Booyor’s BLOGgh!

Less Papageno, more eating quail. I walk the dangerous border of breaking Man Law by posting photos from a bachelor party. This is the risk I take for you, reader. (Grandparents, stay tuned. Cute photos to follow.)(Peter, Laurel, and The Master Predictor: check for the picture of the country club version of the greengrocer’s apostrophe.)

Have you ever been to Bill Johnson’s Big Apple?

It stands out as being garish on Van Buren, which is saying quite a bit. But the serving staff is great. Our waitress was Ronda. I had to do my best to not bust out as Brian Williams.

On the topic of busting out: I’m glad to see Bill dressed up for the bachelor party.

They decorate in sawdust, so you know the meat is good. The quality of the establishment is proportional to the surface area of sawdust multiplied by the number of animals on the roof.

Endless Ribs, Endless Ribs…who ordered the jalapeno poppers? Jeremy, the bachelor party tradition lives on. (And yes, that was darn good salmon. I stick to my principles.)

I was a little wary when I saw that they import cattle from Crete:

I love the look on the guy’s face in the bottom-left corner.

As anyone who survived World War Z or is a fan of Simon Pegg knows, in any restaraunt/pub you must locate a defense against the undead:

Thanks, Mike. If zombies attack, I know I can trust you. Unless you become Zombie Mike.

Next was LazerQuest. It should be noted that in a world of “Phyborg” and “Grand Moff Crotch” (as Andrew told the embarrassed girl who had to call out score cards at the end, “It’s my last name. Please don’t laugh.”), class was immediately added to the fray.

A. Hamilton and A. Burr. Guess who was the Federalist and who was the assassin?

Those high school kids didn’t know what hit them while the Father of Banking sniped them from his perch across the arena. Other names worth mentioning: you know it’s a group of brothers when you get names like “Tax Collector” and “The Preacher”. The irony? The Preacher officiated the wedding. (Devin, I was tempted to enter “Shepherd Book” as my name.)

At the wedding they had a Point and Shoot camera set up next to the guestbook. A fun addition was props:

My grandma’s cousin’s neighbor’s niece from The Motherland was in attendance:

Lovely crowd reaction

No matter how fancy the place, proper punctuation is prime.


Posted five feet from each other
I don’t know which will hurt The Futile Ohm more, a punctuation error or a lack of uniform typography. And that photo outside of the Women’s Locker Room (not the Locker’s Room)? Imagine what I would have to say to explain why a big, hairy man is taking photos outside of the door. Thankfully I rolled a 20 on my Stealth vs. Non-bathrooms check.

And now the random photo stream:

New category!

From the other site:
If you liked reading about Tally and Shay and all the other bubblies in the Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld, you’ll definitely like Bogus to Bubbly.

It’s full of trivia about the books. For instance: look at the cover of Uglies. Notice anyone in the girl’s pupil? That’s the reflection of the photographer from the photo shoot. And the design in Aya’s eye on the Extras cover was inspired by the videogame The Last Starfighter.
Check the last word of each book. Notice a pattern?

The real treat is the insight that Scott Westerfeld adds for aspiring authors. He gives quite a bit of honest information about his writing process and the thoughts behind sections of the book.

Floating Ice Rink
I have no idea where this idea came from, except that it allowed me to write a scene that put together my three favorite things: fireworks, falling, and miscreant behavior.

He highlights where the technology from the books intersects with real-life, like how cuttlefish camouflage can actually match checkerboard patterns and that there are flash tattoos under people’s skin that can detect blood sugar. (I did not know that people actually have surgery to put diamonds on their eyes. Ouch.)

And I appreciate Westerfeld’s great sense of humor. The book reads like you’re checking his blog’s RSS feed.

So littlies aren’t considered ugly in Tally’s world - they’re too cute and innocent and small. Like penguins.

If you’ve just created a cool new building that uses smart matter supports, you don’t want someone coming along and turning that matter into, say, liquid. Because that would be bad.

He also describes the process behind creating effective slang and using it in regular conversation. (I actually used “dizzy-making” in conversation with one of the school secretaries without realizing it.) He has an acronym to help with coming up with slang, but I want you to check out this bubbly book.

5:52am - I’ve actually been here since 5:35am, but it takes that long for our school network to synchronize files. 5:35am - Everything is going according to plan. There was a surprisingly long line outside of my library. I think we may beat in the first hour the 29 that showed up the entire time last time.

Muahaha. Your democracy has been set back five minutes.

And I think this may be the longest article title/URL. Come back for updates throughout the day, much like what I had first envisioned as The Longest Day.

6:08am - Watch as I nitpick Yahoo. “All that’s left is to vote, even for Obama.” That’s an ‘open to interpretation’ way to say it. Is there anyone you’re leaning towards, Yahoo? Hmmm?

6:13am - Uh oh. Make sure you scan that correctly. We don’t want a chad incident.

6:17am - They’ve now overflowed to the tables. No talking during the test!

6:57am - Make a Spot check.
As stealthy as a 6′9″ guy can be… (Although wasn’t there an example in one of the rulebooks for a Wookiee tracking a katarn in the rain? Devin, what’s the DC on that?)
I thought you might enjoy the most recent part of The Ruing:

Wooha!
- Wedge taking out the AT-AT with a tow cable

It should be noted that “Into the Trap” was playing in the Scion as I drove up today. Yes, it’s Return of the Jedi and not Empire Strikes Back, but it’s still an awesome squad theme song.

Brown Squadron, you have been given the go ahead. You are weapons free.

8:38am - Sunshine on my shoulder makes me happy.
Actually, just warm.

8:50am - I shall drown my sorrows in RockStar Juiced.

8:52am - J was there at 4:45am at his site. Yeah, contact with the outside world!

8:54am - Review of Juiced: Good for drowning, not necessarily drowning sorrows. I can taste the mango skin. It’s…unnerving.

Not a vanilla mocha.

8:59am - For my wife:

Snaps is the name of the game, the name of the game is snaps.
Can you please
recommend a
*Snap*
physician?

11:15am - Back from voting:

I have my reasons.

12:02pm - Castro praises one of the candidates. Wow. It’s one of those “please don’t help” moments.

1:32pm - Found out from Peter about the Secretary of the Interwebs. (Yeah! Cory Doctorow in a hot air balloon versus Tron Paul!)

3:27pm -

Cooper Black? Times New Roman?

Ouch. I just sprained my sense of design.

3:57pm - There’s a guy here taking a picture of his votes with his cell phone. What a weirdo.

Unless…

Does he have a rival website, also full of Order 66 and El Pollo Loco? I should ask rather than assume.

4:03pm - I got distracted instead by fonts with a live preview.

4:26pm - Why to avoid exit polls and why CNN vowed to not use them after the 2000 election - did they hold to it? Did you know that in France it’s illegal to conduct a poll within 48 hours of an election? It’s also city ordinance for Parisians to have a permit before using a tripod to film. Madness.

4:40pm - Make your own mini Sheriff Megatron. Fun for the whole family at the cost of one sheet of cardstock.

Click on the picture to hugeify it.

5:09pm - I don’t think we should call it just yet.

vs.

I’ve never actually been to Maine, but I could have sworn they had more people than that.

5:41pm - Political Analyst John Elway

5:42pm - Just got called “dude” by one of the workers.

Cringe.

5:44pm - Why is ‘John Elway’ in single quotes? Is it a quote inside the dialogue by Yahoo? Did Tolkien write the Flash dashboard?

5:46pm - Bwaha. Tatyana Ali? Little Ashley Banks?

6:16pm - Considering running on the Monster Raving Loony Party ticket. Do we have a U.S. branch? I guess we do. (Hosted on Tripod. Tres officiale.)

6:30pm - Town Crier just did his “Polls close in 30 minutes” yell.

7:58pm - They have finally packed up. And they still didn’t lean my name. Much shivering, much creeped out. Everyone must leave. Go home.

9:43pm - It’s funny that there’s still ads for McCain/Palin surveys saying “Can they win?” on Yahoo. There’s always the time machine option. I wonder what my grandpa would have thought. Also, I find it dreadfully ironic that the maps aren’t even all colored in yet. (Our state being one of them.) Did all of the hurtful words add up to much? Now to support our new president and be done with political ads for a little bit! Wooha! (Although be prepared for a “Don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos.” from time to time.)

I always noticed this up at NAU. The German students had a thing for mocking our presidents with masks. I guess it’s the next generation:

My oldest is a comedian. She kept switching the words around, cracking herself up. Keep in mind that I didn’t read any of it to her:


My youngest has a more “Theatre of the Absurd” sense of humor:

On Friday teenage girls across the nation (and their easy to manipulate boyfriends) will be attending the opening of High School Musical 3: Senior Year. This phenomenon has embodied HSM, HSM2, HSM3, HSM: The Concert Tour, High School Musical: The Disneyland/World Stage Show and HSM: Stage Musical…ALL IN LESS THAN TWO YEARS! I have to admit, I am waiting for HSM: The Flame Thrower and other marketing merchandise. To give you an idea of the magnitude of this feat, it took JK Rowling almost 12 years to write all 7 of her Harry Potter books. Disney has matched that is one sixth of the time. Amazing! For every Harry Potter book you’re getting almost 7 versions of HSM. Because HSM1 was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO good.

I am not against Disney making movies. I am not against the idea of a movie about high school musicals (I’m a Theatre teacher who directs musicals…I like musicals). But I am against Disney milking something until it’s dead. Within two months of the release of HSM1, Disney released the rights for high schools around the world to produce their own staged version of HSM. In fact, there were advertisements telling students to ask their high school drama teachers to produce the show. To the average Joe Six-Pack this was not a big deal. But it impacted my world. For the rest of the year I had to hear <whiny teenage girl voice>”Let’s do HSM! PLEASE, LET’S DO HSM!” </whiny teenage girl voice>. I even had a 70 year old woman (substitute teacher) decide to usurp my lesson plans and show HSM. Yeah, working on that study guide for their midterm exam wasn’t as important as the elderly’s love for Zac and Vanessa. But I digress…

I used to work for Disney and I know how they work. They say it’s “not about making money, but giving a high caliber product to their family audience.” (That was taken from my 1st training session as a “cast member”). But milking the same story into 7 different versions doesn’t just extend an overused subject, it completely destroys the magic of the first film. Case in point, HSM won several awards in 2006. Nothing has been won since. In fact, Disney was so desperate to continue the franchise after HSM that it completely ignored its stance on its performers maintaining a wholesome image and allowed Vanessa Hudgens to keep her role despite very racy (AKA naked) photos of herself being released on the internet and later stated that they were intended for her fellow cast mate boyfriend Zac Efron. But who needs standards?

HSM is not “the great American Musical.” I know that. But when there are so many great works of film and television, it seems like a direct slap in the face to the consumer when Disney milks these franchises for all they are worth. I am still waiting for a similar parody by South Park that will mirror what they did to Spielberg and Lucas for what they did to Indiana Jones.

Btw, didn’t Sharpay (Ashley Tisdale’s character) have a “break a leg” moment at the end of HSM1? Why was she still trying to breakup Gabriella (Vanessa) and Troy (Zac) in HSM2? Disney had told me and other audience members that people apparently don’t learn from their mistakes. How pessemistic. I’m sure Sharpay will figure it all out in HSM3.

Also, the TV, film and stage franchises of HSM are just the tip of the iceberg. Checkout the DVDs, the Ice Tour, Book series, and 5 video games. Thankfully, HSM: the Reality Series (Get in the Picture)failed after one season (11 episodes). God is still looking out for us.

“Through the slits of his brightly polished helm, his blue eyes bored into Eragon, pinning him into place, like an arrow through a rabbit. He lifted his free hand and held it out toward Eragon. ‘My son, come with me. Together, we can destroy the Varden, kill Galbatorix, and conquer all of Alagaesia. But give me your heart, and we shall be invincible.’”
- Brisingr, p. 487

There are a lot of made up words in Brisingr, so I’m considering the correlation with the graph. There’s even an attempt at an appendix in the back, complete with pronunciation guide. But here’s the deal:

Let’s say that you got past the Eragon/Aragorn, Arya/Arwen, Old Brom (Dragon Rider in exile)/Old Ben (Jedi Master in exile), Empire burning down the farm boy’s aunt and uncle and farm/Empire burning down the farm boy’s aunt and uncle and farm, Paolini still doesn’t stop.

Is there any epic where an armored villain is not someone’s dad? And the middle of an aerial combat is not the best place to have a Dr. Phil “if you believe in yourself, you can re-invent yourself and rise above your circumstances” conversation. The whole middle of the book is “whose gods are real, the nomads’ or the dwarves’, or are the elves right and there are no gods?” philosophy rants. It sounded very anachronistic when he’s talking about “all of the gods are good and we all point to something”.

The end was cool because characters died, and when Eragon has a sword named Fire, every time he says its name it ignites on accident.

The part that made me laugh but was not a deal-breaker? The power of the evil king (which, wasn’t it an empire?) comes from a dragon’s heart of hearts: a tiny crystal colored the same as their scales and egg. How does a dragon give you their heart? By vomiting it at your feet. Yeah, a page dedicated to a regurgitating ceremony.

And there are some awkward moments where Eragon and his dragon, Sapphira, have some intimate interactions. Is she like a mom or are they even closer? I don’t know. Kinda weird.

Mix all this in with self-mutilation and heroes that drain the life energy out of people/unsuspecting creatures “for the greater good”, and it took some effort to finish the book.

Why are you waving you hand around like that? What, you think you’re some kind of Jedi or something?

We’re not Jedi.

Nor are most Star Wars fans trained/coordinated enough to hang with another Force user in combat. The result of 1:1 would be even more flailing/a wagglefest (wagglefest being IGN’s word, even though they had a lot of fun. I agree that the camera and graphics are annoying, but the controls and immersion are awesome and make up for the shortfalls for me. And the storyline is great Star Wars, as mentioned before.).

The controls definitely do not feel limited. I can chain together combos at will, mixing in Force powers to spice it up/advance subplots I write in my head. It feels a lot like the combat from Jedi Academy and I’m okay with that. (I liked it.)(Jedi Academy was released on Sept. 16? Interesting.)

If you’re one of my graphic design/typography friends, though, you won’t like the instruction manual. No grammar errors upon first glance, but what caught my attention was that they printed all of the screenshots at too dark of a contrast. Many times it’s just a black box with a bright line (lightsaber) in the middle.

These are just some additions to my first impressions as I sit at work. Waiting.

Today is Vans day. I have a picture of the A-Team vehicle attached to my lanyard. Perhaps not the initial intent of the spirit day.

Funny librarian patron stories real quick:

1. A student walked up to me today, no introduction, just, “If you have a problem, and if you can find them, maybe you can call…”
2. A couple of days ago a student walked up to the desk wearing the inner workings of a wall clock and clock hands on a giant chain. I told him it was awesome, since it still kept time. I also told him he couldn’t be late to anything. This is a continuation of junior high library fashion.

On this, our 1,112th post, you may be surprised that I’m talking about Star Wars.
For my non-Star Wars readers, you should know that when I tried to print author photos, my wife’s grandma had to walk me through the process of setting up the photo paper and printer buttons correctly.

Since it’s all flipped, know that when I say Light Side I mean all things good about Star Wars, like Wookiees.

By Dark Side, I mean all signs of George Lucas dementia, like showing a wampa eating, the Life Day celebration, and the entire population of Naboo.

Dark Side

1. Camera unleashed - still figuring out how to lock onto characters effectively.
2. I guess Sith operate all electronic devices by using a lightsaber as a stylus
3. General Kota’s non-moving mouth - “Hey, kid, don’t be like Vader. And, um, oil can…”

Light Side

1. Starting out the game as Vader - usually it’s something that you work towards, but once the first cutscene is done you are the Dark Lord of the Sith crushing a Wookiee rebellion; pillars and ryyk blades go flying
2. Using the Wii remote to slash down troopers - Meesa likin’ da slashins Yubjub!
3. Lining up and tilting the nunchuck to the onscreen prompt actually works - and if you succeed, the Apprentice busts out some Yoda versus Dooku moves

Okay, so I’ve been following Force Unleashed for more than two years now and now it’s two weeks away. I guess I’m not too old for most games. In fact, I still obsess over them.

Recently my dad has walked into the game room while my brother and I are playing a Rainbow Six/Resistance-type game and has to walk out immediately or else pass out.

Here is a list of games that make me motion sick. Here, as I approach a landmark birthday this school year. Here, as I thought would never happen. Here, as I desperately need to try a rollercoaster to give me hope. Here, a list of why I am old-fogeyfiying:

1. 
   TimeSplitters - I got this one in the $5 bin at Circuit City while Jeremy and I were picking up tapes for a filming gig. Split-screen four player capture the flag madness: Excellence in a PS2 bargain game. But play it in singleplayer story mode and it’s a different story. A mansion full of zombies: Lose my brain? Nope, just my lunch. This game actually makes me sweat (like when I saw Dracula at the Herberger in high school), I get so nauseous.
2. 
   TimeSplitters: Future Perfect - More storyline and more quickly rotating nausea
3. 
   Sonic Heroes - To its credit, when my wife and I sat down to play this for the first time, I had on Japanese audio and Spanish subtitles.
   And then the screen began to pulse to techno while giggling rodents freefell through gumdrops and lollipops. Not confident in just that, they started moving faster, screaming in Japanese the whole time. Thankfully I borrowed this one from my brother so I didn’t feel too bad shelving it after 30 minutes.
4. 
   Gyrostarr- I downloaded this WiiWare title last night to play with my oldest. Co-op shooter on the same screen, not big penalties for death, we were having fun. And then we got to level 5. I had to look away for a while; my daughter held down the fire button with one hand while she flipped through a Precious Moments coloring book with the other. Click here to experience the wonder of Gyrostarr

Not too old for video games, just the psycho ones.

If the game is anything like the book, Star Wars fans (Bel Iblis fans) will be excited.

What’s funny is that the author builds in weapon customization and outfit changes that you see in video games. And we get to see the origins of the Rebellion (and a bunch of other stuff), more than just the meeting that was in the deleted scenes of Episode III.

Haden Blackman, you still give Slade cause to worry.

Sean Williams, I actually liked your book. (No Michael Stackpole, but there can be only one…D’oh. Wrong franchise.)

A transcript of my brain while playing Rainbow Six: Vegas 2:

Ooh. Nice credits, like a movie. Whoa. I’m in a government building making a customized version of me, complete with distinguished graying sideburns. That adds pathos.

The game becomes more intense as one mission flows to the next without pause and my tongue swells from thirst and I fear the political repercussions of using the restroom.

In all honesty, the game promises more hours of play and more options for multiplayer. Player 2 can’t issue commands to the AI, but can jump in and out of story mode at will. There’s also the classic Terrorist Hunt stages with some new maps. This is not the old school Rainbow Six that I remember. A lot more streamlined, a lot faster action (rappelling?) and now if you get shot you wait for a respawn. Poor Ding Chavez, who always used to die on the old second mission because he was too fatigued, never to return for the rest of the game.

Really messes with continuity which really messes with me.