PlasmaSplasm

Here’s my newest high score from the ball game.

The ball game is actually a game called “Gimme Friction Baby“, a flash game on the internet that is deeply, deeply addicting.

I’ve been playing it for a couple months at work, and I highly recommend it.

Follow this link, it’s the game with the big white circles. Just jump into it, all you do is click the mouse, and see if you can beat the current high score in my office (not by me)- 35.

(my high score is 32, but we’ll see if I can work on that.)

I really want to love my Xbox 360.

The machine is like a chick who’s totally awesome most of the time, and then goes totally snake-shit insane for weeks at a time.

Is it worth sticking with it? I’ve put so much time, effort and love into the games. . . and Halo 3 is fucking amazing . . .

Recently I was unable to use my sex box for an entire day because other people were using THEIR xboxes too much.
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A few days ago, Mike started playing Halo 2 in preparation for the insanely anticipated release of Halo 3. Whenever he would turn it on, I would invariably fall asleep; a hard, thorough sleep only to be awakened by either talks of dinner or a mischievous finger hovering in my gaping mouth. Anyway, I didn’t find it the most exciting game in the world.

I had actually played it myself once, several years ago - before I even knew the boys. I was at a family-friend’s house. I was in the awkward position of being in the “kid” generation, but being much older than the kids present. So, there is an Xbox there and a huge TV. Now, I hadn’t played a video game any more recent than the SuperNintendo, so the whole set-up was very foreign: the first person shooter point-of-view, the two sticks to control yourself (which still seems unnecessary, but what do I know?) - it all pretty much scared me. Think of explaining how to use a Tivo to a hundred year-old man from Myanmar, and you’ll come close to the effect.

As for the game-play, it was me and one of the kids running around an otherwise-empty building trying to kill each other. I didn’t get it. It seemed really stupid and I basically wrote off all other first person shooters and pretty much any other non-Mario, non-Zelda game as worthless.

Skip ahead a few years:
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Here’s a first: everyone in the house (Brooke, Ces and I) are all enjoying playing a single video game. Gone are the days of Brooke complaining that she can’t play Zelda as Ces and I hunger for more and more achievements.

Why is this on the splasm?

I wish you could have heard Brooke’s unearthly, triumphant howl of pleasure when she slaughtered Cesare’s character for the first time. I imagine dogs all over the neighborhood simultaneously looked up and then crawled into a space to hide when that screech went out.

It wasn’t a bad thing: it was really nice to hear Brooke genuinley get excited by something as woman- inaccessible as a game of Halo. I’m going to ask her to write about why she was enjoying herself, but let this be an invitation to any Splasm reader who wants to get in on the Halo 3 killing:

Our gamertags are:

Mike: Kenyon Grad
Ces: ITALIAN PAZUZU
Brooke: breadshops

Feel free to send us a friend request, maybe YOU’LL be lucky enough to be killed by Brooke in the next Halo 3 match . . .

The usually untarnished reputation of our 7-11 neighbors has been hit hard recently, earning them a Beyond Therapy Dog-Raping Shit-Eater Award.

Last night the guys and I were excited that we were going to be able to walk outside, across a parking lot and purchase Halo 3 at the 7-11 that’s adjacent to our house.

The 7-11 has signs up on every pole in the parking lot, two signs on the front door and signs inside that all clearly state that the video game is going to be available at this store at 12:01 am on September 25th.

Here are a list of problems, in order of how they happened, when we tried to get the game:
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It’s no secret that we love the 7-11 we live next door to. 24 hour security, 24 hour slurpees, 24 hour coffee ice cream.

I’ve been really bad about it, but I should really keep the splasm up to date on the new happenings at our 7-11, because they’re basically a part of our extended family. (you know what I’m saying, Muad Dib!).

Anyway, there are signs all over the place advertising the release of the new Xbox 360 game HALO 3. This is very weird, because I’ve never seen 7-11 sell anything electronic that isn’t attached to a keychain.

Assuming that the basic mark up of anything that doesn’t fit into a big gulp cup is about 35-40%, I was guessing that HALO 3 (an MSRP of 59.99) was going to be going for about, oh 80 dollars. That way they could gouge people and still keep well below the hundred dollar rule of nothing costing that much in a 7-11.

It came as a huge surprise, then, when the clerk understood what I was asking about earlier tonight, and that the game was going to be 60 dollars. I had asked last week (three weeks after they started advertising) and the clerks had no idea what I was talking about. Now they had a sheet to pull out and everything, so they must be getting pretty excited.

Now, I’m not going to be purchasing HALO 3, but I will be renting it from the neftlix of video games, but I’m proud to see the 7-11 crew selling it for a meager full price, instead of at an obscene markup. Thanks a lot, 7-11 guys. Thanks.

Wired Magazine has been running a technology convention for a couple years now. I saw it in Chicago, it ran in NY last year, and yesterday I went to the LA updated one.

The convention’s purpose it to bring new technology to people who, otherwise, could only read about it or may have never heard of it. It
s almost a room full of stuff that you’ve thought “Wow, that’s cool” on the internet, but never thought you’d actually get to hold or operate in real life. No, not porn, stuff like the sliding door that conforms to your body shape, which Ces is walking through in the picture above.

For more pictures and interesting stuff, read on. (Click on pictures for bigger versions)
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This is a spoiler free review, so don’t worry, nerds.

Paul Haggis is a decent film maker.

“Crash”, his Oscar winning movie about racism in LA is an interesting and totally enjoyable movie. Maybe it isn’t the profound examination of American race relations, although everyone who sells it would have you believe that it is . . . but if you forget about the hype then you have a interesting, almost fun movie.

“In The Valley of Elah” is also an interesting movie, until Paul decides to beat you over the head with a cardboard tube filled with pictures of himself giving a thumbs up, smoochy, love-pride notes from his mom and a speaker that blares the words “PAUL IS SO RIGHT”.
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As Mike once said to me, kill me. Kill me right in the eye.

The IT Crowd is so bad. That’s really all I can say about it.

Last night, after making me sit through some gameplay of the fairly boring “John Woo’s Stranglehold” only to be followed by the equally boring “Ninja Gaiden”, the boys decided to put on some TV. One of the shiny new recordings Ces has on his non-Tivo is As You Like It. Now, I’ve been waiting for this movie for a long time. I love Kenneth Branagh. Ever since I saw Much Ado About Nothing when I was 13, I’ve been a huge fan. And I don’t just love him, I love his whole stable of actors and collaborators. I still feel the effects of his divorce from Emma Thompson very deeply. (Helena Bonham-Carter was a poor attempt for a replacement, though I like her well enough in non-Branagh productions.) I was so happy that Ces had taken the initiative to record it. It’s name was glowing in my eye like the shiniest diamond that ever bewitched a girl.

But do I get to watch it? No. And what do the boys put on instead? The Pick Up Artist.

One of the most offensive atrocities of a show I think I have ever seen, it depicts what are obviously several gay men in their attempts to get in good with the ladies…if only for a night. There’s bitch-slapping, there’s whining, there’s crying, there’s betrayal, and there’s feathered hats. And that’s the MEN on the show. It’s just so pointless and maddening.
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