(At work this week I attended a class about writing directly and in plain language. I did not care for it, but I will try to apply the lessons from the class to this entry. See if you notice.)

This past Saturday was Halloween, and I would call the long-awaited Wolverine costume a success. In the end it cost me a little under $200, but if I had to do it all over again, I would try to find a cheaper alternative to the jacket. I suppose China doesn't have vanity sizing like America do because the jacket is a bit tight for day-to-day use, which is a shame because the it cost a hundred dollars. I have no absolutely regrets about the claws, as people enjoyed them everywhere I went this year. I also purchased a blue and yellow t-shirt patterned like Wolverine's Astonishing X-Men costume and custom made dog tags with the number from X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

So where did a crazy man dressed like Wolverine go this year? First, I went with Will to a party hosted by some of his friends. I only knew about half of the attendees yet it was a nice, if a bit uneventful, affair. The one thing that concerns me about Will's friends that their respective friends are getting increasingly younger as they're getting older to the point where they're becoming "The cool old guy who buys kids beer". Despite telling myself that I wasn't going to do it this year, the Thursday night before Halloween I had the nerve to shave my chin and mustache and go to work in a slightly modified version of the costume, with a red plaid shirt over a white t-shirt instead of the blue and yellow and no claws. Since he unfortunately wasn't going to be able to make it on Saturday, I wore my costume to Matt's house Friday night and had a mini-Halloween which involved us going to Taco Bell for dinner followed by Target to buy candy where we discovered some outrageously delicious dark chocolate Reese's mini peanut butter cups.

Saturday I went to the Tom's River Halloween Parade with Will, Niki, and crew. For a relatively small affair, the parade was awesome although my personal highlight was all the attention I was getting. For instance, Angie got excited that two people recognized her incredibly reverent Michael Jackson costume so it became a competition of sorts. I started waving to the kids in the parade with my claws out and they loved it.

Final score:

Wolverine 12

Michael Jackson 7

Now my hair is short again, and I kind of miss it. I have more to write about Halloween this year, but I wanted to get the facts out first. I'm finding that I have increasingly less energy to write blog entries and it frightens me.

I've been feeling weird that I haven't had anything to write about so I decided to do what I do best and smash somebody else's effort through no merit of my own!

I've been on a health kick again because I don't want to find out in November that some loser took a picture of me in costume and was making wacky captions like "Hahaha, look at Fat Wolverine!" although I'll admit it would hilarious if Football-neto had a picture of me on his blog. With that in mind, I bought Wii Fit Plus. As somebody who already owns the preceding Nintendo peripherals the Wii Fit Board from the original Wii Fit and the Motion Plus Controllers from Wii Sports Resort, this was only $20 as I only needed to purchase the disc.

"So what's new in this version?" you ask. Well, we added a little bit to everything. There are three new yoga positions and three new strength training exercises, and those are well and good but not really a deal maker by themselves. The player will probably first take note of the new games that incorporate the Motion Plus, but these are a mixed bag. The Kung Fu mini game feels a lot like an update to the boxing game from the original; it's fun enough, but like the boxing game, you can't shake the feeling that you spend too much time waiting for the cues and not enough time doing the moves. The snowball fight is fun and somewhat reminiscent of a kids' version of Time Crisis, but I never feel like the games that are first and foremost about balance are giving me a workout. Oddly there's a game that gives you a good workout where you wave your arms like a bird and fly your avatar (in a chicken suit no less) from one platform landing to the next. The big find here overall is the Obstacle Course. It's a lot of stop-and-go running, yet it strikes a chord of working you just hard enough that it feels like you're making progress without it being a chore while giving you the thrill of pretending to be Mario.

Also they finally added programs. After playing other fitness based games for the Wii, I have to admit that this was long overdue. Maybe of the yoga stances in particular can be very short, so spending 15 seconds in a menu between each 45 second exercise was starting to kill the flow of the workout. Unfortunately, the problem is that as far as I can tell you can't change the workouts. This means that I can't add my regular 30 Jacknifes to the routine because the game will only allow me to do the default 10 at that time. Fortunately, each yoga exercise only comes in one size and if you mix and match strength training routines it's rigorous enough.

Also my Wolverine jacket sent today!

The votes are in... and after tallying all the votes, the winner... by a two to one margin... is...

( *Drumroll* )

45825243 t78 a

So I've been playing Scribblenauts, one of the most unique experiences on the Nintendo DS. Basically it's a puzzle game where you have the power to conjure things by writing them. The controls and overall gameplay are a bit faulty, but the game has a library of over 60,000 words and has room to allow the player's creative to really shine. Except when they fall back on the same tricks like the Pegasus, or in my case, using large air vents to move everything where I want it to be. For example, I was recently given a mission to reunite the king and queen with their baby.

Attempt 1: My first thought was that storks deliver babies so I created a stork. For the record, this is a game where I regularly summon a reindeer when I need a flying animal so being that abstract isn't completely insane. Unfortunately, the stork appeared to have no interest in said baby. Then I remembered there being this "A Dingo took my baby" thing. And then as I saw it moving towards the baby with the turkey leg symbol over its head informing me that it intended to eat the baby, I remembered that it goes "A Dingo ate my baby". Not giving it a great deal of thought, I summoned a gun and killed the dingo. Finally, I sat there thinking about baby words and came up with manger. The baby went in the manger, and the manger was carried to parents because items you create are much easier to maneuver. Victory!

Attempt 2: Trying to recreate my success from last time, I summoned a crib to contain the baby, but it wasn't holding the baby the same way the manger did. Continuing my theme of baby words, I created some candy in order to lure the baby towards its parents. No dice. Next I made a rattle and waved it in front of the baby, impressed that the game recognized it as an instrument and made the right sound. Once again the baby didn't respond. Instead I decided to lure the parents to the baby so I generate a steak to lure them. However instead of walking up to them, thanks to the game's faulty controls I threw the steak at the queen. This caused the king to get mad and chase after me. I ran in the baby's direction, which technically united the two so... victory!

Attempt 3: Possessing a cynical view of the royalty and having learned to lure them instead, I generated a gold bar and affixed it to a fishing pole. Naturally they gave chase. Victory.

( BYOO BYOO BYOO BYOO BYOO )

This year, some friends want to go to a Halloween festival in Toms River. I thought the House costume was good for last year, but this year I want to do something more because given my age, the fact that it falls on a Saturday, and the [dull] culture of my department at work I don't know how many good Halloweens I have left. Working in a middle school, my mom has the belief that the pinnacle of a good costume is a humanized prop for under $20 whereas my insecure manchild self usually shoots for what I think is cool at the time. With that in mind, let's see some random ideas I had.

( Let's meet the contestants! )


( Ignore this. This is just an address I was given and have no place to save. )300 Perimeter Park Drive
Morrisville, NJ

Last night I watched the VMAs on MTV and had some hilarious repartee with Matt. This is usually how many of our best posts begin [see: Chris and Matt singhandedly save Livejournal, anything having to do with Who Wants to be a Superhero]. However, none of the material was saved, so what I'm trying to say is that you could have seen something cool but it happened offscreen instead and you don't get to know about it. Kind of like watching Heroes.

Tomorrow is the best gaming release day I've had in a long time because Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 and Scribblenauts are both coming out. I've got my preorder at Gamestop so I got my bonus character the Juggernaut. I really wish I had been writing alongside my experiences in Oblivion. I haven't been an outright villain the way I was in Fable II, but my experiences have had a hilariously amoral streak when you compile them. For instance, with the same character I completed the storylines for both the largely pacifistic thieves' guild and the assassins now. I'm working my way through the main story and enjoying the fact that the presentation of the main quest is superior. However, I can't shake the fact that the game wanted me to do the main story first and then explore Tamriel ever since the game and my brain had the following exchange:


Also, I kind of want to go all out for Halloween this year, seeing as it's on a Saturday and with my work culture being kind of boring that way, I don't know how many grand opportunities I have left.

Aaaaaaaaaand I think that's it for now.

Poor Livejournal. Just like I predicted a few months ago, you really aren't getting enough love. It seems that Twitter is where people go now. I really have become a fan of the concept of Trending Topics, but the whole 140 letter thing still feels pretty empty sometimes. Sure, the opening page of Twitter says that's like having ESP, but you're still only hearing the unimportant surface thoughts.

So what have I been up to? Well for one, staying up late and not sleeping enough, which is one of the primary reason I don't have the energy to write longwinded entries. It took me a little while, but I've finally really gotten into Oblivion. It's not quite the masterpiece that Fallout 3 was, but awkward NPC to NPC conversations aside, it's still a fantastic immersive trip. Just like in Morrowind, I'm primarily a sneaky thief/assassin type with a few odd buffs and a weapon of choice to bring the violence, but with the way everything levels (and sometimes overlevels) with you, I never got that feeling of being a physical god that I had in Morrowind. Then again, my sneak skill is over 90 whereas my next three skills are somewhere between 50 and 60, which when combined with my 40% chameleon from magic items has allowed me to do ridiculous things like walk right past someone in low light, stab them in the back, and then stab them in the back again without them figuring out where the hell I am. My personal favorite of these stories involved firing an arrow from the darkness, watching the target run into said darkness to find me only to run past me altogether, and then get merrily stabbing him in the back after I give a look of "Seriously?". It also helps that I have a pair of magic helmets that allow me to switch between blue tinted nightvision or the ability to detect creatures through walls out to 80 feet to really make me feel like the Predator. As if my habits weren't bad enough, I picked up the latest Professor Layton game.

My other weird story of late involved not joining a gym. So my mom entered my name into a sweepstakes at the mall because she said I should meet the girl who was running the contest as she was from our new town and 22. Well, as it turns out I won a free month at the gym should I join for x amount of months. Despite being out of the way from my house and work, I went and actually had a decent time being lead around around by said girl. Unfortunately, they handed me over to a man at the end who had to try the whole persuasion spiel just a little too hard after I kept saying no. My favorite part was trying to convince me that they look for the right kind of person and I had the choice to be that kind of person, and I'm sitting there going "No, I'm pretty sure judging by my motivations I'm about as wrong a person as you're ever going to find."

Also, I think it's almost time to break out the impact font again!

Wow, two weeks without an update. That's kind of sad actually, considering I've been up and doing things for a change. For instance, last week I finally took a day off from work to go see Shrek the Musical. We took the Northeastern corridor from Hamilton to Penn Station which was pretty easy. Before the show we ate at a great place called Tony's DiNapoli where I had the daily special ravioli with ricotta, prosciutto, and spinach. Everything we had there was insanely good, and as much as everything is more expensive in the city, frankly we've paid more for dinner at the local Ruby Tuesday's before so it was great al around.

The show was a lot of fun. I had read a lot of lukewarm reviews so the show had defied my expectations going in. The main three characters Shrek, Fiona, and Donkey were good, and the story plays up their backgrounds in a way the film didn't which makes all of them, particularly Fiona, more sympathetic. However, I have to say that the guy who plays Lord Farquaad kind of steals show. He performs most of the show on his knees with his legs wrapped in black cloth and two puppet legs dangling where his character's legs would be. He generally looks like he's walking when he should be and has a few points in the show where he has fun with the prosthetic legs. For instance, there's a scene where he's "walking on" the shoulders of his dancers which he performs by standing up and moving the puppet legs as he walks "over" kneeling subjects, but the one odd thing about his performance is that he talks more like Dr. Evil than Jon Lithgow. Also they add a subplot about him and his parentage which wasn't in the movie. Pinocchio was played by John Tartaglia, one of the masterminds behind Avenue Q, who also controlled the amazing Dragon puppet.

Being Broadway, Pinocchio and the other fairy tale creatures laid on the gay metaphor a bit thick. At first I thought I was looking at the story too abstractly, as the Let Your Freak Flag Fly song about accepting people for being different could be interpreted other ways. Then Pinocchio ends it with the line "I'm wood. I'm good. Get used to it." so I felt vindicated again. Also, the Youtube video above has Humpty Dumpty, whereas the show I saw had this green person that we couldn't decide if she was Jiminy Cricket or a plant person.

After the show I went and looked at random famous buildings in New York like the Fuse building, the MTV building, Times Square, the Late Show theater, St. Patrick's Cathedral, and 30 Rock where I went in the NBC Experience store and bought some Psych goodies including a sweet pineapple keychain.

I was supposed to go to the beach on Thursday and see Luke but that fell through due to bad weather. Thankfully Matt's been home this week, so I've been going over there a lot and got to see Larissa one day, mini golfed (which went well), and bowled (which did not). Although an old lady tried giving me bowling advice before she said something randomly politically incorrect and I felt kind of uncomfortable.

Sunday was Will's engagement party, and it was perfectly fantastic. I have nothing to write sarcastic comic material about.

...( Are they gone? Good. )

Is it just me or is that "Make a Cartoon You" advertisement suddenly inhabiting every corner of the online universe? I can't get away from it. You know before you even click it that the advertisements have to be deceiving you because it's never the same art style twice: sometime's it's just a Photoshop filter, sometimes it's a caricature, and sometimes it's an altogether different picture that no typical piece of freeware should be able to produce. In case you're wondering I did click on it once, and it's those damn Zwinkys or something. It was a very stock avatar creator that did not resemable anything from the advertisements at all.

Another Friday, another D&D. The Friday night thing has been working out nicely so far. In summary, we didn't have the best night for roleplaying, but we were in a dungeon so we didn't really suffer for it. Frankly, this game can be summed up in one statement; we fought and fought well. Since it wasn't really plot-based, ( I think I'll go straight to... )

So in further news, Cricket told me she had some ground rules for Will's bachelor party, what with only 23 months until the wedding. I thought this was going to a list of things he wasn't allowed to do. Apparently they were more of a "Chris needs to live a little" list. ( Or something... )

---

( Finally, here's my update in Vikings Pirates Ninjas. )

So I told you all about how my Saints Row 2 character is based on Spike. Well, this week I realized that the big bads of the game, the Ultor Corporation, have a logo that looks vaguely like a buzzsaw, not unlike... Circle of the Black Thorn! It all makes sense now, except for the fact that their logos "point" in opposite directions.

Also, despite my ennui with Facebook and its regression into a mediocre Flash arcade, I want to collect one of the uber rare super special awesome item sets in Viking Pirates Ninjas. The list looks overwhelming, so I broke it down for myself. Go me.( I hope you like Harvest Moon because it's farming time! )

The Rutgers semester overlap is over! I'll never have to go to New Brunswick this much in one week again as I'm back to one class two nights a week this month and then one class one night a week during the fall semester. After that I should graduate!

So we're beginning to set up a schedule for the D&D games. We met again this Friday. Zakk's still a Drizz't clone, the other Chris is an Eladrin Wizard who looks for beauty in his art of blowing things up, Jon changed from a Dragonborn to a Goliath Warden, and I'm now a Gnome Bard chock full of leader-y goodness. Sean's supposed to join us as a warlock at some point, and maybe this will be where Andres makes his debut. Also there's probably a special hell for me for saying this, but in this circle having an all-male team works so much better. Also with my aunt more or less a permanent resident of Arizona, I spent the 4th of July at Will's. It was nice and all, but nothing for the books except for the fact that Liz made an absolutely brilliant desert/dessert. Then again though, I've had maybe one really good 4th of July this entire decade.

Zakk and I are developing our usual pattern again where things go well and then he wants to overdo it and I kind of retreat. After a game on Friday and seeing the same circle of people on Saturday he wanted to run a second game on Sunday and I was just like "...Yeah no."

The video game that has been eating up my free time is Saints Row 2 of all things. Matt gave me the idea to try it since I've turned other sandbox games like Fable 2 into exercises in disastrous hilarity. I have to admit that sometimes the whole gang thing is a little too monstrous for me, but it kind of works. Otherwise, you get an allegedly "sympathetic" protagonist complaining about something like how his brother has been killed and he wants revenge while the player is driving on the sidewalk mowing down law abiding citizens by the dozen to the sound of Ride of the Valkyries (true story). Also the voice cast is randomly amazing: Neil Patrick Harris as a DJ-slash-minor villain, Eliza Dushku as one of your three lieutenants, Michael Dorn (aka Worf) as a major villain, Daniel Dae Kim as your "number two", Jay Mohr as who I assume will be the big bad, and voiceover regulars like Yuri Lowenthal and Phil Lamarr. Plus, a little known voice actor named Steve Blum randomly shows up in "gritty" radio ads. Plus there's my character's Cockney accent. ( Gee Wikipedia, who does his voice? )

Random, but the number of people I have to respond to today equals the number of people who should have @#$%ing gotten back to me. Gotta message Dean because it's his birthday and respond to something Rachel wrote on my wall like a week ago. On the other side of the coin, I'm not sure why Erin and that girl Valerie just dropped dead, especially considering how weirdly apologetic Valerie was for not seeing the last message and taking months to respond. Weird.

Random thought of the day: animal totems and people. I have some random thoughts but not enough to generate a post. I would end with one of those "And on the next episode!" notes, but those always turn out to be wrong.

Since I've acquired at least one new reader the since the last time I did this... umm... surprise! I randomly write in too much depth about Dungeons and Dragons. So yeah.

( Haven't done one of these in a while. Don't you feel lucky? )

Don't ask me how they did it, but Rutger's summer semesters overlap. Fortunately my classes are on entirely different days, but it still means that I have four nights of class on top of work for the next two weeks. Sadly,

Using one of my new favorite Livejournaling methods of telling Matt a story and then later transcribing it, I can give my Facebook friends some insight as to why I was so happy to have a bag and a potato. My workplace had a "Brand Fair" which was an hourlong even where guests walk around and observe displays about our company's global locations and products. At each of these demonstrations there was a girl who gave you a sticker, and these stickers all went on a card. When you had all 8 stickers you could spin their wheel and try to win a prize. Despite not initially being invited, I got all eight stickers and ended up hitting the prize spot where I selected a new laptop bag from the table o' prizes. As for the potato, on days when people are inclined not to eat meat, namely Good Friday, we have a "Potato bar" as the lunch special. However, this year we closed early on Good Friday and people complained that they didn't get their potato so now we've had it one Friday a month for the past two months. I had a sweet potato for lunch that day and it was quite good. However, I don't know what goes on sweet potato as opposed to normal potato, which seems more topping friendly.

Also, Matt convinced me to buy some cheap games, including Saints Row 2. Yes, this means I own a GTA clone, but this is the GTA clone that Yahtzee preferred over GTA because of how cartoonish it is. I was originally going to crank the silliness to eleven and be an anorexic old man that looks kind of like Willie Nelson, but then as I continued to peruse the character customization options I realized how easy t would be to build Spike, especially considering that the three default voices are painfully stereotypical British, African-American, and Latino voices so being British was the least guilt inducing option. Right now, my pinnacles of being "gangsta" are sneaking up on people and throwing a bag of garbage at the back of their head and riding a motorcycle into the side of an overpass and subsequently ragdolling a couple hundred feet to my death.

I lent Andres my D&D 4E materials. He used to play and got the itch again after seeing stuff about 4E. After flirting with all the roles and nearly all the classes, I think he's finally decided that he wants to be a Shaman... named Shamandres. If he doesn't change his mind and go Avenger, that is. Also in D&D news, I heard Eberron came out and we have monks now. They're Psionic Strikers. No big surprise I guess. At least now that Psionics are being better merged into the game itself, I'll actually give things like Psions and Kalashtar the time of day.

So our new hobby at work is to find stupid blogs. I thought I should share some of our favorites:

• http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/
• http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/
• http://www.unnecessaryquotes.com/

Anybody know some other good ones? I know the Fail Blog and Texts from Last Night, but they weren't as big of hits.

Meanwhile in Punch-Out!!, I've been stuck on the Title Defense version of Soda Popinski for nearly a week now. I have the patterns down, but he's so fast that taking advantage of them is difficult. Then again most of my online boxing has been done in Golds' Gym Cardio Challenge rather than Punch-Out!!.

On the next episode: one of those running gags using Impact font!

My Wii has turned into a mini gym. I've had Wii Fit for a few months now, but my mom was really interested in that EA Sports Active so I picked it up for us to try. However, she's expecting it as an end-of-the-school-year present, so it hasn't been opened yet. However, while I was there I saw Golds Gym Cardio Workout and remembered that Matt said that he read that it gives you arguably the most intense workout of all these. Plus, it was only $30.

I started poking around a dating site again for shiggles. Unfortunately, the highlight of this experience was giggling at an entry that said, "I am a tall girl I am 6"." All the other lawn gnomes must be jealous.

Finally, I got an invite to a coworker's birthday party. Unfortunately, it falls at a really bad time, but I was highly amused by her boyfriend's name... ( This one's for you, Matt )

Despite never being anything in a wedding more significant than "guy who ate all the mini hotdogs", I'm moving all the way up to best man, nature's lancer. My reaction to this is positive, but I haven't been very good at presenting this to people. I mean, it took me at least 24 hours to share it with some people and about 48 hours for you Internetland which caused my mom to initially misread it as me considering it a bad thing at first. Of course this new role lead to me researching what exactly a best man actually does, but I have at least a year before anything happens.

So apparently they had a Who Wants to be a Superhero? in the UK. However, in England the contestants were children aged 9-13 as opposed to adults in the United States. More importantly though, our favorite faaaaaaaaabulous supervillain was a regular! Unfortunately, I can't find a good picture of Dr. Dark. Can he have a spinoff yet?

I think I like one of the summer interns at work. Then again, it might just be loneliness and that at this rate I could like anything. Well, maybe not dudes even if Neil Patrick Harris gave me a huge laugh with his closing number at the Tonys including this gem:

"This show could not be gayer, if Liza was named mayor and Elton John took flight!"

And seriously why the hell is my aunt trying to add me on Facebook?