I WANT TO EAT A NUT OF LAERMA!

WHAT I'VE BEEN UP TO...

I've mainly been working on a review of the Mobile Police Patlabor: The New Files DVD set that I'll hand in to a popular anime news site whose name I won't mention (as if you can't guess which site it is if you're a regular reader of this blog). I've already seen the episodes a bunch of times, since I had them all on old subtitled VHS tapes that I bought in 1997 and 1998, and I was originally just going to coast along in the writing process on my memory of having watched them, but, eh, when I started writing, I found that it had just been too long since I'd seen them and decided to watch most of the episodes after all, and it takes me a while to watch these things since I'm easily distracted. I am proud of myself that, the other night, I managed to "marathon" seven episodes, the most episodes of anything I've watched in a row in quite a while. And all but the first four episodes are "subtitled-only", so I can't be looking at the computer screen and the TV at the same time. Anyway, I've got the review about 75% written, and I hope to finish it before I get to sleep, but, as with most things I do, it takes longer for me to actually produce it than I plan.


On Monday night, I ate supper at the Red Lobster on Merivale. It was my sister's boyfriend's birthday, so my parents treated them to dinner. I had batter fried mushrooms as a starter (with garden salad and cheese bread), and, for the main course, I didn't have the full shrimp platter like last time, but had a plate of popcorn shrimp and fries, which was pretty good, though I only managed to polish off two-thirds of the shrimp and had to "doggy bag styrofoam container" it.

During dinner, I mentioned that I wanted to apply at the Home Outfitters on Merivale, since they have a lot of positions advertised at the Jobs Canada job bank, and also Wendy's, and Mr. Big and Tall, since they were advertising there too.

Unfortunately, while we were still waiting for the cheque, I all of the sudden had an "emergency" and had to do the thing I really, really hate doing in public washrooms. And I just made it to the toilet in time (and it was the second toilet I tried, since the first one was completely blocked... would it kill them to put a toilet plunger in the washroom for public use?), otherwise I would have had a very messy accident. I've had a low-grade stomach bug for a while, but I thought it was over. Guess it wasn't.





What the hell is this?



I went to IGN/Wendy's Readers Top 99 Games since I noticed that Gran Turismo 4 was prominently featured in the Rotten Tomatoes forum banner advertising it, so, as someone who has been playing that game a LOT lately (and not blogging as much as I was before as a result), I was curious to see where it ranked. I checked the top simulation games page, but they didn't mention Gran Turismo 4 at all. In fact, there not only is not a single driving game mentioned anywhere, even under "sports" if you count racing as a sport, but there were no vehicle games whatsoever in the "simulation" category. The simulation category is dominated by Sims-type games, non-linear games where you interact with people or animal characters in environments conducive to socializing. I don't have anything against these sorts of games, and I've enjoyed Animal Crossing when I had the chance to play it for a week or so, but these aren't the only kinds of simulations that should be considered. Worst of all, Nintendogs is listed *three* times, even though it's all three variations of the exact same game with slightly different dogs. The closest thing to a driving simulator in the entire feature are two Grand Theft Auto games, but they don't really count as they're action games with a driving component. ("Pierre Bernard's Recliner of Rage" rip-off voice) Bottom line, America? IGN and Wendy's should fix their Reader's Top 99 Games feature to include a category for racing games and other vehicle simulators, or they should add a vehicle game quota to the "simulation" category.

posted by Steve Brandon @ 11:13 PM