College Hockey at Fenway!

This Saturday I atteneded a very, very ridiculous and cold event: College Hockey at Fenway Park. It was a cool idea, so I thought it would be fun to go. Gosh, I can't even being to tell you how chillingly correct I was.

(My buddy Ray poured beer on a BC kid, more on that later.)

The event: Northeastern University, my alma mater, in an outdoor hockey game in the middle of winter, playing against Boston College. Northeastern has long had a rivalry with every other Boston school with a hockey team, so I was pretty thrilled to take part in what would surely be a loss on our part. Go team! There was alos the novelty factor, how many times is a guy going to be able to see a Hockey game played in the middle of a Baseball field? Not many, and frankly, after having attended, never again.

It was cold. Did you read my puns up top? Pay some fucking attention! It was really, really cold. Like, c'mon, there's really no reason to subject yourself to a mediocre display of athletics in the freezing goddamn cold. Sure, maybe if it was an entirely awesome thing (I'm not sure what that thing could possibly be, but bear with) that was worthwhile in the slightest, but this totally wasn't it.

And, I'm pretty sure the game was rigged. There was a point where NU scored a goal and it was scored for BC. If I was adding pictures into this, and I might, at a later date, if and when I remember and think it's a good idea, I'd add the picture of Jackie Chan looking all confused with the caption about Jackie's mind being blown. Then there was the NU breakaway, with a blatant BC trip... and no penalty shot. There was the egregious check, the multiple goals that had to be put under review, and the lack of importance placed on NU's dominating victory in the ice cream challenge.

I'm just making myself angry here, as a completely unbiased participant in a college sporting event, I am outraged. Still.

I really like my new Logitech Keyboard that I use for my iPad! (Product placement)

I'm still writing about Christmas, this is wild!

I finally got a keyboard for this bastard iPad thing so I no longer have to use the awful, or at least not easy to use, touch keyboard. It's like I have the easiest to use computer ever, kind of, not really. It makes for a pretty fantastic word processor though. I can now type with the iPad on my lap, comfortably, without my hands being jammed all together. I can also access numbers and punctuation like a normal person.

The logitech bluetooth keyboard syncs easily to the iPad. It's comfortable and lightweight. It even comes with a carrying case that easily snaps into a stand for the main device that actually works while I have the case for the iPad on it.

Now I really don't need to carry around pen and paper. Which is all the better, as I really am not a fan of writing by hand. Typing has always been much more my bag. I really want to go on a complete tangent as to why that might be, but after staring at the mist that the humidifier is shooting up, I really can't think of a reason. We'll accept that this tangent will suffice for my favorite literary device.

I'm using a really great program to write in as well. I forget the name of it. One second. It's called PlainText. Great software. I've read for some time that writing inside of a program that blanks out the rest of the screen makes the focus on filling white space. It really does! It's much easier to concentrate and think like this, without the normal distractions that my laptop normally leaves. You know, that whole taskbar of options that will deliver me to a wild amount of different worlds. This, I actually have to reach forward and press a button or the screen to get out of. I'm practically trapped here! TRAPPED!

That's not true. Not really any way. But it kind of sort of not really at all feels that way in a manner of speaking. Who really knows what's going on inside of my head that's triggering this sharp focus to go from brain to screen at light speeds. LIGHT SPEEDS. I almost miss being able to italicize that I think the impression would be more what I'm going for. Which leads me elequently to my next point.

This thing syncs up to DropBox. So, if I ever type up something where I want to get real creative and add pictures, I can totally use my laptop as an editing tool and write all of the text on here. It's like nearly instant, practically.

I wonder if having the keyboard detached from the main device adds anything to the experience? Kind of. It's freedom. I used to have a whole wireless setup for my computer, back when I had a tower. A tower, can you believe that people had those things? People still have those things. I hope mostly for cheap alternatives to laptops or for gaming rigs. Heck, most games can be played on a decent laptop these days anyway.

Skyrim is fighting with Gears of War 3 for my love

A little bit before Christmas I beat Gears of War 3. I loved the single player campaign and thought it an incredibly fitting end to what is probably the best pure action game series created thus far. Then I started playing Horde mode, which is like the infinite replaysbility version of the game, and was very satisfied to enjoy that as much as possible.

Christmas came and I got Skyrim. I put down the game I was playing at the time (Red Dead Redemption) and started my journey into this amazing new world. Skyrim might be the largest and most amazing single player sandbox game out there. There is such an incredible amount to do. Since Christmas I don't even want to know how many hours I've logged into my Orc warrior Chaos. (side note: the iPad auto corrects orc into Orc which just blew my mind.)

I've found myself jonesing for Gears of War again. Just Horde mode, mind you. I want to dive back into that world where combat means just about everything. No quests, nobody to talk to, just violence for the sake of getting to the next wave, and the next wave, and the next wave. On top of that there's some great new DLC available: RAAM's Shadow; which serves as a prequel to the entire series and gives you the first opportunity to play as the much revered Locust leader and final boss from the first Gears of War game. You might know how awesome I think RAAM is if you've ever played Heroclix with me.

So it's like a war going on in my brain. A war that Skyrim is winning, for now, but I'll be interested to see how long it's going to be able to hold out. I can't really compare the games, they're both the best of their breeds, but I know that they're fighting for a place in my XBox.

Which kind of leads me to wonder what might happen if Marcus Fenix picked a fight with my Orc warrior. Which is kind of making me want to play WH40K: Space Marine...

Skyrim: The Further Adventures of Rune and Chaos

I was lucky enough to get Skyrim for Christmas. It's only the biggest game of the year, and it's probably Bethesda's best work. I'm a pretty big fan of their Fallout series, and this being my first venture into the world of the Elder Scrolls I've got to say I'm very impressed.

You have the choice to be an orc, which is probably the most badass choice, so I chose that first. Continuing in that line of thought, I decided my badass orc would use nothing but two handed axes. A brilliant and inspired choice I think. I might have gone with a war hammer instead of the axe, to celebrate Robert Baratheon, but I had to go with my heart, especially when I decided who my character was going to be.

I decided my character was going to be Chaos, a character that I created as a child for a freestyle fantasy story that I wrote with my best friend Patrick: The Adventures of Rune and Chaos. Chaos was my character, a brazen, run into the thick of things warrior. Rune was his character, a thoughtful mage who, generally, used his power to get the two out of the trouble Chaos had put them in.

Pretty awesome right? I hadn't thought of Run and Chaos in years. It's pretty awesome to have the two of them back in my life.

Wrestling in MMA

Just a thought:

Tried and true wrestlers have a really interesting advantage in MMA that I'd never really thought about before this fight. When a wrestler gets rocked by a strike, their first instinct is to go for a takedown of some sort. Assuming they aren't fighting another, equally skilled wrestler, they will at the very least get some sort of positional advantage that keeps them out of danger, allowing them to recover from the strike that initially damaged them.

Nifty.

Get Angry!

Get Angry!

Do I have anything to say about Gears of War 3?

It’s fucking awesome, that’s for sure.

It delivers on everything that I wanted it too: non-stop action led by giant action hero caricatures who get angry instead of feeling real emotion.

Hell, I even got to experience pain and loss, which isn’t exactly something you expect to feel from a mess of bullets and blood in an action/entertainment setting. Dammit I was moved. It was cheap emotion too, but damn was it well done. Does that mean it’s still cheap? Maybe not. I think that term, cheap, is meant to describe something without subtlety, when, well, what the fuck is subtlety worth? I’m not playing Gears of War for subtlety. I’m not living my life to be subtle! I’m living my life to be all up in everywhere! I want to make impacts like nuclear bombs, lasting. I want to get real real with everything, stand up and take all kinds of stands.

Fuck yea! Stand up, get angry, get in the moment!