GTA IV is here

The production of the video review is pretty sweet. The Kanye tie-in with the syncopated claps and gunfine is divine.

IGN has an amazing review here, and you'll see that's one of the very few games that they've ever given a '10'.

I remember playing GTA III on the PS2 back in a humble 2 bedroom apartment back in early 2001, and being completely blown away by the graphics, gameplay, and sheer replay value of the title. Vice City and San Andreas were worthy sequels, but I never found them to be all that compelling.

Now that the HD-DVD has gone the way of the dodo, and most games are available for both consoles (only talking about PS3 and 360, here: the Wii is cool, but we're not talking about Mario Kart here), I've serious motivation to take up a paper route to score the PS3 so I can get down with GTA IV. Or at least pick the new gear from the finery outlet at the Rockstar Warehouse.

I'm going to have to bug my colleagues in MIS to procure this one for the game room.

Ironically enough, I'm reading some short stories by J.G. Ballard (the writer probably best known for his work 'Empire of the Sun', which Spielberg made into a movie in the early 1980s). One of the tales is called 'The Subliminal Man', in which the protagonist becomes aware of the large signal arrays that are being erected all over the city. At first, he thinks they're related to airline traffic, and later realizes that they're huge subliminal emitters, blasting the populace with urgent advertisements designed to evoke consumption. It's a great commentary on how the things we own end up owning us, and more deeply embedded, are the pitfalls of extreme instances of capitalism and communism.

Is Sony shooting ads at my brain? Bastards. I'll fool them in the end. I had a lobotomy.

Always bet on black and white stripes

Wesley Snipes goes to jail for 3 years for tax evasion or failure to pay taxes, depending on how you want to interpret it.

Just like his Demolition Man character, Simon Phoenix, he'll now be chillin' in the big house, and kept on ice. Even praising letters from Woody Harrelson and Denzel Washington couldn't spare him jailtime. Nobody gets away with not paying taxes. Unless you're Dubya and think that the jedi mind trick actually works on the IRS.

Is this news? Nah, but damn, you'd think that his earnings from the Blade franchise would've insulated him from the rising prices of rice.

Worst. Movie. Ever...oh...and our progeny is doomed

WTF? Isn't the world bad enough with Uwe Boll making movies?

Why would someone ever make a movie about the game Tetris? My mind reels in its inability to understand why anyone would provide funding for this. From the looks of the preview, it's like some Tetris fan's bad wet dream a la 300.

Premise: guys fly huge Tetris blocks around in the air...I guess it's a sport but bigger, but not as big as Rollerball. Guy's brother dies in Tetris match. Brother to avenge death. Filmed in your neighbor's garage via greenscreen.

We are all dumber having knowing someone made this film.

You want to see a relevant and hilarious piece of work? Check out Mark Fiore's White House Life. Oh man.
In a related note, I never found myself that big of a fan of Black Sabbath, probably out of ignorance for actually giving the music a shot after seeing the horrible reality program with Ozzy's family. I stand corrected, and thank Guitar Hero 2 for opening my figurative eyes. It was during gametime that I was able to play War Pigs, and I thought 'sigh...Sabbath...bat-head eater gimmick...lame...' but I needed to beat the song in order to move onto the next level, so I gave it a go.

The song rocks, not just in a pre-metal 1970s rougher-than-Zeppelin kind of way, but in its forthright commentary on war. What I find remarkable is we seem to be expressing the same frustrations and making the same articulations almost 40 years since the song's release.

If the government was run more like a business, then I wonder if Dubya would've been allowed to remain in office. Shareholders would probably have kicked his crappy administration out of office years ago. Why haven't we? Maybe we like the war on terror, and suffer from some prideful ailment that's crippling us from packing things up, which of course we really can't now that we broke it ('it' being the stability of the Middle East). Then again it's not like the current administration is tearing its hair out to attend to majority of people's concerns: jobs, affordable housing, education, etc.

Maybe it's the alluring thought of receiving that juicy economic stimulus package that I won't get because the plan didn't factor in an adjustment for residents living in areas where the cost of living is higher. Oh well, that's just money my great-grandkids would owe the Bank of China anyway.

Ques: How will the US pay for 'economic stimulus package'?
Ans: The US Treasury will write a check for the debt.
Ques: How will the US Treasury finance the check?
Ans: The US Treasruy will borrow the money.
Ques: Where will the US Treasury get the money?
Ans: The US Treasury will sell "paper" at the debt window. [think of your neighborhood checking-cashing facility! yay!]
Ques: Who will buy the "paper"?
Ans: Foreign Central banks interested in US debt (ie China, Saudia Arabia, etc.)
Ques: What will be the interest rate on the loan and what will be the term?
Ans: The rate and term of the loan will be negotiated.

Can we please put Dubya in the Tetris movie, so it'll at least be funny to watch? I also find the mental image of him getting crushed by a giant CG metal block positively hilarious.

I was looking forward to Mahalo on Aloha via BART

Getting on the train today I see that BART is having a survey across its station network, in order to poll riders to see what they think: do they like stinky cloth covered seats, or vomit-slicked plastic seats?

Regardless of the response, riders will be entered into a prize giveaway contest, in which the grand prize is an all-expenses paid trip to Hawaii...via Aloha Airlines. Thankfully, they've updated potential survey participants with the unfortunate news about Aloha's demise.

I hope Hawaii continues to be money-maker state, else I could see the Dubya admin having to mortgage it to the Chinese to pay for our highly questionable and seemingly neverending war on terror. Good thing we found Saddam because...um...ahh...wait...why was it so important?

After all this time it's just an embedded video?

I like this. I was on the edge of my seat while viewing it. It's kinda like what a stick figure themed version of the Matrix would be like...and no, I'm not referring the bullet-time action sequences.

Animator vs. Animation by *alanbecker on deviantART

We've been working on rolling out a Hyperion Business Intelligence (BI) environment at work, and have been pulling the 12-13 hour days for the past month it seems. Needless to say, it's been leaving home when the moon is still visible, and coming home when the crickets are composing their evening symphony, so their hasn't been much time for anything else. I don't even see much of the news anymore, although I do see a certain hillside every morning and see we're making good progress in filling it up with crosses.

Meanwhile gas is now over $4.00 a gallon in the Bay Area, layoffs are plentiful across industries, not everyone is getting the 'economic stimulus package' (read: kiss this money good-bye because it's either paying off debt, buying a flat screen LCD, or going to your interest-only home loan(s)), and our exit strategy is now to go through Iran.

Thank you Bush administration. You're leveling a bill that transcends 3 trillion dollars on future American generations that you'll never see or care about as you cooked your neural synapses on superb 1980s coke while your daddy was running the CIA. Bang up job Dubya.

I keep waiting for the Neo moment when Morpheus wakes me up with the red pill, and can fathom that power larger than the Bush dynasty is responsible for the economic and patriotic wasteland that's permeating our global landscape.

Right now I can't take the blue pill, as a $50 tank of gas coupled with a mortgage crisis, corporate 'downsizing', and (most importantly) a seemingly neverending antiseptic war on terrorism was unleashed on taxpayers by an American president.