Getting Lucky: Hot Dogs and Pokémon

Just because hot dogs only cost ten cents at the ball park doesn't mean you should eat as much as possible. Had the lines not been insane, I probably could have killed myself. Death by hot dog overdose.

Dime-a-dog night is how you get me to go to baseball games. Especially if the tickets are free. Baseball has never interested me. I like throwing a ball around in the back yard; that's fun. But playing the sport. Nope. Actually watching the sport. Hell nope.

I'd take Blernsball over baseball all the time.

Per usual, my mind is wandering and I've completely let go of the leash. This is turning into one of those bad, unfocused posts that goes nowhere and accomplishes nothing. Well, I guess it accomplishes something: I'm having fun writing it. There.

A recent quest is nearing completion (I just got the phone call last night); I have the Gameboy Advance Pokémon Sapphire game waiting for pick-up at a local used game store. When I purchase it, I'll have all five generation three games: Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, FireRed, and LeafGreen. I've spent about eighty bucks bringing the bunch together. The plan is to play through them all (of course) and sell them as a set later on. I'll post those details when I get there. I haven't had much luck selling things lately; maybe I'll get lucky with Pokémon.

Have I mentioned I can't play Diablo III? I can't play Diablo III.

New computer components are still in the mail.

Apartment 101

Three years and nine months. That's how long I've been living in Apartment 101; that's a long time for me, considering I moved every summer while I was in undergrad. In the end, it'll be three years and ten months because the lease is up at the end of June. But my new lease at my new place starts sometime in May. So I'll be doubling up on rent for part of May and all of June. Easy for moving. Bad for the budget. So let's take a moment and remember the good times at Apartment 101.

I can't think of any. Kidding.

Apartment 101 housed me at my most productive and my most lazy. I think of John Nash and Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski; spanning one far end of the spectrum to the other and back again. Graduate school, teaching, working for the university, and unemployment (six sweet long months of it). Video games, video editing, and travel preceded job hunting, interviews, and eventually returning to work. I'm not back to John Nash, but I moving in that direction. Thousands, if not millions, of zombies have died by my hands in bowels of Apartment 101.

The Northern Alaska University was founded in Barrow, Alaska thanks to my Apartment 101 roommate and NCAA Football 2007 on the PS2. The NAU Grease Rats football team is still undefeated. However, the NAU Grease Rats synchronized swimming team has a very high mortality rate. University officials are currently investigating this problem. If I want to continue coaching the Grease Rats, I'm going to have to pick up my own copy of the game. Shouldn't be too hard to find.

When I talk about the bowels of Apartment 101, I'm specifically referring to my bedroom. I used to call my bedroom Frostbite Heights because as I moved from apartment to apartment during my undergrad years, I always seemed to occupy a third floor room. The name didn't stick in Apartment 101, because we were basically in the basement of our apartment complex. No complaints here; I always think of basements are really shallow dungeons. The new place is an actual house and I'll be occupying a second floor bedroom (there's no third floor) so I can break out the Frostbite Heights sign again.

In the end, Apartment 101 has been an awesome stop on my journey so far. It will be missed; it will always be remembered.

WTF? Really Spider-man? Really?

So I get weird emails from Sony Pictures in my spammy yahoo account. This was in that mailbox this morning. I was excited, then horrified, then repulsed, then just sad.

The Last Half Hour

It's a difficult period of time to describe.

Last half hour to go
Seconds feel like eternities
I am almost done

My van waits below
Eager, impatient, ready
Calling for its keys

Three flights of stairs down
Escaping the parking lot
To the long sprint home

Only minutes pass
And I remain keyboard glued
Working and waiting

Just Sippin' Blue Mana Margaritas

There was a time in the not-to-distant past that I hacked and slashed my way through the realms of the sanctuary. I'm not sure if I should capitalize that or not; I'm not up on the lore. Perhaps, "I've been clicking monsters to death since 1998," is a better way to describe my endearment to the world of Diablo. At the time, I was amazed I could play both Diablo and eventually its sequel on my old desktop machine. But I am bummed that I've never had the chance to play Diablo on the PlayStation. Someday.

Nothing is better than swinging a sword or an axe into an army of skeletons, so I always played a warrior in Diablo. I tried the rogue once and hated her guts; I completely ignored the sorcerer. I'm an in-your-face demon slayer; if I'm not feeling the spray of blood then what's the point right? This trend continued in Diablo 2 with the barbarian. In fact, my first play-though was all barbarian, all duel-axes, and all whirlwind. The image of this armored giant with a battle axe in each hand spinning and flailing around in the middle of enemy hordes just made me laugh.

After my barbarian urges were satisfied, I explored the other classes and fell for the necromancer. It was love at first summon.

"You mean I can summon an army of skeletons to do my bidding?! I'll just sit over here and let Mr. Bones and his badass buddies do all my dirty work while I sip mana potion margaritas."





Again, a necromancer with a yew wand in one hand and a blue margarita in the other just makes me all happy and tingly inside. Then I discovered my true beverage of choice: poison.

Ever since the Lord of Destruction expansion, I've been running poison necromancers. Letting the monsters swarm around me then casting poison nova is one of the best feelings I've ever had in all my years of playing video games. Still so much fun.

With Diablo 3 landing next week, I am looking forward to the long-awaited sequel; however, I don't think I'll get the same gush of excitement that Diablo 2 supplied me since the turn of the millennium. With the little research that I've done, I know I'll play my first run as a witch doctor and I don't think that Plague of Toads or Acid Cloud will be as awesome as Poison Nova. Some of the doc's passive abilities look very compelling; for instance: Fetish Sycophants grants the chance to summon those jibber-jabbering little midgets from the jungle levels of Diablo 2, Act 3. I love those little dudes.

Then there's also the Firebats ability which summons a flock of flaming bats; I would rather chuck flaming cats at my enemies' faces. But whatever. That seems like something a crazy witch doctor would do, right?

Besides reading about the witch doctor and watching a sweet Diablo vs. Angels cartoon, I haven't looked into Diablo 3 that much. Maybe because I want to be surprised. This Diablo fan is hopeful.