Dingle Dangle Banana Man Penguin Time!

CBCM 3525 Vlog #1

2011-02-22T03:43:00.001-06:00

One Year Anniversary

2009-10-27T00:19:00.003-05:00

Maureen R. Martinez
Age: 15
Freshman, Music Cluster

I never saw really saw anything that day. I was a little bit late to school because my little brother wouldn’t let my mom dress him, and he was running around the house until she caught him. Let’s see, I think I finally got to school at like 9:40-something, it would have been during my music theory class.

I remember everything from then pretty vividly, because there’s no way for me to forget any of it now. I paused outside the door when I got to the classroom, so I could get myself looking like I had been running a lot and was going as fast as I could. Really nobody really cares about getting to class on time once you are like over thirty minutes late, but I at least like to fake it so maybe my teacher will think a little better of me.

So, I got into the classroom and told Kent, I mean Mr. Ellings, that I was sorry and told about my brother and everything. And he just looked at me for like a full five seconds without saying anything, and then sighed and said “ok” and went on with what he was talking about. You can’t really do anything when you are that late and it wasn’t because of a doctor’s appointment or something.

I sat down in the crappy desks against the wall that no one had taken and started taking my notebook out to try to catch up when we started hearing loud noises.

We were pretty used to noises because of the shitty pipes in the building. They’re old so when the heat kicks on or really any change at all happens to them they make loud clanging noises you can feel vibrating on the floor. Also one of the dance classes upstairs sometimes does some kind of dance I guess that sounds like they are all falling on the floor over and over again. The orchestra class also sometimes knocks music stands over. Basically, we’re used to hearing loud noises so we did the usual pause, and then Kent went on teaching us...non-harmonic tones I think. But these were different sounds, they were more of a popping sound than metal clanging on metal or bodies hitting the floor.

It got really scary really fast for me, and I think for pretty much the rest of
the class too. I mean someone was shooting up the school, there was nothing else it could have been. Images of Columbine and Virginia Tech just started flooding my head and I was scared I was gonna die. I was really scared.

Kent told us all to get under our desks, but I had one of those old-fashioned ones that has a really small desktop. I couldn’t fit under the desk, or at least not enough of my body. So I just ran to other side of the room to put all the newer desks between me and the door and hoped it would be enough.

We just sat there in silence the whole time. Occasionally I could hear some whimpers from some people in the room who I could tell were as panicked as I was and were crying. I couldn’t stop myself from shaking the whole time.

I had my eyes peeled to the door the whole time, watching the little window, waiting to see someone with a gun appear. But no one ever did. It was just the police coming to tell us it was safe to come out now. No one cheered or anything. We just got up, most of us forgot to even pick up our stuff. My mind was as far from school as it could have possibly been. I just wanted to get outside and away from there. I wanted to get outside and see my family.

Charlie T. Hardesty
Age: 17
Senior, Theatre Cluster

That kid, Rich Miller, he was always really weird. He just, never talked. The only time he ever did talk was after English class in the morning, and that was to our teacher. I just wouldn’t have expected him to do something like that. I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that I was shot, with a real gun. That image of him blowing his fucking brains out in front of all of us still wakes me up at night.

I’m not a bully. I’m not like those jocks in high school movies that stuff the nerds in trash cans and things like that. We don’t even have sports teams here, its a magnet school. Really we’re all a bunch of nerds, I just have a mean-spirited sense of humor. I never mean for any of it to actually hurt someone.

I think I know why he singled me out though. I did end up hurting him, even though I didn’t really mean to.

His first year, which was last year I think, we had the same history class and the teacher made us sit in a big circle to do these stupid exercises that would help us “get to know each other” on the first day. Well he always wore really baggy khaki pants to school, he even did on the day he came into English class and started killing people.

Well this first day we’re sitting there in class, and I look around the room and I see him on the other side of the circle. He might as well have had a giant target on his face. He was fat, had long hair that looked like he never washed it, and was wearing baggy pants and a black trenchcoat. That overcoat he wore for the whole year, the pockets he always had filled with just random crap, some of which I had seen him pick up off the floor.

Anyways, so he’s wearing these baggy pants, and he’s sitting up straight with his arms crossed. And all the material bunches up at his crotch and it looked like he had a huge erection. I held back my laughter the best I could, and whispered to my friend J.C., who was sitting on my right, “Boner boy over there looks really happy to be here.” He looked over and snorted trying to hold back his laugh, which caught the attention of the girl next to him. He whispered to her what I said and pointed over at Miller, which caused her to immediately turn to her right and tell her friend. They both laughed, loud enough for the teacher to stop and ask them to be quiet. It spread one by one around the circle, like a game of password.

Looking back, I sort of regret it now. Maybe if I hadn’t been such an ass I could have prevented everything that happened.

I remember hoping that he wouldn’t notice, but of course he did. He wasn’t stupid. All those people pointing at him and snickering, it couldn’t have felt good.

The worst part of all of it, though, was that “Boner boy” stuck, for the entire rest of the year. I didn’t mean for that to happen, I really didn’t. I’m not a bully. I don’t take pleasure in constantly making someone’s life miserable. It just happened by accident. I never had the balls to apologize to him, at least not until it was too late.

III

Roger C. Harbin
Age: 32
English Teacher

I won’t ever be able to forgive myself for not trying to reach out to him. Rich always seemed like a troubled guy. He was very introverted, never talked, never really showed any emotion at all. But during class, I could always see that the gears were turning in that head of his.
While I wished he was more social, I was flattered that I was one of the few people he felt comfortable talking to. Even when I did hear him talk though, it was always in a monotone, mumbling voice. Whenever I would give him advice on the things I assigned, which is all he ever asked about, he would respond in such a way that seemed like he was thinking “well, that’s your opinion.” Whatever he was really thinking I could only guess from his writing, which was always something I looked forward to.

I could tell he was a bit of an outcast to the other students. I myself was sort of a nerd back in high school. I hated some of my classmates and even some of my teachers. That’s one of the reasons I felt like I understood him and was happy to listen to him, I had a sense of where he was coming from.

I never thought he was capable of what he did though. I always had a feeling like something was wrong, both in the way he acted and what he wrote.

I assigned an essay the week before he brought the gun to school. It was an extremely easy prompt: “Describe your perfect day.” I know, cliche, but I was working with what I had, and what I had were lots of artistically talented students who could barely use grammar correctly.
Rich came up after class that day and asked me if I had any restrictions on what we could put in the essay. Normally I would say yes, to prevent anyone from writing something extremely profane or sexually explicit. Because of who was asking, though, I said that he could write about whatever he wanted. I don’t know whether I should have said that now though. Maybe restricting him would have prevented him from snapping and saved the lives of some students.
The essay he turned in was very good, one of the best things he had written all year. It was also extremely dark though, and I hope to God it wasn’t what inspired him to do it. I hope it wasn’t all my fault.

Katy H. Munson
Age: 17
Senior, Visual Cluster

I’m glad he’s dead. I hope he burns in hell for what he did to me, for what he did to Emma. I never did anything to him. I don’t deserve this. He ruined my life.

My friend Emma, my best friend who I had been friends with since 3rd grade, she was kind of a bitch. Now, I don’t mean that to sound like an insult to her, she took pride in it. I was proud to be her friend too, I wasn’t always as mean to people, but for some reason I thought of myself as the counterpart to her. The yin to her yang, to be a little bit cliche.

It was kind of an understood thing around school. Emma was someone no one messed with, because she wouldn’t take any shit from anyone, including teachers. Apparently that kid, Miller I think his name was, didn’t get that memo.

He wasn’t necessarily a bad looking guy, I mean by car accident victim standards. He was really fat and his hair was disgusting, but his face seemed calm. The fact that he never talked was a little creepy, but I guess it suited him, or maybe we were just used to him never saying anything.
I think Emma had something to do with why he killed her, and himself, and all those other people.

The day before he killed her, we were in English class and I saw him looking at her through the class period. Not like a creepy stare or anything, just staring, expressionless. I thought it was kind of cute, that even though he never would have had a chance he still had a crush on a girl.
Emma didn’t. I think she was actually offended. I pointed it out to her during class and she just turned away with her mouth open and this expression like he had just flipped her off or something. After class she walked right up to his desk, got in his expressionless face and said “stop fucking staring at me, boner boy.”

I remember waiting for a reaction from him, maybe we would actually see some emotion for once. But we didn’t get one, he just looked back down at his desk, put the rest of his stuff into his backpack, stood up, and quietly walked his way out of the room. Emma smiled back at me, she was definitely proud of herself. I felt kind of bad.

That day he brought the gun, we were in the same English class as the the one where Emma told him off, but he wasn’t there. Mr. Harbin was returning our essays from the week before, which of course Miller probably got a perfect grade on. He was always Harbin’s little pet. We got back our essays and our teacher was about to go into some grammar thing when we heard yelling from down the hall and a couple of really loud pops, followed by nothing.

Harbin looked curious and went to the door. He opened it looked outside, and then as soon as his head went out the door he shot back in and told us to get under our desks immediately. We knew immediately what was going on, or at least I knew, I had some sense of who was out there. Maybe it was the look on Harbin’s face when he looked outside, or because of who wasn’t in class that day, I could just sense that it was Miler out in the hallway shooting.

We all got extremely quiet, panicked breaths were the only thing I could hear. That, and the heavy footsteps out in the hall.

The only thing I could think about was that maybe he wouldn’t kill me, maybe he would know I didn’t really do anything to him. But I was also thinking that because I’m friends with Emma he thinks I’m just like her, and he that now was going to kill me.

I looked over at Emma under the desk on my left, and she was terrified, her everyday armor was gone. Words can be bullets, but I guess they can also lead to real bullets too.

The footsteps came closer and closer to our room and then he appeared in the doorway, holding that silver gun at his side. The first thing he did was point it at Charlie, the guy who started “boner boy” last year. Charlie put his hands up and started pleading with him. He told him he didn’t mean any of it and that he was just joking back then. He told him he was really sorry and didn’t plan for what happened.

He was in the middle of all this, and Miller shot him. It looked like he got hit in the chest, but it turned out it was just his shoulder and he survived. But it didn’t matter where he was shot at that moment, he was shot. Emma, or I, or anyone else could have been next.

Mr. Harbin got up from behind his desk and started to talk to Miller. Told him that he didn’t have to do this. He asked him to just put the gun down. Miller looked at him for what felt like a really long time before he started to shake his head and wave the gun around while he paced in a circle, like he was trying to decide what to do next.

He stopped, and then turned around and shot someone in the first row point blank in the face. I still remember the blood that sprayed out from behind them, and how they just fell over with a blank look on their face. He shot three other people, it looked like he picking randomly, like an animal that just attacks what appears in its vision. I remember I wanted to just be away from there, I didn’t want to die. As much as I didn’t want to see it, I couldn’t look away from what was happening. I think I must have been in shock.

He turned in my direction and walked over towards the desks me and Emma were underneath. It was like everything was moving in slow motion.

I can’t forgive myself for what I did then. The only thought I could process was that maybe it would be someone else who dies and not me. It was all I could hope for. Nobody deserved to die though.

I remember hoping that it would be someone else as I met his eyes. There was a mixture of fear and determination I saw in them. He looked back at me for a second before looking away, and over at Emma.

He walked over to her, put the gun up to her forehead. I still remember her wincing as the metal touched her face, and closing her already teary eyes.

He cocked the gun, looked straight at her and said “you fucking bitch” before pulling the trigger.
The image of her head opening up won’t leave my memories, no matter how hard I try to forget. There was a loud bang and a flash, and when I opened my eyes again I was covered in blood and my best friend was dead in front of me.

Her forehead had a small hole in it, and the back of her head had a big one. That’s the only way I want to think about, I can’t think about brains or blood or being dead or my emotions will catch up to me.

I don’t know what happened after that. I was staring at her body and then there was another bang and people started to stand up and run. Mr. Harbin grabbed me, telling me he was sorry but we needed to leave right then, and pulled me off the floor and out of the room. The rest of the day was just a blur. The world was moving around me and people were talking to me and hugging me, but I was still staring at the body of my best friend on the floor, and I was still covered in blood.

Tonya St. Claire: Dorm staff, desk clerk,...clown?

2009-04-26T19:08:00.003-05:00

DENTON, TX--Ask any student living in Honors Hall what they know about Tanya St. Claire, and there’s a good chance they will all mention the same thing.

“She’s a retired clown,” said freshman biology major Clayton Rowe, who admitted that he isn’t one of those who regularly stops and chats with St. Claire.

It sounds too awesome to be true, but believe it or not it is. St. Claire, now 55 years old with short white hair, light-rimmed glasses, and dressed very much like someone with a serious job used to be a full-fledged clown, costume and everything.

She worked as a clown for several years as a way supplement her income, attending events that ranged from small kids’ birthday parties to huge Texas Instruments events. This could explain her talent for making balloon animals, as was displayed during Honors Hall’s “Night at the Circus” program.

“Well, about 25 years ago, my husband at the time coached a soccer team, and one of the kid’s dad owned an entertainment company,” said St. Claire when asked about her history as a clown and her balloon twisting skills. “He needed someone to help, so he sent my husband home with some balloons and instructions. He never got around to them, so I did them and I liked them.”

St. Claire, born on Nov. 20, 1953, moved from the state of Arkansas to Henderson, Texas when she was 12 years old after her father died. She considers herself a native of Texas after living here for 43 years, even though she was born in Arkansas.

“As my husband used to say, ‘You weren’t born in Texas, but you got here as fast as possible,’” a chuckling St. Claire said.

A certified paralegal who moonlighted as a part-time clown, she grew tired of the stress of her job and worked for four years at Collin County Community College.

“I love to work around students,” said St. Claire, “and love to work around education.”

Soon after her husband, who was working in UNT housing maintenance, was hired to be the Student Union facilities manager, she applied and was hired in August 2007 to be the daytime desk clerk at Honors Hall, which was soon to open for the fall semester that year.

“We interviewed more than 20 people for the position,” said Bill Rose, director of Honors Hall, “but she struck us as someone we could all really get along with. We saw that mother figure in her.”

According to Rose, she has become a big part of Honors Hall in the short time that it has been opened. When the dorm staff was finally able to enter the brand new building in the fall of 2007, there were only a few days to set everything up before new students would start to check-in, and St. Claire managed to organize the entire front desk area in that time.

“She really has helped us in getting to know every resident,” Rose said. “She is always encouraging students, and knows who has a class at a certain time, or when they usually eat lunch.”

Among the things that she loves about her job, the friendships she gets to make with the students she meets are what she loves the most.

“She’s a really sweet lady,” said Kimberly Garcia, Resident Assistant for the fourth floor of Honors Hall. “Sometimes we call her ‘mom.’”

She admits that some of her most memorable times are when a student that she knows well comes out of the elevators adjacent to the front desk with a defeated look on their face. A sign clearly showing that they have just lost the key to their room and now have to glumly ask her for a new one.

On a regular basis, St. Claire said that at least 50 students of the four-story dorm take time to sit and chat with her on their way to or from their destination. “Where else can you get paid to make friends?”, she said while discussing her favorite parts of working at Honors Hall. It’s her job to be there to help them with maintenance and general housing issues, but she sees it as much more than that.

Jonathan Graham/ Staff Writer

Speech assignment

2009-03-30T01:33:00.002-05:00

Visiting speaker exposes anti-Semitic Arab propaganda

By Jonathan Graham
Staff Writer

The police officer sitting in the back row created a slight air of tension as the audience waited for the arrival of the speaker, Dr. Eli Avraham. His lecture, “Anti-Semitism and the Arab Media,” took place on Wednesday, March 25 in Wooten Hall 222 and showed how anti-Semitism has thrived in other parts of the world since its rise during the Holocaust.

“We tend to see the media here in the west as a tool to change the situation, the media goes and describes the situation,” said Avraham, “but in the Arab media its a little bit different.”

Dr. Avraham is the UNT Schusterman Visiting Professor of Israeli Studies and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Communications at the University of Haifa, Israel. This marks his fourth and final lecture here at UNT. He was invited as part of a grant from the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, in which he was required to present a lecture each semester.

The program began with an introduction to modern anti-Semitism. Examples of propaganda from Nazi Germany were shown that demonstrated to what extent Jews were persecuted. After the swift introduction, Avraham moved into the central focus of the lecture: how the Muslim Arab media uses similar propaganda to paint Jewish Israelis as their enemies.

“They use the media as a tool to, in a way, to serve and protect the government,” Avraham said in regard to why the media plays such a big role in the condemnation of Jews, “for the government, the goal is to survive, and to do that they need to use their media.”

One example, a talk-show style program, showed a reporter interviewing a very young girl who had been imprinted with strong anti-Semitic beliefs. When asked why she disliked Jews, she responded, “because they are apes and pigs,” which caused quite a few audience members to shake their heads in disbelief.

Anti-Semitism, a term coined in 1879 by German polemicist Wilhelm Marr, has existed throughout history as a conflict of religious beliefs and land control between seventeenth-century Muslims and Jews in the country of Palestine. After 1948, when Britain terminated its control over the country, anti-Semitism increased as a response to the state of Israel declaring its independence. The feelings were intensified by the Arab-Israeli War of 1948-1949, in which Israeli forces pushed out over 700,000 Arab refugees, and the Six-Day War in June 1967, where they gained control of the well-publicized West Bank, Gaza Strip, and all of Jerusalem.

Among the many stereotypes of Jews that Avraham showed, the most controversial was the “blood libel.” In this myth, Jews are accused of sacrificing Christian children to use their blood to prepare Matzoh for Passover. This was used in many of the examples that were displayed, including one soap-opera style television show in which a teenage boy was dragged into a basement and his throat slit.

The very popular show, according to Avraham, is one of many that demonize the Jews as entertainment for Arab viewers. Another television clip he played showed a long table of Jewish men, all dressed in stereotypical ultra-Orthodox clothing, discussing their plans to dominate everything and how they are using the rest of the world to accomplish that. The show portrayed all of this in the style of a western mafia movie.

Avraham’s lecture, which was very focused on the Israeli view of Arab media, was not without its share of controversy. A question from 21-year-old (don’t have info here yet) student Hisham Masri sparked a heated discussion that almost seemed to rise to the level of argument before it was stopped by Richard Golden, director of the Jewish Studies Program at UNT. The issue was raised by Masri after Avraham made a statement about the responsibility of Arabs to take care of Israeli refugees.

“A refugee is moved by force, they're not moved by choice,” said Masri during the discussion, “the Palestinians were evicted from their land and they wish to return, so I don't understand why you would mention that it should be the responsibility of the Arab world to take them in when it was clearly the Israeli world that pushed them out.”

After the lecture had finished, Masri had other concerns about Avraham’s presentation, mainly about the examples that he used.

“He's saying they're popular shows, and usually there are special series’ which show for 30 days and then they end, for like the entire year,” he said in relation to one of the television clips Avraham showed, “and I watch all those shows every year, its like a family thing. And that show is one of the ones that's shown for 30 days and then they never brought it back.”

Despite any confusion over who said what and where the information came from, one thing was made pretty clear: anti-Semitism is still very strong in the the Arab world, and it will take a lot of work to ease the tensions created by it.

"Its been 60 years, everything that's happened has happened, let's move on,” said Dr. Avraham, “let's forget that and try to get some kind of a resolution.”

Media Writing Lab #4

2009-03-26T22:39:00.001-05:00

Explosion near Kaufman County injures two teenage boys

By Jonathan Graham
Staff Writer

An explosion at a residence on FM 2727 last night injured four people, including two teenage boys who were airlifted from the scene.

They were apparently trying to open a 55-gallon barrel with a cutting torch just before 8 p.m., at a residence in Cerro Gordo County near the border of the City of Kaufman when the incident happened. According to a Cerro Gordo County Fire Marshall spokesman, the barrel had some sort of liquid inside it that appeared to be oil, and it was likely vapors from this that exploded.

“This is really unfortunate,” said Assistant Fire Marshall Randy Richards, “but it appears that they will all be okay.”

Two of the boys were taken from the scene by CareFlight helicopter to Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. One refused treatment, and the other, aged 17, was possibly treated for first and second-degree burns on his hands and face. His parents were notified by the Fire Department around 8:05 p.m.

“We were really scared when we got that phone call,” said the 17-year-old boy’s mother, who wished to keep her and her son’s identity anonymous, “you can’t imagine how fast my heart was beating.”

According to conflicting sources, the boys were supposedly cutting the barrel for either a school project, or to make a go-kart. The barrel is not believed to be illegal, but where it came from or how the boys came into contact with it is not yet known.

Media Writing #3

2009-03-24T01:14:00.002-05:00

Student Profile: Melissa Boughton

By Jonathan Graham
Staff Writer

Melissa Boughton is someone who has been places. Many places in fact, from growing up in New Braunfels, Texas to living to Europe for a couple of weeks, and it seems that she isn’t done traveling yet.

She was born in Houston, Texas, on December 3, 1987, in a family that as she grew up moved from place to place fairly frequently. It was a “kind of nomadic” family, according to Boughton. Eventually they settled into the South Texas town of New Braunfels, where she lived and grew up in for the longest period of time.

In high school, Boughton gained an interest in photography that shaped her vision of what she wanted to do as a career. When she graduated a year early, a great achievement by any standards, she received a trip to Europe as a graduation gift. This trip, along with her interest in photography made a huge impression on her life’s goals and world view.

During the trip, she lived with a good friend of hers for three weeks in Germany, during which time she also visited Paris and Luxembourg. The trip showed her so much about how the cultures of other countries and how different they are, that Germany is now where she wants to make a living as a photographer.

“I just like the culture over there better than here,” said Boughton on why she chooses Germany.

After her life-changing trip, and some family troubles back at home, she settled here at UNT to learn about how to manage living on your own. “I needed to find out about those things that your parents always tell you about doing,” she said.

Now 21 years old and a student in the Mayborn School of Journalism at UNT, the world has yet to see what impressions will be made by the ambitions and outspoken Melissa Boughton.

Media Writing Lab #2

2009-03-12T01:37:00.001-05:00

Grateful Dead front man dies at 53

By Jonathan Graham
Staff Writer

Jerry Garcia was a driving force in American culture. After founding the band that would come to be known as the Grateful Dead, and gathering thousands of faithful fans, he passed away Aug. 9, 1995 in Marin County, Calif.

Jerome John Garcia was born on Aug. 1, 1942 in San Francisco, Calif. After witnessing the death of his father Jose Garcia, a bandleader, and being raised by his mother for most of his life, he became interested in playing the guitar at age 15.

“When I first heard electric guitar, when I was fifteen, that's what I wanted to play. I petitioned my mom to get me one, so she finally did for my birthday,” said Garcia in a 1993 interview with Rolling Stone Magazine, “I started banging away on it without having the slightest idea of . . . anything. I didn't know how to tune it up, I had no idea,” Garcia was a devoted fan of writer Jack Kerouac, who was famous for writing the influential novel “On The Road” in 1957. After one year, Garcia quit high school and worked as a salesman and teacher for a while until he eventually joined the Army. He received an early discharge and began taking classes at what is now known as the San Francisco Art Institute.

At the age of 23 he created the Warlocks, a rock group that consisted of members Garcia himself, Bob Weir, Ron McKernan, Phil Lesh, and Bill Kreutzman. After finding out the name Warlocks was already taken, the name of the band was changed to the Grateful Dead.

The band gained widespread popularity over the next 31 years, and collected a devoted group of followers, known as “deadheads,” who followed them from show to show around the country.
"If I knew what made us popular, I'd bottle it. Whatever it is, it invented us, we didn't invent it. The audience thinks we're providing more than music, but we don't let on what we're providing, intentionally,” Garcia said in a 1991 New York Times interview.

Garcia suffered from health problems throughout his life, from diabetes to drug use. He was an admitted user of heroin and psychedelic drugs. In the last few years of his life he had committed to stop smoking and using drugs, and had hired a personal trainer.

According to the Marin County sheriff’s office, Garcia died of a heart attack he suffered while in his bed at Serenity Knolls, a treatment center for drug addiction he was residing in at the time.
He is survived by his wife, Deborah Koons Garcia, and four daughters: Heather, Annabelle, Teresa, and Keelin. Funeral arrangements are undecided at this time.

“Ideally I would just like to disappear gracefully and not leave behind any legacy to hang people up,” Garcia said in a 1993 interview with KROG-FM, “I don’t want people to agonizing over who or what I was when I was here when I’m not here anymore. I would like to be thought of as a competent musician. That would be good. I’d like that.”

Media Writing Lab #1

2009-03-12T01:36:00.000-05:00

Serious fire on Main Street leaves sixteen families without homes

By Jonathan Graham
Staff Writer

An apartment building fire at 123 South Main Street on Monday injured two firefighters and left more than 40 people without homes.

The 4-alarm fire, still under investigation by the Denton Fire Department, damaged ten apartment units and destroyed six. The department believes that a child playing with matches may have been responsible for starting the fire.

“This was really quite a serious fire,” said Denton Fire Department spokeswoman Bettye Jablonski in a press conference held Monday afternoon.

According the residents who witnessed the fire, the victims knocked on doors to check that no one was left in the building during the fire. One woman, who was trying to escape the building, dropped her baby from the second floor balcony to someone on the ground floor. The baby, named Angel, was caught safely and unharmed.

No residents were injured in the fire, but two firefighters received minor injuries when a brick wall fell on top of them. One has only cuts and bruises on their arms and hands, and the other has a broken arm. Both were treated at the scene, but the firefighter with the broken arm was taken to Denton Regional Medical Center afterwards, and will be held overnight.

The Red Cross is supporting the sixteen displaced families right now with food, clothing, and household items, and the landlord of the apartment complex is providing vacant apartments for them.

My gamertag.

2009-03-07T14:07:00.005-06:00

I started playing games around the time the SNES came out, but it wasn't on the SNES. It was on a hand-me-down NES that one of my cousins gave me at christmas time... when he got his SNES. It had a bunch of games, most of which I can't remember the names of. I know there was Tecmo Super Bowl (which I could never figure out how to play at my age), some game where you run forward dodging things and jumping over big black gaps in the ground that I've never been able to remember the name of to this day, and of course Super Mario Bros.. I had fun with this system, as it was my first video game system ever, even though I never beat any of the games I had for it. Eventually I guess I grew up, got stupid, and sold it or gave it away. Only now do I regret doing that.

I never had a subscription to a gaming magazine. The reason for this was that I grew up in a lower middle class family. We weren't poor, but I knew what we could afford and knew when not to ask for something. The $10-$20 to get a subscription to EGM, Game-Informer, etc. seemed like a lot of money to me at the time, and I never had a community to see what was good, bad, and coming out soon. So when my real start into gaming started in 1996, when my parents gave me a Nintendo 64 for Christmas, I still did not have any knowledge of what was considered good and bad. I think I somehow still made at least decent choices though; Goldeneye, Yoshi's Story, Pokemon Stadium are the ones that I remember having. I also didn't ever have as many games as my friends did. This, along with my little experience of the console generation before, would play heavily into my gaming name later. I also have never and still don't have anything resembling a PC that can handle PC games, so I never played them.

I had the N64 with just a few games at a time until the next generation came about. I first got an Xbox, then a Gamecube about a year after. (Note the lack of ps1 and ps2 in all this, I was never even introduced to Sony's systems before, and didn't own a ps2 until maybe 2 years after I had both Xbox and Gamecube. Even with the newest systems and games I still wasn't caught up.) I think I finally had fallen into the "hardcore gamer" demographic. I had the Game-Informer subscription at Gamestop, and constantly checked sites like Gamespot for news and reviews. I felt like part of something, and was starting to understand the difference in the way we think of ourselves and the way non-gamers see us. That sounds all preachy, but I'm talking about a few years ago, before the Wii.

When the Xbox 360 arrived, and I had to think of a name to give myself. I reflected on my personal gaming history, and what it meant about me compared to most other people who play video games as a major hobby or job. When all the thinking had finished, I came to my amazing conclusion...I was still a noob. Even with all the interest I had in the medium and read about it, I still had only been putting my toes in the pool at each major era in gaming history. So I accepted it, and made my gamertag accordingly. It was to be cmpLtNOOb, short for "complete noob." I mixed up the capitalization and ways of abbreviating because it just seems like that's what you do with gamertags. Since then I have pretty much used that name for everything gaming related. My gamertag, PSN ID, username on 1up, Giant Bomb, forums, etc.

So now we've come to end of my little tale, hope you enjoyed it. I don't think I will want to change my gamertag, it sort of protects me from being arrogant online, by me basically saying "I suck at games." I'm proud of how well I have managed to keep up with this wildly changing medium, and my gamertag helps me to appreciate where I came from and how I came to be where I am right now: 19, in college, poor, barely scraping enough money together to pay for rent and Street Fighter 4, and getting an Electronic News degree so that I can do the thing that I have wanted to do since I first realized people do it--write about video games.

Assassin's Creed Review

2009-02-20T02:16:00.011-06:00

Preface: Ok, i know this game is like two years old now, but I finally am starting to catch up on everything with Gamefly.

Assassin's Creed: B

Assassin's Creed is a great game that due to a few small technical problems is held back from being the ambitious experience it wants to be.

It looks amazing visually. The animations for the main character are very intricate and detailed, and this detail is consistent with every other person you come across throughout the game. Outside of the animation, the ancient Middle East atmosphere that the game is set in is extremely immersive. The first moment that you gaze off into the distance from the top of the tallest tower in Jerusalem, you will see how amazing the city recreations are.

The entire city is at your disposal.

But for every awesome moment there is always something equally as annoying or frustrating waiting just around the corner, sometimes literally.

The story in concept is very intriguing. Full of mysteries and conspiracies about the world, it will definitely keep you wondering what happens next. But these sequences only make up about twenty percent of the game. The rest of it is...well, I guess a little bit of explanation is necessary first. You play as Desmond, a bartender who is being held prisoner by the Abstergo Corporation while they test a machine called an Animus on him. Without going into spoilerific detail, the Animus is basically a big TV screen screen on which you play your ancestor's memories. There is no gameplay outside the Animus, aside from slowly walking around and talking to the doctors who work the machine. Even though this is all you can do, the storytelling here is the best in the game, and its only about twenty percent of it. Once you lay your buzzcut, hoodie-wearing head down on the Animus, you play a completely different game. One that isn't remotely as compelling.

Inside the Animus is where you actually play the game. You become an ancestor to Desmond, named Altair. Altair is a member of the Brotherhood of Assassin's, or, at least that's what I think it's called. The story in this main portion of the game is a mixture of boring ancient speaking styles, long hard-to-pronounce names, and plot changes that seem to have already been discussed before you realize that they even happened. But where the story falls short is made up for by the actual assassinations that you carry out, you are an assassin after all.

The assassination is great, the monologue you hear afterward isn't.

The assassinations are undoubtedly the best part of the gameplay. The feeling of anticipation as you climb the walls and roofs to your target's hiding spot, or hide in the nearby crowd as they move closer to you is something that isn't done very often, and definitely not with this much original style. Unfortunately, you only do about nine of these throughout a 10 to 15 hour game. The rest of the time is spent walking around the three main cities gathering information about the target. Only a few of these reconnaissance activities actually have to be done in order to go ahead with the assassination, but to know everything you can, you have to do all six of them. It's not so bad, until you realize that there are only five types in the entire game. This amount of repetition tends to ruin the overall pace of the game, making it a struggle sometimes to want to advance the already weak story.

The game's strength's lie in the way that Altair moves about the city. His range of movement coupled with the level of detail in the animation makes the simple act of climbing and even walking fun. One of the original ideas introduced in Assassin's Creed is the Altair's ability to use parkour to quickly get from one end of the city to the other. It is extremely simple to control, but sometimes a little too simple, to the point where it can cause more problems than solve them. To use this ability, you simply hold one button while you run, and point in the direction that you want to go. Pretty simple right? But apparently Altair doesn't have any common sense when it comes to knowing how to stop. Not pulling back on the speed in enough time, and we're talking a window of less than a second here, will cause him to reach the end of a ledge or rooftop and just jump to his death. This can be especially frustrating in a late game section where you are required to jump across a couple of small perches over water, and you can't swim. Climbing uses the same easy hold-and-point mechanic as parkour does. It feels a little better here though, since the speed in which Altair climbs is much slower and methodical. Occasionally, being a few millimeters off on the the analog stick when you are ascending a wall will cause you to stop and be stuck there as you fumble with the controller trying to finding the right direction, even though the handhold you are trying to get to is right next to Altair. This can be a little troublesome when you are trying to escape from guards, since they will throw rocks at you that immediately knock you back to the ground if hit. Overall though, these are small issues that aren't gamebreaking in the least.

What IGN logo? I have no idea what you're talking about...

Even with its few flaws, Assassin's Creed has such a unique concept and gameplay style that they make up for much of the story and movement problems that sometimes keep the game from flowing well. While Altair's story was pretty lackluster, Desmond's excellent one opens up much more by the end and it becomes clear that the developers have great plans for the inevitable sequel. If there is anything that can be taken from Assassin's Creed, it is excitement for what Ubisoft will do with this franchise in the future, both in gameplay and in story. But until then, this is a great starting point.

Today's adventure.

2009-02-02T22:01:00.004-06:00

this...FUCKING SUCKS!!

2009-01-10T12:47:00.004-06:00

Yesterday a shitload of people got laid off from 1up.com when they were acquired by UGO.com. Good for the site itself, but bad for everyone who actually made it the place I like to go to. Also, Electronic Gaming Monthly was CANCELLED!!! What the fuck! They didn't even get to do a final issue.

Since I made this blog so I could write about gaming stuff, I figured I should write something, but this sucks too much to just write a rambling, complaining wall of text that says things that the guys that worked there have already heard by everyone else.

So I used the different 1up Show theme songs, my favorite parts from podcasts, funny clips from the 1up Show, and photos from around the internet to make this video tribute.

Enjoy.

2009-01-02T15:16:00.004-06:00

The following is my term paper for SOCI 1510.007, Honors Individuals in Society. It really doesn't have enough research, and I could never quite pinpoint a main topic I felt was really good, so I ended up with this. Not my best, but I did what I could with the two days I had left to write it.

The Virtual Reality of World of Warcraft

and Why People Escape to It.

Jonathan Graham

Individuals in Society SOCI 1510.007

Introduction

The planet Earth is a pretty great place to be. There are tons of interesting places to go and people to meet, and while there are a few bad exceptions out there, its all mostly pretty cool. But in all the dark, dank, Cheeto bag filled basements around the world, there live monsters. These monsters thrive in the lonely darkness under the house, like cave trolls. When their defenses are finally broken down by hunger and full bladders, they are stricken by an agonizing blindness at the sight of sunlight, followed by spasms of panic and anxiety when attempting to make contact with the opposite sex. These monsters are generally known as “nerds,” but this rare species has an evolution tree with many, many branches. Some are known as the Dance Dance Revolution Nerd, or the Dungeons & Dragons Nerd, but a large rise in the population of a certain nerd, the World of Warcraft nerd, has led to a recent change in the perception and study of this creature. The research culminated in a expedition into the secret world of the nerds, and the amazing discovery of a portal to a dangerous world called Azeroth, the kingdom of the nerd.

Azeroth is the virtual world that the MMORPG World of Warcraft takes place in. MMORPG stands for “Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game,” a genre of video game that has steadily rose in popularity throughout the last 10 years, and continues to grow in the present. World of Warcraft is by far the biggest in the genre, with over 14 million paid monthly subscribers around the world. Blizzard Entertainment, the developer, launched the game on November 23, 2004. In the 4 years that the game has been active, a fully fledged community has grown and thrived. The recent release of the game’s second expansion, titled “Wrath of the Lich King,” sold 2.8 million copies within 24 hours of being released. This makes it fastest selling computer game of all time, beating out the former record holder which is, of course, the first expansion set, “World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade.”

To be fair, World of Warcraft is not only played by nerds and people who have no social skills, it is actually played by a very diverse range of people. There are some who have full-time jobs and play maybe only an hour a night. These are the ones who constantly wonder why they waste so much time in a fake world and feel like they should stop and save the money they pay each month. While there are others whose job is actually inside the game world, through something which has become known as “gold farming,” in which they gain currency virtually to sell to other players, who pay in actual money. This allows them to basically play the game as their hobby and source of income simultaneously. A survey taken of another well known MMORPG, Everquest, even revealed that 40% of players would quit their jobs in the real world if in-game ones could yield a sufficient amount of income (Castronova, 2001). The wide range of reasons why people play World of Warcraft only serve to beg the question: Why do so many people play World of Warcraft, and what becomes of the “lives” that are being formed right now in the game?

World of Warcrack

The basic gameplay of World of Warcraft is not necessarily the most complex thing. There are many game genres, such as first person shooters, that at their base level are much more complex than that of WoW, at least in terms of playability. The player’s main goal in the game is to complete quests, which usually consists of running around the fictional world of Azeroth finding and killing a specific number of a certain type of creature to collect the item it leaves behind. Normally, this game mechanic of “level grinding” becomes a chore in other games and leaves the player bored to the point that they may just stop playing. But nevertheless WoW still has so much momentum, even with this tedious mechanic. The result of many hours of grinding is the eventual leveling up of a character, signaled by a bright ring of light that travels up your avatar and the now familiar “ding!” sound. Upon leveling up, new skills can be gained, and attributes like strength and endurance can be improved. This is one of the reasons why so much time is spent doing the same monotonous task for hours on end.

The natural addiction one feels while playing World of Warcraft seems akin to Flow Theory(Csikszentmihalyi, 1975). Flow Theory has four experiential states: anxiety, apathy, relaxation, and flow. Immediately apparent upon examination of the game is that the states of anxiety and apathy are intentionally avoided in World of Warcraft. When a player is defeated in battle, they are transported to a nearby graveyard where they may then travel back to where they died as a ghost and be resurrected with no loss of experience or items. There is no sense of “this game is too hard,” or “this is boring,” because they are constantly moving about with a sense of purpose as to what they are doing or where they are traveling to. What keeps players motivated is the constant feeling of being on a mission, rather than just wasting time. The state of ‘flow’ is what really keeps WoW’s hooks in its players. The feeling of constantly having a job to be doing, and enjoying it all the while moves the player into a sort of trance in which they could play forever if the human body didn’t have limits.

Within the optimal state of flow, nothing else seems to matter, as theexperience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at a great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). The optimal condition of deep enjoyment must be experienced under two prerequisites. First, there must be perceived challenges for action stretching existing skills, engaging at a level appropriate to one’s capacities. Second, clear proximal goals and immediate feedback of the progress must also be present (Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi, 2002).

The two prerequisites for the optimal state of ‘flow’ are met easily through simple game design. It is common practice for a video game to adjust the artificial intelligence and difficulty of enemies to give the player a fair balance of easy, relaxing moments and difficult, tense ones. Also, whether the game be a shooter, kid’s, strategy, or puzzle game, instant gratification is a concept central to good game design. Gaining experience points and leveling up in a video game is a very enjoyable experience, but it is not an original concept. It has been in practice for many years through the evolution of the games industry. But one thing sets WoW apart from others: virtual communities and personal interactions with other players.

The Power of Internet Anonymity

While it may seem like everyone plays World of Warcraft to just play the game that the developers created, there is much more under the surface. As with any other place online--message boards, blogs, youtube, etc.--the ability to be a completely different personality is an opportunity that many if not most individuals do not pass up. There is no pressure on physical appearance, and there are no real names to trace back anything offensive that is said. In an massively multiplayer game like WoW, this can add greatly to the immersion that the player feels.

The design of a MMORPG is such that it forces gamers to cooperate in high-crisis and trust-building scenarios. This leads to the establishment of relationships. This social aspect of MMORPGs, referring to the ability of gamers to construct friendships, build communities and engage in social interactions in the virtual world (Heckel, 2003), is often stated as one of the major motivations for the increasing popularity of MMORPGs (Burn & Carr, 2004; Friedl, 2003 Lazzaro, 2004; Rouse, 2001, Sherry & Lucas, 2003; Yee, 2004).

According to a 2003 study of MMORPG players, the social interaction aspect was the main draw to the experience, commanding 41% of the vote. Meanwhile the opposite side, the killing things to get stuff aspect, received only a measly 4% (Griffiths et. al, 2003). Were a sociological perspective to be placed onto Azeroth, it would most definitely be from the school of symbolic interactionism. The fictional world--though not a living, breathing place--is still full of life that was born and formed from the simple act of users speaking to each other through whatever form of communication they had available. After 4 years, those interactions have taken root and now continue to grow as more and more soon-to-be Death Knights and Blood Elves make the short but expensive relocation to Azeroth. There are even hookers! Well...not really, but they are female characters who will strip down to the least clothing possible and dance if you pay them.

Conclusion

World of Warcraft is a social phenomenon right now and continues to grow. But the reason behind its success is more than just a good marketing team. First, It’s a well made, well kept online video game, with a strong, successful company pulling the levers behind the curtain. But there are plenty of good games, online and off, that receive much critical praise but fall by the wayside in favor of more generic IPs that people feel safe playing. The reason that World of Warcraft succeeds is because of the balance that it creates between a challenging, satisfying game style, and a fully developed social network that expands in complexity as more Earthlings migrate to Azeroth. So when that rank, unshaven monster walks with exhausted steps up the stairs to the dining room for dinner 4 hours after you called him/her, remember: do NOT make any sudden movements, ask how the weather is in Ironforge, and wish them a good vacation.

References

Chen, V. , Phuah, S. and Duh, H. , 2007-05-23 "What Makes MMORPGs fun? An Explication of Enjoyment, Social Interaction, and Types of Gamers" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, TBA, San Francisco, CA Online . 2008-11-26 from http:// www.allacademic.com/meta/p173005_index.html

Forghani, S. , Sosnovskaya, E. , Chin, A. and Boyns, D. E. , 2006-08-11 "MMORPG Worlds: On the Construction of Social Reality in World of Warcraft" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Montreal Convention Center, Montreal, Quebec, Canada Online . 2008-10-22 from http://www.allacademic.com/ meta/ p104274_index.html

Goodbye 2008, Hello future!

2009-01-02T02:31:00.005-06:00

Happy new year everyone!!

It's been awhile since I last put something here, or at least something serious. So I figure now, when its 2:30 in the morning and I am on my couch at home pondering how to spend the last two weeks of my Christmas break, is a good time to give an update.

The end of the semester went pretty okay, I got my GPA back up to a 3.1 after the abysmal 2.5 that was last semester. I mostly got all the grades I thought I would get, some a bit higher, some lower. A in Japanese, A in orchestra, A in aural skills, B in sociology, B in theory II, and...a D in history. I was surprised at the theory grade, I was absolutely sure I was either going to get a D or F for the semester, even Dr. O hinted at it. Overall, I had a good semester, I worked hard but still had a lot of time to relax.

Ok, I guess I should address the glaring D grade I just mentioned. History was a fun class, I really liked taking it. My teacher was fun to listen to because he didn't just lecture about the facts from the book, he told us all kinds of personal stories that related to the topics. What killed me was that there was a lot of reading material to cover, and a lot of lecture material that he gave us. The grade for the class was made up entirely of 4 multiple exams that came from the non-lectured books, and a midterm and final that were derived from only the lecture materials. No attendance, participation, or extra credit, which is what should be expected from a class of over 100 students. It was hard for me to keep up with the readings, and when it came down to exam time, I had to speed read and cram a few nights before the test. I don't have the best short term memory, so I usually had a lot of guesswork to do on them. The midterm and final were a different story though, they came from the reams of lecture material I had to go through, some of which I had to basically translate from 9amhistoryclasssleepyslurredchickenscratchinese into english. Which basically consists of me trying to remember the second half of the sentence I had started to write before a line crossed the rest of the paper. Hopefully I'll do better in my honors history class this spring.

Oh, I almost forgot about the other adventure I had this year, one I plan to never go on again.

Tuesday night of finals week I made it to bed at about 2 am, pretty normal time for me, and checked that my alarm was set for the next morning at 7:30am. I had my U.S. history final at 8 am, and an aural skills hearing test scheduled for 11:35 am.

I awoke the next morning with a feeling like something was wrong, looked at my clock, and saw that it was 12:30pm! I leaped out of bed, pulled on the nearest clothes, and checked the office hours of my professors. Both of them were not scheduled for office hours that day, and only had the exams to come to campus for, as far as I could see. So despondently, and with heavy steps I walked over to the Honors college administration and asked if I could talk to the dean about what would happen to my grade if I have two Fs this semester. I found out I would still be okay as long as I got it back up to a 3.0 by the next semester, in case it dropped below that. It was about 1 pm by that point, and I decided to call my parents and warn them that my grade wouldn't be too good this semester. They weren't too happy and kept questioning me as to how I managed to sleep through my speakers at full blast for over an hour, something I myself do not know.

About 2pm I happened to look at my history syllabus again to check what percentage of my grade would be chopped off from the final being missing. I realized that for some reason I was thinking that it was thursday, and that he was actually in his office that day for another hour. I grabbed my keys and ran across campus to Wooten Hall to see if there was still hope. After some working up of courage to knock on the door, I knocked and sure enough, he was there. I explained my circumstances to him, among his dismissive glares behind the massive stacks of papers that lined the walls of his office, and he told me this was probably the 15th time he's heard this story.

After a couple of seconds of awkward silence, he asked me my last name, and turned to his computer. I felt a small wave of hopefullness pass through me, which broke as he started to read my grades out loud, "67, 55, a 47 for the midterm, a 100?, and a 78." To have your teacher read all your grades out loud to you as you ask him for a second chance at a test you slept through is a really uncomfortable experience. But after looking at my attendance, which he said was decent (big emphasis on decent), he decided to give me the benefit of the doubt, and led me to the testing center, blank test in hand. Yet after all that, I still managed to make a D. But hey, shit happens.

My aural skills teacher just answered his cell phone, and told me we could do it the next day, problem solved. I am definitely getting like 5 more alarm clocks, just for days when I have tests.

Fortunately, I didn't have as crazy a year as some people I know, and I'm thankful for that. Sometimes I feel like I wish I had some kind of drama like that, so I would at least have something going on, but I will probably regret saying that once I actually do. Until then, I will continue to put my time towards helping my friends who are going through really bad shit.

I smoked weed for the first time this year. It was really fun and I would definitely do it again, considering I screwed up trying to do it right a bunch of times and didn't get as high as I guess I could have. I have two friends who have connections though, so I guess that means it may become something that will happen more often in the future, which would be awesome.

I have a feeling this year will be good for everyone. We have a new president, I am actually starting journalism classes, Lauren is back together with Eric, all is right with the universe...or at least my own personal universe.

My New Years Resolutions:

Get back on a workout schedule and keep to it.
Get a job.
Make some friends, friends like I have in Dallas, not just acquaintances from school.
Start dating, I don't have much experience with dating, but there's no better time to gain some of it than now.
Review every video game I play, unless it's a massive, unreviewable game that takes like 80 hours to finish.
Be more active on the websites and forums that I frequently visit, I won't get any recognition if I don't say anything outside of what I say here.
Post more on here. If I do it enough, I can probably form a new habit and it won't be such a difficult thing to remember to do.

I think that's enough to fill my plate for awhile.

It has been a pretty fun year, but it's over now. Here's to a great 2009.
túrána hott kurdís by hasta la otra méxico! from Till Credner on Vimeo.

Why I listen to podcasts.

2008-12-16T00:42:00.002-06:00

This^

Yaddle milk FTW!

Lol!

2008-11-20T10:09:00.000-06:00

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3171397

Awesome!

Yay!

2008-11-05T22:41:00.003-06:00

Thank you America, for not being the country full of stupid fat idiots who know the ingredients of a Big Mac but not how to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

Thank you for voting for change, and not for the same old crap we have been fed for the last 8 years by a president who choked on pretzels and started a war based on nothing.

I'm not usually a political person but today I am so proud to be an American. Here's to 4 years of much needed healing.

Wait, proposition 8 passed?

Fuck! I take all of that back!

Whatever happened to separation of church and state?

2008-11-03T02:06:00.007-06:00

To Lauren,

It gets frequently more difficult as time goes by to remember exactly how we came to know each other. I know it was late junior year, and it was because I was hanging out with JC and Colin, and a little bit of Chamber music class. But somehow an awesome friendship sprung from it all and has lasted strong until today, and I am forever thankful for it.

I very much had a huuuge crush on you when I first met you and it lasted for awhile, but I, and to a certain extent we, worked it out and it's a non-issue for me now. There were some really awkward times, but I think they just made our friendship stronger. Haha, Fight Club was on the other day and I realized I can't watch that movie now without having some interesting memories.

I know you think your life sucks and you are unsure of what the future will be like for you, but you really shouldn't. You have an awesome life, you've got a lot of friends (way more than I ever had) from high school and now even more in College, and you're getting to try all sorts of new stuff as an independent person. I'm seriously jealous of you. Just be careful though, I know you've got a good head on your shoulders and have plenty of common sense, but every once in awhile I have a bad thought and hope you don't go overboard.

While I may slightly disagree with the way you want to take the situation now, I know you well and I respect your decisions. But please, if you know you want to move forward from now on, don't focus too much on Eric and the past, it will only make things even more stressful and complicated, and I care for you too much to have that happen to you. What's going on right now, and since I've been there listening to you as long as you need me to I definitely know, really sucks and I don't envy being caught up in it. But you are one of the coolest, most beautiful girls I have ever known, and you'll do just fine with whatever comes your way.

Your best friend ever,
Jonathan

P.S. In the event that things do get really hard, just call me wherever I am, forever, and I'll be there to help you.

It's a little early for this one and I was saving it for another time but I figure now is the best.:)

I kill things.

2008-10-03T15:24:00.002-05:00

Why is it that every time I find a good gaming website, the best people there leave a few months later. First there was Rich Gallup leaving Gamespot, then Jeff Gerstmann getting fired, then Ryan Davis, Brad Shoemaker, and Vinny Caravella. All cool guys working for the site I liked best at the time.

Fortunately it seemed to be all sort of planned since they all started their own website. But by that time I had grown tired of watching and listening to what seems like a bunch of sidekick personalities trying to hold everything together, and discovered 1up.com.

Come a few months later, and Jeff Green, the guy who has been at the 1up network the longest helping to create Games for Windows Magazine along with GFW Radio (RIP favorite podcast...) leaves to go produce the Sims 3. I thought the worst was over, but less than a week later Shawn Elliot, funniest and best writer in the gaming enthusiast press (in my opinion), announces he is leaving to go work for 2K Boston! The most down to earth and outspoken guys of the entire site are moving to the other side of the fence...where we won't hear from them as much because they will have most likely have signed confidentiality agreements.

For the uneducated, 2K Boston (led by amazing creative director Ken Levine) used to be known as Irrational Games. They could also be known as the guys who made System Shock, System Shock 2, and its spiritual successor BIOSHOCK! So Shawn working there and putting his experience from the press side to use will definitely make their next TBA project even more awesome.

Oh well, I'll get over it sooner or later. Hey look at the bright side, more people leaving means more open positions. I wish all the best for Jeff and Shawn, you guys provided some great times for me as a fan of video games (yaddle milk, griefing, and toxic waste come to mind), and gave me even more inspiration for becoming a part of gaming press. Jeff, you gave me more knowledge about PC games I never got to play than I could ever get from finding and playing games myself. Shawn, you know so much about everything from 18th century literature to the consistency of female Yoda milk its hard to not listen to anything you say. Hopefully you guys will come back every once in a while for 1up FM or 1up Yours and give us some horror stories about the processes of game production. Best of luck to you both!

I'm still alive...

2008-09-24T19:06:00.003-05:00

...not that it matters anyways, no one is reading this.

So it's been a long time since I posted anything here. I don't know why I bother though, no one except for the people I know look here and only when I tell them to.

Not too much has happened since my last post. It's my sophomore year here at UNT, and besides the drop my GPA took after second semester last year, nothing too disappointing or horrible has happened in my life. My best friend Lauren left for Austin for her first year at UT, so I'm slightly disappointed that she won't be in Dallas to hang out when I come home every once in awhile. But I'm pretty sure the amount of time she spends online (which is now starting to reduce ever so slightly with all the parties going on every day down there) well makes up for it.

I love my schedule this semester! I still have a music theory class ass-raping me at 8 in the morning, but after this semester I will be done with theory and another boring music class. After that all I will have to worry about is the advanced music history courses I have to take, but they will probably just be lecture classes so I'm not that worried. My sociology class is also pretty boring. I mean, when we get into discussion about specific things that I can relate to its interesting, but the rest of the class is pretty much a bunch of "because different levels of society treat their kids differently...people do stuff." Then the professor will usually go off into something even less interesting and equally unfunny. Then after that remind us that he's mainly an anthropologist, not a sociologist, and that most of us are in this class because it was the only thing available. Even when are talking about things I am interested in (i.e. parent's raising their kids and not letting the media do it), I am usually seeing it all through one half-opened bloodshot eye. Although now that I am staying awake with energy drinks, I can see he is a pretty cool teacher, he hitchhiked across the country just for kicks when he was younger.

As much as I hate that class, its all made good by the fact that I GET TO TAKE JAPANESE!!!!!!!!!! I finally convinced my parents to let me use it as my foreign language requirement, which means I will be taking 4 semesters of it, just below the advanced level course. Learning Japanese is like the greatest most funnest thing ever. Not only is it fun because I am actually learning every day, (unlike Spanish which due to its Latin base feels like an alternate spelling of English most of the time) but it's even more fun to speak. It also feels a little simpler than English once you get the hang of it, there's significantly less weird rules to take into account. Hardt Sensee is an awesome teacher too. It's funny that she's white bread American, not Japanese, but we don't ever feel like we are getting a watered down version of what "Nihongo" (japanese in japanese) sounds like spoken. Every day in class feels like were not taking a foreign language course, but like we are learning about important aspects of how not to offend people in Japanese society, and by the end of the day we know how to not forget the one thing we learned. By the time we get done with the chapter, I feel like I know everything I was taught like the back of my hand. It felt a little bit like Mr. Rubio from when I was at Booker T., for those who were lucky enough to have him.

This summer there is an opportunity for me to go and learn 2nd level Japanese actually in Japan, a place I thought I would never be able to travel to. A chance to visit the coolest country on earth and get college credit for it is something I'd rather not miss. I better start saving up money for Akihabara.

Another good thing about my schedule is that it leaves me time to actually use the gym this year. I got my older sister to help me get started with a full body workout routine, which I started and eventually lost track of. Now I just basically do every muscle group, in whatever order I feel like doing. The crazy thing is I'm actually starting to see progress! Small progress, but progress nonetheless.

I decided to not let what happened last year in regard to a social life happen again this year. If you need a refresher on what happened, here you go...there was no social life last year. I was so focused on getting used to being independent and doing homework, I realized by the end of second semester that I was leaving with no one I could call a new friend. When I started this semester, I said to myself "this year things will be different" and now I do my homework in the lobby, find regular people to sit with in my classes who I can talk to, and just generally be more social. It's working slowly, but I don't really want to try rushing things if I want to find friends (or girls) that will last for a long time, seeing as how college goes straight into real life. The biggest roadblock I feel like I face right now is that usually a lot of people make their friends in the early weeks of their first year. Those people find other people, and eventually there are many little groups of friends throughout the school. That's not how I roll, I always found the people I got along with the best in later years after I had met pretty much everyone. I didn't find them in elementary/middle school until about 7th grade, and I didn't find the kick-ass friends I have now until late late junior year at Booker T. Though considering how awesome my friends from high school are, when I eventually find some cool people to hang out with here, they will just as awesome if not even more awesome. (No offense guys.)

I'll try to keep this blog more active, but I can't guarantee anything. I'll even try reviewing some games for fun, but I usually start that process and give up because I don't even know what to start with.

Until then, here's a fucking insane but completely hilarious commercial for nuts that I saw during the premiere of Heroes monday. I laughed my ass off when I first saw it.

Funniest fucking video ever!

2008-08-17T02:12:00.001-05:00

...or one of them.

Anyways, enjoy.

Family Guy s Take On Me

E3 2008! Day 1 (Microsoft Press conference)

2008-07-14T15:17:00.000-05:00

So its E3 again and heres the stuff I am excited for:

Resident Evil 5 delayed till March 2009, but online coop confirmed.
Fable 2 is coming October this year, never played the first one so I don't know what to expect. Apparently the first one was great so we'll see.
Gears of War 2 November 7th. Its Gears, its awesome, end of story. 4 player coop and 8 player multiplayer.
Portal Still Alive on XBLA later this year. More portal=me happy.
Fallout 3!!!! This is what I've been looking forward too for awhile. Its on schedule too so that's a good sign. First gameplay footage I've seen.

and finally...

FINAL FANTASY XIII IS COMING TO THE XBOX 360! HOOOOOLY SHIT!!! SYSTEM WARS BEGIN!!!!

check in

2008-06-05T22:41:00.000-05:00

Still alive here, I just haven't had the time to post in a while. Actually...I've just been too lazy to do anything. I finished my second semester with a 3.2 GPA, which is still pretty good even though it dropped .7 points from my first semester. (But from what I hear that's pretty normal for a college freshman.) Somehow I made a C in English 2, which completely baffles me, because I was able to see every single one of my grades throughout the entire class, and they were all A's and B's. So it had to be my research paper (worth 40% of the total grade) that did, but Ms. Wright approved of the first 5 pages the week before it was due. Either I wrote complete crap for the last half, or something happened with the grades, but nonetheless the whole situation sucks balls.

My best friend Lauren graduated earlier this week and it was pretty awesome to see. The only other times I had been to an Arts graduation would have been my older sister's a long time ago when I was too young to care about what was going on, and then of course my own last year. It was weird seeing it from the other side, and also realizing that I knew a lot more people than I thought I did. The performances and everything were pretty good, but the music one seemed a little lacking. I mean it didn't sound bad or anything, but after all the original stuff we had last year doing just a mash-up of choral pieces and jazz standards seems a little...lame. Oh, and I didn't like that they didn't call James King's name during the actual commencement ceremony, I know it would have been a little awkward, but he at least deserves the right to actually have his name called during the real thing. But still it was a very good ceremony, congratulations Lauren! You're awesome! : )

As great as it was to see that though, I discovered something during it that left me pretty deflated for most of the evening. (I tried to hide it though) I won't go into detail but basically I thought I had an understanding about something, or someone (based on my interpretation of some things they said) and I found out some things that night that I didn't know and now I feel like I've lost a chance at something I really wanted. I think that's vague enough for most people.

So that's weighing pretty heavily on my mind right now and I'm trying my best to not think about it. I'm still planning on writing my review of the Lost game, and I'm about to get a PS3 so I'll have more stuff to write about soon.

Damn, blogs are easy to forget about.

Vote for Fitch!

2008-05-05T23:24:00.000-05:00

VOTE FOR FITCH!!!!!!!!

Vote Here

When the future comes, where will you be?

2008-05-01T21:18:00.000-05:00

Today we, meaning gamers, constantly get attacked for the things that we love to play and live a lifestyle about. Games are either evil, or immoral, and are warping the minds of children, turning them into mindless violent hoodlums. So far we have been able to take it pretty well, voicing our opinions well in a tasteful way (outside of forums and article comments of course), with the occasional barrage of bad book reviews on Amazon.

But soon the baby boomer generation will be gone and we will take their place. When that happens, what will you do? Will you practice what you've been preaching this whole time, or will you be a hypocrite and let your 5 year old son play Grand Theft Auto 7?

Heads need to roll.

2008-04-24T18:59:00.000-05:00

Good lord Nintendo is this the best you could come up with! How did they even find the idea funny in the first place?

You know, those old NES commercials are really bad now, but I bet people thought they were normal back then. I'm gonna go ahead and put this out there...THE WORST VIDEO GAME COMMERCIAL EVER!!!!!

...I mean come on what the fuck! Does anyone find this funny in the least?

SSBB!!!

2008-03-10T14:09:00.000-05:00

I finally get Super Smash Brother Brawl today, Im skipping class for it.

It better be damn good with all the extra time we had to wait for it!

RIP

2008-03-04T18:46:00.000-06:00

I never played Dungeons and Dragons that much but I respect the foundations it created for the rest of gaming history. If it wasn't for TSR (Tactical Studies Rules Inc.), we probably would not have things like Final Fantasy or Mass Effect. We owe it all to this man, the father of the role playing game.

Rest in peace Gary Gygax, thanks for everything.

...oh yeah, he was 69 too!

New game

2008-03-03T11:06:00.001-06:00

So I started playing "Lost: via Domus" last night. Early consensus: I like it. It definitely has some issues, and its pretty esoteric for non-Lost fans, but its kept my attention thus far. I like the episode format.

Full review coming soon.

GDC!!!

2008-02-23T20:08:00.000-06:00

I wanna go to GDC someday, it sounds awesome!

Fable 2 will have co-op gameplay. Its always awesome when you have the option of getting pregnant in a video game. (You don't see the actual process of it happening stupid.)
Street Fighter 4 looks pretty cool. I'm not much of a fighting game player though.
Ugh, do we really need Postal 3. We already have enough problems dissuading the media, and this franchise has not helped. Not to mention that they're not even good games in the first place.
I'm hopeful for Bionic Commando, It looks like fun.
We're going to begin to see a lot more independent games on Xbox live.

Portal wins Game of the Year, COD4 and Mass Effect win nothing.
Ninja Gaiden 2 on June 3. Hopefully it won't kick my ass as much as the original did, but not take that away from the people who want it to.
Spielberg's first attempt at games will be...jenga? Fuck it, if its good, then that's great.
Portal 2, maybe.
Far Cry 2 will be the game version of Heart of Darkness.
GEARS OF WAR 2 THIS NOVEMBER!!!!!

The war is over

2008-02-19T13:56:00.000-06:00

Toshiba announced today that they are dropping the HD-DVD format. Unless you have had your head in your ass for the past few months, you will know that this effectively means that HD-DVD is dead.

Bluray wins!

If you already bought a player or the useless add-0n for the xbox 360, run to the stores now. There's gonna be a firesale for HD-DVD movies everywhere as it makes like the Betamax.

I really wasn't rooting for any one format to win, I don't a have player for either yet. I'm just glad its over so I don't have to think so much when simply buying a movie.

The Revolution Has Begun!

2008-02-18T15:18:00.000-06:00

Ryan Davis and Jeff Gerstmann started a podcast! Add this to the quiet announcement that Alex Navarro has a new project in the works, and I am a very happy person.

Arrow Pointing Down Podcast

Navarro's blog

Oh and if you have no idea what that last post was talking about, good. (and don't ask me)

CHEER UP!!!!!

2008-02-17T01:07:00.001-06:00

Makki is the coolest and prettiest person ever!! She should read this and be happy!!!! : ) : ) : ) : )

BE HAPPY!!!!

She's gonna take first place in that concerto competition tuesday, and first place in every other competition that happens tomorrow, even if she doesn't even know about them!!!! She's even gonna do it while feeling sick! Is there any other person in existence more awesome than her?!

GOOD LUCK! : D

She's so hot she even has to fight off her fat, annoying orchestra teacher, and does it with style!

She should comment on this post and tell me what else I should talk about.

I dare you to not laugh at these.

2008-02-11T22:33:00.000-06:00

Real video game awards!

2008-02-08T12:52:00.000-06:00

So last night they broadcasted the D.I.C.E. Interactive Achievement Awards, the game industry's official awards show previously held and attended by only the developers and publishers of the industry, and for the first time this year it was broadcast live online for Gamespot users.

I didn't know what to expect from it, fearing a lot of esoteric acceptance speeches boring viewers to death, but to my surprise it turned out to be an excellent show! Its exactly what we want from an awards show: red carpet with interviews, comedic host that (usually) keeps the energy up, audience enthusiasm, and content that we actually want to see. That being said, I did find a few problems that made it a little hard to watch sometimes.

1. The red carpet pre-show was generally very good, but for god-sakes get rid of Laura Swisher as a correspondent! Her voice would be manageable if she wasn't making every single interviewee uncomfortable, screwing up questions, and keeping her mic on when Tim Surette was trying to pay attention to who he was speaking to. But with both things its rotted icing on the burnt cake.

2. Jay Mohr as host wasn't too bad. I mean, I know from the stories of the previous years he was about the same, so I didn't hold my expectations too high. There were some genuinely funny moments, more hit than miss. But he might do a little better next year if he lays off the asians. Racial tension is not good for a room full of Japanese and white men when video games are the subject.

3. In order to make the IAAs more viable as an awards show, especially if they want to move to television someday, the language definitely needs to be toned down a bit. There was A LOT of stuff that kids (who people will inevitably think this show is for, if it expands) shouldn't be hearing, and that would not be allowed on a TV broadcast. The "getting rid of crabs" thing, although probably one of the funniest things said all night, would probably seem pretty offensive to some. But David Jaffe should be able to do whatever he wants and they can just bleep and blur it out, because he's awesome like that.

4. Game developers can make great games, as we all know, but they sure have no comedic timing. Maybe a tiny bit of rehearsal might do some good.

5. The best moments of the show would have to be the lifetime achievement award for Ken Kutaragi, father of the Playstation, and the Hall of Fame induction of Mike Morhaime, creator of a little company now known as Blizzard. Those guys are legends and truly deserve the recognition. These moments are what me feel really good about being a gamer, the knowledge that I am part of something big and not just a multi billion dollar fad.

But thats just my opinion, cause lets face it, who's really listening to me.

Oh and "lulz," either don't keep this in your bookmarks or shut your fucking mouth if you don't have anything productive to say. I didn't make this to be a whiny little bitch, I made it so I could get some amateur experience writing on my own for fun. It doesn't feel good to be trying to do something and being put down the whole time. I do know where you live...

Moment of the show:

Yeah, I know. I need a life.

2008-01-24T01:35:00.000-06:00

Yes this is me in case you didn't notice.

...I'm still better than you though.

This pretty much sums it all up.

2008-01-22T13:33:00.001-06:00

I know its been talked about like crazy, and you're probably tired of hearing about it. But the recent events at Gamespot after Gerstmann-Gate won't let it go away.

The first to leave was Greg Kasavin, managing editor, and the main man responsible for the strict review guidelines that gave the site its journalistic integrity. But his dreams did not lie in game journalism, because early last year, he left to go make games at one of the many EA studios. His departure, while sad, did not really seem to be a huge deal for the everyday activity at the site. All was well on the homefront. But that was until Josh Larson was hired to take his place.

Larson is not a passionate gamer to say the least. Hell, I don't even think he is a gamer at all. He was the man responsible for selling those annoying ads that take over the page when your mouse scrolls over them, and now he is the man in charge of the entire editorial staff. (I say "is" because he is still in the position today.)

It is reportedly this changing of the guard that led to the criticism of Gamespot's integrity and the eventual firing of Jeff Gerstmann, 11 year veteran of the site, whose opinion I truly respect and admire. The immediate lashing the site received after this news officially broke was wide ranging and explosive, and cracked open the discussion that, in my opinion, is the biggest video game related issue of 2007.

The game industry needs the media just as much as the media needs advertisers, and for years a happy medium has been in place between the two. Places such as Gamespot are is happy to show ads for a product to make their site profitable, and the advertiser gets their product out there. At the same time, the advertiser must also accept that once the product is out at retail, it is open to any and all criticism. (Its called the First Amendment.) But to break this trust and betray the church-and-state separation is like being a public school orchestra teacher and giving all the opportunities to the best players. It makes you look good but fucks over all the other students who don't get a say in the situation.

I still support Gamespot because I like the personalities that I have come to know over the years and don't want to put them out of work. But if they ever get the opportunity to rebel against this bullshit corporate censorship, like Frank Provo, Alex Navarro, and Dan Hsu already have, without becoming unemployed in the process, I sincerely hope they do. Because even though the government isn't involved (thank god!), that's exactly what this is, censorship.

This pretty much sums it all up...

Ok, lets get the ball rolling.

2008-01-16T01:00:00.000-06:00

Its been three days here in my second semester, and I can already tell which classes I am not gonna like.

Overall, everything is pretty fun. Mass Communication and Society may be a class where I just learn common knowledge about the media and how it works, but the things the professor talks about and references are things that we hear about pretty much every day (britney spears, writers strike, beavis and butthead), so I think I might be able to have a little fun there. Hey, I may even get to make myself known defending video games if it ever comes under discussion.

I was scared shitless about going to Honors American Government, but it turned out to be not so bad. The teacher is very high energy (in a limp wristed way), and keeps us interested because he knows that we would never have taken the class if it weren't for required Honors credit hours. From what he tells us, were going to be talking about current affairs, domestic policy, foreign policy, all that crap you hear about on those channels you never watch. Im a little concerned about the fact that a big part of our grade is based on us participating in discussions, which will inevitably turn into debates, one thing I have never been good at. We'll see though.

Aural skills I is okay, its just a lot of singing and ear training. Right now its really easy and for some strange reason I can hear my own voice over most of the class, but I'm sure that will change soon. Sightsinging in modes...ack!

As much as I like to write, I hate my English class!! The teacher is like an unfunny version of Ms. DeOre, and we're going to be doing literature analysis again, which is one of the most tedious and boring things possible in a class. I would rather eat glass, vomit it back out, and wash it all down with a cool glass of pig urine.

Oh, and its a half hour longer than all my other classes too.

Despite the fact that I have to go to theory at 8 in the morning, I don't have much else to complain about, its music theory.

Ok, last one, and probably my least favorite, college algebra. Oh wonderful wonderful college algebra! Where would I be without you?

Oh yeah, thats right, HAPPY!!!! I mean, I took math classes all through middle school and high school, and I don't plan on going into something that uses math for a career. So why do I have to take this fucking torturous class? The location is far from the class I have before it, its boring, I already learned the materials at least once before, and the teacher barely speaks english. Nothing remotely good can come from this experience, but I guess I have to go through it to actually take classes related to Electronic News. I think I'll survive, but I'll be hanging by a fraction of a thread.

So thats where I am at the moment.

College is fun, but it can be a lot of work sometimes.

Hello everyone!

2008-01-16T00:55:00.000-06:00

I made a blog some unknown time ago and then proceeded to not touch it since. I dont even remember what it was called or where it is. So yeah...uhh...Hi.

If I feel like posting stuff you might see something on here.