Shut it down!

My new favorite game: Destroy All Humans!

It's one of the funniest games I've played in a while. And there's definitely been a shortage of funny games (that are intentionally funny) since LucasArts stopped being cool. While it's not nearly as hilarious as Monkey Island or Sam 'n Max, it's pretty damn amusing.

My favorite bit -- one of your powers as a psychically-gifted alien is the ability to hypnotize people. Generally, you can either order them to distract other humans nearby through chicken-dancing or elvis-impersonating, or you can put them to sleep. The latter option allows me to pretend I'm in Dark City. Every time I hypnotize a human, I say to the TV screen, "You...can sleep." Yes, I'm an uber-geek.

And Gamespot gives it a 7.5. Thus proving my belief that a game has to have a certain amount of crappiness for me to like it. The next game I'm curious about is Advent Rising, but only because Orson Scott Card supposedly wrote the script. However, that one got a 5.7, which means it must be the shittiest game since the atari version of E.T.

And speaking of Atari, I saw something on G4 TV the other day that said some Atari games were going for $150+. I knew them shits would be worth something someday! Note to mom: whatever you do, don't throw out the box of Atari crap in the basement. That's going on Antiques Roadshow.

In which Simon Cowell tells me I'm not as bad a singer as I thought I was

I had an audition today for a classical a capella group. No small-time college group, neither. This is the motherfuckin' St. Louis Chamber Chorus, son. Because I don't have enough embarassing moments in my life. I mean, check out what they sang last year alone. That's a helluva lot of singing right there.

I'm not sure why I decided to audition for this group -- I think I was just bored one night and said, "Eh, what the hell? At least I'll be able to say I gave it a shot" So, with that attitude set, I drove to St. Peter's Episcopal Church. Fortunately, I got there early, because I locked my keys in the car and my mommy had to come with her spare set. Yeah, I do stupid things when I'm nervous.

So I go into the little room for my audition, and the first thing I notice is that the Artistic Director has a British accent. Yep, I'm on the classical music version of American Idol. Now I'm thinking I'm gonna be on the "embarassingly shitty" reel -- you know, the one with William Hung (a.k.a., the "She Bangs" guy). But actually, he was a lot nicer than Simon. Don't get me wrong, he still said things like:

"Everything that's wrong with your voice comes from breath control."

Which is, y'know, honest. And true. But, hey, singing is a hobby for me, so it's no skin off my nose if Simon Cowell doesn't like my voice. Then he concluded with:

"I think I'm going to recommend you as an Alternate.

This is kind of like being an understudy. So if another tenor can't make it to a concert, I'm in there, baby. To me, this is ab-so-fucking-lutely un-be-fucking-lievable. I was fully expecting to get laughed out of the room. That Simon (I'm gonna keep calling him that even though his name is Phillip) would even consider throwing me in as an understudy is ... surreal.

Thus proving that, if you can sing tenor reasonably well, you'll be able to get gigs a lot more easily.

Yet another reason why video games are evil...

...They can hypnotize you and make you think you're inside a survival-horror shooter.

No fucking way can this be real. But if it is, I totally want to be hypnotized into thinking I'm living inside Knights of the Old Republic. With two lightsabers.

And speaking of video games, if your name is Mikey, you have to play this game right now. The game's not that great, but the soundtrack is pretty bitchin'. If you can get past the first level, please tell me how. Oh, and if any of you happen to speak German, please tell me what this guy's saying. I'm pretty sure I heard something that sounded distinctly like "Gangster scheisse" in there.

OT, how I miss thee

I've gotten to the point in learning my job where I know enough to do all the shitty jobs nobody else wants to do. So they're piling them on me. This results in 9-10 hour days for me. And, now that I'm "exempt", no overtime pay. I'm beginning to think they're not paying me enough.

Okay, enough of that. In other news, I've rediscovered the joy of creating midi files. I've been translating a bunch of corny German love songs into glorious 3-6 kilobyte orgies of "choir aah" and "synth string" goodness.

I remember my brother getting me into this way back when we had our good ol' Mac SE. This was when bro called himself "Trien" and thought he was all badass 'n shit 'cuz he made himself a logo with three Ns in triangles. Whateva, punk. All the Mac could really provide in the way of entertainment was ParArena and midis. I remember thinking Allen-a-Dale was the coolest song ever when I heard it midi-style.

CNNOOOOOOOO!!!!

Apparently, I wasn't the only one to notice the awfulness of Anakin-cum-Vader's yawp.

Now you, too, can be an account executive

The confusion mounts. Okay, if somebody can explain to me the difference between ADP and ACP testing in plain English, I'll love you forever. Or at least for an hour or so. Oh, and if anybody can tell me what IFTO stands for, you win a bonus prize. You could tell me anything, really. I wouldn't know the difference. You, brother of mine -- use your google powers to help me out here. Don't you Google folk have a box somewhere that has all the knowledge of the Internets in it? Pour some of that on me.

After three days, I now have the ability to perform grunt work. Today, I got to play with Excel spreadsheets that had a bunch of payroll data on them. Tomorrow, the world!

Oy

Today was the second day of my new job. I'm friggin' exhausted. There's a whole bunch of crap I need to learn and, since there's no formal training, I'm learning it by watching someone do it. 8 hours a day.

On the plus side, it's official: drinks are on me. Long Island iced tea, anyone?