Which seemed pretty odd, considering that I'm wearing my biggest size ever. But maybe it was fat vs muscle (lost muscle, gained fat = gained size but lost weight).
So I stepped on the scale again.
And gained back 10 of those 20 lbs
And stepped on the scale again
And gained back the other 10 of 20 lbs
And stepped on the scale again
And it stayed where it was.
Dammnnnit.
I was just looking up lapband info cause I have a theory that most of the gastric bypass stuff works, largely, not by causing satisfaction but by causing negative effects from eating too much. Primarily nausea, heartburn, and vomiting. Those aren't intake deterrents to me. In fact, most of the time they're triggers to each starchy foods to calm down my stomach.
Truly, truly, truly, the only time I've EVER experienced satisfaction with food was when I was on Fen/Phen. Not the speed part (I didn't take that one), just the pondamin (fenfluramine). Within a day or 2 of starting those pills, I had a totally different relationship with food. I suddenly understood how "normal" people look at food. I could eat a bite, be content, and then stop. It was a revelation!!
Whatever that chemical was, I have NONE of it in me naturally. I know it's totally dangerous and causes heart valve problems but, no joke, if I could find it I'd still take it. I mean, heart risk vs obesity risk vs risk from gastric surgeries? All comes out pretty even to me.
Not that this has anything to do with anything, it was just on my mind. As I sit here with heartburn. Contemplating my morbid obesity and bad knees and what the hell I'm gonna do with myself in 2010.
Finished Wishin' and Hopin' by Wally Lamb.
This is set in 1964, from October up through what is quite possibly the best (read: outrageously funny) school Christmas pageant ever.
Felix Funicello (Annette's distant cousin) is in fifth grade and is trying to deal with scary nun teachers (he's in a Catholic school), two older sisters and the odds that the new girl in school is a Communist spy (she's from Russia).
There are no words for how fantastic this book is. It's very funny and sweet (in a weird way) and all around wonderful.
And how can you not love a book that has this for its first two sentences: "The year I was a fifth-grade student at St. Aloysius Gonzaga Parochial School, our teacher, Sister Dymphna, had a nervous breakdown in front of our class. To this day, I can hear Sister's screams and see her flailing attempts to shoo away the circling Prince of Darkness."
(The rest of the book is awesome, too.)
In the 80's the PC was known for many computer games. It excelled in bringing cutting edge Role Playing Games such as the Ultima Series. It was also the home for Adventure games. Anyone who wanted to get in some time on Sierra, or Lucas Arts adventuring titles generally headed toward a DOS based PC. But one area of gaming that was utterly barren on the IBM PC compatibles until the late 80's, and early 90's were platformers.
Now I say IBM PC compatibles because back then there were a lot of various computer platforms.
IBM didn't make a closed platform at the time. Where Apple even to this day requires Apple Software (Unless you want to pay even more on top of what you paid for your Mac to install Windows), IBM did not.
Rather than work like a console system (Which is what other computer makers like Commodore, Atari, Coleco, Texas Instruments, and so on did.) where you had to buy software for that specific model machine, IBM instead created hardware, then licensed out the technology to third parties. Because of this many other manufacturers could build a machine pretty much however they wanted, buy DOS (And later Windows) licenses to go with them, and sell the final product. This of course continues to this day.
What does all of this have to do with today's subject?
Well opposite the home computer market existed the console market. Nintendo had pretty much resurrected the industry after it's success with the Nintendo Entertainment System, and it's library featured (Among other genres) dozens upon dozens of platformers. Obviously the most popular of which was Super Mario Bros.
But there were other examples. Other consoles, and even home computer formats would see their own platformers, or ports of popular platformers. But the IBM PC compatibles didn't see many of these.
Nintendo even had some games that successfully bridged platforming with adventuring, and even role playing. Zelda is one of those, but one of the others is the quintessential Metroid series.
Anyway after finding today's topic at a pre Christmas run to Play N' Trade, I did a little online research, and it was originally done by a small studio for the platformer starved IBM PC.
Well, at some point Color Dreams, producer of several unlicensed games for the NES (who later became Wisdom Tree, and made unlicensed games for the NES with religious themes)
picked up the rights to port this game as well.
Folks, this is Captain Comic
Here we have it with a face label on black plastic. One thing that was odd about this particular one is how tight a fit this cartridge is. Seriously. It barely makes it in, and out of my Nintendo without getting stuck.
Anyway here's what we see upon boot:
Anyway here's what you will see upon pressing Start
But it isn't. Suffer with it long enough, and you will see that somehow they tried to do some cross pollination of their own.
They don't have a pattern. They don't disappear after being vanquished. They respawn on a constant basis.
And they attack with the fury of a Bullet Hell game. The difference being there is a life bar. But honestly it depletes so quickly from the birds pecking you, it might as well be a one hit, and you're dead affair.
So we've seen it's emulated Mario. But now it's emulating Contra. Contra. CONTRA.
That my friends, is not a mix you make. One could argue that Contra has some platforming elements, as you do jump on ledges, and such. But that is a much different game than Super Mario Bros, or even Mega Man for that matter.
Oh, and did I mention you can't shoot any of these things yet? Well you can't. As you'll see
the Frankenstein monster isn't done yet.
Gee, I wonder where I've seen that concept before:
And yes before you grill me about how there are hundreds of games about fun, and exploration, the point I'm making is that those games are actually fun to play. Captain Comic not only makes you lose all of your lives in five seconds, (rendering you too pissed off to want to bother) the control is sloppy. If by some miracle you actually DO manage to not be devoured by animals, you will slip off of platforms, or miss them entirely. You will die cheap death after cheap death after cheap death in this game.
But the nail in the coffin is the lack of a great character to latch onto. When someone thinks "Captain Comic" they probably see some sort of spandex laden hero vanquishing aliens, demons, or super villains. It's not even about the quality of the graphics, it's what they represent.
Here we have a NASA reject, running from a castle to find an Arm Cannon so he can kill birds so he can get to other areas of a planet that don't look like anything that seem to belong together.
It's a mash of a Moon, a Medieval forest, a land of tubes, a pier, a giant concrete block.
It's not the worst game you'll ever play but that doesn't mean it's a good time either.
If you actually suffer your way the entire game, collecting every power up, and meeting the goals, you then get to BACKTRACK to the beginning of the game where you are greeted with a poorly written text ending.
Only because I'm going to a funeral at 2pm. But I'll take it.
I apparently decided, without thinking about it, to use the time between Xmas & whatever day we go back to work in 2010 (I don't have all that time off, that's just the timeframe) to kick my dependency on sleep aids (primarily Xanax). So far, it's not going well. Didn't matter on the holiday nights but last night, tossing and turning till well past 4am (and resuming at 7am), completely sucked. I'm hoping I'll be so exhausted tonight that I'll just conk out. More likely: I'll end up napping around 7p and tossing & turning when I go to bed.
I am sooooo glad I'm not traveling by air this week. As always, one person is a retard and everyone - all over the world - pays for it. Even though that one person's action proved that all the screening insanity DOESN'T WORK. Evil doers will always find a way to do evil.
I watched 3 more episodes of MadMen (season1) last night. I wanted to watch Extras but I couldn't find the DVDs. During my night of tossing & turning, their MIA location finally dawned on me (table in the dining room, under the curtain that's currently draped over the table (there's other stuff on top of the curtain)).
I never got as far as housecleaning. That sucks. I really really really need to vacuum the carpets and mop the floors. I haven't bothered to look for a new cleaning service yet. And I also haven't called the old one to get my key back.
Okaaaaay... time to shower and get dressed. I don't need to leave here till around 1pm but if I put it off any longer, I'll probably lose track of time.
Finished The Dreaded Feast: Writers on Enduring the Holidays, edited by Michelle Clarke & Taylor Plimpton.
This is basically the anti-Christmas book, and if you have a dark sense of humor, odds are you'll love it.
The first essay is by John Waters, and it's my favorite of the bunch. But there are also essays from David Sedaris (but not, sadly, The Santaland Diaries), Augusten Burroughs, Hunter S. Thompson, Dave Barry, Robert Benchley, Mark Twin, Jonathan Ames and Chris Radant (the short story that inspired Home for the Holidays), plus a ton more.
Also, the cover is fantastic.
Nate has the vid and better pics.
Well after Christmas I had a work day, followed by a day of catching up with a few relatives I hadn't seen, so I'm a little late.
Anyway, after a night of lack of sleep, everyone went over to my Sister's house for Christmas. It was actually a pretty good day. I also got a shiny new Camera so I took a few pictures. I'm still learning the ropes of the new one so if a few of these came out terrible I can only request you cut me some slack.
My parents bought My Sister, Brother, and respective spouses a Blu Ray player. They were pretty psyched to say the least.
Megan helped Emma open her Monchichi.
BEAN! (My Brother Steve's Boston Terrier.)
I gave Jen a few Blu Ray movies because I knew my folks had purchased Blu Ray Players. Here she has Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and The Shining. We couldn't help but wonder how she hadn't seen The Shining, but she will see it now. She doesn't have a choice.
I gave Brian a copy of The Dark Knight, and the A Death In The Family Graphic Novel. Later in the evening he set up the Blu Ray player, and put it on for a few minutes just to see how nice the player worked. He seemed pretty impressed with it.
Still, he lit up seeing the Classic Trek T-shirt, and Revamped Trek flick.
On the whole it was a pretty good Christmas. Everyone got along well, we had a huge dinner. I mean huge. There was a Turkey, AND a Ham. A lot of Potatoes, Green Beans, Peas, Olives, Squash, Sweet Potatoes, Two types of Stuffing, and a bunch of stuff I'm probably forgetting. Everything came out wonderfully so if any of you guys who made the food decide to read this, well thank you a lot. Also thank you for not electing me to cook any of it because it would not have been anywhere near that delicious. In fact, I still have an extra Lemon Meringue pie to eat as of this writing because Amy was kind enough to make one for me, and one for everyone else. I say extra because I hadn't realized this, and ate almost an entire one during the Christmas festivities.
I do have to close on some sad news though, Early the following morning my Cousins Kyle, and Chad lost their apartment in an electrical fire, so any prayers or well wishes are appreciated. They made it out perfectly fine, but they did lose a great deal of their belongings. So here's hoping their insurance can reimburse them. Our family is helping in whatever way we can but there are also emotional distresses that one suffers in these cases so again any prayers or well wishes are greatly appreciated.
Merry Christmas everyone.
The topic today is guitar – specifically the kind that plug in. Why? Because it's my birthday and that's what I want to blab about.
So anyway, here’s an easy lick that enables even intermediate level guitar players to readily throw some ripping scale runs into their improv playing. It goes through 24 notes just to ascend a single octave, so it’s a great way to add a bar of shred while relocating to a new position on the fretboard for the next part of your solo.
It also sounds pretty damn slick.
But what’s really nice about this riff is that it only uses the first and second strings and the exact same frets are used on both strings. That makes it easy to remember and easy to execute.
We’re in everyone’s favorite shredding key, E minor, which is spelled E, F#, G, A, B, C, D. Begin on the E note located at the fifth fret of the B string and then ascend the scale in six-note stairs.
I’ve tabbed it out in the example above as a legato riff, which really makes this lick haul ass. To play it this way, pick only the first note in each triplet, then hammer-on the next two notes. The result is a fast, fluid run of notes that also looks cool as you play it.
This pattern also makes a terrific alternate picking lick. Start with a down stroke and use an “outside” picking style by alternating up-down-up-down all the way through.
Once you’re comfortable with all four positions, start adding some spice by mixing them up all over the place. The results can be pretty cool. I uploaded a full sheet of tablature examples with this post to help get you started. Yay! FREE TABS!
It's not a very bad cold. In fact it's one of the milder illnesses I can remember... My sinuses are about 40% stuffed up. My throat is just vaguely scratchy. I'm more tired and achey than usual, but not by much. Nonetheless I am taking the cue and lounging on my couch for the 2nd day in a row, swaddled in blankets, books, and handkerchiefs.
Sometimes when I'm sick I will do a juice & tea fast for the day - to keep myself hydrated and let my body concentrate on killing the virus, rather than digesting complicated foods. So today I've had emergen-c, water, yerba mate, and vegetable juice. And I really must not be all that sick, because I am STARVING. I think I will get some extra-spicy thai food for dinner.
And then perhaps I will watch the Dr. Who xmas special AGAIN! I can't believe it's the 2nd-to-last episode starring David Tennant.
I got a copy of The Talented Miss Highsmith for xmas (Patricia Highsmith's new biography). It's sort of fascinating, especially considering that the author seems to hold a certain amount of (justified) disdain for Highsmith. Apparently she was a racist and anti-Semite. Her personal life was chaotic, despite her solipsistic tendencies (it is even referred to on the inner flap as a "Pandora's Box"). She was an obsessive list-maker and left behind 8,000 pages of journals when she died. Her life is a rich territory. Still, this bio is a bit cumbersome... Mostly I'm interested in reading about writers' writing habits.
Being sick is dull. More tea!
This christmas, like a few of those that passed before it, I honestly thought I didn't need anything. I mean sure a Porsche would be nice, but I don't need it. But oh, how wrong I was. All the stuff (loads and loads of stuff. I think at some point they must've messed up and I got all the stuff meant for somebody much nicer, but I ain't tellin'.) I got was a complete surprise to me, and everything was so awesome.
