#tweetyour16yearoldself

Yes, I know what today yesterday is was - YAY FOR THE KINECT!! We just picked ours up (well, tsudoku did; I just picked up Dance Central - woo!), but I want to focus on something else just for a moment. After this post, I promise to get back to talking about the Kinect and my review of Dance Central and Kinect Adventures :)

Today we're going to focus on Twitter's trending topics. I admit, I love Twitter but sometimes (okay, a lot of times) Twitter’s trending topics are freakin' stupid to say the least. Trending topics, usually prefaced with a hash tag (#), range from international aid (Haiti, Indonesia, Darfur) to Hollywood gossip (Demi Lovato goes to rehab, Lindsay Lohan is sentenced to x amount of days in rehab, Mel Gibson knocks out his baby mama, and then goes to rehab). Today's Yestereday's trending topic, however, was one that I could actually relate with: #tweetyour16yearoldself, or tweet your 16 year old self.



Me & tsudoku in high school; we were both probably 16 here



It’s been 11 years since I was 16 and a lot has changed since then (thankfully). I wholly believe that this topic started trending because of the unfortunate tidal wave of teenage suicides that have been happening all over the country as of late. These young people were literally bullied to death because of their sexual orientation, or because they were smaller than everyone else, or because they weren’t citizens, or because they were just trying to fit in.

Like a lot of other kids, I was picked on during junior high and high school probably because I didn’t say hi to someone. But I never had it as bad as these kids. My heart breaks for them and if I could go back and tell those kids (and my own 16 year old self) something in 140 characters or less, it’d probably be along the lines of:

Don’t deny the person that you are. Your quirks, talents, and knowledge are needed in this world. You have to bypass a lot of crap in order for things to get better.

Xbox Live Gamer Looking to Surpass the 1/2 Million Gamerscore Mark

I just read this amazing article about Stallion83, an Xbox Live gamer whose mission is to reach 1 million points!! He's currently got a Gamerscore of 500,000 and is recognized by Guinness World Records for having the highest Xbox Live Gamerscore IN THE WORLD!

How does he do it?! Well, according to Stallion83, he says that consistency is key. Some days he'll play 8 full hours, and other days he'll just play 10 minutes. In the end however, he admits he'll play any game to death.

I'll be rooting for this guy to make his goal and will be following him via his blog 1 Million Gamerscore.

Zombies Amongst Us

"'Twas the night before Halloween, when outside the house,
Some creature was stirring, too human to be a mouse.
The shotguns were hung by the chimney with care,
A warning to zombies that they should beware."

Tonight's post is kind of ironic considering I hate movies or games about the dead reanimated. True, I loved 28 Days Later, but that's not really about "zombies" per se; those crazies were more along the lines of human beings who were pissed off about being infected with some aggro-virus and were just looking to rip up anything as opposed to eating your brains. Oh, and we can't deny the comedy that is Shaun of the Dead; I mean, a Queen song was used in the movie for crying out loud!

Anyhoot, my office was hosting a Halloween costume contest and since I didn't participate last year, I figured I had a shot at winning this year's event. Here's a before picture of me:


Before the makeup and the madness - or how I normally look


And here's an after picture:

BRRRAAAAAIIIIINNNNNNNSSSSSS!!!

This is what happens when I don't have my morning cup of coffee, or my usual helping of Raisin Brain cereal.

November news

The first week or so of November is going to be hectic!

Nov. 2: Election Day. This will be the day that California voters will decide whether they should vote for or against marijuana legalization. Choose wisely voters, and read the voter information packet cover to cover!


Xbox 360 Slim with the Kinect

Nov. 4: The Kinect is officially released! I'm still entertaining the idea of taking the day off to set up the Kinect and start playing, dancing, racing, running...yeah, that's a lot of action verbs.

Nov. 9: Call of Duty: Black Ops is released. I might be standing in line for the midnight release with tsudoku at our local GameStop for this one (in which case, future blog post).



See you at midnight Nov. 9







And to think all of this will happen before Thanksgiving and the Black Friday madness.

Tonight's Soiree: Back to the Future



What year is it, again?  

Tonight one of my good buddies and I are going to go see the 25th anniversary digital re-release of Back to the Future at our local AMC theatre! Twenty-five years ago on October 25, 1985, one Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) literally drove back in time and accidentally messed up the past and realized he needed to fix it, otherwise there would be no future!

I was two when this movie was first released in theatres and I remember watching it over and over again when I was five to well into my preteen years (it's what happens when your parents own a video store). I can't wait to recapture my single-digit youth with a box of popcorn and a theatre full of excited and rowdy twenty- and thirty-somethings :)

Back from (New) Vegas: A Call of Duty recap

Woo!! It is so good to be back in town! Vegas, as much as I love you, your arid, desert environment combined with the constant cloud of cigarette smoke wrecks havoc on my skin. Overall, it was a great trip and believe it or not, quite relaxing. We took a lot of pictures with the fancy-schmancy DSLR, but I'm only going to show you the two most important photos from our trip to The Gun Store.

Cat says, "When the owner starts packing, I will place myself in the suitcase."

As long as I'm in this box, you can't go anywhere

That's my cat, Griffin, and he's got it all figured out that I'm leaving town in the immediate future (tonight actually). So what does he do? Being the genius that he is, he decides that the best way to keep me from leaving is to lay in my suitcase and look horribly miserable. Needless to say, my heart ached when I snapped this photo last night.

In case you were wondering, Griffin is about 7 years old and is an orange tabby that gets called "Garfield" a lot by kids. He has a younger brother that I officially adopted last year named Derry, NH. Seriously, that's his full name, although I didn't put the New Hampshire part down on his tag - people might get confused and wonder how a cat from New Hampshire made it all the way down to California. Derry was definitely someone's pet and we believe he was abandoned once the housing market tanked. I think he's part Maine Coon and the vet estimates that he's now about 3 or 4 years old. Here's a kinda fuzzy photo of Derry:



What's the point in having birds around if I can't eat them?


Hopefully all will be forgiven once we return from Vegas.

Heading to Vegas! (A Call of Duty related entry)



Las Vegas - The City of No Clocks

 Woo-hoo!! Vegas!!! Also known as "Sin City" and the "Land of Abandoned Inhibitions", and if you're not careful about where you sit, you may bring home something more than just an empty wallet.

I love Las Vegas. As a Southern California resident, it's only a four hour drive away - we don't even consider that outside of California! I've done many a turn-around trip from here to Vegas and back again - all in 24 hours (I was much younger then), and every time I go you can always count on one or the other happening:

1. You win (not very likely unless you're a really lucky person, in which case, let me buy you a drink), or
2. You lose (very likely, especially if you have a gambling problem).

Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage - the XBL demo



Scene from Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage; image courtesy of
Amazon

 If it weren't for @JoystiqXbox for blasting the PSA about the forthcoming Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage demo on Xbox Live, I wouldn't have even known that this button-mashing game was going to be released just right before the holidays.

After waiting for the game to download for about 45 minutes (1.31 GB file AND I completely forgot that nothing will DL if you're watching Netflix - my bad) and about 45 minutes worth of gameplay on Legend mode (story mode based on the manga), I've reached the following conclusion:

I royally suck at this game.

Movie of the Night: Tank Girl

As I'm writing this post the wonderful Lori Petty is squawking in the background in a role that was practically written for her by none other than Alan Martin and Jamie Hewlett. Yes, that Jamie Hewlett, the awesome artist who along with Blur frontman Damon Albarn created the super-awesome-fantastic legitimately animated band the Gorillaz. Yup, Tank Girl is on the tube (thank you, Netflix)!

I never got to watch Tank Girl before tonight, nor have I ever read the comic book, but seriously! I must've been living under a rock or something because this movie is awesome (even though it was critically panned but who listens to critics, anyway), and here's why: