Here is a word of advice for anyone who is willing to listen. It's a simple thing, but it could very well save your life ... and your immortal soul. If you're ever meeting with an advisor from your college and you're asked if you would like to take a macroeconomics course, kill the advisor and flee. You'll have to remove the head or destroy the brain, but this is the only way to make sure they don't come back. Also, you'll probably want to burn the corpse just to make doubly sure. Only, make sure the smoke is contained so that it doesn't escape into the atmosphere. Otherwise rain clouds could be contaminated and then we would all have a plague on our hands.
When I signed up for this godforsaken class, I though it sounded interesting. "A study of how society's needs are satisfied with the limited resources available." That sounds like it could be interesting, right? Well, it's not. It sucks ass. If only I could go back in time to kick myself in the balls as a warning.
I'm sorry if you're an economist or if you're in to that whole thing, but come on. Do you really have to make a graph for everything?!? Some things can just be said. You don't have to graph every single damned thing.
And some of the shit that's in my textbook is just plain stupid. Here's an excerpt from the book: "a $10 bill will do when the price of an item is $10, but a $10 bill plus a $1 bill is needed when the item costs $11." I'd like to point out that this textbook costs, as of the writing of this blog entry, 109.85 U.S. dollars. And anyone who pays this amount in exchange for the book is paying for that excerpt. I would like my money back. Or at least the portion of what I paid that went toward stupid crap like that.
Luckily I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Not much longer until this semester is over now. And then I can put this whole terrible nightmare behind me.
The drought was ended in a spectacular fashion yesterday when the heavens opened up and pissed all over us in biblical proportions. OK, maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but it did rain pretty freakin' hard.
So hard in fact that it pwned my basement. I had to miss work today so that Debbie and I could run to get a wet/dry vac to clean up the mess.
But first I had to remove the obstruction from the gutter that I think may have been the root of the issue. So I ventured out around 8:00 this morning in the cold, pouring rain to climb up to my roof on a slippery ladder on muddy ground. That was fun. The headline was running through my mind: "MAN FALLS ON HEAD, DIES WHILE BEING DUMBASS."
Nothing of any significant value was lost, luckily. We did have to throw away some stuff, but all that crap probably should have been thrown away a long time ago anyway. The box containing Debbie's Barbie doll collection was a little wet, but I don't think any of the actual packages were affected.
On the plus side, while shopping for a wet/dry vac, Debbie purchased her very own Nintendo DS, of the crimson/black variety. It's pretty cool looking. And now I fully expect her to keep her grubby hands off mine. Final Fantasy VI isn't going to finish itself and how was I supposed to do it when she was using my DS to play New SMB?
Besides having fun playing the multiplayer modes of New SMB and Phandom Hourglass, I've been delighting in sending her obscene drawings via the DS's PictoChat function. I'm sure there's a better use for PictoChat, but damned if I can think of it.
So anyway, today kind of sucked. But I did get a day off work. And that's always a good thing. Although if I had fallen off of that ladder and killed my damn self, that wouldn't have been so cool. Unless I DID fall off the ladder and die and now my spirit is continuing its routines as if nothing had happened. Oh wait, no, that would be cool too.
I picked up The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass a few days ago and I'm really glad I did. This is a great game. And it does a phenomenal job of utilizing the touch screen of the DS. Many of the tried and true Zelda conventions are given new life with the advent of the touch screen and the stylus. You don't just throw the boomerang in the direction of your choosing, you can actually plot out its course by drawing a line on the screen.
Even the sea travel system is reborn in Phantom Hourglass. While that aspect was, in the opinion of many, a detriment to Wind Waker, in Phantom Hourglass, it's actually fun. Again, you can plot your course using the stylus. And, instead of directly steering the ship as in Wind Waker, once your course is set, the ship essentially steers itself while Link is free to man the cannon.
All of these new ideas work together to create a unique Zelda experience. Even though this is primarily a top-down adventure with gameplay similar to A Link to the Past or any of the other Zelda titles for the handheld systems, everything seems new. The level designers were able to use the new functionality of the boomerang and other tools to create fresh puzzles.
This one seems to be more of an adult game than previous Zelda titles. I don't mean to say Link is dropping F-bombs or giving his patronage to hookers ("yo honey, I'll show you a real good time for twenty rupees!"), but some of the puzzles require a depth of thinking that is, frankly, unusual for a Zelda game. And many of the puzzle hints are vague at best.
Playing Phantom Hourglass has reawakened my taste for the older, classic console games. Luckily for me, many of the old games that I cut my gamer teeth on are now available for the GBA. And, it just so happens, the GBA games are compatible with the DS. So now my handheld game library is stocked with games like A Link to the Past, Final Fantasy IV, and Final Fantasy VI. Once I finish Phantom Hourglass I'm going to start those journeys again. Rockin' it old-school. Hells yeah.
