On a Monday afternoon a young couple goes into Costco. They shop happily enough, joking and sampling, agonizing about whether to get guacamole, unaware that disaster is so near. They purchase their few selections and enjoy some food court refreshment, still unaware of the DISASTER lurking. They approach the exit, receipt ready. She begins looking in her purse, “Why can I never find my keys?!?!” He looks to his right, past the girl, eyes lazy but something gets through. “Those kinda look like your keys,” he says, also lazily. Ice cream and heat make him lazy. She looks, “OMG!” They step slightly out of line. The customer service woman hangs up. “These are my keys.” “They were found outside.” “Do I have to show…” “No.” They rejoin the line and live happily ever after.

Thanks to freewaregenius for telling me about it.

I know there are other ways to get a similar effect, but this is really specialized. It’s basically set up, select files, push button, enjoy. It works perfectly. So far anyway.

This time when I searched around I found this which explained that you can right click on the awesome bar and select Edit search engines. There you can input alternative search engines, including images.google.com or any website and associate a keyword with that engine. So now if I want to search Google images I can just type image [search term]. Google even auto populates this list with frequently visited sites, so the engines you are likely to want to use might already be there. I just didn’t know to look. It’s very handy, so I thought I’d make sure you all knew.

The game was fun, though. It is definitely closer to Sands of Time than any of the others since, which is a good thing. The combat suffers from all the magic powers they give you in my opinion, but I liked the combat in Sands of Time. In Sands of Time  people complained that the combat was either too difficult or too time consuming. It wasn’t either, unless you made it that way. If you were any good at it it was fun and not that time consuming. Unfortunately, you could get through it just by mashing square or whatever. So that’s what most people did. In this new game you can use magic to tear through all the monsters without hardly using your sword. If you do use the sword the combat is not quite as fun as that of Sands of Time, but pretty close. The platforming, which is really the best part of PoP, is great. I think it is more difficult than Sands of Time, which I appreciate. I must quibble about the existence of hidden treasures. Normally I enjoy such features in a game, but I wish they would leave them out of PoP. Prince of Persia is the game I want to race through, getting in a rhythm and trying to be as smooth, and fast, and bad ass as possible. I do not want to be looking around for alternative paths to take and secret places to look behind and such. I do that in every other game. I know I don’t really have to, but I wish they wouldn’t even tempt me.

Also in video game news, Kim has decided recently she wants to play Modern Warfare 2, which means she and Aaron have come over several times recently and we have taken turns playing. There’s a new expansion map pack out, which I haven’t purchased yet, but might. I love the game, but it’s way more fun with an audience. We prestiged up again and have gotten the tactical knife with the USP so I got my first chance to be a knifer bitch. I went 24 and 9 on Bailout, one of my least favorite maps. Not all my attempts since have been so successful, but the option to be a knifer bitch is pretty sweet.

When Kim comes she brings her Xbox and Red Dead Redemption, so I’ve had quite a few chances to play that as well. I’ve beaten the first area pretty completely, I think. Still have to skin some armadillos or something. It’s a good entertaining game. It is the sort of game I would prefer to play when I’m alone, though, so its sorta unfortunate I only have access to it when company is over.

Anyway that’s all the games I’ve been playing. They’re all good. You all should play MW2 with me. I have a headset I never use and everything.

I also have 241 Stars in Mario Galaxy 2. Haven’t gotten that last one. I must have died more than 100 times trying so far. Kinda sad, since every other star was so easy. /sigh I’ll get it someday, I suspect.

I’d like to start my review by saying that it’s a huge disappointment and I can’t think of anyone who should see it. It is not as bad as you might think from reading reviews on the internet. Those have been unjustifyably vitriolic. It is still a deeply flawed movie that shouldn’t be seen.

It’s tragic because the movie is really good at a few things. All those things you see in the trailer. The action is good and the world in general looks like the Avatar world would look if it wasn’t a cartoon. If you took out all the talking everything would kinda feel right.

Everything else is awful, though. The acting, the lines, and pacing, the plot. If you know the series, it’s not like it anymore. They killed all the funny cartoony goodness in order to shorten the first season into 2 hours, consequently changing and ruining several characters. They couldn’t have survived even if they had been played well. The exposition is the worst I can think of in my movie watching history.

I know that blame doesn’t need to be placed, but if I was asked I would place it squarely on Mr. Shyamalan. He wrote the screenplay and directed the performances. I’m not sure if the casting was just bad, but I’d bet that the cast could have at least done a passable job given the chance. I think Shyamalan drove the movie into the ground by somehow needing to get exactly 1 season into 1 movie.

It should have been done like a comic book movie. Take the characters and world from the show and make a movie using them. Tell the origin story. Cramming 400 minutes of excellent cartoon into 120 minutes of anything is going to be really really difficult, if not impossible, and I see no reason to attempt it if one doesn’t have to. And nobody ever has to.

Oh, and I went and saw it in 2D because I knew it was an upscaled 3D which I don’t approve of. From what I hear I made a good choice. The 3D just makes things more expensive and worse. That shouldn’t matter since if you take my advice, you won’t see it at all. Unfortunately.

If they don’t kill the movie projects entirely I’ll be looking for some drastic changes before I pay to see any sequel, even given my adoration for the original material. /sadface