Review: Apache Blood

Thought this was the main character? Nope.

For Christmas this year, I received one of those inexpensive Spaghetti Western compilations with "20 classic features." "Classic" is a debatable adjective for some of these movies, but it's awesome to get my hands on Spaghettis that I may not have otherwise picked up. A lot of fans of the genre advise people to not buy these box sets because they expect the movies to be crappy. However, I think to fully appreciate and understand the genre, one needs to embrace the good and the bad... and even the ugly.

At a Glance
"Apache Blood" (1975) is not actually a Spaghetti Western, go figure, but I guess it was put in the set because it was considered too weird by American Western standards in the 70s. It was directed by Vern Piehl and stars Ray Danton as a vengeful Apache named Yellow Shirt and Dewitt Lee as Sam Glass, a mountain man who I guess has something to do with the American cavalry. I don't know. Here's a brief synopsis brought to you by the back of the DVD tin (that's right, I got the classy set): "An Apache brave, the surviving member of his tribe, vows to avenge his people by finding and killing the soldiers responsible for their deaths."

Story and Characters
Somehow this movie is able to take a very simple concept and make it utterly confusing. First of all, the characterization of the Apaches and white men seems off; we're supposed to root for Yellow Shirt because the cavalrymen murdered his peaceful tribe, but they are portrayed as generally nice guys. What really boggles my mind, is why so much time is spent on Sam Glass and his struggle to get away from Yellow Shirt. Honestly, they should have just called the movie "Mountain Man Blood." There are also a lot of continuity errors or at least a lot of unexplained things that make the continuity lose its credibility. First off, there is some weird sequence where I swear to God Sam murders one of the cavalrymen he's with, but the dude is shown alive a few seconds later and the scene is never mentioned again. Maybe it was a dream, but I would have had no idea that it was unless someone told me. Another mystery is where Yellow Shirt's Indian posse came from. He and his wife were mentioned as the sole survivors of their tribe in the opening narration, and yet here are three other guys on the same mission. I suppose they could be from another tribe of Apaches, but it is never explained how they teamed up with Yellow Shirt if that was the case. The biggest mystery lies in why Yellow Shirt is chasing Sam in the first place. It wasn't mentioned that he was among the men who attacked the Apache tribe, and his character didn't really harbor any noticeable hatred toward the Indians. I guess Yellow Shirt may have thought he was a part of the attack when Sam was hanging around with the cavalrymen in the woods, but that would be out of character. Yellow Shirt is the kind of man who knows who he's after.

Filming and Locations
The scenery isn't particularly enthralling and the cinematography is cheap. I think the fact that a horse visibly takes a crap during one scene tells you all you need to know.

Music
There are pretty much only two songs that play during the whole 89 minutes, but the song during the last scene is surprisingly good. The theme at the end is bizarrely amusing and the music for the credits sounds like it was made for a comedy.

Overall
"Apache Blood" is pretty bad. It's not the worst movie ever*, but it's really only entertaining if you think discontinuity is funny.

Final Verdict: 1/5
 *The worst movie ever is "Wyatt Earp." Don't watch it. 

Doors, How Do They Work?

Thanks gamezone.com, Harry Tipper is my fave.

It's about time that I talk about video games on here, don't you think? I'm sure that at least Clarinet and Olovio agree with me. So, let's talk Timesplitters.

I believe I was in 5th grade when I first played a Timesplitters game with my two cousins. We played the 2nd in the series while listening to some weird playlist thing that the older of my cousins would have running on his computer. I always played as the gingerbread man because a gingerbread man carrying a dangerous weapon always equals comedy gold.

Not really.                                                   

Anyway, last year I scored a copy of what I thought was Timesplitters 2 in the bargain bin at my local Game Stop. To my surprise, the game inside the case was actually a later version of the game: Timesplitters Future Perfect. What a blessing that was (solely based on the fact that there was a disco track that we could use in the arcade mode). Well, after spending lots of time in death matches like we used to, my cousin and I decided to be daring and try the co-op story mode. We did alright for the first stage, but once we got to the second one, we couldn't get any further. Our first objective was to get into this big castle or fortress or whatever after killing a bunch of guards. We succeeded in killing the guards, but no matter what we tried, we couldn't seem to get inside the stupid fortress. We shot at it with all of our guns, threw grenades at it, shot at it with a turret gun mounted to the ground, we ran into it, punched it, and I even tried to use Cortez's (my character's) weird wristband device that lifts stuff using see through octopus arms. Nothing worked. We tried and tried until it seemed like the only reason why it didn't work was that the disc was messed up.

Well, here we are a whole year later, and we finally figure out that all you have to do is hit "x." That's right, just "x." I'm past the point of feeling stupid and am just happy that we can actually make the story progress! What more could I want than to unlock Swinging Tipper for arcade mode?

I seem to have a penchant for overlooking simple solutions in video games. I had trouble with Lego Batman, for god's sake. Lego. Batman.

Keep frodoin' that frodo, dudes. 

Man. This post really ruins my credibility, doesn't it?

Reason Why I Love My Grandma: #1

Today my Grandma and I were talking about squirrels on our way home from the donut shop. She was saying that there weren't too many of them, and that they must not be reproducing.
"Maybe they're just not the marrying kind," she said. Then after a pause, she added, "We've got a bunch of gay squirrels running around!"
I love my Grandma. XD
~Pigeonmeister
Random pic:

The Billowing Pants Saga

Today is the day after the day after Christmas, and I would like to make a post about clothes.
I'm not the most stylish person ever. Actually, I'm currently sitting in my grandma's computer room in jeans that have almost become too small since the onset of the holidays, a shirt that used to be long-sleeved but has since shrunk to 3/4-sleeved in the wash but is still big enough to wear due to its awkward proportions, cat socks, crooked glasses, and a ponytail.
Most of the time, I wear pajamas. I sit around my basement playing Final Fantasy wearing my "bad kitty" pajama pants (which are almost a foot too short; I've had them since middle school) and perhaps a tank top. I often find myself at Skynugget's house wearing my green pajama pants with brown horses on them, whatever shirt happens to be in my closet that day (usually one of my nerdy t-shirts; my favorite of those is the one that says "you have died of dysentery"), and bunny slippers. Of course, I have many more pajamas than these, and I got more for Christmas (including some delicious owl pajamas I sort of got myself for Christmas... teehee).
Unfortunately, it is not acceptable to wear pajamas to school. Otherwise, I would do it all the time. Chelsea did manage to pull it off the day before Winter Break, though. She looked quite awesome!
On school days, I usually end up wearing dark jeans, some fancyish shirt, and a necklace of some sort. Whether I wear glasses or contacts depends on whether or not I'm going to the darkroom for Photo. I can't see with my contacts nearly as well as I can with my glasses, so I usually wear my glasses to the darkroom to get the precise focus I like.
Formal occasions are a bit different, of course. I only really have one formal outfit- brown slacks and a flowy green patterned top. Occasionally I try something else, but I usually just go back to that same outfit, only occasionally changing the necklace I wear with it. Yesterday I went to see South Pacific (a musical) at the Kennedy Center, and I wore that outfit with a small silver necklace that I have. I thought I looked pretty nice before I left, but when I got to the Kennedy Center, I felt awkward. Everyone else looked really distinguished in red and black or beige, and I stood out with my brown pants billowing in the wind. Oh well. I'm glad to have people to hang out with who don't really care what I look like. Skynugget, for example, doesn't care at all what I look like. I show up at her house in pajamas, she greets me at the door in pajamas, I say "yo" and we go play Oregon Trail.
I started a story yesterday on a whim. Unfortunately, it is not about wearing pajamas, but rather about a family falling apart. (insert emoness here). I highly doubt I will finish it, or even continue it, but it has been started.
So ends a post that was probably pretty boring, that wasn't game-related at all. Except a few references. Oh well.
Random picture of the day, from Ugliest Tattoos:

Merry almost 2011.
~Pigeonmeister

YEEHAW (echo)

So two days ago, I went to Skynugget's house to play X-Men Legends.
You're not going to get a post about X-Men Legends, because Skynugget and I are stuck and we got fed up with it.
So we played Oregon Trail II.
At first, I thought someting had happened and it wasn't going to work, because we got this:

Some shit's goin' down.

But luckily, it worked. However, in the process of getting it to work, we noticed that the symbol for it looks really weird. It's this pixelated ox skull.

Delicious.

The startup screen is pretty normal, except that the sound effect is someone yelling "YEEEHAW" really loud. It echoes. It reverberates in your soul.
So we set off. We started with the following conditions, if you care (it doesn't matter all that much):

Of course, the first thing you have to do is buy supplies. Skynugget and I were surprised to discover that we had 18 pairs of socks, but no pants. Or shirts. That'll make for an awkward trail ride.
"Hey... I like your socks."
"Thanks... I like yours too."
(awkward silence as everyone tries not to stare at each others' bodies)
Then we got to talk to this lovely specimen of manhood, who speaks for himself:

I would like to have this man narrate my life.

Then we talked to a bunch more people, and went to buy food.

Who the hell needs 451 pounds of bacon?!
Of course our wagon tipped over in the river.

The following picture is of a man who actually offended me a lot. I'm not Mexican, but this dude was so stereotypical and had such a bad voice that I cringed.

Also, you see what he's saying? "Well, I figure we're seeing the elephant for sure now!" Skynugget and I have no clue what that means, but four separate people said it to us four separate times. Did they know about elephants back then? And even if they did, what on earth does an elephant have to do with a tipped wagon?!

Skynugget got cholera, we got the elephant message again, and we met this guy:

Howdy-do! Whee doggies! Hot diggity dog!

Dutch Optimo freaking shot himself. How do you even do that? This was on a day when we didn't even get anything from our hunting trip. Then it got worse. 

At this point we had a bit of a dry spell, if you will. A bunch of people died of thirst. 

Then: salvation! Unfortunately, we couldn't buy the man. Or water.

YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHH

We sort of ran out of meat. Now let me explain something to y'all. I love cute fluffy things. Bunnies especially. So I refuse to shoot the bunnies that crop up in this game. Of course, they kept running past me, and there was just about nothing else. Skynugget got really furious with all this and yelled "BUNNAYYYYYYY" every time one appeared. Hehe

BUNNAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

We settled in Salt Lake City. Even though we had been journeying to Oregon. Sigh.

We started another game. One of our men died, and we got this picture:

That's definitely a woman. Was Casper a crossdresser?!

We got okayishly far. Then, we crossed a river and got completely stuck. We made no progress whatsoever. And worst of all, our wagon parts kept breaking (even though we weren't moving), and we had to trade for replacements. This is normally fine. However, the only thing these people would accept in exchange for their parts (hehe) was a mule! And when we tried to haggle, all the people would do was say "Screw this. 2 mules then!" And so we ran out of mules. We tried lightening the wagon load, eventually dumping literally everything in the wagon. It was no use. We sat there for about a year, eating the last of our mules and starving to death.

We played again, and the following unusual things happened: Buddy got attacked by a mountain lion (I didn't even know that was possible in this game), Skynugget got water poisoning, and we kept finding abandoned wagons. 

Thanks, grandma.

At one point, we found a pitchfork in one of the wagons. Just a pitchfork. Skynugget said, "Oh gee, we got us a pitchfork. Now if we want to start a riot or something..."

Then we found a hope chest, and she said, "I got me a mobile home now!"

I think she'd been affected by the trailfolks' way of speaking. Either way, she stopped being funny after that. (XD jk. She's always pretty funny. Except this morning when she gave me a crappy gift D< )

Anyway, here ends what is quite possibly the longest post ever. As usual, here is the picture of the day, brought to you by Picture is Unrelated:

Have a great-tastic holiday.

Also, happy Atheist Day, aka today, December 23. Just because I said so. Let's make it a tradition.

Peace be upon the ninjas.

~Pigeonmeister

Our Oregon Trail Tale

So I'm sure I've mentioned about Oregon Trail sometime ago. However, I never went into great detail about the previous adventures that happened about two or three days ago. Oh yes. It was three days.
Now my counterpart complainer Eagle will be writing a post about this, with colorful pictures provided. However, I will not. Because I can't lol. My phone won't let me do such things. So you will have to depend on my vivid words and imagine the tale of Oregon Trail I am about to tell you.
It was on Friday that She came over, and originally we were just going to play X-men Legends. However, and oh my god this will be one of the only times I'll complain as well, THAT GAME IS BEING DIFFICULT! Not only have we died three-five times in one day, but no matter how we start over, it ends the same! We die, we die, WE DIEEEEEEEEEEE. We're on a boat, and we have to save the citizens (Go figure) and the boat is springing leaks like a boat going down. Which is what was happening. the boat we were on was going down, and we had to save thos freakin citizens, plus a hundred and one weirdos coming at us like no tomorrow. so seriously. we were screwed beyond belief. And there was a frodo-ing TIME LIMIT FOR GOD'S SAKE! we were all like "No! I think we missed that crewman! NO. there's a sprung leak we have to patch up! OH GEEZ. Storm just jumped into the deathly water AGAIN.
The end of this story was that we stared at each other and chose to turn the tv off, and we turned offer in our agony and complained.
But then. Oh then! Eagle said the magic words. "Wanna play Oregon Trail II?" and I was a little indifferent due to the horrible way we ended that game. so I only replied "Sure. Why not." That was how Our Oregon Trail Tale began. Gather round again kids, and listen to my story. This is a tale for the ages kiddies.
I, along with Eagle, surrounded my computer as we inserted the game. There was some problem however with the disc, and an awkward problem box popped up, asking some stupid question about restarting or something. Eagle was puzzled, I didn't care, and while she pondered on this, I just clicked it close and went onto settings to find the disc on my computer. Just wait kids, this gets better.
Suddenly, I saw the disc picture I had to click on in order for the game to work, and OHMYGOD, you wouldn't believe what it was! It was a pixelated bull/cow/animal, looking to the side, totally creepy and awkard but also awesome all the same. It was hilariously odd, and Eagle took a picture of it with her phone, because she always does that XD LOL. anyhow, we clicked on it, and of course this journey began with a great "YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAW" as the opening screen displayed. I love that Yeehaw. It's the beloved Yeehaw of this generation, coming forth from the ashes of a god known as a tiki head, that suddenly starts walking because a man jumped inside.
ANYWAY.
The first game was against my religion.
LOL.
No, but the first game was pretty special. Me and eagle took controls intermediately, sharing and whatnot, and of course it seemed kinda normal. We started out at a great time, and OHMYGOD, we managed to make it to SALT WATER CITY! (Lol Salt lake City) where we settled and lived our days as bankers or something. I forget what happened in that bio of our life story. But i'm pretty sure somebody shot the president XD Well, of course we wanted to play again, hoping to get to Oregon this time, so Eagle automatically assumed she should take the lead. That was cuz I ran to the bathroom and suddenly she just started and i couldn't stop her because I was in the bathroom XD
This is the greatest story ever, kids. It's the story about Eagle getting herself into some hilarious trouble.
First of all, she frodo-ing used up all of her money at the start. FRODO. The only amount of money we had left was like five buck. BARELY FIVE BUCKS! She giggled while I banged my head on the desk, screaming about our money problems, because I'm a cheapskate and wanted at least a hundred bucks before we left for the frodo-ing trail! But nooooooooooo, she haaaaaaaad to buy like mules and food, and oh geez, clothes! CLOTHES?! who wears clothes on the Oregon Trail?! Lol, in our starter set before we bought anything, we had like twelve pairs of socks but no shirts or pants or anything. Maybe that's why we kept freezing in previous games. . . .
Oh well. Luckily we didn't freeze in this game. Except for me I think. I died like first thing. It only took a hundred miles for me and mia to die. Mia's my cat, but in the game she was a living humaN! And the reason why we died was because we had no medicine, or anything like that!!! SHe bought like three cases of bullets and gunpowder, but geez no we don't need no veggies or meds!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH.
Soon after our deaths, people started dropping like flies before even getting to 300 miles. Suddenly, the last two were left. The leader, frodo-ing Eagle, and Casper, our friendly living ghost-albino man friend. mrmrmrmr. How the fudge they didn't die like the rest of us, I will never know. But somehow, they did, and that's when things started going. They past by like a million different landmarks, going, going, so far as a thousand miles, and the moraLE WAS HIGH. pun! She went hunting, got us some bears, and lols even a few pigeons (I'm kidding XD)
Here's the Hit hons, she got stuck.
I'm serious.
She didn't move at all XD
Let me explain. There was a point just where she pasted this river, and it was getting to Winter, so it was cold. It was also slightly rainy, but the two remaining travelers were doing good. But that's when it happened. THE WAGON STOPPED MOVING. As in, the status we had was " No Progress." or something like that. Our mile count was stopped at like a thousand and something miles, not going anywhere. We thought this was a glitch for a second, but no, time kept passing, days were going by. As if that weren't weird enough, suddenly THE WAGON WHEELS KEPT BREAKING. OHMYGOD HOW THE FRODO DID IT KEEP BREAKING IF WE WEREN'T GOING ANYWHERE?! were we stuck in the mud or something??? All I know is that they kept breaking, and we had to use our supplies to fix them, until we ran out. and so we had to trade with strangers for fixing supplies. Ugh. Those stupid strangers just knew we were desperate, so of course they ask for our mules. We need those mules. They are the only way we could ever get out of that spot. So we kept asking to hassle, and suddenly, oh hey!, they ask for TWO MULES. So we finally settled on one mule, and it kept happening. I'M SERIOUS. WE RAN OUT OF MULES HERE FOLKS. nO MULES, NO TRAVEL. NO HEART, NO FRIENDS. THAT'S WHY WE ALL DIED. But oh no, not before we kept trying to throw stuff out of our wagon, hoping it'll move if we ligthen the load. We threw out food, clothes, rum, etc. We had to trade our gun for fixing supplies. Slowly, and I do mean slowly, Casper took a turn for the worst. He was starving, duh, cuz we had no meat or clothes or ANYTHING. and finally, he died. He was the only one with a proper burial, because clearly he needed it since he lived the longest XD But wait. We have one person left. Eagle. Eagle wouldn't die!!!! SHE JUST WOULDN'T DIE! and i was waiting, and she had given up, begging this game to just let her die. but no. she kept living. For like a week she kept living. When she did die, I was so happy I would've kissed the goat, but we had no goat, and plus I was dead. So instead i just laughed. because we finally noticed that we were stuck in the same spot for a year. A whole year, trying to move from that one area where we never left. and so was our tragic ending, for our tragic tale of Oregon.
But wait. There's a sequel. A ray of light for this horrible ending. The true ending of this post. But since this post is too long, kids, I'm just going to have to do it in another post. Wow. I told a long story kids, so be proud of me. I haven't posted in awhile. It's pretty nice to get back into it. I'm sad Eagle had a bad week, but happy that it will become good again soon. Tm in school i'll be handing out little gifts for christmas. Until I post again, fair thee well my lovely internet people who read this tale.

The Crappiest Week

So yeah, I've had a crappy week. I won't go into detail, but let's just say that I'm exhausted by life.
I have two half-finished posts in the works, but my computer is crapping out (I'm on the old brokenish one upstairs; also, the crap count in this post is up to 3.) Oh Kamina, it just started playing Age of Empires. I don't want to play Age of Empires, dammit. The one day I don't want to conquer surrounding nations would be the day my computer decides to just sort of randomly start playing the game.
You know, I think I'll talk about it. I actually really, seriously did not intend to do a legit post here, but I guess I will since I have half an hour to kill. No pics, though. Freewheelin' it!
(I'm not sure what that means.)
Age of Empires is a game o' the naughts (the 2000's; it was copyrighted in 2002). It's pixelated, awkward, and lovely, and it has bird sound effects as background music. My mom always used to become mildly angered when I would go to bed in the middle of a paused game because the bird effects would keep going and make her think there were weird things afoot.
(By the way, I'm talking about Age of Empires II, with the Conquerors expansion. Cause that's what I have. You know.)
Basically, it's a strategic conquest game. You are a civilization. You exist to crush other civilizations with your civilized might.
I like to be the Huns because they have a really great special unit, the Tarkan. It's a mounted unit that uses some kind of weird slingshot/bag of rocks type weapon, from the looks of it. I love me my cavalry. I used to only use cavalry for my conquests, but recently I've been seeing the importance of a solid infantry and archer units as well. Siege weapons go without saying. It's extremely difficult to raze a castle without siege weapons.
The castle is the most bad-aardvark building in this game. It takes 650 stone to build and shoots arrows at any enemy who has the misfortune of passing by. Since the enemy AI tends to be pretty dumb and send one enemy at a time into the line of fire, the castle can do a lot of killing.
Speaking of AI, when I say it's dumb, I'm talking about Standard mode. There are three harder modes (and one easier), which I find difficult to beat. To be honest, I'm not the greatest strategy person. I just like to raze all the enemy's buildings, even the walls, and leave nothing but scorch marks upon the earth. And then take over their farms. Cause that's how I roll.
The most fun part of this game, in my opinion, is not the games whose variables (like enemy civilization, number of units, etc.) you can control, but the campaigns. Campaigns put you into the shoes of a great historical war leader and allow you to fight ancient battles and decide the fate of nations. You usually have very specific goals and enemies, and there's an actual plot, with even a bit of dialogue thrown in! Ooh, the intrigue!
This is interesting. I'm looking at the back of the case, and apparently the original actually came out in the late 90's. The critical reviews are from '99 and 2000. It was originally built for Windows 95, 98, ME, or NT. I have XP on this machine. It's pretty cool that it works. The game was actually built by Microsoft. Fancy that.
There's a really big picture of Johnny Depp staring at me from my printer. I feel awkward. I'm going to go finish putting this spirit box (er, bag) together.
Great ending, huh?
~Pigeonmeister
Btw, I forgot a picture of the day last time! Le gasp! This time, I have one. Credits are on the pic itself.

Looks kind of like a messed-up brain. Would you like to eat this fish?

Middle Class Memories

Not me, but I did have a yellow Skip-It.

Welcome to a segment I like to call "Middle Class Memories." In this, I will share with you many stories of my childhood, because God knows we need more 90s kids telling you about their youth like they were your grandparents.
Today's topic is the Skip-It, which I highly encourage you not to do. This hunk of plastic was actually a lot of fun and was probably one of the only ways I got exercise. It was kind of dangerous though, if you were right next to someone. The end of it was heavy and hurt like hell if it whacked you in the shin. I don't remember when I got the Skip-It, but one particular memory that always sticks out in my mind was from 5th grade...
One evening, back when I used to actually stay up fairly late, I was drawing animu characters and whatever while listening to 99.1 HFS (now the Spanish station). They were doing a Sublime marathon which I guess got me really pumped up because I just suddenly wanted to exercise! I whipped out that Skip-It and skipped for at least an hour. The toy had a little counting mechanism that counted how many skips you did in a row. With the grace that I have, I obviously surpassed that number easily.
But don't think I stopped after that! It was crunch-time (literally) and I did 100 reps. I have no idea what exactly it was about that Sublime marathon that made me want to get physically fit, but either way, I had a great time skipping to "Wrong Way," "What I Got," and "Date Rape."

Wow. Just goes to show you that the media doesn't make every kid a sex fiend, drug addict, or psycho killer. I listened to Cypress Hill in 5th grade, too.

Tune in for the next installment of Middle Class Memories, in which I share with you my collection of...?

Addictive White Substance

Today, it's snowy outside. I was sincerely hoping for a complete day off of school; however, we got only a two hour delay. Sigh. So now I'm sitting in Computer Science with nothing to do at all.
Sigh.
Yesterday I got deferred by MIT, which is pretty much what I expected. I'll be considered again as part of the regular application field. You know, I should probably be writing my essays for the other colleges right now. Oh well.
I would really like a waffle right now. At home, we have waffle mix just sort of sitting on top of the microwave. I was hoping that if I got a complete snow day, I could have waffles for breakfast.
Sigh.
I eat my waffles with Nutella most of the time, because Nutella has to be one of the best things on Earth. Sometimes I just sort of eat a spoonful of it.
Yesterday I played Final Fantasy X for like 6 hours. I hope I'm done with it soon. I've hit a dead end on the Sphere Grid with Auron because he's overleveled and awesome and I have no Lvl 3 Key Spheres.
Sigh.
I need to finish Pokemon Blue. My character is currently standing on the doormat in the cave on Victory Road with a bunch of level 35-ish Pokemon. This may not turn out well.
One of the things I adore about the Pokemon games is that you can save anywhere. You don't have to spend hours finding a save point, or run away from all your enemies really fast because you're dying and you haven't saved in an eternity, or mess with anything. Plain and simple. Menu. Save.
I've never yet had a game system die in the middle of a save. I bet it screws things up pretty badly, so I'm not really keen to try it.
Well, that just about concludes my random rant of the day. I'm going to Skynugget's place later for a lovely bit of X-Men Legends, so expect a nice pictured post soon.
Have fun in the snow (if you have any).
~Pigeonmeister

An Odd for an Oddball

Hey folks. I'm out of school sick today. I spent my morning lounging in my basement in my owl pajamas, wrapped in a blanket, watching Full Metal Panic! and Mythbusters (both of which are among my favorite things in the world; I'll post about them eventually.)
Then, I decided to have lunch.
I didn't really expect much. I was foraging around in my kitchen, looking for something both delicious and nutritious, when I opened the freezer and stumbled upon a box.
A suspicious box.
A box full of Indian food.
Now, it's snowing, I'm still wearing my owl pajamas, and I'm about to do my very first food review. Yeehaw!
This was the box:

Amy's Indian Paneer Tikka. Organic, gluten free, amazing. We have this wonderful Indian restaurant in our area called House of India, and this boxed food is almost on par with the restaurant meal.
In my opinion, the best part of this package was the Aloo Palak (spiced spinach and potatoes) that came with it. As Skynugget will certainly tell you, I freaking love potatoes. I make her make me some every time I go to her house (XD). Indian food with potatoes in it has always been one of my favorite types, and this meal certainly does it justice.
You might expect the rice in such a meal to turn out flavorless or dry, but if you follow the instructions on the box properly, it turns out nicely steamed, with flavor provided by cumin and carrots. Delicious both mixed with the tomato sauce and on its own, it surprised and delighted me.
I was happy the entire time I was eating this meal. And that's pretty good, considering that I'm sick and I sort of feel like crap.
If you like Indian food, you should seriously get some of this. It's awesome.
By the way, the title of this post is sort of a reference to Kodocha, which is one of Skynugget's favorite series ever.
And now for the obligatory random picture of the day:

This was taken by me in Virginia. I've never been inside, but I hope it's a damn good buffet.

That's all for now, folks. Now I'm going to go play some of that accursed game (you guessed it, Final Fantasy X) and drink lots of fluids so maybe I can feel better tomorrow. Roar.
~Pigeonmeister

Listen to my Story

Ok. It's storytime again kids. Gather round mother and listen to her words. She has wisdom. Apparently.
So this week has been both trippy and iffy. Monday. . . I don't even remember what happened Monday. That's what happens when you get as old as I do. You tend to forget things, such as Mondays and whatnot. But anyhow. Tuesday was an iffy anime club, but it was still good. My bf who will be title Teddy Bear, was very sweet and wonderful.
Let's move onto way more important things. Unfortunately I haven't been able to get to too much video gaming, of which I am very upset about. However, I have been lazy and don't have too much gaming left to do. I still need to finish Star Ocean, which I started at like the beginning of high school and never finished. Then. . . uh. I forget what else I need to finish. Oh well.
Let's see. Oh yeah. I was watching an anime that is really bad and good at the same time. It's completely girly and slow and whatnot, but I still can't stop watching it anyway. It's called Aishiteruze baby, and I first came across it as a manga.
This was a seriously adorable manga. It's about a kinda playboy high schooler named Kippei, who is forced to take care of his cousin Yuzuyu, because her dad died and her mom disapeared. Yuzuyu is only five years old, and doesn't really understand why her mom left her. So she thinks her mom hates her, and is trying really hard to be good because she wants her to come home.
Of course, Kippei is totally infatuated with this adorable lil thing, because she's trying so hard and is so cute. But don't even think about any incest crap! this manga doesn't involve that at all, and neither does the anime!
So as Kippei is taking care of Yuzuyu and helping her through the troubles of her life, he starts to grow feelings for his classmate Kokoro. Kokoro is a very independent beauty who wants nothing to do with Kippei, but also secretly likes him (of course.)She doesn't like what a sleeze he is with girls, and so refuses to go out with him. But she has things she's dealing with too, and Kippei sorta helps her through it by comforting her. I'm not spoiling the rest of this for you kids, but i'm pretty sure you know how this goes.
I loved the manga when I got into it like a year ago. The anime is ok, but I don't like the opening or ending songs. They're like lullabies, and I like songs like that they're like the song from Furuba (Itsumo, if you want to listen to it, but these songs were just. . . ugh. Bad rythm, just. . . no. And some of the music in the background of the anime just bother me. The humorous music is played in awkward places sometimes, and makes the anime lighter than it actually is. And then they sorta portray Yuzuyu as whiny, when really she's just trying to sort out the issues placed on her by bad parenting choices. She has very innocent worries that aren't her fault at all, yet her bad BAD crying voice acting makes me wanna smack her. Well not her, her voice actor. And I do mean japanese voice actor. I swear they just use the same clip of her crying and looping it and reusing it for any other episode where she cries! aaaaagh.
However, the animation is rather decent. Granted, this was made a few years ago, so it's slightly mediocre, but still the coloring and shading is good, and the movement is alright. The way the faces are structured are done nicely. And in general, I love the story. It's very profound, sweet, and all around life lesson learning. I recommend this, though preferably the manga, if you ever get the chance.
That's the end of this story. I'll tell more about my life and other anime and video games later. and yes. Teddy Bear is a ginger <3

Rebut of the century folks

Does anyybody else get tired of eagle's constant nagging? "ew, camera angle! lol I hate this character, omg NO WAY!!!! XD" seriously. This isn't just some internet persona. she seriously acts like that in real life.
MOVING ON.
The angles for final fantasy X are portrayed as artistic, and OH GEEZ I'm so sorry that there was too much beauty in macalania woods for this silly girl to not understand the difference between scenery and treasure!!!!!
I SWEAR THAT GUY WAS AUSTRALIAN.
I didn't post because I knew it would make her angry :D
Oh yeah. the picture. I got bored XD
lolololz. so anyhow, it's really late and I'm just doing hw. Seriously, psychology is kicking my butt. That take home test was so difficult! mrmrmrmrmr.
I'm going to bed. But I will post much more before Eagle.
BTW, ALWAYS WATCH SPAGHETTI WESTERNS WITH CHEALSEA. TRUST HER INSTINCTS. TRUST THEM YO.
The end.

It's That Time of Day Again

Time for a post about Final Fantasy X. I'm lazy, so I will probably be mostly letting the pictures do the talking.
One of the things I hate most about video games is that they sometimes have hideous camera angles that make it super difficult to do stuff and occasionally give me headaches. Like the picture below, for instance.

Where's Tidey?

Tidus is that tiny little yellowish speck in the center of the picture. And it's not as though this picture was taken when I was in some out-of-the-way place trying to get a treasure chest. No. Tidus is standing right in front of a save point, which is one of the most important things in this game. A tiny little lifesaver.

Also, this one. It's looking down on Tidus. Why? I don't know! But this has to be the most awkward camera angle in existence.

Just jump, Tidus... Work up the nerve so I don't have to listen to your conceited yammering anymore (lol irony) 

Another thing I hate about this game, particularly in the Macalania Woods, is the shiny objects.
That's right. You just heard (er... read) someone easily distracted by shiny objects say they don't like shiny objects.

So this picture is a bad example. But there are shiny things freakin' everywhere that look like they could be magical treasure, but are really just part of the scenery. Big huge letdown. I want those shiny hours of my life back.
There are a lot of awkward situations/positions in this game.

Teehee. Auron likes.

There's also a lot of awkward standing around while some character or another explains their life story.

We're waiting... and waaaaaaitiiiiiiiiiiing...

Have I mentioned yet that you ride a ridiculous gigantic bird all over the place? It's a Chocobo, which sounds like some sort of horribly fattening chocolatey dessert. I must admit, the Chocobo Theme that plays when you're riding one is pretty fun, and the birdies do get you places fast. FLY, PELICAN!

Badass.

Of course, the thing I hate most about this game is the fact that Skynugget likes it. It's sort of funny that I hate all the parts she likes. The awkward laughter scene and the awkward make-out scene (sorry, spoiler alert for those of you who can't see the obvious) seem to be her favorites, but I really and truly despise them with all my shriveled black heart.
That being said, I love fluffy bunnies. My bunny is tiny and black and cute and gives me scars <3

Such an adorable little bundle of evil. <3

I picked up said tiny cute bundle of evil tonight... my chest is all scratched up. Such is life with an evil bunneh.
Whoa, I'm getting off track. Time for a cutscene!
...
Jk. Time for this to end.

From now on, I will be ending my posts with a random picture of the day. Today's RPOTD is one that reminded me of Chelsea:

 Love love,
~Pigeonmeister

Putin the Love Back in ...Russia

I interrupt your daily bloggage to bring you something truly bizarre: Vladimir Putin singing a love song.
Yes, it's true, and here's the video.

Source: Yahoo News. Here's the article: http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_newsroom/20101212/od_yblog_newsroom/putin-finds-his-thrill
Merry Christmas.
~Pigeonmeister

Failure for Nuggets, Win for Asians

Alright, Skynugget, here comes a rebuttal of your X-Men post.
WOMAN. Her name is Magma!
Also, the "blue beast guy" was Nightcrawler, who is different from the other blue guy, who is called Beast.
The pink robots are called Sentinels!
Gambit isn't freakin' Australian! They call him "the Cajun". Why? Because he's Cajun! From Louisiana-ish areas!
And you never added more to the post! AGH WOMAN
So anyway. :D
Yesterday I was watching old episodes of Ninja Warrior on G4, and I figured I should post about it, since Ninja Warrior is one of my favorite things in this life.
First, a little background. Ninja Warrior is a Japanese game show that pits the strongest men of the world (and several comedians) against four challenging levels of crazy obstacles and epic special effects. There have been 25 competitions so far, with two per year. each competition has 100 competitors, selected through a series of trial rounds.
The competitors are split into three categories: old/young people who are way more awesome than anyone expects, comedians and "entertainers", and attractive muscular Asian men. Most of the people in the first two categories get eliminated during the first stage. Things really start to get interesting during the second stage, when only the serious competitors remain.
My favorite obstacle is the Rolling Log, which usually appears in the first stage. It's exactly what it sounds like: a log rolling down a track that the competitor must hold onto for dear life. To make it worse, the log not only spins but goes over a series of bumps.
The announcer guy is really great. He uses a lot of strange metaphors and makes puns about the contestants.
There are a couple of people who have been on the show so often that they have been named the "All Stars". These guys are freakin' awesome. Makoto Nagano, Toshihiro Takeda, Shingo Yamamoto, and a few others are there lurking in the background to cheer on the newbies every competition.

I would sign this shirt.

I sort of forgot where I was going with this post, so I'm going to go play a little Final Fantasy and procrastinate on homework. Toodles.
~Pigeonmeister

Review: Two Mules for Sister Sara

Here's my first attempt at a movie review, whoa. I'll be breaking it down into five parts to make it a little easier to write out. I'm no Ebert, that's for sure, but I hope you get something out of it.

At a Glance
"Two Mules for Sister Sara" (1970) was directed by Don Siegel and stars Clint Eastwood as his usual drifter character and Shirley MacLaine as a nun of questionable actions. Clint's character does vaguely break stereotype seeing as he has a legitimate name: Hogan, and he actually has relations with women.
Here's a brief synopsis brought to you by Wikipedia: "A drifter named Hogan spots and saves a naked Sara from being gang-raped by several men whom he shoots and kills. He later learns that she is a nun that is working with a group of Mexican revolutionaries that are fighting the French. When Sara requests that Hogan take her to a Mexican camp, he agrees because he had previously arranged to help the Mexican revolutionaries attack the French garrison in exchange for a portion of the garrison's strongbox if they are successful."

Story and Characters
The premise of a nun and drifter working together provides a fun and often humorous dynamic, particularly when Sara pardons herself and Hogan for drinking, cussing, killing, etc since it is all for a good cause. The one place where the story feels weak is in the reveal of Sara's true occupation. It isn't much of a surprise based on her appearance and actions throughout the majority of the movie. If anything, you may find yourself being surprised when she actually reveals who she is.

Filming and Locations
The movie was filmed on location in Mexico, so there are some lovely landscape shots. However, even though the locations looked good, not much about them really stood out. This may have been due to the camerawork which, though not bad at all, is not particularly creative either. The big battle at the end of the movie looks pretty good, save for a somewhat bizarre shot of an explosion and a really silly looking wound-to-the-face that would have fit in with B horror films a lot better.

Music
Ennio Morricone provides a decent score, but it lacks the flair that many of his other scores had. The opening theme is really awesome, though, and is quite clever. Some of the instruments are made to sound like the hee-hawwing of a mule. Check out the opening here.

Overall
"Two Mules for Sister Sara" is a fun movie, not too complicated or serious, letting you just enjoy the interactions between its titular characters. It's fairly predictable, but comfortably so. You still have the fun of seeing how everything plays out.

Final Verdict: 4/5

P.S. - Dear Clarinet, after we watch "Hot Fuzz," I'll write a review of it just for you.

LOLOLOLOL THIS HAS BEEN A CDC PRODUCTION

So Eagle came by the other day to play X-men legends AGAIN. I can't get rid of this lady XD Anyhow, recently I've been forgetting where we are in this game, because i keep having flashbacks of snow and death and falling off cliffs, from the most difficult place imaginable. I'm talkin about that area where we died a ridiculous amount of times. It gave me a bad impression on snow in this game, and now I can't get it out of my head. SIGH. moving on. We finally got back from that nightmare, and we had to be ms. lava again. What was her name again? Flamio? Miranda? Lucy? I dunno. Well, we had to explore the grounds and meet students and think about becoming an X-men (even though she's a WOMAN! c'mon people!), and then we meet a beast in blue coloring. I forget his name too. Well he tells me about life, and then suddenly we have an option to go through his flashback, cuz yknow, he's a knowledgable blue beast, and thus has flashbacks. Me and eagle did not realize that we could move in this flashback, so of course we were surprised to find people attacking the X-men, and low and behold they weren't moving! So we were using completely different characters, the blue beast guy as the lead, and had to fight big pink robots.
Yes. That's right. BIG. PINK. ROBOTS.
I lol'd at that, eagle got angry at me, we ate snacks, Cat came in, and of course we kicked butt. That's just the way it went. oh. and Eagle went the wrong direction sometimes, but that was ok because I was there to guide her :3 I made sure we checked every nook and cranny before moving forward, so as not to miss an item. LOL. She got angry by my slowness. It was fun. I was in my snuggie and Eagle was in her bunny slippers, we were seriously relaxed.
Moving on. We defeated all the pink robots and the flashback just ended. Suddenly. NO WARNING AT ALL. We stared at each other because the ending of this flashback was so abrupt. But oh well. We got over it.
At first I thought this flashback was completely irrelevant and totally random, no point whatsoever just wasting time. But no. I was wrong. But I didn't realize that until later. First we had to save an australian mutant from the sewer people. Wow that sounds ridiculous XD But I'm serious. This mutant was an X-man too, and his name is Gambit. This Australian mutant named Gambit got caught by the mutants who felt so shunned they had to go into the underground. They hate outsider mutants. and other outsiders for that matter.
Wait, why am i even explaining this!? The storyline barely ever matters!
We were in the sewers. and kept dying AGAIN. It was so odd, and leveling in the Danger room just wasn't working. So as people died and we were without any healing items, Eagle became the last person standing. So she ran.
and ran.
and RAN.
Away from the millions of sewer mutants coming after her!
She was trapped in a corner! She panicked, unknowing what to do, and then one of the mutants blew up the door, and suddenly BAM! Exit yes! Eagle ran again, trying just to get out of the mess that was mutant. and of course, she got out of that area.
and into a boss fight.
We started over in the sewer.
This ended up happening to me, and I did the same thing. We couldn't revive anyone because we didn't have enough money, it was like the cost for reviving had gone up! It was like taxes for god's sake! aaaaaaaaahgh.
The moral of this story is teamwork. Together, we got through this and the mutant chick boss fight.
MORE IN A MINUTE

X-Men Legends

So I was at Skynugget's house a few days ago, and we played X-Men Legends again. I guess this is turning out to be our game of the season...
I'll give you the game from my perspective.
The first thing you notice when you play this game is that the graphics are mostly pretty good, though slightly repetitive.It's sort of hard to tell the difference between the characters, and as a result, I sometimes end up wandering off into space punching the air because I think I'm playing as Wolverine when I'm actually Cyclops.
You can play by yourself, or with up to four people (by daisy-chaining your controllers). The 2-player mode is supremely fun because you can mess with each other. Since both characters have to stay on the screen at all times, you can hold your partner up and make them mad (teehee, Skynugget). There's no real way to play against each other, unless you count competition for leveling which doesn't even really make sense.
You can destroy practically everything but the ground in this game. Seriously. Benches, trees, lampposts, most interior walls, chairs, desks, trash cans, desks, refrigerators that are not cabinets (WOMAN), and pretty much everything else succumb to your destructive impulses. In my opinion this is actually the best part of the game...Doing this gives you items that heal your HP and energy. The HP healers become supremely valuable as you get more and more underleveled. You can combat underleveling by visiting the Danger Room, which pretty much gives you unlimited enemies to beat.
My favorite character is Wolverine because he's super strong. He does a lot of super great claw attacks that do a lot of damage.
Skynugget and I have problems with dying in this game. For the longest time we had no idea that some of the barrels explode when you attack them, and there was much carnage. Also, Skynugget jumped two of our characters off a cliff! Tsk tsk. Then again, I fell off a few times too. So I guess we're even on the accidentally-killing-characters scale XD And then for the longest time, we had no idea that you could revive dead characters. We had to look it up online because the instructions for my copy of the game are missing. Turns out you just need money and an access point. Who knew?! (It's actually not called an "access point". It's an "Xtraction Point". I just like to refer to things in Persona terms. Don't judge me XD)
The glitches in this game are plentiful but useful. For instance, if you jump at the right time to the right place, you can jump on anything. Skynugget and I spent a while just walking along the side of a cliff. Also, if you get close enough to some enemies, they can't hit you. This is true of the tanks and the Sentinels. Super useful. Also, dead characters still level, which is weird. But again, useful.
I just can't believe this game is working out so well for us. I bought it at the thrift store, and I totally expected it to not work, or at least require some cleaning, or be so so so bad that I would never want to play it. Actually, I didn't have to clean it at all, it works great, and I'm really looking forward to playing it with Skynugget again.
I'm writing this post in Computer Science. Terribly exciting. BYE
~Pigeonmeister

Defenders of Suckage I MEAN SPACE

So Chelsea gave me this really suspicious-looking DVD to watch. It's got a smiling girly-looking guy standing in fromt of a smiling robuty-looking robot in fromt of some parallelograms in space. It's got one of those spiky speech bubbles that says "$1.00", like that's a good thing. This piece of wonderful crap is called Defenders of Space, and it is a ripoff of everything. Ever.
Before I start ragging on it, let me quote what it says on the back. As far as I can tell, it's in a font close to "David" or "FrankRuehl" in MS Word. It looks awkward.

"A HYPOCRITICAL RULER OF THE ZINBA EMPIRE, WANTS TO EXPAND HIS TERRITORY AND TURN THE EARTH INTO HIS OWN COLONY."

That's it. That is the entire description.What's the movie about? That one guy, right? And his desire to take over the world?
You'd think that, wouldn't you?
No.
It's not even about Earth for most of the movie. It's about saving a city called Aurora, which has already been destroyed by the evil villain guy.
Guess what the evil villain guy's name is. No, really. You'd say something like Zanborggggggg or Xrggrerrgyg or some crazy evil-sounding name, right? Surely not Nicholas.
But that's his name. And his empire is never ever called the Zinba Empire in the movie. It's called the "kingdom of Nicholas", which made me laugh out loud.
So the movie starts with the evil guy destroying the city of Aurora. Nobody really cares. a robot flies straight through a building. These guys don't understand how an atomic bomb works, because they had like five mushroom clouds pop up and then die down in succession, all from one bomb.
Then we cut over to some weird scene where these kids are playing baseball really, really badly and this girl is harping on them. Her name is Mary, and she shows up throughout the movie. She's in love with this guy named Henry, who is of course the baseball captain and can fire a gun and will eventually save the world by stealing Mary's thunder. But we'll get there.
You figure out where these random kids tie in when they are upset that Aurora has been destroyed. Oh, you lived there? Thanks for telling us that sooner.
They get out of their spaceship and find a stereotypical German scientist guy who is never really explained and tells them to go find the Phoenix King to save their planet. Because apparently the fact that the city was destroyed doesn't matter. It can still be saved. So Henry and Mary take Daddy's spaceship and go for a joyride to Earth to find the Phoenix King under a rock. A rock... shaped like a phoenix. Wow. Real imaginative there.
Evil Nicholas realizes that people are still alive and promises his two generals that whichever one of them rids Aurora of the remaining humans can marry his daughter, who is cleverly named Medusa. He didn't even ask her opinion on this. It's worth noting that all of the evil people are blue. Except Medusa, who is as white as a tissue in bright sunlight in the snow. Someone slept with the milkman.
This is the point where you start to notice that the animators really don't like animating, and they don't work together very well. Their styles are really quite different. Also, it's really obvious where they reused and loop scenes because they didn't mesh up their backgrounds. So you see a huge jump from one section of cloud to the next and it's distracting.
The music is really weird, too. It's some kind of weird synth-pop, and at times it's really inappropriate for whatever is happening.
Anyway, Mary and Henry arrive at the Phoenix Rock. There's this scene where they're looking at the world from the spaceship and Henry looks really stoned and goes "The Earth... is so beautiful". I feel like he should have added "Dude" or "Man".
They land, and you'd expect them to have some kind of trial to get to the Phoenix King. Maybe the enemy found its way there, or therre are ancient traps, or there is evil afoot...
No. Stairs. Lots and lots of stairs. And then bats. Lots and lots of bats. And then a bunch of falling rocks and Mary screams obnoxiously.
Then Henry steals Mary's necklace and uses it as a key to awaken the Phoenix King, who is a big-ass red robot, but also this floating thing that looks like a cross between Jesus and a giraffe. Seriously. I don't even know how that's possible.
So they hop on board and head back to Aurora. It was at this point that I realized that by "save the planet", the old German guy had just meant "get rid of the invaders so we can stop being shot at already".
Have I mentioned yet that the sound effects suck? The bombs sound like radios, the planes sound like bombs, and the falling rocks sound like bouncy balls being dropped on a table. The voices are pretty bad, too, and they don't match up with the mouth movements most of the time. And they always sound so excited. Why yes sir I will defeat these humans and I will not be a traitor. Thank you sir long live King Nicholas.
Anyway, to make a long story short, Phoenix King kicks everyone's ass and saves the day. Then the enemy ship falls burning to the ground and... he transforms into a fire truck. It is an exact ripoff of a Diaclone toy, which was the toy series that led to Transformers. Both Transformers and this insane thing came out in 1984, incidentally. (I read the Wikipedia page. Defenders of Space was originally South Korean, and was crappily dubbed into English, which explains the voices.)
So yeah, woo, saved the day. The last minute of the movie is just various shorts of Phoenix King zooming around in space, and then a big red screen that says "THE END" like something big just happened.
Now remember that cover I told you about? The one with the smiling boy and robot? Well, the boy is Henry, but the robot isn't Phoenix King. It's one of the enemy robots (the one that flew through a building, incidentally). That's like putting Simon from Gurren Lagann with Crazy Pirate Lady's (her name is Adiane) sea scorpion ship. It's just wrong.
The back cover has a creepy yellow smiley face with awkward hair that has text around it. The text reads, "For children of all ages to enjoy!" I dunno about you, but I actually did enjoy this steaming pile of gold. Especially the part where I write a scathing review on my blog. Lolsauce.
Next up: Space Thunder Kids, which incorporates scenes from Defenders of Space along with other movies. I can't wait to see how much I hate it.
Tschau!
~Pigeonmeister