| Wednesday, February 22, 2006 |
  Paradise - First Full Drafts Completed | 
Posted - 2/22/2006 2:33:22 AM | Last night I finished what I recently decided would be the full first draft of Paradise and I'm surprised at how well it's turning out. I have a nice majority of the content I want for the first chapter written in, but it's still very rough around the edges. Last night I made an initial editing run of the first ten pages of the 1.5-line spaced draft (which stands at thirteen pages right now) and added a few large sections of entirely new content that have yet to be proofread. And tonight I spent a solid few hours just editing the first six pages of last night's draft… So I still have to get around to doing a first pass on the recently-written content as well as the last few pages that I wrote a week ago. The first full editing pass should be finished tomorrow, and I'll update this post accordingly once that happens, but I figured I'd write a post now. My eyes are currently too tired to really edit anything else at the moment (though I'm not personally tired enough to head to sleep quite yet), so what better time than now to post the "it's finished" entry?
Against my better judgment, I'm going to do a little bit of talking about the actual content of the chapter, just so those who haven't heard me rant about it before can have some semblance of an idea about what they're going to be getting into if they read it. The basic premise is that the story takes place in a planned "fallout shelter" which has room and supplied enough to support over ten-thousand people for as long as it needs to. The first chapter starts forty-six days after the inhabitants of the shelter (named Paradise; and you thought the name of the story was unrelated. SILLY YOU!) are actually locked in (though they have been living there with a bit more freedom for an unknown-to-even-me amount of time before then). They have no means of getting out of the shelter other than outside help by those "in the know" or an inner-shelter failsafe which I have yet to establish.
The story of how the people in the shelter got chosen will be shown through flashbacks into the main character's life, for the most part, with the occasional "present time" conversations between characters when it seems fitting. My original intent was to not have any flashbacks until the third chapter or so, as I think it's a strange enough situation to not warrant immediate explanation, but a number of people felt differently, so I threw in a fairly explanatory flashback just to test out the concept. Whether or not it will actually stay where it's currently placed, I don't know, but the early feedback I've received about it has been positive.
As of right now, there is very little I actually have in mind as to what I will be working towards. As an example, I have had a fairly fleshed-out sense of what the main character (Adam) is like and what will become of him… But while I was plotting out and writing the first draft I never had any intention of giving him a wife. Then, last night, while I was reading through the chapter, I gave him a wife in the flashback and that's just how it turned out. That's pretty much the gist of my knowledge of the actual story specifics at the moment, but I do have a lot of general ideas of what I want to work in, as well as a potential ending scene already completely written out in my head.
And now some more general stuff: this story isn't science-fiction, so don't let your imagination go too crazy while you read it. The story is set to take place in an undetermined year (and it will remain that way), though the social and political events that the story is based around could never happen now, or even in the next decade, so the story takes place in the future solely so that these kinds political tension can be safely developed and explained. For all intents and purposes, though, everything in the story will be based off of modern technology and scientific knowledge. The idea of a large underground fallout shelter is reallya bit far-fetched, and I understand that, but as of now I'm really not all too concerned about that.
And now, a WARNING: the introductory chapter contains some fairly detailed description of gore and PG-13 language. On the other hand, the first chapter includes no explicit material aside from a fairly substantial amount of swearing (R-caliber stuff in this case).
Paradise- Introduction (DOC or PDF) -- The introductory chapter is intentionally vague and seemingly unrelated to the first chapter, but I assure that it will eventually find its place in the actual story… And if it doesn't, it'll disappear like POOF. Gone. For now, though, just assume it's related.
- Chapter 1 (DOC or PDF) -- This is where the actual story begins and the main character, Adam, is introduced along with Seth who has red hair. Thrilling.
And the general folder where I upload the drafts as I "complete" them can be found at http://www.polycat.net/trent/book/. If you have any general comments, then please by all means e-mail me or just leave a comment to this entry… Or some kind of combination deal if that's your thing. If you feel the need to make any small grammatical corrections, just refrain for the time being. Currently any feedback on style, pacing, specific or, best of all, general content would be absolutely awesome to the max.
Update (2/26/06): Alright, the first draft of the full chapter was just finished. As I said on my site, I hope you enjoy it. I'll probably start work on Chapter 2 in a week or two. Still drafting some basic ideas for the chapter. It'll be a good'un. I think it'll primarily be centered more around the story of what kind of place they're living in (though I don't think I'm going to get into the why yet). The real crazy stuff won't be breaking out quite yet, but I may lay a few of the foundations for it.
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| Sunday, February 19, 2006 |
| Three Months in the Life of a Kitten | 
Posted - 2/19/2006 5:25:47 PM | Every now and then I feel it my civil duty to ensure that Polycat.net actually has a post or two about cats. And since this very rarely actually happens, I thought I'd write a nice summary post about the first three months with my little kitten Hobbes. Before I get too far into this, though, let's just all make sure that we know that when I say "summary" I really mean that it's more of a treatise on the matter. So, that said, don't blame me; blame my brain for feeling the need to disclose whatever may enter its reign of "freedom."
It was late on a Saturday night in the middle of November -- November 12, unless I've forgotten how to correctly read a calendar… Which is a distinct possibility -- where I was just starting up a new character in World of Warcraft after my friends had very nearly taken care of all of the work in playing the game (gave me CDs, someone else's paid account, and were damn near willing to install it for me as well). I was watching the lengthy install process when one of my housemates came into my room and said "Hey, Trent." Now, this particular housemate and I haven't been on good terms since he took a turn to the "douche bag" route of life so I didn't even really feel the need to turn around from my monitor and look back at him standing in my doorway. Eventually, though, his unspeaking presence was enough to make me look back once to see if he was still there, and when this happened, I saw an orange and white ball of fuzz peering at me from the upper, unzipped portion of his jacket.
Quick interlude: if you know me, then you know I love cats. That's really all there is to it. You don't even really need to me all that well to come to some kind of understanding of this fact. I mean, I don't make it a habit to wear cat ears to my classes, or wear shirts with kittens on them, but eventually you just know, instinctively, that I like cats. I like almost all animals, to be honest, but cats have a special place near my heart that no other animal can take away.
Upon seeing the fluffy little ball of cuteness, I emitted some kind of unspeakable high-pitched "zee-oh-em-gee" squeal which, thankfully, has never emerged from my vocal chords since, but I did then. I got up out of my chair and jumped over to the spot where the guy was standing and I caressed the fur on this unspeakably small bundle of cute. One I awoke from my shellshock, I asked the question: "Who's is this?" My best buddy in the whole wide world gave the answer "Oh, I thought you could have him," which point I think I hugged him -- something which happens about as often as the zomg-squeal. I ran upstairs to one of my friend's rooms and we played with the really tiny kitten, who everyone save me said was a "girl," and took a few of these here pixel-collections:
  
After about ten minutes, little Orange Cat (which was the name at the time) needed to rest:
  
That night was a very, very long night for me, to say the least. My new best-friend-forever-and-ever brought home food, but other than that we were completely unequipped to keep a kitten in the house. I took Orange Cat down to my room and did my best to kitten-proof the entire thing (which wasn't too hard), but I still had to try and figure out how to jury-rig a litter box together for the little kitty. After about forty minutes of searching, I found a cardboard box that was roughly large enough for a potty sandbox, but I still had the problem of trying to find something along the lines of litter. At this point, it was roughly 3:00am in the morning, so any stores were out of the question, so I walked outside and just looked around: jackpot. I brought the homemade litter box outside and grabbed a bunch of dirt, doing my best to remove any non-dirt objects, form a big pile recently dug up for reconstruction of a sidewalk near my house, and threw it all in the box. I brought it back in and placed little Orange Cat in the dirt-filled mess of a litter box. He went, I rejoiced.
Next on my list was trying to figure out how to deal with the little guy for the night. My instinct was to just keep him confined in a fairly sizeable box just for the night, but this quickly shown to be the wrong move. I eventually completely cleaned up my room, removed anything that could be considered harmful for a six-week-old kitten, and took him out of the box and gave him free roam of the room for the night. By the time I finally was ready to go to sleep, it was about 7:00am, I was exhausted, and so was kitty. He slept near my head all night... All three hours of it.
Eventually the guy who had given me the kitten to begin with came in my room and, just to make sure, I asked if he was positive that he didn't want to take care of the cat himself. His response was that he "didn't have enough time or money" to take care of a cat, much less was his room/lifestyle suited to one in the first place. With these statements in mind, I don't think it's all that difficult for you to imagine my surprise when he came into my room later that same day with this:
 
Having two absolutely adorable little kittens was pretty much cute overload for me (and every other self-respecting male in the house) -- it just doesn't get much better. And it didn't. My friend realized that his room wasn't ready for a kitten yet, not to mention that my room was fully outfitted with kitten food and, now, litter. So I had both kittens in my room all night. And if that first nearly-sleepless night wasn't bad enough, try imagining a similar situation except this time with two dominance-asserting kittens fighting it out all night -- the first silence I got was when, after two straight hours of meowing, hissing, and clawing at each other, the two finally slept at opposite ends of the bed. I was awoken by the next round in this epic struggle at 8am the next morning (roughly two hours after I had gotten to sleep). Yeah, that wasn't going to fly, a thought I relayed to my friend who was already beginning to show the trademark irresponsibility and thoughtlessness that he was known for.
Living with the single kitten in my room most of the time was not a single problem though. I took him to the vet later that week, forgoing giving Orange Cat a name due to the fact that I was afraid for the physical health of the cat (I had no idea what kind of things kittens could have, nor what kind of idea what kind of home he was raised in). Of course, we had tentatively decided on "River" as the name for what was, at the time, a girl kitten by popular belief. The vet trip was both expensive and informative though, as we found out that Orange Cat was actually a dude. He did receive a clean bill of health, however, and that was just all sorts of awesome. We jumped back and forth between names for the cat, and eventually "decided" on "Ender," which was later changed to my preferred name of "Hobbes" (even if it is a far more common name). For those individuals curious as to how much money you're talking for a kitten, the food and litter are fairly trivial, but the vet bills are what really cost. For me, it was roughly $130 for the first visit, then $85 for a second visit, and then $200 for the final visit (front declawing and neutering) -- so roughly $400 in vet bills. That said, after the first couple of months the vet trips will really cut down to once per year after that. I was also very lucky, personally, because little Hobbes has never really had it in him to "destroy" anything I own -- something I attribute to getting him at a young age and, for the most part, spoiling the little bugger.
And while Hobbes is a fairly harmless cat, my friend didn't get so lucky with Grey Cat. Everyone in the house had their reservations about this guy taking care of the cat, which I relayed most of to the guy himself, and in the end all the reservations were very much justified. The guy did the bare minimum to take care of the cat, never took her to a vet in the two months that had her, and over Christmas break we believe that the cat was stuck in the bathroom with "ample" food/litter to tide her over for however long she was there -- which I don't honestly know. What I do know is that the cat went to town on the entire bathroom; there was thrown-up something, the shower curtain had been cut into fine, clear strands of curtain, and there was litter and food strewn all around the bathroom. At this point, the guy was told by some others to take the cat to the Humane Society. I don't know what ever became of little Grey Cat, but I do know that pretty much any other place besides in my "friend's" room was pretty much an improvement. I wasn't present for the forced ousting of the kitten (or any of the other events which closely lead up to it), but after weeks upon weeks of badgering my friend to do something, I can only think that I should've done something about it sooner.
On a far more uplifting note, Hobbes is doing absolutely fantastically in the house. He's roughly five months old now and has had every kind of kitten booster shot and medicine that a kitten should have and... Well, he's really only gotten more spunk as time goes on. The little guy has one of the coolest, most unique personalities I've ever seen in an animal. He gets free roam of the first floor of the house whenever I'm around (which is fairly often), but at night he stays in my room with me and I wake up every now and then with him sleeping right near my head, and it's just a really cool feeling. It's also a cool feeling when he wants me to wake up (which he does by licking my face) to pet and love him, but not exactly the most welcome one.
And here are some random pictures of little Hobbes that have been taken over time. The first row would be in the weeks immediately after I got him, the second would be in late December, early January, and the final row are the most recent shots which were taken mere days ago.
  
  
  
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| Saturday, February 18, 2006 |
| I Watch You Go | 
Posted - 2/18/2006 5:28:36 AM | Weeks simply shouldn't feel as long as this week has. It just should not be allowed by whatever governing force remains in charge of determining the relative length of a week for a certain individual. This is week that a majority of my classes decided to cram the rest of the out-of-class homework into due dates, so I had a nice, full schedule of things due every day of the week that kept me all sorts of busy. Next week, other than reading The Martian Chronicles (and writing a short paper on it), editing and improving upon last week's draft of Paradise, and a Spanish exam (easy) it's a very relaxing week; while I list a fairly decent amount of items, I am not being sarcastic in my statement that it's a very mild week. Though let me say how much of me just died in realizing that I wasn't being sarcastic… At this point the high point of my existence is going home on Thursday afternoon of this coming week and, oh, how sweet it shall be.
And now that this horrid week has neared it ends I have snagged some time to play some of the amazing games I've gotten my hands on recently. I'm only two missions away from beating the Dawn of War campaign (and then working through the expansion, and all I can say now is a continuation of what has been said many a publication before me: damn good game. On top of this, Devil May Cry 3 and Killer 7 came in earlier this week as well. DMC3 is far and wide my favorite of the two as it's pretty much the action-packed, "Dear God why hath thou forsaken me" kind of difficult game I'm always so quick to fall for… And had I played the original DMC3, and not the recently released special edition, earlier on (say, when it was released), it would've probably pushed Battlefield 2 off of the infamous top ten list without as much as a sweaty brow. And as for Killer 7… Well, I think the game is more geared to the anime-watching pothead bizarro gamer crowd than, say, me. Sure it's a fun game and, at times, it's truly a marvel to behold its own insanity with open arms (much like I would, if I was a game), but it just doesn't seem to know what it really wants to be.
Of course now that I have all these great games to play it is the universe's job to create some kind of hugely "equality" by releasing more awesomeness. Late this week we had Star Wars - Empire At War hit the shelves and I'm currently in the process of trying to track a copy down. I'm not a huge fan of the Star Wars universe, normally, but this game just looks all sorts of cool. I'm a huge sucker for real-time strategy melded with turn-based strategy (what better way to take over a galaxy than with a Risk-like component?) so I'm looking forward to this one. I'm also looking forward to checking out the new DS re-imagining of Age of Empires: Age of Kings which has gone the turn-based strategy route and is receiving, to a bit of surprise on my end, quite positive reviews. And don't even get me started on the fact that Galactic Civilizations 2 which is due for an unlocking, in a Steam-reminiscent fashion, on February 21 at the rumored time of 3:00pm EST. This game will be the first of this upcoming and recently released batch to receive a written "review" of some sorts by me, with Empire at War being a close second, and then the long-overdue Armada Online preview being the last of the trio to receive my written treatment. These will come, most likely, sometime after I get home.
And speaking of work that needs to be done: I'm going to be retooling (Retooling? Ha! I'll retool you! -- Ten points for whomever gets it) the site around a bit while on break as well. I have some very basic ideas of some minor tweaks I want to make to various aspects of the interface along with some fairly trivial aspects of the site navigation and configuration but, aside from that, there's not a huge laundry list of tasks to be done. If there's anything you feel a particular burning desire to have implemented, taken out of, or redone regarding Home, Sweet Home then you best tell me soon-like.
This entry is far shorter than I normally write and I do apologize for this, but when I took a look at the clock directly to my left I noticed that it was about 5:20am. I'm not particularly sure how it happened, but it did. This information helped me really pinpoint that creeping feeling I had that I wasn't really all there at the moment, so I think I'm going to cure that. As a means to work my way into your forgiving hearts, here are some pretty pictures of kitty:
  
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| Monday, February 13, 2006 |
| Love Is In The Air | 
Posted - 2/13/2006 11:42:53 PM | Word on the street is that it's Valentine's Day, and being that I'm just such a festive person, I'm already wearing a red t-shirt with a white long-sleeve shirt because today is the day of love, romance, infatuation, eating chocolate, and doing lovey-dovey things for the person you love the mostest in the world. So, in the spirit of the holiday, I'll be giving little Hobbes an abundance of Pounce throughout the course of the day -- that's pretty much the extent of my Valentine's Day-related excitement. I may help a couple of friends with their plans for the day, but I believe I'll just spend the night doing homework and perhaps watching Undead (though Saw II will also be released, so that's a nice alternative).
I don't even have any particular dislike for Valentine's Day, but I can't very well be held responsible for the person in my life at this general time of every year to having extenuating circumstances; say… another boyfriend or lack of interest in that way (though generally the former). I can be held responsible if I did something to greatly aggravate said person near or on said date, but that's normally not the case. It probably wouldn't be such an issue if I was a far more outgoing kind of guy, but I have my close friends and venturing out beyond that ring is a bit of an issue for me. I'm working on it, sure, but we're talking progress in the hundredths of a percent per year kind of thing.
And speaking of Hobbes Kitty: I feel kind of bad for the little guy, I'm starting to think that he's not all there. That certainly doesn't stop him from being a big time camera whore, though. It also doesn't stop him from waking me up whenever gets the slightest glimmer of consciousness from me in the morning. If my eyes open up even the slightest bit or my leg twitches even a nudge I can always count on the cat moving over to the pillow I always sleep on and either laying on my head, licking my nose, or using his clawless paws to bat at my eyes until I open them again. It's just all sorts of cute, I guess.
One of the great joys of a Michigan winter is snow football (it's football… in the snow. Get it?). Me and five of my good buddies got together to take on another team of five other group of friends-of-friends on Saturday afternoon during the closest thing to a blizzard that we've gotten in the last couple months, and to say it was good fun would be a total understatement. Granted one of the others somehow managed to break his ankle within the first five minutes of play, so that completely stalled the game until the ambulance came and carted him out of the field, but after that it was a good time. The day before that I had bumped up my nightly run on the snow and ice encrusted track near my house to four and a half miles. And then the day after the football game (which, in a decent amount of snow, was kind of a workout) I had a fairly hard three and a half mile run. Now all I can say for my poor, poor little legs is "I'm sorry, I won't treat you so badly again." Though I will. And they know I will. It's kind of our little thing.
I watch The O.C.. This is something of common knowledge for those who commonly read this site (or journal, for those of you reading this from alternate locations), and I say it not to discuss the show, but rather to discuss the show's excellent taste in music. In a recent episode during a certain character's funeral, a fairly amazing song was being played (also being replayed at the end of the episode), which took me a while to track down. The song is "For the Windows in Paradise, for the Fatherless in Ypsilanti" off of a Sufjan Stevens album titled Greetings From Michigan: The Great Lakes State. I had not originally known that the singer was from Michigan and upon finding this out I was all like: !. It really is a great album though, and if you share any semblance of my loving feelings for Iron and Wine then you should be all sorts of stoked to go check Sufjan Stevens out. Go. Go now. And don't go into the long grass!
Last night I rewrote a nice chunk of the first chapter of Paradise and while I really like everything that's there, I think I'm going to end the chapter where it currently stands. With that said, I'm going to expand the entire chapter a bit in other places to make it a bit more entertaining to read. As it stands now, there's primarily just a lot of description of certain aspects of the fallout shelter (descriptions which I'm actually quite fond of) but not a whole lot more -- though I certainly like the ending. I'm going to do anything possible to have the current ending remain the end of the first chapter, but unless I think of a fairly compelling idea for adding something more to the what's currently there, I'm just not sure that's possible. Anyway, the updated draft of the first chapter, which doesn't have any significant changes until the fourth page (at which point nearly everything after is new), can be found here (and here's a direct link to the DOC file). I could use any support/feedback (or dinner and a movie, that's a possibility too) you're willing to give either in the entry comments or in an e-mail.
And that just about wraps it up. Happy Valentine's Day everyone.
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| Thursday, February 9, 2006 |
| Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War | |
Posted - 2/9/2006 4:32:33 AM | Over the course of the last week I have become quite infatuated with the popular RTS released early 2005 (or was it late 2004?), Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War. Dawn of War is set in the futuristic version of the pen-and-paper universe (there's also a fantasy version of the franchise, which also has a big-name RTS in development). And while this is all nice and well for people that find themselves getting all sorts of turned-on by that kind of thing, it doesn't really mean much to me other than the fact that it gives developers quite a bit of background material to work with. The gist of the thing is this: Dawn of War is a fast-paced RTS that could best be described as result of a lonely night where Starcraft had its virginity stolen away by its younger, hipper sibling, Warcraft III. What this means, in layman's terms, is that the game puts an emphasis on both large, important individual units (though there are no RPG components) while still making unit diversity and population as important as, say, Starcraft or Command and Conquer. In short: it's damn good.
The game was developed by the same company responsible for Homeworld (both the original and its sequel) as well as the less critically acclaimed Impossible Creatures. I played both Homeworld games and found them entertaining but a bit too slow-paced for my tastes; the completely free-form 3D game space was fairly overwhelming for me as well. I wanted to like both games (though I never gave Impossible Creatures a try) but they were a bit too complex to easily get into and given that I didn't find them that amazing I didn't feel the necessity to force my way into the guts of the game.
I have heard great things about the multiplayer component of Dawn of War but currently I'm quite engrossed in the original game's campaign mode, which consists of eleven missions played from the Space Marine faction's perspective. And, before you get yourself all down, when I say that there are eleven missions, I want you to understand that these missions are nothing to scoff at. The first two missions took me around an hour to complete whereas every mission since then has taken me roughly two to two and a half hours to complete on hard difficultly. These are some pretty huge missions and, despite there only being eleven of them in the vanilla game, it'll take you a nice chunk of time to complete. The story is also surprisingly compelling and interesting, which is a nice change from the highly predictable stories of every game I've played in the last couple months. I just finished up the seventh mission a few minutes ago, and here are some nice little screenshots to give you an idea of how hectic things are at this point:
  
Did I mention that the game is damn purdy despite the engine being capable of displaying a massive number of units and special effects on the screen at once? Each unit has an unsettling amount of detail paid to it, and the weapons/loadout on the unit will change if you choose to upgrade certain features on it. As an example, there is a tank on the Space Marine side that you can eventually upgrade to have two side laser cannons as well as upgrading the primary gun into a dual-laser turret (I feel nerdy just relaying that) and both upgrades will show up on your unit in-game. Generic tech upgrades will also have a visual influence on your units throughout the course of a match too; for instance, if you decide to upgrade the melee tech of your leaders/commanders, their melee weapons will switch from a kind of chainsaw-sword to an unnecessarily large power-glove with little electrical beams pulsing through it. It's the little details like this, rather than the polygon count, shaders, and texture resolution, that really help make a game stand out all the more in my eyes.
And let me say this now: you've never seen an RTS with such amazing, inventive (and violent) animations as will see in Dawn of War. The game fully earns its M-rating with animations which, as an example, have a very large "avatar" unit that spears infantry units on its sword while blood drips down. There is also a Space Marine mech unit that will impale infantry on its claw-like thing and then beat it to the ground. It's a very neat effect, not to mention jaw-dropping when seen for the first time, but definitely just a bit violent. I personally love it -- not sure what that says about me and I'm quite willing to keep it that way.
Overall though, Dawn of War is the most fun I've had with an RTS since Rise of Nations which was released almost two years ago (and then Warcraft III before that). I liked it so much that I actually went and bought Dawn of War's first expansion pack (as was recently announced, a second expansion pack is also under development), Winter Assault, which is something I very rarely do with games. I'm going to ignore the fact that the EB Games cashier didn't put in the first CD of the game when he was filling the empty box that was displayed on the shelves. Bringing that up just makes me sad.
Now, if only it wasn't currently 4:40am so I could get to work on starting the eighth campaign mission...
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| Wednesday, February 8, 2006 |
| A Mental Eutopia | 
Posted - 2/8/2006 1:52:48 AM | At the moment, all I can really say is that I'm really quite glad that the list is finally done. I've gotten some really awesome feedback and comments from a number of people, and for the record, if you'd like to reproduce the list on whatever site you may currently be running, knock yourself out. As I've said to others, the only thing that may anger me is if you replaced my name on the articles with "Derek Smart" who is, pretty much, the black sheep son of Mephistopheles. Word on the street is that Dr. Smart was born, good 'ol Meph looked down, and decided that the closet was the right place for him. He's been there ever since using the Internet as a preying ground for his trolling antics.
Ah it feels good to get the rambling going again -- oh, how I missed it… Yeah, yeah, I know you probably haven't so much. That's just something you and I will have to work through while we take classes in "Back-Alley Brawling 101." I'll be the really scrawny kid sitting in the back corner hiding behind the dumpster.
I recently finished reading a book called War with the Newts (no, I'm not kidding). Here I was thinking that the title was just some sort of clever marketing ploy and that the book actually had nothing to do with newts whatsoever, but I was so very wrong. The book is actually about a war against newts (mankind versus the newts), though the war occupies a very minimal part of the book. For the most part, the fairly long book details the discovery the newts (they're about four feet tall), the taming of the newts, and the gradual enslavement of the newts for the betterment of mankind -- something that mimics the African slave trade of the seventeenth century right down to the methods used to get the slaves on boats for trading. After this, the book took a number of pages to detail the slow integration of the newts into various societies across the world, along with newspaper and civilian responses to it. It is a fairly hilarious satire about a number of different topics, including Nazism which, given that the book was written in 1936, was just maybe a fairly pressing topic. Don't let the humor of the book fool you though, as it's still a very dark and fairly disturbing book on the whole.
Over the last few days, I've been greatly enjoying Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War (gallery here). I bought the game the week it came out sometime last year (or the year before?), but after having my campaign progress wiped by an unexpected hard drive crash, I never bothered to play it again. So now, almost randomly, I picked it up and am really quite enjoying the game a lot -- despite the fact that each campaign mission takes me about two to three hours to beat on hard difficulty. I'm going to be picking up the expansion pack when I head to the mall tomorrow and maybe, just maybe, Devil May Cry 3 as well. I think I'll also work on picking up a gift for that special Valentine… Oh, wait. Hahaha.
As was just pointed out to me, this page is approximately fun for about two minutes. On the first question my response (don't read this until you do it, if you have interest in doing it) was "fruit" and I only had three Fs for the second. According to the site, I'm both warped and stupid. Makes sense.
This weekend I have plans to write a bit more on the first chapter of Paradise which is… Fun, I guess. I mean, it is fun, but I'm not really sure what else there is to say about it at the moment. As a side note of interest, I did use the introduction and the draft of the first chapter in my thirty-page portfolio for my Undergraduate Creative Writing Program application, something I'm quite a bit nervous about to be honest. I'm not quite sure when (and if) I'll hear any kind of response about the application, but I'm still keeping my hopes up? Getting my fingers crossed? Whatever.
Let's also not forget that both Star Wars: Empire at War and Galactic Civilizations 2 are both due out within the next couple of weeks. I'm not generally a huge fan of the Star Wars universe as a whole, but Empire at War simply looks amazing. And, well, I need not explain myself on Galactic Civilizations 2; the thing, at my last testing time, played like a heavily upgraded version of the first game with a create-a-ship feature and better graphics… I mean, it's hard to go wrong with a formula like that. I'll have quasi-reviews for both of these games within a week after each comes out. I'm also planning on writing a fairly comprehensive preview for Armada Online which is currently in alpha testing (gallery here).
Other than that all that, I simply have a crap-ton of writing and reading to do for school as well as my now-3.2 mile runs in the snow every night. If you've never ran twelve straight laps around a frozen track before let me tell you something: it ceases to be about stamina and starts to be a lot more about whether or not your legs can tolerate the slipping-and-sliding for twelve laps. By the time I was done, I was actually wondering if I was beginning my evolution into a transformer and my legs were planning to turn into mini-tanks of their own. I mean, after all, I'm quite certain I have some kind of biological connection to Optimus Prime (Jewish or not -- I don't discriminate).
That sounds about good. I'm going to try getting back into the habit of writing these little rambling messes of unrelated content every two-three days again now that the top-ten list is finished. Don't hate me if I fail though. Well, I mean, you can, but I'd prefer a valentine card with a sappy message from an early-nineties ninja turtle.
Speaking of memories... Is turns out that the original pink power ranger is now a porn star? I've heard rumors of such a thing, but hearing it brought up at our not-so-little Super Bowl party turned this dirty, dirty lie of a rumor into something a bit more palpable. Say it ain't so, Universe. That's part of my childhood you be messin' with. Sadface.
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| Top Ten Games of 2005 | 
Posted - 2/5/2006 12:11:00 AM | My Top Ten Games of 2005 list started on a whim on a bleak afternoon on January 3, 2006. I thought, hey, I like to write and I sure have played a ton of games so I might as well contribute to the gaming society by writing a top ten list. Yeah, that would be fun. I also like ranting about nothing, so I'll just make every article a few pages long, with most of the text not even directly relating to the game at hand. So, I did. And it took me over thirty-two days before I was finally even able to write all of the ten articles for this "list." I received a number of flaming comments for the number of delays I took over the course of writing this list as well as a nice share of friendly comments. And now, at 11:54pm on February 4, 2006, I bring to you a nice summary of the top ten games of 2005 according to me, Trent Polack.
I was going to write a paragraph for each of the games in this list, but a combination of laziness and … Well, mostly the laziness just advised me to make an actual concise list of all the games I wrote about. Click the title of the game to go to the far, far longer article.And there you have it. Around thirty typed pages, 12,523 words, and thirty-two days in the making: my top ten games of 2005. I hope you enjoy all of the articles I've written for these absolutely amazing games, and I look forward (hahaha) to doing for the top ten games of 2006 as well.
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The entries in this journal have all been posted, along with many more, at mittens' personal site at www.polycat.net.
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