Nothing rhymes with Pokemon, man

I know very, very little about poetry. I know that I like Poe's The Raven , and Rime of the Ancient Mariner thanks to Iron Maiden. I'm pretty sure that to be a good poet you have to have been dead for a few years. I own books by dead poets and, by and large, enjoy them occasionally.
What follows is something that was a requirement for my creative writing course. I had to write forty lines of poem and a five hundred word commentary.
So I pulled on my favourite beret and black turtle-neck and gave it a shot. And here it is, Cat.
You could skip straight to the poems but please read the commentary first you can see what I was at least attempting. Let me know if you dig, you dig? Cool.

I don't know...

... how to play backgammon, how to drive, how 'planes fly, my seven times table past 27, how long until an egg is hard boiled, more than ten words in any language other than English, the difference between a womb and a uterus if there is one, my own favourite colour, whether I like poetry or pretend to, if it should look like that, how the internet works, why I should have to change my jeans more frequently than once a week, where the stop cock is, how much money is in my bank account, whether I should be using commas or semi-colons, what taking cocaine feels like, the offside rule, how to spell nesessary, how to change a plug, more than one way to tie a tie, my home phone number, or my blood type.

But I do know...

Losing interest in comics

Tears of frustration not pictured.

I like to think I've got my priorities in order. I know what sits at the top, lording it over lesser priorities: family, eating etc. and I know what dwells in the dungeon of my concerns, barely surviving on the scraps of attention thrown down to it. It's pitiful really. That medieval dungeon of ill worth is becoming more overcrowded by the day. I went in to town today to give my Interest In Comics a breath of fresh air. He is a long-termer. The low priorities that share his cell call him a Lifer. When I grabbed Heavy Metal by his studded collar and bullet belt and threw him on the bedding straw, old Comics was already there, leafing through a copy of Previews that was already four years old. Inmates come and go. Even Sleeping, Grooming and Video Games have had short stays in the antechamber of apathy.

One day I'll stroll down the stone steps to the damp dungeon, rattling my keys and inform an exhausted and emaciated Interest In Films that he has served his time and is free to run amok in my mind and my wallet. He will, no doubt, be elated with the news of his release and before I help him up off the cold floor and out towards the light he may glance at old Comics then back at me, sunken eyes full of hope for his cellmate. It's likely I'll just shake my head and lock the door. And poor old Comics, well... he probably didn't even notice that I had come in.

My visit, today, to Forbidden Planet only served to reaffirm a future I already suspected. I will never again be 'into' comics.

Throw away the key... for they've come too far and become too many.

Motorstorm: Arctic Edge for the PSPGo ... and huds

HUDs or Heads Up Displays traditionally are tools employed by video game developers to inform the player of various status changes within the game. Changes that occur, for example, to the game score, time elapsed, health or ammunition remaining, etc. are displayed in a manner befitting the type of game they are in usually around the periphery of the main playing area and, when done right, can enhance the play experience.
I really like HUDs at times like when they are very creatively 'written into' the core game experience (Dead Space's backpack mounted health bar and Metroid Prime's visor projection of status being a ... prime example). If not they just tend to get in my way and distract. 

Initial thoughts on those ten free PSPGo games



My PSP Go is about a fortnight old now, and of the ten free games that I downloaded on day one, my thumbs' physical memory is already skipping past a few of them on the XMB without my brain having to intervene. They (the Thumbs Of Power) have decreed what will be played and what will not, and in their small way (ie. pressing the space-bar) they will now do their bit to help organise my thoughts into transcibable words below. 

Batman Returns for the Sega Mega Drive

Batman Returns (1992) - Sega

Sega Megadrive

Also for Sega CD, Amiga, Atari ST, SNES, Atari Lynx, PC, Sega Master System, Gamegear

vampires suck (or something much wittier about how disappointed i was by the latest castlevania game, lords of shadow)

So, I turned my Playstation 3 off. Not in disgust but in disappointment. After loving, and completing, Batman Arkham Asylum this seemed like my kind of game. One that I had been very much looking forward to. A rich looking, Gothic 3D action adventure with hand-to-hand combat and exploration and puzzle solving. The developer (Kojima Studios) and the publisher (Konami) both have a high success rate in the category of Games What I Like. So what went wrong, for me? I emphasise the subjectiveness because I believe this to be a great game in the opinions of many. Had the review scores not been so favourable I wouldn't have bothered playing it. I recognise that it is not a 'bad game' in the same way that I recognise that Citizen Kane or The Ten Commandments are not 'bad movies'. Retro-viewed contextually they are difficult films to fault in the respect of scope, grandieur and technical achievement. They're just not My Kind of movies.

my atari lynx II

I love my Atari Lynx II. The screen is too small. It eats 6 AA's a day. The resolution is pitiful when compared to, closest rival, the Sega Game Gear. It's cumbersome to hold. I've only got one game for it. There are only four or five games that I even want to play on it. But it is easily one of my favourite gaming items.

Batman Begins for the PlayStation2

Batman Begins - 2005

Action Adventure

Electronic Arts

Developed by Eurocom

Also for Gamecube, Xbox, Gameboy Advance and Playstation Portable.



My PSPGo

It's not my birthday until march but thanks to some shrewd negotiating on my part I managed to pry my present from my girlfriends grasp with the promise of beauty products. It's a general rule of mine to be as disinterested and apathetic as possible with regards to new gaming technology at least until it is affordable. On the whole these things become affordable when  they are succeeded by newer tech. So, it was with the announcement of the PSP2 (or NGP) that I suddenly became filled with an all encompassing desire to own a PSP.