I leave on Wednesday for a five day trip, so don’t expect any wonderful posts to magically happen as I won’t be taking my laptop with me. And I’m not sure when I’ll get back to posting again as my desktop decided to die on me moments ago. I believe it may be the power supply, but it could also be the motherboard or or or. No time to figure it out now, will deal with when I get back.

Until then, enjoy this:

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A lot of people lately have been having a rough time . . . and I don’t mean just because of the economy. I put myself in that category on a number of levels, but nothing too terrible. Anyway, following a friend’s advice, for the past few months I’ve been surrounding myself with things that make me laugh or smile, which means I’ve been watching a lot of comedy shows. So far I’ve been through Arrested Development, Mr. Show and Curb Your Enthusiasm while (mostly) keeping up to date with 30 Rock and the Office . . . and you know what, it helps. (Oh, and I laughed through just about every second of Tropic Thunder. Robert Downey, Jr., an actor I use to despise but has really stepped it up as of late, really deserves an Oscar for his performance [edit: apparently he did get nominated]. Too funny.)

So, I give to you, dear reader (omg, I just wrote that), one more thing to laugh at in the hopes that it will brighten up your day a little.

One of the things I found so distasteful about the Bush Presidency was the slipperiness of the people involved. Sure, they could be brought before a Senate committee, subpoenaed or not, but their answers always left a bitter taste in my mouth as they more or less dodged every important question. Yesterday was the Senate confirmation hearing of President-elect Obama’s choice for Attorney General, Eric Holder, and I’ll tell you what, I like what I heard.

Now, I’m not happy with some of the policies that Obama is going to be putting forth, but I am fully in support of how he and those who will presumably be in his administration go about their business. They’re more open and direct in their answers to questions and while those answers are still slick and practiced, they aren’t obvious deflections.

Case and point is the confirmation hearing yesterday. Sure, Eric Holder isn’t perfect (especially as he is from the Clinton White House), but it’s a breath of fresh air from listening to Albert Gonzales at a hearing. I’m about to quote extensively from a Slate article about yesterday’s hearing to emphasize my point, but I recommend reading the rest of the article along with some not-as-obviously-left-wing reporting that Slate gives. (I just browsed Fox News’s website and all I can find about the hearing, outside of flak from before the hearing, is an AP article.)

I’ll let Dahlia Lithwick take it from here:

Remember back when Gonzales was asked in July 2007 about whether water-boarding violated the Geneva Conventions? His response:

There are certain activities that are clearly beyond the pale and that everyone would agree should be prohibited. And so, obviously, the president is very, very supportive of those actions that are identified by its terms in the executive order. There are certain other activities where it is not so clear, Senator. And, again, it’s for those reasons that I can’t discuss them in the public. …

When Barack Obama’s nominee for attorney general, Eric Holder, is asked the same question today the response is this: “Water-boarding is torture. … It would violate the international obligations that all civilized nations have agreed to—the Geneva Conventions.”

Remember when Michael Mukasey was asked last January whether the president could override laws passed by Congress? “I can’t contemplate any situation in which this president would assert Article II authority to do something that the law forbids.”

Here’s Holder responding to the same question today: “No one is above the law, the president has a constitutional obligation to faithfully execute the law of the United States.”

Ah, sanity, you have come back into the conversation.

That game was ugly and I have a headache I’m pretty sure was created from close to four hours of stress, but damn, they won. I was kind of hoping they’d lose so they could all get some rest . . . as tired as the defense obviously was. Anyway, they won and will probably have to play the Steelers next week. Yay, more stress headaches.

In order to play some of the games I would like to without having to fork over money I don’t really have to spend I’ve opened an account on GameFly. Renting games just makes too much sense when you’re broke. Anyway, the catalyst for my decision to fork over $15 a month to play games was because the PC release of Grand Theft Auto IV was so poorly received.

I have always been primarily a PC gamer and since my self built PC is a fading beast I usually wait for multiplatform games to release to the PC so I can yet again justify the build. I say that with mild sarcasm, but it’s true to a certain extent and there are always benefits to having something on the pc (mods, better graphics, cheaper). So, since GTAIV’s launch was more or less a disaster on the PC I decided to pass on it and rented it instead.

I lasted an hour in the game before I packed it up and shipped it back to GameFly. Surprised? The game has garnered numerous game of the year awards and has sold in the bazillions. Hell, back in April there was even (unfounded) talk about the launch of GTAIV cutting into Iron Man’s ticket sales. So why would I decide to send back such a huge selling, critically lauded and fan favorite game? I was bored.

For months now I had heard about the story in GTAIV and how engaging it was (for the first two thirds) and that the main character Niko Bellic was likable and generally something of a nice guy. Nico isn’t a deranged psychopath as previous iterations of GTA had you playing, no, he was just trying to make his way in America and fell in with the wrong people. Are. You. Freaking. Kidding. Me. From the moment the game starts, Niko is already looking and talking tough and acting like a KGB thug from overdone Cold War spy films. He’s a thug who happens to be in a situation not entirely of his making, but certainly furthered by his violent (re)actions.

Suffice it to say that I was severely disappointed by this and I’m fully aware this is due to my hyped up perceptions of what Niko was going to be and was going to mean to me. Was it enough for me to stop playing? Not really, but I quickly ran into the wall that I have with GTA games. They’re huge, open ended worlds that are lovingly created with a ton of interesting minutiae from rocket packs to bowling to driving off cliffs in slow motion. But that’s just it, there is so much to do and so much to see . . . and I’ve more or less seen it all before in other GTA’s. I just wasn’t interested in exploring the city because I would much rather explore the real world than a fake city in which I have an annoying cousin and terribly voice acted girlfriend who are calling me all the time to remind me that yes, I exist and matter in the game world. You know what? I exist and matter in the real world and constant calling and bothering me annoys me here too.

I’m getting way off track here. I haven’t spent as much time thinking about this game as I would like before writing something about it, but then again, I only spent an hour or so with the game. Some of my other hangups are leftover from previous games. The graphics look bad with aliasing all over the place. People are ugly. I can get past those things, but the controls are still muddy when fighting or shooting and I just don’t have the patience for that anymore. The driving, something many people complained about, felt fine to me outside of the rather minor learning curve (seriously, GRiD has a steeper curve . . . and that’s an arcade racing game).

So, what all this comes down to is that I wasn’t interested or inspired enough to continue playing. Sure, if I had purchased the game I would definitely have given it a longer play and probably would have ended up liking the game, but I spent 8 hours or so in the world of Far Cry 2 and was never able to fully immerse myself in that game. I think, in the end, I’m just not interested in first or third person shooters anymore. They’re all fairly derivative and because I’ve been playing them since the days of Doom, I’ve more or less seen it all before. I just wish Niko had turned out to be the interesting character I had heard about because I really wanted to play that caring, hard luck individual who occassionally gets to beat hookers and take their money. Yeah, that makes sense.