Ugh, how anticlimactic. At the time of this writing, my Bungie stats page hasn't registered my new Colonel rank yet in Halo 3. I just got it, and now I have 400 EXP with a high skill of 45 8) I'm happy!! Check it out here.

In other news, I finished Contact Harvest. Yay! :) That book was SWEET.

School is going alright I guess. Grades are being fine in some cl@sses and dreadful in others :cry: I don't have much longer to make them better...:roll: I'm not reading anything else right now, I'm still needing to finish my flight combat story (why haven't I yet?), and aside from Halo I'm not playing anything right now. (Why haven't I picked up PH yet?)

Also, it snowed for the first time this season! We got let out two hours early from school, got a two hour delay the next day, and it was good. We have school off on Tuesday too, the school is being closed due to the church having a funeral. :) :(

My laptop charger broke too, for like the third time :roll: Luckily, we can fix it for a mere $20. That's good too.

I guess that's pretty much it. I'm still leaning towards the Leonidas sword for Christmas, with AC6, CoD4, and Assassin's Creed bringing up the money leftover purchases. I'll keep you all posted on that :P So what are you all hoping for Christmas? Let me know with a comment!

Until next time, I've been Colonel irmeeleman5995, and that's a mouthful to say!

While purusing a recent Game Informer (oh, and more on that in a minute...) I stumbled accross a little holiday gift section. Among other things...I found...this. Ridiculously detailed and from what I can tell, lifesized. Amazing. And for a great price of merely fifty dollars. Totally Christmas material (it very well might be my only present). However, that is not all.

A while back, I bought a cool thing at Target made by Master Replicas. It was a Hylian Shield and Master Sword based on TP, as well as a mini soundtrack for the game. This one upped them by a mile. Massive, detailed, and just plain awesome. The reviews said things such as, "Takes two hands to wield" and, "Makes me wonder how Link holds the thing in one hand." With an overall 46 inch length, it's 2 inches short of four feet long. Measure that out with a yard stick and ruler. It's big. This is another one I'm getting. Two more that are worthy of mention are this and this. Crazy stuff, but I'm passing.

The last one I wanna show you is completely unrelated, but on the same site for some reason. It's a wonderful, actual size, meticulously detialed air soft rifle of the Heckler and Koch G36, a personal favorite gun of mine, as well as a bigger fave of my brother Kyle. It's 30 bucks, but absolutely worth it to me. Here's the link. The only issue is that, for now, it's out of stock, and it would be oh-too-typical to have it not get restocked for like three months...:? Here's to hoping...Anyway, be sure to check the rest of that site out, they have a lot of stuff there that some of you guys might be interested in ;) Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden...

Anyway, for Josh I bought Shooter. He loved it, hasn't gotten around to buying it, and I never got to see it, so it's a win win :P

So back to the GI. One thing that irked me about this issue was their CoD4 review. Both reviews (the main, and the shorter "second opinion") gave it 10s. Not only is that game far from perfect, but it was NOT better than Halo 3, which got a 9.75. Then again, I guess I'm in the minority here cuz most people on these forums beg to differ. The controls in CoD are just less efficient and unnecessarily so. Clicking the aim stick for melee works way worse than it sounds, and B to crouch is such a waste of a face button. Meanwhile, you have the left trigger being look down sights which can work just as well, if not better, on the RS click. It's just sloppy. Halo's works and makes sense, makes everything accesible, and just downright right. That, and they took a shot at Halo's level design which has never been "bad" since Halo 1, and Halo 1 had perfectly good reason for repetive level design (the ships look the same in every room in REAL LIFE too guys). Halo 3, on the other hand, had the most beautiful and jaw dropping level design I've ever seen in a game, where as CoD is just modern day, drab, and not very interesting. And on the flip side, they commended CoD's level design and VARIETY, where it deserves absolutely zero recognition for either. But the worst offense was that they said it was downright the best shooter they'd ever played on a gamepad. I simply have no comment on that. I can rattle off three without even thinking about it that blow every CoD game out of the water. The only good ones were 1 and 4 anyway.

In other news, there is none. School is alright, Soccer is being missed dearly, and school is as boring as ever. Still zero progress on my flight combat story, but I'll get around to that...speaking of no progress...still none in PH...:oops: I don't know what I'm waiting for. I know I'll adore the game when I get back into the interesting parts. I can't wait to do this temple three times. Yay.

Well, until next time, I've been a sword oggling (you guys know what that's supposed to mean...right?) irmeleeman5995, and that's a mouthful to say!

Hello all GS. How's it going for you people? I'm doing pretty well.

Ben spent the night last night, so we did stuff all night. System linked R6V, hooked him up to the Wifi and we did some Halo 3 stuff, and I let him play Bioshock while I CoD4ed (he brought it over). We also watched a movie (my personal favorite) called Brick, and we also watched the Rainbow Six special edition DVD. That had some interesting stuff on it, and having had it for so long I was shocked I had never seen it.

Oh, but wait. I haven't said anything about Thanksgiving!!! It was amazinnnnnnng. Ah, I LOVE IT. Aside from eating, we played some Halo with my cousins and watched We Are Marshall. I had seen it in theatres and it was better than I remember it being. Then that night I watched 300, also for the first time since theatres. That. Movie. ROCKS. The action was just so beautifully choreographed and it was just fantastic to watch. After having sat through the movie Troy a bunch of times since seeing 300, I appreciated the action a lot more. Troy's was vastly inferior :P The next day I saw V for Vendetta for the first time, which was awesome, and then that night I watched Brick. Then when Ben came over I thought he'd like it so I watched it again with him.

So, gaming in particular. I beat F.E.A.R., and that scared the crap out of me. It was amazing though. I might end up buying that cheap sometime soon, it's worth having I think. I also made some progress in CoD4 while Ben was playing Bioshock. Still no progress in PH.....and in Halo 3, my highest level is a 41, I hit Commander, and I finally got the Metagame achievments for every level but Cortana. I wasn't up for it :?

I finished my flight combat story, realized I left a whole scene out of the story that I was planning on doing, and never went back to add it in. When that's done I'll post it here though.

So last, I'll close with what I want for Christmas/what I want to buy with my own money and incoming Christmas money. I haven't decided what will fall under which category.

Assassin's Creed

CoD4

Ace Combat 6

Wii Zapper

Halo 3 Soundtrack

Halo 2 Soundtracks

*makes mental checklist* Is that everything? Wow, between all the money I have and Christmas, I should be able to pick all this stuff up, no sweat. Heck, I might even be able to include FEAR, Super Paper Mario, Mario Galaxy, and Spiderman 3 if I factor in Christmas money. Hmmm.....

Wow...Christmas in a month. Where does the time go? Anyway, here's my Halo 3 stats.

Until next time, I've been irmeleeman5995, and THIS IS SPARTA! Er, that's a mouthful to say.

It's time for the second or first best holiday of the year. Well, for Americans anyway. Thanksgiving!!

Great food, 9 days off school, and plenty of fun. What more can you want? Turkey, stuffing, bread, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie...and GRAVY!! Oh yes, Thanksgiving is a good time. I wish it could be like it was back when it first happened when it was three days straight of feasting and celebration. But then again, we have 9 days off and you always eat thanksgiving leftovers for the next five days anyway :P But yeah so...meleeman is a huge fan.

That's not to say I'll only be eating though. 9 days means catching up on gaming and reading. Contact Harvest, which I am ashamed to be only halfway through, will be read this week. PH which I am still shamefully behind in will be played a fair amount. I've also checked out FEAR for 360, so I hope to play and beat that single player since I was only about 2/3 done on PC before I had to give it back to Kyle's friend Chris. On 360 I get to see it's excellent visual glory anyway, and I'll get acheivments. Heck yes!

In other news, I'm 25 wins away from Commander in Halo 3. Jeez that was fast. I might get that over this break, but I'm not staking money on it with FEAR here.

In writing, I'm working on a rather lengthy short story inspired by, but not based in any way on, Ace Combat. It's turning out even better than I thought it would, and you can read what I have so far here. Enjoy, and I'll be working on that a lot during the week off too. Also, I realized I took a break from posting Metroid Chrons. 2 on the Writers' Lounge with Halo 3 and never started again. I'll start that up over the break too.

Oh, hey, look at that, I'm a level 25 now. Interesting. :D

Haha ok so back on topic, the last thing I have to say is about my soccer party. With our season over, we had a party yesterday to celebrate the season. It was really fun with good food and just hangin' around with the awesome people from my team. It sucks that next year most of them will end up on varisty. Oh well, I'll still have my fellow freshman guys.

Well everyone, for being so long between my last blog post and this one, I really don't have anything else to say! :) So I'll finish up by posting this. My kill/death ratio went down by .01 :( But my highest level is now a whopping 39 :) THAT is impressive by my own personal standards.

Until next time, I've been a turkey feasting irmeleeman5995, and that's a mouthful to say!

How is everyone? I'm doing alright I guess. Been a while since I blogged, so I'll try my best to cover everything.

First off is soccer. :x This is ridiculous.

So the last time I updated you guys on soccer, I don't remember how we were doing, but basically we won every game since whenever I last updated, and made it all the way to the championships. Awesome, right? First year of high school sports and I'm on a championship team? And surely we would win, being in first place guarenteeing a home field advantage and having just beat the other team 3-0 in our last season game.

But it was not to be.

In the dozens of ways you can pick homefield advantage (or just pick a neutral field), they had to pick the ONE we didn't have.

In our playoff game, we faced Glenelg. The fourth place team. It was the first team we lost to, a crap filled 1-0 game, and the next time we played them we won 5-1, a much more acurrate portrayal of the two teams. So needless to say, in our semi-final against them, we won 2-0 (or was it 3? I don't even remember now). McDonough, the other school, was in second. They were the other team we had lost to, the one where we were down four starters, on a crappy field, and the game was tied 0-0 until two minutes before the end? That team. So like I mentioned earlier, we played them as our last season game before playoffs. On our turf. With all starters. And we won 3-0. So we were pretty confident we had the championships in the bag.

Here's the problem. The team they played their semi-final agaisnt, Baltimore Lutheran, they beat. That means out of three total times McDonough and Baltimore Lutheran played, McDonough won all three times, whereas my school only beat Glenelg 2 out of our three times we played them. Therefore, McDonough secured home field advantage. Even though we had more wins, goals, shutouts, etc. So we all thought, whatever, we'll get a decent field for a championship game.

Wrong again.

We played on the same crap field. As we walked to the field, we passed a perfectly cut, pristine grass field. Why couldn't we use that? Oh, becuz after our game ended, the varsity team needed it for a practice. Yeah, real fair guys.

That said, our game was not our best. Quite frankly, it was embarrassing how badly we played compared to our total potential. The field sucking didn't help our passing either. That said, McDonough scored with 15 minutes left to go, and we started to finally get our act together with about 5 minutes left. Not soon enough though, and they won. But not fair and sqaure.

McDonough has been notorious for how physical they get. Pushing, shoving, tripping, you name it, they do it. The first half of the game, the refs called it fine. The second half though, the foul calls went out the window and McDonough was pushin' us around left and right. We had some of our own when we got fed up with it, but for the most part we kept our dignity. I think. Anyway, it was a hell of a season, and with so many varisty players graduating this year, JV and Varisty will both undergo some changes to the teams, so I'll inevitably play more this season. My coach even apologized to me for not playing me very often, but next season it'll be better.

Jeez, that was all soccer! :oops: I'll try to make my game tales short :P

First on the plate is Halo 3. Still awesome as always, I'm ascending the ranks quickly, with my Doubles rank being an impressive 38 at the time of this writing, and Team Slayer being 34. I'm steadily grabbing some of the straggling achievements too. I'll link you all to my stats page at the end.

Next is Ace Combat 6, which Kyle finally got out from the store. It's AMAZING. The gameplay is familiar but top notch, controls feel great, and difficulty is for the most part just right. The sound has very much improved since the demo too, everything sounds incredible, and nothing can top the first time you hear bullets rattle off your fuselage and you practically jump out of your seat. It's impressive stuff. But the graphics.....ohhhhhhh the GRAPHICS.....leave me speechless. Enviornments sprawl endlessly, scale magnificently when you're at 30,000 feet, miles above clouds, and all look real. My favorite enviornment so far was reminiscent of a Canadian tundra, with sprawling hills all covered in snow and ice, with ever greens dotting the landscape and a beautiful, setting, red sun off in the horizon. The light glinted brilliantly off the ice and planes, as it would in real life. The lighting in general is just fantastic. The game is simply a wonder to look at. Contrails litter the sky from sidewinder missiles, explosions have very real looking smoke, fire, and spark effects, and water has never been so fun to shoot with that endless ammo machine gun. Definitely give it a look, AC6 is an utter delight. You owe yourself to play this incredible game.

Other than that, not much on the game front at the moment. CoD4 sounds like it delivered the goods and I'll scoop it up sometime soon. PH is still on hiatus becuz I never have time to play it with the great 360 and Wii games coming out. Speaking of Wii, Mario Galaxy got very well received by...well...everyone. I still have my doubts about how much I personally will enjoy it, but I will not knock the game by any means. Looks good figuratively and literally, I just don't know how far I'd get into it. More on all that at a later date though, what I really need to do is try it first.

In other entertainment, Contact Harvest is out and I'm a decent chunk through, but not nearly done. I'm enjoying it a lot though, but like PH am at a loss for time to read it. Hopefully I'll get more in this weekend. I'm told it only gets better from here. Also, that album I was drooling over a few blogs ago is due out soon, but of course my friend Matt got me the whole album already. I'm in love. It's perfection in music form. Its the first CD I personally have ever heard in which I never have the want to skip a single song while listening to it. I seriously urge to guys to check it out, though I suppose the genre itself isn't exactly for everyone. It's good though. For those of you who don't remember, the band is Streetlight Manifesto (whose music is now actually on iTunes) and the album in particular is Somewhere in the Between.

Other than all that, I bid you all adieu. Oh, that's right. Link. Less than a month with the game, already over 4,000 kills in matchmaking. I'm quite proud. :D

Until next time, I've been irmeeleman5995 jamming to Streetlight, and that's a mouthful to say!

Alright, I'm about to write a little editorial here about something that's been on my mind for a while now. I'll do my normal blog-blog after. Wouldn't it be cool if this got into the Soapbox? :D Then again...what the heck does Soapbox mean? Well, whatever, on to the editorial.

Shhh...can you hear that? I do. He's still talking. My brother is STILL TALKING. My brother Josh's interests are pretty much sctrictly sports. That's not to say he's anti technology or anything like that, and as far as my interests, I am a video gamer, but I'm by no means a couch potato, I play lots of soccer and some baseball, and I consider myself fairly decent at both. You aren't a catcher or a goalie without guts, ya know?

But like I said, sports are what he lives and breathes. He can tell you the names, teams, heights, weights, pass completions, passes made, homeruns, and just about any other stat of just about any athlete you want him to. He's insane...in a good and bad way, I suppose.

This blog is asking a very simple question: Why am I the geek?

As I stated earlier, I am a gamer. I play lots of games, know lots about games, keep up with news and release dates here on GS, lots of my friends are gamers, and with them, I talk about these games (or our gaming exploits on LIVE). I guess you could say that my knowledge of games parelells Josh's of all things sports. So how come he can have a thirty minute conversation with my mom about all this sports crap, yet I don't even have to say anything about my video games to anyone who doesn't care and I still get labeled as a geek?

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not choking back tears of name calling or anything like that. I don't consider a geek as an insult, and no one ever refers to me as a geek once they see me make a diving save in that soccer goal, but still. It's something to think about. How come Josh can be a sports maniac and people will let him talk forever about sports, yet I'm the geek cuz I'm a gamer? The closest I ever get to talking about video games with non-gamers is when I tell them about things me and my friends do online. Halo 3 is a very big part of my free time right now, and when people ask me why I'm so tired in school, of course I'm gonna tell them, "I was up till three last night playing Halo 3 with my friends." You know?

So compare: Josh knows a ridiculous amount about sports, and plays them a lot; I know a lot about video games and play them a lot as well. So isn't he every bit as much of a geek as me? I think so. So the next time you're in school and that starting football player calls you a geek, you can just laugh and smile, becuz deep down, he's as much of a geek as you are. Just...a higher viewed geek in the eyes of most.

* * *

K, there's my editorial. Please comment on it, whether it makes Soapbox or not :P

In terms of daily life in the life of meleeman, things are fairly normal. Lots of rain around here, which is long overdue. It's nice and wet, and cold. Yay cold!!

Soccer is going extremely well. We are now in first place, instead of just being tied for first. We have one more season game before playoffs, and we're gonna win, I can feel it. It's against the second of two teams to ever beat us, and this time, we HAVE all our starters and it's a home game. We always win at our home field. Then playoffs start, and as long as we keep this up, we ought to make championships. Pretty awesome huh? I can't remember the last time I was on a sports team that was this good.

And I actually started the other day! Which is to say...most of our second string players started the other day :). Our three main defenders stayed on, as well as our goalie ( :x ) so I got thrown onto midfield ( :x ) but I did pretty well. It was a very important game and it was a good game last time, and this time, it wound up with the same score, 2-0 us. We even scored one of those goals in the first half, with me and most of our other non starters. It was awesome. Second string players? Goal? Agaisnt a great team? Heck yes. So yeah, just thought I'd tell you all how well we're doing. I'm so happy :)

Gaming is the same it's been for a while now. Not much time to play PH, which I regret but Halo 3 is just too good. But even Halo 3 is gonna be put on the back burner for a bit now that AC6 is out. Kyle's gonna rent it out today from his store and just keep renewing it until I've beaten it. I won't really bother with online till the rest of my friends get it, and they're all too (understandably) addicted to Halo also, so they won't be getting Ace Combat for a while.

School is going well I'd say. For english, we have to write a short story, and I wanted all my GS friends' inputs. Most of you know I write a lot, but very few of you actually read anything I've written, but that isn't the point. I want to know what I should write about, it can't have sex or drugs or language (duh duh and duh), and if it's violence, I will seriously have to underdevelop it for her not to say anything. So keep that in mind when you give me ideas. Personally, I wanted to write something wicked funny, or something incredibly crazy complicated that brings itself together at the very very end, but I have no plot ideas. Your thoughts?

I think that's all I wanted to say. Shoutout to ZM, who finally got Xbox LIVE!!!! I saw him sign on yesterday for like five minutes! Can't wait to annihilate you :twisted:

Check this out and this out (Halo 3 stats page and story). The story is rather short, so hopefully you guys will find time to read it. It's like...four pages...Yeah. So go for it, it's awesome.

Until next time, I've been a Spartan Lasering Sniper Rifling irmeleeman5995, and that's a mouthful to say!

Indeed, a while it has been. How's everyone been doing?

I'm doin' pretty well. I just got back from a retreat (been doin' a lot of those lately it would seem, but no more till Spring, if that). It was decent. I'm growing really tired of my church, I don't like the people much and the way we do things just doesn't sit well with me. I'm thinking of just going to the adults' church from now on, but that decision will have to wait. The retreat was about half good half bad, and the good parts were when we played soccer for a long time and I was one of two goalies. I made a ton of wicked saves, and to be completely honest with you all, the people LOVED me. Even the people on the other teams were laughing becuz of how unfair it was. I'm not the kind to gloat or embellish this, I'm dead serious. Of course, we did lose in the end, so that sucked :roll:. The huge group of people all split themselves up into teams of ten, with me and one of our leaders in the goals the whole time, and each game went to one goal before teams rotated off. Out of the four games played, I got scored on twice, meaning whatever team I was with lost from only one goal, but most of the games lasted upwards of half an hour scoreless, so that was pretty cool.

In terms of school soccer, our season is wrapping up with two more games left before play offs. But, our team right now is tied for first, so we're going to the playoffs no question, so expect more news on that later on.

As far as school itself goes, it's going alright. Not much to report. But...I guess that's good...

But then there's gaming. Oh, games. Halo 3 is taking up hours upon hours of my time. It's incredible, amazing, and fantastic. I've spent numerous nights, school nights included, going for hours past midnight playing. I haven't made much progress into PH, partly becuz the part I'm on is super gay partly becuz Halo 3 hasn't given me any reason to play Zelda. In PH, I'm currently in the Temple of the Ocean King on my first visit, and I keep getting to the last floor with the Force Gems before dying. I've done it on three seperate occasions now, and I just don't have the patience for it right now. I really wanna get more into the game though, it has so much potential and I feel like I just haven't gotten far enough into it yet.

There are a lot of games comin' out soon though, too. Ace Combat is just around the corner, BWii is too, Mario Party DS isn't going to be a day 1 buy by any stretch of the imagination, but if it's half as good as it could be then it'll be one to pick up soon. Assassin's Creed comes out soon too. That one though might be one to rent not buy, becuz even my parents have a limit, and a game named Assassin's Creed my set off a few bells. Kyle can bring anything home from Hollywood though, so more likely than not, that's how I'm gettin' some playing time in for that one.

Also, he checked out Half Life Orange Box the other day, but returned it while I was on the retreat and I didn't get to play it. He loved Portal though, and he thinks he'll rent it back out though to play Half Life 2 and the Episodes. This'll be cool cuz I'll finally actually play Half Life 2, and it'll get some Gamerscore. Last, I also wanna check out FEAR for 360 and just finish it, and I wanna play the Far Cry for 360 and play that too. More for acheivements (yes, I did just type out the whole word) then for the game itself, as I've played it countless times on Xbox, but still, it'll be a good one to rent and play through in a week or so.

Splinter Cell: Double Agent is another one I want, becuz I've always meant to play it and Conviction actually comes out mighty soon, so I'll wanna get through DA before then.

Last, I wanna get out Hitman and play that, becuz Kyle got started but never really got far a while ago, and I really wanted to get into that.

Why the sudden burst of games you ask? Becuz Brawl got delayed :( The way I see it, Brawl got delayed and I have no particular intrest in Galaxy, so November and December will remain more or less barren months for my Wii, and while Halo 3 could undoubtedly last me that long, there are some 360 games I want to play and Halo 3 has gotten enough attention as it is :P

That reminds me, I still need to play Bioshock...

So that makes:

Bioshock

FEAR

Far Cry

Ace Combat

Assassin's Creed

Hitman

Splinter Cell DA

Half Life 2

There's a few. I have til February though :P

In other closing remarks, I'd like to mention that Streetlight Manifesto has a new album coming soon and I got ahold of two songs from it, both of which are amazing, and Halo: Contact Harvest comes out soon.

AGH, WAIT! I CAN'T BELIEVE I CAN FINALLY DO THIS!!!

Check it.

Not bad, eh? I'm so glad I can finally do that (link you all to Halo 3 stats, that is). Check me out, I'm pretty sweet right? Got that Scout mask goin' on...love it. And don't worry if my mere Lt. rank is underwhelming, gimmie time, I'll be Major before you know it. And that front picture is in fact me in the corner, getting a two for one Spartan Laser Kill on two helpless red guys :twisted:

Until next time, I've been a Halo 3 playing, sadistic story writing, Streetlight listening, day counting (for lots of things) irmeleeman5995, and that's a mouthful to say!

My Xbox 360 is back. FINALLY. Like, thank God it's finally back.

So I'm typing this up mainly to tell anyone who sees this blog post to drop your XBL name down if you want to play with me. In my past experiences, friends I play online with in other games that I don't know personally never really end up playing much, but if you're on a lot/and/or need some friends in Halo 3 who are, I'm your man.

My gamertag is sacksy boy (see profile side). If you wanna be friends, send me a friend invite, and either comment or PM telling me who you are :D

..........And I swear to God if you're some sort of a stalker and you take this as an invitation to kidnap me...forGET it. I hate you. :lol:

If any of you who saw this, like in a friend's blogor something, who don't care about anything but the Halo thing, you can stop reading now if you want to.

So that was basically the main point of this blog. However, I have a few other things to say.

For starters, today in soccer we played the first of the two teams to beat us again. The last game was 1-0 and total BS, and we should have won without question.

Today, we did.

5-1 game, and I'll be damned if I even remember how they scored :P Basically, we rocked them. Literally, I rocked them. I lived up to my physical reputation with numerous exploits of slide tackling and one insane tumble. This guy tripped me when I was at full speed, I landed, SHOT up with my momentum, came next to him, clipped his ankles (accidentally, I swear) and he tumbled forwards, catching me in the mix. It was like one of thse cartoons where there's a huge dust cloud and limbs shooting out of it. I have cuts all up my thigh, and he kicked me sqaure in the face during the whole thing, but I still got up and won the ball. I am THAT good ;) So yeah, that game was super fun, and I did very well.

Last, Samus's special moved got announced for Brawl? Suh. Weet. I can't wait for it...but Halo 3......Halo 3.......Halo 3.....

Until next time, (a very long time from now;) ) I've been irmeleeman5995, and that's a mouthful to say!

Hey blog readers!

Not much has happened since my last blog...that I can remember. I feel like every once in a while it'll be like, "Hey I could write about that in a blog since I'm so bored" and then forget what it is when I decide to write one.

Guess I'll start with my Phantom Hourglass impressions.

To start off, I'd like to say a few things about Wind Waker. WW was one of my favorite Zeldas. I loved loved LOVED the graphics, and the game's sheer size astounded me, and still does to this day. Every time I play through it, I find or do something I hadn't ever before. It's that huge.

When the PSP was first announced and they said it'd run on little discs like the GC does, I always hoped someday Ninty would do the same. With that in mind, a huge game like WW to play on the go would just own my soul. So while PH is doubtfully that huge, it's darn close, and I can't wait to see what other things it has in store for me.

So yeah. The gameplay is pretty nice. I love how it's top down style like traditional Zelda but cel-shaded with WW style. Nice blend. The touch screen controls work very nicely. I love looking around on your ship, drawing your boomerang path, rolling, slashing...everything except MOVING. The moving drives me insane. It's imprecise, clunky, and your hand is blocking the screen half the time. The D-Pad doesn't NEED to be used for what it does, so can't I move with the D-Pad and still use the touch screen for everything else? Please? Anyway, that's my only gripe so far. It's awesome otherwise, and I know it'll only get better.

WOW!!! Ben just stopped by with his Xbox and Halo 3. We played co-op through the whole campaign...and I'm astonished. Some friends dropped in and out at certain points, and I'm in love. Best game ever. Ever. Ever. Graphics rock. Cutscenes rocked. Music rocked. New stuff rocked. Ending rocked. Chief rocks. Bungie rocks. Halo 3 rocks. When my brother picks up my Xbox tomorrow (for sure, right? ........) I won't be obligated to miss out on any fun, I'll be able to dive right into multiplayer with my other friends. Consider my week long leave of action on GS effective tomorrow.

I can't think straight enough to blog about anything else. Halo 3 came. Halo 3 conquered. We beat it all. I even got a huge amount of the achvmnts. for it...:P

Until next time, I've been a Halo 3 monster noob pwner, and that's sort of a mouthful to say!

Well not much is going on around here. Let's start with soccer.

Tuesday we had a game and we won 1-0. At least, I think it was 1-0. I can't even remember now...It was a pretty good game and I had a big chunk of playing time and did pretty well. I had two or three slide tackles (I'm quickly becoming the slide tackle afficianado on my team :P) and some good pass intercepts and such. The only thing I did bad actually happened three seperate times :x The ball would be flying into the middle of nowhere on the field and I'd sprint over to trap it and pass it off or whatever, and THREE TIMES I completely missed the ball on my way to it and lost it. I felt like such a moron. One of them was a horrible pass by the other team, which I of course horrible missed, and so it got through to the person who the pass was meant for, and one of the moms in the stands went berserk, screaming, "BEAUTIFUL PASS, GO GO GO GO, YOU GOT IT, GO, PUSH UP, BEAUTIFUL, IT'S ALL YOU BABY!!" I grinned to myself, said, "We'll see what's beauftiful," and sprinted after the other guy who got it and took him down with a beautiful tackle. He landed on his face. Enough said. And one of the other times I sprinted up right next to the guy and kicked the ball right out of bounds while he was in mid stride. That one put a funny look on his face.

Today we played the only undefeated team in our league, and we lost :( Only our second loss, the game was incredibly evenly matched and the one goal they scored was in the last two minutes. And leave it to the absolutely crapy field for the goal. The ball hit a clump or whatever, bounced over our goalie's hands, and went in the corner. It wasn't the only thing that happened because the field sucked. There were some other mishaps, but let's just say our home field is way better than theirs >.> Next time we play them, we better be on OUR field.

Also, we were down four people. Two are high scorers on our team, one's a star defender, and one's a key playmaker, goaless, but important. One of the two high scorers was the guy whose knee I accidentally screwed over, one hurt his shin in Tuesday's game, our defender guy got in a fight today and got suspended, and our playmaker guy...I have no idea where he was.

So there's a few reasons we played like we did. Those things considered, we still gave the team a sizable run for thier money yet I personally did pretty bad. I didn't have too many good opportunities to do any good becuz their team was very good at passing the ball off as soon as they got it, so I'd be going towards them to do...ANYTHING...and they'd have it gone before I got there. Pretty annoying, but at least I got recognized by some people for at least trying...which I did...

HOLY CRAP. I just typed a freaking lot. :oops: Moving right along..

My Xbox. Is. Still. Not. Back. But wait, what's that on the door? The note thing from the mail man that he tried to deliver it but no one was here when he did, and he'll try again tomorrow? *Blows brains out*

At least I have Phantom Hourglass to hold me. I got it yesterday, but have yet to play it. I chose to read instead, figuring if I turned on PH for the first time at 10 at night I wouldn't sleep that night. So I didn't. Instead, I read Darkly Dreaming Dexter. Now more than halfway through, it's quickly ascended the ranks of my favorite books ever, somewhere in the top five. For those of you who don't know, it's about a serial killer named Dexter who essentially plays vigilante and kills...well...bad people. Er, at least at nighttime on full moon nights. Otherwise, he's a blood spatter analyst for the Miami police, using his uncanny knowledge of killing to his advantage to solve mysteries with the help of his tough as nails sister. One of the reasons I love the book is how witty Dexter can be, yet how sadistic and clever and ironic and charming and...!!!! He's just awesome. And, in many, many, many, MANY ways, he reminds me more of me than anyone else I know or in any book, game, or movie I've ever seen. Most of you could read the book and have no idea, but trust me, I'm not saying it to be like, "Hey I wish I was like Dexter so I'm pretending to be him!" I'm literally saying he's like myself in twenty years. And for that, I feel Dexter. He's great, and I can't wait to finish the book.

So anyway, to summarize, I'll prolly play PH for the first time tonight, and by tomorrow my Xbox will be, FINALLY, back in my house, and HOPEFULLY, working for the rest of history. The worry is that the repair ultimately fixes nothing, which I have heard before, so I swear if MS pulled a fast one on me I'm gonna take it to Bill Gates and cut his freaking nuts off. :) But hopefully, there will be no need. Now..I still don't actually HAVE a copy of Halo 3 yet...leave it to my at-times-to-laid-back-brother to not even bother picking it up. The preorder has long expired, and there's a fair chance it...isn't there...

Yikes. That was a long'n. To close, I'd just like to say....PLEASE GO TO THE WRITERS' LOUNGE! WE NEED MEMBERS!!!!!!!

Until next time, I've been a for-some-reason-sore-all-over irmeleeman5995, and that's a mouthful to say!