Being the movie buff that I am, I did not watch the Academy Awards...

Okay, I watched about five minutes of them. But around the time I saw Jack Black and Jennifer Aniston annoucning the winner of best animation, I decided it was time to go. Jack Black is not the kind of person I ever thought would be doing something like that - apparently enough time has passed for everyone to forget about "I want to fuck you slowly." Is Tenacious D even around anymore?

It reminds me of the constant double-standard of television. Take Fox for example. The cable channel runs all of those terrible news shows that preach about how all the sex, violence, people enjoying themselves, opinions and non-Christians on the Devil Box corrupt your children, and then the network Fox channel runs all of the sex, violence, et al. Or how MTV made a show called Banned from MTV, where MTV played music vides banned by MTV on MTV.

I don't like watching award shows for the same reason I don't really read reviews - they both have that vague sense that someone is telling me what I like. And the kind of clout reivews carry is sort of scary. I know people who won't go see a movie or buy a video game unless it gets above a certain score on a given website. I can sort of see that if the website matches your taste and opinions pretty well, but it does limit you from experiencing something just as fun/entertaining that got a very undeserved 3/10. Sales figures do this too, particularly in the game market. Some of my favorite games, such as Beyond Good & Evil, Fatal Frame, or Symphony of the Night did terribly, and they are now considered to be some of the finest, most beloved games in existence. Sure, everything is clearer in hindsight, but that doesn't mean we should all wait until the masses tell us what we like to go out and get it.

The other part of reviews and awards in general is that they're often slighted by the reviewer him or herself, and whoever is paying said reviewer. And with the internet, it is almost impossible to tell if people on Game Spot or Rotten Tomatoes who write their own reviews just really love the game or movie, or if someone is telling them they love it. Does anyone remember the "All I want for Christmas is a PSP" thing? When sony unvelied its new piece of crap do-everything-including-the-second-coming gadget, a blog popped up about this guy's quest to save enough money for his own overpriced slice of PSP pie. The blog got pretty popular pretty quick, which is strange in and of itself, and it was later revealed that the whole thing was an ad campaign at the behest of Sony.

On the rare occasion that I feel I should review something, I try to keep it short and sweet, and to always point out that there are some things which I simply like. It's subjective as hell, but its honest, and with the rush of reviewers trying to justify why you should like what they like - and sometimes being paid for it - I feel it is a merit.

Other news: if anyone is wondering what happened to my web projects, I am taking a break from them. Some personal stuff has come up - stuff that I've put on hold for way too long because of college or whatever - and it needs to be dealt with.

And to end on a sad note, my cat of 14 years Fuzzball passed away last week, after having a stroke. He was the friendliest, laziest and fuzziest cat ever and he will be sorely missed.

Yeah, I know I'm using a Weezer song as an entry title. The way I figure it, I get one emo moment every couple months, and this is.

And as far as things to be emo about go, holy fucking shit Weezer sucks anymore. So much for the band that got me through high school.

Anyhow, progress on my site(s) has slowed to a crawl. They're designed and ready to go up, pending some last minute tweaks, but I'm now faced with two (expected) problems when it comes to running a state-wide site: 1) people have to know about it 2) people need to be into it. It's damn near impossible to sell anything web-based to anyone anymore because so much of the market is eaten up. Imagine making a new search engine and having to compete with Google. I mean, your average American probably doesn't even know what a search engine is anymore - but they know Google. They don't know what the fuck it does or how it works, but it's used. Or imagine making a social site to compete with Facebook.

It's pretty hard to believe that the general concensous is that this country has laws against monopoly. Wait, no it isn't.

I used to read the webcomic Penny Arcade, and one of the comments writer 'Tycho Brahe' made about web culture alwayss stuck with me (in paraphrase) "Want to make a successful webcomic? Start in 1997." It sounds pretentious as shit, and it is, but the guy's point is excellent. I feel like I've missed the boat of web life, and my feverent hatred of social sites and just about anyone who self-identifies themselves as a web geek doesn't help. I still live way back in 1995, before I even owned a computer or had ever seen a fucking website before, and believe that the Internet is a tool, not a way of life.

And speaking of the wonderful Internet, Myspace proudly (which I don't understand how you can be proud of this) announced that it removed 90,000 sex offenders from it's site. Let me say that again, for it sounds almost musical. Myspace removed nine-tee-thoow-sand sex offenders. That means that up until yesterday, there were almost one tenth of a million rapists and pedophiles pouring through the public profiles looking at YOUR twelve year old. And trust me, your little snowflake has a Myspace. And a Facebook. If s/he is artsy probably a Deviant art account, downloads porn on his/her PSP and has probably sent a nude photo to his/her boy/girlfriend. How do I know this? Because I fucking pay attention. Parents.

There'a a line of smiley faces above the text window for this blog software and they're really starting to creep me out. That information doesn't help you at all.

Well, another rant concluded. New topic.

I started playing Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion last week and I must say I'm really enjoying it - and even managed to hang on to a slim thread of maturity and named my character something other than Ugly-Ass Mofo or Balls. I don't get what's up with the contiunation of series nobody has heard of: I wasn't aware there was an Elder Scrolls 1, 2, or 3, even though I played Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind a few years back and hated it. It's the same with Fallout 3 - what happened to Fallout 1 and 2? Or does the three at the end just sound better?

Oblivion basically took everything that sucked about Morrowind and made it better. You actually have a fighting chance against a goblin with an iron knife at the beginning of the game, and don't need a full suit of plate mail and a magical hammer to win in single combat against a rat. The races are all basically the same, and I only say that because any character of any race can do any thing if you increase the right attributes and skills. For example, my Wood Elf can swordfight like an Imperial and sneak like a Kajieet. Kadidit? Kajet? Cat person.

The two biggest improvements over Morrowind are 1) rapid travel. No more looking for those giant fucking bettles to carry you all over the world. And secondly, there's an actual storyline. Morrowind suffered the problem of not having any direction and a dense storyline populated with generic overlong fantasy names that would make Tolkien himself want to punch the writers.

Of course Oblivion has lots of drawbacks. The system by which you interact with computer characters is impossible to understand (though quite amusing when you piss people off.) The difficulty is a bit unbalanced and the only reason the game is difficult at all is because the monsters you fight have eighty billion hit points and can tie your silver sword of frost into a silver ballon doggy and eat it. Plus, for a game that markets itself for giving the player freedom, there is almost none. You basically run from point A to point B and complete one or two objectives, then move on to point C. You can get just about anywhere on the map from square one, but what good is that if there's nothing to do there?

To round it out, that is what I see as the limitation of all technology: freedom. From games to websites, users are just limited. And I suppose what annoys me is that all of this is starting to become normal. Technology is like an insurgency - when the people embrace it, it wins, regardless of the opposition. Now that the majority of consumers accept that Facebook captures a personality and Oblivion or other sandbox games represent AI freedom, there will be less of a drive to improve on such technologies and more of a drive to maintain the status quo and keep the dollars flowing.

tell me who's this funky dude, staring back at me?