Blogger, for the shit I shouldn't post on facebook.

What the Hell

Ummmmmmmmm

Mass Effect 3 Ending

So the web has been crazy with controversy over the way Mass Effect 3 ended. I'm going to have to say I don't see what all the complaining is about. The post credit cut scene alone was enough to let us know the story ISN'T over. I have a feeling the ramifications of the public outcry have definitely already made an impact on how future games in the series/new DLC will be handled. I love the fact we can give real time feedback to game developers about our experience so they can do better or different next time. I just think it is unfair for us as consumers to demand that our expected outcome options become a reality. While Mass Effect is different in that you own some portion of the story telling I think it's best to remember that it's not our story. We did not spend thousands of hours crafting these characters and we aren't the ones who know the future of the franchise. I for one would excited based of the current ending to see how the future would pan out after what happened, but apparently others just can't be bothered to have some patience and see what could have been. Now I'm almost certain the free DLC that will be coming out in the future will clear things up, but at what cost to the future of the franchise?

FAILURE

That's what I am. In this endeavor.

Taking the easy way out today.

8 years ago was a very strange day in blog history

If you read the post from April 8, 2004 the trend seems to be that everybody had obviously had a case of WBS: Whiny Baby Syndrome. I tried to read all the post but there was so much negativity going on I couldn't bare to read it all. I was kind of considered to be a lesser member of the group back in those days but I have to say at least I was(usually) more emotionally stable then most of the people involved in that donkey show of a day. Needless to say I will not review that day in blog history nor will I review any other. It brings back all of the complaints about people back then that I never was willing to air because well, people were too damned sensitive.

Speaking of the past. I went to Albia today and saw Shannon's and my family. It was fun to see everybody but it also like the blog reminded me of lesser times in my life. As much as I miss the high school days in Nick's basement, I can't say I have too many more fond memories of Albia. I used to look back on things regretfully wishing that just one person in my time there would have recognized my abilities and potential. Luckily I had a group of people that I could relate with/outlets to friendships I had formed in Ottumwa. Now I just look back at it with sadness. There is nothing there for me. MOST of the people who are still there still look at the world from the same narrow lens that they were looking through 8 years ago when I finally left.

Timestamps on Blogger

I started this blog this morning then walked away and completely changed it, however it maintained the time stamp from when I initially started it this morning. Weird.

The Latest Arcade Craze

The Miniseries

I just watched the hunger games and while it was pretty good it was also rushed. Strange thing to say about a movie that over 2 hours long but it's the truth. The build up was great but they rushed through some of the good stuff. Granted I haven't read the books but I feel like there was probably a great deal more involved with developing the characters. Perhaps in the end it won't matter but it frustrated me.

My initial thought was that perhaps this would have been better suited as a television series, but what you run into with that is story lines being prolonged for no good reason. Then I realized it may be more suited to be a miniseries. With a miniseries you lose the obligations of a set number of episodes that TV shows often require. You also don't have to deal with time restrictions that a movie forces you into. You have as much or as little time as you need to complete the project. I understand from a business perspective why they aren't used as much but really it could be the perfect setting for a book to film adaptation.

Minutes to Spare

I nearly already failed my quest on the first day no less. It's currently 11:48 and I don't even have topic. This feels a lot like high school. I would often wake up with a make or break my grade paper due in an hour and not be done. I would usually succeed in these situation. I was good at using the internet search engines to complete papers, even without Wikipedia available to me. Kids these days seem to have it easy in these matters, so long as the student isn't straight plagiarizing. I usually successfully put in some complete bull shit to throw the scent of plagiarism. I often times forget how clever I was back then. If only I had the communication skill back then to convince people I wasn't a complete waste of DNA. I suppose that will be my first of 15 days. A fairly weak entry but an entry none the less.

Post A Day

I, Kevin Henderson, hereby do vow to blog 1 time every day for the next 15 days. Tomorrow will be the first day of my pledge.

Wrestlemania

So I watched Wrestlemania last night and it was for a change of pace actually good. The matches were good, they didn't waste too much time, all in all it was a pretty good show. Some moments were memorable even for an old school fan like myself. This lead me to decide to post my top 10 WWE moments of all time.

Honorable Mention: Mr. Perfect vs Bret Hart (Summerslam '91), Kurt Angle's Milk Truck, Booker T calls Hulk Hogan a Nigga(OK not really but it's funny)

10. Jericho wins the title.....no wait, but he

Back in the day I never missed a Raw and I nearly skipped this one. I remember the feeling on the show that night. Chris Jericho was playing a face and he was finally getting his shot at the title against HHH. Jericho beat Triple H that night and the crowd went absolutely ballistic. Only thing is that once we got back from commercial HHH forced the ref to overturn the decision. It was bittersweet but I actually cared about the product and the character back then. It would be a while before Jericho would, well I'll get to that later.

9. Papa Shango puts a curse on the Warrior.

Man, oh man did that shit terrify me. You don't need the full story odds are if you read this blog you know what I'm talking about.

8. Is that a tooth in his nose?

Mick Foley vs Undertaker's hell in a cell match was an instant classic. While the two of them will not earn any points from the perspective of a wrestling purist it was still an iconic moment.

7. HBK wins the World Title at Wrestlemania 12

He beat Bret Hart in the first ever(it think) 60 minute Iron Man match. It was an iconic match and the beginning of a new era. It was the last time I probably enjoyed a match with the naive eyes of a child. His emotional celebration after his victory was truly an amazing way to end the Bret Hart era.

6. Shane McMahon coast to coast on Vince

Why? Because I didn't expect it. I can usually call a move in advance but this shocked the hell out of me. The below video illustrates a coast to cost.



5. Warrior beats Hogan

22 years ago the industry was all about 1 man, Hulk Hogan. That was until The Ultimate Warrior. We loved this guy and as an adult I can't for the life of me figure out why. His promos are nonsense, I guess it was just the energy. This was the moment that finally put another "good guy" on top. Sure there was Macho Man before this but Hogan never would have even dreamed of putting Savage over. This moment is truly priceless and allowed WWE to begin to flourish.

4. Chris Jericho beats the Rock and Austin back to back.

I watched this PPV with Eric Jourdan, Scooby, Britt Ogle, Joe Bricker, and a few others. I'm also pretty sure I was stoned like a mutha-fucka. I walked in arguing that Jericho would be the man to unify the titles and they all doubted me. Jericho had for years been a top name in the WWE but hadn't yet been given his due. He beat the Rock and my confidence soared as all the others in the room doubted me. Suddenly the sound of broken glass hits and out comes Austin, just seconds after Jericho beat the Rock. Well my confidence wavered for just a minute. Ultimately Jericho would unify the titles and finally solidify his legacy as one of the greats.

3. Macho Man wins the World Title @ Wrestlemania 4.

In my childhood I had a strange infatuation with tournament brackets. So WM4 was definitely up my alley. Hogan was eliminated early in the tournament in a double DQ with Andre. So my little heart was crushed early on watching this one. However, Macho Man would go on to win with a Hulk Hogan assist(which further proves my argument that Hogan would never have personally put Macho Man over)

2. Undertaker goes 20-0 at Wrestlemania

The streak would continue last night and I don't think I need to say anymore.

1. Shawn Michels vs Chris Jericho at Wrestlemania 19

In my opinion the single greatest match of all time. This was a true match that showed two different generations greatest going head to head. HBK was Jericho's hero when he was coming up and if you watch Jericho wrestle you can really tell. Jericho developed his own style off of watching Michaels and adapting it to his own strengths as he traveled the world before his ECW days. Michaels was a seasoned vet at this point and had seen it all. The two of them together was as pure as it gets. The match itself was a mixture of old school grappling, combined with high flying antics, and mixed in with a little submission. For me this was probably truly the swan song for my fandom. I still watch the PPVs with Ryan from time to time, and get a little nostalgic, but the fact of the matter is I will probably never enjoy anything WWE does again as much as I enjoyed this match.

Polyphonic Spree

May 12th....Anybody wanna go?

Here's my thought leave on Friday and stay here this hotel is about 40 minutes from the venue in Lawrence but there isn't anything available in Lawrence. I figure if four people go the cost per person would be about $125 bucks per person (including gas/hotel/tickets).

Banana Sprit

The only thing to cleanse your internet pallet from P-I-Z-Z-A.

you hear that? that's the sound of rome falling.

and it sounds like . . . badababa baaaaaaaa!

Or it sounds like an over weight, over budget fleet of fighter jets.

Or maybe it sounds like a rocket exploding as it collides with an American citizen, who may, or may not have been guilty of masterminding terrorist plots. . . we'll probably never know.

It could soon be the sound of SWAT teams rounding up members of the resistance in the night, not unlike what they did to suspected LulzSec members.

I don't know if Wired was intentionally creating a theme with its stories today, but every single article I read this morning made me more depressed about the state of the U.S. government and our inability to do ANYTHING about it. Change we can believe in? Peak Oil is the only change I believe in.

SRSLY

Seriously: no one posted in February?

Visiting Iowa

I am hoping to visit Iowa in February. It looks like the best dates for me will be the 17th (Friday) through the 20th (Monday). What is everyone up to during this time? I would likely just go to Des Moines, although I may stop in Maquoketa for a night.

Public Invited to Horse Show

If you are an MST3k fan (and I know you are), chances are you saw the golden egg called "Manos: The Hands of Fate."

Apparently, some folks are cleaning up the film and preserving it in all it's glory. It's like a totally different film of the same shitty subject matter. Instead of looking like a snuff film run backwards through a goose, it now looks like Hipstermatic scene trash.

I am all over it like a film reel run backwards through a goose.

For Dave

More Gravy Than of Grave

What's the dealio this weekend?

Albia is where a few of us will be, correct?

What of next weekend? What will happen in Des Moines?

Inquiring minds want to know.

December

First

A Skyrim Review(Minor Spoilers Ahead)

So Skyrim seems to be incredibly popular right now so why not tell you guys how I feel about it. I'll start by saying that Skyrim is quite amazing. The vast world draws you in and the fact you can hardly go anywhere with out somebody needing your help and sending you on another side quest will keep me playing for quite some time. However, this game is not perfect. It suffers from the same drawbacks as the other Elder Scroll games and Fallout.

I'll start by talking about my wife, Ysolda. Early on in the game I met her and she wanted to start a trading business. Sounded good and she was cute so I found her the Mammoth Tusk she required to start the business up. Later I went on a quest where a man challenged me to a drinking competition, after a few drinks with my new friend I woke up inside a temple and I had made a mess of the place. The women at the temple asked that I clean up my mess and I moved on my way, with no idea of how much had really happened since the drinking competition. Later in this quest I was sent to meet Ysolda, whom I had apparently smooth talked into giving me a wedding ring on credit, I did not pay her back for the ring and she was down right disgusted with my behavior, especially since I couldn't even remember that I had a fiance in the first place. So anyways I finish this quest and later get the item required for Marriage in the game. I walked into Whiterun and spoke with Ysolda curious how angry she would be with me about the ring incident. Well, she didn't even seem to remember it, in fact she just rambled about marrying me. I agreed thinking some kind of dialog would come up about my previous fiance but nothing. I later read online that even if you do this mission while you are married to Ysolda the quest still has the same dialog happen regardless of the fact you convinced your wife to give you an engagement ring for another girl. I don't expect perfection but come on, why would a potential wife(you can only marry certain NPCs) be a part of this quest if you may run into this later on in the game? They could at least have her acknowledge what happened. Moments like this really pull me out of the game for a bit.

The next issue I will talk about involves glitches, of which there are many. One in particular that caused a character to fall through the floor and disappear. Not just any character, no, it was the primary character I was trying to tail. Fortunately there is a video showing you how to find this character on youtube by running into a wall and dropping through the floor yourself. However, I now had to kill the character to finish the quest and piss off some of my ally's not enough to effect the overall outcome of the quest but enough to lose my reward for finishing it.

Overall Skyrim deserves all the praise it gets and I would probably give it 9/10 for an overall score. If it weren't for the issues mentioned above it could easily receive 9.5 or even possible a 10. These types of games have always suffered these issues and Bethesda has continued to get better at avoiding them.

That is all.

This Blog Needs an Enema

His name was Amish.
His cars were covered in dust.
He only ate beef.

Who is going to be around for Thanksgiving? I know Tim will be in the Northwest Territories of Iowa . What will everyone else be doing? I am likely going to be in Albia Wednesday evening through Friday and I would like to be in Des Moines through Sunday.

And I will have money.

I did find 1000 of them

Here's the game we can play next at Kevin's.

Stolen from a Forum

I almost broke the blog posting this damned picture.

For those who didn't know

Amish lost his grandmother recently. My condolences go to the entire clan. Which also means that the jokes are now off limits till the end of time. So you know. The end of a era. Lets leave it that way.

My Current Quest

I am trying to get Amish to go as Bluto for Halloween. When I asked him if he would do this, he replied, "Depends. Can I light you on fire?"

I am campaigning for this costume. I think it was the role he was born to play.

Stolen from Facebook

"you thin you have shit organized and then you louse track of a letter from your Doctor that is spouse to save you in college classes that cost 2000 dollars to get evaluated with."


Even I don't.

Alan Watts - Awareness of the Self

An excerpt from an Alan Watts lecture.

Now, the Hindus say that the self--the great Self--is consciousness. But, of course, that does not mean consciousness in the sense of our ordinary-everyday consciousness. Ordinary-everyday consciousness is, indeed, a form of this kind of consciousness; shall we say: a manifestation of it.

But then, there's also consciousness which doesn't notice, but nevertheless is highly responsive.

The way your heart beats.

The way you breathe.

The way you grow your hair.

You're doing it, but you don't know how its done.

So, therefore, just in the same way that conscious attention is not aware of all the other operations of the body, we are not aware of our connection (indeed, our identity) with the Fundamental Self.

When the leaves die and fall off the trees, or the fruit drops; next year: more leaves, more fruit.

So, in the same way, when you and I die: more babies later.

If the whole human race dies?

You bet your life there are all kinds of things that feel they're human, scattered throughout the multiplicity of galaxies. Because this universe is a people-ing universe, just as an apple tree apples.

But because we are unconscious of the intervals--we are not aware of the self with our conscious attention when conscious attention isn't operating (just as you don't notice what your pineal gland is doing at the moment)--so in the same way, you don't notice the connections which tie us all together, not only here and now, but forever and ever and ever and ever.

The basic reason why we don't notice the Self, is that the Self can't look at itself.

A knife can't cut itself.

Fire can't burn itself.

Water can't quench itself.

A light can't shine on itself.

So this is the fundamental problem of having some sort of awareness of the Self.

Nevertheless, it is the whole contention of Indian philosophy (especially what we call Vedanta), that it is possible, in a certain way, to become aware of one's self in this deepest sense.

To know that you are the totality.

And this experience is the real substance of Indian philosophy as a whole, both Hindu and Buddhist. It is called Moksha, which roughly means: Liberation.

Liberation from the hallucination that you are just poor little me.

To wake up from that kind of hypnosis and discover that you--your organism, your physical body, your conscious attention (which is your ego)-- are something being done by this vast indescribable Self, which is out of time; which has no beginning, no end; it neither continues nor discontinues; it is beyond all categorization whatsoever. And so the Upanishads say all we can say of it is "neti, neti": not this, not that.

Anything, therefore, you can imagine or picture will not be the Self. So when you are trying to know the Self, you have to get rid of every idea in your head. It doesn't mean, as some people seem to think, that you have to get rid of every sense impression. It isn't as if you had to go into a catatonic state of total absorption (of course that can be done), but, the full Moksha, the full liberation, is when you come back out of absorption and see this everyday world just as it looks now, but see as clear as clear can be that it is all the Self.

You can become aware of this tremendous interconnectedness of everything.