March 28, 2004 - 10:47 a.m.
ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND.
That's a movie title, but it is also an order. If it's playing anywhere near you, even if you are unreasonably averse to the very idea of seeing movies in movie theaters, you've just got to go. It's fantastic. The only way you can get out of this assignment is if you have a very large television at home to ensure an optimal viewing experience when it is out on DVD, but even then you would be depriving yourself of something really special.
So yeah, I liked it. It blew my mind and made me cry and coated my soul in creamy awesome, even though I was sitting next to a guy who would shout OH MY GAWD! in the Stereotypical Gay Guy Voice whenever anything would happen, who also drained his soda in the first half hour and spent the rest of the movie noisily digging ice out of his cup during dialog.
This week, I have some bad news, some neutral news, and some good (but, I'm warning you now, videogame-related) news.
First the bad news, I suppose. It turns out that Laurie's car had electrocuted itself. Not even the mechanic is sure how it happened, but-- you'll have to excuse the crudity of my explanation, for I know nothing about cars-- something under her hood went KA-PCRHWWWWEWW and that thing was connected to every other important thing under the hood and all those important things went FRZZZZZKT. The repair cost was an estimated one thousand dollars.
Making things not only sad but complicated, Laurie had planned on telling the mechanic to junk her car, but before she had that opportunity, Laurie's mother told the mechanic to go ahead and fix it. Laurie is within walking distance of her job, so being without a car would have been annoying but not tragic. What Laurie's mother (claimed she) did not know is that Laurie does not have one thousand dollars.
My theory, though, is that Laurie's mom did know that, and this is her well-meaning but backwards way of inspiring Laurie to get a second job, which is something she's been hinting in unsubtle terms that should really be done. Laurie's job is well-paying but only part-time, with a limit on the number of hours that can be worked per year.
This reminds me, somewhat painfully, of my father, who had a number of sneaky ways to try to trick me into working more. No matter how much I worked, it was never enough. If I was working 40 hour weeks, he would lecture me on my need for a better job. The credit card debt I worked so long to pay off was the result of one of those little "life lessons" of his, and although I wouldn't mind Laurie having another part-time job, I just think it's all kinda crappy and I don't want her to get stuck the way I did.
I'm sure it wasn't as malicious as I'm making it sound, but man, it annoyed me. I like Laurie's mom a lot but there should really be a satute of limitations on the age at which one's parents are allowed to meddle.
So, the neutral news (unless you're Gretchen) is that I got rid of my hair again. It started as a random urge, and I suppose it ended as a random urge as well, but it was one that just wouldn't leave my brain. With that in my mind, everything annoying about my hair was magnified until it simply had to be done.
And there is a lot about my hair that is annoying. It seems I have tried every hairstyle under the sun, and I am just not happy with any of them. Last summer I got fed up and had Amanda shave it all off, and found it remarkably freeing. I've had pompadours of various sizes, the Gap-style duck's-butt, the greasy slicked-back look, Hugh Grant hair, bangs, no bangs, the bangs that Scott said made me look like the blue virus from Dr. Mario, a Solid Snake pseudomullet, long hair, short hair, and finally just enough hair to not be bald. I don't like the no-hair look any more or less than the others-- well, I like it more than some others-- but it has the distinct advantage of requiring no maintenance.
Sorry Gretchen, but with Trainspotting hair, I can zone out in the shower and still make it to work on time. I go through a lot less shampoo, which means less trips to the store. It doesn't need blow drying or gel and I don't need to worry about messing it up by changing shirts or taking naps. Laurie likes to rub it and that feels neato. Brian From Work has hair clippers which saves me haircut money. All in all, it's a positive and practical decision.
If you look carefully you can see just why my hair refuses to be styled without immense effort. The grain of my hair is nuts. It is totally bonkers. It has no symmetry, no pattern, and basically makes no sense. This is why my hair couldn't hold a part, why it always looked lopsided, and why it took so much darn gel just to make it stick up in the front. Coupled with my family's genetically super-thick and naturally oily follicles, you get a big mess on my head. So, there. No more mess.
The good news is that I found a couple more classic games I've been searching for. (Those with no interest in my lifelong quest to collect old videogames, read no further.) One is Kung Fu, for the NES. I didn't have any experience with it aside from emulated ROMs, but Laurie had almost beaten it as a child before the people who owned the game moved away. So she's had a bone to pick with Kung Fu ever since, and also it's one of those classing NES games I didn't have, so I've had my eye out for it. Matt spotted it on top of the demo NES at GameCrazy, and I asked if it was for sale, which it was. For seven dollars, it was mine. Also on that same fortunate trip I picked up Rocket Knight Adventures, for Genesis, for a measly five dollars. Rocket Knight was overlooked at its time for coming in late amongst a glut of Sonic-inspired mascot platformers. And as a generally blue (though the blue is his armor) and rodentlike (though he's an opossum) character, mistaking Sparkster the Rocket Knight for another crappy Sonic clone is easy. But for smart kids who paid attention to such things, there's a Konami logo on the box that demands attention. Konami could make a mean platform game, usually with a fun twist. Rather than jumping on the heads of his enemies, Sparkster the Rocket Knight flies around on a jetpack and dispatches foes with a magic sword, which is damn cool. People who dismissed such games as "too kiddie" should not have scoffed at this one. Although the Kids difficulty was only a small challenge, the Hard setting gave the player only two hit points that could not be restored by powerups, one life, and no continues. Completing the game under such evil conditions is something only the hardest of the hardcore could even hope to accomplish and certainly not something meant for children. The music is some of the best on Genesis and there are some interesting graphical tricks (another Konami trademark) that still impress me now. I had a boxed copy of the game, but a long time ago I lent the cartridge to somebody who in turn lent it to a cousin who promptly lost it forever. So another wrong has been righted, for a mere five dollars.
BEGIN 'PREORDERING' RANT
I shouldn't have bought it, because I'm still in debt and need to be careful with my money, but I also picked up Worms 3D for the Gamecube. I'd asked about it before after its supposed release date but was told that they did not have any in stock because nobody preordered it. That pissed me off. The video game industry often shoots itself in the foot with business practices that make absolutely no sense to normal people whose lives do not revolve around video games. One of the problems I see with today's game market is a fanatical devotion to the concept of preordering. This is, somehow, a great moneymaking concept for game stores and they'll go out of their way to push it on you. "Hi-welcome-to-GameFunk-would-you-like-to-preorder-Final-Fantasy-XVII-how-can-I-help-you?" It's idiotic and it scares normal people. It's the worst when this is also coupled with employees that are forced to upsell club cards and magazine subscriptions. In the past, preordering was a useful practice put in place only for the most eagerly anticipated games, like next-generation franchise updates such as Zelda that tend to be in short supply when released. Nintendo in particular is naughty about creating artificial demand by undermanufacturing new games, and for a while preodering was a neccesary annoyance for anybody interested in having the newest games.
But all too soon it mutated into a sort of evil scheme where orders are placed on anticipated demand, and demand is measured by preorders. This is stupid. Essentially, in order to buy a new game, I have to know ahead of time when it is going to be released and put money down so I commit to a purchase that I am sure of making in the future. I can think of no other industry that works in such a way. Some people stick up for this by pointing out the particular speed at which games become obsolete, but I think that's crap. Part of the thrill of video games is their exciting evolution, and being wowed by the newest and prettiest games. This shouldn't be reserved only for the sort of dorks that know what games are going to be released in the future. Maybe concert tickets are sort of like this, but that's people wanting to see bands they already know they like. In the past, a game might sell poorly due to lousy box art, but now some games won't even get that chance because the box will not even be in the store to be displayed because nobody put money down promising to pay for it when it got there.
The video game market crashed almost completely in 1984 because it was flooded with too many copies of poor-quality games that nobody wanted. It may crash again for a completely opposite reason: there are tons of fantastic games, "sleeper" titles without a big marketing push behind them, but nobody ever buys them, because you can't impulse-shop based on a store's future inventory. Catering only to the hardcore gamer is a bad move because it completely neglects the income that really adds up when a parent buys a game that "looks cute" for their kid, or when somebody who likes only one genre of game casually buys a game because the box makes it look like a particularily cool or fun interpretation of that genre. Most gamers tend to buy the newest games, beat them in a week, and then trade them back for another new game; those used copies are then snatched up quickly by people without so much disposable cash, and by people like me who collect them. This leaves little time for casual gamers to notice the game and buy it. The frenzy over preordering scares off such customers and adds an unneccesary hurdle keeping games from going truly mainstream.
END 'PREORDERING' RANT
So yeah, I bought Worms3D for Gamecube. It was buried in a box of new stuff that the store was unpacking at that moment and the employee happened to then say, "hey, Worms" at which point I pounced. ("Somebody was asking about this the other day," said the employee. "That was me," I said from behind the glass case of Super Nintendo games.) The sole reason that game was in that box in the first place is, I believe, because I had gone on a shorter version of the rant about how stupid it is that I couldn't buy a game that had been released just because I didn't tell the store ahead of time that I was going to. I was told that preordering indicates a demand for the title. "I'm the demand," I had said, gesturing to my wallet. Anyway, the point (heh) is that I bought the game on priciple even though I probably shouldn't have spent the money mostly to reward the store for actually stocking it.
I'll probably write about it in more detail another time (lucky you!) because I'm still getting the hang of it, but Worms3D is great. It's really a bargain at the $30 suggested retail price, especially if you've played Worms in any of its 2D forms. It's remarkably faithful to the almost flawless Worms gameplay; it just adds another entire dimension, making for more hilarious turn-based blunders involving exploding sheep and bananas and such. Well done, Team 17.
Hrm. Maybe I should start up another diary-- I mean, "blog"-- about games, just so I won't have to waste so much space on them here, huge part of my life though they may be. Perhaps I'll make that a part of my future website, which I do still plan to get up and running. Really. Maybe I can set aside some of my next check for domain registration and spare those of you without interest from my self-indulgent video game rants.
