Sunday, Lazy Sunday (3/16/08)

It's Palm Sunday. Do you know where your palms are?


Yesterday I was reading a forum thread about video game webcomics. The subject focused on more popular ones like Penny Arcade and Ctrl-Alt-Del. I've seen Penny Arcade a few times and I just don't get it's popularity. However, I haven't seen Ctrl-Alt-Del and now I'm glad I haven't. CAD had a storyline where some gamers started their own religion. Their bible was called the Instructional Manual and so forth. A bunch of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim leaders decided that they had nothing better to do than to harass this guy and his friends. Why? Because religion sucks! Haw haw haw! There was even a comic where the guy's friend asked the leaders to disprove the video game god without disproving their own. OOOOOOH! Take that! The author was clearly in the Dawkins school of assholish atheists.

I was going to make a bigger deal about this in a separate post, but I realized that I don't have to bother. Even though I'm Catholic, I've played a ton of video games over twenty some years of my life, and you know what? It's NOT. SPIRITUALLY. FULFILLING.



In the latest "I'm an idiot" news, I just bought a new game. (Seriously, not a religion. More of a drug.) It was the first thing I got from ebay by bidding instead of just buying. I save about 3 or 4 bucks, which isn't bad and I'm not including sales tax. The reason why I shouldn't have bought this game, though, is because it's the first Resident Evil game, remade for the Game Cube. Lately I had been playing the Wii version of Resident Evil 4, and was curious about Resident Evil 2 because that had Leon. The only Resident Evils I have besides 4 is Code Veronica and Zero. I can't enjoy those as much as 4 because all Resident Evils besides 4 have giant spiders. However, 2 (for the GameCube) was really expensive since it's so rare, and I ended up bidding on the remake of the original game, which was a best seller and much much cheaper. And I won.

I have no business bidding on any RE game because I'm horribly arachnophobic. I rarely play REZero and RECV because of the spider parts. RECV is worst because it the spiders are crueler and can survive having their bodies blown off. After summoning the courage to face one of those, it's torso-less body leaped at me and crushed me, maybe even biting me. I love the soft reset option, don't you?

So now I have a game that I may only play halfway through because I know the spiders are coming. Heck, the back of the box shows a huge one on the ceiling looking down at you. And a gamefaqs guide says there's a giant spider black widow boss. Super. Plus, as a remake, they're going to add more webbing, which is death for me. Even if I can resist spiders like in Zelda, adding webs makes things 10 times worst.

Still, and this is the reason why I'm probably boring everyone who doesn't care about video games or the RE series, I have been thinking about my phobia a lot. It's silly that I can't even stand to look at video game versions of spiders. And yet when I do, every hair on my body is ready to betray me. The slightest touch can cause me to immediate panic and press every button on the controller to quit. Also, I have this irrational fear that something is going to crawl down my shirt, so I tighten my shirt around the collar. So lately, I've been forcing myself to watch videos of scenes with the spiders on youtube.

Is it possible that I can control my fear a little by getting used to these scary beasts? Maybe. I've done ok lately. No bad dreams. No sudden jump. No cussing or shrieking like a girl. If anything is going to motivate me to face a phobia like this, it's going to be a game series I would like to play more of but can't. Today I played REZero and ran to the basement where the spiders lurked. I turned off the tv so I didn't have to watch but turned my dvd-r machine on. I didn't know what was going on but I played by pushing the aim button followed by shooting several times. I kept waiting for my controller to tell me I was dead, but it never came. So I reset and watched the recording. The spiders surround you as soon as you start, but without looking, I had defeated all four of them with a weak hand gun. Seriously. I was poisoned but I could have moved on and been ok. The spiders only drooled poison on you or sort of head butt you. In a way it's silly to be scared of them. In another way, they're as big as ponies and are very hairy.

Will I show courage and be able to beat the first RE? Probably not. Most likely, I'll just bury it and play Super Smash Bros Brawl and Bully: Scholarship Edition. Still, if I can stop worrying about running into spiders for no good reason, it would be a step up for me.



I went to Delaware yesterday. I was tired and not really into it. I got a couple books, including 2001: Space Oddyssey and a Two minute mystery book. Too bad I've been horrible at reading lately. The last thing I read was Stardust by Neil Gaiman, and I've been too lazy to read since.

We went to the Dover slots later in the day. I lost about 4 bucks. Kids, never gamble. I was rapidly losing money at a penny machine! The machine I was at most had a bonus game where you could choose from five options. I won a hundred credits, and was offered a chance to win more or lose half. I figured fifty wasn't bad so I gambled. I lost, and picked one of the two loser choices. I went on a losing streak after that. Still, I got a free soda.

I also got a couple MST3k sets at Delaware. There's a store there that sells them for forty bucks, which is a great deal. I got Volume 10.2 and whichever set has The Dead Talk Back, which I haven't seen. I should do a review of that and The Giant Gila Monster, because I haven't done anything MST3k related in a while here. (I didn't think the cartoons would suck as bad as they did, really!)




Currently reading: 1984 by George Orwell