I love bullet points.

• I totally won State of the Union bingo last night.  It excites me because I rarely win anything/do anything right.  A “close up of John McCain” sealed my victory.  Totally hung that shit up on my wall.
• Tomorrow afternoon/evening I am going to go help my friends remove a virus/malware from their computer.  This is how we nerds spend our Fridays.  It’s apparently the Malware Defense one, which seems pretty nasty.  We may lose the battle, but fuck we’re going to throw everything at it.
• I really hate myself for not telling Amazon to ship my Mass Effect 2 on release day.  Right now I’m dying over it.  I WANT IT SO BAD.  I hope I get it tomorrow, because then I can spend all weekend playing that shit.  I am such a total Mass Effect fan girl it’s not even funny.  I squeal and flail every time I see an ad for it.  I realize that I need help, and lots of it.
• My thesis advisor ended his email to me about my paper proposal with, “Charge on!”  I am rather inspired now, and also filled with mirth.  He’s probably one of my favorite people in the history department.
• Some friends and I are doing a fun social experiment with OKCupid.  I’ll probably dedicate an entire post to it soon, because there is some serious hilarity.
• Pretty much everyone hates my room mate’s boyfriend.  This is the same one from my last entry.  That entry was on a Friday; he was at our apartment from Thursday to Tuesday.  It would be less obnoxious if she was the one that had her own room, but they sleep out in the middle of the living room on an air mattress.  Meaning, a huge chunk of our gathering space is gone.  So we were rather annoyed by that.
  
  Then this week, he fucking comes back again.  She said, “He’ll only be here one night.”  He stayed for three.  Now I would have less of a problem if a) she had asked us first, and b) he wasn’t a fucking douchebag creeper. 
  
  Need examples?  No problem.  Firstly, he barely acknowledges anyone.  If you’re in our apartment for five straight days, I would expect to at least have some meaningful exchange of dialogue once.  Secondly, there was a commercial for Yaz (the birth control pill) on TV and he openly said to my roomie, “Should we try that one?”  Holy fuck, keep that shit under wraps.  Third, he’s supposedly going down to NC to live with his grandfather who has cancer.  It sounds honorable at first, but it gets weird when you take into account the fact that my roomie doesn’t know what type of cancer it is.  As someone whose dad had a cancerous colonic tumor removed (and luckily it was caught before it spread – btw this happened when I was in 4th grade and back then my mom told me it was just a simple removal, but I found out this summer that it was fucking serious and I seriously almost lost my father – but I digress), and my other roomie’s mom is a breast cancer survivor, I know that when you say “cancer” it’s almost always specified due to the sheer amount of types there are.  Fourth, I noticed the infantile, speaking-down-to that my other roomie noticed before.  And it is seriously disgusting.  I mean, I’m far from an ultra feminist (my main goal in life is to be a stay/work at home mom, for fuck’s sake), but seriously, this guy isn’t even going to college and is basically just bumming around.  He’s the last person that should be talking down to her. 
  
  Seriously, I think all of her friends hate him.  Even our friend Anthony, who likes everyone regardless, despises him.  I usually get along well with people and can become friends with practically anyone, but this guy totally turned me off.  Not to mention she gets totally weird when he’s around.  Also, I share a room with her and if they’re both back here, I can’t sit back here in my Awesome Space (tm).  I usually have to bring my laptop out there and just wait until they get bored or whatever the fuck.  I’ve had many offers to come over and stay at other friends’ apartments, and if this trend of him appearing randomly for days on end continues I may have to take them up on him.
• Our rats continue to provide some awesome entertainment.  I was talking to my dad on the phone, and Bella climbed up onto my shoulder and started nibbling my hand and my phone.  They really don’t like it if you don’t pay enough attention to them, hahaha. 
  
  As if that weren’t enough, when I finally got Bella to stop messing around, my troublemaker Chryseis jumped up my leg and climbed up to my arm and then clicked a lot at me, which means she’s happy from what I’ve read.  Well that’s nice and all, but goddamn I’m on the phone! 
  
  Later that same evening, the last one, the runt of the litter Buffy who has finally realized that our hands do not mean insta-doom for her, followed me all the way down the hall to my room.  I usually don’t like to let them in our room because one of them (probably Bella) decided to chew through one of my power cords.  However, Buffy was too cute and she was looking at me with those little eyes and I gave in and let her in.  I was about to take a shower, so I picked up Buffy and put her back into the living room.  Lo and behold, she ran after me again and followed me into the bathroom with her little nose conveying “HI WHAT’S GOIN ON IN HERE?”  It took several minutes and a piece of a tortilla chip for me to get her out.  I’m flattered she likes me so much, but shit.  It’s like having mini dogs.
• Anyway.  I want to read ahead for one of my classes, then I have to watch Project Runway with my roomie.  IT IS ESSENTIAL.  I am seriously losing a lot of my tomboyishness and I’m actually not that sad.  Fuck yeah, estrogen!

WRRRRYYYYYYYYYY

So much to bitch about.

So my favoritist band in the world besides Radiohead, The Receiving End of Sirens, are reuniting, hopefully for good.  I was pumped and ready to go up to Mass. on May 8th, until I realized it’s my graduation day.  FFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU…I seriously hope they’re reforming for good, because goddamn.  Fucking love those bitches.  When they broke up/went on indefinite hiatus I was depressed for an entire week.

I have the virus from hell right now.  Kinda feel like my head is about to explode.  I spent all of yesterday evening, last night, and the better part of today in bed drifting in and out of consciousness.  I hate getting sick because when I do get sick it’s fucking bad.  My immune system is good until something actually gets in, then it just creates a giant clusterfuck with my antibodies and white blood cells and they’re all like “OH GOD WHAT IS THIS FALL BACK!”

Also, it’s weird how my sister and I both always get sick at the same time.  ALWAYS.  We don’t even see each other that often.  I saw something on her status about being ill this morning, and I was like, “WTF I’m sick too!”  She apparently has the full-blown flu, I just have some nondescript shit that has the possibility of turning into a sinus infection.  Still weird though.

My roommate’s boyfriend is spending the weekend here.  Because of my current condition I actually haven’t met him, but my other roomie was kind of turned off by him.  Apparently he kinda talks down to roomie #1, which if that’s true, I don’t feel comfortable with that.  I mean, I gave him my seal of approval because he likes the same type of music as I do and roomie #1 seems to be crazy about him.  And roomie #2 really isn’t one to make something like that up, or see something that isn’t there.  I dunno.  If I feel better tomorrow I’ll see if I can gauge him a little better.  I really have problems with guys who do that sort of thing.  Sure, roomie #1 is rather innocent and sheltered, but seriously, that talking down shit is not cool at all.

First week of my last semester of college actually went by well.  It shouldn’t be too bad, except for my big thesis that I have to do.  30+ pages about the battle of Thermopylae pass during the Greco-Persian wars.  I can do it easily, it’s just that it’s going to be a lot of work.  Will be starting on that probably this weekend.

Buffy, the rat that used to freak out whenever you tried to pick her up, has finally learned that doom will not befall her if a hand comes near.  She still sort of seizes up, and she let out a tiny squeak when I picked her up one day, but she no longer bites and is pretty calm as you hold her.  This is great, because she’s actually rather cuddly when she realizes she’ll be alright.  A couple of days ago she stole a wrapped piece of chocolate from one of my roommates and then scampered away.  I nearly died laughing.  Rats apparently do laugh, it’s just that it’s beyond the range of sound humans can hear.  I’m sure Buffy was giggling while running around trying to dodge my roommate.  Hilarity and a half.

Anyway, time to eat some vitamin c tablets, listen to Iron Maiden, and play Modern Warfare 2.  It was what one of my friends told me to do to get over this illness.  Might as well give it a shot!

Sims 3 - World Adventures EP

I broke down and bought the Sims 3 expansion pack, even I didn’t think it looked all that great and, as previously demonstrated, I’m not crazy about the base game.  However, I am the master of impulse buys and later deep regrets.  The deep regret of this purchase hasn’t quite hit, or at least not yet.

Basically, if you’ve played Sims 1 or 2 and know of Bon Voyage and Vacation/On Holiday, you know what to expect with World Adventures.  You can take your pixel dolls to China, France, or Egypt and immerse them into a very watered down version of the actual countries.  It would have been sweet if your sims had to learn the languages and were standing there holding a translation book mispronouncing everything with the sims who live there just stand there and laugh, but hey, I’m a history major, not a game designer.  Whilst there, the sims can go on these crazy adventures that lead them into tombs and such.  They can also steal precious artifacts so they won’t be taken care of properly and future generations will not understand past cultures and humans and therefore will be doomed to make similar mistakes or just being rock stupid in general.  /historymajor

I actually found these little quests quite fucking tedious.  Maybe I’m just lazy (80% possibility), but it’s not like Fallout 3 or Borderlands where you just point the analogue stick/mouse while holding down WASD to get through one area.  You have to click around each maze to keep the sims from killing themselves.

Like Jimbob McGee here.  First time he was going through a tomb in China I was like, “Oh, he’s probably smart enough not to walk through fucking fire.”  When the Grim Reaper showed up to take away the now toasty Jimbob, I realized I was putting too much faith in the programming.  Sorry, Jimbob.  Again though, tons of clicking.  And if you want more than one person to go through a tomb, expect even more.
The visa system is an interesting new twist, though.  All sims start off with a level 1 visa for each location, and must acquire points through adventuring in order to gain a higher visa level.  On visa level 1, they can only spend three days on location before getting booted into a loading screen regardless of what they were previously doing.  Because I’ve been playing an epic amount of Red Faction:Guerrilla and I’m now back at school, I haven’t managed to get anyone past level 1 yet.  I’m also not trying very hard, so there’s that.

Sims can also enjoy the new hobbies photography and martial arts.  Martial arts is hilarious because they start off fighting with the sissiest half-hearted slapping you’ve ever seen.  Photography is sort of silly because the challenges are pretty weird.  One of them is to take a picture of a tissue box.  Yeah.

With every expansion, of course, there’s new shit to pimp your sims out with.  Such as this hairstyle, and this eyeliner that looks like an earthquake hit in the middle of the application process.

 
Seriously, what the fuck.

There isn’t a ton of new shit, which is understandable given that there are basically 3 more neighborhoods instead.  In general, it’s a few new Create-A-Sim shit like hair and clothing (men are once again largely overlooked unless you want like 12 new hats), as well as some nice Chinese, French, and Egyptian styled furniture and decor.  There’s also a totally bitching moped that made me giggle furiously.  Other than that, gameplay back in the normal neighborhood is pretty much untouched.

Of course, because this is EAxis we’re talking about, there’s some pretty gnarly bugs in this expansion.  The biggest one is the fact that the launcher refuses to install a bunch of custom content, even if it’s content from the Sims Store.  That’s right, if you were willing to pay money for some little pixel furniture, guess what?  You can’t even use it unless you use some insane fix that involves converting files or sacrificing to Odin or something ludicrous.  Great job, EAxis!  Further, I personally have had weird shit like sims not going to school or work and therefore performance slips to ridiculously bad levels, an issue that I’ve only been able to solve by using the Awesomemod’s “backtowork” command at 9 AM, 3 PM, and 8 PM.  That or just letting everyone fail and then sitting back and laughing, but usually I actually want to play the game as they meant for it to be played.  Another weird glitch is that sometimes inventory objects will just vanish.  Shit sucks if it’s an adventuring item that you need in order to get more visa points.  I never thought I would ever actually say “FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU…” in real life, but I did that day.

Honestly I don’t understand EAxis’ bug fixing policy.  Some of the issues people have been having have been around since the base game.  Half the bugs EAxis doesn’t fix are fixed by fan-made mods like the Awesomemod.  I understand the economy sucks and they may not want to hire a whole bunch of testers, but if some regular guy can fix this shit for free and do it within a couple of days, what’s EAxis doing?
I feel like I rant about EAxis every time, but sweet Jesus, I don’t think I’ve ever played a game this buggy that doesn’t get a patch within a few days.  Hell, wasn’t Modern Warfare 2 patched like the day after it was released because there were issues with multiplayer?  Infinity Ward, go help EAxis or something.  Damn.

Anyway.  It’s hard for me to recommend this expansion pack, but I feel like that’s probably because of who I am.  Currently I’m having a ton of fun beating dudes with a sledgehammer in Red Faction.  World Adventures, by comparison, is kinda boring.  If you enjoyed the other “journey to another land” expansion packs of Sims 1 and 2, you’ll probably enjoy this one.  It’s a good expansion, but I wouldn’t have used it as the first one.  I think they should’ve done something like Nightlife/Hot Date and mix up everyday gameplay a bit.  Again though, I study ancient Greece so my opinion is moot, really.

Final verdict: meh.  Hold your money until a patch is released.