Old School Games And The Reviews I Post

This Amazon.com review turned out to become more than slightly amusing and definitely worth noting in my blog. It's not often I'm inspired to write something comical and more than slightly amusing:

A Review of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (Includes Four Swords)

16 Years Later...I FINALLY BEAT YOU!, March 30, 2009
By J. Wactor (Tucson, AZ) -

That's right 'A Link To The Past', I bought you when you first came out on Super Nintendo. You were one of my first games and I loved you dearly. I must have invested hundreds of hours playing you, searching for all the fractions of hearts, digging with the shovel in places I shouldn't have been digging. I would hop between worlds like it was a revolving door and try to murder the invincible chickens. I'd play your mini-games until I was a grand master at shooting those squids in the shop 5 out of 5 times!

But you know what I never did? I never kicked the crap out of Ganon and beat the game!!! It was either because it was too hard, I was too distracted, or I was too confused as to where that last key was in the Ice Palace (YouTube'd that nonsense) but I never conquered you.

Fast forward to November 2008: I'm in Iraq with a pink Nintendo DS my wife gave me and a lot of free time on my hands. So I order you, and oh the nostalgia! I still remembered nearly every little trick 17 years later, and this time Ganon, instead of meeting an idle 8-year old with a low attention span you find yourself squaring up with a battle-hardened 24-year old weapon of the U.S. Army...with a slightly higher attention span. But you find yourself suddenly lacking, and you stink of fear. My silver arrows cut your fleshy pig skin to shreds, and for the first time ever Zelda is overwhelmed by my machismo. The TriForce is in the hands of a benevolent ruler once more and we celebrate until dawn; I make bacon for breakfast with the flesh of my enemy.

This game is the pinnacle of video game greatness. I didn't play `Four Swords' so I have nothing to say about that portion, but it doesn't get better than `A Link To The Past'.

My Anthem.

We were driving down the road towards town. I can't remember if we were heading there to shop or my mom was taking me to school. I was looking out the window when on the side of the road I saw a family stranded on the side of the road with a flat tire. I asked my mother if we could stop and help them out, but she said there wasn't anything that she could do for them. I began to cry. I empathized with them but there was nothing I could to help them, because I was nine years old.

I am a sympathetic person. The plights of others are a burden that often weigh heavily on me. More often than not I feel helpless at the sheer immensity of the project that needs to be undertaken in order to address seemingly simple troubles. I'm not a skeptic and I won't lose hope, but being a person that studies politics and looks at the macro- equation I try to mentally tackle the large picture that needs to be addressed behind small problems.

Someday I will be able to do something to address the precedence of pain/suffering/toil on a large scale. For now...I hope I can merely bring relief to those immediately affected by my life.

This is my anthem.

My Second Fiddle.

I'm not going to lie, I kinda idolize Heath Leadger's portrayal of The Joker, however, it makes me sad to see people taking things too seriously. A soldier dressed and wearing face-paint like The Joker was shot and killed by police in the Shenandoah National Park after he pointed a loaded shotgun at them after a chase

It further saddens me that this guy was in the Army. He also has a badge over his heart that shows that he was under direct enemy contact at least once. The article doesn't say...but the guy probably has PTSD, which just goes to show that we still have progress to make in addressing Soldiers who return from Iraq with more mental baggage than they left with.

Don't get me wrong, I think the Army has made leaps and strides in addressing the many, many concerns of our Soldiers. But life is a continual struggle for improvement and I believe we have a ways to go.

I received my French press maker two days ago and I’ve started to become proficient at it. It is by far way better than drip coffee, so much so that I’ve already gathered a small group of loyal followers who congregate around Armand (that’s what I named him). Pretty soon I will be playing the fiddle and leading them to the edge of a cliff to jump into the seas below to be swept away by the strong tides. Alas, it is inevitable. Sooner or later I have to ditch my followers; it us impossible to be dark and mysterious with lemmings following you wherever you go ;-)

My French Press.

Someone threw a vital piece of my coffee maker away, thus rendering it less than useless. It was rather upsetting, if only for the fact that I wouldn't have coffee until I replaced it.

Instead of running to the Post Exchange (PX) to get another crappy Haji drip coffee maker, I've decided to make the transition to french press makers. Whereas I'd originally believed French Press users prissy and stuck-up with too many hours in their day, I've come to understand that perhaps I merely have been too addicted to coffee to logically consider that 8 oz. of coffee may be all I need for one day, and such small quantities can be crafted carefully instead of brewed in bulk. You are talking to the person who until recently drank around 40oz. of coffee daily. I had no time or patience to skillfully brew small quantities of French Press coffee. It was an absurd thought, one that I never thought I'd entertain.

With the recent loss of my drip-coffee maker, compounded with my gradual shift of coffee intake from 40oz/day to around 8oz/day, it became ideal to consider the very real possibility that perhaps I deserved more in life.

I haven't received it yet, but I soon will.

About the Greed of Many

It no longer suprises me when I see stories about a military Soldier hiding away hundreds of thousands of dollars. It pops up in our papers at least once every six months, inciting many people to discuss 'what they would have done differently'. It's no different from a person's compulsion to watch 'Cops' or other high speed chases. You fantasize about a life on the run, robbing banks, evading cops, and getting the girl in the end. It's why the Grand Theft Auto series is so popular.

The problem is that people are too greedy. I had this discussion with a friend of mine, who raised a very logical process in which he could get away with stealing money. If you raid Saddam Hussein's palace, break open a safe, and find $600,000 cash, the key to getting away with it is this: don't take it all.

Don't try and hide $600,000 in your room. It's almost impossible to hide that much cash from others in Iraq, and ABSOLUTELY NO METHOD of getting it all back to the States without getting caught.

You can't stick it in your ruck sack. You can't mail it home (because packages are checked thoroughly before they're sealed and sent). You can't bury it and return to it later.

The ONLY way to get it out of here is to send it $600 at a time in envelopes, and if you do the math, it's going to take you 1,000 envelopes to send it all home. And even if you do, like Captain Retard in the article did, you can't even deposit it into a bank. You can't flaunt it by buying a new car. You can't pay cash for your house. The only way to spend it is by spacing it out over many...many years.

And that's impossible. When you have cash sitting around your house that can't even collect interest in a bank, the average man cannot avoid spending so much that it raises the eyebrow of onlookers. It would take a Superman, or Übermensch, to accomplish such a feat. It wouldn't even be that fun.

So like I was saying, if you find $600,000 in Iraq, what I'd suggest is that you pocket at the max $10,000 and leave the rest of it there. It is more pain than pleasure after that point, because you'll be sweating bullets for years trying to hide it away.

And if you aren't sweating bullets constantly, it's because you're an idiot. And you really want your face to be on the front page of the next Army Times.

I Spoke Too Soon.

This week's Threadless shirts were too awesome. Like a fat man involuntarily takes the next highway exit when he sees those McDonalds arches, so did this shirt find its way into my shopping cart and onto my credit card.



It's been pointed out to me by others that I'm irresistably drawn to the color red. I'd never noticed before then, but now I notice the tell-tale signs.

The only exception is vehicles. My last two vehicles were both blue, a color I didn't recognize until after I'd already purchased both vehicles. True story.

My Choice Clothes.

Each week Threadless releases a handful of shirt designs from the submissions of different artists who are looking to make an extra buck. I receive it on my RSS feed because nearly every week there's at least one of them that's so AWESOME that had I the option, I wouldn't even order it; That'd take too long. Instead, I would print it out my printer and Scotch tape it onto a plain white Hanes undershirt.


Unfortunately I don't even have that option because I have absolutely no use for civilian clothes for the next seven months. The truth of the matter is...I don't have that much use for them even when I'm in the states. Most nights after work I climb into pajamas and proceed to shift constantly from one bedroom task to another, with little intention of leaving the warm and cozy confines of my domicile.




I actually don't know why I continue to check out such unique and random shirt designs with no intention of buying them. It's like window shopping. Who does that!? Who leaves department stores without the spoils of your newly conquered lands flowing from their coffers...err...arms. If that's the case you should just save yourself the time and energy and stay home staring at the hated things you DO have but don't have the budget to replace.

I long for the days in which I can be a civilian once more. Being myself. Wearing what I want. Instead of these digital camo ACUs every...day...of my very...long...life.

Currently Reading: A Moveable Feast
Currently Listening: Sleepercar