Catching Up

Yeah, I know I haven't been posting. Though, no one is probably reading so it all evens out. So this will be a bit of a random assortment of stuff post as I catch up.

First off, I will never buy scented Fabreeze again. Well, actually its pseudo-Fabreeze from ALL. God, it stinks. I sprayed it two hours ago and I'm still sick from the smell.

Anyway, I was getting very gung ho about going to NYC, but my enthusiasm is plummeting. After doing everything but buy my bus tickets, I started realizing that I really didn't want to spend 9 hours on a bus in a single day. I really do want to visit the Whitney, but I'm just not sure I can justify that. I usually can't justify the 45 minute train ride into Boston unless I'm going to work. The idea of spending 9 hours on a bus, an additional 2 hours waiting for buses, ANOTHER additional 2 hours getting two and from the bus station in Boston, and I'm looking at spending 13 hours just so I can get 6 hours in New York. Not sure my rate of return is high enough there, no matter how much I want to do it. And I was finally going to walk through Central Park and everything! Oh, well.

In mundane personal news, I've got a part-time job. Not the interesting part-time job I was hoping for, but rather sales floor work in the Women's Clothing section of Target. Eh. Its a living. And I'm getting paid more than I expected, so that's a small (very small) comfort. Plus I get the employee discount, which should come in handy enough.

I've also found a place to live. Woo hoo! Great apartment, great roommates I know I'll get along with, nice neighborhood, great view from my bedroom, just a lot to feel positively about. I'll probably post more about that eventually.

Its also been a banner week for the couple of video game franchises I enjoy. The good folks at EA Games/Maxis released a neat utility for their upcoming Sims 2 game. Basically, it allows you to create characters for the game and is mostly a test drive for the new character creation tools. I'm really impressed. I was able to create a computer character that looked very realisticly like me, right down to the details of my face and nose. I just hope I can go in and add some of my scars and birthmarks, because I get geeky like that. One thing I loved is that they thought to put in a tool that would allow you to add a double chin. Its damn realistic looking, too. I've never seen this before, as usually you just have to blow up the face to get a "fat" look, but I'm very impressed. I'm less impressed that the game's "fat" bodies are still noticably not fat. Especially the woman's body. My virtual doppleganger deserves a VBBW! Oh, well.

Speaking of fat video game characters, a torrent of news has been released about the follow-up to Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, GTA: San Andreas. One minor tidbit is that the game requires you to eat to keep up your stamina, but if you eat too much, you can get fat and this will slow you down and result in you getting verbally attacked when you walk down the street. *groan* The solution, of course, is going to a gym and working out. Its an interesting twist on video game's stamina regulation, and the fattened character looks more realisticly fat than most fat characters in video games, but I'm really annoyed that dieting is getting built into a video game. Sims 2 may have the same thing, actually, and I'll be more annoyed with that. Other than that, the new GTA game looks very cool. Set in early 90's California, the game deals more with street gangs than the earlier use of conventional organized crime. They are also seriously pushing the evelope on what a game like this is capable of. If you've played Vice City or GTA III, you're no doubt impressed with how expansive and open-ended the environments are. GTA:SA goes much further. Instead of playing out in 1 city, its not spread across a whole state with three distinct urban environments, each larger than the whole of Vice City. Plus, you have to drive through the country side to get from town to town. How cool is that? The game takes you from a psuedo Los Angelas to San Fran to Las Vegas. Its also the first GTA game to feature a black main character, and I'm curious to see how some of the white suburban fan base takes to that. Early word is that there is clearly some racially motivated distaste going on, which is ironic since it sounds like the game will deal head-on with race issues in the inner city. It also sounds like the plot will deal more with the noble crooks of GTA III instead of the Scarface inspired drug dealing of Vice City, which is a nice switch. The screenshots look gorgeous and engrossing, and I can't wait for its October release.

Hmm. What else. I haven't discussed TV lately, which is a shame since there are several things I wanted to talk about, including the end of Friends and the return of the Dick Van Dyke Show and the impending end of Angel. For another day, perhaps.