Temperamental

It's been almost a year since my last published post. That's terrible. But I've also been in full time employment for almost a year, which cuts down on my free time, and writing a blog that no one reads isn't exactly a high priority in comparison to dealing with my backlog of games and shows.

But there's nothing that's really grabbing my attention right now, so I guess it's blogging time.

Anyway yesterday at work I was looking up the four temperaments in TV Tropes to help myself create better characters (after the the plot central 2 or 3 the rest tend to be either devices or just flat characters filling roles). I followed a link promising more detail and bloody hell did it deliver.

You see I had been just thinking of the temperaments as an outdated pseudo-psychology and a means of writing inspiration, but I kept encountering phrases that so eloquently described how I think and feel. Whether or not everyone falls into one of these classifications I don't know, but I'm fairly sure I do.

I am melancholic/phlegmatic, or possibly phlegmatic/melancholic. I think the former is more likely, but that just be because I want it to be so.

...hmmm there's really not much else I can say about this. Personal insights/discoveries really aren't that interesting to anyone not involved. So I guess that's it. Perhaps in the near future I'll write something worth reading and promoting.

Odd Picture Choice

Foreshadowing!

I had this idea to help myself update regularly by doing a weekly post that just talked about the various media I had consumed recently. This was a week or two ago. As you might guess, I've already let the schedule slip before it even really began. But Apple just crashed TF2 and I'm too bitter to play anything now.

The first order of business is Minecraft. After hearing good things about this game from multiple sources I gave it a go. And for a couple days I thought it was freaking brilliant.

You are placed in a world made up of cubes of various materials that can be harvested and turned into various items. Also at night monsters spawn and murder you rather effectively if you haven't built some shelter. Beyond that you are left to make your own fun (like Garry's Mod) in a world where basically everything wants to kill you (like Dwarf Fortress). Unlike these two games however, Minecraft is a lot more accessible (once you've browsed the wiki).

Here's some of the shenanigans I got up to while I played.
Since monsters spawn in darkness I decided to convert my house to glass in my spare time when I wasn't doing things such as...
...building a tower to the top of the sky. Unfortunately you cannot walk on the clouds. Naturally the next step was to dig to the bottom of the world which was considerably more difficult. At the bottom there's several nearly complete layers of unbreakable stone. If enough gaps line up the can reach the void beneath the world. So naturally I decided to link the tunnel containing the infinite abyss to the ocean of infinite and see if I broke the game:
Nope, but apparently stairs break the water physics.

I found a strange level of enjoyment linking the ocean to the tunnel. The inability to tell where you are in relation to everything lead to me making a series of tunnels coiling all around the place, and there was a sense of suspense because I never knew when I would strike a another tunnel, which may have been full of water.

Ultimately what turned me off the game was the lack of goals as I'm not obsessive enough to be one of those people that make huge scale structures and models. Once the multiplayer gets stabilised (the game is still in alpha) I will give it another look.

Since I'm running longer than intended I'll finish up with Highschool of the Dead. When visiting the Madman site for an unrelated reason I came across this show andwas intrigued by the idea of the Japanese take on the the standard zombie apocalypse scenario. Turns out it is the same as the western one except with lots more fanservice.

No seriously, lots of fanservice.

After getting over my initial disappointment that this wasn't a dark and slightly serious work that the first episode made me believe, I came to except the show for what it is: an entertaining romp full of bloody and breasts. It's not a work of genius but it still rates higher to me than most zombie fiction.

Oh right, I haven't actually really said anything about the show itself: great animation, adequate attempt at plot, one brilliant musical homage, serviceable action, mostly fast paced, no gore despite excessive violence and blood, fanservice (cannot stress that enough), possible second season.

The Silver Age Begins...

Now that I've got a scanner I can subject you all to the various pictures that I can't reproduce in MS Paint. Here's a brief comic showing my standard reaction to the presence of a cat:

My Day at Supanova

Having just got back from Supanova, I decided it was a blog-worthy experience. Since I don't have a particularly good camera on my phone, I'll be providing MS Paint pictures to compliment the text. Enjoy.

The morning started low key, as there's only so much excitement a person can have when they have no real expectations except that a lot of money will be spent. My only concern was who was coming with me and how we would get there.

Several weeks earlier I had mentioned Supanova to my group of friends, and there had been plenty of agreement, even from people I know would not enjoy going. As the days past I would occasionally bring up the approaching event in conversation when relevant but never managed to get a definite answer of who was going.

Finally I posted on Facebook in a last attempt to get clear responses. All I really got was advice that it would be better to go on Sunday than Saturday. Fine fine I though, this group doesn't do organisation well. Or at all. Everything will be done on the fly then.

So Sunday. I kill several hours waiting for some sort of communication from someone. Nothing, no phone call, no email, no Facebook message. Eventually I spy Keiran online only to discover that he had no money and thus was not going. Given that he was one of the people I moved the date from Saturday (which was better for me) to Sunday, at that point I lost it a little.

Just a little.

At this point I resolved to go alone, and hope everyone else has an unpleasant bowel movement.

The next part was surprisingly simple. Getting there was quick, parking was effortless (although expensive), and the line moved deceptively fast. And inside lay Supanova, my first convention.

The first thing that struck me was how comparatively normal I was. If there was a normalcy scale from 1 to 10, even with my attire (all black with an Ergo Proxy shirt and my Trilby hat) I would score an 8, beaten only by people wearing completely normal clothes (9) and people dragged there by their significant others (10).

This was my first experience with cosplayers. As a closeted one myself, I could not decide whether these people are brave (for having the guts to make a spectacle of themselves) or just sad (for not understanding that just because you want to do something, doesn't mean that it is a good idea). I found I have a similar response to cosplayers as I did to prostitutes: I'm not comfortable starring directly at them even though I'm allowed to, and I have a strong urge to ask them where they went wrong in their lives.

I can't bash the cosplayers completely. While most of them were generic mainstream characters (I'm not sure whether I saw more Naruto or Bleach characters) and girls in outfits that they could not pull off, them were some good/interesting ones. Two that come to mind are the fairly awesome xenomorph outfit, and a girl that I think was dressed up like some sort of representation of GLaDOS.

I wish I had asked her...

The sheer amount of people proved to be rather daunting so I sought out higher ground to get a good view of the entire convention. At this point I spied the guest autograph signing area and more importantly, Summer Glau. Not content to wait in the massive line, I nonchalantly edged towards the table. At about four metres I burst into a sprint, leapt the table, scooped up the rather startled actress and flew off into the sky. At about this point the fantasy ended and I went to look at more shops.

Not pictured: actual events.

Whilst wondering aimlessly I encountered some sort of Nintendo booth, complete with No More Heroes 2. After playing a Ranked battle and impressing at least one 12 year old, the nice lady at the counter informed me that I could buy the game for $25. given that I had bought the game several weeks earlier for around $80, I died a little inside.

After the monetary loss by technicality, to check out the Madman booth again for potential bargains. Naturally there was none as the only things that are ever cheap in life are things I already own. Since my quest for cheaper DVD's had been a complete failure, I bought Darker than Black and Rebuild of Evangelion 1.11 (at a slight discount when I mentioned that I already had bought the earlier edition). Why? Because like France I'm always ready to concede. Yeah that's right, I went there.

Aware that there was probably other stuff I'd like to see/buy, I decided to leave. With no one to make witty observations to, I didn't have enough interest to plunge into the crowds. But I left with a resolution, that I would return in several years time, only this time I'd have more money and a better group of friends. And it would be awesome.

To be continued...

Total spending:
$25 entry
$12 parking
$75 Darker than Black
$20 Rebuild of Eva 1.11

Wherein I talk about trivial matters

When I signed up to Twitter I had the idea of doing mini-posts, only to discover the whole 140 character limit. I was hesitant to do it here cause it seems like a kind of tease, similar to how you are playing a game only for the the end boss and credits to jump out at like the two hour mark or something.
I'm going to do it anyway though, cause I've got vague thoughts and no one to humour me in real time.

Idle thought number one

Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0 was finally released on DVD in Japan, so I'm downloading what I hope is a subbed rip. What I can't grasp is how Gainax seems to hate money and success.

1.0 was released in Japan in 2007 (screenings) and 2008 (DVD). It wasn't until 2009 that Australia got it on DVD. Now I could except this for an unknown movie or even one of middle-level popularity, but this is the anime equivalent of Watchmen; they should be getting this out as fast as possible.

Gainax, like a lot of Japanese companies, do favour the whole updated release thing which is suppose does milk money out of obsessive fans and collectors....like me.

The other cause for my bafflement at Gainax is the absence of inducing nostalgia. Other franchises have got nostalgia generation down to an art.
Recent Legend of Zelda games have made a habit of squeezing in music from previous games, Motoko Kusanagi can't go a movie/season without jumping off a tall building and cloaking midfall, and most of the Metal Gear series seems to be call backs to earlier instalments.

But despite remaking the original series in glorious high budget detail, no one has truly tried to deliberately get the fanbase screaming. Where are the homages and shout outs to iconic elements (actual plots and characters in the remake don't count).

Really the point of the last two paragraphs has been these two questions; where is a new version of Cruel Angel Thesis? and where is a new version of Fly Me to the Moon? They should be big and dramatic and orchestral. Look at what FF7's One Winged Angel has done to a generation. Evangelion could do that too. Twice!

Idle thought number two

Can't remember anymore.

PSP Shenanigans: A True Story

I don't want to do my TAFE work so let's hear about a frustrating chapter of my recent life.

Ever since I'd sold my Gameboy Colour several years ago, I had not had any real desire to get any kind of portable console. My Ipod was enough in most circumstances and there were rarely games that caught my eye anyway.

Last year though I became aware of Dissidia: Final Fantasy, a fighting game which pitted the mian hero and villain of the first 10 games in the series against one another. It had the two thing I like in my fighting games: recognisable characters and unconventional gameplay.

But alas Dissida was PSP only and there was no real chance of it being ported (games only get ported from consoles I own, not to). As any person with basic comprehension will have figured out, I bought a PSP.

Realising I just spent several hundred dollars for a single game, I looked for others in an attmept to justify my purchase (although Dissidia did get me through Brisbane with my family so it has been fairly worthwhile).

On the suggestion of internet personalities I like, I bought Castlevania: Dracula X Chronicles. The downside with this is that it is a remake of game from era when games were still at ridiculous arcade difficultly, and so I'll probably never finish this. It did come with Symphony of the Night which was decent.

So it was around this point I decided I should actually do some research on the console I bought several months earlier cause I'm all about careful planning. Turns out that the PSP is the loser by far in comparison to the DS. It has a weaker battery life and game library. Just like with the N64 I made my choice and it was the wrong one.

Only recently a lot of my friends have been getting into mod chips for their DS's. Why don't I do the same I thought. Well I can't because my PSP is a 3000 with version 5.5 on it, and no one can hack that. Oh boy, things just keep going my way (irony).

And that's basically where I am now. Really the only good thing about the PSP is that it is region free so I can get games from the US and Japan. If only there was something particularly worth while.

PS I apoligise for all the dryness between the few interesting parts.

MYOB

I don't wanna study,
So I'm doing a blog,
This is almost a poem,
Almost.

~~~

If there's one thing I'm good at it's procrastination, which is why I'm here and not studying for tomorrow's test. I was going to do an actual half decent post on either another Steam game or maybe get around to doing another GitS draft but common sense pointed out that would be unwise.
After all, I want to put off the work for some time, not outright skip it, because when I start a post there goes the night.
You see, I can get rather anal about sentence structure and word usage, and will whittle away hours of my life agonising over trivial choices. Eventually I'm left with some decent but unconnected paragraphs and no more interest in my topic. At this point I say fuck it and force the post together like a guy gluing odd lego blocks to each other. This is one of the reasons my conclusions suck so hard, if they are even there.

~~~

In completely unrelated news I want this game. Now.

Bandwagon

As you probably have noticed, I've got a Twitter account now. I signed up so I can keep in touch with all my vocal readers who have stuck with me for so long. I did this because as an earlier post hinted, there are times when there is something I want to say but it is not worth writing an entire post about it (not that it always stops me).

While writing the Indigo Prophecy 'review' I realise most of my thoughts would have been better suited to brief, as-they-happened messages rather than trying to stuff them into an overview at the end.

So now there's Twitter for all the minor things that I want to voice regardless of whose listening.

Diversion

Steam has been throwing one hell of a Christmas sale, with some games up to 80% off. This has given me the chance to play some games that I wouldn't have bought and others I wouldn't even pirate (if I did pirate games, which I don't).

I avoided console ports and games that were not a negligible money and after browsing the deals for some time I ended up with:
-Braid
-World of Goo
-Indigo Prophecy
-Mirror's Edge
-Painkiller
-Eufloria
-Beyond Good and Evil
-Torchlight

In normal circumstances none of these games would have been worth my money but the considerable discounts and my pay arriving hours earlier together overwhelmed my stinginess.

Let's take a look at these choices:

Braid was an immensely popular game with clever puzzles and a surreal atmosphere. To my ears that means over-hyped and pretentious. The gameplay consists of puzzle platforming with time manipulation, with goes from ingeniously challenging to fiendishly frustrating.

World of Goo is an indie puzzle game that I've actually finished before, when a friend bought it. My logic for buying was that if I was going to support things like Braid and Mirror's Edge which I paid for because it was there, then I had to support something that deserved it.

Indigo Prophecy can be fairly accurately described as an interactive movie, as the gameplay mostly consists of simple actions to get you to the next cutscene. There are also intensive button mashing sequences whenever the makers wanted the player to feel the same level of stress as the character.

Mirror's Edge is some bastard hybrid between a platformer and a FPS. The gameplay consists of first person free running in first person. Yes I know I repeated myself but that was to emphasis the bizarreness of the design.

Painkiller is an oldschool FPS in that you shoot demons.....and that's about it. No hiding in cover, no gimmicky mechanics, just pointing weapons at targets and watching them die.

Eufloria is another little indie game (strangely it was also one of the most expensive) that plays similar to a free game on Kongregate. You control little seedlings as you head out and colonise meteors, so if you hadn't guessed this is not a game steeped in realism or logic.

I remember Zero Punctuation mentioning that Beyond Good and Evil is a game people should play, so why the hell not. I know even less about this one than I do about the others, to the point where I'm not sure what genre it is.

Finally there is Torchlight, a game that would be a clear Diablo ripoff if it hadn't been made by some of the people who worked on Diablo. It's so similar I'm actually curious to see what if anything is different.

That's just a very brief summary of these game. Some have finished downloading and I've played them to some extent while others remain unknown. After some more time I'll do a recap on each game.

But since I'll be going to Brisbane tomorrow, don't expect this anytime soon.

That also applies to the Silent Hill 3 conclusion or a GitS post.

Subversive Playing

Since I last posted I've gone through several more failed GitS drafts and I've come to the realisation that while I have plenty of opinions, I don't seem to have adequate way of stringing them together in a coherent shape.
I find myself able to word my views better when it's in a conversation with another person, where the other person can pick up the social slack when I falter. So when I'm faced with a blank white screen, hungry for text and order, my opinions seem to wither into vague musings and my inner critic looks down at what I type.
In conclusion, no GitS actual yet.

And now for tonight's entertainment.

As you may or may not know, the FPS Team Fortress 2 is a class based game. Periodically the developers, Valve, release an update for one of the nine classes, offering 3 new alternative weapons/items. This time Valve are updating both the Soldier and the Demoman at once, and naturally there's a twist.

Valve has just announced that either Soldier or Demoman (but not both) will get a 4th unlock. And how is it decided who gets this rare privilege? By pitting the two classes against one another. Until the end of week (I think) every time a Demoman kills a Soldier or a Soldier kills a Demoman it is recorded and which class has the most kills, wins.

Now this makes this pretty interesting. As well as giving people a new goal to work towards it also shakes up the maps themselves as players adapt their strategies to the new class ratios. I found myself being lured back into the game having been bored with it for several months.

In theory this event should lead to plenty of Soldiers on the attack, and plenty of Demomen on the defence. In theory.

Because everyone who has a preferred class wants it to win, people are having to come up with some fairly meta strategies. One has to decide when it is worth risking your class to take down the other because the last thing you want to do is feed the opposing class kills.

I found myself foregoing playing as a Soldier because of the sheer number of enemy Demomen. Instead I was playing as another Demoman, who just didn't kill any Soldiers, as I found it was more productive to the Soldier's cause to not play the class.

And any sort of situation that generates this sort of out-of-the-box thinking is alright by me.

Bump

Yesterday I decided that I should do a Ghost in the Shell week, with a post each night discussing a feature of the franchise as a whole. Since there wasn't a finished post from Sunday, one can conclude that this idea did not prove successful. Worse still, I started on the one topic that I thought I could talk about at length only to find that I said all that needed to be said with one paragraph.

Go team.

So GitS Week will never be. I will however endeavour to do a post or two summarising the major concepts I wished to praise and/or condemn. If I'm feeling adventurous I may even try to make it entertaining AND insightful, something I constantly struggle with.

Choice

My mother and I were looking over our Foxtel plan to see if there were any packages we could cut. It is a dilemma we have faced before. The few channels we watch are scattered over the various deals Telstra offers so we end up paying for several dozen channels we don't want.

Confused by some of the more esoteric titles for the packages I sought out the official website to see what they contained, only to find that all the deals had changed recently. Perhaps the new arrangement would prove beneficial and result in more bang for our buck?

Short answer: NO!

Long answer: The new packages manage to be even worse than the previous ones. After some brief number crunching I worked out that to keep all of our current channels would cost even more. Thankfully our plan will remain on the old deal as long as we don't modify it at all.

What I can't figure out is why we the consumer have to bugger around with these packages to begin with. Wouldn't a system were people just individually bought the channels they want be better for everyone? The viewers would get want they want and I'm sure that Telstra could come up with a pricing system where they don't lose money (hell they'd probably be able to squeeze more cash out of people than they already do).

Further more this system would clearly show which channels are the popular ones which I'm sure would be desirably news for those in charge of advertising.

Though I shouldn't be surprised by this current situation. I've always believed that the basis of all business is the rule that you should make it as easy as possible for consumers to give you money, and time and time again I've seen companies ignore this. The really infuriating thing is that somehow they are frequently successful.

Satire. Subtly not included.

Clip Show

Several months ago I finally got around to turning clips from my various DVD's into GIF's. It had been an intention of mine for quite some time.

Like usual the simple idea turned out to be a complex endeavour that consumed far too many hours. In the end I worked out a 4 program system to do it......and I also filled my computer with viruses. One stolen account and reformat later I decided to put off GIF making.

But Present Me scoffs at the silly precautions of Past Me and decided to try again (no malware detected yet which could just mean it's well hidden). And so now I've encountered another problem; a problem I have met before with Garry's Mod. I don't want to do anything I can do, and what I want to do I can't.

Theoretically I can make videos, GIFs or just take screenshots, and from these I could make all sorts of potentially funny videos and so forth. The internet is practically founded on humorous stuff made with copyrighted material (that and porn).

But in actuality making something halfway decent is a lot of hard work for very little reward. Look at this blog, the amount of time I invest in this is way more than the amount of enjoyment people (assuming this is read) get out of it (assuming they enjoy it).

So basically, I've once again risked my computer for the ability to do things I don't need to do.

P.S. Here are some awesome screenshots from FLCL:

Don't mind me, I'm just chilling out.

Even in context this shot is both brilliant and wrong.

Sanity? Who needs that when you have got a shotgun-guitar.

Fractured

As you may be aware, Australia has some pretty intense censorship laws in comparison to other western countries (does Germany count as western?). When they are not outright banning media they are gutting it of its content, and in their spare time they are building a giant internet filter.

Left 4 Dead 2 Refusal of Classification

Though I'm rather ambivalent about the game, I am all for it getting into the country unchanged but apparently hacking the limbs off the zombies is too graphic. Outright banning probably won't occur as Valve will nerf the violence instead. So L4D2 could end up like No More Heroes, mechanically fine but visually butchered.
Last year Fallout 3 was also refused classification. What's strange about this is that the refusal was due to drug use, and not violence. Violence such as the slow motion kills you get from using VATS (ie all the time).

Mandatory Australian Firewall

I have difficulty trying to express my contempt for this idea without resorting to unimaginative responses like 'Luddite thinking' or 'where are we, China?'. On the most basic level the proposed firewall slows down all of Australia's internet.
What I find more troublesome is the vagueness of what will be banned and what won't. Content that is outright illegal (child porn, snuff films etc) is obviously out but things that are either immoral or offensive may be in danger. This worries me because not only do I enjoy some things that are technically immoral/offensive but I also don't like the government having a say in what's right and wrong (barring actual laws of course).
On a slightly more absurd note, I find it interesting that they'll be blocking child porn because I was under the impression that they used those sites to track down paedophiles. It would be funny (in the blackest sense) if paedophilia in Australia rose due because authorities couldn't track any down, and also because without the internet they had to make their own entertainment.

Even though I'm being hypothetical I may have crossed a line there.

Alternative Democracy

Half-heartedly researching this post made me wonder who the hell I should have voted for last election. My biggest complaint with democracy is that voters don't have nearly as much choice as they are made out to have. All you can do is vote for a party and hope they go through their promises. Given that people with actual knowledge and experience in politics have failed to come up with a good solutions to democracy's shortcomings I don't claim to have the answers; however I would like it if there was some way to make an 'antivote'. While I find it hard to find a party I agree with, I find it easy to think of one I want to keep out of power.

Obsolete

I was wasting time on TV Tropes when I happened to find out that Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation fame also does articles in addition to his weekly video so he can elaborate on things he had to leave out.

Awesome.

Until I realise that Extra Punctuation covers the same topics as my blog (minus the anime) except that he does it more entertainingly, with more skill and focus, and has an actual audience.

So it's one more name to the list of websites that do what I do but better.

Back from Purgatory

It's been a while since I last posted; complete loss of password security tends to interfere with schedules.

What I had been planning to do just after the last post was an apology. Self-deprecating humour aside the previous post was a new low. It wasn't entertaining, informing or insightful.

While I could laugh it off and say that the lack of focus, structure and quality are part of this blog's style, similar to how the font, size and layout varies from post to post (long story). I could say that, but that would be like Uwe Boll saying he's a good director whose signature style is 'making crap movies'.

Part of the basis of this blog was to experiment with styles till I found a good one and maybe even developed some sort of fan base (I don't aim or dream particularly high). However I took the easy way out with basically textual diarrhea; I sprayed unpleasant paragraphs of unfinished thought out onto the internet.
Also I hope I just killed someone's appetite.

Since I know myself rather well I'm not going to bother promising to produce better quality posts because I almost stick with any vows I make. I will however try to produce better quality.

In conclusion, here's a picture with no relevance to anything:

!!!

As hypothetical readers of mine might remember I spent far too much time talking about an idea for a special infected. It was a female zombie with pigtails whose primary attack was a spitting move.
And then just now I found this on the Left 4 Dead wiki.

This right here is one of the main reasons were I decided to start inflicting my opinions onto the internet.

Many times in the past I've had a great idea that then turns out to be not as original as I thought.
Now often sometimes it turns out that I had unconsciously stolen this idea, generally by seeing the movie/game/whatever as a children and then forgetting it, except for a particular idea which I then assume I came up with on my own.
Further more, in most other occasions the idea has just been such a simple and universal one that anyone, and in practice, everyone will reach it.
However, just like the guy that has to loudly predict plot twists in fiction, I feel the urge to inform people of my concepts/ideas. Regardless of how childish and petty it is, I enjoy being able to say 'I thought of this first/too'.

Totally Epic

It has occurred to me that I've been neglecting the main purpose of blogs, nay the internet. The world wide web exists for people to tell others about the inane details of their daily lives and I haven't been doing my part. After all, if we don't do this, who will? Foreigners, homosexuals and communists that's who.

I'm a fairly lazy person. I tend to procrastinate as much as possible, but sometimes I just can't be bothered to do even that. So just earlier I decided to have that shave I had been needing for the last fortnight. Trivial enough yet? Well I can do worse better.
Despite being a simple procedure the act of shaving varies in the details from person to person. For me the mundane routine goes:

1) Apply shaving cream. It doesn't seem to do anything but I'm not going to argue with every other male of the modern world.
2) Find the comfortable angle to shave with, then reverse it because biology hates you and this is more effective.
3) Avoid slashing throat. Getting those last few hairs is not worth the potential embarrassment/death.
4) Give up on the last lingering hairs. They win this round.
5) Realise how much time has been wasted on this endeavour, cue existential crisis.

And now you know how I shave. But for those of you who want more than just a recount of basic life exercise, here's a low fantasy style story* inspired by the act of shaving:

Grim Dark and the Tsinogatna

Gripping his well-notched sword tightly Grim brought it down past his opponent's guard and carved deeply into his torso. Blood spurted from the gaping wound as the Tsinogatna savage collasped into a heap.

Glancing around Grim noticed that he had now been completely surrounded. It had been only a matter of time but he had hoped to make more progress before it had happened. Only a scant five Tsinogatna lay dead at his feet.

"Fight me like warriors you bastards," Grim exhorted, assuming a defensive stance.
The Tsinogatna were a hostile people. From their mountain refuges they would raid nearby, more peaceful villages and towns. None could predict when and where they'd strike so the only way to deal with the Tsinogatna was to take the fight to them.

After some less than effective attempts from local militias Grim Dark had been approached. Even in this backwater country the pilgrim's exploits were known.

Two of the vicious Tsinogatna began to approach the lone fighter, their weapons rusted and wicked, their eyes dark and violent. Spinning around suddenly Grim slashed the third savage who had been approaching from behind. They'd need more than that to down the legendary mercenary.

Undeterred the remaining two attacked at once. Grim dexterously rolled to the left and struck one of them in the his unprotected side, Grim's sword cracking ribs and piercing organs.
The last attacker leapt at Grim, snarling and bringing his axe down. The sword met the axe and the weapons locked. Grunting Grim forced the clashed weapons aside with one hand and punched the Tsinogatna in the face with his other. Nose and jaw broken the savage was hopeless against Grim's finishing blow.

One on one the Tsinogatna stood no chance against the pilgrim as Grim was by far physically superior to them. His chiselled muscles were covered in a network of scars, each one a hard won fight and life experience. While muscular, Grim was not bulky, but rather lean, like a lone wolf. And like a lone wolf he was ruthless and determined.

Before he had even managed to pull his sword from his latest corpse another five Tsinogatna from the surrounding dozens surged forward. Quickly looting the his last opponent's weapon, Grim stood defiantly sword and axe in hand.

"Your Gods have forsaken you," he laughed.

Grim danced the dance of death. Tsinogatna fell before him but more filled their place. Whatever they gave he gave back better and soon there was nothing but blood and silence. A few Tsinogatna had fled but most were dead. You could never get all of them, all you could do was lessen their numbers.

On top of a pile of his slain enemies, cut and bruised, Grim stood grinning. On this day he was the victor but there would always be more fights for that was the way of the drifter.

*Assume any and all cliches and bad writing are a deliberate parody.

Freaking Laws #1

Welcome to the first Freaking Laws. Although I don't currently have any plans for any more, there's a good chance in the future something will screw me over and make me want to do another one (also hopefully I can come up with a catchier name, preferably one that makes a cool acronym).
Before I get to my vaguely formed idea, here's some background. Whenever I want to find a new anime series or two, I follow a little procedure:

-Visit TV Tropes
-Look at Noteworthy Anime
-Pick interesting sounding names
-Read brief summaries
-Judge!
-Find torrents
-Download
-???
-PROFIT!

Unfortunately there sometimes is either a lack of torrents or a lack of people actually using the torrents. While this sometimes is caused by age or obscurity, more frequently this problem is caused by...LICENSING!

You see non-commenting readers, when an American company buys a license to an anime series/movie they can (legally) tell everyone sharing fan subs to GTFO. All the little fansites naturally do so, leaving only the faceless torrent archive sites to lift the burden (brave faceless souls). So if the fan sub is complete and there's enough demand for it, the torrent will survive despite illegality.

Tonight I proceeded to have none of that luck and found that the show I was after was currently impossible for me to obtain (within reason). Lame.

Then, a glimmer of hope, faintly shining in that way that only hope and dim lighting does. I noticed that the company that bought the license were streaming the series. Adequate.

This was not to be however, as the earlier paragraphs have hinted (wait, have I done this joke before?). Because I was not located in America I was not allowed to watch the stream because it wasn't licensed to Australia. I'll just let that sink in.
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Due to licensing I can't download the show because it's licensed to America, but I can't watch it either because it isn't licensed to Australia. So basically American laws directly effect the English-speaking part of the internet. Freaking laws.

A Valid Argument for the Death Penalty

In general I'm a fairly cynical person who expects the worst from things I don't trust and slightly less (more?) than worst from things I do trust. When I'm in a good mood my outlook on the rest of the world slowly rises so when things have been going well (no stubbed toes, headaches, DVDs failing to work for no good reason etc).
If life continues to be less than awful for long enough I switch from being a pessimist to an optimist, and I then set out to inadvertently kick myself in the nuts. In this heightened state of trust and good feelings I have a tendency to go and do things that I ordinarily wouldn't consider even if money was involved (unless it was a lot).

Tonight's misguided idea: putting videos onto my iPod.

Which meant using iTunes.

The Scourge of God.

Katsuhiro Otomo had just used iTunes when he wrote Akira [citation needed]

When dealing with music I can just turn to faithful Winamp but unfortunately I can't seem to make videos transfer right through a combination of not trying hard enough and not understanding what a lot of Winamp does. So I have to use iTunes. Now the last time I tried to transfer videos I managed to succeed only to realise I also managed to erase all 350+ of my songs. Damn.
This time round I was ready for it. Experienced and cautious I looked carefully at what I was pressing and when I was completely certain that I would only sync my videos I went and deleted all my songs instead. Damn.

Another defeat at the hands of iTunes has made me realise that Apple are clearly run by sadistic mindreaders who are probably also Nazi's or werewolves. After all why else would people make a program that doesn't have individual syncing for separate functions (or better yet, a freaking add button) unless they wanted to make me (and presumably others) suffer through a self-inflicted hell.

Possibly works at Apple