weblog – Page 124 – that Jason Pace

Naked People Are Not Evil

2006-05-22 Jason Random Thoughts

It’s really weird. In this country, the United States of America, our society seems to think that a child viewing nakedness will be destroyed, scarred for life. But they can watch people be murdered brutally on practically every TV show. Now, of course that is an exaggeration, but the point remains…

Recently, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was re-rated to Mature because you can appearantly hack the game to show no clothes, and the texture artists for the game put nipples on the skin textures (not just the women, the men have nipples too, but you never read that in the articles). Being able to behead people and play soccer with the head… that only makes it a T for Teen. What?

Seriously, I don’t expect people to show eight year olds hardcore pornography, because well, even as an adult I find some of that stuff disturbing, but to hide “boobs” from kids while allowing them to see blood spattered violence just seems oddly hypcritical to me. Gun, bombs, and death are cool, kids, but naked people are evil… or something like that.

Just My Luck

2006-05-22 Jason Reviews

I am married, so just get over the fact that, yes, I went to go see a chick movie in the theater.

That said, its wasn’t a bad film. It was funny, all the parts well cast and played, although it was typical, and by that I mean the basic plot is a “switch” story, like a Freaky Friday, Vice Versa, Like Father Like Son or 18 Again, only without the body switching. In this case, an almost teminally bad lucked guy switches his fate with that of an overly blessed young girl. His life is crappy, hers is blissfully wonderful, and then suddenly his life is fantastically awesome and hers is in the pits. And of course, when he (unknowingly) runs into her again he can sympathize with her woes and helps her out, leading to romance…

Yeah, typical chick movie. But I laughed, so its all good. Well, except for the $14 we spent to see it. AMC raised their matinee price to $7. Now it will actually be cheaper to buy movies on DVD than to go to the cheapest showing at the theater.

A Grilled Cheese Sandwich

2006-05-19 Jason Random Thoughts

The wife and I went to breakfast this morning. Now, I am not a breakfast person really… I like cereal, I like bacon, sausage, good hashbrowns or potato cakes, and occasionally pancakes… I hate eggs, which seem to be the staple food of most restaurant breakfast plates. So we go to IHOP because she loves it. I scour the menu. I want to eat something, but not alot of something. Normally, I get the sampler, sub out the eggs for some extra bacon or something, and ask if they can sub out fries for the hashbrowns (IHOP’s are far too greasy and often undercooked in the center of the pile while be overcooked on the edges), but I’m not that hungry and eight dollars is a little much.

I finally spy the kids menu and decide I’ll settle for the grilled cheese with fries and get a side of bacon. $2.99 for the grilled cheese and fries, $2.19 for the bacon. Good deal. Only, the waitress informs me that you must be 12 or under to order from the kids menu. So I ask, “Is there an adult’s grilled cheese?” She tells me there isn’t, but they can make one, only they’ll have to ring it up as a side of toast ($2.19), a side of cheese ($.89), and a side of fries ($2.59)… $5.67 for the exact same meal they will sell for $2.99 to a kid. Add in my bacon I wanted and the meal is $7.86, which is actually more expensive than the sampler that contains twice as much food (two eggs, two bacon, two sausage, two ham, two pancakes, and hashbrowns). Ummm… what?

So I get a burger. I order it plain (as usual), and I even say, “I’d like it plain, with nothing on it.” It comes with lettuce, tomato and mayo. The waitress gives me an eat-shit look when I tell her I wanted it plain, like as if my decision not to eat what I didn’t order was ruining her day. IHOP just lost me as a customer, for life. Let’s hope the wife can forgive me.

The 2006 Fall TV Season

2006-05-18 Jason Reviews

All this week, networks were unveiling their fall line-ups for the upcoming season. The following are my thoughts, as they progressed through the week, so don’t complain when I speculate about things that by the time you see this are already known.

NBC

I was happy to see the return of Las Vegas, Medium, and My Name Is Earl. Good shows all three, and they will continue to be on my watch schedule. Scrubs, as usual a fan favorite but not well rated, managed for the first time in 5 seasons to not be cancelled, but will be held off until mid-season (likely to fill the hole of some show they cancel within the first couple of weeks). I’m sad to see that Surface isn’t returning as it was the best, most exciting of all the alien invasion TV shows from last season. Heist is gone, which sucks because frankly it was more exciting to watch than Thief on FX (Thief has a better cast, but it was so slow in its plodding storyline). Teachers bids farewell as well, a shame because it was pretty funny, in my opinion, as was Four Kings (also not returning). Conviction is missing from the line-up, which is too bad because I was really enjoying it. As for new shows… Heroes looks great to me, which means it should last exact three episodes, nine tops. Kidnapped also looks interesting, in the vein of all the other mystery serials, this one could be good. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip has a stellar cast, and Sorkin is a good writer/creator (see the first seasons of The West Wing). 30 Rock, well, I like Tina Fey, she’s a good comedy writer, I’ll watch the show, but I’m iffy about its chances. I really want to see Andy Barker, P.I., but its been relagated to mid-season status, so I’ll have to wait. Raines might be good, but as much as I like some of the actors the plot seems like it could be a bit too hokey for me. As for the rest of NBC’s line-up, I really don’t care… ER I gave up on long ago, though I’ve heard its been decent. The various Law & Orders, I catch those on TNT, USA and other stations when I’m trying to go to sleep. Friday Night Lights? Didn’t enjoy the movie, I’ll probably not enjoy the show. Deal Or No Deal? I’ll care when they come to Atlanta and I get to be on. America’s Got Talent? Like the Deal, only care if I’m on it. NBC also got the contract for Sunday Night Football, which means at least one night a week I don’t have to even bother checking to see what’s on that channel.

ABC

Lost is sticking around (Yay!), as is Grey’s Anatomy (Woot!). Freddie is gone (Boo!), and The Night Stalker got axed early this past season, as did Emily’s Reasons Why Not. I’ll miss In Justice, The Evidence and Commander-in-Chief. Invasion is out… however, I know the CW has expressed interest in picking it up, and I’m conflicted about this show. Previously I wrote that it was the worst of last season’s three alien TV shows, and for about the first 9 or so episodes, it clearly was. The pacing was godawfully slow, and it made me want to scream at the TV, but seeing as how I was a huge fan of American Gothic years ago, I wanted to give Shawn Cassidy a chance, so I stuck with it. Now, at the end of their season, Invasion has gotten alot better. There is action, and plot movement, and stuff makes more sense now. If the CW doesn’t pick it up, I won’t be too upset, but if they do, I’ll keep watching. So, on to the new shows… Day Break, eh, not so interested but I’ll watch it for Adam Baldwin. The Nine sounds interesting, but I’m willing to bet it gets cancelled rather quick. Six Degrees will get some attention from me if only because J.J. Abrams (creator of Lost) is involved. I refuse to watch Traveler, because it sounds kind of lame, and I don’t think it will last long at all (Best Buy, however, will sell exclusively the complete series that contains as many as six unaired episodes). I’m going to pass on most of their comedies… I might watch the Ted Danson one, Help Me Help You, if enough people tell me its good, and Let’s Rob… might be a winner, but then I love Donal Logue (only not in a gay way). Every show I didn’t mention, I have no interest in. Betty the Ugly and Men in Trees have to be the two worst named TV shows ever. And American Inventor? This season was so horribly crappy that it won’t sucker me in again… what a hunk of garbage!

CBS

Of the shows I watch How I Met Your Mother will be back, so will The Unit, Numb3rs, and Ghost Whisperer. Yes, Ghost Whisperer is a stupid show, but for some reason (and it couldn’t possibly be Ms. Love Hewitt’s breasts) I keep watching it. Threshold, of course, got axed early this past season, and won’t be returning. CBS is actually renewing 18 shows, more than anyone else, so there isn’t alot to complain about in the cancellation department. New shows… sitcom The Class sounds like it might be okay, but the appearance of Lizzy Caplan in the cast doesn’t bode well for the WB’s Related, which I can now assume is not getting picked up for the CW. Smith is another “people stealing stuff” drama, Heist didn’t last and I found Thief kind of boring, so I’ll give this a try but I’m not holding out much hope (though the cast is stellar). Jericho sounds like it might be interesting, Skeet Ulrich as the lead isn’t a big draw for me though. With the possibility of real nuclear war looming in the Middle East these days, either people will heartily embrace this story, or flee from it, I don’t see much middle ground. Shark… well, since I lost Conviction, I suppose my TV line-up is missing a court drama, so I’ll give it a shot. If the world didn’t so love all the various CSIs, I’d say can them and pull a couple of the midseason replacements out… Waterfront sounds promising, but then I’ve always had a soft spot for Joey Pants (and, really, not in a gay way). So it looks like I’ll be trying all of CBS’s new offerings, how many stick is another story.

FOX

Prison Break, Bones, The O.C., and The Family Guy all return (though I’m getting less enthused by The O.C. each season Marisa continues to live). 24 is back, of course, but I’m still many seasons behind and have decided I’ll just watch them on DVD, but as long as they are good, I’ll be happy they keep making them. The Loop is coming back, and probably bringing is crappy theme song with it, but only as a pair with the American Idol Results show on Wednesdays. And yeah, Americal Idol will be back. Reunion died long ago, and the only show they axed I was watching was Free Ride, and I really won’t miss it. Vanished sounds like it might be good, but frankly I’m getting pretty tired of the “you must watch every episode or else you’ll be completely confused because this show is really one 24 hour story” shows. A couple is fine, a few is pushing is, but next season it looks like there will be aboout fifteen of them. Standoff looks better since its more episodic (like Numb3rs, The Unit, and a few others). Justice… well, it’ll be either Shark on CBS of this, I really don’t want too many courtroom dramas on my schedule. Shark may win just because “James Woods > Kerr Smith”. ‘Til Death sound formulaeic, but fun. The Winner might be a winner, except I got burned on Reunion last year, so a time warping comedy drama looking back to the days of 1994 probably won’t make my list unless the word of mouth is extremely good. Yeah, and Simon Cowell has another show, Duets… more singing on TV. On The Lot might be the first reality show I actually get excited about rather than just watch because its on and people talk about it. (New Fox Shows don’t have links because I can’t find links to New Fox Shows)

The CW

Veronica Mars survives the merger! WOOHOO!! So did Supernatural, Smallville, Gilmore Girls, and One Tree Hill (I hate that I’m addicted to this show). Pepper Dennis and Related didn’t make the cut. Neither did Everwood, of which I wasn’t a fan watching every week, but I enjoyed every episode I saw. I honestly don’t know why they renewed 7th Heaven. It wasn’t a bad show, but I never felt it was any good either, it was very bland family happy-happy-joy-joy drama. But I guess I can’t begrudge a network wanting at least one wholesome show on TV. Sadly, they are keeping both the UPN’s and the WB’s reality shows. Runaway seems like an odd plot… its The Fugitive, only the guy doesn’t run off alone, he takes his whole family with him. It could work. They’ve picked up Palm Springs for midseason, which sounds like The O.C. only with really dark secrets. As long as Marisa Cooper isn’t there I’ll be watching. No word anywhere, but I hope that they at least try out Mercy Reef (the Aquaman TV show) to see if people like it instead of just letting it go. And it seems they did pass on Invasion, something about it being too expensive. I wish they’d take the 7th Heaven money and put it in Invasion instead. Well, I got my Veronica Mars, so I guess I’m happy for now.

Other Networks

TNT is starting up another season of The Closer this summer, and it looks like they cancelled Wanted. FX will probably keep Rescue Me and The Shield, even Thief might run another season. USA has a show called Psyche about a private detective who pretends to be a psychic by lying, guessing and using inside information. And beyond that, I don’t really know any more…

The Amulet of Samarkand

2006-05-17 Jason Reviews

I suppose one of the things that always kept me away from the Harry Potter books were the descriptions of Harry himself. In the beginning he’s pure and noble, and everything he does is for the good. Its almost sickening sweet. The later books help fix him up right as he makes mistakes and costs people their lives.

In The Amulet of Samarkand, the first of the Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud, one of the main characters is a horribly flawed boy who lives in a horribly flawed world. In the London of his world, magicians rule, literally. They aren’t hidden or secret, they run Parliment and keep the “commoners” beneather their feet. Common children are sold into apprenticeship where they are forced to forget their birth names and learn the ways of magic. Nathaniel, is one such child who is apprenticed to a minor magician of small power, but Nathaniel wishes to be greater, teaching himself more than his master will allow, especially once he is humiliated by Simon Lovelace, a much more powerful magician. Nathaniel takes his self taught knowledge and summons Bartimaeus to help him get his revenge on Lovelace. The only problem is, in seeking his revenge he stumbles on to a much more deadly plot by some of London’s other magicians. While keeping revenge on his mind, Nathaniel also decides that he needs to help the society of magicians by stopping this fiendish plot.

Most of the tale is told by Bartimaeus, who like many of the demons summoned by magicians, hates magicians and their petty squabbles. He’s also a wise cracking smartass, which helps keep the book fun and fast. One of the things I really enjoyed about this book, however, is that while it does leave some loose ends, the tale sits well by itself, and if I never manage to read the rest of the trilogy, I won’t feel like I’m missing something. I would gladly recommend it to young and not-so-young readers.

Alliance: I love it when a plan comes together

2006-05-16 Jason Gaming

So, this past weekend I decided to do a little PvP in the Battlegrounds. As usual, I dumped myself into all three BG queues and then headed off to mess around with low level quests I never did.

It took a while, but just as I was finishing up a handful of Darnassus newbie quests (Woohoo! 11 faction per turn in!), I got the call to enter Warsong. If you’ve read some of my ranting before, you’ll know that for the Alliance on Durotan Warsong Gulch runs last about as long as it takes for the Horde to run the flag three times. Non-stop. They just chain us, mostly because the entire Alliance side is out getting honorable kills, wasting time while me and maybe one other guy try to defend the flag. One shadow priest and one other random guy just often are not enough to fight off four or five Horde. We usually down a couple of them, but their shaman/druid/rogue will take off at high speed and that’s all she wrote. (By the way, being able to use speed forms or sprint while carrying the flag should be forbidden. It sucks that I start fighting a guy, he runs off with some speed boost, and I’m in combat so I can’t mount up and chase him. Blizzard, either remove the use of speed abilities while flag carrying, or remove the combat flag in BGs.) All I usually ask is that a hunter or two stay on defense and use their ice traps. I realize that druids switching forms can break free easy, but it help against everyone else.

Anyway… so I go in expecting it to suck. Only, it doesn’t. One guy starts shouting orders and, lo and behold, people listen. We win, 3-0. Yeah!! So, I re-enter the Warsong queue, and twice more I get in, and twice more we win. Awesome! Then I guess people stop joining, or perhaps too many people are in queue, so I head back to lowbie quest fulfillment. A short while later, an Arathi Basin call comes in. Whoosh…

So, Arathi Basin, like Warsong, seems to just suck for Alliance. And it doesn’t fail to disappoint in the first round. After asking to be invited to the raid a few times, I start inviting people. Most of them are in groups already, in the raid. I do invite three people to my group: two priests and a druid. All the healers in Arathi were not in groups. At this point some of the people start bitching about lack of healing, so I explain the situation. They start arguing that you don’t need to be grouped to heal. I explain about group heals, and the fact that Power Word: Shield can only be cast on group or raid members. All the other healers back me up, but some of the melees (rogues mostly) continue to say we don’t need to be grouped. I finally relent, “Hey, you’re right, we don’t NEED to be grouped, it just makes it about 10,000 times easier, especially since most of us have CTRaid_Assist installed and can easily target and heal anyone in range in the raid IF THERE WAS A RAID FORMED AND WE WERE ACTUALLY INVITED INTO IT.” Just then, the pop up for Warsong springs up on my screen. I click it and zip over to Warsong. I’m about to leave my group when I notice that they are all also in Warsong. We stick together and put down the most awesome 4 healer defense ever. Another Warsong victory.

After Warsong, I go back to the queues. Immediately Arathi Basin pops up. I’m hesitant, but I go in anyway. The good leader from the earlier Warsongs is in there. He gives commands, and people actually listen. Its a tough fight (I think the Horde side had more “raid level” players, because by far their outfits were sillier and they were really hard to kill), but we managed to eek out a victory by a mere 50 or so points (2000 to 1940/1950).

Finally, as I’m about to queue up again, the Alterac Valley gong sounds and I zip in quick. Normally I come into Alterac toward the end. All the towers are gone, and its the weakening dregs of an 8 hour zerg fest who remain emboldened by a few new players. But this was a new start. Immediately everyone rushed forward to try to take a new graveyard. The entire half-hour I was there, we fought at this location. We pushed up and down the hillside, getting so close to the flag at times. And then my computer locked up.

Ah well… maybe next time.

Why can`t I use the elevator?

2006-05-15 Jason Random Thoughts

“You can’t use the elevator.”
“My friend here is blind.”
“I’m sorry, but you can’t use the elevator.”
“Why can’t I use the elevator?”
“Because someone defecated in it.”
“What?”
“Someone defecated in the elevator.”
“When?”
“Two days ago.”

This was the exchange I heard while waiting for the MARTA train to leave the Doraville station this morning. Shortly after that, inside the car was this:

“What did she say?”
“Someone defecated in the elevator.”
“No shit?”
“Just the opposite.”
“Shit.”
“Exactly.”

It put a smile on my face, the second conversation not the first. However, the initial exchange bothered me. Not because someone had appearantly defecated in the elevator, because, well, with homeless people around Atlanta things like that tend to happen (like that one time a guy actually took a crap on the bus…), but the fact that the woman from MARTA knew that it had happened two days ago and was only now being cleaned up.

I understand that everyone deserves a weekend off every now and then, and many businesses don’t operate at all. But I think feces in an elevator might be one of those “emergency, pay the extra $100 to have them come out on the weekend” kind of situations. Instead, appearantly they decided to put up some “Wet Floor” signs and police tape to block off the elevator (the only one at this particular station) for two days so it could be cleaned up sometime today without having to spend any extra cash. I’m sure any people in wheel chairs appreciated it.

Veronica Mars

2006-05-14 Jason Reviews

If you don’t watch this show, you should.

It has been a couple days since I watched the second season finale and I’m still just amazed. The final episode, just like the season before, takes all the clues that you’ve been getting all season long, the ones that you know are related but they don’t all fit into one puzzle, and gives you one last bit that makes everything snap together and the rush for the resolution is on! Holy crap! No wait.. they didn’t just.. oh my.. wait… what… I don’t… jeez… wow… holy fu… NO, THAT DID NOT JUST… YES!!

Seriously… season one is on DVD, buy it. Season two will likely come out soon, buy it also. And season three? Well, we will find out this week if Veronica and company make it on to the CW Network’s fall schedule. And they better, because I want to know what … nah, I won’t ruin it for ya.

Stuff on the Net VIII

2006-05-13 Jason Stuff on the Net

The image of this in my head just makes me laugh.

Amber Night tells a tale in two parts that everyone needs to read.

This isn’t really funny, but for some reason I keep watching it.

… and no, I will not be providing any E3 links. If I can’t go, it gets no airtime on my weblog.