Okay, so I definitely should have checked the news before my last post. This is why aggression should never be channeled behind the wheel of an actual car.
Not cool at all. Almost as not cool as my disturbingly tangential post. Very sorry about that.
Your carma will catch up with you one day...
I used to love running over people with my car. In this game only, of course. I’d never do that in real life (at least not anymore; bodies leave unsightly dents on your hood). I mean, I really loved it. So it was inevitable that Carmageddon 3 would become one of my favorite racing games.
Strangely enough, though, I never really played the actual game. I just ran over people. In that regard, I would definitely consider the Carmageddon series to be a predecessor to the Grand Theft Auto series, in that you could enter the game world and just drive around, not following the set rules—just splatting people flat with your car. I’m saying this all, of course, based on the third of the series; the others might have been different. But if they were, then the others sucked.
Now, keep in mind that I’ve lived in the D.C. area all my life. I learned to drive here. I suffer traffuck here on a daily basis. I am, by my own admission, a very aggressive driver. Never dangerously so; I don’t weave sporadically through traffic, cutting people off in ways that could cause a major accident. I consider that type of driving to be offensive anyway. Driving should not be a frantic fumbling. It should be fluid undulation of faster and slower, back and forth, in and out…seamless weaving timed to an almost sensuous rhythm.
Wait. Where was I? Oh, yeah. I’m not dangerous aggressive. I do, however, find myself succumbing to much wailing and gnashing of teeth when I’m trapped on the Beltway in whatever daily cluster fuck back-up happens to be occurring during my commute. This kind of frustration must be properly channeled. Channeled on the road is very dangerous. Channeled through a steering wheel joystick and a game where you earn points for running over pedestrians? That’s just bloody fun. Literally. I can’t tell you anything more about this game beyond the fact that I spent a lot of time running over pedestrians.
You can even run over farm animals in this game. I remember exploding sheep (or was that a screen saver I used to have?).
And all of it was set to a throbbing electronica soundtrack that included such classics as “Diet Coke Overdose,” “Night Time Madmen,” and my personal favorite, “Hands Up.” I recently burned the entire Carmageddon 3 soundtrack to my iPod, but this last song is probably one that I should avoid listening to while driving. I think the last thing that people on the Beltway want is me roaring up behind them in my car, blasting a song that has the repeated line of “Hands up! Hands up! Who wants to die?”
All this sounds so very demented, doesn’t it? I haven’t played Carmageddon 3 in a long time. It’s been at least since I switched to Windows XP and the company that sold my steering wheel joystick refused to create a patch for that operating system. Bastards. Maybe I should fire it up again and see if it still captivates me like it once did…or has Vice City ruined me forever to these simpler pixelated pleasures?
And on that note, I kick off this new feature, sort of like Flashback Friday…but not really. Gaming Glory will be an every now and then reminiscing on my part about those horribly violent, horribly addicting video games that I played for far more time than could ever be considered healthy. It’s like the fun just never starts here at the lair. 
So Maryland apparently has swine flu. Or at least six people living in Maryland. Since when did six sick people qualify as a pandemic? I hate that word. I hate any word that is over-used, especially when it’s used incorrectly. This isn’t a pandemic, just like the avian flu outbreak wasn’t a pandemic (I kvetched about this in my angry blogger days, too).
Yes, this is something to be treated with due caution and care. But stop trying to freak us all out. You’re going to scare the children, and then they’ll start crying. I hate the sound of crying children. It irritates me like nails on a chalkboard might irritate normal people.
Doesn’t matter to me anyway. According to my dad, I might actually be immune to piggy flu (ew, that evokes Lord of the Flies imagery that I just don’t want to have in my head this early in the day). Apparently, he believes that both my parents went through swine flu back in the seventies…1976, to be precise. And my mom just happened to be pregnant with me at the time. I wonder if that’s true…the immunity part, not the pregnant with me part. I think this will be a theory I’ll refrain from testing.
On other news fronts, I’ve been thinking about this whole deal of Arlen Specter switching teams. I think this was a bad idea. If there’s one thing that the GOP needs more of, it’s moderate thinkers. They need people in the party who will start pulling them away from the far-right precipice on which they’ve been teetering for far too long. I get that Senator Specter is willing to do whatever it takes to make sure that he has a better chance of winning next time he’s up for re-election (if I remember correctly, he came close to being trounced soundly by his Democratic opponent last election), but this is a Spock sacrifice moment if ever I saw one: needs of the many, my friend. And right now, the GOP needs many, many more of your moderate type.
Also, I don’t necessarily think I like the idea of a filibuster-proof Senate. Democrats are running all the tables right now, and I don’t even think that’s a good idea. Everything requires balance. The government has been fairly imbalanced for a while, what with the GOP running the show for practically 8 years straight. Now we’re just flipping over to the exact opposite end of the spectrum. Avoid the middle at all cost.
Never mind that most people actually exist in the middle anyway.
Ms. Foster, waxing poetic
Looking for the perfect gift for the actor-obsessed loved one in your life? Then you might want to check out this auction. Apparently, the Hollywood Wax Museum is going to auction off several wax statues from their collection. Included in the auction are life-sized statues of Laverne and Shirley, Kirk and Spock, the Fonz, Terminator 2 Ahnold, Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman (looking strangely like Sarah Ferguson), Marilyn Monroe (looking even more strangely like a young Betty White), Travolta and Thurman from Pulp Fiction, zombie Michael Jackson, some Star Wars blokes (no Jar Jar), the Scream Killer, Forrest Gump – three pages of nothing but wax statues up for sale.
The problem, however, is that the statues look only minimally like their corresponding characters/actors. Case in point: this wax statue of Jodie Foster from Maverick.
Um. No.
Looks like her in the same way that your reflection in a car door kind of looks like you…but not really. I’m actually kind of shocked at how unlike the actors most of these statues look. Madame Tussauds apparently makes the statue process look so much easier than it really is.
Of the statues that I looked at, probably the closest to realistic I saw were Darth Maul and the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz. However, they don’t even showcase the Tin Man on the main page; you have to click on the Dorothy photo to see him (Dorothy actually scares me a little; she looks more like early-in-the-movie Regan from The Exorcist).
However, skip ahead to page 4, avert your eyes from the wax crucified Jesus at the top of that page (really?), and you’ll see some pretty cool costumes, including one of Robert Englund’s Freddy Krueger outfits (minus the glove, unfortunately). I wouldn’t mind that, actually—and I think it might be less scary than some of these statues.
Another long time in between finished books, but finally I am through with Calculating God, by Robert J. Sawyer. This was a “That sounds kind of intriguing” pick from my last trip to the library. I’d never heard of Robert Sawyer, but I’m: a) a big sci-fi geek, and b) interested in religious discourse. Score on both things.
This was a delightful read. It starts out with the whimsy of a Douglas Adams tome and steadily metamorphoses into an oftentimes provocative examination of what it would mean if aliens reached Earth and we learned they were a far more advanced species that believes God created the universe and all within it. Such is the dichotomy for the Human protagonist, Tom Jericho, an atheist who now finds himself faced with uncertainty about the beginning and ending of life, both through personal crisis and professional dealings with the alien visitors.
I’m still a little uncertain as to whether or not I found the ending to be satisfying. On some levels, yes, it works. I’m not really sure what exactly is holding me back from giving this a perfect 5, but there’s something there that’s not quite what I expected it would be. I guess I was expecting an 11th hour option that I secretly knew was never going to occur. Perhaps a second read is necessary, but for now, I will give this a final score of 4.5/5.
Next is Walking in Circles Before Lying Down, by Merrill Markoe. I know nothing more about this book than it has a photo of a dog on the cover. Yes, I have done blind book buys before based solely on the fact that a dog was on the cover, and I did it this time, too. Hopefully, this will end up being as successful as the last time I did this and ended up being introduced to the wonderment of Paul Auster through his delightful book, Timbuktu.
I have been promising my old blog posts. So here they are, still residing where many of you already knew them to be, at think.lobablanca.com. I used to call that blog “incite.thought.” I think I should have called it “Terminally Pissed” (and not in the drunk sense of the word).
I was an angry mofo through most of these posts. Hulk angry. As you’ll be able to deduce, a lot of it was Bush-related fury. Some of it was religion-related fury…and some was government (federal, state, and local)-related. Still, that was a whole lot of fury. It’s no wonder I once called it the “blog of Dorian Gray.” I can’t imagine what kind of wolf I would have been if I hadn’t been dumping all that venom somewhere.
It is true that my anger remains to a certain extent. However, I have tempered my outlook on many subjects, dropped certain viewpoints and altered others. We are an ever-evolving species after all. Also, apathy does wonders for dulling anger. Perhaps this new blog should be called “incite.meh.”
I suppose I’ve linked to these posts anyway because…well, hell, I spent almost 4 years blathering on about various things (sometimes even posting funny or happy things). And even though I don’t feel that way about several things anymore (or even agree with some of what I wrote back then) I guess those entries and feelings should somehow be acknowledged.
Plus, I know it sounds strange, but I kind of want all the posts made about my beautiful Jodie girl to remain out there for people to read. She was the best dog in the whole world (IMHO, of course) and, even though she was taken from me in an utterly horrible way, I guess I want others to see what I was so blessed to see every day for a little more than 8 very short years. She had the soul of an angel and a punim that could have made even the Grinch’s heart melt.
So there you go. Read if you’d like. Ignore if you’d like. Comment you cannot. E-mail you can. Talk like Yoda I will. Smile you may 
I grew up with Air Force One pretty much in my back yard (I also grew up witnessing all variety of strange sonic booms and mysterious lights in the night sky affiliated with living so close to a military air base…but that’s for a different post). So it wasn’t all that strange a thing for me to see Air Force One flying low in the sky when I was little.
What might have seemed commonplace back then and in the particular area where I grew up has completely different overtones in another part of the country. Especially a part of the country that bore the brunt of the worst terrorist attack to ever reach our shores. It hasn’t been all that long since September 11, and even though we no longer have Mr. Bush out there reminding us of this day every chance he can find, you’d think that—at the very least—those in the military and the government would remember that morning.
They might even remember it enough to want to avoid quietly setting up a photo-op in which, unbeknown to residents and workers, they fly Air Force One low in the sky over NYC, complete with a fighter jet escort, during a work day. Or any day for that matter. Really? That’s one for the History of Dumb-Ass Ideas, Volume 8,000.
Next time you want a pretty photo-op of AF1 coming in for a tête-à-tête with Lady Liberty, you might want to give those on the ground a bit of a heads-up…
Golden Friendships
Thank you for being a friend,
Travel down the road and back again,
Your heart is true,
You’re a pal and a confidante!
And if you threw a party,
Invited everyone you knew!
You would see,
The biggest gift would be from me,
And the card attached would say,
Thank you for being a friend!
I know, I’m a soppy git sometimes, but damn if it didn’t depress me when I read that Bea Arthur died on April 25. Anyone who knows me well knows that The Golden Girls remains one of my all-time favorite sitcoms. It’s one of the few that I watched as a child that can still make me laugh today as an adult (probably even more so now since I get so many more of the “adult” jokes than I did back then). And I have to say that Dorothy Zbornak was my favorite of the group (although all of them were absolutely amazing and a joy to watch every week; there was a chemistry there among those women that very few shows are lucky enough to capture).
And then there’s Maude. What an amazing sitcom that was! It’s been years since I watched it on TVLand, but I will still break out a resounding “God’ll get you for that” every now and again.
If anyone out there reading this has never had the pleasure of watching either of these shows, I urge you to rent them and catch up on some damn funny, poignant, and socially relevant television viewing. Bea Arthur was an amazing comedienne and I’m so very glad that she played such a prominent role in my youth and continues to remain important in my life even now. I might even have to break down and buy those Golden Girls DVDs now…
I realized something after yesterday’s follow-up cranky post: I’ve already got four posts under “Surly” but I don’t even have a “Happy” category. So consider this post me fixing that problem. I’m actually not an unhappy person; I just carry around a lot of surliness inside me. I might be an early 30s girl on the outside, but inside I think I’m more like that cantankerous old dude that Dana Carvey used to play every now and then on SNL’s Weekend Update.
So here’s my first official post on things that make me happy. Today, for instance, was a happy day. First day of the season to break the 80-degree mark (Fahrenheit, that is). It was hot, it was sunny, and it was perfect for a hiking trip to Great Falls. Of course, when I say “hiking,” what I really mean is, “walking along a dirt path for a few miles up and then turning around and coming back.” No actual climbing on rocks was involved this trip. But it was a perfectly lovely hike. Not too many people, but plenty of wildlife. We saw little lizards, turtles lined up on rocks to catch some rays, dogs running everywhere – plus two blue herons. One even let me get close enough to it for the lovely shot below. Of course, he probably felt more than safe since there was water between us, but it was still nice to be trusted that much by wildlife. And look in the lower right corner of the photo. I didn’t realize it at the time, but there’s a little turtle surfacing.
We even saw a snake swimming in the canal. I snapped a few shots, but the canal water is so disgusting looking…it didn’t make me happy to look at it, and I can only imagine that it didn’t make the snake happy to be swimming in it. So I left it out of this post. Maybe I’ll use it later…when I’m back to feeling surly
Wildlife gone mild
I sense a strike!
Here, my friends, is an integral piece to the puzzle that was my childhood: Strolling Bowling. This game probably also fed my growing desire for order and organization, but we’ll get to that in a minute.
This was the absolute perfect gift for an only child with simple entertainment needs and a bear-trap attention span. You wound up the little bowling ball, aimed it, and set it loose to bounce on its cute oversized orange feet toward the collapsible pins at the end of the alley. Yep, that really is all there is to it. Long was the “portable entertainment” road to Gameboy, my friends.
As for the encouragement of my future as an anal-retentive organization freak, this game might have started it. It folded up so very neatly. The pin section detached and fit inside the rest of the alley, which doubled as a carrying case. Oh, and the bowling ball also had a special little storage niche inside the case, and everything clicked together into a cute portable package that was perfect for those long trips we took every summer to my grandparents’ house and to Florida…because listening to repetitious plastic clackety noises coming from the backseat couldn’t have been at all irritating to my parents!
I actually still have my Strolling Bowling set; I even had it out last night when I ran across it in one of my storage bins (again, organized to a fault!). It’s one of the few childhood games that I kept. The rest of them really didn’t mean much to me. I think most only children have a certain disconnect when it comes to liking board games (also, I dare anyone to hold a special place in their heart for “Hungry, Hungry Hippos” when that was the taunt that still haunts their formerly fat inner child). I also think I was more of a book, drawing paper, and stuffed animal kind of kid.
Anyway, sorry for another game, but look at this little guy. How can you not love him? (And, yes, one day soon I will discuss my overwhelming anthropomorphic urges…)
The Strolling Bowling ball in action
(Images Courtesy of Firebox.com)
