Numbers Rock!

1) As mentioned before, I've been playing GTA: San Andreas a lot lately. The first time I played it was on the PS2 a few years ago, and I just couldn't get into it. I had beaten GTA 3 and GTA: Vice City on the PC and I just can't stand the controls of it on the PS2. Steam recently started offering Rockstar games and had a sale when they were first available, so I downloaded San Andreas 'cuz it was cheap.

It's a lot better on the PC, for me anyway. It was chugging along really great too, I've probably spent 40 hours on it, having fun, goofing off, completing missions...

Then *BAM* - "Hey CJ, go learn to fly a plane!"

Now, I like games that are challenging, but I also think that missions and quests and whatnot in games should be *beatable the first time around.* Even if it's hard as fuck and I end up dying 20 times, I want to be able say after it's all said and done, "I totally could have done that the first time, if I wasn't such a dumbfuck!"

These plane controls... FUCK WHOEVER DESIGNED THIS SHIT. Yeah, gimmicky missions with bad controls are just as much a staple of the GTA games as stealing cars and punching hookers, BUT FUCK!!!

I remember a mission in Vice City where you had to use a toy helicopter to plant bombs in a building being constructed. It sucked, but I got it done in one sitting. In San Andreas, there are the infamous Zero missions, especially the last one where you control a toy helicopter that has to protect Zero's toy car. That was kind of fun, but challenging, and I was able to beat it in two sittings.

I've spent about 3 hours in the past week trying to FLY THIS FUCKING PLANE in a CLOCKWISE CIRCLE and I finally DID IT and then it WANTS ME TO DO THE SAME THING AGAIN, and then LAND.

The controls on this plane fucking suck and I can't for the life of me fly THE DAMN PLANE in a FUCKING CIRCLE a second time.

Most of these missions I'm able to beat on my first try, so I have the sense of momentum in the game, and then FUCK.

FUCK this PLANE and FUCK fucking ROCKSTAR for this MISSION.

2) Seems like there are no good horror movies hitting theaters anytime soon. That really fucking sucks. There's a new Spanish movie called [REC] that's getting a lot of positive buzz, but I doubt it'll be hitting theaters stateside - ever. Hopefully it won't take long to hit DVD.

Upcoming highlights:

Repo! The Genetic Opera (August) - This is either going to be the best thing ever, or the worst thing ever. Pluses: Nivek Ogre and lots of gore. Minuses: It's a musical with a bit of an Andrew Lloyd Weber sound (*gag*puke*gag*) and Paris Hilton.

Midnight Meat Train (August) - Best title ever, plus its an adaptation of a short story from one of Clive Barker's Books of Blood. Now if only someone good would adapt The Damnation Game.

Saw V (October) - Because the Saw movies are always decent and I don't regret having seen any of them in theaters. Hopefully this isn't the first one to completely suck.

Hellraiser (January) - The only thing that could top the original movie would be a closer adaptation of Barker's The Hellbound Heart with a bigger budget. I wouldn't even consider this if Clive Barker himself weren't involved.

In other news, I'm disappointed that Guillermo Del Toro is going to be spending the next four years working on a couple of Hobbit movies, I was really looking forward to his adaptation of Lovecraft's At The Mountains of Madness and I'm sure "Fruity Little Midgets with Swords: The Movie (Parts 5 and 6)*" is going to delay that. Most Lovecraft movies fall flat on their face, but I'd like to see what he comes up with.

*(Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll fucking see them and they'll be awesome but C'MON!!! Del Toro + Lovecraft!!!!!)

3) I really, really hate my job. I had problems with the way shit was run when it was the pork plant, but the wiener factory higher ups are 100x worse. They outsource so much shit to other companies who don't give a fuck about our customers, it's retarded. There is no accountability in these other offices and I get the sense that people are free to just say and do whatever the fuck they want there. It's total bullshit. I feel like the factory that I work in is the only one in the entire nationwide chain that gives a fuck about anything, and that we're the only ones who even try to solve *legitimate problems* that people have with our... processed meat.

Yeah, some people are deadbeats, some people are assholes, but at the end of the day, paying customers should be able to... properly digest our meat... the way it's supposed to work. When someone has a problem, I shouldn't have to "fill out a ticket" and wait 72 god damn hours for someone in fucking Denver to fix it (or more likely *not*). That wasn't part of the problem solving process before, there's no reason for it to be now.

I think the essential problem is that the Pork Plant was a privately held corporation and the Weiner Factory is a publicly traded stock. As long as the Pork Plant was turning a profit, its dozen or so shareholders were making mad bank, so they didn't feel the need to belligerently FUCK everyone. With the Weiner Factory, they have to dick over everyone, employees and customers alike, just to squeeze a few extra pennies onto the value of each of their MILLIONS of stock shares.

Seriously - some of the crap I've dealt with in the past two months has really, seriously, honestly DEPRESSED me. I hate that word. I grew up in the 90's, when it was *oh so trendy* to be depressed. But for the first time in over a year, I *dread* going to work. I used to be able to jump out of bed and get in the shower, no problem. Now - I absolutely cannot move for at least the first 10 minutes while my alarm goes off - I'm paralyzed. Creatively, I feel flaccid. When I get home from work, I just want to forget everything that happened that day.

If there was more work in my area, I would bail. But I'm saving up money and paying off my student loans for the time being, so as much as I want to get the fuck out of Hoosierland, I don't want to move to another place and not be able to find a job for few months and come back here with less money than when I left.

4) Gemma gave me some CDs for my birthday, one of them was Haujobb's Vertical Mixes, the companion remix album to Vertical Theory. One of the remixes is by Seabound, and I was really looking forward to it, but when I listened to track 7, which is labeled as "Platform (Seabound Remix)" on the back cover, I was disappointed. It wasn't horrible, just kind of "meh." But Damn, I really got into track 8, which was labeled "Metric (Hecq Reemiqs)." The more I listened to track 8, the more I noticed little things. There was the dream beat... and then there was an Oscillator Sync sweep... very similar to something from Seabound's No Sleep Demon CD. And the lyrics... "Is it possible for software to live? You Think. You think you are free. You are a PLATFORM, a presence that could be."

Wait a second. Is there a misprint on the back of the CD?

TO THE INTERNETS!!!

Sure enough, track 07 was "Slide (Glis Remix)," which was labelled on the CD as track 12 - not horrible, just kind of generic futurepop. Track 08 was "Platform (Seabound Remix)," and everything up until the final track on the CD was one track off.

It's a good thing Seabound is one of those bands who are just so good that you can pick them out from everyone else, because otherwise I would've attributed Backlash's remix of S.adow to the very different "Shok's Scrambled Egg Mix," or whatever. The Backlash remix is awesome. A lot of the other tracks on here are awesome as well, the best tracks are the new song "Mind Crush," Haujobb's remixes of "Metric" and "Platform," the aforementioned Seabound remix, the Backlash remix, "Renegades of Noize (Asche Remix)," and "The Noise Institute (1994 Mix by Iszoloscope)." That's just over half the CD right there of "best tracks."

The weakest track? "Metric (Hecq Reemiqs)."

Go fucking figure.