Hard Candy

Wow.

So I was talking to Bryan and he directed me to the My Space Music site where I could listen to the whole new Madonna CD.

Wow.

So we listened to it from begnning to end and talked about it as we did.

Wow.

That's a shit-ass album.

4 Minutes is primo Timbaland and Devil Wouldn't Recognize You is pretty good in the vein of What Goes Around. The rest of the CD? Crap.

What a disappointment.

Good Enough To Eat

Music at the moment: Duffy - Mercy

So...

If I have another boyfriend named John, technically it isn't cheating right? We'll go with that.

I love pastry. If I'd ever pursued my love of cooking and made it into a career, pastry is what I would have focused on. However, if I'd gone to school with the new love of my life, i'd have focused on little else beyond him.

Johnny Iuzzini not only excels at desserts and artistic pastries, but he's also right up my Mr. Right alley. And come on, John LOVES chocolate. He'd be perectly fine with having handsome Iuzzini as our "third."

Ohhhhh Johnny. Daaaamn

Macs, Games, Movies, Beds, Birthdays, and Books: What I Did On My School Break: The Mega Post

Music at the moment: Vincent - Enemies

Macs

So, I love my new Mac. Love is perhaps inadequate here. If I didn't rely on so much software for Windows, i'd chuck the whole bootcamp thing out the do

or and go Mac exclusive, but unfortunately that can't happen yet. Suffice it to say I want to migrate solely to the Mac OS.

Games

I finished my first PS3 game with John Saturday night. Heavenly Sword, a game I never thought I'd be all that crazy about, absolutely blew me away. It's rare that a video game story is done well enough to make the player interested in the plot rather than just the action filling the screen. This one delivered on so many levels. My only complaints were some minor in-game control issues and how very short it was. I was even more disappointed to hear that this had been an intended trilogy, but the plans for the next two games has been indefinitely postponed (shades of Advent Rising.) This game really astounded me. The characters, the really well-written dialogue, the texture and animation work,

all of it was a bar-setter in my opinion. I'll even risk ridicule and confess that I shed more than a couple tears at the end. To do that to me it has o be quite a story.

Phred Phun Phactor: 9 out of 10

A few months ago John and I also finished Mass Effect, our first Xbox 360 game. This too was an incredibly well-done game with satisfying story, visuals, and game play. We just downloaded the add-on content for it, but have yet to begin. For our first foray into the world of Xbox, we were very pleased.

Phred Phun Phactor: 8 out of 10 (-1 for no option to have John Shepard get it on with Kaiden or Garrus or Wrex)

On the Wii front, we also finished Metroid Prime 3: Corruption this time home for John. The game was addictive and we really enjoyed the hell out of it (a 52" Sony HD TV doesn't hurt the experience on any of these either.) The Metroid series has long been a fave of mine and stirs fond memories of Josh and I cussing and playing until all hours of the night to finish Metroid Prime. This "Threequel" was no different. John and I had a lot of fun playing and even went the extra distance to complete 100% of all pick-ups and the like to unlock all the super secret mega cool bombtastic endings and mess. So when we finished the last boss and sat back for the awesome spectacle that was to be our long and cinematic ending we were more than a little disappointed when it was essentially Samus taking off her helmet, a very brief flashback of the boss battles we actually played through (been there, done that, seen it already, cussed it thoroughly), Samus hopping in her ship to zip away and then a message that Hypermode was unlocked and to play again. Um. Hate. You mean I enjoyed the hell out of this game only to finally come to the end to get the 2008 version of "Congratulations Mario! You've saved the Princess! Press B to play again."? Crap. We were not very happy.

Phred Phun Phactor: 5 out of 10 (-2 for crap ending)

Movies

We've also been taking in the second and terribly exciting installment of 8 Movies to Yawn For. Please tell me you detect my sarcasm. It's quite hard to convey venomous disdain of facial expressions in text.

In November we actually went and used a free pass to see Unearthed (refer to my previous post on that work of crap.) That was pretty pathetic. Now that they're out on DVD we've started watching them here.

We started with The Deaths of Ian Stone. Okay, so the acting in this was decent. The story was far too Dark City for my tastes, but still watchable. That is, until the movie got lost in itself. This movie had a very hard time keeping its focus. Am I watching Mystery? Wai, not this is a horror. Uh-oh, no, this is a Thriller. Oh my bad, now it's a supernatural action epic. Huh? How many movies did I just watch? The story is derailed by far to many shifts in gear and overall the experience leaves one with the feeling the movie had an identity complex. Mike Vogel is pretty, but something about his looks says "stinky ass" to me for some reason so he doesn't do muh for me. The one definite plus to the movie? Jaime Murray. She is too damn hot and it makes me miss Hustle.

Phred Phun Phactor: 3 out of 10

Next we enjoyed Lake Dead. Yeah. Bad title choice. It would have better captured the sheer horror of the movie if they'd called it Lake Shit. So this movie...yeah. Casting was done at the local community theatre or downtown modeling agency apparently. The acting quality was that of-- okay I can't in good conscience put the words acting and quality in the same sentence when referring to this movie. Suffice it to say that the writer/director/janitor, whoever put this film together REALLY liked the X-Files episode Home and felt that it necessitated a 90 minute "improvement" complete with stolen lines. I'll stick with the Peacock family thank you very much.

Phred Phun Phactor: 2 out of 10

The latest we viewed last night. Nightmare Man was the next step in our journey through 8 Films to Make You Regret Not Having A Lawn To Mow Instead. Wow. I mean WOW (And again I don't mean that crap MMO, though playing it might have been preferable.) I've only walked out of two movies in my life. One was some shit foreign horror flick called Burial Ground we decide to go see because we were bored. The other was The Squeeze with Michael Keaton. Nightmare Man would have been my third had we been in a theatre. This was not a movie. This was a very poorly done extended episode of Amazing Stories or Tales from the Crypt complete with extremely bad acting and horrid makeup and effects. Where Lake Shit used local amateur actors, Nightmare Man undoubtedly recruited "actors" from the local Circle K, a Pimp on the corner, or a downtown sports bar at happy hour. The writing, the plot...screw it. I'm not even going to detail this atrocity. This movie sucked dog ass.

Phred Phun Phactor: -1 out of 10. That's right, Nightmare Man gets my lowest rating to date! Good job!

Beds

The doorbell rang repeatedly this morning prompting me to dress quickly and risk broken neck as I raced down the stairs to the door. Ready and quite willing to eviscerate whatever salesman was hounding us, I yanked the door open to find no one. In fact, the only thing I did find was four large boxes piled in front of our door that dwarfed me. Our Sleep Number had arrived! We only bought it a few days ago and had been told it wouldn't arrive for a couple of weeks. Hallelujah! We're setting it up today and hopefully sleeping our way into more energy and less neck and back problems.

Birthdays

Happy Birthday to our little speshul kittee Julio!

Books

Recently a very good and long-time friend had her first book published. While initially in e-book format, the print version was soon to follow. I was absolutely dumbstruck when she asked me to do the cover for her. I'm still not comfortable with Photoshop, but I'm getting there. I find I learn a lot more when I dive in and hit buttons than from that crap class I had that taught me nothing. So, I told her I would and we brainstormed some ideas about what to do for the cover. In the end, I was pleased with it as were the authors (her and her co) as well as the publisher.

Whirlwind by Jim Richards and Trinity Knight

The print version was supposed to be out a while ago. Unfortunately, we've had no end to print problems with the printer (Lulu.com - avoid at all costs)

Having found a new printer and relying on hope and crossed fingers, the print version will be out soon and I'll have one in my hand. I really enjoyed doing my first print cover layout despite the measurement and printer problems. The next book is due out in may, so i get another cover to play with.

Congratulations to that heathen I've known and loved for nearly two decades!