Did you miss me? Of course you did. And it's been less than a month since the last update. Not bad, huh? Yes, thank you very much. (So this new update is going rather well. Something *must* be wrong, because altering the code feels *too* easy.) Anyway, to your right, the "Sometimes I write about myself" link is now active. Or rather, it now leads to somewhere besides the main page. More on that at the very end. And now, enjoy my rather lengthy rant.

So, what have I been up to?

I am back at the house (that's in MD) for the summer. I would say 'home', but it doesn't much feel like 'home' these days. I don't know if it ever really felt like home. Maybe when I was younger and didn't hate it here so much. That might explain why the smell of the place evokes middle school flashbacks and why I often dream about my 8th grade crushes and the girls from Saved by the Bell. I don't get along with my parents AT ALL, so I've just given up trying there. It seems to be working okay, just accepting the fact that some people are so entrenched in their ways that they don't even want to try to understand other viewpoints, let alone consider that, perhaps, those alternate viewpoints are superior to their own. Ah well. One day I will leave them behind and not look back, and if nothing else, at least I shall be the better for it. I suspect they will benefit as well; torturing one's only son cannot be good for karma.

So I've been rather depressed here, but it's getting a little better since I've been keeping to myself more. I bought a PS2! Just beat Soul Reaver 2 today. Fun game, as far as story/dialogue goes, and the combat was entertaining, but the game felt more than a little repetitive to me. Go out, find something, realize it's what you needed to unlock a door WAY BACK WHEN, now go all the way back there and open that door with it, go in there, follow a path to something else, get some new power, now realize you needed it to open another door WAY BACK WHEN, so go all the way back again...shake, stir, repeat. "With the Reaver thus imbued with the elemental power of X, I could gain access to that chamber I passed by so long ago." So the whole game was a lot of backtracking, and the same environments got traversed time and time again, especially since they made use of a time-streaming device, so not only did I pass through the same environments 2-3 times in one specific time, but I ran across them in other times as well. With the exception of the future time, which was just a nasty demon-infested wasteland, things don't change much. Oh, and the demons. FUCKED UP, kids. Towards the end they started talking and telling me (as Raziel) things like, "Come closer, Raziel," and whispering, "Destroy," etc. Scary stuff. I actually got one of them to talk at an earlier part in the game, which was kind of weird. I kicked one of the green cleaver-armed demons into some water at one point, but unlike some other happenings where they just die if they get knocked into water, he sank to the bottom...and later, when I had to swim around down there, he ran around and chased me for a while, and I could hear him whispering threats...but this kind didn't usually talk. Guess the water served as a medium for his thoughts. Oh, oh, and there were these HUGE Red Minotaur things near the end too. Big, nasty, AND they talked. So scary. Towards the end Raziel got to be invincible, which was good, because the seven Sarafan leaders were crazy difficult, no skillful fighting with them; I had to result to the old MediEvil tactics of running around flailing the sword. And oddly enough it worked with them fairly well, whereas I hadn't even been tempted to use it earlier in the game, even against the Red Minotaurs. So yeah, fun game, despite its repetitive nature. And I haven't a clue what the ending ultimately meant. The ending felt more/less like the beginning to SR3, and, from what I've heard, the ending to SR1 was pretty much the beginning of SR2 as well. Woo, I wrote a lot about SR2 there. Maybe I should start a separate section for video game rants.

Oh, I have more stuff to talk about. I also bought Okage: Shadow King for PS2, which is great so far (combat kinda sucks, though); I'll talk more about it after I beat it. I LOVE that the PS2 can play DVDs. I bought a $5.99 budget DVD this weekend, one of those 2 B&W movies to a disc dealies -- Carnival of Souls and Horror Hotel. Haven't watched Horror Hotel yet, but Carnival of Souls was f'n great, creepy, and everything that makes a classic B movie. If the other films in the budget line are half as good, I'm going to abuse their generosity with glee. And the clarity of the DVD pictures really shows. I'm impressed.

In other news, in my boredom/melancholy moods I posted a couple of online personal ads. I posted one to http://www.gothic-classifieds.com/ (I am Brandon-Wesley) and one to the ads on http://www.theonion.com/ (as creepybw). So far I haven't gotten any responses from them, but these things take time, I expect. It's a shame I didn't read the terms of the Onion personals until AFTERWARDS, because it f'n costs money to contact people -- one credit to send a message, and it costs $19.95 for 20 credits (and yes, you have to buy them in sets of 20). Nuts. And you can't put any contact info in the ad either -- like e-mail or homepage URLs or anything -- because that would, of course, make it possible for people to contact you without having to pay. I'm pissed, because I was reading the ads for the opposite sex and there were more than a few that made me really want to contact them (I'm lonely, and they sounded *really* interesting), but I'm a cheap bastard. There are "collect calls", but that's just really lame, you know? However, depending on how much you can write in a "collect call", there may be just enough room for the resistance to creep through...

So I've written enough for this update, dontcha think? One more thing, though, since I've had that "Sometimes I write about myself" link hovering up there for ages with no purpose. Something should be there, so I'm putting the text of my gothic-classifieds.com ad up there for now. OK. Until next time, friends.