No, actually it’s because I pretty much know what I’m getting into, having played the previous two.  I’m not really the target audience that the demo is required reading for.  I mean, it’s a God of war game.

I assume that there will be Kratos, and some blades attached to his body with chains.  There will be the collecting of red and blue orbs and the mashing of the buttons as Kratos kills the entire population of Ancient Greece.  There will be some ultra violent minigames as he continues to kill more people and creatures in a Greek mythos based storyline of some sort, complete with a sexy minigame at some point that cuts away because it’s M rated.  Then it’s going to escalate into a boss battle that doesn’t really resemble any other part of the game.

The only surprise left for me is how good it is going to look.

If they surprise me in any other way, then awesome.  Otherwise, I’m hoping for a very competent, entertaining God of War game.

It’s the middle of summer and I live in a house with eight other twenty-younglings.  There is a cathode ray television, twenty-one inches of diagonal measured space that is on top of a flat piece of plywood that is held off of the floor by cinder blocks.  My PlayStation (the first one) is suspended upside down, elevated by two paper backs because it won’t load games otherwise.

Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo is the game that is loaded and hasn’t come out of the PlayStation in weeks.

Everyone plays.  Guests.  Girlfriends.  Housemates.  All talking trash and then having a good time.

Ah, misspent youth.

This is probably why I really enjoyed Might & Magic Clash of Heroes on the DS.  There was just something about placing an RPG into a match three puzzle game with bits of strategy wargaming.  It doesn’t sound like it would mesh very well, but it really did pull me in for several hours before I decided that I had to send it back to GameFly so that I could purchase it outright.

Now it’s coming for the PS3 and the Xbox 360 for each of their respective  stores.

On the one hand, it’s HD.  On the other, I really liked the fact that it was portable.  Depending on the price, I may pick it up for the 360, simply because I might be able to finagle other people into playing it online for quick bursts of puzzle battling.

I exit the door of the building and get onto Connecticut Avenue. I make a left. I don’t know if it’s north or south. To be honest, I’ve never been that good with the cardinal directions. It’s just not something that I’ve been able to learn.

I walk for a few blocks, saying hello to the other walkers. The snow has melted mostly, save for a few stragglers in the shadows of buildings. It is a beautiful night, although some would call it cold.

I see a young woman with a flashlight, walking very slowly. I stop to ask what she’s looking for.

“It’s my ring,” she says, barely audible. I nod. “I’ve had that nightmare too. I’ll keep an eye out for it.”

She ignores me as I take out a small LED flashlight.  It’s one of the keychain bits that I’ve added over the years. It’s bright and as I walk another block, I aim it downwards every now and again.

I pass the liquor store and say hello to the proprietors, outside for a smoke. I cut across Nebraska and give some lovers a courtesy cough as I come up behind them.  The woman startled as I pass and the man laughs good naturedly.  In general, it’s hard for people to notice me unless I really try.  It’s just something I’ve grown accustomed to over the years.  I tip my top hat and wish them both a good evening.  Dinner awaits.

It’s one of those locally sourced, feel good sort of place.  The interior is minimalist clean white walls and a menu along one wall.  The cashier looks up and asks for my name.  I give it to him.  He looks at me slightly puzzled but says nothing.  My order is ready and I swipe my debit card.  By the time I leave, he’s forgotten about me, just another Tuesday night customer.

The walk back is uneventful but it is when I see the young woman again that I realize that we have business to take care of.  My suitcase is next to her.  It is a battered boxy silver thing with a black handle and battered metal sides.  It is the weathering that makes it unmistakably mine.  It appears, as per our agreement, whenever I need it.

She is on the sidewalk, on the verge of tears.  I sit down, set the suitcase in front of her and open it.

Inside is a simple unadorned silver ring on a fine chain.  The clasp is broken, weakened by the daily wearing.  I smile.  “Ah, that’s how you lost it.”

She stares.

I take her hand,  pick up the chain and the ring and drop it into her upturned palm. I close the suitcase and start to stand.

“It’s a good thing it was dark.  When you shined that flashlight into the grass, you saw it shining back in the darkness.”

“Yes, it was.”  Her voice wavers, as if she is about to ask a question.

“Your grandmother was a wonderful woman and you were both lucky to have had the time together that you had.”

She starts to stand and I help her up.  She’s no longer crying.  As usual, my suitcase is already gone.  “Thank you,” she says.  “Thank you so much.”

I smile and pick up the plastic bag with the pizza and the salad.  “Don’t worry about it,” I tell her, but she already has.

The pizza and the salad are delicious, as usual.

There are outdated pieces of technology, joysticks that no longer have supported interfaces or computer components that are no longer functioning.  Whey they are around is a mystery, but I’m slowly solving it.  There are DVDs, stacks and piles of them, bought before the digital availability of them negated their usefulness.  And then there is the not easily classified, “stuff.”

Bits and pieces that were important at some point but have lost their usefulness as I have moved on, but their singular purpose has not.

Wall mountable speaker stands, cargo pants, reference books for car repair, bluetooth headsets that take batteries, persistence of vision messagers and of course, unrecognizable power adapters.  There are always power adapters.

There’s always a fear of course, fear that I’ll need them, but in the six years that I’ve lived here, they have taken space and given nothing back.  So it’s time to just get rid of them.

• 55-200mm VR Nikkor DX lens which rounds out my kit.
• SB-900 Flash which acts as a commander for my two SB-600s, which also rounds out my kit.

The funny thing is, I’m shooting with the 35mm and the SB-400 and it’s just fine.

I know what I don’t want.  I don’t want it to be a compelling human drama and then suddenly turn into something completely ridiculous that I cared nothing for, but ended up having to finish simply because I had come too far not to.  Indigo Prophecy’s story had a lot of potential about a man committing a murder but being completely innocent at the same time.

But then it became something else entirely.  I would have been okay with it slowly turning into something with magical realism.  But it turned into this blathering seething mass of a story that didn’t seem to know what it was about.  It was as if they ran out of story budget and then everyone turned into orange goo.

I know only snippets about Heavy Rain’s storyline, little bits and pieces that I’ve gleaned from here and there.  There are four characters.  One of them is a special agent of some sort with super crime fighting sunglasses.  That’s about all I know so far, and I’m okay with that.  I really want to know more, but I want to experience it.  I want that wonder and awe I felt from playing the first half of Indigo Prophecy.

I just hope that it lives up to that promise.

She told me, “I love you,” but I felt there was a “no matter what happens,” after it.

So.  Emo.  And that’s in 1995.

I’ve always preferred the cold to the heat.  I appreciate a lot of lower temperatures, from the moist cloying cold of an ocean sunset, to the dry bitter chill of a winter wind.  I’ve never enjoyed the heat in any form.

Which is really surprising from a nature versus nurture point of view because my heritage is mostly from a tropical island nation.

I also have a box, filled with not empty notebooks.

June 5, 1997

Usually, about the most exciting thing that happens to me is the drive to the Metro station.  Why?  Well, it’s usually because I can smell the beer on my boss’s breath.

Man.  That is a great entry.  Also, this one:

(9/22/90)  Ooops!  Missed a day.  Fortunately nothing much happened yesterday.  Except that Phil, Arcelio, and Josh are thinking about going to Homecoming together and they invited me.  Unfortunately, I don’t have anyone to ask.  Oh, well that’s about it.  I don’t think much is going to happen today.

Riveting. And I have pages of this writing goldmine all at my fingertips.

I like the way that they days are transitioning.  How the great white swatches of snow have become these grey monstrosities on the sides of roads.  I like to think that in the future, you’ll be able to recreate the entire Washington DC landscape just from the pictures people took during the Blizzard of 2010.

I have also purchased some light stands for my strobes.  I’ll need them eventually for some of the portrait work that I want to start doing.  I’m working more with flash and manual settings.  Trying out different styles of lighting to see what works and what doesn’t.  The camera has glitched once during this period, which resulted in two glitch photos and about three irrecoverable files that just didn’t write correctly.  I’ll have to pick up another card to see if it is really card related, but it seems to have happened on both of the cards that I swap every other day.