Conservative Satire: It's Debatable

So, I haven't updated again in a while. Been busy with writing, gaming as usual, and of course, getting ready to start applications to several grad schools for next fall. Busy times, busy times. (At least, technically productive, by my standards.)

Going back after writing all of this - this entry's even longer than usual - consider this my big presidential election 2008/political season blog entry. I'll probably write some more, smaller political ones later on - before or after the election - but this is the big one. Savor it, if you like.

Do look forward to Part II of Conservative Satire later this week, though. (This post initially began as an intended evisceration of An American Carol, but obviously went somewhere else instead. I've got enough written on that terribly dishonest flick that I'll be completing that in my second Conservative Satire post in the next few days.)

I've been watching the debates, of course, like everybody else. (Yes, even the angry, self-proclaimed "enlightened" individuals 100% convinced that both the Democratic and Republican parties are absolutely the same in every way conceivable. Because it's a deep political epiphany that gives them the right to look down on the rest of us wacky beatniks who live in reality*.) But this entry isn't going to get into those too much - that's not what this one's about. (Though admittedly, I am including a great deal of general political commentary in this one, given the current events, that could be split up into several longer and more indepth entries. But just as I don't want to drown you in a deluge of video game entries and drive non-gamers off, I don't want to drown you in political rambling either. I'm part of the minority of open, unashamed political leftists in this country these days, and as anyone who's read this blog with any kind of regularity knows, I make no effort to hide this fact.)

With three of the four debates down, we've seen a lot of hyperbole and a lot of expectations raised each time the candidates get together to exchange words with their verbal-fists. McCain tried to duck out of the first presidential debate, not being ready to debate Obama and wanting to focus on his personal political posturing over the bailout. (Which ultimately isn't going to help things much in the grand scheme of things. For all the talk of hating big government and "pork barrel spending," he really wanted to make himself look like the "hero" of this economic crisis, somehow saving Wall Street - and all of America by proxy - through this bailout. Of course, once it was passed with additional tax breaks (Many of them aimed at the wealthy, in the Republicans' favor, and ultimately pushing more of the $700+ billion burden onto the shoulders of lower class Americans and the few remaining members of the middle class. (By which I DO actually mean the real middle class, as opposed to McCain and Palin's definition of "main street" - "rich, but not millionaire-rich.") McCain then went on to talk about the bailout on TV following its passing and came off rather schizophrenic - not unlike Gollum from Lord of the Rings, as was observed on the Daily Show - in his praising the bailout, and yet also reviling it.) With bailout money being wasted already (Why hello there, AIG.), and the bailout not coming with the vastly improved regulation it should have (And McCain himself has proudly tried to paint himself as a champion of deregulation in the past - for all his posturing on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac regulation attempts and the attacks on Democrats with it, they've tried to increase regulation before themselves and he's fought against it.), we're only going to continue to encourage this sort of activity and economic history will repeat. And not to the average citizen's benefit, since the bailout does little for most of us, when we need other help with all sorts of additional problems. (And after this bailout - which won't do anything to fix the financial industry's fundamental problems - McCain's domestic solution is to simply have the country bankrupt itself further by buying up bad mortgages at the tax payer's expense. Again, this same guy talks about cutting "pork barrel" spending, when he and Palin don't have a track record of that at all anyway - they go after perceived Democrat "pork barrel spending." Republican? Not so much. And of course, this same McCain has proposed we effectively freeze putting taxpayers' dollars into anything but the military and avoidable future wars he intends to start. Frankly, it's a good thing for both Americans and the world that chances of a McCain victory grow slimmer by the day.)

McCain pretty much defined the first debate by his refusal to look at or acknowledge Obama - despite Obama's efforts to engage McCain directly, as per moderator Jim Lehrer's request. He gave off the impression of being a grumpy old man who gave often deceitful answers - alongside the typical non-answers to - to various debate questions, and came off very arrogantly throughout. His big theme? "Obama doesn't understand." He made this claim many a time that night. Did he follow up that statement with anything that showed he understood the issues he was talking about? Of course not. (Especially in regards to Iraq, in which he seems to be living in a different reality from the rest of the world. There's no "war," there's no "honor and dignity." There's no "victory." There was an invasion. There's an occupation. There's lots of violence, dead insurgents, and dead civilians. And there's a massive part of the population now completely displaced. This is not "winning a war." (Nor "the surge working!") But our bitter old Vietnam vet doesn't get that. We got rid of Hussein, sure, but at a criminal cost. A ridiculous number of innocent men, women, and children have died as a result of our illegal invasion - as have many of our own soldiers who shouldn't have had to. And those who didn't? Still come home as screwed up as anyone else by Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. And McCain? He's practically the poster boy PTSD presidential candidate.) Throughout the debate, Obama remained calm and collected, certainly coming off far more suited for the office than McCain, who at several points looked ready to start throwing punches.

In the second, just a couple of days ago, McCain went on to claim that he "knew" how to fix the economy, all the crises we're facing now, "win the war," and how to get Osama Bin Laden - as though it were that easy and he was just keeping his secret perfect solutions quiet all along. Did he share any of these solutions? Of course not. He just spouted further conjecture - as that's about all they've got this election, as low as they're sinking and as desperate as they're getting - but couldn't bring out any working concrete plans to accomplish what he claimed - the facts aren't on the Republicans' side this time, after all, so they've avoided those like the plague in the debates. It all just amounts to telling us that George W. Bush was right, and that continuing his policies - while slapping even worse ones on top of them - would change things and make them better. Americans aren't that stupid. (Most of us, anyway - and certainly not as many of us after these two terms of the George W. Bush presidency.) Obama was right to call out McCain's attempt to say he "didn't understand" the "war" in the debate - strongly countering it with his simply not understanding why we went to war with a nation that had nothing to do with the events of September 11th in the first place. Just as he was in calling McCain on his little "Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" "joke," which even McCain couldn't defend. There's no excuse for saying something like that when running for president - these are people's lives, after all, and the Iranian people? Are not Ahmadinejad. Just as the Iraqi people were and are not Saddam Hussein. For all the bullshit talk of a "culture of life" in the Republican party (Essentially placing unborn fetuses and fertilized eggs above actual grown, living women and girls in terms of rights and protections - unwanted fetuses and fertilized eggs, no less. Bringing an unwanted child into the world is one of the cruelest things a human being can do - even worse is taking away someone's right to choose not to and attempt to force the birth of said children. (Especially given that banning abortion does not stop it or decrease its rate of occurrence, it simply raises the risk, turns it into a criminal act, and becomes quite likely to result in the mother's death. The "pro-life" community couldn't care less about the continued lives of pregnant women. They simply self-righteously believe all unwanted children should be forced to be born into this world. And that they're of the superior moral fiber to dictate this to others.)) they place no real value on the lives of ordinary people in other nations.

Even with McCain being hyped up by the media as being "in his element" and "assured victory" in tuesday's town hall meeting style debate, Obama defeated him handily. He didn't make underhanded jokes like McCain - the future of this country is no joke, especially in the unstable time we're living in - and he didn't falter under outright lies and distortions told throughout the debate. (As his ads are now full of - they're down to fear mongering. They keep asking us, "Who is Barack Obama?" With Obama and his family having been publicly vetted for the presidency for 20 months now, we know well who he is. The real question Americans want answered? "Who the fuck is Sarah Palin?" From the looks of things, she's a massive crook who doesn't take her job seriously, believes everyone should keep their rape and incest babies, and thinks she can win us over with smarmy winks and patronizing "folksy" speech. Like we're voting for who should organize a local bake sale instead of who should occupy the second highest office in the nation with the first occupied by our oldest potential president - and one far more at risk of death in office than most.) Likewise, Obama was victorious in the first debate as well, holding his own under pressure far better than McCain, and giving us far more concrete answers, speaking of policy that would actually help this nation start to pull itself out of the Republican neo-conservative sinkhole it's been drowning in for years now.

McCain and Palin can't win on issues. They know this. So this is what it's come to. Stepping up the lies, stepping up the distortions, spitting on the American people and democracy itself in their desperation. Are they fond of the freedom of the press? Oh no, of course not. If the media dares to report anything that doesn't make the Republicans look good, accusations of a horrific left-wing bias fly. This same media is afraid to report, on the whole, that the Democrats have been winning the debates this year. It's never worse than a tie for the Republicans, as if they insinuate that they didn't at least tie, the mud comes flying. The mainstream media is broken and controlled by corporate interests, sure - but their bias is anything but left-wing, let alone "liberal." Freedom of the press is crucial in order to maintain an informed populace. An intelligent, informed populace is necessary for democracy to sustain itself. The conservatives have strangled the freedom of the press and fostered a climate of anti-intellectualism in this nation - when someone like Sarah Palin is a serious potential vice president, when in America, being intelligent is a bad thing and only met with reactions of "You think you're better than me?! I'm better than you because I'm ignorant and proud of it! And I want someone just like me in power!" we're in deep, deep shit as a nation. If you read that article, who do we see Palin and the McCain campaign calling on and riling up? Bigots. There was blatant, open racism present at that Ft. Myers rally in Florida - both in who was targeted in the harassment of the press and reactions to the very dangerous accusations the campaign is throwing in attempting to link Obama to terrorism. (When it says something - especially in that capacity - if William Ayers was the best skeleton they could come up with in Obama's closet. An acquaintance, no less.) Yes, these people are among the demographics this campaign represents - to America's racists, a victory over African Americans. And no doubt in their hopes and dreams, steps towards the days they've dreamed of when the racism this nation still bubbles with becomes something to acceptably express openly as simply one's "opinion," unquestionable by others - held in esteem like politics and religion. (Though mostly if you're conservative and love you some of that Jesus guy - in the sense that the Jesus-dude totally loves tax cuts for the rich, drives a Hummer, and wasn't in any capacity Jewish.) These are just some of the many reasons why we can't afford a McCain/Palin victory - and why they're already well on their way to a loss. (Potentially by a relative landslide if things keep heading in the direction they are.)

The Biden/Palin vice presidential debate's barely worth noting in how one-sided it was. Palin had a set of talking points on note cards to stick to - she was incoherent and spouted a bunch of insulting "folksy" bullshit whenever she went off her script, and openly admitted from the beginning when Gwen Ifill opened the debate that she had no intention of answering the questions so much as simply saying what she was sent there to say. This is - again - insulting both to the intelligence of Americans, but to the very notion of functioning democracy as a whole. A surefire sign of how far the Republican party as sunk, and how badly we need to get these ridiculously far right conservatives out of power and start shifting back towards the center as a nation - perhaps even someday get enough of a left-wing voice in the government to make some progress, maybe legislate some additional protection for abortion rights, get the minimum wage up to a living wage, allow same sex couples to marry, actually start restructuring our mixed economy so that its more socialistic elements favor the common man and workers instead of corporate interests, perhaps even get off oil entirely and switch over to alternative energy - solar and wind in particular, things that don't wreck the planet - y'know, sane stuff like much of the rest of the world has been focusing on that we politicize to death and call a "bunch of liberal hippie tree-hugging bullshit" here in America. (Since there's no "truth," it's all just partisan bickering with no meaningful political exchange or discourse. I'd say we're like a bunch of squabbling monkeys, but frankly, that'd be giving us too much credit - monkeys deserve more respect than that.) While Palin was busy making "maverick" into a synonym for "neo-con sycophant" and trying to convince America that she's from "main street" in being part of the McCain campaign's ridiculous definition of "middle class," Biden reminded us who had far more common roots - as both he and Obama did - and easily countered everything she said. She didn't actually debate him at all, as that would've entailed going off-script, so she simply continued to regurgitate talking points, while helping to encourage the conservative media to accuse him of "focusing too much on the past," when the reality of things is that if we don't, we're never going to learn from the past. And McCain and Palin are together promising four more years of George W. Bush policies and worse. The past is no friend to neo-conservatives. Reagan's much-beloved "trickle down" economic policies (Reaganomics!) are demonstrably faulty and only lead to increased stratification as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. And Teddy Roosevelt? While he gets called on and praised too, he was an outright progressive compared to today's Republicans.

Anyway, thus concludes my first set of rambling on the debates and the disgusting conduct on the right as we barrel towards election day. Stay tuned for more politically charged (Hopefully more humorous, rather than just attempted bitingly writing, as there's been a shortage of that in here in recent months, I know.) posts! As well as hopefully some other posts on a variety of subjects again like once drew more readers in the past, haha. (And yes, additional video gaming ones are inevitable as well. I'm actually involved in a game project now that will eventually be released on a smaller platform as a pay download, which I'll start promoting more in time when it nears release - it's still in the relatively early stages of design at this point. But yes, I will indeed soon enough be not only a professional published writer (Hopefully that story will go up on the Raleigh Quarterly site with the second issue sometime this month.), but someone who has done actual writing and design work in the video game industry as well! Huzzah!)

*By "reality," I do in fact mean actual reality, as in the world around us, as opposed to the poorly constructed realities inhabited by the crowd that considers An American Carol to be an "A+" work of "truth-filled" cinema, those who believe there's some deep dark "liberal agenda" trying to destroy them personally by pointing out that bigotry really isn't cool, and in many of my own peers' cases, simply "turned Republican because I can't stand listening to those goddamn lib'rulz." (These individuals are the sorts we've also seen trying to argue that the Democratic party is full of socialists and communists when the party is, on the whole, very much center-right, as opposed to where the Republicans are now - dangerously far right. As a result, are we making actual progress in this nation? Of course not.)

TV Season 2008-2009: The Choking Stench of Entertainment

Yes, a year has indeed passed already, and it's that time again! Ramblings about things to view on your moving picture box for the next eight months to properly numb your brain! Clearly, this is just what you come to this blog for - am I right, or am I right? (I'm never wrong.)

Let's get right to it, shall we?

NBC
Heroes - Mondays @ 9 PM - The big Heroes season 3 premiere was earlier this week, and the overall theme of the first two episodes? "Fuck you, season 2!" Series creator Tim Kring's already admitted that season 2 was lackluster at best, and terrible in its worst moments. The season opened with lots of major twists and turns and plenty of action and mystery, starting up a new series of story arcs with powerless characters starting to gain powers, some seriously convoluted screwing with the timeline, and an assortment of villains escaping while a previous villain returns to prominence in Sylar's regaining his powers and picking up some even deadlier new ones. (Not to mention the abrupt death of an antagonist from last season as well.) The season's full of promise so far, and considering how good season 1 was, hopefully Kring and company are up to the task of delivering, after how hackneyed season 2'd been.

Chuck - Mondays @ 8 PM starting September 29th - This one turned out to be a real surprise favorite from last season. (It was hard to know what to make of it from the commercials, and I missed the pilot episode (Still haven't caught it yet.), but I watched all of season 1 from episode 2 onwards, and got hooked quickly.) The show's goofy and fun, sort of like a comical postmodern play on old spy serials. The writing's consistently fairly light - though it delves into melodrama here and there, it never gets too heavy-handed - and the strong cast plays their roles well. Not deep television by any stretch, but it's a hell of a lot of fun, and I'm really looking forward to season 2. (The couple of new episodes they aired after the writer's strike that'd been written beforehand were a nice little appetizer half a year ago.)

The Office - Thursdays @ 9 PM - The 5th season premiered in these past 24 hours, and it's off to a strong start as well. Amy Ryan's been a strong addition to the cast in her first two episodes so far. She's got definite chemistry with the rest of the cast. The premiere brought an interesting return for Ryan after his rather quick release from prison, the usual Jim/Pam relationship storyline got some strong advancement in the premiere, and the Dwight/Angela/Andy love triangle only got more amusingly complicated. Even poor Toby got a brief appearance. More of the usual strong writing, acting, and great dry, deadpan humor. I'm optimistic about this season, as usual.

ABC
Pushing Daisies - Wednesdays @ 8 PM starting October 1st - Season 2 of Bryan Fuller's (Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls) current series kicks off in less than a week now, following the first season having been pared down to 9 episodes from the planned 20 as a result of the WGA strike. Given that the show established itself a one of the freshest, best television programs on the air in its relatively short run last year, I'm naturally really looking forward to the premiere. Sharp writing, great cast, interesting plotlines and mysteries with lots of humor and interesting visuals from week to week - something to look forward to the return of. With any luck, the series will continue its popularity and last far longer than any other Fuller series to date.

FOX
Family Guy - Sundays @ 9 PM starting September 28th - Seth MacFarlane's hit animated series'll be going into its 8th season, I believe, this coming Sunday. More of the usual inane cutaways, more of the general absurdity you either love or hate. I've been enjoying the show since it first premiered when I was back in high school and it still aired back-to-back with That '70s Show in the early days. With all sorts of ridiculous plotlines and a planned season ending Empire Strikes Back episode, I'm looking forward to Family Guy's return. It'll be interesting to see what happens with the Cleveland spinoff, though, seeing as Cleveland's leaving the regular cast as of this coming season.

American Dad - Sundays @ 9 PM, not sure when the premiere is - If you like Family Guy, you probably like American Dad too. They're basically two shows in the same vein, with American Dad being more politically oriented. They're different enough overall to both be worth watching if you're one who enjoys animated comedy.

FX
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia - Thursdays @ 10 PM - Sunny started its 4th season just over a week ago now, with four episodes having aired so far. Between cannibalism, waterboarding, the gas crisis, Youtube viral videos, reality TV, Green Man, and even more attempts to fuck the Waitress, the season's off to a strong start, still being one of the darkest, funniest shows on television. And it's only poised to get stronger, with plans for another Night Man/Day Man episode, amongst others, ahead.

Comedy Central
Chocolate News - Wednesdays @ 10:30 starting October 15th - Following Dave Chappelle (The loss of who is one of the biggest Comedy Central's suffered in recent yeras.) and Carlos Mencia, David Alan Grier's got his own new variety sketch comedy show premiering in less than a month now. Grier can certainly be funny, so it'll be interesting to see how it turns out.

Just Finished/In Reruns
Weeds - Showtime - Season 4 of Weeds just finished on Showtime recently, I believe. So for those with the channel, they'll no doubt be reairing it frequently for a while yet. As for myself, I'm stuck waiting until it hits DVD next year. (I really wish they'd get the sets out sooner after the seasons finish airing.)

Code Monkeys - G4 - The second season finished a few weeks ago, and overall, felt like it went by far more quickly than the first season. (Though it started earlier in the summer as well.) As usual, it was absolutely base and crass, as humor goes, but full of amusing classic video game references and parodies, with a bit of modern stuff thrown in, so if you're a gamer geek, it's worth watching.

No Reservations - Travel Channel - The latest season (I have no idea how many they're up to now) of chef Tony Bourdain's exploits concluded on Labor Day earlier this month, and he traveled all over the globe as usual, providing some interesting looks at different cultures and peoples - along with their food, naturally. The Saudi Arabia episode was especially interesting. Well worth catching in the Travel Channel's reairs.

Midseason Returns/Replacements
Battlestar Galactica - The Sci-Fi Channel - At some point in early 2009, BSG is slated to return to the airwaves for its final half-season, resolving everything the fans've been waiting for and answering our questions following their dramatic arrival at Earth months ago. We haven't seen the last of those frackin' toasters yet. In the meantime, it looks like we may be seeing a second TV movie later this year. (Though looking at the IMDB, The Plan may not actually be airing until 2009. And there may possibly be two more TV movies following the series' conclusion.)

Reaper - CW - CW surprisingly ended up picking up Reaper for a second season as a mid-season replacement. Odds are, it probably won't last beyond that, and if they keep that in mind, hopefully the creators will write the season in such a way that it'd wrap up to give the show a good ending. Season 1 was a mixed bag, starting out as a fun weekly horror comedy romp with a bit of a Ghostbusters feel to it, then gradually turned into a semi-tedious monster of the week show with a likable cast. The second half of the season that aired in earlier 2008, however, took the show in much better directions as the characters started getting developed more and a lot more interesting subplots arose around Sam's identity as a reaper and confidant to the Devil, along with a demon uprising in an effort to seal up the Devil. If they continue with that kind of stronger writing momentum that carried them through the end of the season, season 2 could be very good, as nerdy comedy series with a supernatural current go. Otherwise, as far as I'm concerned, CW has no other worthwhile original programming. (At least, none that interests me.)

Scrubs - ABC - Yes, Scrubs is returning for an 8th season after jumping networks to ABC now. Many of season 7's episodes that were planned never ended up being finished or airing, and the season even ended out of order, with the Princess Bride style fantasy episode originally taking place prior to Dr. Kelso's departure, while the later episodes in the season focused on Kelso's retirement and Dr. Cox's becoming the Chief of Medicine. There's some definite unpleasant twists, though. Season 8 won't be the end of the show as it should be - though fans should probably consider it the final canon season. Series creator Bill Lawrence is cursed. He and Michael J. Fox leave Spin City and ABC decides to keep it going for another couple of seasons with some recasting including Charlie Sheen as the lead. The ratings plummet and the show stops being worth watching. Now? Just when you'd think he'd have escaped that in Scrubs having been an NBC series for most of its run, ABC has announced intentions to capitalize on their investment and keep the show going beyond season 8. So it's going to get a planned essential series ending with JD leaving the hospital - Zach Braff is leaving the cast - but then Bill Lawrence is leaving as well, so we'll likely see a season or two of what they did to Spin City. Judy Reyes has confirmed that she won't be sticking around either, and without JD or Carla around, Donald Faison's character, Turk, will lose rather critical pillars in the writing. Sure, they'll still have him, Elliot (Sarah Chalke), and Dr. Cox (John C. McGinley) along with assorted supporting characters. But without the lead, another of the main cast, and the creator? I'm getting nothing but bad vibes as to where Scrubs is going after this next season.

Dollhouse - Years after Fox treated Firefly rather poorly and it still managed to garner a devoted - and much deserved - fanbase, and following the release of Serenity, Joss Whedon returns with a new science fiction series starring Eliza Dushku (Tru Calling), with Tahmoh Penikett (Helo on BSG) in the supporting cast. And where's it airing? You guessed it - Fox. Somehow, I have a bad feeling that they're going to slap it into a terrible time slot - like they did Wonderfalls and Firefly - and barely advertise it, then cancel it as soon as they come up with a good excuse. A shame, too, considering that the premise - centered around frequently mind-wiped humans with altered DNA dealing with false memories in an unusual society - is really interesting. It premieres in January, anyway, so I plan on watching it then, as a fairly new Whedon fan, having only seen Firefly on DVD, and never having really gotten into Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Angel.

Hard to Say
Virtuality - Ronald D. Moore, one of the guys behind the Battlestar Galactica revival, has a new virtual reality-based science fiction series in the works now, with a pilot produced at this point, I believe. No idea if it'll have a shot at being picked up, but it'll be interesting to see if it does, and if it'll fare any better than last fall's Bionic Woman, which failed on numerous levels, reportedly because NBC execs kept messing with it and didn't let the show find an audience or voice of its own. You never really got to know or care about anybody in the cast or get a feel for what was going on from week to week - Katee Sackhoff was the best thing about that revival.

Caprica - Still also only in its pilot phase, as far as I know, and also produced by Moore, this planned Battlestar Galactica revival spinoff set 50 years prior to the Cylons' genocide upon the colonies could potentially be worth watching if made into a full series.

And if you're not much of a TV watcher? Hey, at least the autumnal equinox has come and gone, so the days will only get shorter, the air cooler and crisper, and the leaves are soon to turn. (Unless you're in the southern hemisphere, anyway.) The change of seasons is certainly a good thing.

Let's Reading!

Yeah, so I said I intended to write another entry or two earlier this month prior to the Raleigh Quarterly's next issue went up with my short story. Technically, their fall issue isn't up yet, anyway, but I was focused on other things as usual. (Project 27 Days has 20 of its 28 chapters complete now, and these last 8 are already mostly complete, so I'm still on schedule to hopefully finish by the end of this month, in time to shift focus to grad school applications and an agent hunt in October.)

I'm here now, anyway, for whatever it counts. In focusing on my literary work, I've been running low on good blogging ideas as usual for a while - not having been intending to swamp you with political or even more video gaming entries. (Though more of both are certainly coming later this year.) It'd be nice to appeal to those who've come for some of the other categories I haven't blogged about in ages, but I'm still blanking great odd comedy ideas for many of these things at this point. Hopefully I'll get to some more later this fall as I shift back to focusing on blogging more once the novel's finished.

For now?

As a soon-to-be-published new author and aspiring novelist about to finish his first novel, I haven't done any "what I've read lately" sorts of posts. So I figure it's about time I did so.

This time?

The books I've read this year at a glance, with some general thoughts and commentary. Exciting, no? Of course it is.

Practical Demonkeeping by Christopher Moore. This was Christopher Moore's debut novel, first published back in 1992. Practical Demonkeeping tells the story of a young man named Travis who stopped aging back in the earlier 1900s after accidentally summoning a giant lizard demon from hell named Catch to be his servant, gaining effective immortality in the process. The story follows Travis and Catch's arrival in the fictitious Californian town of Pine Cove - along with the lives of numerous characters there - as Catch begins wreaking havoc while Travis continues for his search for a means to get rid of the demon. As a result, of course, the residents of Pine Cove's lives are turned upside down. It's a very funny, light read, and a solid introduction to Moore's writing. It might be a little over the top ridiculous for some, but it's well worth reading, and certainly great in how it pokes fun at supernatural thrillers that take themselves far too seriously - as Moore's works often do. He's certainly a highly enjoyable author worth keeping an eye on, someone to read if you're looking to laugh.

After Dark by Haruki Murakami. After Dark focuses on the unusual events that unfold over a single Tokyo night between two sisters. The elder, Eri, sleeps through the night while being drawn into menacing and surreal circumstances, leaving the reader as a sort of unusual second person unidentified disembodied figure simply observing the ordeal she undergoes. (It's hard to describe it beyond that without dropping any spoilers. Given that this is Murakami we're talking about here, if you're familiar with him, you can imagine how strange it is.) The younger, Mari, spends the night reading in a Denny's and finds herself interrupted repeatedly by an old acquaintance, a battered Chinese prostitute, and a tough woman who ran an area love hotel. While she interacts with these characters, something sinister quietly unfolds in the background. Frankly, this one isn't one of Murakami's stronger works for many reasons. His usual recurring themes of alienation and loneliness are present, but in many ways, it's a lighter story than he usually tells - despite the darker undercurrents. A great deal of the background events are never explained and many things don't completely add up. You're left with far more questions than answers, and the story does feel somewhat incomplete as a result. The ending is effective, however, and the night is full of wonderment and incredible atmosphere. The interactions between Mari and the other characters carry the book, with all the brilliant, enjoyable conversation you'd expect from Murakami. Overall, while it won't knock your socks off like you'd expect from one of his novels, it'll keep you thinking, and leave you with a lot of pleasant feelings. It's well worth reading, as you'll greatly enjoy the time you spend with these characters, as short as the novel itself is. Quality magic realism, as Murakami has produced much of. Murakami's still easily one of my favorite authors.

The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut. An author known for his dark, comical stories, Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan is no different, and certainly a very memorable work of literature, both as a work of science fiction and social commentary. The book tells the story of Malachi Constant, an extraordinarily lucky bastard living his life hedonistically, enjoying his riches and fame. After a meeting with the chronosynclastic infundibulated (A rather difficult to explain absurd phenomenon that keeps Rumfoord and his dog traveling back and forth across space.) Winston Niles Rumfoord, who forecasts a trip across the galaxy for Constant, ending with him married to Rumfoord's wife on Titan, Constant's life falls apart. Soon enough, he finds himself somewhere else, as someone else, and begins a journey to find himself again as he's trained to fight on the Martian side in an upcoming invasion of Earth. To say anymore beyond that would be to drop too many spoilers, of course, but the story only gets stranger and more enthralling from there. As usual in Vonnegut's work, Constant's tale is full of kindness towards and criticism of humanity. A sort of idealistic cynicism still appreciating the beauty of the world and people amidst their innumerable uglinesses, all handled with a sense of humor. Funny, heartfelt, and both warm and cold, The Sirens of Titan says a great deal about people, and about life's many ironies and largely accidental nature. There are good ideas about love within the plot as well, and the meaning of life itself. Vonnegut's one of the few authors who could tackle issues such as these and come away with something so powerful and affecting, all while wrapping these ideas and themes up in a relatively pulp sci-fi core plot outline. A highly recommended read.

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams. When people think Douglas Adams, they usually tend to think of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Comparatively one of his lesser known series, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is a strong start to Dirk Gently's comical adventures. Quite dark at times, amidst the absurdity, the story focuses on the abrupt murder of the president of an up and comic software company, Gordon Way, in the middle of the night. The earlier half of the book focuses largely on his demise, a mysterious time-traveler, and his employee Richard MacDuff's (The story's main protagonist) interactions with various people, including an old college professor and his girlfriend, Way's sister Susan. Seemingly unrelated events begin to connect as holistic detective Dirk Gently himself shows up halfway through the story and he and Richard embark on a wild journey to unravel the unlikely series of events behind the death of Gordon Way. And as you'd expect from Adams, it's a compelling, absurd, and highly enjoyable literary romp. I actually hadn't read any of Adams' works since I read the first Hitchhikers' Guide book when I was a kid (I hope to reread it eventually, along with the rest of the series, as I'd no doubt appreciate them even more now as an adult.), and at first, I was taken aback by the relatively slow pacing of the plot and the lack of clear interconnection between the events in the earlier half of the book, leaving me rather unsure of what to make of the story at that point. But once Gently showed up and things began to click together, the book became near-impossible to put down. If you're familiar with Adams' work - as all fans of science fiction and absurdist lit should be - you know this is one not to miss. I picked up the sequel, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul recently as well, so I should be reading that soon enough.

The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami. I just finished this collection of 17 Murakami short stories the other day. They're all varied in length, some a good 30-40some pages, others only a handful or two. An eclectic mix overall, some more humorous, some more dramatic, and some just absurd, the collection's a good sampling of enjoyable Murakami stories that'd be a solid introduction for anyone new to his work, an excellent way to get a feel for the way he writes, his sorts of characters and stories. "Sleep" reminded me a bit of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper," which I read a couple of years ago in a Politics and Culture in Literature course I took in my last year of college. Both dealt with mental illness in focal female characters - in the case of Murakami's "Sleep," telling the story of a housewife who stops sleeping and begins to convince herself she no longer needs to sleep, as she spirals downwards. "The Dancing Dwarf" tells a surreal - and at times menacing - story of a dwarf that appears in an elephant factory worker's dreams that takes some horrifying turns by its conclusion. "A Slow Boat to China" tells several stories of a single character's cross-cultural experiences in interacting with Chinese people - an especially interesting read if you're aware of the history of Japan's interactions with the other cultures of Asia. And these are but a few of the odd tales that make up The Elephant Vanishes.

I'm not sure what I'm going to read next, but I'm thinking I'll probably sit down with Tom Robbins' Villa Incognito, the last remaining novel from those I got for Xmas last year. Of his works, I've only read his excellent Skinny Legs and All before. (Which was also part of the Politics and Culture in Literature course curriculum. It was a thoroughly enjoyable course, to say the least, full of good literature, movies, and discussion.)

At any rate, not a dud to be found in this batch of books. They're all well worth reading, and personally highly recommended it. I'll no doubt do more of these entries in the future discussing other books I've read and will have read by then as well. For those of you looking for good book recommendations, I hope this proved to be of some help to you, anyway. And here's to writing more entries of substance in here soon.

Just Wanna do Something Special for All the Ladies in the World

I let other things distract me again, but I'm back. Sorry, I was too cheap to pick you up any souvenirs again.

But now that I'm back, I suppose I should go ahead and first note that I did indeed somehow manage to win that "Teach Steve to Read" contest over at The Raleigh Quarterly, so that short story will be hitting the internet sometime in September when their second issue goes up. I'll be sure to note that again here when the day comes. (Hopefully I'll manage a good entry or two here before then, anyway.) Having been expecting to only finally become a published author for the first time sometime in 2009 at the soonest with my first novel - assuming I have any luck at all in finding an agent and publisher, anyway - this comes as a pretty huge surprise to me. And at this point, frankly, I'm still just trying to process the idea that I'm finally going to be published - going from dreaming to an actual literary accomplishment in reality such as this, however minor, is one hell of a step forward.

Anyway, onwards to the main focus of this entry. It's time to get political! Because I know you all haven't had nearly enough politics crammed down your throat in the past year and a half already, as America's kept its focus on getting rid of Bush - and it's impossible not to blame them - with enough eagerness to kill at least several small children if not expressed in appropriately reserved quantities.

The "liberal media," of course, was completely focused on the Democratic National Convention this past week, helping to deliver the important message that the progressive wing of politics is finally getting their act together, uniting as one, and preparing to undo the damages of eight years of George W. Bush, no matter what it takes.

Oh, wait, that's actually the last narrative the media was interested in telling. The convention opened with its first two nights headlined by (hopefully) future first lady Michelle Obama and former first lady/presidential bidder Hillary Clinton. Michelle Obama did an excellent job painting more of a picture of Obama's family life for America - something we're obsessed with as a nation, for some reason, since we want our politicians to be paragons of morality, living the kind of life that might give Normal Rockwell diabetes.

(Thus, the conservatives' excessive exuberance in jumping on John Edwards over his own personal scandal just weeks ago. I've met Edwards before, and he's certainly a likable enough guy, who's made a point of standing for some important things politically. While I do think he's been particularly foolish in hiding his infidelity from the public (When even New York Governor David Paterson has been open and honest about his own past extramarital affairs, no doubt especially important in his position after the scandal that brought down Eliot Spitzer earlier this year.), I don't think it's anything that reflects on him as a politician. He wasn't a spectacular senator for North Carolina - though I'd take someone like him over Elizabeth Dole or Richard Burr any day, both of them having been little more than mindless cogs in the congressional Bush administration enabling mechanism, and thus wholly unrepresentative of North Carolinians and Americans alike - but a scandal like this doesn't take away from his own political passions. Nobody goes out of their way to address the issue of poverty like that unless they truly care about it - poverty's not exactly a subject that has a history of winning votes in recent decades, even from the impoverished. The Bush policies of tax cuts for America's richest, shifting the tax burden back onto the middle and lower classes, actually worked better - simply because the very idea of a tax cut is winning, while talk of a tax increase (No matter who it's for, and the lower and middle classes are generally not the focus of tax increases.) can be a deathblow. The American people are not overly fond of voting with their brains, unfortunately - which also played a part in Bush's 2000 and 2004 victories. But in the end, the Republicans don't have a leg to stand on in criticizing a Democrat for infidelity - their own sex-related scandals, which we tend to see far more of, are often worse, looking at Larry Craig and Mark Foley in recent years in particular. And we've certainly seen Democrats continue on after personal scandals and do further good for America - looking at Bill Clinton in the last decade, and even further back, across Ted Kennedy's political career.)

Nonetheless, Michelle Obama reminded us that no matter how much the McCain campaign would like to disconnect Obama from ordinary people in Americans' minds (And let's be honest, how many "ordinary" people ever manage to become a presidential candidate, let alone make it anywhere of note in politics? Aside from the great Charles Doty, anyway.), he still has a background not so different from most of us, he's still a husband and a father, and as human as any of us. Michelle Obama also showed through her words - as she has through her public appearances in general throughout the campaign - her intelligence and strength as a feministic figure, and that she'd be a far better and more interesting first lady than our other main option. (And certainly more so than Laura Bush, rarely seen in public, and virtually never making any statements worth noting or reacting to. Keeping their women down, so to speak, seems to be something of a trend amongst the more conservative crowd - Cindy McCain certainly seems nothing more than a trophy wife as well. But then, the Republican party is noted for their consistency in more misogynistic political policies, and a general track record of oppression of the fairer sex.) After the 8 years of Laura Bush following Hillary Clinton, who herself has been a strong feministic figure as well, Michelle Obama is certainly someone we could be proud to have living in the White House as well.

Hillary Clinton went on to give the sort of strong speech the party - and America - needed to hear from her as well. You could get a sense enough of that she still would have preferred to have been the nominee herself, but she never made a point of stating or rubbing that fact in. She threw her full support behind Obama and party unity, behind progress and all the fields in which we need to focus on making progress and reforms after eight years of Bush and Republican regression. She outright slammed the idea of a McCain presidency and effectively encouraged her voters to get behind Obama, with the similar political stances they've had, given what an incredible mistake voting for McCain out of bitterness would be. And after all that, on wednesday, Hillary herself announced Obama as the party's official presidential candidate following the tallying of the delegates' votes. Another strong act in the name of party unification.

Of course, as the Daily Show and Colbert Report spent the week making light of, the media was having none of that. The only story the so-called "liberal media" was interested in telling was a tale of a party bitterly divided against itself, with an insurmountable chasm between Hillary Clinton and Obama supporters that would invariably assure a John McCain victory by a landslide in November. The media was far more interested in telling the narrative they'd prefer to be reality - that they'd prefer Americans buy into. Along, of course, with the usual insinuations that there must be no way America would be ready for its first African American president, and that the very notion of change - both in that regard and many others - would be too much. But if there's one thing America needs now more than anything else, it's positive, progressive change - and lots of it. If we continue down the current path, as a McCain presidency would take us, our future as a nation is grim. We'd start even more unjust wars (Though if you think on it much, there is almost never any such thing as a just war.), our economy would collapse, and we'd watch even more civil rights simply evaporate. Together, George W. Bush and John McCain represent a wholly self-destructive conservative nation where citizens' freedoms are limited and we exist in a constant state of war - amongst the worst things people could represent in both politics and humanity, and certainly going against the very spirit in which this nation was first founded. (As much hypocrisy as we had within the founding fathers.)

Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard in particular showed himself to be as much of a predictable conservative robot as he's always been in his televised commentary on female Obama and Clinton's speeches, simply blankly characterizing them as "generic." He gave Stephen Colbert some good material to satirize in and of that, being that he's amongst the many conservative pundits who will never even consider a kind - let alone honest - word about someone they don't agree with politically. (While even the Democrats have been acknowledging that you can't deny McCain's military service, no one beyond General Wesley Clark seems to have had the guts to publicly note that said military service does not actually make him at all qualified for the presidency. And while I've mocked him plenty himself, Mike Huckabee praised Obama for breaking the color barrier in the presidential race on the Colbert Report the other night, while also admitting that he still didn't agree with Obama on anything otherwise.) For a newspaper editor, Kristol doesn't exactly come off as overly verbose. Perhaps that's a testament to the extent of his conservativism, however, in demonstrating that he's too conservative to maintain and utilize much in the way of a varied vocabulary. But then again, no matter what Obama and Clinton said in their speeches those first few days, he would have found something negative to say about them. And though that's nothing to the conservatives' advantage in the grand scheme of American politics, even without Hillary as the presidential candidate or running mate, women are still taking center stage in this year's election.

Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and John Kerry all spoke over the rest of the week, delivering great speeches about where we need to go and what we need to do politically. (Kerry in particular having shown remarkable improvement in the accessibility of his public speaking over 2004.) Dennis Kucinich issued a great wake up call to America in his impassioned address - slightly cheesy in concept, but brilliant in all the truths he told. (And only when you've been a candidate and figure with no real shot at the White House, like Kucinich has, do you truly tend to have the freedom to speak the absolute truth about matters as he does.) And on thursday, prior to Obama's big acceptance speech, Al Gore gave a 15 minute speech addressing a variety of political issues, eight years of Bush, and wholeheartedly endorsing Obama, rallying the crowd and reminding America well what could have been - had we and the system not failed, in the true election results in 2000 being suppressed and George W. Bush taking office - and that he would've been a far better president than Bush ever was. We wouldn't have invaded Iraq, we would have kept our response to 9/11 to focusing on the perpetrators instead of entering this insane proclamation of endless war, we would have focused on going green as a nation actually properly responding to Global Warming, we'd be seriously working on implementing alternative energy plans in breaking our addiction to and dependence on oil, and our civil rights wouldn't be under attack - women being able to breathe more easily in not worrying about someone overturning Roe v. Wade one day or another, or trying to redefine various forms of birth control as abortion to further a literally dangerous regressive line of political thought.

Largely thanks to the ambitions of Hillary Clinton, women are one of the most critically important demographics in this year's election. But there's been a good bit of blowback as a result of Hillary's being neither the candidate nor his running mate. Personally, I suppose Barack Obama's choice in Joe Biden. In just about every way, Biden's strengths complement Obama's personal weaknesses as a candidate - which he's acknowledged in this choice. And as such, he's a far better running mate not only for Obama, but for America as a whole than Hillary would have been - even if Hillary would have likely guaranteed her supporters' votes. (As said votes should be guaranteed already between Hillary's supporting Obama herself now, as well as their politics largely representing the same things as Hillary's.) Joe Biden is an open feminist, who supports women's right to choose, as well as efforts to bring about true equality across the nation. As such, he's earned the support of feminist organizations as a vice president who would look out for women's interests in the White House while serving as an excellent adviser to Obama - filling the Vice Presidential role far better than Hillary likely would have, as Biden himself is certainly someone who would've made a great president too, had he done better in the primaries.

The McCain campaign, on the other hand, has been taking the low road rather consistently for some time now. One day - and many others - they try to use music by groups that in no way support him or his politics as their campaign song (And now we've got Jackson Browne actually suing the campaign for their use of one of his songs.). Then they try to sling mud the next, trying to paint Obama as nothing more than a substance-free celebrity, actually going as far as to try to compare him directly to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. (Not to mention that the Obama campaign actually had to go out of their way to create a website to dispel negative myths about the man.) Of course, Hilton herself ended up releasing a response to this at Funny or Die, which did a pretty decent job mocking McCain, with writing by Adam McKay. (Who wrote and directed Anchorman, Talladega Nights, and Step Brothers.) McCain plays on Americans' fears - and counts on fear votes, like George W. Bush did in 2004 - and makes constant gaffes in the media spotlight, as well as convenient mistakes about what he stands for. Such as his conveniently "forgetting" how much he's stood against birth control in the past last month. And even more recently, conveniently forgetting how many houses he owns and going on to give a ridiculous definition of what kind of money he feels constitutes "rich" He's shown himself repeatedly to be less than reliable in the mental faculties and completely out of touch with the American people, outright denying the American crisis we face. And he's gotten away with every mistake - far more than any candidate would otherwise - because the media and people (Disturbingly enough, looking at the close polls) love his image. That he's a "maverick." (When he's anything but - he's mostly been a rank and file far right Republican for most of his career, and he's only gotten worse in the Bush years.) That he's a war hero. (Who came away from his experiences frequently coming off as someone suffering from PTSD - which should be a major red flag - as well as a supporter of George W. Bush's baseless wars. And he's been very open about his intention to pursue further wars, should he be elected.) He may have served his country, but military servitude doesn't make anyone qualified - let alone "deserving," as he's treated - of the White House.

Most insulting yet? The announcement of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as McCain's running mate today. She is no Hillary Clinton, let alone a Shirley Chisholm or Geraldine Ferarro. Is she qualified? You bet she's not. Which is especially funny considering all the time McCain's spent attacking Obama for his lack of experience, in his own choice to nominate someone with far less experience. The Palin nomination is nothing more than a slap in the face to America's women. It's McCain and his campaign saying "You're so stupid and angry over not getting to vote for Hillary that you'll vote for anyone with a woman on their side. Even one who doesn't represent you well at all." And that's exactly the issue with Palin - she's the diametric opposite of feministic figures in politics like Hillary Clinton. She's regressive, openly opposed to abortion, all for opening wildlife refuges to oil drilling, anti-same sex marriage, and has even outright vetoed Alaskan efforts to research alternative energy, being firmly in the pocket of big oil - essentially, while she regards herself as a feminist figure, as a prominent member of Feminists for Life, she stands for all the wrong things. A proclaimed feminist who doesn't stand for women's needs or interests, with intention of rolling back their rights - including reproductive rights - just like McCain. The far more incompetently run campaign of the two has made a terrible, horrifically unqualified running mate choice as an insult to the women of America in hoping to use bitterness over Hillary Clinton. Nothing more. America's women aren't stupid, like McCain and his campaign are now banking on - let's hope that shows in November.

In the end, we need to pay close attention and educate ourselves as citizens in America. This is the most important election since 2000 - and if you need a refresher, check out Recount, which does an excellent job covering what happened back then, as infuriating and disillusioning as it is - and the last thing we need is Americans making political choices out of bitterness, racism, cynicism, and so forth - essentially any excuse to not even take a chance on change. Taking on more of the same after eight years of George W. Bush would only serve the downfall of our nation - we have only two choices here in our ridiculous two party system, but this year the choice is obvious. To cynically elect someone who promises more of the same in distrust of someone who promises the meaningful change our country sorely needs, effectively giving up on things ever getting better, or getting behind that change and electing the right president, right senators, and right representatives we need to fix our broken government and get to work on undoing these past eight years of damage that the Bush administration and Republicans have inflicted upon America and the world. Too many lives have been lost, too many rights have been taken, too much damage to our nation on every level has been done - we can't afford to risk a McCain presidency. And to you, my female readers in particular, if you're even considering voting for McCain in losing Hillary as an option - especially after his nomination of Sarah Palin - please, please, both for your sake and that of all of America, take my words to heart.

Determination: Carving Out a Future

A first "normal" Spiral Reverie entry in a good while. Astounding.

So what's the topic this time? More on life, love, or even dare I suggest yet another video game entry? ... Well, no it's not that last one this time - rest easy, dear non-gaming readers who I probably scared off months ago after I stopped updating with any sort of consistency.

This time, it's all about the fine art of putting your foot down and rather than simply talking about doing something with your life, actually doing it. Naturally, at this point, you're ready to start protesting on the grounds of that I'm nothing more than a robot programmed to dance around for your entertainment and sometimes malfunction. But this time-traveling killer robot? He dances no more! (At least, not right this second.)

People love to run their mouths and prattle on about all the things they've convince themselves that they're going to do. I've no doubt come off that way enough myself. (Hah! I bet this guy doesn't even have a book in the works! No, italicized parenthetical text, I'm afraid I actually have been hard at work all this time.) But now? Concrete plans for that thing they call a future have begun to materialize. (Because one more year of living at home is going to be absolutely rough as is - having been living at home for over a year since I finished the last of my undergraduate college classes hasn't been the most wonderful of experiences either, with all the isolation that entails.)

Firstly, I've taken a first stab at a publishing opportunity, in entering the newly-started Raleigh Quarterly's "Teach Steve to Read" contest, a contest they started as a bit of a jab at Steve Jobs for a comment he made earlier this year about nobody reading anymore. I wrote a fairly sardonic, cynical short story, though I felt somewhat constrained by the 600 word limit. As such, I don't feel it's quite up to par compared to what could have been, had I not had to pare it down some to meet the length requirements. But I'll mention it again here if I do manage to win and get it published. Failing that, I'll probably submit something else at some point and see if they'd be interested in publishing any of my other short stories. In general, I really do need to get to writing more short stories once I'm finished with Project 27 Days (Which I'm almost to the home stretch in writing - the air conditioning issues the other week delayed my writing a good bit, so I'm expecting to finish the book by early September at this point now. The horizon draws nearer.) and find more venues for publication online. Every little bit of publishing I can manage would help at this point, in forsaking the pursuit of profit with those. (Though should I get the opportunity down the line amidst my novel writing and publishing, I'd certainly be all for releasing an actual physical short story collection with everything written by then.) In general, I need to start getting some recognition as a writer, and to make it clear to the world in getting my work out there that I am serious about this whole writing stories and reaching people thing.

Why the rush? Grad school, of course. Though I likely have even less chance of success at getting into the program I'm applying to than I do the Raleigh Quarterly contest (Though granted, given that the online magazine's only been going since April, I honestly have no idea how many submissions they're regularly getting already as a new online literary magazine - let alone the kind of quality I'm up against in regards to other submissions. I generally don't like to think of writing in a competitive sense myself, anyway, it's nicer to view all other aspiring writers simply as colleagues, all simply working towards the same goal.) I've set plans in stone to apply to UMass Amherst's Creative Writing MFA program for fiction writers and poets in October. The odds are stacked heavily against me, in their only accepting 20 studies of roughly 500 applicants each year. (It's one of the nation's oldest and best Creative Writing programs, and highly competitive, while it's said to be not quite as difficult to get in as a normal undergrad there, the school being Massachusetts' biggest and best public university. I'm striving for a much higher level school and an extremely tough to get into program, after having spent my five undergrad years at a very different - and ultimately much lower level in many regards - university.) As such, I really have my work cut out for me, and getting some of my work published would no doubt help boost my chances of getting in a bit, with such works a clear indication of how seriously I'm taking these literary aspirations of mine. I've just got to do my best and keep my fingers crossed that I'll be getting ready to pack up and move up north by this time next year. If not, I'll probably lose my mind down here. Living at home again loses its charm after having been home for over a year again, rarely hearing from most of your college friends, and never getting to socialize in real life, with what friends one is still in touch with living and working off in Japan now. The south's never been for me - I need the big shakeup and change in general in life that comes with such a major move in heading off to grad school.

I can't exactly keep all my eggs in one basket, so to speak, either. I still need to gather more information on northern creative writing grad school programs to apply to, while I work on writing and publishing more short stories. After having done a good bit of research though, finding a program that'd suit me anywhere is easier said than done, and working with the resources I've used - including an excellent Creative Writing MFA handbook for prospective grad students (By Tom Kealey, an alumnus of the UMass Amherst program himself.) - UMass Amherst has struck me as where I need to be.

I almost finished an application to Boston University's program earlier this year, but ended up not going through with it. I concluded that I didn't have quite the exact type of writing sample they'd need on the short notice they needed it on hand at the time. Then in reading a letter from the faculty to prospective students, I quickly discovered that applying would've no doubt been a waste of money in my case, as they'd outright cited the sort of story elements I've been working with as nothing they'd want to read. (Stories focusing on dreams and memories, specifically.) I can somewhat understand their feelings on those subjects - I can only imagine how many less-than-spectacular aspiring writers there are out there who think they're doing something brilliant after having their mind blown by one or both of a couple recent Michel Gondry films, while ultimately doing nothing unique or interesting with the concepts, simply feeling that dreams and memories are out there, vague enough concepts to somehow be brilliant literature in simply writing about them. But on the other hand, writing off people's works that use those subjects as parts of the plot seems a bit overly cynical and close-minded. (Not that I have much room to talk when it comes to cynicism.) Basically, what I'm saying is that there's still plenty of genuinely unique and original ways to use these themes - and that not everybody who works with them is necessarily a hack, as writing them off as such strikes me as a bit questionable, personally. (But then, the comment may have just been to note that they're sick of stories like that, and thus to discourage that sort of submission with applications. I can't pretend to know the Boston University Creative Writing faculty's biases and lacks thereof.) Working within the magic realism subgenre as I am with Project 27 Days, subjects like dreams and memories are ripe for appropriate use in the story. And for me, they play an important role in the framing of the narrative.

So ultimately, I've gotta make an impression on the panel of UMass professors evaluating applicants. It's high time I started carving out a concrete future - and that future? It's sure as hell not rushing into becoming a 9-5 wage slave and watching my soul leave my body in a matter of an hour. I'm not cut out for that, and after half a decade studying International Studies, more than anything else, I want to spend those three years in the program at UMass pouring my heart into improving my writing and becoming a writer worth reading. Whether anything happens with my unrequited love situation - as is highly unlikely - or not, I need to get out of here and start accomplishing things as a writer. I'll be turning 25 before I hit grad school either way, and I've wasted enough of my youth as is. Now is the time to take plenty of big risks, put myself out there, and try to really make something of myself before it's too late.

UMass certainly intrigues, as it feels much more like a "real" college than UNCC did, and there'd be a lot to overwhelm myself with in trying to make new friends in an area where i have no connections at all. (UNCC was primarily a commuter college, and most of its on-campus residents still left on the weekends - the campus was relatively isolated in Charlotte, and there was almost nothing to do on weekends. No student comedy groups, no student-run television station, nothing like that. Definitely issues I had with the school.) I'll have to get used to a new area, and carve out my niche of things to see and do for the next 3 years then. There's a lot more going on there, and while they let in most of their undergrad applicants, as I've mentioned I've got extremely daunting odds to face - I need to figure out how to catch their eye and make it into their top 20 so I can go there, but I also need not to focus on it and try too hard and force the writing sample - the writing has to come out and achieve quality naturally, whether I write something new for my application or look to something I've already written when I apply in October.

Their Creative Writing MFA program is an extremely high class and difficult program to get into, and I've actually never succeeded in any sort of competition against great odds - I always fail to stand out or measure up, making it rather stressful to think about. But I need to find a means of doing so and then some - I have a history of standing out with my writing next to people in more "normal" academic veins, as I did all throughout my undergraduate years, but I falter in the face of competition, and probably don't come off as anyone worth reading or noting next to the kinds of quality people tend to submit. (You're probably not going to try to apply for a highly competitive Creative Writing MFA program unless you're confident that you're producing something excellent, after all, no?) Not to mention, there's the individual professors' tastes in the sorts of literature that interest them - the question of the unknown and unidentifiable variables. You'd think they'd likely not just be interested in teaching someone writing the sort of things they'd want to read personally, but someone doing something different, who has a noteworthy personality to their writing or a particular unspecifiable edge that makes their writing crackle, and seem worth instructing to be a part of our generation's literary future. (Which I'm hellbent on making my mark on, simply wanting to write interesting stories that'd make people laugh, cry, think, and simply feel a whole range of emotions.)

I could over-research each of the professors with ease, no doubt, with enough information on them being online to begin with, but I feel like that'd be a cheap and disingenuous way to approach things - I'm not merely looking to go there for the sake of going there. I have high aspirations and a great drive to write, and I just feel, intuitively, from looking into everything there, that it's where I need to go in order to further grow and nurture my abilities as a writer. I'll just have to beat out likely roughly 480+ others who probably feel the same way, haha. As such, it's impossible not to worry some. I just can't let it consume me - I have to do the best I can, and it has to come naturally, seeing as entry's entirely based on your 20-page writing sample. (Which is a weight off my shoulders, since I was worried my having been an International Studies major would disqualify me from a shot at a Creative Writing program. Fortunately, many schools seem to recognize that talented fiction comes from people from all walks of life. I'm not sure whether I'll be attempting the GRE again or not, but given that I've heard the actual software it uses runs in the same eye-damagingly bad resolution that their Power Prep software I installed does, I really don't like to think about it. It's not required, but it can be beneficial, and I need all the help I can get. I'm not sure I'd do well enough for it to be of any benefit though, either. Going by the approach in the Power Prep software, it's a heavily flawed test that largely grades the taker by all sorts of shit that frankly doesn't meaningfully reflect on an individual's intelligence. In th eleast, it's becoming less important in recent years as more and more organizations acknowledge how effectively worthless it is from an academic perspective and measure of an individual. The grad school application process is stressful enough in its high level of competitivity without that test.)

Looking forward to the future too, it's probably high time I worked on some renovations to this blog too, maybe see if I can put together an image logo for the title (Though I have little skill left in Photoshop these days, so making one that'd look decent and mesh with the rest of it'd be a challenge. Visual design is in no way my forte.), and while I like this gray-oriented color scheme, I know it's not exactly a popular look. I'm not very good at visual design and color combinations, so I need to come up with some color combination changes to make this place more visually appealing to readers as this blog gradually wakes from its slumber.

I'm not exactly interested in changing it to anything bright and hugely colorful, but I don't want it to be fiercely dark either - just something comfortable and neutral, if that makes sense. Anyway, to any readers or passers-by reading this, if you've got any suggestions on that front (Or as to how I can improve this thing in general), by all means, I'd appreciate the advice if you don't mind taking the time to comment.

That's all for this week. Hopefully this wasn't too dull or disappointing as first entries of this sort in ages go.

Once Again Belated: E3 2008 Games of Note

Yeah, this one's ridiculously late too. I got lazy that week and planned to wait until the next week. Then our air conditioning gave out and we had to wait about a week before we finally got our system replaced. North Carolina summers without air conditioning are, shall we say, less than pleasant. Anyway, late though it is, time to finally talk about E3 2008 Wii and DS games of note for a bit. The next entries'll hopefully be of more interest to you non-gaming readers - the few of you who still drop by here now and then - as I intend to get back to writing more regularly over the remainder of the year.

Wii

Captain Rainbow - Insecure as gamers are, the gaming community made haste to jump all over this game simply because of its name. (Something along the lines of "ZOMG NINTENDO'S CALLING US GAY!!11" From the same crowd, of course, that thought they were subliminally doing that with the Super Mario Galaxy cover. The online gaming community, by and large, is dominated by insecure teenagers and manchildren. You can't really blame Nintendo for trying to make gaming more appealing to the masses, rather than focusing on this crowd.) Personally, I'm looking forward to this adventure game from Skip, the dev team formerly of Love de Lic (Chulip, Moon, Lack of Love) best known for the excellent Chibi-Robo Gamecube and DS games (As well as the party game L.O.L. on the DS). The game itself seems to play very similarly to the Gamecube Chibi-Robo and Chulip on the PS2 (Both of which I highly recommend), telling the story of an unpopular children's television hero - the titular Captain Rainbow - and his adventures on an island full of cast-off D-list Nintendo characters with problems that need taking care of. With characters ranging from Birdo to Crazy Tracy (Or possibly Ness's sister Tracy from EarthBound, hard to say yet) from Link's Awakening to Little Mac from Punch-Out, the game simply looks like an extremely humorous adventure with lots of great classic Nintendo fanservice for those of us who grew up with their games.

Oneechanbara: Bikini Zombie Slayers - A surprise announcement from D3 just prior to E3 revealed that they would be bringing their cult cheesecake zombie franchise to the west on the Wii (And seemingly other installments to other platforms in the future as well.) in early 2009 as the series' official western debut. The series stars the bikini and cowboy hat-clad Aya and schoolgirl uniform-clad Saki, two katana-wielding young women who take it upon themselves to slay hordes of zombies whenever they rise up to threaten Japan. (As they seem to one way or another in each installment.) The series' appeal lies in the B-movie cheesiness of its premise between the zombie hordes and scantily clad women and its arcade style addictive hack and slash gameplay. Rumor has it that we may be seeing exclusive content in the western release as well.

Mega Man 9 - Recently announced by Capcom as a WiiWare exclusive to much fanfare, Mega Man 9 promises to bring us back to the series we grew up with and loved, bringing a full-on new NES installment to the series on WiiWare - a love letter to the Wii and fans who grew up with the original games. Inafune himself openly decried the so-called "necessity" of high definition in visuals with the game, and promised it would surpass Mega Man 2, the widely-regarded best game in the series. Confirmed for a September release, this is one to keep an eye on.

Dead Rising: Chop Til You Drop - A major megaton announcement from Capcom came in Dead Rising not losing its Xbox 360 exclusivity to the PS3 as expected (When it frankly would've made little to no profit on the platform anyway.) but to the Wii with Dead Rising: Chop Til You Drop. Effectively a remake of the first 360 game in an overclocked Resident Evil 4 engine, Capcom promises up to - if not over - 100 zombies on screen at once (Not quite the sea of zombies in the 360 original due to hardware limitations, but nonetheless an overwhelming horde at all times.), more and new types of enemies in addition to more enemies in general, and the same vast Dawn of the Dead style mall environment in which to combat the zombie hordes with whatever you can get your hands on. (The gun controls should be vastly improved as well, considering their brilliance in Resident Evil 4 Wii, while Dead Rising's on the 360 were very awkward and clunky at best.) the visuals are also on par with the 360 original's - as they hadn't pushed the 360's hardware much to begin with anyway - making it one of the best looking Wii games to date. With more content overall, Dead Rising: Chop Til You Drop serves, with Mega Man 9, as a shift in Capcom's third party treatment of the Wii to taking the platform far more seriously, giving fans the sort of core-market-oriented games they've been dying for.

The Conduit - Another of the most highly anticipated Wii games to date, High Voltage is developing a Wii FPS that promises to be the Wii's first truly killer release in the genre, and a strong response to the PS3's mediocre but hugely hyped Resistance games and the Xbox line's vastly-overrated Halo series. Admittedly, I'm not a big FPS fan myself, so I'm not going nuts over the game, but it's regardless a major and long-overdue third party game in a genre the Wii's needed more of (Especially compared to the other two, overrun with awkward FPSes using traditional controllers as they are, considering that the Wii controls allow you to do much more with the genre than traditional controllers can.), and given High Voltage's extremely strong Wii track record so far, The Conduit's a game to absolutely keep an eye on. It looks gorgeous, and the gameplay certainly looks fun and promises to answer to Wii-owning FPS fans' long-untended needs.

Tales of Symphonia 2: Dawn of a New World - Namco has confirmed the long-awaited sequel to Tales of Symphonia on the Gamecube for a Wii release this fall. Though this JRPG (With the series' much-beloved action-oriented battle system) has drawn some advance criticism - a) the original game's cast only return as guest characters who can't be leveled or have their equipment changed, b) there's only two new playable human characters and your other two party slots are filled by trained monsters you collect, c) the overworld is a point and click map instead of a full globe to walk around on, and d) Nintendo isn't handling the localization, and as such, the original voice cast isn't reprising their roles. All valid complaints, but none of them make it a bad game, certainly - just a different experience befitting the new world that came of the original game's ending. As a fan of the series who thoroughly enjoyed the first Symphonia installment in the Tales series, I'm certainly looking forward to Symphonia 2. And with the series director having confirmed that the next main series Tales game (Of an epic scale comparable to the first two games in the series, Phantasia and Destiny.) to be a Wii exclusive, the Wii's seemingly become the series' main home. (Defying Xbox 360 expectations with Tales of Vesperia hitting that. Though ultimately, JRPGs don't sell particularly well on that platform - or the PS3, for that matter - and given that Vesperia isn't beyond what the Wii can do on technical levels, a port of that to the Wii down the line wouldn't be a surprise.)

Spore - In addition to its hotly anticipated PC release, Will Wright's first new franchise since The Sims, Spore, is coming to the Wii and DS as well. And in general, it looks similarly addictive and engrossing, the game's visuals nothing beyond what the Wii hardware can pull off - likewise with its online focus. (There's much to be confident in, given Electronic Arts' more-than-competent handling of online play on the Wii so far with Medal of Honor Heroes 2 last year.)

Arc Rise Fantasia - While not actually shown at E3, Marvelous unveiled Arc Rise Fantasia recently in Japan as another major exclusive JRPG coming to the Wii - and no doubt coming westward in 2009 - with character designs by the artist responsible for those of Eureka 7. From the Famitsu scans posted online so far, it looks intriguing.

Little King's Story - Another Marvelous/Xseed showing, Little King's Story another of my personally most-anticipated Wii games. In this adventure/RPG/real-time-strategy/life sim game, you play as the young sickly boy Corobo Bread, who comes across a magic crown that makes him king of the area. Setting out as king and supported by a variety of literary-inspired characters (Including heavy influences from The Little Prince and Don Quixote.), you build up an eventual globe-spanning kingdom as Corobo, with each of your kingdom's residents having names, jobs they attend to daily, their own needs, routines to follow, and development. The game crosses numerous genres and has a very strong development staff behind it - including members of the Harvest Moon team. An absolutely fresh game to look forward to in Winter 2008.

Rune Factory Frontier - Yet another Marvelous/Xseed game due out in early 2009. A follow-up to Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon on the DS, their action RPG spinoff of the popular cult Harvest Moon farming sim series. With gorgeous, inspired environments, a good cast of characters, and much exploring to be done - farming and adventuring to be had alongside the usual pursuit of a spouse. Marvelous's offerings in the west through their new partnership with Xseed are quickly making them one of the Wii's strongest third party supporters. And given Rune Factory's use of Nintendo WiFi for a few online features on the DS, I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a few online features in the Wii installment as well.

Sim Animals - EA only showed this non-gameplay trailer of their essential Wii/DS answer to the Xbox 360's Viva Pinata games, an effective Sims style game focused entirely around animals in the wild. From the short trailer and details revealed so far, however, it looks to be an exciting and worthwhile title. EA has certainly been picking up the pace on the Wii and DS - certainly something nice to see, given their often questionable history in the past.

Fragile: Farewell Ruins of the Moon - Another JRPG not shown at E3, but given Namco's track record, its western release is undoubtedly a sure thing. Set in a post-apocalyptic Earth setting, as young Seto, you explore a vast, barren, atmospheric world. Looking easily as gorgeous as an Xbox 360 game in terms of character designs and models, with breathtaking environments and impressively mood-setting music, it's one of my most anticipated Wii games to date.

Spyborgs - Bionic Games' oft-misunderstood Wii debut. Gamers expected them to unveil something violent and M-rated. But with numerous seasoned former Insomniac employees involved with th company and the game, we're seeing a very intriguing and comical adventure game coming from Capcom here, taking inspiration from cartoons and games like Psychonauts. That said, Spyborgs looks like a lot of lighthearted fun. The market can always sorely use more games driven by a sense of humor.

Fatal Frame IV - The latest installment in Tecmo's notoriously terrifying survival horror series about ghost photography and combat was directed by Suda 51 of Grasshopper Manufacture (Killer7, No More Heroes, The Silver Case, and Flower, Sun, and Rain) fame, and is now being co-published by Nintendo. (And as such, the game has gotten some Nintendo fanservice content in the form of costumes exclusive to the game.) I just hit at the end of July in Japan, and will likely hit in the west sometime in 2009, since all the other games in the cult series have crossed the pond so far. Given the series' track record of quality and Suda 51's brilliance as a director, Fatal Frame IV could very much be a survival horror game not to be missed. And with Nintendo co-publishing, there's a good chance that it won't be near-impossible to find a copy of this entry in the series, unlike the others.

Castlevania Judgement - Widely slammed so far for being a fighting game instead of a new 3D Castlevania adventure game (In the vein of the PS2 installments, which were fairly mixed experiences overall) or a new 2D WiiWare installment (As fans have been begging Koji Igarashi for, and he's since hinted at may happen depending on how well Mega Man 9 does.), I'm waiting on further details before I pass judgment myself. The Wii crowd loves to jump to conclusions - especially when a game falls off the beaten path - particularly skewed to the negative. This interesting fusion of the Castlevania series cast with Power Stone series style action certainly has my attention, though.

Wario Land Shake It! - Nintendo's biggest core-market-oriented showing of E3 was the rather gutsy return of Wario to full gorgeous 2D in his upcoming platforming adventure this fall controlled similarly to Super Paper Mario. It looks to capture well the magic of the portable installments in the Wario series with some of the most impressive 2D visuals in a console game to date.

Wii Music - Not exactly a competitive game like Guitar Hero or Rock Band, Wii Music's gotten some rather mixed reactions so far. (Including a lot of angry "core" gamers throwing fits over its simply being a fun, relaxing pick-up-and-play music game.) Conceptually though, it's well executed and certainly looks like a lot of good, simple fun, so it should be worth picking up. Admittedly, I'll probably wait for it to hit bargain bin prices though, myself, with my priorities lying elsewhere.

Call of Duty 5: World at War - Like The Conduit, another likely killer FPS on the Wii. This time around, the Wii seems to be getting a rather equal release compared to the 360/PS3 version, with quality online play, simply trading visuals quite on the others' level (Though it's still technically quite nice looking on the Wii.) for far superior controls. Between this and The Conduit, Wii-owning FPS fans have a good bit to be happy about.

Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party - Those lovable screaming Rabbids are bad for a third party gaming run on the Wii this well as well. More goodness for fans of the series.

Animal Crossing: City Folk - People are, predictably, already complaining that the graphics don't push the hardware. (Though as a franchise, Animal Crossing has never been about putting technical prowess in the graphics. It's all about the social interactions and relaxing atmosphere.) As far as I'm concerned, it's easily Nintendo's game of the show.

Major Minor's Majestic March - The PaRappa the Rapper series creator and director's first music game beyond that series, having had to leave PaRappa behind in Nanaonsha no longer developing for Sony platforms. Rather than playing as a two-dimensional rapping puppy with plenty of unintentionally hilarious lyrics, this time around, you play as some sort of cat-like animal leading others in a marching band through various environments in this unique rhythm/music game. Impressions by Rawmeat Cowboy of GoNintendo were that it was disappointingly repetitive at E3, but hopefully it'll be improved a great deal before release. Either way, as a PaRappa fan, I'll be picking up the game when it gets cheaper down the line.

Wii Sports Resort - Wii Sports Resort is planned to be packed in with the Wii MotionPlus Wii Remote expansion to allow 1:1 motion controls. And from what they've shown of it so far, it should be more of the same kind of fun we got out of the original Wii Sports game packed in with the console itself.

SPRay - This Mario and Zelda-inspired Wii adventure from Tecmo looks promising. The character designs remind me a bit of the Dragon Quest series.

Lost in Blue - The first Wii installment in the cult DS island survival sim series, Lost in Blue, is definitely very visually underwhelming. But gameplay-wise, it looks to make up for that well with the same sort of addicting day to day survival activities that made the DS games so addictive.

Mad World - Yet another of the many strong core-market-oriented third party games coming to the Wii that Nintendo fans online love not focusing on in lieu of simply complaining about everything Nintendo does in regards to the core market these days, sadly. Published by Sega and developed by Platinum Games (Formerly Clover, the developer behind Okami and the Viewtiful Joe games), Mad World looks to potentially outdo No More Heroes in terms of sheer graphic violence - continuing the Wii's trend of being the platform with by far the most violent games of this generation. But like No More Heroes, it also retains a strong sense of playful, twisted humor rather than taking itself seriously. As unappealing as a black and white action game about slaughtering with a chainsaw might sound conceptually at first, Platinum Games is doing a great job in putting together an immensely fun-looking product.

Sonic Unleashed - The Wii version of the multiplatform-release Sonic Unleashed looks like a great deal of fun too, as Sonic and The Secret Rings was. I'm looking forward to the return of the A-life system with Chao-raising as well.

Sonic and The Black Knight - Actually recently unveiled after E3, Sonic and The Black Knight is a Wii-exclusive follow-up to the Arabian Nights-based Sonic and The Secret Rings, this time focused on Arthurian legend, with a great deal of RPG-esque content (Not unlike Secret Rings), which should lend the game a great deal of depth and make it a very complementary release to the upcoming Sonic Chronicles on the DS. Sega's been doing an excellent job with Sonic the Hedgehog games on Nintendo platforms as of late.

Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility - This game marks the Wii debut of the Harvest Moon series (As new installments go, at least, the very original game on the SNES having hit the Virtual Console a few months back.), and it looks absolutely gorgeous and atmospheric - like a fuller realization of the A Wonderful Life games on the Gamecube (And the PS2 port of the first one), which looked beautiful, but sorely lacked in substance. (If you pick up any one last console Harvest Moon from this past generation, make it Magical Melody on the Gamecube.)

DS

Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia - The much-loved 2D Castlevania action-adventure series continues on the DS with Order of Ecclesia being its latest installment, starring Shanoa, the series' first lone female protagonist fighting Dracula in a very long time. The series has a top notch track record with this directorial approach from Koji Igarashi, having taken the series in this RPG-influenced direction started with Symphony of the Night over a decade ago. Order of Ecclesia'll be one not to be missed.

Viva Pinata: Pocket Paradise - Rare brings their well-regarded post-Nintendo life sim series, Viva Pinata, to Nintendo audiences at last on the DS this fall with Viva Pinata: Pocket Paradise, an effective portable remake of the original Xbox 360 game with several new pinatas brought in from the forthcoming 360 sequel, which also looks to be quality. As a life sim fan, I'm looking forward to this one quite a bit.

AWAY Shuffle Dungeon - One of E3's DS surprises, a DS dugeoncrawler developed by Mistwalker and picked up for western release by Majesco Entertainment, which has continued to carve out an interesting niche for itself on Nintendo platforms as of late.

ASH: Archaic Sealed Heat - One of the largest and most gorgeous DS games yet. It wasn't actually shown at E3, but it has been confirmed for a North American release at some point, with an ESRB rating of E10+ already announced. At this point, it's just a matter of waiting for Nintendo to nail down a date for this highly-anticipated hardware-pushing Mistwalker DS strategy RPG.

Tales of Hearts - Also not shown at E3, and only just recently announced in Japan. I can't say I love the more "realistic" Final Fantasy style approach to the cutscene FMVs, but the core game very much looks like the Tales series gamers have come to know and love. Namco has yet to release any of the Tales DS games in the west - outright stating that Tales of the Tempest and Tales of Innocence wouldn't be seeing the light of day here, but perhaps Hearts will have a shot at breaking that trend.

Elebits: The Adventures of Kai and Zero - In an odd turn, rather than following the original directly in terms of gameplay and style, Konami's opted to make the sequel to Shingo Mukaitoge's Elebits on the Wii an adventure game on the DS. There's not much information on it available yet, but as a fan of the original, it's certainly intriguing.

Chrono Trigger DS - Yes, we're never going to see Chrono Trigger on the Virtual Console, sadly. And personally, as they're no doubt going to retranslate the game, Ted Woolsey's original translation will be sorely missed. (As his was in Final Fantasy VI Advance.) But I am looking forward to being able to play Chrono Trigger on the go on my DS, with new content being added. (Which is suspected of being the Singing Mountain area of the game that was never included in the original SNES release, though designed.) As one of the best RPGs of the 16-bit era, anyone into the genre who hasn't played it owes it to themselves to pick this version up when it inevitably comes west.

Flower, Sun, and Rain - Suda 51's masterful Groundhog Day style hitman PS2 adventure is finally coming west (With a North American release also confirmed at E3) on the DS. A game to jump on for any fan of Killer7 and No More Heroes. Stylized as hell, as you'd expect, with a brilliant narrative, and it represents the first PS2-to-DS port we've seen. (Which largely works out because the actual visuals themselves don't take too much hardware horsepower. And by DS standards, the environments are impressively vast and immersive, in full 3D.)

Populous DS - Having grown up addicted to the PC and SNES versions of the original Populous, I was ecstatic to learn they're bringing the DS Populous - which returns to the series' roots after sequels had strayed from them - westward.

Moon - A new DS FPS by Renegade Kid, the dev responsible for Dementium: The Ward. It looks like an extremely atmospheric experience.

Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood - Bioware makes their Nintendo platform debut in working with Sega on Sonic Chronicles, Sonic the Hedgehog's first full-on venture into the RPG genre, due out this fall. Given Bioware's strong track record as a western RPG developer, I have high hopes for this one.

Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness - Due out later this month, Island of Happiness looks to be the first Harvest Moon DS installment worth picking up beyond the Rune Factory spinoff. The setting and society building aspects on the island bring a great deal of additional depth and variety to this wonderful cult series.

Kirby Super Star Ultra - And lastly, the reason we're not getting Kirby Super Star on the Virtual Console either. Unfortunate, but in the least, this new DS version looks even better with its new content. Another Kirby classic.

I'm pretty sure that just about covers everything I felt was worth noting. I might have missed one or two things here or there, largely because I took way too long to get around to writing this, but hey, despite the delay, maybe this'll come in handy to somebody someday. Watch this blog for more upcoming posts on a variety of subjects! (Astounding!) It'll be coming out of hibernation soon as I move towards finishing Project 27 Days.