The Haiku
It means change of mind
to the point of changed spirit –
which we all could use

It’s also the name of Bella’s production company (Monteverde/Verástegui’s company they created specifically to make the movie).

The Haiku
Playing bass guitar
on Sunday, Star Wars before
and energy drinks

The Haiku
What’s up with my feet?
They have all ten toes but still
look like funky yams

Another shot of the Zone of Corto (MGH) and a cast for orthotics. One side of my fascist is .47 cm but the injured fascist is .84 cm (that’s bad…but it comes with free ice cream…that’s good!), according to today’s ultrasound. (Like my foot’s givin’ birth to the ugliest vegetable ever.)

The Big Question: Did God design my foot but my finite eyes don’t appreciate the beauty or are my feet a result of the fallen nature of the world’s entropy?

If I ever go for my Philosophy doctorate (as my fellow grad students suggested)…

Tonight we present the doctoral thesis “Predestined Podiatry in a Post-modern Pedagogy”, as defended by an immensely hairy manbeast and his just-off-the-mountain Gorgosh yams.

On the bright side, my oldest daughter was working on reading Go, Dog. Go tonight and my youngest was trying to get people’s attention by grunting/grabbing faces in order to laugh at them.

Yep. Summer’s here. Instead of struggling back to the Lhusu Mines, Devin’s favorite Level-Up Cabana, I decided to re-start the game now that I know about its funkiness.

I had missed:

1. The new Mars polar landing
2. Apple patenting touchscreen solar power for iPods/iPhones
3. The NBA Finals haven’t happened yet?

(This happens every time I play Final Fantasy.)

The Haiku
They won’t laugh at you
Riding on giant chickens
if you’re a good shot

Shivaree - (also spelled charivari (if you’re French)) –

n. Midwestern & Western U.S.
A noisy mock serenade for newlyweds. Also called regionally charivari, belling, horning, serenade.

Shivaree is the most common American regional form of charivari, a French word meaning “a noisy mock serenade for newlyweds” and probably deriving in turn from a Late Latin word meaning “headache.” The term, most likely borrowed from French traders and settlers along the Mississippi River, was well established in the United States by 1805; an account dating from that year describes a shivaree in New Orleans: “The house is mobbed by thousands of the people of the town, vociferating and shouting with loud acclaim…. [M]any [are] in disguises and masks; and all have some kind of discordant and noisy music, such as old kettles, and shovels, and tongs…. All civil authority and rule seems laid aside” (John F. Watson). The word shivaree is especially common along and west of the Mississippi River. Its use thus forms a dialect boundary running north-south, dividing western usage from eastern. This is unusual in that most dialect boundaries run east-west, dividing the country into northern and southern dialect regions. Some regional equivalents are belling, used in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan; horning, from upstate New York, northern Pennsylvania, and western New England; and serenade, a term used chiefly in the South Atlantic states.

This will greet the newlyweds tomorrow as they enter their new house/life together (I assume that they won’t check the bloggh while they drive back from Canada):
The Haiku
Welcome to your home
You may find hidden treasures
Know that we love you

Hidden treasures = 200 Post-Its as well as some other fun items.

We sent Teddi this picture in a text:


with the caption “Breaking it in”.

We did clean the house up a little bit, but I don’t want to reveal too much more just yet…

It’s fun. Different, but fun.

The Haiku
I would give to you
my old sarcastic spoiler
but now it is real

I know it’s popular, but I’m talking hard drive space. I was astounded by Resistance: Fall of Man requiring 120MB per save game. What information does it save? There’s checkpoints, so it’s not like it has to even pinpoint an X-Y-Z coordinate. The original Jedi Knight saved your exact position and inventory. Jedi Outcast had files 50-80KB in size but then by the time Jedi Academy came out they got the save games down to 3-5KB.

Have you ever had to install files first before playing a game? On PC, yes. Even on Wii, with the Super Mario Galaxy Wii Update.

But 4.6GB? That’s how big the file is that Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots will require in order to play the game. This is a growing tend, sadly. Many of the hot, new games require an installation before you can even play. I remember Penny Arcade flipping about Halo not being able to be put in, booted, and played quickly.

4.6GB. Umm, that’s a DVD being copied straight to your HDD.

If the trend continues it will put a roadblock in playing games at a friend’s house. A quick match now might mean clearing of an HDD onto an external or whatever. Now, MGS4 is not multiplayer, but you may want to show it off to a friend. Or let your PS3-less older brother stalk you.

Or you may want to sit down with some Dots and your Harkins cup to endure the 90 minute cutscenes.

Yeah, 90 minutes. And that’s just one cutscene. (But there are multiple ones just as huge.) The 4.6GB makes more sense now. With Final Fantasy X, with its unpausing cutscenes, made it real tough to play when anyone else was around. Because, well, I like to hear dialogue. It’s one of my quirks. That and with FFXII, I’m dad now. Naptimes for kids end all too quickly when you’re in video game mode. (Unless you have an awesome 4 year-old who wants to play Brawl with you. Not big in the “games with dialogue” genre.)

Maybe if they could give me a little play bar that tells me how much time the movie will take.

It’s important to hear the dialogue because you’re not playing a game, you’re playing a movie when it’s Final Fantasy. I mean, the giant fire golem might, surprise, be weak against ice-type stuff. For the most part, it’s about the engrossing storyline (although FFXII is the first FF game in a long time when my entire party died repeatedly…still need to try and finish that game).

All I know is that Hideo Kojima better give me the opportunity to save wherever I patriot please if he’s eating up the HDD.

Check out the site, though, for some semi-innovative marketing by the Khan of Otaku, Hal Emmerich. The training missions are pretty fun and are required if you want to download anything from the site. (You gain points by exploring the site and playing the games. Points = downloads.)

The photo shoot for the Beauty and the Beast Corps is stereotypically funny. With all of the awkward/revealing camera angles on the female lead of MGS3 (what was her name?)(I remember Meryl, but none of the other women’s names in the series. Was Sniper Wolf one? The smoking Russian? Raiden?) Well, now we have Nordic, Latin, Asian, and African Beauty. Yeah, that’s their name. And they’re based on a real-life model search. More awkward cutscenes, but now for 90 minutes worth of family fun.

What? You say there’s a remote-controlled Metal Gear in the game? Okay, the game rocks now.

The Haiku
I will sit and watch
as my brother tears up
with great robot force.

The Haiku
The victory lap
My car around the school’s track
Nothing wrong with that

6 years and counting.

(Oh yeah. And don’t eat your Wii.)