The Rabbit Hole

This same weekend as the gross personal injury, PopCap Games had a sale this weekend for charity to benefit Japan following the tsunami and earthquake. All their games we $1, $2 if you bought it for the iPad, which I did. I narrowly avoided buying Bejeweled, for fear that I would never stop playing. (I already have Catan on my iPad, and I'm killing the battery with that enough as it is.) Instead, I bought Plants vs Zombies and some other game I can't recall right now. For $2, I bought peace of mind by having a game or two to turn to when I'm about to smash the iPad into pieces because someone threw the robber on me for the third time, what the fuck I don't even have any cards for you to steal...

Ahem. Alas, it seems I didn't escape the Bejeweled problem. Plants vs Zombies is easily just as addictive. I do at least have some new home-preparedness ideas for the zombie apocalypse. Oh, I'm not saying that sunflowers and pea-shooters will make a lick of difference, just that the game made me aware of how criminally undefended my as-yet-unpurchased home's lawns and roof are. I'm thinking Sleeping Beauty-style wicked brambles and razor wire will get planted instead of adorable, bouncing flowers that sing.

Speaking of singing flowers, I've had the "Zombies on Your Lawn" song from Plants vs Zombies alternating in a loop with the theme from The Great Escape, which I finished watching while playing Plants vs Zombies last night after studying for my exam. Suffice to say, I paid a lot more attention to the movie before I started in on the addictive video game. I also bet that if the microbes I need to memorize were trying to reach my house and eat my brains, I'd know them a lot better by now.

(The Great Escape was good, but the ending is terribly tonally confusing. It's got a lot of tragedy and then some random levity surrounding Steve McQueen that...yeah, doesn't really follow from what happened immediately prior to that scene.)

( Damn it feels good to be a female geek in 2011! )

In other, less hormonally-driven news excitement, I got to see the first episode of The Walking Dead. Truly, it is gorgeously done. It remains to be seen if the story really takes off. Don't get me wrong, I like a lot of what they're doing with this series. However, being as well-versed as I am in zombie movie-ology, there's not yet a lot going on that hasn't gone on before in zombie movies. One thing that's actually nice is that this is a very slow story of the apocalypse. As in, the rushing around and panic aren't really the focus. It's slow and steady survives the zombies with this show. So, yeah, there's that. Hopefully, by the time I finish my test, I'll have enough episodes stored up for a good long marathon.

I watched the entire Resident Evil series, minus the new one, this past weekend. I still think the first one is fun and all, though I was struck--repeatedly--with how bad an idea the whole "Let's go in physically to investigate why the computer killed everybody!" plan was. I mean, the computer killed everybody, and you want to go walk into its kill zone to find out why? It's an artificial intelligence! Couldn't you just call it up and go, "So, Robot PMS or what?" No one asks questions until they're in the middle of the shit storm. Okay, fine,  you didn't know there were going to be zombies. YOU STILL FUCKING KNEW THAT THE COMPUTER KILLED EVERYBODY AND WALKED INTO ITS LAIR TO FIND OUT WHY.

As hslayer  put it, you can believe Umbrella is evil enough to dick over its private military dudes, but how the fuck did they get to be so goddamned powerful making such brilliant decisions? The genius only got better in the second movie where, rather than pop some fucking Dom over the fact that they managed to genetically engineer not one, but two superior killing machines and set to work assigning them assassinations best suited to their individual skills, they decide to make them fight to find out which was better. You have two killing machines that work pretty fucking good! You should be celebrating, not playing DeathMatch! Go take over the world! (Some more! Apparently!)

This all makes me want to finally put pen to paper on a zombie story I've been kicking around in my head where people do not act stupidly. It's such a little thing to ask, right? That people in the zombie apocalypse--not all of them, mind you, but definitely the ones who make it past the first culling stage--not be blithering idiots. Gawd.

Last night, I dreamed that my parents' house was under siege by zombies.

( You'd be surprised to learn that this isn't a frequent dream for me. )

...and woke up. I blame our trip to the Met's Samurai swords/armor exhibit for some of that dream.

Okay, so the last Resident Evil movie sucked, and I haven't been able to finish Prison Break as yet because, wow, they brought back a decapitated character (and I heard that's hardly the worst abuse of the "if they didn't die onscreen..." rule). I'm still excited by this news, even if it's yet another bit of bullshit from i09.

I also haven't stopped laughing at the part where they put the crazy break-into-jail-to-break-out-of-it guy...in a prison at the start of the apocalypse. Perhaps Michael Scofield determined that it was better to sit in prison than risk infection breaking out. But I'm totally sure something CRAZY and DRAMATIC will necessitate his leaving soon enough...

I guess that explains the zombie-infestation blogging. When will you people GET IT? The more you poke fun and take the piss out of the zombie apocalypse, the less likely people will be to believe you WHEN IT REALLY HAPPENS!!!

Get with the program, people!!!

*

I am sick. The roommate, who's had a particularly bad week, must have given it to me in a fit of irony. Because I was stupid idiot who went, "How do you catch a cold in summer?" when she was sick. Serves me right. I could barely breathe last night, but at least the achy pain of swallowing is gone.

*

I have a new phone! Contracts came up again, and out we went to the Verizon store. My mother hates the place with a passion. I don't blame her. They went without me two years ago, and I missed the fact that this phone-setting-up thing takes TWO HOURS. We weren't even unsure about the phones we wanted. My sisters got Blackberry Pearls. (OMG THEY DON'T NEED BLACKBERRIES.) My mother and I got the free Jukes. (I got the red one!) It is so tiny. I mean, it's chunky, but it's slim, only about two fingers wide. It has 2Gb of music storage space, which is awesome, but the size of the headphone jack IS TINY. It doesn't fit my earphones for my iPod. And the earphones that came with are for crap. I should have known there'd be a catch when they told me the phone came with the necessary cables to put music on. Oh well...

Did I mention that it swings out to open sideways. I kept playing with it and my mother was all (rightly) "You're going to break that in a minute. Probably, since, again, law of averages states that even though I've kept two phones whole over their lifetimes, the fact that I didn't get the insurance on my phone means it will break.

AND THEN I CAN GET A BLACKBERRY.

I'll be harassing people when I see them next to take new picture ID pictures.

There's a boycott? God, I'm clueless. You get a permanent account and suddenly you don't notice the plight of the common LJ-er.

Also, HOW WILL I SURVIVE WITHOUT LJ FOR A FULL DAY!?

I guess I will participate in the boycott, even though I don't realistically see that this will change fuck all. I sort of figure this day was coming since LJ rolled out the better-and-worse than Basic accounts with the ads. At the time, I didn't see the point since I didn't have any need for thirty billion icons so why have the ad-ridden one? Man, that shit was old when I had a geocities account. Geocities!!

Sigh. I guess it doesn't really matter. What the hell do I even have to post? I've spent much of the past week playing Dead Rising. I'm working on achievements after properly finishing the game and hoping to level my slow ass up. Goddamn Ecks-box and its goddamned achievements. This is just ASKING me to obsessively play games until I have them all. It happened with Carcassone and I don't even like that game that much! I played Hexic until my eyeballs ached! And now I'm literally running down zombies for hours. I ought to put a book on tape on my iPod and just listen to it because it's not exactly thrilling work.

But my goddamned completionist whore side won't let me not. I draw the line at rescuing everyone, though. Fuck that shit. The survivors who aren't me and the hot chick I'm angling to bone can go hang on the meathooks in the psychotic butcher's shop. They're annoying, needy, and alarmingly stupid. (They see zombies and are like, "Ooh, cool, I'll run right through them! They'll never expect that!") One of them actually led a mutiny out of the secure zone because his fat ass wanted more food. Fucker. Have fun being 'et.

Hilarious unlocked scene after completing the game, though: ( Just in case, slight spoilers, but not really )

I laughed, I cried, I wanted to whup my character upside the head. The roommate got a kick out of me telling her there were zom-bees. Yes, that's right: zom-bees. Crazy, infectious insects that give you the zombie or something. I officially replace the bees from The X-Files, the cockroaches from Night of the Creeps, and any of those horrifying bugs that made me afraid to leave Manhattan as the worst bugs ever in favor of zom-bees. THEY ARE BEES THAT GIVE YOU THE ZOMBIE. Someone with my phobia cannot take this. I'm already revising my personal zombie survival plan to account for zom-bees. Great, like I needed MORE work. I'm already having to work on learning to ride motorcycles and drive armored cars in addition to ever firing a gun, and now this. Fuck!

I forgot how bad I am at video games.

I'm pretty sure I screwed up pretty bad already in Dead Rising. Suddenly, the "case files" were now dismissed or disengaged or something. I think I let some guy die. Whatever--he told me to go protect this other guy from zombies and I did. Is it really MY fault he got shot up by some pyscho? Obviously not!

Anyway, it was an excuse to turn the game into a zombie version of Dynasty Warriors. I went down to the local 2x4, lead pipe, sledgehammer, and chainsaw emporium and just kept slaughtering zombies. I went from 200 dead to 1600. I'm pretty sure I can't even end the game properly at this point, so I guess I'll just monkey around on achievements and start over when I don't successfully escape or whatever. I'll be a higher level when I play through the first part AGAIN. ::rolls eyes::

Dead Rising is the perfect video game for those of you who loved Resident Evil but always secretly thought: "Jeeze, I can hold WAY too many items at one time. It's ridiculous. Also, I can save everywhere and all the time it's ridiculous." It's also a perfect nexus between those folks and the ones who thought that what Pokemon Snap really needed was more of a challenge, with, say, the Pokemon actually attacking you when they do their super moves.

I'm not even kidding. It's a survival horror game where you have to take pictures to level up. Yes, kill zombies, but you level up faster with good pictures. And? THERE IS NO PLACE TO SAVE FUCKING ANYWHERE ZOMG. The last time I had trouble with a game that put its save places so far away was with the beginning of Resident Evil 2, where you had to run through and avoid zombies for about twenty minutes of gameplay before you got to the police station and a save point. Dead Rising? IS WORSE.

However pissed I am that I am BACK to square one each time I died and had to start over, I will say that I do find it immensely funny that it's not the zombies that I have a problem with: it's the fucking psychopath survivors! Sheesh. Never have I hated the humans MORE.

Of course, since I played for hours prior to going to bed and went to bed frustrated all to blazes because I DIED AGAIN (MOTHERFUCKING HUMANS!), naturally, I dreamt about a zombie apocalypse. Or, rather, preparing for it. I was in a mall (what a surprise) and in a store kind like a Sams' Club or Wal-Mart that had a wide variety of a lot of shit and really, really tall cabinets that were wide enough that I made plans to climb up and make my little home up there. The dream consisted of me picking and choosing what to take with. I grabbed food stuffs and water without thinking, but I spent the greater part of the time deciding on what craft projects and books to bring with. (This is so perfectly me in real life--I never leave the house without at least a dozen things to occupy myself with should I get stuck somewhere and so that I don't run the risk of boredom.)

Then, randomly-but-not-if-you've-played-Dead Rising-all-night, I started grabbing giant containers of liquid detergent and stuff like that to have up there with me and to throw down should any zombies get ambitious and start climbing up to the top of the shelving where I was. In true Supermarket Sweep style, I weighed them based on how expensive they were (because of course that's a better estimate of how well they'd fend off zombies) and how heavy (makes more sense). Other people running around the store thought I was nuts. Well, I'd show them who was nuts when I had stuff to chuck at the zombies' heads!

(In case none of that made it clear, I actually really, really love Dead Rising already. I'm definitely its target demographic as I loved both Resident Evil and Pokemon Snap. It's only the impossibility of reaching the save points that's killing me. Because it exacerbates a problem I already have where I tend to be cocky playing video games and already don't save much. So it's saying something that Dead Rising doesn't even offer saves enough for someone like me.)