Daily Loaf

Love on the rocks
Ain’t no surprise
Pour me a drink
And I’ll sell you some lies
Got nothing to lose
So you just sing the blues all the time
-Neil Diamond

If you have been dumped then you know how bad it sucks. If you have never been there, then you are one lucky son-of-a-bitch.

About four weeks ago I was in heavy training mode for the Marine Corps Marathon. I was at 18 miles of a 22-mile training run  and it happened. I got tendonitis in my lower ankle/foot. I was out for about four weeks and had to make the decision to defer the race. My weeks away from running were like a bad break up.

Here’s my reasoning, assuming you are the dumpee and Running is the dumper: You meet running and at first you aren’t real impressed with it. It’s a little tough to get to know him/her. But you do. And you start spending a lot of time together. You spend money on Running, taking it out to fancy stores and locations. You woo it with your fancy clothes and gadgets. You even buy it lots of delicious Italian dinners. You fall in love with Running and think it feels the same way about you.

You become obsessed with Running. You think about it all the time. You doodle its name with little hearts on your checkbook while balancing it. You think you and Running will never break up. You + Running = Forever.

But then it happens. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s hard to feel guilty when people don’t even bother to move out of the way of your tank when it’s about to run them over. That’s good, because Prototype is a game that clearly doesn’t want you to be thinking too much about innocent bystanders, especially if doing so would get in the way of tearing the hell out of anything and everything around you. Still, even I felt a twinge of discomfort while going for the achievement points for running over 500 people with a single tank. In retrospect, this actually works within the convoluted framework of Prototype’s story, but at the time it was just one more way of causing mayhem. Prototype’s all about the mayhem.

You play as Alex, a scientist who always wears a hoodie for some unexplained reason, and who has been infected by a virus that’s quickly turning him into a monster/superhero. And of course you have amnesia. So you’ve got to find out who did this to you while Manhattan dissolves into a chaos of nasty soldiers and even nastier infected who’re constantly attacking each other and you. You get to tear your way through both sides in a blood filled, high speed romp up and down the length of the city as you unlock the secrets of your recent past and search for who’s responsible. If the story sounds typical and uninspired, that’s because it is – amnesia, virus, shadowy government agency, trust no one, and did I mention amnesia? Blah, blah, blah. We’ve seen it all before. Protoype’s setting and story don’t break any new ground and are almost throwaway.

But it’s not the why’s and therefore’s that draw you into Prototype – it’s what you do. Read the rest of this entry »

Last night, Dereck and I attended the SuperNova Sunday event at NOVA 535 (535 Dr. M. L. King Jr Street N, Saint Petersburg, FL 33701, (727) 821-6682). I’ve been spending a lot of time at NOVA lately, and when I heard they were putting on a weekly party that was part Gong Show and part social gathering, I decided it was time to go do a photo shoot.

More pics after the jump: Read the rest of this entry »

I have certain weak points – topics that just get me interested and excited without hearing more than a few words. Armed revolution against The Man is one of those. I’m a sucker for tales of bold freedom fighters living underground and facing incredible odds as they try to tear down the system. Red Faction Guerrilla not only delivers a great smash the state simulator, it also gives you a great smash EVERYTHING simulator. Indeed, on reflection, the game’s central plot of freeing Mars from the tyranny of Earth is just fine but not thrilling, but the fact that very single building is destructible ii exciting, chain-reaction inducing, Mars-shaking ways, is what makes this game a ton of fun.

You’re just a working guy, come to Mars to make your way as a miner, but when the bastard Earth Defense Forces kill your brother because he’s part of the revolutionary Red Faction, it’s time to take up your sledge hammer and fight the man. The game is an open-world, third-person actioner, with Mars divided up into six different districts. Each district offers core missions that you have to complete in order to liberate the zone, but it also has a host of side missions that lower the EDF’s control. There’s nice variety in these side missions – driving around manning a turret for an insane revolutionary, freeing captured prisoners, intercepting EDF convoys, participating in Red Faction raids, stealing cars, and of course blowing up buildings. Most people will not enjoy all of these equally, but Red Faction’s OK with that – you never have to do all the side missions, and if there’s a type you don’t enjoy you can easily ignore them completely. In fact, you could ignore them all and just go around blowing up buildings and doing the core missions if you wanted to. I admire that level of freedom in a game like this.

More review and video below the jump: Read the rest of this entry »

I got thrown for a loop the other night.  I was sought out; someone wanted to turn in his fuck-buddy application.  I was reluctant at first. He’s not my normal type of applicant.  He’s not my normal type of anything.  That’s what makes him so unique and alluring.

I went to meet him with the idea of swapping ideas, not body fluids.  We’re colleagues and thought we could stimulate some creative juices–and stimulating juices is exactly what happened. Read the rest of this entry »

Van Jones has been selected by TIME magazine as one the 100 people influencing the world today. Here’s what Leonardo DiCaprio has to say about him.

Recently, Larry King asked Van during his CNN interview if he liked being called Obama’s new “green czar”. Van quickly dismissed the term saying, “I don’t like it. I call myself the green jobs handy man. They chop the heads off czars. My job is to help Barack Obama get his idea from signing a signing ceremony where he signs a bill to ordinary Americans signing back paychecks.”  Read the rest of this entry »

I have a natural and somewhat unexplained affinity for all things having to do with India. I’ve also really liked British director Danny Boyle ever since he made zombie attacks (in 28 Days Later) and heroin addiction (in Trainspotting) seem so aesthetically cool.

So, naturally, when my dad told me about a new Boyle movie called Slumdog Millionaire about a poor Indian kid who ends up winning a million dollars, I was interested.

I wasn’t even deterred by my grandma, who had no problem telling me once she found out I wanted to see the movie that it was the “worst movie of the year.” I love her dearly – but guess what, grandma? Slumdog took away the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture- Drama – and three additional Globes – on Sunday, proving that more than a few people disagree about it being the worst movie of the year… Read the rest of this entry »