I, for one, am completely sick of it.

Yes, it sucked—more than I’m going to bother to try and convey.

I was (and still am) in NYC. I had to live through that day, walk through that day (all the way to Brooklyn) and deal with the next few weeks of absolute discombobulation (which, to me, was the worst - that’s when everything sets in) as to what’s safe anymore.

I had to go to work the next day, convinced I was going to die. I rode the subways every morning and for the first two months, every time the train stopped in the tunnels, a cold sweat would kick in and I was hardly the only person.

It was horrible. I wish it hadn’t happened. It did and it’s certainly affected me, my decisions and how I view things.

But it’s been five years.

Still, every time I watch the news, there it is. 9/11 is invoked left and right. I see the plane crash or at least the smoking buildings in the media every day. It’s no longer a tragedy. It’s been co-opted as a tool for politics and media. It makes me sick.

This morning, I was reading an article about a CBS interview with “Tuesday’s Children“, a group to support and represent the children who lost parents that day. The reporter was asking how they felt now and the biggest complaint, round the room, was the constant barrage of imagery from that day. A quote:

The kids [..] told 60 Minutes some of the worst memories don’t fade because the media won’t let them. [CBS Reporter Scott] Pelley got an earful about showing those pictures of 9/11 over and over again.

“Even when you’re just sitting down like eating dinner and watching TV, you’ll just have a nice conversation and then all the sudden you’ll see like pictures of 9/11. You can’t escape it. It’s just like everywhere you go its always like you’re always reminded of it somehow even in the littlest thing,” explains Amy Gardner.

“They’re showing my dad’s death and everyone else here. It’s just really offensive. Every time I see it, it brings up so much and it actually really hurts,” says Erik Abrahamson.

That pretty much sums it up for me. Here’s the link that has video and a transcript.

9/11 is now a political tool. It’s a ticket-selling, ratings-boosting tool. It’s a tool for bloated, flag-waving idiots to show how patriotic they are to everyone else. It’s disgusting. It’s sad. It’s infuriating.

Happy 9/11, everybody.

In the past two years, I’ve gone from having a freak religious cult for neighbors to having a chicken waving, chanting, hooting and hollering idiot living next to me. Is it a case of “like attracts like”? Who knows? It just seems that my luck with neighbors in Brooklyn kind of blows hairy donkey balls.

I live on the third floor of my building and outside my bedroom window is a kind of a pit-like opening, made up of several of the surrounding buildings meeting up. It’s one long shaft straight down and all there is to see are the windows of other apartments in the surrounding buildings. The whole space is only about 12×12 feet and this shaft manages to act as a natural amplifier, bringing all kinds of interesting noises into my bedroom and blissful beauty rest at any odd hour of the day or night.

(more…)

A few days ago, after spending a wretched day renewing my ID at the hell that is the Brooklyn DMV, I picked up a copy of “Shadow of the Colossus” for the PS2 to brighten my day. I had no idea what it was about, but chose it because somewhere at some point I’d glanced at a review that raved about it. This is basically how I buy all games as I’ve a decided lack of patience to read gamer sites and magazines. I usually will subscribe to an RSS feed and scan the photos and titles. Games that get a bunch of posts, stick in my memory and usually end up getting purchased in moments of consumer weakness, which is often.

The format of your run-of-the-mill action game is: fight, fight, fight…boss scene. Fight the boss and then it’s back to fight, fight, fight til the next boss scene and the game eventually ends. Nothing wrong with it, I suppose but the boss fights have historically always been my least favorite parts. Give me a room with twenty little baddies that I have to kill á la God of War and I am one happy fucking camper. Games that are boss-heavy usually begin to collect dust shortly after purchase.

SotC is all bosses. There’s nothing else to the game, unless you count running from point A to B. There’s not baddies in between to slay. You go from one boss monster to another and while normally this would have me hating this game, I find myself hooked. SotC doesn’t have just any old bosses. These bastards are HUGE, gorgeously rendered behemoths that combine action, puzzle-solving and strategy to beat. The graphics, scenery and feel are hot shit. Strange, mysterious and moody. There’s little or no dialog in the game so the huge dream-like world sprawled out before you, unoccupied but for the mountainous beasts reminiscent of something out of HP Lovecraft is simply there to wonder about.

The hero of the game is this dinky little fucker, armed with only a sword and bow and a horse to ride. Pitted against giants literally fifty times larger, the little dude has to expose and attack the monster’s weak points. This is accomplished by figuring out how and managing to climb the boss, get to his weak spots and stab the fuck out of them before you lose your grip and fall. Tense shit.

There’s something to be said about a game revolving around my least enjoyed facet of the action genre that manages to completely entertain me. SotC is a great game on so many levels, from the concept to the anime-like look. It’s a short game, there being only sixteen bosses to battle, which sucks since this is a game that keeps you wanting to see more. More bosses, more areas, more everything.