An Incongruous Pairing
Posted by Ray @ 10:33 pmConversation excerpt (the context: we’re comparing Law lecturers):
[M]: haha anyway my lecturer is so funny
[M]: he is trying to attain nirvana now
[M]: he converted to buddhism
[Ray]: …what?
[M]: in fact he’s a monk!
[Ray]: …teaching competition law.
[M]: he’s an ang moh (i.e. caucasian - ed) monk
[M]: he wears those red robes to class
[Ray]: a Monk.
[M]: yeah
[Ray]: teaching Competition law.
Picture, for a moment, the remarkable (ironic?) juxtaposition:
A Bald. Caucasian. Monk. Teaching Competition Law.
Withdrawal Symptoms
Posted by Ray @ 8:44 pmExams are just tomorrow, I have not much time, I have an extremely shaky grasp of Competition Law concepts… and yet, I cannot concentrate. Where ordinarily desperation lends men wings, this time it’s given me lead weights and sandbags.
I attribute this crushing apathy to: withdrawal symptoms.
You see, I’m a gaming addict, and my last fix was in June. I think.
I can’t remember the last game I played. Hell, I can’t even remember the kind of game it was, or if it was on my PlayStation 2 or my PC, or if it was even fun. It’s driving me to madness; a continuous itch in one of those nerve-sparse areas of your body where you can’t scratch the darn thing because for some reason you don’t have enough nerves to register the satisfaction of a scratch, but you do have enough nerves to register the existence of that $%&@ itch.
And there’s the rub: it’s not like I can even play any games. Because I’m using a cursed Macintosh, whose game library reads like last century’s fashion catalog (The Sims 2? Doom? Please!).
Worse, the impending holiday season is driving me into pavlovian madness. Witness the deluge of top-notch games (upcoming or otherwise) that I have yet to palate:
- Shadow of the Colossus
- God of War
- Splinter Cell 3: Chaos Theory
- Age of Empires III
- Serious Sam II
- Quake IV
- Black & White 2
- X3: Reunion
- Call of Duty 2
- Civilization IV
- F.E.A.R.
- Fable: The Lost Chapters
I mean, come on, look at that list. Civilization IV alone will destroy any hopes of a social life for at least a couple of weeks, while X3: Reunion will probably do irreparable damage to numerous already-strained friendships.
(Note that I do not include World of Warcraft above. That’s because WoW is an insidious evil disguised as a video game. The aforementioned games will lose me some friends, at most; WoW will have its way with me and then happily spew my lifeless husk out to provide sustenance to maggots.
Everyone knows feeding maggots is evil.)
Oh Apple, why have you forsaken me? In my hour of need, you hang me out to dry while you sit on the vast quantities of wealth sucked from iPod sales…
Why do you do this to me? You say your OS integrates with OpenGL at the lowest level, you say you have the most powerful development tools, you say you have the best, the coolest, the fastest, well then, where the $*%# are my videogames??!
Never in my life have I yearned more for the buggy, BSoD-ing, crash-prone, security-holed zombie-magnet piece of s%$t the world calls Windows.
…
Now look what you’ve made me do. Are you happy now?
On Serenity
Posted by Ray @ 12:01 pmI feel that enough time has passed that it is now safe for me to indulge in a spoiler-laden, one-line review of the movie Serenity, sequel to the ill-fated Firefly TV series. For maximum effect, I ask that readers repeat my one-line review with the same tone of voice Luke Skywalker employed when he discovered his father was Darth Vader.
Ready? Here it is, my one-line review of Serenity:
Oh my God, Kaylee lost weight!
I shall now go sit in the corner and silently sob over pre-emancipation era photos of Jewel Staite.