Question and Rant: Here and Back Again

I sound smart when I speak to people, a skill I honed in lieu of any other skills. I did this primarily because I like the sound of my own voice, which is a pity because I'll never have an audience inside of my own head to appreciate the light, yet solid qualities my skull lends it. Despite sounding a bit like a stereotypical mentally challenged person, my sounding-smart skills encourage people who barely know me to ask me about my thoughts on current events. People who really know me skip this in favor of letting me daydream about Magic, comic books, or emo guys, mostly because they know I'll be thinking about those things anyway and don't want to put me to the trouble of pretending that I'm listening to them.

Now because I've had the money to stay away from strangers for the past few years, this hasn't really been something that's happened much. However, if I did still have to meet new people and interact with them, I'm sure these are the questions I'd imagine them asking me while they said boring things.

What do you think about this secret service prostitute thing?

Secret service agents fucking prostitutes in South America is no more connected to Obama than Abu Ghraib is to Rumsfeld.

Massive Mass Effect Week: Simply the Best

I said a lot of nasty things about Mass Effect yesterday. I stand by those things (even the ones I had to look up), but I wouldn't have devoted five days to a video game trilogy I've only played 1.5 games of if I didn't think it was the best damned game out there right now.

Okay, one of the best games out there (I forgot how good Fallout 3 is. Also...Portal? How do you even compare that?). None the less, if Mass Effect isn't the best, it's one intelligently-placed bomb away from being the best. Is it perfect? No. But if it wasn't so great, no one would care about it, its warts, or its ending.

The best thing Mass Effect has going for it are its characters and the relationships you have with them. You guys know I love Mordin Solus by now and that Garrus is my bro. You may have picked up on the fact that I'd leave Chief Ashley Williams to die on Virmire twice if I could. Even when you hate them, you hate them for being believable, consistent people, consistent enough that every conversation with them rekindles that fire of loathing. I was yelling at Josh just this week over how he'd let Mordin die in one of his ME2 games because Mordin is awesome! I ask Garrus about his calibrations every time I come on board the Normany in ME2 because I wanna see how he's doing. The characters in Mass Effect engender feeling in me, which sets it apart from almost any game at all which failed to engender more than hate for an exposition character in me.