nightcrawlers

I observed an interesting phenomenon last night. My parents and my brother are neighbors, and I usually spend the night at my brother’s place when I visit home. While walking out to my brother’s house last night, it was pitch black in the field between their houses, and I was carrying a flashlight. I found it disorienting to see little slithery things on the ground suddenly disappearing right before I was about to step on them. I thought “did I stay up too late? am I seeing things?” I took a few halting steps because it looked like bits of the ground itself were shrinking away from me before I could put my foot down. I paused and saw that, just a foot or so in front of me, the ground was covered with earthworms. Specifically the honkin’ big nightcrawlers; I think I discovered the origin of their name. As my flashlight would hit them, they would slide quickly back into their holes in the ground. Since I kept the flashlight focused just in front of me on the ground, that resulted in the worms sliding out of view just before I reached them. It was really cool after I realized what was going on; the whole hike over to my brother’s place was filled with slippery nightcrawlers squiggling away from me and my light. If only the walk had been accompanied by slurping sounds, too.

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selling furniture and my dad on Twilight

I had the sneaking suspicion that when I bought my PS3, it might make me long for a nicer TV. That suspicion has turned into reality after bringing my PS3 home to let my brother try NCAA Football 2010 on it, and playing Bayonetta using his widescreen plasma TV. The text in Antonio’s Notebook, when read on my own 25″ standard-definition TV, really messes with your eyes. You get these vibrating lines around all the letters, I think because of the border on the text. That goes away on my brother’s TV and I can read comfortably. The rest of the game is much prettier, too, of course, and I can see more detail. I can only imagine what getting an HD cable to go along with a nice widescreen HD TV would do for gameplay.

My problem though is that I need to get rid of my existing stuff before I go buying new stuff. I’m trying to reduce the amount of crap I have in my apartment, and I’ve started by putting my loveseat up for sale on Craigslist. I also cleared off one of my two bookshelves in my apartment and brought it home for my brother to use. In the process, I picked out a bunch of books that I don’t figure I’ll want to read anytime soon, but that I otherwise don’t want to sell/donate, and I brought those home to store in my old bedroom. I look forward to the day when I have a house from which I don’t plan to move for a long time, so that I can bring back all of my crap from my parents’ house and either keep it, sell it, or donate it. I would also like to sell my couch because it is a freaking heavy sleeper sofa that my old roommate picked out because she thought having a sleeper sofa would be a good thing. I insist that it is not. I for some reason bought the damn thing from her when we parted ways, though, and now I want it gone. That would leave me with fancy camper chairs for seating, were I to sell the couch and the loveseat, but that would be oh so convenient when I move later this year. I would end up buying a couch that is not a sleeper sofa for my new place.

Anywho, I’m still getting my ass kicked in Bayonetta at this harder difficulty setting, but I’m muddling through. I’m discovering all kinds of new stuff that I missed the first time through, probably because I’m used to the game and recognize when something is out of ordinary. I’m looking around a lot more, initially ignoring the obvious spot where they want me to go and poking around instead to find secrets. I found the last piece of a record, allowing me to get a new weapon I didn’t have before: the Kulshedra. I’ve also discovered what those Broken Witch Hearts are good for (collect 4 to get a larger life bar) and have been actively seeking them out. It’s funny that on Easy I didn’t have need of these things because it was easy enough I just blew through every fight. I didn’t miss not finding the extra goodies because the game was easy enough without them. Now I find myself in dire need of some of the green concoction components because I’m always using health lollipops and can’t make more. I’m even running low on the yellow and red components used for the other lollies.

I was just reading about God of War III and it sounds pretty fun. I like the idea of battles played on top of huge creatures. I enjoy that part of Bayonetta, and wish there were more battles with a crazy-large scale.

I find it interesting that before I bought a PS3 or became interested in owning one, I didn’t think there were many games for it that I would enjoy. It’s probably because I didn’t even look at games that came out for the PS3 because I didn’t own one and didn’t plan on buying one. Now that I do own one, though, and am looking at games for it, I find there are quite a few that I’m interested in playing. It’s nice, because I kept replaying the same old games on my Wii: Animal Crossing, Paper Mario, and Twilight Princess.

Ha! My dad just said something to me about glittery vampires and I was all “what?? what do you know about glittery vampires?”. He told me that they do get Showtime, and apparently he’s caught Twilight on there. I told him how I was going to rent New Moon later this month and force Jon to watch it with me. His response: “You mean there’s more than one of these things?? I haven’t been able to sit through more than about thirty seconds of the first one! It’s just stupid. It’s unbelievably stupid!”

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beat Bayonetta

I beat Bayonetta already, but perhaps I should note I was playing it on Easy. I had first started the game in Normal mode, the hardest difficulty available, but after dying like crazy trying to get through one area, I switched it to Easy and just carried on like that. I’m playing through it again on Normal and it’s much more difficult. The game lets you keep all your stuff after you beat it, so I have all the same weapons and items as before. I assumed I would still have the marionette Accessory from the first time through, so when I saw it was for sale at the Gates of Hell, I ignored it. Turns out it took that Accessory away from me, either because I beat the game or I started playing again on Normal. Now I can’t afford the darn thing but it was so helpful to have. It allows you to bang away on the two main attack keys and it will generate random combos. I pretty much do what Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation said in his review of Bayonetta: flail around on the two attack buttons and hope for some awesome combo to come out. Often times, it does. *shrug*

One thing I wanted to point out (can’t remember if I’ve said as much before on here) is that I haven’t had any problem with the game’s load times. I know I read in different reviews online of the game that everyone thought Bayonetta’s load times on the PS3 were ridiculous. Now I haven’t tried the 360 version, but I did do one thing that I didn’t see other PS3 reviewers mention: I chose the Install option before I ever started playing Bayonetta. I saw it in the main menu, didn’t know what it would entail, but it sounded like a fine idea. I’m guessing that doing that speeds up loading considerably by copying necessary stuff to the PS3 instead of always reading from disc.

I have Eternal Sonata ordered and it should arrive in a couple days. Just in time, too, since I beat Bayonetta only yesterday. I’ve been playing Pixeljunk Eden also, though I’ve only gotten 4/5 Spectra in Garden 1 and nothing in any other garden.

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apartment + cable deals suck

In searching for apartments, I found one place that I was really pleased with. It was in my price range; had a dishwasher, washer, and dryer in every apartment; and was in a generally pleasant area of town. I just found out that they’re working out an agreement with a local cable company that would require residents to buy cable TV, though, which is a big part of why I’m leaving my current apartment. I don’t watch TV and I don’t want to pay for some service that I’ll never use! It’s so frustrating. The guy at the new apartment that I’ve been talking with told me it will “guarantee 252 customers for [cable company]“. Yeah, and it will piss off a bunch of your residents, I’m guessing, and perhaps make potential residents like myself pass by your apartments. Whose side are they on? Are they in the apartment business to have residents, or to line the pockets of x cable company? I’m entering an agreement with the apartment complex, not with the apartment complex and whatever other companies it wants to tack on. Let the cable company get its business from customers who actually want their service, not from people that just happen to live at an apartment complex and are forced to pay for television they do not want. Residents would get cable at a discounted rate, but why not let individual residents choose which services to buy and from whom? I don’t want to be locked in to cable TV for the duration of my lease, nor do I want to be required to buy it from a particular company. My apartment search continues, apparently.

Edit: I’ve been continuing my apartment search online and I’ve discovered one thing that is both baffling and annoying. Apartment complexes brag about all kinds of extra stuff, e.g., “We have a duck pond!! Come see our manicured lawns! OMG we have a fitness center!!!1” without having things like a dishwasher or washer/dryer. I would give up crap like the duck pond and fitness center in exchange for an apartment with a dishwasher, washer, and dryer.

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got a PS3

Just a quick note to say Best Buy happened to get some 120GB PS3’s in today and I just happened to call at the right time, squeal “Omigod, can you hold one?!”, and buy one. :) I couldn’t find Eternal Sonata at either Best Buy or Gamestop, so I ended up with Bayonetta instead. After dying repeatedly in the prologue on Normal setting (the hardest setting there is, for some reason), I realized that using Triangle + Circle does combos a lot better, or something, and I’ve since progressed to Chapter 3 on Easy mode. I’m really enjoying it. Anyone who has a PSN account, my user name is cheshire137, if you want to friend me. :)

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