The eve of New Year’s Eve is almost upon us.

So much time has passed…Jesus Christ…

My life has been so consumed by work lately that this blog has been left unattended, and ravaged by silence in its comments section. An unfortunate side effect of accumulating wealth, I suppose. On the other hand, the money I gain from my job seems miniscule. I’ve worked four months at this job and haven’t even breached the two-grand mark. Deductions, reduced hours, and a floundering company are to blame. Honestly, it is time to relocate. Somehow, I must wedge myself into the blissful utopia of EBGames. After all, is their a more suitable place for a vidiot like myself to work part-time? Not a chance. In fact, with that match-up, I can envision a short-lived FOX sitcom.

Cool beans.

Not only has this blog been left neglected, but other obligations have been shirked as well. The plans for the New Year’s Eve Box Social have been slightly side-tracked. Fortunately, the only remaining bits to be arranged were dinner reservations headed up by none other than the Right Honourable Caleb. They were originally pegged for 5:30, but have since been moved to 7:00 because Cory couldn’t attend earlier.

On the one hand, this is convenient because it gives us time to relocate stuff to Aaron’s house. On the other hand, it leaves us with less time together. An hour and a half less time - in fact. Substantial sorrows to that lost time. Many times could buts have been whooped in Mario Tennis or Halo 2.

Props to my homies.

Travis popped into Zellers briefly recently and was talking to me about university, once again inspiring within me the insidious hatred towards my decision almost a year ago. It would have been glorious had I left for university last year. So many things would be better. My father wouldn’t be insisting on charging me rent to prepare for a university experience that he hadn’t saved for on my behalf until a few years ago. But apparently the financial plight is entirely my fault. I’m working almost every night in a shithole that I hate to fund my university experience, but last year he bought a snowmobile. My bad.

God dammit. Well, I intended to send out an e-mail about New Years, but my computer is fucked up right now. My cursor appears to have passed out over my start bar as a result of fatigue. So, I guess I’ll have to shut her down.

This computer is dying… for every time I scan and remove crap from this thing, it is returned threefold (as my sisters and brother thwart my efforts).

Jaysus.

It was an uncanny coincedence. I’d merely gone into EBGames to browse about the gaming possibilities for my brother’s modest Christmas gift when I felt compelled to flip through the used Playstation games. It was to my immediate surprise that I noticed a copy of Resident Evil 2, the original version. When I say original, I mean before Dual Shock Analog Support. I found a copy of Resident Evil 2 from January 1998 and picked it up for an easy $8.99. I was fucking ecstatic.

My unsatiable desire to complete my collection knows only one roadblock: Resident Evil 3 is as impossible to find as a leprechaun dry humping Heidi Klum on All Souls Day. The original Playstation copy of that game has evaporated from the surface of this planet like the first seven snowfalls of this winter. It is simply not existent in any retail outlet of any type.

As a result, I’m going to have to sink to a disgusting low: I’m going to have to purchase the more expensive and not improved Gamecube version of the game. These were produced in limited quantities, but obviously, they were made more recently than their PS1 cousins, so some locations may have them. I’ve confirmed that my own local EB Games does not, but perhaps in a larger city, I can find something. If, by chance, you can find Resident Evil 3: Nemesis for Playstation OR Gamecube, please purchase it for me as a Christmas gift. I will pay you back.

On an unrelated note to my ravenous hunt, I purchased the recut and extended Sin City, although I have yet to watch it. Family movie night (Saturday night) was spent watching 40-year-old virgin, which - I’ll admit - had me spilling urine everywhere as I chuckled. The doctor did recommend I use a lid for that storage cup, so I guess it is genuinely my fault.

I also have eczema. I find it funny because Andreas diagnosed it quicker than my doctor did. Perhaps a guiding light in Andreas’ cloudy future?

NURSE: Doctor, this man is losing a lot of blood.
DR. ANDREAS: Holy shit! N00b. Rush B. This j00 needs rez!

Then again, maybe not.

When you are employed in the retail sector of the service industry, you begin to realise what massive jerkholes the entire planet is populated with. Although you are trying to do your best to help someone, they are still bitter towards you. If you fail to find something, they curse your name and march away to complain to someone else about the horrible pratfalls your store has laid before them.

It is even worse around Christmas time. In a worried frenzy, these massive and sloth-like humans trudge through the front doors bringing along their shopping cynicisms. They spill over into every department like a viscous sludge, clogging the aisleways (the arteries of the store) resulting in a full-blown heart attack. People cannot find what they need. People do not know the price for items. Employees are washed away in a sea of angry faces.

So many things about working in retail have developed a deeply seeded hatred for the holiday season. Frankly, I’m not surprised that this happened. It has been my belief that whatever job you take ruins your appreciation for the realm in which the job resides. Working at McDonalds makes you detest their food. Working in a grocery store destroys your passion for canned goods. It only seems logical that working in retail makes you detest Christmas.

And why not? Every day, customers come into the store asking if we have any more of this item and if we can get any of that item. No. It is getting too damned close to Christmas. The store has been raped and pillaged by customers bearing torches in their hands. If you’re one of the tardy scavengers who attempts to tear the rotted meat of the bones, you’re out of luck. The bones have already been picked clean.

But I’ve digressed too far from the topic I intended to cover.

Christmas has changed from what I remember. Parents push through the aisles with their children and actually have kids select their own gifts from Santa Claus.

Am I of a dying breed that actually puts genuine thought into the gift for a person? Am I the only one who appreciates the twistedly sinister art of deception when it comes to hidden stores of Christmas gifts waiting to be placed under the tree in the eleventh hour?

It seems the Christmas of thought and love poured into a selection of gifts is gone. The secrecy and the intimacy of that Christmas has been devoured by some obese stagnant cluster of bile and wax. The spirit that existed within that Christmas has been tapped and left as a withered husk.

You can see the decay in Christmas. When I was a child, the mall would be packed with children literally itching to sit on the lap of the department store Santa. He would ask your parents what you wanted ahead of time, and pretend to actually have some obsessive need to make lists and check them twice. The kids would smile and laugh. But recently, I walked through the mall and the Santa was sitting alone, in his gazebo, ringing a tiny bell. Merry Christmas Santa Claus, the spirit is dead.

Maybe it is because we live in a world where every 40-year-old man dressed as Santa Claus is feared to be a pedophile, and the only reason to purchase gifts for kids at Christmas is so they will shut up and be good for once in the year. Frankly, the thought is terrifying. I truly feel that the season has died. I’ve never been fully in tune with the Christian aspect of the season, but I could at least appreciate the good will towards man part.

I must be old fashioned. I still live in a world where the entire family (including the dog) goes out on a crisp Sunday afternoon to hunt down a coniferous tree to put in their living room. A world where decorating the tree is a family event, and each ornament is represenative of a Christmas past. Each ornament has meaning. A world where gifts are only unwrapped Christmas morning, with the entire family still in housecoats sipping various heated beverages. A world where Christmas is celebrated on Christmas and not on New Years. A world where Christmas needs to have snow. A world where people know the Scottish words to Auld Lang Syne.

A world where the Christmas spirit of a town is not as cold as the harsh tempest outside.

With IGN’s section for the Nintendo Revolution up and running, it has become monumentally simpler to keep aprised of all the latest gaming news. As a result, I can now have much more to comment on in regards to the Revolution and Nintendo’s blunders therein.

Nintendo’s official stance is summed up in the following text:

Our competitors would have you believe that the next generation of gaming will be solely defined by high definition graphics. High definition graphics look fantastic, but come at a price. To shine, high definition games must be played on high definition televisions, which aren’t cheap. Games with high definition graphics are expensive to develop because they must be developed in both standard and high definition formats. Those development costs are passed on to you in the form of more expensive software. Finally, playing games with high definition graphics requires a system with loads of RAM and costly high-end graphics chips, both of which make it prohibitively expensive for most consumers.

Sharper graphics are certainly part of the next generation. We know that games for the Revolution will look brilliant whether played on a standard television or on a high definition television. However, is that all there is to next-generation gaming? We feel that sharper graphics should be combined with a new way to interface with the game itself. Our controller is a sharp departure from the current standard, to be sure, but it will provide a level of interactivity you can’t get currently.

We believe in providing a single system that can play not only the previous generation’s titles, but also games from a massive library built over 20 years of creating innovative and exciting games. We also believe in providing a complete wireless online experience right out of the box.

Nintendo has created a gaming system that is sleek and compact in size, powers up quickly with minimal load times, makes game development easy and fast, is easy to use, and is affordable for everyone. We are confident that gamers and non-gamers alike will support the truly next-generation experience only Nintendo can provide. Once you have a chance to play games on the Revolution, we think you’ll agree!

Nintendo of America

Realism is key. Realism provides immersion, and immersion provides a truly rewarding gaming experience. The interface is an important development, but Nintendo’s advancements seem to be the tiniest of steps in what can possible arise.

Nintendo stated clearly that high-definition games and consoles will work on low definition televisions. So, purchasing a high-definition console at this point poses no problems. Nintendo does not even consider the declining prices of high definition televisions over the consoles life-cycle (which may be extended on account of the giant leaps achieved by respective companies). Is it poor to purchase a high-definition console in the event of a possible high-definition television purchase? Hardly.

Software sees a ten dollar raise in price. Of course you’d expect that. The same price gap is witnessed between Game Boy games and Gamecube games. No surprise there. Surely we cannot expect the Revolution’s games to be priced on par with the noble Gamecubes games. Unless Nintendo is telling us that there will be no improvement in graphic quality. In that case, why should I get a Revolution at all?

Once again, this article brings up Nintendo’s uber-backwards compatability promise. Of course, this is a service they have released no information about in reference to available games, prices, server loads, availability of games by location or anything important about the service. And online capability? They bring it up as if it is new and exciting, apparently not realizing the popularity of XBox Live.

And apparently, the Revolution”makes game development easy and fast”. This comment is troubling. Does it mean Revolution fans should expect a lot of poorly made games that are hurriedly pumped out of Nintendo’s think tanks? Are we in the market for a gaming generation without substance? And how can it be easy to develop a game with a bizarre new control mechanic? Honestly, that phrase sounds like a blatant lie.

And thus ends me trying to rip apart Nintendo…again.

Next post, I promise I’ll talk about something more interesting. I’m off to play Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga.

I’ve been exploring the pure, raw power of my Playstation Portable for the past few days, experimenting with the limits it will push in portable gaming innovation. The Internet browser - much to my surprise - was an ingenious little add-in. Yesterday, I caught up on Binkle’s and Caleb’s blog posts from the comfort of my bedroom through the use of my PSP and a wireless router.

This opens up an entirely new realm of uses. For example, Portable Gaming Pornography. If Sony were to release a PGP, with simply an Internet browser, people could carry pornography around in their pocket wherever they go. Bored in church? Turn on your PGP and get more wood than the cross. Tired of waiting in the grocery line? Just whip the PGP out and browse through the Internet archives for “fat man porn” and show it to the people in front of you. You’ll be out of that line in no time.

If only Sony would listen to my marketing strategies, they’d be rolling in the dough.

Moreso, I’ve spent the past three days re-organizing the videos in the place where I work. It has been a real pain. But in that time, I’ve picked out three films I figured I might enjoy. Tonight, I watched Crash. It was amazing. Tomorrow, I’m going to watch the Final Cut (probably not as good as One Hour Photo, but I’m going to give it a try). After that, Young Frankenstein. Should be pretty wicked.

I’ll right a more substantial update when I’m not tired.

Opening the box was truly a wonderous event. Examining the package carefully in the dim monitor light, I slowly peeled it open to spill forth its precious contents. First, I removed the adapter. Then, the headphones. The glorious 1000MB Memory Stick Duo. It was sleek and black. Framed in gold. It was a valuable commodity. Already I feared thieves were at my window, looking in on the gift that they could not have.

Finally, the unit itself was unwrapped and unveiled. Breathtaking. The black finish was like gazing into a black hole. No light escaped from the polished surface. The battery was already in place. I activated the system.

It flickered into life. I smiled.

Now, I’m hurriedly trying to downgrade the Firmware on my PSP to get the l33t haxxors.

Shh…don’t tell Sony.