Happy halloween / Comedy is dying

There was once a time where Halloween meant something you know. Now it's just an excuse for TV Channels to show horror and horror parody shows. Even then it's not perfect, where was the new Simpsons Treehouse of Terror? Tick or treaters are down too. 3! 3 is all I counted and we usually get at least 1 party of costumed kids every night. Last year I bought some cadbury's minature heroes especially for the little brats and not a single one turned up.

Perhaps I'm getting too old but then is everyone? What's changed in the community since I was a kid? Perhaps it's a fear of some sort. Perhaps Parents won't let their kids out because the candy they would get would make add to the invisible Obesity Problem. I say invisible because I don't see it. If it was noticable I wouldn't feel out of place in public because of my weight. I still feel like one of the biggest people in my hometown.

On a lighter note is anybody watching Sky one's show Hex? I was a little critical at first, thinking it would be another buffy like program. The main star doesn't kick ass and the shows about, well a person being cursed simple as that. It's a slow developer but it's starting to get rather creepy.

It's one of the few things worth watching on TV these days, and surprise surprise is on during Sky one Sunday. Sky One Sunday has been responsible for Showing two of my favourite progams, Futurama and Family guy. While they have been cancelled (although FG is making a comeback I hear), S.O.S. also has The Simpsons, Malcolm in the Middle and Oliver Beene. 3 Brilliant comedies in an age where comedy is dying.

Besides "My Family", which is hardly ever shown, and "They think it's all over", which has recently been relegated to the "graveyard slot", I can't think of a comedy that's made me laugh out loud on terrestial TV. The theme seems to be one of Cringeworthyness, Characters that make you cringe with stupid comments and actions. Example of these are the Office, I'm alan partridge and Little Britain. The last great comedy from the BBC was "Only fools and Horses", why don't they make something like this instead? A comedy filled with Ironic situations.

Yet the other channels still insist on Reality TV. Who ever created Big Brother deserves to be shot. They have started a craze that has poisoned TV by filling the good slots that aren't taken by the awful soaps. Big Brother, I'm a celebrity, pop idol/fame acadamy, Road Raja, The 1960's office, The Match (although the game itself was rather good), when will it all end?

Thank god for gaming. If I didn't have Pokemon Leafgreen and Sega Superstars I'd go insane. But then their appeal is wearing thin and I have no money to get anything else.

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Fanfic progress: Still planning a new one. It's getting really hard to think of something new which I can write a lot on.

A Strange Saturday

Tomorrow's Halloween yet it's today that's full of weirdness.

I've reached the Elite four on Pokemon Leafgreen and for some reason I just don't want to do it. Mainly because I need to bring my party up 5 levels each and find a way to beat Agatha's Ghosts. I've decided to go with Snorlax and teach him Psychic, being a Normal means Ghosts moves have no effect and Psychic will hammer them. Problem is he's only level 30. Now logic would state that going back into victory road and fighting wilds would help me here but it doesn't. I'm not getting enough EXP.

Sorry but facing lots of random battles just to level up is just not fun at all, especially when it seems it's not all that effective. So I decided to go pokemon hunting. Found a few today and did some ingame trades. Spend a while in the safari zone but found a lot of the time I had that pokemon. Chansey wouldn't sit still on the rare ocassion it appears, nor will it just get in the damn ball.

In Yellow, Gold and Sapphire this didn't bother me much. But I just don't want to do Leafgreen.

On top of that Portsmouth beat Man Utd. WTF? Surely that's enough to suggest this day has been weird. But once I saw the highlights I felt a little annoyed. Ferdinand's shirt tug led to a penalty, yet the pompey striker still managed a couple of steps before falling over. Seems to me the shirt pulling had no effect. Perhaps this is looking for an excuse but I do feel the ref was a bit harsh on Man utd today. There was a clash between Rooney and Quashie (I think that's the name), in which to me both were as bad as each other. Besides the Ferdinand incident above the only other yellow card went to Rooney. Why did the other player get away without being disiplined.

On the other hand their second goal was 100% legit and even without the penalty they would've won. Maybe I'm just looking for some excuse as to why we lost. At this rate though we'll never close the gap which is a shame cause I think we have the best team by far.

Oh and it seems like I've made an enemy on Fanfiction.net. This guy who calls himself "A Critical Sonic Fan" puts down my fic with some stupid comments that I rip apart completely. His arguements were stupid and it's obvious he had some influence elsewhere. I think he's just mad at me for making him look stupid, although now he's made another comment in a good fics review section. The good fic "Metal Sonic Revised" is currently top of my favourites so check it out.

Oh wait you don't know where to find my fics, Here's a link. Speaking of my fanfics...

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Fanfic Progress: Thinking about a possible Exterminatus now/3 Shadows/Sonic Crossover but I'll have to check up on a few things first. Mainly when EN is set so I know whether to use Joz or Joz's Spirit. There will be an idea that I'll be using in two fics, one in The 3 Shadows time and one in Sonic's time.

Lothar rant hits a sore spot (again)

Firstly I'd like to promote my friends webcomic Exterminatus now. It's an excellent comic loosely based on Sonic and drawn by The Virus, an excellent Furry artist. If you check out this weeks comic's notes you'll see the writer Lothar ripping apart the Sonic Series.

He recently did Teen Titans. Not that I'm that much of a fan to be offended but I think he summed it up when he said "I haven't seen Teen Titans".

Today he rips Sonic. Now I'll be the first to say the Sonic Series isn't as good as it used to be (same goes for a lot of other classic games series though). However to then promote Halo is an insult.

Halo while being a good game is flawed. I have never found it more fun than any Sonic game (with the exception of some of the old game gear/Master system games and Sonic advance 2) because it feels to much like a Generic FPS. Then consider the boring corridors you run down for each level. There's only 5 levels that you do twice.

Then you have the whole driving thing. It's meant to make Halo unique but it's poorly done. Why do they insist on FPS controls to drive vehicles when they could've used Normal racing controls? It makes the whole thing unnecessarily awkward.

Finally the game could do with more customisation of your characters in multiplayer. The only thing you can do is change your armour's colour. Boring. Then compare it to other FPS's and it feels weak in multiplayer compared to say Timesplitters 2, Goldeneye and Perfect Dark.

Halo tries so hard to be different but whatever it does differently it does awkwardly. It's a well done FPS but I hardly stands from the crowd.

Compare to say Sonic which is still as fast and thrilling as the originals. Nothing compares to it in terms of Style. It's unique, Halo isn't.

Halo is a great game, Halo 2 is on my wanted list. But it isn't as good as some people say. Sonic takes a hammering these days, people are being to critical of the Blue Hedgehog. It's much better than what people say.

Sonic 3 & Knuckles, And Sonic Adventure 2 sits proudly in my top ten games of all time list. Halo is no where near it.

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Fanfic Progress:

I should finish Apocolypse's Revival Tonight. Currently writing the ending.

What am I doing then?

I am doing nothing. I look at November and I think "damn I need a job". The list of games I want is getting too big and I have no money at all. Problem is though, beside the lack of good jobs is that I don't know what I want to do anymore. I was aiming to be an accountant. Good with numbers, good pay, sounded perfect. Until I actually tried it and found some of it's more opinion that fact. Do you use a historical cost basis, straight line depreciation method or percentage, blah blah blah! Perhaps Newcastle uni made it seem more complicated than it actually is.

I would like to do something in gaming but what? I'm crap at English so journalism is no good. I can't draw as well as some people I know so art is out of the question and I find programing too confusing and frustrating. Perhaps I'll stick with playing for now.

Sega Superstars is brilliant fun. Eyetoy has always somewhat interested me and SS was the perfect game to start it for me. There is just one problem with it. For some reason they decided to go with a blue-bottomed CD-ROM disk. Why? Don't they know older model PS2's have difficulty running them. I spent 40-50 minutes today just to get the damn thing to load.

With the list a mile long it's surprising I spent what little debt I could spare (I'm right at my limits) on a game that's more for the occasional party that a hardcore play. Paper Mario 2, Tales of Symphonia, Halo 2, Prince of Persia 2, Zelda:Minish cap, Metroid prime 2, all come out NEXT MONTH. Yet I get Sega superstars. Why? Because I feel this has the most potential of the lot to go rare, i.e. be hard to find and cost twice as much in about half a year like Ico.

It's funny, after I finished Uni I said I wanted a year out. A break from working hard. I didn't think that I'd actually want to work more than play and sleep which is all I seem to do these days.

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Fanfic progress: I'm halfway through chapter 12 of Apocolypse's Revival. Seeing as this is my first post let me describe some of it. AR is a Sonic Heroes based story, written as the plot for a possible sequel. It has some familar faces and some new ones as well as links with my series "The 3 Shadows". I'll probably finish it and post it on ff.net tonight.