Free! FREEEEE!! FREEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

I graduated from college, and therefore now have more time for blogging.

I can't think of anything to blog ABOUT right now, though, because I have a headache, but if you absolutely positively need to read something I wrote RIGHT NOW, then allow me to bring to your attention my Yelp profile, where you can follow my petulant mini-reviews to your heart's content.

I'm headed off on a fantastic island vacation soon, but when I return, I have solemnly vowed to write some serious blog posts about the thesis that I wrote in order to graduate from college, which was about how online communities use language. Hopefully you will like it if only because it necessarily applies to you, since you are on the Internet right now.

Foods I have Eaten Meme

I couldn't pass this one up. Got it from Swati. I couldn't post it on my LJ, though, because I gave up LJ for Lent. But fortunately I have a blog.

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you've eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating. (HAHA YEAH RIGHT)
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht (I even make borscht)
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart (sometimes good, sometimes bad)
16. Epoisses (Don't even know what this is)
17. Black truffle (just a slice)
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes (marionberry)
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat (No, but I have had cabrito, which is just goat uncurried...)
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV (I probably have)
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S'mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin (I thought this was a rock.)
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs' legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette (I've had andouille...)
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini (Not at the same time though)
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill (Disclaimer: "This deer just got hit by a car and it's a shame to waste good meat" is roadkill for this purpose. "I found a racoon on the side of the road and it doesn't smell too bad, wanna eat it?" so does not count.)
76. Baijiu (AND I WILL NEVER HAVE IT AGAIN, UGH UGH UGH.)
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong (Not a fan)
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant. (I have eaten at a restaurant with Michelin stars, just not the tasting menus.)
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare (I have had rabbit)
87. Goulash
88. Flowers (I would eat flowers every day.)
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake (I would like to someday)

Free on Hulu: "The Discovery of Heaven"

I've decided to begin a new project. This project is essentially the written form of something I do often in real life, which is suggest movies and television shows to my friends, provided that they are free to watch on Hulu.com. "It's free on Hulu" is a phrase that comes out of my mouth so disgustingly often that NBC should seriously cut me a paycheck.

That said, here is the first of my reviews of things that are free on Hulu, a movie called "The Discovery of Heaven".

"The Discovery of Heaven" is a four-part, two-hour movie I found by looking at the 'you might also like' section under "Ink", which will probably be the subject of my next review. It's an adaptation of a novel by some Dutch guy. I decided to watch it because I didn't realize it was two hours long, and the premise of 'Angels create a human for the purpose of reclaiming the Ten Commandments because God is pissed' is always enough for me to at least watch thirty minutes.

Contrary to the sort of silly plot synopsis, the movie is quite good, quite serious, and quite coherent. Starring Stephen Fry and some other dude whose name I can't remember, the movie is neatly divided into two halves. The first half chronicles the attempts of the angels to engineer a situation in which their special envoy, who will recover the Commandments, can be born. Incapable of travelling to Earth, the angels are forced to play the deus ex machina game throughout the entire movie. The second half of the movie chronicles the life and mission of that special envoy, whose name is Quinten.

While words like 'deus ex machina' might suggest that the movie's literary devices are hamfisted, one of the most surprising things about it is that it's not. The plan that the movie is essentially composed of is both artful and clever, which is a difficult piece of writing to pull off. A key factor in pulling it all together may well be the quality of the acting. Stephen Fry is magnificent, of course, playing Stephen Fry the classical linguist, and the wide-eyed Greg Wise as his cosmic twin/best friend Max the sex maniac astronomer gives the whole movie a really nice feel of... this is just a series of lives, playing out naturally, except for when divine influence intervenes.

I wouldn't call this movie funny, or awe-inducing, or particularly filled with ideas that make me want to go run off and immediately start writing something off the inspiration high, but it is enjoyable, and it feels smooth. It doesn't feel like a two-hour movie, and there is little in the movie that is jarring or disruptive to the plot line, which is so uncommon these days (or maybe just in my trashy movie selection).

If you feel like a gently rambling, clever piece of contemplation on life and humans' relationship with the divine and the church, then "The Discovery of Heaven" might be a good afternoon's movie for you. If you love Stephen Fry, then you definitely won't be disappointed!

Whoops

Like many amateur bloggers (and don't get me started on how hilarious I think it is that anyone qualifies as a professional blogger) I have fallen prey to 'real life syndrome'. Literally enthralled by my thesis, finals week, work, and holidays, I have forgotten to post to my blog. This is probably okay. It's not like I'm getting paid for this.
I've noticed that the majority of my posts thus far have been about food and/or games. In the spirit of this, and to keep you and me going during the blogging famine, here are some games I'm playing now:

*Dragon Age Origins (I think I'm at least halfway through it)
*Assassin's Creed II (It's-a me! Pop culture references!)
*Halo 3 (I am the last person on earth to get Halo 3)
*Dungeons & Dragons Online (Trying to master the art of auctioning)
*Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn (FOR THE GLORY OF AMN!!!!)

It's tiring having all this free time. Here are some things I've eaten lately:

*Tamales with queso and Texas chili (traditional Christmas meal)
*Beef tenderloin encrusted with pecan, mustard and herbs (good one, Mom)
*Deviled eggs (I don't understand why I like deviled eggs so much)
*Two-tone fudge (another Christmas tradition)
*Ham (too much ham)
*Those gumdrops that only come in Christmas colors and the red ones are cinnamon and the green ones are mint (I can't decide which is my favorite)

Lists are fun. In any case, I had a great Christmas. I am outfitted with some dandy new clothes and other presents. In particular, I got both of A.J. Jacobs's books, "The Know It All", and "A Year of Living Biblically". I chose to read the latter first, and have been extremely pleasantly surprised by it. When I finish, I'll probably write a review.

Read the Manual

I remember when I was younger, when my video game purchases were limited by my allowance and thus primarily for my Gameboy or classics for my PSX and very infrequent, one of the very best things about making the purchase was reading the manual on the car ride back home. Man did I ever love reading the manual. There is the sense of studying it closely so that when I played the game, I would be prepared to operate its controls, but mainly, the manual was my first leap into the game's world. Most manuals are simply guides to the controls, but almost all of them have at least some little blurb about the environment. Some manuals even had more information about the game world than the game itself (cf. the Marathon manuals). Often, manuals gave you your first explanation of how the game world worked, which is always important for me as it is my first step for immersion. I also remember what a treasure trove finding all the old manuals for my grandmother's NES games. That was pretty awesome.
There was always something interesting in the manual for me, little previews to get me psyched up even more than I already was. And seeing as I had to save up sometimes for months in advance in order to buy a game, I was already pretty psyched up. Then, as now, I only bought games I really, really wanted for sure, which were few and far in between.
Reading the manual now is a much different story. I buy games a lot more often now that I have disposable income, and since I am usually driving myself, I usually can't read the manual on my way home unless I want to get into a car accident. But the manual is still the first thing I look at when I get home, and reading it is the first thing I do, before I ever play the game.
These days, I frequently find myself disappointed by manuals, sometimes to the point of absurdity. Dragon Age: Origins is a fantastic game with a terrible manual. I can't even remember what it said, except that it made no sense to me whatsoever and was pretty disorganized and all around hard to read. I'm sure there was some valuable information in there somewhere, but I couldn't tell you what, and this is the pattern I see most often these days. It seems manual writing is a bit of a lost art. I don't know if game publishers have a philosophy for manuals, and the lack thereof may be the reason why they are so wildly different from game to game. It would be nice if a manual made me excited to read on about when to press A, but I also have to recognize that the manual, as an auxiliary piece of literature which is often made redundant by in-game tutorials, is not necessarily important enough to spend a lot of time or QA on.

Exercises in masochism

What Facebook really needs is Bastard Tetris. That will teach you to procrastinate. Maybe you think you're good at Tetris. Maybe you think it won't hurt anything if you just play a flash game for five minutes. Well, you're wrong. If you're going to procrastinate, you may as well punish yourself simultaneously, rather than later when you realize you have wasted all your time.
You'll start playing Bastard Tetris, and for a bit, things will go just fine. Oh sure, it threw you the worst starting piece, but that's no big deal. This isn't that hard, you'll say to yourself. I'm even doing well, I've knocked out five lines already! And that is when Bastard Tetris will give you twenty S-pieces in a row, and then squares. Don't be ridiculous. Bastard Tetris isn't your friend.
And you will love it, because you deserve every time you get the L-piece that faces the wrong way from what you needed, because you are supposed to be working right now.

Someone was mean to me on the Internet

As some of you know, I spend a great deal of time on the Internet. I am bold enough to say to my professors that I spend so much time on the Internet that I am qualified to write papers about it. A lot of the time that I spend online is used playing games. These days, I generally like first-person shooters, like Counter-Strike or Team Fortress 2, where I feel like I am a comfortably average player. I've occasionally dallied in MMOs, having played Guild Wars devotedly for a little while. Right now, I play on Dungeons & Dragons Online, which is, notably, free.
All of these games center on the multiplayer experience, in the sense that without other people, there is no game. Even in MMOs, where it is possible to play through content by yourself, there are numerous points where it is simply not possible to win if you're alone. So interacting with other people is a big part of the games. When people are friendly and competent, this can make for an awesome game. When they are stupid or rude, well, you get the idea.
Something happened to me today that never happened to me before. Now, I have been yelled at plenty of times while gaming online for a large variety of reasons, but this was new to me. I was lectured, extensively and aggressively, on how to play my character, as I was, apparently, doing a terrible job.
On DDO, I play an elven ranger named Shenoute. The ranger's job is, historically, to shoot things with arrows and pet animals, all the way from the original Dungeons & Dragons days. In tabletop, where a Dungeon Master is interacting with you and crafting a story on a personal level, rangers can have all kinds of uses. Their ability to commune with nature, be invisible, and shoot people is rarely questioned. But when D&D hits the MMO platform, the tactics change. Thinking creatively is not important here; you must always be the biggest, baddest killing machine (or healer) possible or otherwise YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG.
The way I play Shenoute, I pretty much live on my bow. I shoot arrows at monsters. I try to manage how monsters hit my party, because I see them before everyone else does, and I also try to draw fire away from other people. I am going for a particular prestige class that is basically a sniper. Why? Because I think that would be awesome. And I like playing this way. I think it's fun.
But this is not enough for some people. It was not enough for the guy who decided to call me out tonight. We were breezing through quests on the hardest level with the greatest of ease, and halfway through a long quest, he turned around and started tearing into me. Why do you use a bow when everyone knows they suck, he asked. Ranged is crap, you need to switch to melee. Stop shooting at things and melee. If you don't want to melee, then why are you here? Why are you taking up space being useless? Oh, 'you want to have fun', whatever.
For this person, it was not enough that we were doing well and enjoying ourselves individually. He seemed to have every sundry detail worked out to exacting specifications for how it should be done, and any deviation is useless and offensive. He had to turn around and start accusing me of messing everything up for everyone. Naturally, I am perturbed by these kinds of people, for whom playing a game is a mechanical process with rigidly defined rules, for whom it is a matter of clockwork and machine-like efficiency. It doesn't matter if they actually succeed in this or not, so long as they think this way. Seeing someone like me, whose character has been haphazardly designed for maximum coolness and funtime rather than to beat the game at its own rules, is apparently unbearable.
I wonder if they are really having fun, or if yelling at other people and telling them how to play the game 'right' is their way of compensating for the fact that they aren't really having fun. Seeing what they are lacking, perhaps, they lash out. If that's true, it's pretty sad. I can't hope to understand why people like this go to such lengths to enumerate things that they may as well be performing statistical analysis to find the best class combinations. I really just want to have fun, so I left the party in the middle of the quest and found another one that picked up where I left off. I plan to keep running and gunning, even if it isn't the best class in the game, because that's not what's important to me.