The one where I attempt to (unsuccessfully) live-blog the Under the Dome season premiere.
(Note: Actual recap to come in the next day or two.)
[liveblog]
stuff that doesn’t go in a place…
The one where I attempt to (unsuccessfully) live-blog the Under the Dome season premiere.
(Note: Actual recap to come in the next day or two.)
[liveblog]
Sometimes the present is boring and the future takes too long to get here. No hover cars, no robots, not a single alien.
In video games we get to see the possibilities for the future good, but mostly bad. But I don’t think the bad is really all that bad. If you look from the right angle, some of these video game futures are kind of awesome.
If you’re a psycho or a bandit in the Borderlands future your life expectancy is probably not very promising.
However the Borderlands future is an entrepreneur’s dream. From magic powers to treasure chests everywhere you turn, it’s a wondrous place for those with plans and ambition. Would you like to run a bar like Moxie? Maybe have an army of brutes like Handsome Jack? Or, maybe you’d like to start a simple minion operation like Claptrap? It’s all possible!
Sir Hammerlock is an anthropologist of sorts and even though he’s lost a limb or two, he’s having a ball. Of course there’s a constant threat of death an destruction and the wildlife is out to get you, but that just spices up life on Pandora.
What’s the fun in just safely walking from point A to Point B with no threat of being stomped or devoured?!
Ignoring the very end, Mass Effect was a damn good future while it lasted. Unless you were sick or enslaved or from a place that got invaded while no one was watching…
But! for people who live in the Citadel or on Commander Shepard’s ship life is pretty fun. There are so many different aliens to mingle with. Different planets are waiting to be mined for resources or treasure. There are bazaars for buying, discos for dancing, and beautiful views every which way you turn. And every time you want to go somewhere, you get to hop on a space ship.
Maybe (likely) a big draw for the Mass Effect future are the characters in it.
Mordin, Garraus, Harrot… Any future that produces people like that, must be a wonderful place… aside from the constant threat of interstellar destruction.
Sure, life on the ground might be a bit chaotic with all the indiscriminate killing and various types of grenades being thrown at the suicide grunts and highly explosive vehicles but Spartans don’t live on the ground. Hopefully no one lives on the ground considering it’s pretty much razed except for the beautiful and indestructible buildings.
Oh and how beautiful are the buildings?! If there’s a dystopian, post-apocalyptic place to be stranded, one of the Halo colonies would be perfect. If there aren’t any Spartans or Flood or Covenant or other type of weapon-wielding juggernaut around, you could make yourself quite comfortable in one of the many abandoned buildings.
Hell, even if there are killer factions around, there are piles of weapons caches as well to help you defend your turf. Most buildings also have some kind of anti-air weaponry waiting to help keep your city beautiful.
Very few people will agree with this one because it seems like Alice is the only person who survives this future without being controlled by robot spiders or locked in a coma pod. …Actually Alice might have died and been a clone or two a few times.
All that aside– and also ignoring the the fact that the zombies in this future are psychotic, monstrous beasts– notice that the zombie populations in the Resident Evil future are in massive hordes. Massive as in the entire population of California is gathering around this one building. That means everywhere else in California is empty and worry free.
Alice is a badass but she have a 50/50 save to loss ratio for her party member (at best). If your goal is to survive, avoid Alice.
Find a comfortable place outside a city to cal home and wait for whoever is fighting in this chapter to drop some bombs on the horde and know it’s not your problem. The skies (except in the one chapter there seemed to be vicious bird things…) are clear and the air is safe to breath.The pollution is no worse than it’s been and no one interrupts your shows to tell you a celebrity is having a baby. Even the bandits have to work hard to earn their keep.
5. Dead Rising
In Dead Rising 2 the zombie threat is mostly under control.
Under control to the point where zombies are used in entertainment.
People choose to group up around zombies to watch them get their comeuppance. The uprising was quelled and now, instead of cleanly ridding society of zombies, zombies are props and the virus is a controllable condition. This sounds so great!
Maybe zombies feel pain, maybe they don’t but using them for violent entertainment is a bit barbaric. No worries, there’s even a group of activists that fight against that part.
All that nonsense aside, this is a future where you can find work on a zombie clean up crew, the malls are open, and the zombie virus can be kept at bay with pills. A boring lunch time walk requires a solid bat, just in case.If you’re spending a day at the beach, you pack sunscreen, towels, and a crowbar!
Who doesn’t want a world that’s mainly organized but has a bit of extra spice to kick things up a notch?
Radioactive by Imagine Dragons is one of those songs you hear and see. Everyone visualizes something similar but but a bit different.
The lyrics tell you as much as the music does. From the way the beat hesitates before it drops the the way overall lulls and crests until it’s all on-your-feet self-empowerment.
No matter what you see, the story to accompany Radioactive always has the same basic bones:
The quiet rise from unknown to greatness from unsure to leader in Radioactive is well-trodden but beloved. The song was used for The Host, Assassin’s Creed III, and a slew of other soundtracks.
So what was Imagine Dragons picturing when they wrote and heard Radioactive? Check out the video and be surprised by their version of a standard trope.
It is somewhat possible that computer games have given us an artificial idea of how it will be to live in a post-apocalyptic world. For a start, I sincerely doubt that 200 years post-event, there’ll still be pre-packaged snacks and good-condition guns hanging around. In fact, it’s likely those things will vanish pretty quickly.
Which is why instructables is a site you should be reading before the power goes off forever. Why? Because it has all sorts of tricks which will help make your post-apoc life a little easier.
In this post, I round up some of the best.
I work in Boston’s Back Bay-Copley area.
I had lunch with my bestie at Copley square last week and that spot between the two bombs is where you can usually find some great food trucks. Sugar Heaven, that candy store next to Marathon Sports where all the blood is staining the sidewalk, is where I bought my co-workers candy because they helped me prep and score my sweet new job.
All of that is now part of an active crime-murder-terrorism situation. And when the tape comes down and the stores reopen it’ll still be a crime-murder-terrorism situation. There’ll probably be a memorial– first ad hoc then something more permanent like a placard in the cobblestones.
Everyone has great things to say about the strength and resilience of Boston and its citizens. I’m more than inclined to believe them. Boston’s fucking awesome. “Masshole” is a term of endearment for us.
Collectively, we’re unfuckwithable.
I on the other hand, I’m paranoid and scared and sad and don’t want to (also I can’t because it’s a crime scene still) go north of my office building. Not sleeping, eating, feeling safe.
All this time play-planning for survival and apocalypse and I’ve spend most of this week with no idea what to do or say or think. I even wore shoes one day that I could not have walked for miles in!
So… I need shoes I can wear to work and run from danger in.
I need to resume never watching the news because I was right about it being horrible and awful.
I need to exercise because science says it lifts your mood and prevents you from being got in a situation that requires strength and endurance.
I need to make a habit of eating and sleeping and doing normal things because one day I’ll wake up and Boston will be a normal place to be again.
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In case you haven’t already figured it out (it probably wasn’t that hard though), my last post was an April Fool’s joke. Sadly, ICoS isn’t really building bunkers (but maybe some day!).
Okay, so for real, I am back at ICoS (though I never really left). I may not get a post up every week, but I’m hoping for at least every other week. Lots of stuff still happening in my offline life (which is weird and takes getting used to) but I miss you guys. I also miss talking about zombies. And evil robot space monkeys.
In the interest of full disclosure, I’m no longer with the non-profit organization that I had been with not too long ago. I disagreed with…things, and after some time decided it would be best if I left. Because yeah. I don’t have the energy to deal with the kind of stuff I had to deal with >_<.
So yes, basically the point of this post was to say that my last post was a joke and to say that I will be posting more often in the future. Watch for more random shit from me. The random is coming.
Char
ANOMALY 2 from 11 bit studios is going to be available for demo at PAX East this weekend and I’m stoked!
Why?
Obviously, I’m for anything thing that leads with “build war mechs,” but this glee is mainly because I’m a huge geek for tower defense games. Ninja Town is for real my favorite game. I lent it to my mom and then strongly considered buying a new copy because I missed it.
But ANOMALY 2 isn’t a tower defense game. It’s a tower offense game! You build troops to push through the enemy’s defenses and ultimately breach their base.
As the story goes, aliens came to Earth in the first ANOMALY Warzone Earth game and they won. They beat everyone handily and now the planet is theirs and the responsibility to take it back is yours.
I plan to make a meal of this at PAX East and let you know how it preforms against expectations.
Check out the trailer and the official summary from 11 bit studios:
Continue reading “Tower Offense? Yes, Please; I'll Take ANOMALY 2.”
So, I watch a lot of post-apocalyptic and dystopian TV. I read a lot of fiction. I thoroughly enjoy doing these things.
The problem is with consuming such a huge amount of one thing is your brain starts to go to strange places, thinking strange things.
This leads to me questioning all sorts of things that are probably supposed to be ignored.
But the main thing that is bugging me at the moment?
How in the hell are these women so fucking hairless?
I mean, I know that smooth legs and underarms are the current beauty standard (though that has not always been the case). And I know that actresses have to stick to these standards even more than the rest of us.
But this is the post-apocalypse. They’re scarred, covered in mud and blood and wearing filthy, tattered clothes. How come, when they can’t seem to wash their face, do they have enough hot water, soap and razors to shave their legs? Is this really a priority in the post-apocalypse? ‘Oh, I know I’ve got to run from the aliens, just let me wax first.’
Oh, I know. Suspension of disbelief, blah blah blah. I mean, if I can accept that they’re all so pretty and well fed, surely I can expect the preternaturally smooth legs and underarms.
But I can’t. And you know why? Because I am the owner of a female body. I know how fast my leg hair grows, and I know what I look like when I’ve been unbothered for just a week. It utterly stumps me that they are unafraid to let us see their heroines bloodied and ugly crying, but they can’t show ‘em with a tuft of underarm hair.
What do they think? That the viewers, after watching all the death, murder and torment, will draw the line at some hair where hair naturally grows?
We’re all grown ups. We understand that hair grows. And it breaks the illusion (for me) to have these women with their limbs as smooth as dolls.
Tell you one thing. I am not shaving in the post-apocalypse. And if it bothers anyone, if people are genuinely so concerned with my body hair that they’ll forget we’re three meals away from starving to death, they can suffer and die alone in the wastes. Because their priorities are FUCKED.
Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been writing about the zombie apocalypse parenting class I took at Babes in Arms, a local baby store. Part 1 is here and Part 2 is here. This is the third and final installment to the post series.
Note: Babes in Arms gave me the complimentary seat in the class because I’m writing about it for ICoS.
So, okay. This class was held in Calgary. You know, in Alberta. Where it gets cold and snowy for six months of the year. (Yuck, I know, but such is life.) But since we live in a place where winter takes over for what seems like forever, we always have to be prepared for blizzards. Which are kinda like the hurricanes of the north, if you think about it. I mean, it gets windy, with ridiculous amounts of precipitation—though instead of being flooded out, you get snowed in. And instead of drowning or dying from heat stroke, you could freeze to death when the power goes out.
Either way, it’s pretty bad. And blizzards do happen. So, as always, it’s best to be prepared.
Continue reading “Zombie apocalypse parenting class: Part three”
I’m still moving, and currently wondering how I got so much STUFF.
I won’t be able to keep so much STUFF with me post-apocalypse, that’s for sure!
Like last week I direct you towards an interesting post-apocalypse thing.
That should take up an hour or two you should be spending working.
And hopefully in a week or two I’ll be back to writing proper posts.
Because of course, your life is bereft without my paranoid rambling.