An Irrational Love for Rock Band

Although I could be the biggest nerd right now and totally complain about Rock Band and Guitar Hero and all of that truly kicking off the whole casual gamer craze, I can't help but love them, especially Rock Band. I personally don't have an Xbox 360, but I've played Rock Band so many countless times merely at other venues at this point.

This is an avatar my friend made for me on Rock Band on his 360. This is also scarily EXACTLY WHAT I LOOK LIKE.

When I first played Rock Band was actually at college at a school sponsored party in a neighboring environmental college. For just a second, stop and wrap your head around exactly how nerdy that was. At approximately 11 PM on a Saturday, while my peers were getting wasted off their asses, I was at a school sponsored party (hence, no alcohol whatsoever) playing Rock Band with some friends for the first time... and I'd proceed to do this more than once. Weeks later, at the same time and venue, I'd get strikes in Wii bowling  without even looking, but I digress.

During that first experience with Rock Band, I mostly got stuck with drums. I've never played drums before at all so it was pretty tough. I'd play on medium and still find myself having some trouble keeping up sometimes. After that fun night, some of my friends all chipped together to purchase Rock Band for the group and it was then that I found I started to get to experience things beyond merely drums. As we played more and more, I got to eventually try bass and guitar. Learning the two instruments, I found them around the same difficulty as drums. I would play on medium and would have a hard time at points, but I at least started to have a little less difficulty as we played on. I'd eventually try hard mode a little, but found the jump to be just a bit too much.

Having played a bunch of guitar, bass and drums, the day finally came that my incredibly musically-cultured friend would get bored of always doing vocals himself. Getting my first turn at vocals, I quickly learned something that was nothing short of amazing to me. Rock Band's vocals are much more forgiving than anything else in the game and thus playing on medium would often end with me getting little to nothing short of 100%, thus convincing me that my voice might be less than ear-shatteringly awful. Obviously, I still knew this was the case, but damn it, Rock Band was going to make me feel good about myself. Even if I didn't know half the words to the songs I was singing. Even if I faced a huge physical and mental struggle every time I tried to activate Star Power with the mic. Even if I'd constantly do a weird thing with my voice, multiple times a song, where I would find I was going a little too high in tone and thus would DROP A WHOLE FUCKING OCTAVE IN THE MIDDLE OF A NOTE. And yet, none of this mattered because Rock Band, the mistress which had been so harsh on my drum, bass and guitar skills, kept informing me that I was singing with 100% perfection. To me it was like Humphrey Bogart was throwing me a "Here's looking at you, kid." even though I had just accidentally elbowed him in the face. He knew I didn't mean to elbow him, and he realized that I must have just not had the slightest clue how to actually correctly shake someone's hand, so he just rolled with it and gave me the affirmation I wanted regardless.

As I gotten so used to the level of difficulty to expect from the other instruments, this made the level of forgiving on the vocals that much more surprising. Typically it was to the point where the facial reactions of my friends were a better judge of my vocals than the game itself. None of it mattered though, because at that point I'd be so high off singing Under Pressure and being told by a game that I did it well that nothing else mattered.

My Batshit Crazy Dogs

I've come to terms with the fact that, out of the two dogs I currently own, they are both completely and utterly batshit insane.

As these dogs have only been living with me for a few months, I can't know for sure whether or not they were always crazy, but I certainly know that they are now.

When I return home from work each day, I'm always greeted by the same sight, namely this:

Though I've gotten used to the sight, I do have to say that there's just something about that huge ass dog greeting you, wagging his tail incessantly while looking at you with a comically large bone in his mouth. He's completely made a ritual of the whole thing, and you can't enter the house without this formal greeting of his.

As you can tell obviously, my dog, Otis, is a very lovable dog. Sometimes he can be a bit... special though. Like here for example:

That's not a random shot that just managed to catch him in an awkward pose, he actually was laying like that for quite a while. A LONG CRAZY WHILE. Otis isn't just crazy because of the weird ways he decides to sleep though, no. He's also crazy because he's 200 pounds of pure massive english mastiff and he still doesn't seem to have realized it. Almost every night he likes to follow us into the kitchen while we get his dinner together and he plops down right in the middle of the kitchen. Our old dog used to do this and it was fine, but when Otis does this, it isn't fine. When Otis does this WE NO LONGER HAVE A KITCHEN. Our kitchen is NO LONGER A TRAVERSABLE ROOM. IT IS MERELY FOUR WALLS AND A DOG. But I digress:

It's kind of cute how he doesn't really he's this massive beast of a dog. For the more literary of you out there, I'd seriously compare him to Lenny from Of Mice and Men. Yes, seriously, that is my dog. In fact, here's how  he responded last week when I gave him a pillow pet:

He loved that Pillow Pet. When I first walked in with it, he literally just grabbed it out of my hand in his mouth before I was even done presenting it to him and plopped down with it. He looked like he was having so much fun...... and then less than 10 minutes later that pillow pet was missing an eye. LESS THAN 10 MINUTES, NO EXAGGERATION. By the next morning it had no eyes and all the stuffing from it's head was gone, and yet Otis still loves that thing as if nothing ever happened to it. Otis does not discriminate against this pillow pet that he DECIMATED IN THE MOST CRUEL AND UNUSUAL WAYS POSSIBLE. He doesn't understand what he did to it, but he knows it's his, and he knows he likes it.

In fact, not only does Otis love his pillow pet, but he loves all his toys. He loves them enough to hog them all happily, while leaving none for our other dog.

He'll actually go to the length of napping on two toys stacked together so that our other dog, Lola, can't play with them. I'm not totally sure why Lola lets him get away with it, because I know that type of shit never flew with the toys back when I was in kindergarten. If little Timmy tried to hog all the toys during nap time, you PUNCHED LITTLE TIMMY IN THE FUCKING FACE. You might have had to sit in the corner for it, but dammit, it was worth it.

Anyways, I'd hate to give the incorrect view that our other dog, Lola, is any less batshit insane. Lola and Otis are very different, but are just as insane in their own unique ways. Where as Otis is outgoing, innocent and naive, Lola is depressed and scared of anything that moves.

She's literally scared of EVERYTHING. If you approach Lola too quickly, she'll flee into the kitchen. If you sit in the recliner in the same room as the dogs, and it squeaks, she'll also flee. In fact, when approached for her opinion on this blog entry, Lola in sheer horror.

Now, none of these things are what Lola truly fears though. What she truly fears will leave her not only fleeing, but shaking. What she truly fears is......... plastic bags. Yes, plastic bags. There is nothing that can bring Lola into a more pants-shittingly state of horror than one of us returning from a completely normal trip at the grocery store. I'm not sure why this is, and I've learned to not question it. For some reason, however, plastic bags are the devil.

Though I'm rambling, I just want to end on one final note to show just how purely massive these dogs are.

That's Otis preforming what I call Otis and Lola's trademarked "Mastiff Sit". It's when Otis, due to his massive size, stands and sits on the couch at the same time. THE SAME TIME. I think I used to think sitting and standing were mutually exclusive, but Otis has come around and proved me wrong. And for that, my life will possibly never be the same.

Adventures with a 3DS

Considering how big of a gaming nerd I am, I'm aiming for one gaming related post per week. Anyways, on that note:

I recently picked myself up a 3DS. It's a pretty cool piece of hardware, between the 3D, augmented reality, dual cameras, street pass, etc. I honestly can't even joke about it, it's a nice piece of hardware that can be a pretty awesome conversation piece to show off.

Now, as incredible as the hardware is, there's certainly some... issues with the system. Namely, the fact that there's pretty much NO GAMES OUT ON IT.

In fact, the best way I can describe the 3DS so far is this:

Imagine you picked up a prostitute. This prostitute is possibly the hottest girl you've ever seen, and she's hilarious to boot. So, you throw down your 250 dollars and take her up to your room. You climb into bed together, only to find out that this expensive sexy prostitute is A MOTHERFUCKING VIRGIN. 

Now mind you, there's nothing wrong with virgins. Some of my best friends are virgins. However, when you throw down 250 dollars, you kind of hope this sexy chick will actually know a couple tricks in the bedroom to back up her flashy looks. But no, she doesn't. SHE DOESN'T KNOW A SINGLE FUCKING KINKY THING. I mean, sure, she tries her best. She has a certain determination that you have to respect, and you can't help but smile at her while she puts her all into giving you a halfway decent handjob like Pilotwings Resort, but you can't truly be happy because you just can't stop thinking about what could have been.

The Geese from Hell

For my first post, I'm about to tell you what most of the blogging community already knows:

Geese are a vile hellspawn that cannot be controlled through any natural means. When a goose has claimed your property as it's own, you surrender your property to it, move elsewhere, and strike any evidence of your existence from all local records.

That being said, one of these vile creatures has decided to make my workplace its home. In fact, over the past two weeks, said goose has built a nest in front of the main entrance of our building, and has proceeded to lay eggs and incubate them, hoping to create a whole new generation of tiny hellspawn to follow in its personal legacy.

 

Though the goose may look innocent enough, it tends to hiss at anyone who walks by, which tends to happen pretty often considering it has set itself up RIGHT AT THE ENTRANCE OF THE BUILDING. Granted, I'll admit the various shouts I've heard over the last week from my coworkers who smoke outside that entrance  make it all worth it. Some coworkers frantically suggested we call animal control, while others seemed to create a sort of rivalry with the goose. Still, no one dared get overly close to the goose, as we're haunted by not only this goose, but it's loyal husband who forever stands guard.

As I'm sure you notice, upon my snapping this shot, the goose had just started pacing in the opposite direction. This reason, and this reason alone, is why I still have both of my eyes.

Hopefully, over the next week, these two hellspawn will finally leave, but I don't truly know what to expect. No one truly knows what to expect when geese are involved.