No title, but yet another update

Oh, blog. How I've neglected you.

I've been showing one of my favorite movies of all time, Road To Perdition, in my class. It's ideal because the language in the movie isn't too complicated, there's enough pathos and 'cute' moments for the girls, plus there's also enough male posturing and swagger for the guys in my class. As of tomorrow, I will have seen this movie about thirteen times this week, a number bordering on Star Wars trilogy statistics. Previously, I showed The Shawshank Redemption, so I'm keeping a unified theme with the Thomas Newman-scored movies.


As far as games go, I've been rediscovering old-school Playstation games on my homebrew-ified PSP (my attention span and wallet thank you, Mr. Zhang at Hailong Dasha). I started up a new game of Parasite Eve, in hopes of finally beating the New Game+ / Chrysler Tower grind. I'm thinking that I'm older and wiser, so maybe this time getting strong enough gear is possible. It's kind of hard to believe this game, along with other classics, are edging on 10 years-plus in age, but then again, it isn't. The prerendered backgrounds, plus the interaction with environment that requires you to stand on a specific spot down to the pixel all shrieks of gaming standards of yesteryear that wouldn't stand a chance against the comparatively lax template on which games are graded today (ie. IGN and Game Informer, but I didn't need to spell that out, anyway). I don't care what all retrospective reviews might say about Parasite Eve; I loved it. From its depiction of NYPD cops as urban warriors with their own high-tech armory to its indulgent overuse of obfuscation of everyone involved, including, probably the very same people who wrote the script, I'm reloving every minute of it.

Also, Zoe is a fucking amazing artist. I don't need to write any overwrought description here; I'll let her art do the talking:


This is a picture of one of the multiple WoW toons she uses, a Level 70 Night Elf Druid who carries the unfortunate name of Avisa (her 5v5 buddies nicknamed her AV, as in Adult Video in Japan, as in films that involve a lot of scatology and schoolgirl fetishes). Creepy Japanese businessman pasttimes aside, I'm goddamn speechless.

Zoe also snapped a few pics of her and co-workers character designs for their upcoming MMO, but out of respect to the little thing called "copyright", I will not post them. But they are impressive, let me say that.

Speaking of which, here's the artist herself, bathed in a radiant glow of sunlight. Zoe, you're amazing.


Finally, Ein had his first bath yesterday. There wasn't much in the way of whimpering, but there was a lot of cute puppy dog eyes that begged the question, "how long is this shit going to take?" Here is the pup after said bath:


All together now: Awwwwwww.