There's basically two things that are killin' me here!

I don't mean killing me literally; as a smoker, I pretty much know how I'm going to die. And I have to tell you, it's quite convenient. I feel confident enough that I could walk out in the middle of a Wild West style gun fight and live through it because I'm that confident it's going to be lung cancer. So I pity you non-smokers in a way. Do you have that kind of self assurance? I thought not.

I'm also heavily anticipating the invention of some kind of artificial lung, not unlike a pace maker, that will let me live well past a century. If science has taught us one thing, it's that it'll solve all of our problems with no reprocussions.

But that point aside, my calculus classes and my scope creep are what are killing me. My life is a series of routines. I like things to happen when I expect them to. I could tell you my schedule for the next month if you wanted to hear it, but then the mystery of what kind of exciting life this dirtywick must lead would be gone. Since it's half gone, though, I'll break the rest down for you: It's not particularly exciting.

Thus, my calculus class takes up my Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday afternoons and evenings. I take my classes online, and the way they work is you get an assignment for the week due Sunday and can pace yourself, so a routine there is important (especially in this particular class where nothing is really "due" until the final week, upon which I will sit back and laught at the idiots who threw away a few grand because they can't manage their time!). But I probably spend at least 20 hours a week doing homework and learning the material. Compared to my usual any class where the assignments are to write a paper or two a week, which I can crap out an A paper in about an hour, that's a ridiculous amount of time to me. You see, my primary skill is finding the fastest way to get the best results. I don't allow myself to get anything less than an A, but I also don't allow myself to spend any more time than necessary to get said A. I give 110% as fast as I can so I can do things I want to, but the amount of money spent on college would make getting anything less than perfect grades a waste of my precious money, you see.

In any case, that's a good chunk of my free time spent doing matrices and logarithms, which is a phenomenal waste of time. Really, when was the last time you said "oh man! I wish I knew the quadratic formula! Then I could balance my check book!" Game, set, and match, son.

The other cause of my demise is scope creep. What that does is causes you to add so much to your project that every time you start up, you don't feel like you actually got anything done, which is mad discouraging. I mean, I did get stuff done, but not as much as I'd have liked, mostly because I'm doing a ton of complex scripts and "what if" scenarios that bog down the whole process.

So, I might have underestimated the work load a bit when I thought I was 50% done. As of now, I have no idea how percent done I am, but it's markedly lower than 50, I believe.

But F it, let's check out some screens of what I did do!

Below you can check out what's become of the catacombs. Did you ever wonder what it would be like to step into the middle of a religious war fought below some churches of opposed faith in a catacombs? No? Really? Damn. Well, I went ahead and did that anyway:









What remains to be done there is to finish the final battle up in which you confront the leader of the side you're fighting against (again, options! Will you turn traitor on who hired you? Try to work out a truce? Stick with your word?) which is what I'm working on now. A little cutscene, a few scripts, should be done by the time I hit the bricks tonight. Well, matress.

Then I need to reproduce the scenario from the other perspective, in case you want to take the other side in the conflict. That's what I've been talking about when things go faster, the areas and blueprints and spawn scripts are all done, just need to modify a few things and do a bunch of dialogue and some changes in when and where things happen.

But, let's not go without taking a look at these screens:







You know, I was thinking "what the hell am I going to do with asteriods!" when I installed MotB. Guess whose temple that is.


Well anyway, I having seen the ads for Cloverfield a few months ago I decided to look it up on IMDB, mostly trying to figure out whether it was a good movie or not because I'm not likely to see it until I can get my hands on a bootleg of it or it's on HBO. Or I got to Blockbuster, which isn't likely. Anyway, I headed over to the IMDB boards to see what the monster was, because really like you couldn't figure out it was a giant monster and honestly that's not much of a spoiler (mostly because I was reading about Cthulhu in preparation of my Far Realms area I want to do. Having never read a H.P. Lovecraft book in my life I, admittedly inexplicably having no knowledge of what Cthulhu is anyway, thought "dude, that's probably what Cloverfield is!" It's not.) and will probably forget the spoiler by the time I get around to watching it...

Apparently, this movie is a lot like the Blair Witch Project. You'll either like it or pass out vomiting from migraine induced seizures. Or something. Well, point is nobody can agree whether it's a good movie or not. I'm going to go ahead and say yes because, come on, giant monster? I'll also say it could probably kill Superman to nip that debate right in the bud.

But anyway the message boards had something about whether or not this movie belonged in the top 250 movies of all time. So I took a look at that list.

Alright, since I've never been afraid of saying something stupid in my life, I won't start now: Most of the people who decide what good movies are just say what they've heard are good movies in an attempt not to sound stupid to people who "know" good movies.

I mean, how else do you explain that list?

Alright, The Godfather at the top, I'll accept that. I mean, it's a pretty good movie, no doubt. Best ever? Well, I'd disagree, but I'm more of an John Everyman that likes things that are awesome over beatiful cinemetography and beautiful other words I can't spell or know the meaning of. I like explosions and stuff and junk.

Knowing that, explain:

Pulp Fiction at #5

This movie wasn't that good. Taratino, I mixed about that guy, but Pulp Fiction wasn't all it was cracked up to be. There's a Sammy L. bible quote scene which is pretty awesome, but John Travolta doing the vogue with Uma Thurmon and then dying on the toilet? Yeah, it's a Royale with Cheese, I get it. I've heard people quote that too many times, and I'm all "yeah, foreigners say different things that us. I get it. Besides, you heard that on Pulp Fiction, you're not actually cultured by hearing somebody who was cultured make an observation about an American fast food company...you know what, forget it."

Point is, not #5.

Speaking of Tarantino, Grindhouse even being on that list is an atrocity, slightly more than Kill Bill Vol 2. A woman with a gun for a leg? That's stupid. I could see an arm, but a leg? That's stupid.

Psycho at #22

Uh, this movie wasn't that good, sorry. I know it was like terrifying or whatever in the wholesome 60's when people didn't get killed in motel rooms, but I lived near Milwaukee when Dahmer was arrested. Come on, this movie is not that entertaining. For it's time, sure. But this isn't the greatest movies of all time for their time, it's of all time.

Raiders of the Lost Ark at #18

First of all, I'm bringing this up because it should be higher, but it bears mentioning that the Temple of Doom isn't even on the list(!), and The Last Crusade is in at a paltry 120. This is the greatest trilogy of all time, and Indiana Jones could kick any of these other action fruits at higher rankings asses. So let's put things in perspective here.

V for Vendetta at #146

Real talk, I know the guy that played V in the movie. Not the voice, but the guy in the suit. His name is David Leich, and he was my neighbor's son by my ma's. That said, this wasn't that good of a movie. It was OK, but I think the only reason this is on the list is because of the anti-Bush feelings in the US. Watch it plummet in 2009.

2001: A Space Odessey at #80

Movie is balls. First of all, it's 2008 and we're not floating around in technicolored crappy special effects. Secondly, this movie just sucks.

Apocalypse Now at #36

Can anyone honestly say they enjoyed the sweaty Marlon Brando donkey killing mess that was the second half of this movie? Didn't think so.

Alien at #52

I liked this move, but the vastly superior Aliens is ranked #69, which is a little backwards. What's better than a single poorly made rubber alien killing people in the early 80's? Many, many slightly less poor rubber aliens killing more people armed to the teeth with cool guns in the mid 80's. And what's better than them both? The Thing at #175. It's inexplicable.

Terminator 2 at #74

Uh, Terminator 2 is awesome? It's awsome almost 20 years after it was made.

Amadeus at #85

Wow, this movie sucked. I don't know how the circumstances came about that I watched it...perhaps it was the cool box art, perhaps I had nothing better to do. But wow. Just...wow.

Donnie Darko even being on this list

Terrible. Just terrible movie.


Alright, well I'm going too far with this, but let me just say that perhaps the biggest travesty of this whole debacle is the movies listed here are all on the list, despite being mostly awful with the few underrated exceptions, yet neither The Warriors nor Big Trouble in Little China made the list. I'll let you ponder that.

Wait, I had to edit this in:

How in the hell do you explain Scarface being on that list? I mean, I know it's every rapper/mustachioed popped collared 80's business man's wet dream to snort a mountain of cocaine and shoot grenade launchers at illegal immigrants, but are there really that many of them out there? Really?