Family Business 1

When my father passed away (I think it was in 2007), there were only 13 people in attendance at his funeral. His four children and nine invited friends, a paltry amount of people considering all those he met and befriended in one way or another over seven decades. Memories of him being just Dad, or “Pop”, as we often called him, linger in my mind and can’t recall him being a poor parent or experiencing many hard times because of him. We had what I would call a “busy” relationship, in that as almost everyone was busy being a kid and got busy growing up while our parents both worked. There were good times and not so good times, but I can’t recall everything I’d like to at the moment, which is quite unfortunate, as I recall certain things, but pure memory tends to be quite an unreliable narrator if solely relied upon.

I recall hearing of his death from a relative who was “caring” for him and how disgustingly clinical the explanation was. I’ll admit my brain has since (more or less) blanked out almost every memory I had other that the time he took me to work (he was once a motorman for the MTA) and showed me how a subway train worked. Then, he let me take the train he was driving into the final stop on its route for about 25 feet or so (detailed here). Anyway, flash forward to now, that annoying relative has made a return at the very worst of times for everyone and I’m just not a happy camper as of this writing (to say the least). NO, I’m not planning anything drastic or dramatic at all. My life needs a lot less stress these days, period.

I do kind of need to borrow one of these, however:

Or, this guy…(just kidding!)

-GW

Hannibal Duress, Or: Words to the Not So Wise

eat the rude
 

Feh. Even more than usual these days it seems the internet can be chock full of not too bright people who should be ignored at all cost. No matter how patient you are, some of these people want nothing more to drain your sanity with inanity while laughing at your heroically feeble attempts at civility. Having an “opinion” biased to the point of making you a total idiot who doesn’t know what you’re talking about and being loud and persistent about it because that’s how you “win” every time isn’t anything to be smug about. All that does is leave you with online “friends” who think like you, like what you say and will prop your soapbox up only until someone louder and more annoying comes along to kick you off that box and take over your airtime.

That said, I’ll shut up now and let those of you who groove on tooting your own horn about things known little about continue to do your stuff. Have at it. Ignorance is bliss only up until you wish you knew what the hell you were talking about in the first place once you get into actual trouble because your one-way thinking has backed you into a corner with the dogs you’ve helped breed coming for you.

My Brain Wants to Play, But One Side Says “Nay”

itsamadhouse (Source: lifesuxx)

Oh, bother. I’ve been somewhat good for a while, trying to not explode into a sarcastic ball of caffeinated noise bouncing around the room ranting about all sorts of stuff. It’s hard to write about entertainment you like when the real world is becoming a lot less entertaining and a lot more unlikable. We may be in the process of having Max Shreck voted into office by a bunch of goggle-eyed TV-raised rubes who believe that well-clothed celebrity charlatan with the failed businesses who also took money from people who paid to attend a “university” with his name on it (just because it had his name on it) is someone who can “get the job done” and who just might get the job done. Well, if that “job” in question is traveling backwards in time to a few lousy places in history.

Ugh. Yep, here comes the Howling Man…

(Thanks, N0stril!)

Anyway, all that and more have been rattling around in my busy little head of late and that rattling is getting louder. While I deal with that noise, I’m going to be nice and stick to writing more about stuff I like primarily as a means of keeping me distracted while I deal with what’s turning into a weirder year than even I expected. Back in a bit – I have a ton of notes and press kits that I’ve been going over this past week to keep me busy, but I could use a nice adult beverage and an ear to bend.

#TBT: The Perfect Storm Knocks Me For A Temporary Tech-less Loop

Status

Let’s see now:

My laptop’s power supply blew out very early Sunday morning while doing a backup to an external drive and some article writing (whee!), and in the mad scramble to recheck/restore stuff and order a new power supply I lost a ton of mostly old data (whee!), game saves and I think some pieces of digital art (whee!). Normally, I’d just shift my workload over to the desktop, but the other two PC’s here are dead. One has been for a while and the other was running when the power went out and now won’t boot up properly at all. (Whee!).

I’m also having some pesky issues with getting the new phone I got up and running, and one of the consoles I just had repaired a few weeks back un-repaired itself in a spectacular, noisy fashion. I think all of that counts as five impossible things happening before breakfast. Amusingly enough, thanks to all the password changes I’ve done so far this year, the only ones I recalled off the top of my frazzled head were my PayPal, bank and ebay accounts (all of which came in handy as some old books and games I’d posted sold and needed to be shipped out). Just so you know, Whenever I change my passwords I email a few of my email accounts with the updates just to have a few places to check should I need to. Of course, forgetting one’s email account passwords and/or log in info doesn’t help (*beet!*), but I just KNOW you’ve done this as well.

In the midst of all that nonsense… I got a LOAD of stuff to review from a few nice folks. Thank you, nice folks! In the meantime, I’ve been taking notes longhand while waiting for that replacement power supply to arrive and pretty much having as much fun as I can traveling back in time to 1995 as I could under such short notice. That power supply got here just fine about a half hour ago, so I’m now back in action. A little crazier and busier than usual and nope, not having enjoyed my unexpected “vacation” one bit. Granted, I did get kind of lazy at one point on Monday evening, crawling into bed to play catch up all that rest I missed over the long weekend of worrying about whether I was going to be needing a new laptop or not. Well, I do kind of need a new one, but I just can’t afford a replacement at the moment.

Anyway, how’s YOUR week going? Back in a bit. I just glanced at my inboxes and think I have something like 3000 emails to read and a lot less to respond to (thankfully). Eeek.

A Friendly Reminder To Myself From Myself

(thanks, Sleaze-O-Rama!) 

Yeah, yeah… I know, I know. I tend to forget to do that “break” stuff sometimes, which is a bad idea at the end of the day because I just end up staying up too late and paying for it later. Well, I could use a helper monkey here, but we’ll see about that at some point down the road. Of course, if I had nothing to write about, all this would be SO much easier, I suppose. Ha and double ha. Okay, enough slacking off… *whipcrack!* back to work. I’ve some salt to mine and the clock is tick-tocking away. (Sings) “Cheap holidays in other people’s miseryyyyyyy!”

A Modern Stone-Age Remedy…

poor fredBlehhhh. Woke up to-day with what feels like someone stepping on my throat IN my throat. Slight headache, too… but that’s probably caffeine withdrawal kicking in because it’s what, 12:46pm (what, already?!) and I’m still buried under some blankets. Currently debating whether to roll over and get back to sleep, kick myself out of bed far enough across the room to lift an aspirin out of my bag, pop it and fall backwards hoping I land back in bed or just getting the heck up, splashing some water at the body and getting out for a walk in that howling wind I hear outside. Wait, what? It better NOT be back to being too cold again. (*DingDingDingDingDing!*). Stupid bell. Damn thing always goes off when I think of the right thing to do (*DING!*).

Oh, shut up bell.

Besides, there are dinosaurs out there and hot sticky tar pits and something that looks like a stegosaurus but it’s really a lawn mower that I haven’t fed since it turned up in the yard the other day. So I don’t feel like venturing out and getting stepped on, sucked down or eaten. (*Ding?*)… Okay, Okay, so I had a rather silly Flintstones related dream last night, bell. It was kinda scary and really stupid and I’m not quite awake yet.

(*Ding…DingDINGDingDingDING!!!*) Hmmm… yeah, yeah… easy for YOU to say, you’re just inside my head and man, that ringing? It’s getting annoying! That and yes, I now REALLY want to buy a case of Gold’s Horseradish now because of it (*Ding!*). Ha, ha and ha. Alright, it’s settled, bell. (*Ding!*) Door Number Three it is, bell (*DingDingDing!!*)… but if I trip on a fossil and bust my head open, you better hope I wake up and this is some really dumb dream.

Ugh… back in a bit. I need a vacation… (*DING! DingDingDingDingDing!*). Geez, “what’s with this bell ringing…”

You KNOW You NEED A Vacation When…

hazy_parisPlaces you’re been to turn into warped versions of themselves even in the photos you’ve taken. Of course, this is what both real Paris and Hell Paris look like after a few drinks (actually, Hell Paris ALWAYS looks like this, and remember… there’s no beer served in Hell at all despite what some of those signs you’ll come across say).

In short, I really need a vacation, but first I need to be able to PAY for a vacation. I’m working on that, or at least trying to make more money in general. If I can’t go somewhere fancy, it’s at least good enough to pretend at somewhere local and appropriate in its selection of diversions.

OK, OK… I could just go back to Hell for a bit, but I think they’re starting to notice I keep popping up for the free hot buffet and leaving right before the mandatory floor show experience. Hey, that key I found on the street happens to fit the exit door AND gets me in the front gate when I wave it at the guard, so I may as well use it while I can, right?

ghost_walk

 

Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken Flies In For a Welcome Rescue Mission…

 

Arriving in time to give me a break from all this writing (oh, I’m not done, folks – I still have a TON of Toy Fair stuff to do as well as more hands-on articles), Ratloop Asia’s fine and funny side-scrolling action/platform/adventure game (also available as a PS3 game via PSN) is saving my brain bacon from crisping up too much. So far, it’s fun and funny in an 80’s action flick meets old-school NES game kind of way, but that’s a good thing, as I wasn’t expecting Shakespeare on Ice or whatever. Actually, I go into most reviews with NO expectations, so I’m pleasantly surprised so far. Anyway, a review will indeed go up shortly. Most likely after that big, fat Sony event on Wednesday while I’m trying to recover from THAT madness. Stay tuned…