I had the good fortune to obtain a job at Office Depot a few weeks back. It's an organized, welcoming workplace and the staff are a blast to work with (we make so many smart-ass remarks about customers after they walk out that I cannot shop at a store without feeling that the same is being done to me). At the very start, it was pretty rough. There was an online course I had to take that told me the basics of the company and how to work for them that literally lasted 10 hours. It is impossible to fathom how slow time travels when you are sitting in the same spot listening to someone talk about things like sales rates and combo packages. After enduring through this 'torture initiation (the words of the manager himself), I managed to get hired and things went uphill from there. But, there is one thing that you cannot escape in the world of retail, no matter how great the place is that you work it. I speak of annoying customers. There are two in particular that make me want to bludgeon them in the head with my Motorola mic/walkie-talkie until their skull caves in ala Pan's Labyrinth. These are the penny-pinching misers and the last-minute shoppers.

The penny-pinchers are annoying because they have a tendency to waste my time by demanding to know why the totalled expense was thirty cents more than the one they had calculated at HOME. I will almost always have to void the entire transaction (which involves calling the manager over to input a special code) and going through it again SLOWLY so she (I say 'she' because the only penny-pinchers I have encountered are women) can watch each and every swipe I make with the bar-code scanner. Meanwhile, a line that is roughly the length of the Titanic has accumulated behind this person, and the customers in this line start to become annoyed. After she points out in a smug tone that the computer did not apply the 2% discount on her 5-pack of ballpoint pens and manages to leave, I then have to deal with a dozen or so irate shoppers. Congrats you money-whoring b*tch, I hope those two dimes you saved was well worth it.

Last-minute shoppers should be self-explanatory. They are something that ANYONE who hass worked in retail for at least a week has fantasies about torturing. Five minutes before your store closes, you will start wrapping things up and closing your register out. The staff who monitored the floor whip out the vacuum and mops, and half the lights are turned out. One minute before your manager (who is in a running position about twenty feet from the entrance) can lock the doors, in comes a single person through the front doors. You watch, incredulous, as they stride in, are TOTALLY unaware (or they aren't and get sick pleasure out of this) of the obvious signs of closure, and ruin any chance you had of getting home in the next half hour. When the floor staff quickly get to her and ask what they need, they will ALWAYS reply with a cheerful "Oh, I'm just browsing". Was it so Goddamned hard to browse sometime in the last ten hours? But please, don't mind us. After all, we've been here for only eight to ten hours, and are in no way sore, hungry, tired, or eager to get home. Yes, do go ahead and pick through the paperclip selection. Who knows, there could be a golden dollar in there. Or the map to Atlantis even. Oh, you found nothing in your forty-five minutes of dawdling and are FINALLY leaving? Think nothing of it, my fellow coworkers and I adored every second of awaiting you to make up your farking mind on what you wanted.

I love my newest job, don't get me wrong. It's probably one of the best ones a college student could nab. But I hold a special place in my imaginary hell for the kind of people listed above/

...or vice-versa. Behold.

Now, not only does this little **** resort to barbaric methods to solve his problems, but he even fails at EXECUTING those methods. Anyone who has seen his fair share of action flicks will immediately notice that he is wielding a variant of the renowned AK-47, the AKS-47 with folding stock to be precise. Now, these durable bastards fire a big round. 7.62mm. Can leave a fist-sized exit wound. And they hit hard. Now, presuming this idiot owns the weapon (a scary thought) and didn't rent it from an acquaintance, then he probably knows this. If so, then he would have thought twice about standing ONE GODDAMN FOOT away from a piece of machinery made of thick rigid plastic, silicone, and metal when SHOOTING at it with the aforementioned round. After expending the 30-round clip, he switches to an AR-15, which fires a high-velocity 5.56mm round. Again, shrapnel hazard= through the ****ing roof. He did not even take the precaution to wear goggles for Christ's sakes. However, the thought of razor-sharp shards of such materials flying into his eyes and blinding him IS satisfying. It would reduce the chance of his 60 point IQ being passed on to his children. I guess phenomenal stupidity IS required to be a fanboy after all. If you are any self-respecting Sony fan, I suggest that you do NOT flaunt this video, because if morons like the one who created it are people you support...there goes what little credibility you had to begin with. Even if he wore protection, it's flat-out disturbing. This person seems like the kind of lunatic who will eventually snap and take an elementary school hostage.

14 months ago, I dropped my cable connection after being a customer for over two years. What was once Cox Communications was transformed into SuddenLink. Immediately after the merger was official, I experienced frequent outages, bottlenecked bandwidth, and outright sucky speeds. SL clearly didn't have their crap together, and I wasn't going to wait for them. I needed a new provider, STAT. As if the internet gods were watching over me, a new provider happened to come into town, and a wireless one at that. This company was Clearwire. I simply walked into their building, set myself up with a 1.5 mbs connection plan, accepted my router, and drove back home. The thing worked right out of the box, and I was getting speeds that were on par with SuddenLink's. And it was CHEAPER than the aforementioned. What a great deal. Fast forward a year. I had received several notifications that I was, quote, "abusing my connection contract" over the past few weeks. How odd, considering I had signed up for the 1.5 mbs plan and was not even exceeding 1 mps on any occasion. Pardon me for wanting to use the goddamn services I paid for you freaking idiots. When it seemed that my "abuse" would not stop, they throttled my connection like Darth Vader's preferred method of execution for inept officers. I have not been able to exceed 200kbs for the past two months. And they STILL expect me to pay for the 1.5 mps plan. I only found this out by going through layer upon layer of unhelpful and downright rude customer support over the phone. I was even practically called a liar by one operative when I told them that I had not exceeded the agreed upon limit of usage. Unacceptable. I absolutely refuse to let myself get screwed up the ass like this. What really and truly infuriates me is that there is a $180 cancellation fee I must pay before their laughable service is terminated. However, I have a good lawyer, and from past events Clearwire haven't the spine to stand up to threat of a lawsuit as their profit margins are going up in flames like the Hindenburg.

Clearwire is an absolute joke. It is run by moronic, tyrannical scum bags who do not know just what the hell they are doing. The service they provide is slow, inconsistent, and will frequently just die for no apparent reason. As mentioned before, their customer support is simply unhelpful and is apparently comprised of punks that the management plucked off of the streets. And I am not the only one who shares these opinions. Simply type in "Clearwire" in Google, and you will be amazed at the number of links that lead to other outraged Clearwire customers ranting just like I am. In fact, there is a whole website devoted to spreading the word of just how horrid this company is. For real entertainment, type in "Clearwire sucks" and see how many results you get. I honestly cannot recall any other service provider receiving so much blatant hate as this one. How it has managed to stay afloat this long is beyond me. Their recent attempts at staving off bankruptcy with the merger with Sprint points to a bleak (but righteously deserved) future, however. I am going back to SuddenLink tomorrow. I've heard that they finally got their act together, and are providing superb service. I'm returning my Clearwire router to those hacks by tying a lead bar to it and chunking it through their front display window.

Watch the movie. You know which one I'm talking about. I shouldn't even have to tell you to see it. It should be a mandatory requirement if you ask me. Such greatness should not go unwatched by anyone. But, out of all of this orgasm-inducing awesomeness, one specific role truly stands out above the others. Yes, the Joker. Unarguably one of the best villains in history. One of the few men, among both real and fictional, to truly earn the title of "monster". He will do unspeakably cruel and shocking acts for literally no reason other than because he damned well wanted to. He doesn't want money, or power, or fame. He does it for s***s and giggles. Especially the latter. Heath Ledger, bless his soul, captured this perfectly. All of reality itself is simply one big game to this maniac, and this latest portrayal of him was the most spot on yet. Yes, Jack Nicholson's portrayal was pretty good, but that Joker was more of an egomaniac. As Heath showed us this time around, Joker is best shown as a man who doesn't care if he gets the crap kicked out of him physically, just so long as his goal is accomplished. Hell, as one unfortunate cop noted, he probably enjoys getting the crap beaten out of him. We can add masochism to his list of mental illnesses that undoubtedly goes into the twenties. At least. Mark Hammil's Joker was closest to what heath pulled off. He just wasn't as smart. But Heath's Joker is. No, he's not smart. He's brilliant. Totally bat**** crazy, but brilliant. And that's what makes him so terrifying in The Dark Knight. Not unnerving or unsettling, but scary. You don't have to have a fear of clowns in order to get goosebumps during some of his scenes (the video-camera one in particular). Just see it. Now.

So, big, nay, EPIC news today. FFXIII is now heading to the 360. No, not FFXIII Versus, Final- ****ing-Fantasy XIII. As in, the arguable key title for the PS3. Well...former, I should say. To think that Sony let this happen is mind-boggling. We have seen earlier the partial loss (see; multiplat) of other staple franchises to the 360 that used to be synonymous with the Playstation name, like Devil May Cry...to outright exclusitivity to the other console ala Ace Combat and Star Ocean. But this truly takes the cake. Why Sony did not secure the rights to this game is nothing short of insanity. Perhaps they though that SE were their 'business buddies', a totally oxymoronic and contradictory term. One would think they had learned their lesson after losing the aforementioned series, but no. It's almost as if they are going through this generation in a drugged up stupor, totally oblivious to what is happening as Microsoft is stealing the generation from them. One of the key reasons to own a PS3 has been lost, and I really don't think there is one goddamned thing Sony can do about it.

Moving on...the hubub regarding FFXIII has also brought up the topic of a PS3-exclusive FFVII remake that would help compensate for the loss of the FFXIII exlusitivity. Now, I will be blunt here. I think anyone who is hoping for such a thing needs to be slapped. Seriously, the game wasn't nearly as great as they think it was, especially compared to the earlier titles. Many of them were first introduced to the genre through FFVII, and everyone knows that the first time you experience something is the best...or so it appears. They seem to be wearing rose-tinted glasses. The other thing that warrants a slap is that the inevitable sales the game would receive from the aforementioned nostalgic fans would only encourage SE to continue on its blatant and unapologetic whoring of and milking of their past accomplishments. Just LOOK at what they did to the other FF games and Dragon Warrior. Do you people seriously want more cellphone games featuring Cloud snowboarding?

Hurr hurr, I made a funn- *shoots self*

Anyways...Crysis. If you've spent at least five minutes on the SW board, you've probably seen this game mentioned just as many times (with said mentions accompanied by ten screencaps...each). This game is the crown jewel of the PC gaming fanbase, it would seem. Now, I've been a PC gaming enthusiasts for a while now, but I never had the hardware to really run this graphical powerhouse above medium-low settings. Well, with completion of my upgrade to a dual-core CPU and an 8800GS, I figured I finally had a shot of seeing this thing run in high settings and it was high time I experienced the proclaimed FPS GOTY. I enjoyed the demo, so why not spend the $40? So, I pop the sucker in, go through the installation, tweak the settings a bit (everything set to high, resolution at 1152x864), and let 'er rip.

After getting through the botched parachute-opening and swimming ashore, I made my way to my first KPA foe. ...An english-speaking one, no less. So, I aim down the sights of my 'SCAR' (It's an XM8...come on, Crytek), position the RDS on the poor saps head, click...click...click again...BANG. What the hell was that? There was about a three second period of freezing between my click and the round actually going off. I figured it was a one-time deal, but no less than four seconds later, it happened again when I encountered a pair of KPA soldiers about 100 feet away. For SOME reason, the shader settings seemed to be causing the issue. So, I grudgingly lower it to medium settings, effectively taking away about a fifth of the game's visual quality (REAL nice scaling there, Crytek...). Meet the other nano-suit guy, hear some of the most cliched dialog I have ever heard in my 19 years of existence, find what was left of the poor hispanic guy...why didn't I remember those cringe-worthy lines from the demo? Anyways, after all that, dawn starts to break on my little unidentified Philippine island. Finally...time to see just what this game to do. I cap a few hapless KPA soldiers on patrol, who probably needed to be removed from the gene pool anyways due to the fact that the sight of one of their comrades falling to the ground like a sack of rocks apparently isn't enough cause for alarm. I make it to a ridge, and....holy sub-20fps batman. My performance fell like a goddamned dive-bomber. And when that boat-gunner somehow managed to spot me squatting in foliage from 1,000 feet away and let fly with his 'machine-gun' (more like rapid-firing sniper rifle with farking guided bullets), and my framerate took yet another hit. Guess what I had to do to get at least 30fps? That's right, tone down the shaders again. Crysis now looks, at best, half as good as the screenshots you see posted in the SW board so often. I was, and still am, dumbstruck. I had upgraded my CPU, RAM, GPU...even the freaking PSU, and I can't even manage 30fps with shaders on MEDIUM!? This is simply a case of poor optimization. But, hey, I should manage. I progress, taking out more KPA soldiers...and more...and more...and more. Okay, things are staring to get a bit redundant here. Granted, it's fun taking these guys out, but sheesh, I'd like a bit more variety. Same can be said for the weapons. There are a grand total of...four you're going to be really using (AK, sniper rifle, missile launcher, and the ice-chaingun...thing). Anyways, things went from being predictable to downright painful around the instant the first alien that you fight appears. And the zero-G level inside the mountain...Christ, I nearly uninstalled the game right then and there. Things pick-up again once you hit the Nimitz-class carrier, but that lasted a whopping 30 minutes. Oh well, I'm going back to the now-frozen island to hopefully bombard some hapless aliens from the air in that near-uncontrollable VTOL...wait, nope. It's over. Yup, the supposed crown-jewel of current PC gaming is essentially a 10-hour campaign that has an even more laughable plot than Far Cry and a vomit-inducing multiplayer mode. I will be blunt, I cannot believe that THIS was the FPS GOTY. Maybe if I hadn't had such high expectations due to it earnign that award I wouldn't have been so disappointed, but...Christ. STALKER slams this game into the ground in fun and gameplay factor, even WITH the plethora of bugs it launched with.

*EDIT* Well, if I'm gonna b*tch, might as well go for the gold. Another thing that really bothered me were was what the KPA was fighting me with. I mean, you'll find a variant of one of the world's most advanced assault rifles and farking nano-suit technology in their hands. You will also see updated variants of the T-99 Chinese MBT. Now, in stark contrast to all of this futuristic tech, you will see, multiple times, 60 year old Mig-21 fighter craft on patrol in the skies.

I guess Kim Jong Ill dumbed every penny of his country's budget into his land forces.

There's also the little fact that the current KPA is laughably ill-equipped in 2008, a mere 12 years prior to the events in Crysis. They still use shoddy Chinese copies of the AK-47, their best tank is a slightly upgraded T-64...in short, all of their stuff is the same equipment that the Soviets dumped decades before the Wall fell. There must of be one HELL of a modernization movement in N. Korea that'll occur in the next 12 years.

Again though, this last segment was just my military-buff side ranting.

Sometimes, I wonder if I should change my minor from business to philosophy, judging from the stuff that's been going through my head (and into this blog). Anyways...

What is it that really makes us human? Is it the flesh and bone that we are made of? Is it our soul? Is it our ability to discern right from wrong? It may be that all three of those are required for one to be classified as a human. By 'human', I am not referring to being a homo sapien, either. I am talking about the other, deeper 'human'. It's almost impossible, for me, anyways, to truly define what it is that makes us human. Actually, why not use a movie to help bring things into focus. Why not, say...

Yes, geeky, I know. But, it's the best I come up with. Bladerunner doesn't really answer the question, but it provides an ideal way of how it must be asked. In the felm, the 'replicants' are supposed to seem more human than, well...humans. In the film's setting, the 'real' humans appear to have become cold, uncaring creatures. So much, in fact, that a method to discover whether someone is a replicant or not is to bombard them with situatations involving them supposedly not helping a poor, suffering animal. If the individual sshows horror and anger as to why they cannot help it, then they are replicant and are to be shot on the spot. The fact that they would want to help the animal, be it a starving dog or an overturned tortoise, shows that they are not 'real' humans. That caring emotion apparently cannot be found in natural humans at that point in time. That is what director Ridley Scott wanted us to realize, but is that really what determines humanity, or a mere portion? I, for one, think it goes deeper than simply that. For instance, if you placed a robot that possessed the aforementioned ability to care for things other than itself alongside one of the cold, heartless humans...we would probably still say the apathetic bastard was more of a human than the robot. Or, at the very least, we would not be able to decide.

...this self-righteous, whiny, hypocritical bastard takes the cake. When will you DIE, goddammit!? Season 2 of Code Geass had best involve a slow and agonizing death.

What was once found only in mere science-fiction outlets has finally become a reality. With the introduction of the first cloned animals, something that seemed impossible became perfectly feasible. We are, however, at only the very beginning stages. What will happen as time progresses, as well as our knowledge of how to clone and what purposes it may serve? The cloning of animals would certainly be a method used solve the hunger crises...but what about the cloning of humans? What moral and ethical dilemmas await us when or if we perform this inevitably controversial act? Will these clones be seen as mere science experiments, guinea pigs in the ever growing and advancing lab that is human medical research? Opportunities to perform experiments that only the most heinous of governments would allow? Or, they could become integrated into the armed forces, serving as mortals who were literally born to fight ala Star Wars? Or as eventual organ donors should their natural-born 'brother' need a replacement ala The Island? These are the most pessimistic of predictions, of course. The soul that the clones would possess would not be overlooked so easily as it is in fiction. Almost everyone, be they the public who read of them in the news or their very creators, would know that they are as human as we are. Knowing and acknowledging are two different things, however. I am sure that there are very positive and humane uses for clones...but I cannot think of any at this time. Other than seeing if we could actually pull such a thing off, I see no real reason for cloning a human that does not lead to exploiting them for our own personal gain.

So, the PS3 finally has what one could call a must-have title. A defining piece of software that truly justifies the existence of the hardware. More than a bit late in coming, if you ask me. But, better late than nothing. As for MGS4 itself...well, I want it. I know I've said that I was going to get it AND a PS3 on the same day (which was the launch of the former, of course) but...to be honest, I balked. I adore the Metal Gear Solid franchise, and love every single one of its installments (save for Twin Snakes...it's the MGS equivalent of FFVII). But, I don't love it enough to warrant my purchase of a multi-hundred dollar piece of equipment soley so I could play it. Do not mistake this as me saying that I am underwhelmed by MGS4. I am anything but. It looks phenomenal in every sense of the word. A fitting and worthy conclusion to a game series that has been with me sense I commenced gaming many years ago. But it is not nearly so captivating that I will spend three hundred dollars (or more) on a PS3. Many of you know I rank that machine on the bottom of totem-pole, and I am very open about it. I do so because it really has not presented me with a library of games that catch my interest. Yes, it has quite possibly the defining game of this entire generation...but that does not make up for the overall lack of titles that I want to play. It's akin to a child version of myself (who was a bug maniac, mind you) being presented with two jars of fireflies. One of these jars holds a plethora of healthy, illuminating insects. The other, holds a single, yet exceptionally bright firefly. I would have undoubtedly chosen the former. The PS3 may have that extremely bright 'firefly', but it is still a solitary and lone firefly no matter how bright it is.