions through logical means. I am fairly liberal but I can understand and respect intelligent conservatives. However, there is nothing I despise more then a person who holds strong political opinions for no clearer reason then fashion or expectations from peers. However it seems that this is how most people with political opinions are now a days, from all political sides. I despise the ignorant liberal as much, if not more then, then the ignorant conservative. At least a stupid conservative is easy for my liberal mind to deal with. A stupid liberal can insult my own beliefs just by agreeing with me and attempting to argue my beliefs with wrong information and poor logic.

I would also like to add that I am generalizing, a lot, in this post. When I say all apathetics do something, I mean that a vast majority of them do.

It has been common in the media to talk about widespread voter apathy the past few years. Perhaps it has been going on longer. I only really started paying attention to the news a few years ago. Voter Apathy has become an incredibly negative term. People use it to complain about candidates they feel are doing poorly in office. There is a belief that voting is the responsibility of every citizen. That to not vote is to be unpatriotic. This is all wrong. Voting is a right of every citizen. It is not mandatory, but every citizen has the choice to participate if he or she so chooses. In the same way, every citizen has the right to not vote. If someone doesn't care about the politics of the country, they should not feel obligated to vote anyway. In fact, it is better for the apathetic to stay home and not vote then to go to the polls and vote for someone based on some rough, uninformed approximation of the candidates. To pester and beg the apathetic to vote would be dangerous because their lack of opinion/resolve on political issues makes them susceptible to manipulation. An apathetic voter could easily become a second vote for someone else.

This is, of course, precisely the idea of the Get out and Vote programs. In attempts to gain votes for their respective candidate both political parties have started numerous voter registration drives. They preach the voter responsibility and patriotism gospel and pester people outside in public spaces and door to door at people's homes. The truth is most of the apathetic citizens are not "unpatriotic." The majority of them understand that they are lucky to live in the United States and feel a certain amount of pride to live in this country. When you question their patriotism, they are generally going to want to show that they do care about this country, and when it is pounded, over and over again into their head, most people are going to believe there is some truth to the unpatriotic act of not voting. So people are registering to vote, no, nany people are registering to vote, no, record numbers of people are registering to vote. Who are the apathetic going to support? They don't follow political events unless they can't avoid it. The only firmly established opinions can come from two sources: peers, and media. Now the various media certainly have their biases but, with a few exceptions, most mass media is fairly unbiased in regards to political candidates. The influence comes from friends and family, the same people who likely helped in convincing the apathetic in the importance of voting. These are the people who are going to guide the political opnions of the uninterested. Whether intentionally or not, these opinion guiders have just skewed the election one vote to their side. Now imagine the vast numbers of people who have been convinced to register, despite not caring about politics. Imagine hundreds of thousands of people all just siding with their buddies. It gets worse, because it's contagious. A newly converted apathetic will convert his or her apathetic friends the same way. So know those original influencers are gaining even more votes. What it does is create a situation in which the person elected might not be the choice for the majority of intelligent voters. Instead it was decided by a minority influencing a majority of indifferent voters.

And even if this system of uneducated voters evens out, the fact still remains that the country is being guided be massive groups of people that don't know or care about what effect politics have on their lives. This election the damage has been done. Both political parties have gone out on a massive run to get the apathetic to vote, and in order to win them over, both sides are encouraging absentee ballots, even if you aren't absent. The reason they say they do this is because it supposedly saves the political parties money because they won't call or send you mail demanding before the election night. This isn't really completely honest. Instead they call and send you mail a month before the election and try to change your mind on the absentee ballot. The real idea is to make it more convenient for the apathetic to vote. Both parties belief they have the most to gain out of convincing the uncareing to care because both parties believe they have the most logical belief. The idea is to get them to agree to vote, make it easy for them, and then attempt to sway them through the media, and personal communication lines. They are thought of as nothing more then puppets who will fill in the right circle come election time.

What can be done about this? not much. The damage this election is done. I can tell those around me what I believe, I can beg those who didn't care but are now voting, to not vote, but all these will accomplish little. It's a problem that I don't know how to fix, and by this point, the manipulators from both parties believe they have won.

-Brandon

Monday, October 18, 2004

A Dirty Shame

I saw John Waters' latest film last night. It was absolutely hilarious. It was chock full of rude sexual jokes and bizzaare situations. Such a strange and entertaining story.
A town where every major head injury turns normal people (or neuters) into raging nymphomaniacs.

A messiah like figure that heads a group of 11 (eventually 12) sex addict apostles with unique fetishes seeks to revolutionize the world by freeing them from neuterdom.

A group of concerned citizens take up action against the spreading plague of nymphomania in their town.

When these two groups collide, hilarity ensues. The film wasn't perfect, and seemed to sort of fall apart at the end. But if you have the chance too, I suggest you see this flick. It is rated NC17 for a reason, but if you are easily offended, I probably don't like you enough to care anyway.

-Brandon

Friday, October 15, 2004

<>Oh my god, if you haven't checked www.b3ta.com yet you are missing out.
They have some brilliant takes on nursery rhymes. And a frightening yet hilarious stunt (I don't think it's real). How about an incredibly surreal and nonsensical bush animation?
-Brandon

Thursday, October 14, 2004

Low Grav Water Balloons

http://microgravity.grc.nasa.gov/balloon/blob.htm
http://microgravity.grc.nasa.gov/balloon/HS.HTM

These are cool videos I came across about popping water balloons in low gravity situations. This stuff looks so cool. I like the crater like impact of the blunt pencil stabbing into the balloon on highspeed camera. Very awesome. These guys looked to be having fun too.

Posted by Hello

-Brandon

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

Yay for me!

I feel special. I have figured out how to add a links list to the sidebar all by myself. (with a little help from Blogger and Google. What, you don't thiink it's that special? LEAVE ME ALONE! I DON'T KNOW HTML!

Although it seems to be pretty easy to figure out, maybe I'll take some time out of my hectic schedule of fucking around on the internet to learn.

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/earth.php

-Brandon

Friday, October 08, 2004


Just testing the power photo uploader with this work of art. I made it myself.
Posted by Hello

Hi

I wanted to check out blogger. Whether or not I'll use this often or not, I don't know. Sometimes I just want to post cool links and news articles, when I feel like it, I'll put it here.

no one looks at my old blog garp.postureposse.com since I took a long break of posting anything. No one will look at this either probably, but maybe changing the URL will change people's minds. Whatever, it doesn't matter anyway.