My Love For T.V Shows

I would have been traumatized if Friday Night Lights didn't get picked up for another season. Luckily, the gods have shined upon me because not only am I getting the promise of another season, I'M GETTING TWO!!! God does exist.

This day cannot go wrong.

Someone get ahold of Dustin and tell him I'm super pumped; I'm too lazy to get on MySpace.

In other significant television news:
Grey's Anatomy and The Office got picked up. As if they wouldn't...
Greek is renewed (only reliable ABC Family show)
Gossip Girl will continue to be my guilty pleasure for another season. Dirty Sexy Money will not.
Prison Break got its final season (Peaked after Season One)

No news on How I Met Your Mother yet; I might be paranoid but I consider that bad news. Right next to The Office and Friday Night Lights it is my third favorite show...tied with Grey's Anatomy.

About Quality Customer Service.

This Norwegian Warner Brothers executive actually called a Norwegian kid complaining on Twitter about how he can't download the new Dave Matthews CD off of iTunes (through no fault of his own) a "shit youth" because he rebuffed the ongoing arguement that pirating thrives due to corporations' copyright protections preventing legitimate buyers from successfully purchasing their products. Well, he didn't put it exactly in those words but teenage kids are rarely affluent enough to legitimately lodging their complaints in an intellectual manner. Especially on Twitter.

People get so upset on either side of the 'pirating' issue. I will admit to 'pirating' albums when I'm home, but I wouldn't even call it pirating. What I do is sift through the inane and trite musical albums in the endless quest for quality artists worthy of my monetary commitments. Downloading it on Bittorrent is by far the most convenient way of listening to dozens of albums per week. I add the most interesting/unique onto my Amazon.com Wish List, delete what I illegally downloaded, and purchase it at a later date. If entertainment venues want me to stop they need to get innovative; I can't listen to 30-second samples to determine the quality of an album. I need access to the full album for the course of about a week to weigh its aesthetic values. Those are my needs, cater to them.

It is the job of record industries to be innovate and evolve with the times/trends. Instead of being obstinate and battling every user in court you should sit on your thinking stool and come up with ways to market music/movie enthusiasts back into your soft, warm embrace. Meanwhile your profits will continue to spiral down into an endless void, only to be sucked up by competitors who exercise the due diligence to meet the consumer's latest needs. (SIDENOTE TO RECORD LABEL COMPANIES STUMBLING ONTO THIS ARTICLE: I own 450+ original CDs and I never burn copies. I am a legitimate and devout consumer to the record label industry and not some 'shit youth'. Please keep that in consideration)

P.S Why do they even call it 'pirating'? By definition a pirate is 'a person who robs or commits illegal violence at sea or on the shores of the sea'. Is it the digital seas they sail? If so what pitfalls can an online pirate expect to further contextualize these similarities? Let's see what I can come up with off the cuff:

- Pirates have scurvy; online pirates have trojan horses/viruses
- Pirates have parrots; online pirates have Twitter
- Pirates steal booty; online pirates download booty
- Pirates fight with swords; online pirates fight with minced words and vicious screenames

That's all I got really. I'm still working on the next installment of Lemuel's Life; class and work have been overwhelming me. I just finished my final paper last night for my latest Master's course and I start my next course 'Public Policy' next week. In the meantime I have a larger allotment of freetime to catch up on my latest rants.

Lemuel's Life (Part I)

I was talking to Jade the other day about using Quicken software to compete financially, pretending our finances were a game in which there could be a winner and a loser. I mean, technically it can...and is...but I'd like to think scales can be measured by more than just finances.

I might just be saying that because she'd totally stomp me. She has two incomes (hers and her husband's) AND she doesn't have student loans. Both facets place me as a serious underdog. In fact you could say I'm completely outclassed. I pointed out to her that after they buy their first house and have kids I'll have the opportunity to pull ahead for the big WIN. But then I realized...that's not really winning. In fact that's kind of losing.

What if life were just a game, with measurements, scores, tiles and tallies?

Oh right, there is such a game. It's called 'The Game of Life'. Duh.

Then I had my first stroke of artistic brilliancy since the chilren's story I wrote on my MySpace blog in 2006 (I'll link it later).

I present to you dear readers, 'The Game of Lemuel's Life'. Fully illustrated and customized. Journey with a plastic, stick-figured version of Lemuel. as he competes against his toughest competitor: himself. Travel with him over a series of the next dozen blogs as he reconstructs life after high school within a series of tiles, using a standard of crudely drawn yellow sticky notes and a ridiculous camera that refuses to focus when it's too close to the board.

(Words in color represent actual captioning and/or details as would be described by a Life game designer)

CONGRATULATIONS! You graduated from high school! What's more, you graduated early! You're 17 and on your way to Abilene Christian University for the next four years. But oh, you don't have a car, you're gonna have to walk buddy!

You've been driving your mom's suburban all through high school and you catch rides with your church buddies. Plus you've got your skateboard to travel to nearby hotel lobbies to watch Gilmore Girls! Collect $15,000 in car payments/insurance savings over the next four years!*

*It sucked to be without a car all throughout college. Fortunately, I ALWAYS had roommates that not only owned cars, but were gracious enough to let me borrow them. Shane and his Camaro especially. God that thing was fast, slick, and awesome. I also frequently used Jon Strong's Monte Carlo, Billy Smith's old pick-up truck, Josh Quigley's new pick-up truck, and my sister's Suzuki Swift. I bummed just about everyone's vehicles, but I don't think too many people minded terribly because I always put more gas into it than I used. Still, sometimes all I had was a skateboard. I remember walking all the way to the county fair freshman year. It was like four miles away, just far enough to be a slightly ridiculous walk. Luckily someone gave me a ride back.

Strep throat right before Freshman finals week, OH NO! You bomb most of your finals and lose your academic scholarship! Lose $4500 over the next four years.**

**Against my defense, I was only put on academic probation. Should I have aced some of my classes that next semester I could've won my scholorship back. But I wasn't interested in putting in that extra work. It sucked though. What I'd initially thought was just a sore throat kept getting worse and worse until I finally saw the doctor and he told me I had Strep Throat. By then it was too late and it had already practically disabled me. All I could manage to do was sleep 18 hours/day, drink fruit smoothies, and crawl into class to take my finals. There was absolutely no way to study while you have a bad case of strep. What's more, my parents had traveled to pick me up right after finals so it wasn't like I could talk to my professors about letting me take it the week after. I was doomed, and it played a small factor in me graduating from ACU with a 2.42 GPA. (The other factor being that I just didn't care about GPAs) I know, horrible right? It's why I have to maintain this 4.0 GPA at AMU, couple that with an amazing LSAT score and I might just stand a chance of getting into a good law school. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot...

Like I said, brilliant right? I have my moments; it's why you love me. Stay tuned.

I Enjoi Posting Crazy Product Reviews A Little Too Much

No one's ever going to read them, minus the people that read my blog, because most of them refer to outdated games, movies, and books that've already been thoroughly reviewed by other people. However, because I want to ensure I've said my piece to Amazon.com about almost any materialistic possession I own (and because I'm a shareholder of said company) I feel compelled to write them nonetheless.

My Amazon.com profile is right here. I give it to you not only so you can see reviews, but if you want to see my 'Wish Lists' of what I plan to buy someday, or even what I've bought recently (you little snoop you) it's always tracking my latest interests, fads, and recent reviews. BTW, I write reviews generally as I finish consuming it, so it's a genuine tracker of what I've been reading/watching/listening to lately. Pretty cool huh!?

At least until you're all disgusted by my 'Girls Gone Wild Wishlist'. But cut me some slack; I just can't ever seem to keep up with because they put out so many releases per month. In Blu Ray nonetheless.

I'm j/k by the way. Don't judge me ;-)

A Review of Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift
What's A Grimoire, And Did I Fix The Rift?, April 2, 2009
By J. Wactor (Tucson, AZ) -

I spent over 100 hours playing this game and all of its various side quests, and I only managed to complete a little more than half of the total missions. This game also has a Hard setting so if you're into this game, you can easily get your money's worth by purchasing it and letting it siphon months of your free time.

However, I wouldn't recommend it; after completing the first hundred or so missions you begin to wonder to yourself just how many times you have to clean an airship, deliver correspondence, help with the spring festivals, and other menial tasks. Don't get me wrong, it was awesome to be able to level-up by accomplishing such tasks. It's also a nice break from always battling foes, but is it really worth the trouble? Is it really worth trying to visit four different areas in six days, visiting different baby mamas while posing as your client? Is it moral?

Most of the time it isn't; the dialogue is incredibly drab and after the tenth hour I always skimmed the words. This is an unprecedented move for me, as I generally love the dialogue/storyline of Final Fantasy games. It unnerved me that I just couldn't get into this game.

However bad the storyline may be the battle system more than makes up for it. The classes, weapons, attacks, terrain, enemies, and laws are all incredible. I played this game mainly for the battle system, not understanding most of the reasoning behind why I was killing this bunny, aiding this witch, picking up this flower, or intimidating this blob monster. It had to be for the good of mankind right? I believe I was fighting the forces of evil, but I don't really know. People were paying me to do it, and as a mercenary you don't ask questions.

It's probably a good thing there was no morality gauge in this game. Before I knew it the credits were rolling and I didn't have to contemplate as to my noble/horrendous deeds I committed or my impact on this world. I knew that in the final stage someone was trying to kill me, so I killed them. And that's all that matters in the end, when you're offered a little supplementary income by a shady bartender who has a friend who has a friend who wants you to fight someone to the death.