Just wanted to write a short update blog for today.

I just sent back Red Steel and I have to say, one of the worst FPS's i have ever played and that even includes those free online ones. Also, I picked up X-men Legends 2 again and have been wanting to finish that. I've been getting this recent addiction to comic books lately and since I don't read comics, i decided the next best thing is to play the games based off of them. Xmen Legends 2 is based off of the Age of Apocalypse story arc for the X-men and is basically when Apocalypse takes over and the Brotherhood/X-men team up to take him down. Pretty great game. If you like Diablo 1/2, Baldurs gate Dark Alliance, or any other games like that, pick this up. You also get to learn a lot about the x-men which is pretty awesome. Oh yeah, my next game from Gamefly is Marvel: Ultimate Alliance so i'm looking forward to that and am trying to beat Legends 2 before it gets here.

3 more days until... *drum roll* HARRY POTTER 7!!! YAY!!! can't wait to get it and that probably means i'm gonna be gone all of saturday reading it just like i did the 6th. Peace everyone!

In an effort to get back into my normal summer sleep schedule, i decided i'm not goin to sleep till at least 1 o clock which is a big effort since i got up at about 7 this morning X_x. Anyway, I watched the movie Black Christmas to keep from sleeping... Needless to say, it worked. Nasty, nasty movie. I thought that 28 Weeks Later was one of the nastiest movies i've ever seen (the whole... umm... shove in the eyes thing... *shudders*) but this beats it by far. The killer in the movie has an interesting fetish for... eyeballs... Namely, he pulls them out and eats them while his victims are still alive. Yeah... not a pleasant scene. Anyway, definitely not for the weak of heart. Otherwise, very creepy movie. Not the scariest ever but definitely will keep you on the edge of your seat. I give it an 8/10. Peace everyone!

The title pretty much sums that up. I'm exhausted beyond anything i've ever experienced before. Everyone's been tired after a long hike or something to that extent before but the mission trip was not only that. It was also extremely emotionally exhausting. I hope you guys don't think i sound super cheezy after sayin this but it's true.

Anyway, i'll give you the scoop on what happened during the trip. We left on saturday at 3:00 in the morning (yeah so not cool...) to go to the airport and from there, it was a full day of flights to get to Picayune, Mississippi which is the sister city to my hometown. What this means is that after Katrina, my city of Issaquah kinda banned together and picked a town that was devastated by the storm. We picked Picayune and since Katrina, we have been helping them financially as well as sending help and whatnot. The stay at the Picayune Methodist Church was the best night our team had all week. We had full air conditioning (which was the biggest plus of all since the humidity was killing us, being from Washington which has about 3% humidity at most.), personal showers and a full gym. Super cool. Anyway, after having a great Mississippi meal at a local coffee house (which made front page news by the way lol. http://www.picayuneitem.com/archivesearch/images_sizedimage_191143512/resources_photoview ) we all crashed for the night and got about 7 hours of sleep. The most we would get throughout the trip...

When we drove into New Orleans the first time, we went over the longest, not to mention the bumpiest, bridge in the world which is 27 miles of bouncing around and hitting head on the roof of the car. We were all pretty excited to get to our camp where we could meet the other churches and all. When we got there, we learned that the guys and the girls were not only in seperate rooms, we were in completely different churches all together... well that sux... Oh well, it's only at night anyway. So our church ended up getting our own room which was pretty cool and we stayed in a sunday school room. It was small but it soon became home. Our place of refuge from the work and the heat. The first day, we went to work with a group called ACORN which was working on rebuilding homes. We got to work in a house that has not been touched since Katrina two years ago. It's sad to think about but even after two years, thousands of homes have not even been entered since the disaster. Anyway, we were working on gutting the house which basically means take down everything except the main structure of the house. So we took out the furniture, personal items, trash left by the floods and then we started work on the walls. This meant grabbing crowbars and breaking them down. It was fun but it was also very emotional. We were tearing down the home that someone had lived in. One of our members had a really hard time with it since she found a picture of the family that had lived there. There were also signs around that said things like "God bless this home". It was pretty tough seeing it but we all knew that this was necessary for rebuilding. After work we finally got to take a shower, which was the highlight of every day since it's SOOOOO FREAKIN HOT!!!! Other than that, everything was basically just getting into the swing of things.

Second day was a lot more of the same thing. Except for one major thing. We got to meet the owners of the house. The mother and daughter in the family were coming to see their home for the first time. She told us that we came at the absolute perfect time since a week later and her home would have beenbulldozed and she would have lost everything. It was touching hearingher testimony but unfortunately, she couldn't stay for long since she had to get to the airport.

The third day weswitched our work sites so that we could mix it up a little bit. Other workcrews went to ACORN while my work crew went to a place called ARC which stands for the Association of Retarded Citizens. Not politicallycorrect, I know, but that's because it is an old facility. Anyway, as you can probably tell, it's a place for mentally handicappedpeople to stay for the day while their families work or whatever. Honestly, when i firstwent there, I was thinking,"oh geez... retards... that's just great. I have to spend my day with a bunch of people that don't make any sense at all and can'teven think straight." Now after the experience, i feel awful for even thinking somethinglike that.One of the most important things i feel that i learned over the weekwas thatmentally handicapped people are still people and they still have feelings just like you or me. Just because they don't think the same way as you or I do and don't see the worldlike we do, doesn't mean they areany less important. My time at ARC was my favorite time throughout the trip by far and I became friends with several of the people there. One man, his name was Chuck, was the funniest guy there. When we first got there, i decided to go play Bingo with some of the people and I ended up sitting next to Chuck. He was instantly attached and wanted to go with me everywhere. Throughout most of the Bingo game he was holding my hand and it was like he was a child. He also hada really hard time communicating and often spoke through numbers or hand signals. One of the few things he could say was this great "eh eh... yeah". It's obviously hard to explain it in words but whenever he said that (which was a lot. Basically whenever we said anything to him), his face just lit up and he was so happy. It was amazing. Just from saying something to him, it was like that was the best thing that ever happened to him. There were obviously other people there and most of them, just as amazing as Chuck but I realize that this is becoming an incredibly long post. One guy i do want to mention was a man named Reggie. He has Cerebral Palsy which means he is paralyzed in a lot of his body. However, despite this, he is an absolutely brilliant man. He can beat anyone at checkers and he is now learning chess which he is becoming very good at rather quickly.

The fourth day was also the same basic work day but the major event here was the foot washing ceremony. This is where I start bringing in my religion quite a bit so bear with me if you don't believe the same things I do. In the bible, one of the major parts of the story of Jesus was a time shortly before Jesus' death. Jesus knew he was going to die and wanted to impart his teachings much quicker than he had before so he gathered all his disciples and told them he was going to wash their feet. This was often the job for slaves or servants during biblic times and the disciples were mostly horrified. Peter, often known as the brash and most hardcore disciple of them all, spoke out saying that he would not let Jesus wash his feet because of the shame. But Jesus said that if you will not understand it now but you will soon. He said that if they would not allow him to wash their feet, they have no business being his disciples. And so the disciples all allowed Jesus to wash their feet. Jesus then said that just as he has served them, they must go and serve others. Obviously, this is a big deal as far as mission trips go since we are basically following this teaching of Jesus to the tee. Therefore, on the mission trip, the adult leaders from our church would go around and wash the youth's feet. This ceremony, tradition or whatever you want to call it, is really meaningful to me for personal reasons so as in the past, it meant a lot to me that we did this. Somehow during it, we turned into a church web of people hugging one another and it showed that we were all connected. No matter what happened, we would all be there for one another. It was extremely moving and extremely emotional.

On Friday we left New Orleans and returned to Picayune to spend our last night before the long plane ride home. We all had a lot to digest and a lot of spent a lot of time alone to sort out how we felt about the trip as a whole. Our last night passed and all of us were exhausted from the 6 hours of sleep we got every night and the long work days. Yesterday, we all got home safely with all of our luggage (there was some concern over whether or not our luggage would be on this plane or another plane as it was over-filled) and parted. We met again today in church (so another day with not much sleep X_x) and discussed what happened on the trip. So that's basically where I am now.

I'm glad I wrote this blog as it really did help me sort out my thoughts as well. Anyway, as far as video games go,I haven't yet seen anything from E3 but I have caught up on the Super Smash Bros. Brawl site. Extremely dissapointed that it won't be released till December 3rd but that's the way things go right? I'll probably watch all the stuff i can tomorrow, but no promises. Also, that's probably when i'll return to your guys' blogs and the everything cool forums (which you should check out if you haven't already! Link is in my last post). Thank you for reading all that and I hope you weren't too bored. Peace all. g' night...

Hey everyone! I got home a day early from this trip so I have a short break before I leave to New Orleans. The trip to Snee-oosh was really fun. A couple of the kids that went brought upa gamecube so i wasn't completely cut off from video games hahaha. We played smash bros but it, unfortunately, wasn't too much of a challenge since no one there was expert. It was pretty fun anyway tho and i switched around characters a lot so that it was more even. Normally, I play asMarth but i played a lot with Mario and others on the trip to even it out. Then we turned on handicap which made it more fair.

Anyway, the big news from Snee-oosh is with a death. Yes... a death... I am sad to say that my cell phone has gone on it's last adventure. :cry::cry:. I was gettin on a boat to go crabbing with everyone when my feet didn't make it all the way up onto the deck hahaha. Fell off and of course, my cell phone was in my pocket and hasn't turned on since... Fortunately tho, my dad is getting a smart phone soon so i can have his Rasor phone. I don't really like the rasors but it's certainly better than some of the possible alternatives. At least it has the same os as my now dead phone. Other than that, got to hang out with some of my friends i don't see very often, including one of my best friends so that's cool. Oh yeah and also in my pocket during the fall, was my wallet which had my tolo/homecoming pics in it. Thankfully, the only one that was really damaged at all, i have multiples of so that's all good. Okay so yeah.

TRANSFORMERS!!! Saw it before I left and it... was... AMAZING!!!! like omg. The first half of it is just comedy stuff which is actually pretty funny and then the second half is just pure, awesome action. Also, it really isn't just a kid's movie. In fact, i'd say it's more targeted towards teenagers than kids at all. They also have a few bonus's that all you Beast War's fans just might pick up (Watch very carefully when Bumblebee tranforms and you can see his yellow cheetah form from Beast Wars). Honestly, instead of just feeling geeky about watching something that has become very childish, i felt nostalgic feeling like Transformers was finally back to it's teenager roots. One of my best friends and I were picking out the references from the past and kept remembering stuff from the original movie and Beast Wars and whatnot.

So, i think that's all for now everyone! Just so you know, my Baldur's Gate 2 offer is still up for grabs. I'm leavin it till after I get back from New Orleans and then it's goin up on Ebay for more than that. If you're interested and didn't see the offer before, just check out the past blogs (it should be 2 before this). Umm... Visit http://www.yunashiro.proboards53.com/index.cgi , it's a forum that i'm an admin at and we just talk about whatever. It's pretty fun and so far we're a pretty tight-nit community. Everyone's really friendly and the more the merrier right?! K enough ad's, check out that stuff and if you're interested, please comment or send me a PM. Peace everyone!

haha jk. just the last blog before my trip. I'm leavin to see transformers in a few minutes then i'm off to sneeoosh! peace everyone and see ya when i get back! (hope E3 is freakin amazing... i'll have a lot of vids to catch up on later :?)

Hey everyone, I need help getting a new banner... I know this one sux but i'm just not very good with photoshop. If anyone is good with photoshop plz comment and i'll ask whoever's first. I'll pm u with more details.

In other news, i know i just got back but unfortunately i'm gonna be gone again... Yeah i know, it pretty much sux. I'll be here tomorrow but i'm leavin tuesday on atrip for fourth of July and i don't get back till friday. Then saturday morning (freakin... 3 in the morning...)i'm leaving on a week long mission trip to New Orleans. So i'm basically gone for the next two weeks. On the plus side, that means that i'll have A LOT to talk about when i get back so expect a long blog lol. Also, i might be able to get on some times during this week, it depends how much we decide to do there and i can probably check in on Friday.

Also, i'm one weapon away from getting the final ending for Drakengard but it's INSANELY hard to get. I have to kill 260+ guys in less than 6 minutes. I almost got it once (missed it by 10 seconds) but i've pretty much given up for now. I'm probably gonna end up callin my friend over (he's teh one who owns the game) and have him try cuz he's better than me anyway.

Finally, last little bit. Yesterday i posted about how much i didn't like Baldur's Gate 2. Well, i know that a lot of people do like it so i decided to sell it and u guys get first dibs. I'm only sellin it for 10 bucks plus shipping which is a really good deal. It comes with the four main disks and a bonus disk that gives you access to a secret vendor as well as some bonus stuff online that you can only get to with the CD. Unfortunately, i don't have the main box or any instructions for the game but it does have all the needed stuff and the game does have a tutorial in it so the instructions aren't really that necessary. It's a 2000 game so if u only have to have a decent computer to make it run on full settings. I have run it on XP and it works perfectly, not sure if it runs on Vista. My guess is no but who knows. Anyway, if ur interested, comment and i'll take the first comment. Realize though that since i'm not seein any of you in person (at least... if i am then i haven't realized it yet hahaha) so you'll either have to send me a check or pay me through paypal.I'd prefer paypal but i guess a check would be cool.So yeah. i think that's about it. If you have any questions just PM me or comment. I'll be checking online tomorrow. K peace everyone!

As some of you know, i'm abig fan of R.A. Salvatore's Drizzt series based on Forgotten Realms. Recently, I found my old copy of Baldur's Gate 2 and decided what the heck. I'll give it a try again. Well i played it for about 4-5 hours today and liked it. As soon as I logged off though, i realized. That game is a piece of crap. I had no idea what i was doing and, since i will never play AD&D, i really didn't know the rules to the game. I don't know how to tell what weapons are stronger than other weapons and i didn't get what most of the spells did. Finally, the A.I. sucks which is really bad since when a character dies, they die for good. Oh well, whatever. It was a fun 4 hours where i was too stupid to realize the crap i was playing. I don't know how it got good ratings from Gamespot or any other site for that matter. I would give it a 5.0 at best. Just wanted to rant about my thoughts on that. I'm going back to playing Drakengard 2 now. Oh right!I also just got Drakengard 1 back from a friend so i'm hopefully gonna finally be able to get the fifth ending. To get it, you have to get all 65 weapons in the game. Hella tough to get some of them but hopefully i'll be able to soon. Peace everyone!

Well, as some of you may or may not know, I did a preview earlier for Overlord and I felt kind of mixed about it. I wasn't sure if it was gonna be good or bad and it seems my instincts proved true. Overlord has been released and got a... 7.5... well that sux... I was hoping they would make it amazing since it did seem to have potential. Oh well. At least it's not as disappointing as Brute Force (not like anything could beat that...).

Inother more positive news, .hack//G.U. 3 looks great!... except it's still gonna get awful ratings... oh well. When .hack//G.U is released i can finally start playing them! I decided i wasn't gonna play any of the GU games until they all come out cuz I HATE WAITING!!! and since i would have been waiting about 2 years if i had played the first one, i would have had a really bad two years lol.

Also, not related to games at all, a friend of mine sent me a link to watch Saiyuki so i'm gonna do that now. Peace!

Hey everyone! Sry i broke my deadline :cry:, i underestimated how many games i "had" to finish before i came back to GS. Even know i'm having to force myself back to let you all know whats goin on. School ended for me last friday and finals all went pretty well. My grades weren't great by any means but good enough and my parents actually hardly talked about them. I'm still cool with it since this year was by far my hardest year ever and next year is gonna be really easy so i'll get really great grades for that first quarter to send to colleges. Weird, i'm a senior in HS now... Just one more year and i leave everything i've ever known. Kind of a depressing way to see it but that's what i see. After this year,there will be tons of people i simply will never see again. It's really sad :cry:. But i'll still come here so that's a good thing!

I should have known that i wouldn't be back that friday tho, it was a stupid assumption. That day i had a bunch of parties to go to and then saturday there were more parties! then sunday, we had a bunch of stuff going on at my church (i'm president of our youth team so theres a bunch of stuff i have to do sundays). When i finished with all that, i got home and played a rogue galaxy marathon but i unfortunately couldn't finish it... it was one o' clock and the last boss battle takes about an hour to do... freakin 10 forms! crazy... so i beat that monday morning then i whipped out Drakengard 2 which my friend let me borrow. I have to say, 2 is not nearly as good as 1 was. It's still a great game but it's far less emotional and the game is played in a much smaller scope. In the first one you'd have battles that could give you 1000+ kills. In Drakengard 2, a great battle has barely more than 100. It's pretty disappointing. But the characters are all pretty great and the cameo's add a lot to the game. It's great that square enixmade an actual sequel to their game (since they are known for sequels that really have nothing to do with the prequels at all). I'm more than half-way done with that now and i plan on getting all three endings which means replaying it on Hard and Very Hard. It seems kind of daunting since the game is pretty hard already lol. I'm sure i'll be able to do it tho. Oh yeah! and on tuesday, i hung out with a friend and we played random japanese games that he has for PS2. His brother married a chick from Japan so he lives over there now and had about 40 japanese PS2 games. Well, he decided to give up gaming and gave them all to my friend along with his Japanese PS2. So it was really entertaining playing the japanese version of Fatal Frame 2 and making up stupid storylines for it. Must say, horror games are a lot less scary when you have no idea what's going on :P We also played the japanese version of The Bouncer which is a hilarious game. If you have a gamefly account or something like it, you should get this game. Don't play it alone tho, grab a friend and i guarantee you won't stop laughing the whole time. The storyline is alright but that's basically all it is. The Bouncer is essentially a movie where you play the battle scenes. These battle's last about a minute each and are all INCREDIBLY easy. Imagine Advent Children where the storyline stopped and you got to fight the battles. That's essentially what this is. The thing is, the fighting is so cheezy and stupid looking. I played as this huge character, Volt and simply body slammed everyone over and over again. The ragdoll physics make the game even funnier too since when you get hit, you apparently lose all control over your bodily functions. This results in arms bending the wrong way, people flopping around on the ground, and hilarious things involving rolling bodies and stairs. It also has a versus mode that is just as funny as the main game, if not moreso. Anyway, i might end up writing a full fledged review for it later, probably not. Just play the game, you'll understand hahahaha.

K so i know i promised an editorial about GTA and IT WILL COME!! just not right now. I doubt u guys would want to read more anyway. My editorial is about 3 pages too so that would suck to read ALL OF THAT along with this lol. maybe next time. no promises tho. Well, i hope everyone's doing well. I still won't be able to tear myself away from the PS2 for a while now so if you wanna talk to me about something, please PM or comment here. Peace!

Just wanted to let u know, Finals start tomorrow up here and go till next friday (since i have a couple senior finals that go early and then the rest of my junior finals are next week. I've already written my editorial about GTA but i'm kinda mixed about it. I feel that i am correct in my beliefs but i'm not sure how u guys are gonna react to it lol. That's actually the reason i'm not posting it right now. I want to be online when i post it so that i can respond to your comments. Well, anyway, gotta get to sleep now. My hardest final by far is tomorrow so that's the one i'm gonna need a bunch of sleep for. G' night all! See ya next week! Hope you don't all forget about me :P.