AND IN A SINGLE BREATH THIS WORLD IS GONE

audio: (in her head) "chemical calisthenics." blackalicious.

i am <3ing Blackalicious more with each passing day. i must have more! XD

pretty uneventful weekend, all told. rented Donnie Darko Saturday night and cut myself chopping an onion to make pizza as well...better to cut myself while chopping an onion than, say, chopping chicken, though. >.<;;; wasn't a bad wound...was on the tip of my left thumb...bled a bit, but is okay. 'course, this had to happen directly after i bought a new Playstation game, but i'll get to that later. XD

as for the movie...i enjoyed it, as far as it went, but it felt like there was something missing. i would love to know if there was...but i can honestly say that i did enjoy it quite a lot. and can see where a lot of people alleged that it was completely mismarketed when it was released to theatres...but how would you go about marketing this movie, anyway? O.O;;; i'm still not sure. might have to watch it again to figure that out. Kimmie might be pleased to note that her ABSOLUTE FAVOURITE actor of all time is in this movie...as a character called Frank, who is a demonic giant rabbit. XD

in another side note...it was impressive to see how dead on the portrayal of the period of time (October 1988) this movie was set in was done. the people, the cars...the clothes...the way things looked...EVERYTHING. a lot of times when people try to set things in a particular time that's already passed, there's usually *something* wrong. but it seemed everything was done pretty well in that regard...even the popularity of particular brands of clothing. which was a fact that Spaz had to point out to me, cos at that time i would have just turned 10...was therefore ensconced in my parochial grammar school and thusly wearing uniforms most of the time...AND my family was desperately poor, so i hadn't the foggiest idea of what was in stores that weren't Woolworth's or the church rummage sale...O.O;;; so that was even more interesting to note, though i wouldn't have caught it on my own. XD

made me feel an Echo and the Bunnymen fit coming on, too. XD

anyway, the game i bought on a whim on Saturday was Capcom's One Piece Mansion. purely because Polpo was glaring at me from the shelf, and how could i turn him down when he was only $10.99? XD after looking through the manual and being highly amused by the character designs, i couldn't resist.

and despite my aforementioned thumb-cutting adventures Saturday night, i did play it a little bit in story mode. once i get the hang of it, i think i'll be highly amused. it's entertaining. a loose synopsis:

you're Polpo, the manager of an apartment building. in Story mode, your little sister has been kidnapped by a rival landlord who's upset that you're doing fairly well with your building. to get her back, you have to fulfil 7 tasks (or "stages") set for you by this rival landlord. if you perform them satisfactorily, you will allegedly get her back. and of course, these tasks are to increase in difficulty.

now, here's the deal...it's partially sim-like, and partially puzzle-like, this game. there's a number of different residents already living in the building, as well as some vacant apartments. occasionally, there will also be different tenants waiting to move in. you gain money by collecting rent from your tenants every month and/or having (a) tenant(s) live happily in your building for 2 years, at which point said tenant(s) will move out with great fanfare and you'll receive a huge bonus for being such a good landlord to them. you spend money either on creating new apartments, building new elevators, and/or paying damage penalties when vandalism occurs and/or one of your tenants is so stressed out that they move out and blow up their apartment upon leaving. XD

so that's the REAL challenge...you have to keep tabs on the stress levels of all of your tenants and make sure they aren't getting too stressed out. also, different personalities will affect other tenants differently...so the key is to arrange your tenants in the way that's most comfortable for them all to live. to add another monkeywrench to the works, there's a gang called Syndicate 5 that keeps sending spy troublemakers into your building...and unlike with normal tenants, you cannot move these troublemakers. they have a tendency to stress out those around them...AND will run around destroying things and setting fire to your building. you have to keep tabs on them and try to surround them with stress-inducing tenants in the hopes that you'll drive them away, since you can't move them around. you also can blow whistles and sound alarms when they're vandalising the place.

er, uh...i think you'd have to play to understand. XD it made more sense to me once i played it...reading the manual wasn't nearly enough. but i really do <3 the character designs. will have to play more. ^^ i don't think i'd have been happy had i paid full price for it, but for $10.99 it's plenty entertaining. XD

oh, and Wipeout Fusion comes out on Wednesday, according to the helpful gentleman we spoke to on Saturday. allegedly it DOES feature NeGCon support...but no Designers Republic involvement this time around! O.O;;; and of course, Psygnosis has been absorbed back into Sony Computer Entertainment, which kinda sucks...but Spaz is very curious to see how this will play out. may even have to buy a PS2 if it's done alright...oh, and slight personal amusement for me...i found out awhile ago that my new keyboard was used in writing some of the music for this game. XD eheheheh. it remains to be see whether or not this is a good thing, however...as i haven't heard said music yet, i can't comment at the moment.

perhaps more later...