Ho Hum

Things are quiet. Too quiet. That's a cliche, isn't it? Is that the right word I'm looking for? It's feeling rather cliche-ish right now. I don't like it. It's really offsetting.

No new word on Chris and his coffee adventures yet, but know that as soon as he takes his next sip of coffee, I'll bring word of the results. Unless I'm not there when it happens, then we're both up the creek without a paddle. Or a canoe for that matter, or a creek. Wait... Chris would be the creek... and coffee the canoe... the paddle would be us....

Whoa.... Give me a second here.

University Brings Out the Best in Us!

Have you ever watched someone on TV, on a game show for example, and just wished with all the willpower you could muster that they would fail miserably? And when they did, did you ever feel a bit bad about it, like you had something to do with it? Well assuming you said yes, boy do I have a story for you.

A little background information, my friends Chris, Alex and I all go to the same university. Chris and I happen to have the same first class in the mornings, followed by a spare where we usually hang out with Alex one of the cafeterias. Now today, we were sitting in this cafeteria, minding our own business, when Alex spots a kid through the window he was facing, which faced the nearby street. This kid was running on the division between the two parts of the road, which looked basically like a curb in the middle of the street. "That kid is going to die" says Alex with a laugh, to which Chris and I turned to look as well. "Yeah, he's going to get hit" I say in the same humorous tone. The, together, we chanted the seconds to the kid's doom.

"Three"

"Two"

"One"

Then it happened. Suddenly right before a car passes in front of our field of view we see the kid jump into the street, only to be hit by a car. We were instantly dumbfounded and shocked as we watched a man step out of the car, approach the kid, talk to him and bring him into the car, hopefully to take him home, or to a hospital... The kid seemed fine, that's what I want to get clear as crystal. We didn't kill the poor kid we just... Well I'm not entirely sure what we did, but I am a little scared of our collective willpower now, thanks to that.

Another interesting happening of the day, and something that I hope will be a regular update around here is... Caffeinated Chris! Yes our good friend Chris has decided to drink coffee. Now I'm not entirely sure how long this will go on for, but I intend to keep you up to date with information regarding Chris and how his new beverage is effecting him! Now, I took a few notes on Chris today, and his "first" cup of coffee.

Chris' Coffee for today was...
The Caramel Biscotti (Mild)

Me: "How does the coffee taste?"

Chris: "It was somewhat bitter."

Then Chris started to talk about how the taste could grow on them, comparaing it to heroin. This raised further questions, but that would be a different day, different experiment. Different intervention.

Me: "How often do you expect to have a coffee after this?"

Chris: "Whenever I feel like I need it."

He then went on to talk about how he usually has 7am - 2am days and that coffee would probably be able to help him keep his energy up throughout his entire day. Also, he mentioned that it could be a university enhancer as well as increase performace during band practice. I'm not sure if the underlying drug joke only came up for me or not there. He also claimed that he would be able to save Justine (another one of our university friends, who took Alex's seat when he went to class) from stray soccer balls, which leads me to believe that he is either gaining superhuman powers, is delirious from... caffine? Or he was trying to tell me he wants to play goalie for us in indoor soccer this year. Then things started to frighten me slighly.

Suddenly Chris claimed that it would increase his immune system, and that he should start smoking as well, to become a good writer. Also, apparently he would have to hide scotch away in his house. I'm starting to think that coffee is perhaps a gateway beverage, leading on to bigger and more dangerous libations! Being scared of changing as a person as well as being mocked and wethere he will care or not, were things he was afraid of happening to him (I mean come on, who likes those crazy people who drink coffee, amirite?)

While I was taking notes, I noticed Chris exclaim...

Chris: "I'm adorable!"

Things took a turn for the lighter (less adorable) side of the force when I asked him...

Me: "Do you feel any different then before you started to drink this single coffee?"

He told me he felt more energized, more active. Great! Sounds like a regular reaction to coffee for me! Then he told me he felt the sudden urge to punch Justine in the face, really hard. He was also afraid of the urge to murder if he drank too much, which actually makes sense if you think about it. If he was about half-way through his coffee when he said he wanted to punch her in the face, I can't imagine what happened to him later on that day. Chalk another reason for me to not start drinking coffee on the board.

Justine: "You don't want to kill me, Chris"

Chris: "I don't want to, but I will!"

It was easy to see that Chris was getting irritable, as he started claiming that he could do "Whatever he wants" and even started to physically restrain Justine from reaching over the table. Reaching for salvation from Chris' jittery, homicidal, caffenated attacks was my guess, but I wasn't paying attention. I had just ordered volume one and two of LoXG. I can't remember exactly what he said, but in my notes there is something about threatening with circles and lines, which leads me to believe Chris' super caffenated energy must have lead him to creating a new way of killing people, via geometry.

And that was about it for Chris' first day on coffee! See you next time, viewers! Maybe we'll have a dead body or two on our hands! If anyone asks, I was here the entire time.

Player One

"I'm adorable!" - Christopher Hunter, Caffenated Chris.

(Edit: With all the new news, I forgot about the shameless self-promotion! Recently, I auditioned for a play and recieved a part, and now it's already time for us to open the show soon! Check out the website!)

It's a Beautiful Day!

So why am I inside? This doesn't really make any sense to me, but I think I'm going to lose my mind if I don't leave this place soon. Summer is almost over already and I think this might be one of the only enjoyable days that we're going to have here.... So I have to go make the most of it. I'm not exactly sure, myself, how I'm going to seize the day, but it will be seized!

Nothing much when it comes to new news, the Fringe Fest has already started and I haven't checked out any of the shows yet. I suppose I still feel a little angry that I missed all of the auditions that there were, as I A) Had no idea when they were and B) I'm apparently not very versed in actually finding auditions. Maybe I'll eventually check something out, I'm sure it's worth it!

On a different note, me and some of my Blogger buddies are all writing short stories for a "Short Story Club" and I just want to put this out there, in case any of them are reading this right now.... When are we doing this?

Anyways, I'm getting a bit too restless, so I'm going to attempt an adventure of sorts.

Player One

"Oh boy! Mark Soup!" - Monster Party


-Edit

BlahBlahBlahBlahBlahBlahBlahBlahBlahBlahBlahBlahBlahBlahBlahBlah

Short Update

I just figured I would give a small "shout out" to some friends who also have their own little blog;
The Things Beneath the Fridge and The Timely Howard

So, go and look! Do it now, quickly! Give me some time to think about something to write about on here!

This may take a while...


"Your a sight for sore eyes! I thought you'd be stealing bases down in Burmingham." -Michael Jordan, Chaos in the Windy City.

-PlayerOne

Follow Up

I feel slightly ashamed... Coming back here after so long, with my tail between my legs... I would like to have an excuse, and I could say I've been busy but that would be a slight lie. I have been busy, but there's always time for Slices of Cake Inc.

You should see the offices though. Personally, I had no idea interns could survive off coffee grinds, expired vending machine chocolate and those little yellow sticky notes for a month. Smart little buggers.

On a brighter note, I'm going to be in a web-based commercial for a local teen outreach program called Youthspk, or something like that... I won't give too much away, but I'm supposed to be a drug addict pressuring other people to do drugs. Apparently it's the cool thing to do, and lord knows I want to be cool. Maybe I'm getting the message the commercial is getting across wrong, though. Anyways, I'll try to link it here as soon as I can. Seriously though, these series of commercials are trying to help kids relate to this program, and hopefully they will make a difference with the kids who need help.

Surfing the internets yesterday, I came across this picture that just felt right. You know the feeling, when you see something that is simply perfect for something that's been lying in the back of your mind. I'd like to add that I don't take any sort of credit for the picture, all I did was crop it a bit. So, I present you with a picture of what my idea of what The Players would look like.

I'm the one with the suit!

Well, if we want to get technical, the one with the black suit. Do you want to get technical? Do you really?



Yeah, that's right. Now we be gettin techical. Word.


-PlayerOne

Still Alive

Beep

"Happy Canada Day" - A lot of Canadians



Edit:

See more funny videos at CollegeHumor

Because... Well, why not? Sure, not as good as the original...

It's been a while, I know, but I haven't been able to really think of anything worthwhile to say on the blog. Lately all the writing I've been doing has revolved around a little project that I've been working on for a little while now, using a program called "RPG Maker 2003". As you can probably tell, it's a program for making Role Playing Games on the computer. It's pretty user friendly, though there are newer versions of it out now that seem far better, the only problem is that I've used up my 30 day trial for one of them, and the other... well I can't figure out why, but it stops downloading at around 89% every time I try. So 2003 will have to do for now, and I don't mind, it's still a pretty sweet program.

Personally, I think that Video Games are a great way to portray a story, and some of them do an amazing job of bringing you into it. Allow me to give you a couple examples of games I thought were very well done when it comes to story and bringing the player into the game.

Shenmue I & II (Dreamcast and Xbox, in that order) - I was introduced to the Shenmue games a while ago, when I first bought my Dreamcast. I can't remember why I bought it, when I bought it, or where I bought it (I'm assuming Microplay) but I do remember my "older brother" Justin saying something like "Oh, you won't like that game, you'll probably think it's too boring", but I bought it anyways and never regretted it since. I can't really describe the genre of the game... It's a mix of adventure, puzzle solving, mystery, and a bit of acting and fighting. The story is focuses on a young Japanese man named Ryo Hazuki, who's father (a martial artist who created the Hazuki style of fighting, which Ryo is a student of) is murdered at the beginning of the story by a mysterious martial artist named Lan Di, apparently a past acquaintance of Ryo's father. The rest of the story plays out as Ryo swears to find out who Lan Di is and extract revenge on him, a story which by the second game is still not finished. From what I've heard, a long time ago, it was originally supposed to be about 5 games long... from what I can remember.

The story is really great, but the best parts are this game is the freedom, exploration, and interaction that it gives you, especially in the second game. As you walk around the town, or city, you see people walking up an down the streets doing their daily routines, going on walks, shopping, eating, playing at the arcade... I seem to have it a block write now, so I can't explain everything as well as I want to, but the game does an amazing job at making you feel as if you are living out Ryo's life, you can speak to passers by on the street, work, play games, eat, get into fights, gamble, sleep, buy little miniature Sega toys from those machines you see everywhere, buy pop from a drink machine, examine so many different little objects around you... It's really one of my favorite games, and I supposed how I can understand how people don't like it, or may think that it's slow... While it does have it's action, there are huge spaces where all you do is walk around the city/town, which doesn't bother me at all, with all the things you can do in it.

Perhaps today wasn't a good day to start writing on here again. I'm going to head off now, probably take a nap before I take a bus downtown for rehearsal. My last wisdom tooth is coming in, and it's at the part where it's just about to push through my gum, but it doesn't hurt. All it does is swell my gum so it's very irritating to do basically anything on the left side of my mouth right now. Fun fun, I wonder if I will have to get them removed?

-PlayerOne

"(Insert Shenmue quote in here, as I cannot find a good one)" - Shenmue