The Hour of Darkness
That's not what they called it, but we had a little game here in Corrado where you drink a gallon of milk in an hour and try to keep it down. Most people didn't. One of the guys had to pause our semi-nightly Starcraft game and piss for like 5 minutes straight.

I feel like school is almost over, and it sort of it. We have about five weeks left, including finals. Some classes are starting to wind down, and we're starting to get ready for the last round of exams before Friday. I'm quite glad that I don't have to worry about some of the crazy housing stuff we've got going down here; the rules for non-freshmen applying for housing seem hideously complicated. I'm trying to finish strong, but it's already starting to feel like summer and that means lazy.

I got my hair cut, too. I was kind of embarrassed; I lost like 10 pounds of hair.

WTF?
Earth and Beyond was cancelled?

Explorer reporting
I used to really, really dislike StarCraft. Though I still prefer the mad old-school stylings of Westwood's Command & Conquer series, I have to admit that my appreciation for Blizzard's magnus opus has been steadily increasing the more that I play it. For one thing, I no longer suck, even as the Terrans. Quite the opposite, in fact; I find that the combination of seige tanks, goliaths, valkyries, and science vessels is a beautiful, beautiful thing, especially when working the famous bunker crawl on the unsuspecting scum of the universe.

I picked up Battlefield: Vietnam as the MGLan on Saturday. The LAN itself was cool, even though (or perhaps, especially because) I wasn't a part of the Counterstrike tournament that was the main event. Instead, I just hung out, talked, and owned a couple of people at a game of Homeworld that we started on the side.

Back to my point. BFV, though a good game, and superior in general to Battlefield 1942, feels like an extremely professional mod more than an entirely new game. Granted, the music and sound is awesome, and some of the new stuff is really cool (like a capture timer for control points - finally), but overall I feel like I'm playing the same game with new clothes. I think I'll stick with Desert Combat for now.

But it will be total chaos!
I didn't comment on that last post at all. I just wanted to hear everybody sound off. Which they did, in several different fashions and to several degrees.

I am currently studying for a calculus test that I have in approximately 27 hours. Nearly an eternity, I know, but I'm not putting things off anymore. No sir. The material for the test is fairly easy, but there's a lot of it and my professor loves to put little surprises into his test. They're kind of like land mines: you gotta watch out for them or they'll blow your legs off. And you think I'm joking.

Apparently, my EN311 (advanced composition) professor thinks that writing nonfiction is roughly the same thing as writing about yourself. That's usually true in reverse, but set that way it means that I have to read lots of excepts from books like On Being A Self Forever and writing stories about myself. I wouldn't mind writing about myself if I had anything to say worthy of turning into a class like that. Gaming and reading might be interesting to people who do them, but probably not to someone with a doctorate in writing whose idea of a good time is attending opera.

mglan is tomorrow. It's another Counter-Strike tournament, which means that even if I wanted to play, I wouldn't be able to. I still plan on heading down there, hanging out, maybe picking up a game of Homeworld or StarCraft on the side, and digesting massive amounts of caffeine.

To Shaun: what's up? Nice of you to come on around to blogville, population us. We laugh, we cry, we waste time.

Got nothin
Man, I'm AFK for a couple of days and people go all crazy...jeez. 94 comments, though. That's well over twice my previous record. People do like to talk.

For me, spring break has come and gone. Naturally, given the bass-akwardness of UP in general, our break didn't so much as overlap with anyone else's, meaning that the part of the week I didn't spend working I spent at home, except for a few small excursions. Though hardly exciting, I needed the rest, so no complaints.

Yay, controversy! I loved this article. "Ohio evolution lesson plan irks science groups." Interesting by itself, but even more so when it turns out in the body of the article that it was in fact no irking science groups at all, but the parents and teachers. For those of you too lazy to read the article, I'll explain: apparently biology cirriculum for an Ohio school district has a section on evolution which includes the theory of "intelligent design" as a possible alternative theory. Perhaps some of you who know me will understand why I find this quote ironic: "I am convinced this is a religious effort cloaked as science." I've been saying the same thing for years, about evolution. I would just as soon this not turn into a repeat of our last gaggle of comments, but I am interested in what everybody thinks,

No, I don't plan on making a habit of introducing these kinds of topics; you guys just got lucky this time.

Passion
I never wrote about it, but I saw The Passion of the Christ the afternoon it came out. I went in with fairly high expectations, and it delivered. Granted, you have to approach it from a certain standpoint to fully appreciate it. For one thing, it's extremely violent. In fact, the scene (rather, the section of the movie) where Jesus is scourged is probably the most graphic torture scene ever to show up on the big screen. A second point: the focus of the movie is very narrow. It's not like the Jesus Film, showing his entire life or even a good part of his ministry. It shows only the last twelve hours of his life, with special emphasis on the last few of those hours. The producers obviously assume that you know how the story goes up to that point.

However, the shocking (though admittedly realistic) brutality visited upon Jesus really brings home the sacrifice that he made. Even knowing that it would bring eternal happiness for all people, I really doubt I could let myself go through with that. The end result is that a very human face is put on Jesus, who we typically thing of as a detached figure lecturing the people of Earth from on high. We tend to forget that, in addition to being all God, he was all man as well.

Regardless of your current religious orientation, I would encourage you to go see this movie, or at least rent it. I can guarantee that it'll at least get you thinking.

And so the wheel turns
Nearly two weeks, and a new record. Even though I have precious little to say, according to Charles "everyone wants me to post," so here it is. Spring break is nearly upon me, all I have to do is weather a physics test on Friday and I'm free. Since I'm just lucky enough that my break doesn't align with anyone else's, I won't have a whole lot to do, but it should at the very least be relaxing.

Within a few weeks I would like to run a canned Ars Magica adventure I found on the Atlas Games website. It starts with the "prequel" Promises, Promises and continues with the Nigrasaxa. Don't read those files, but you can get the core rulebook pdf for free here. You have to "buy" it for a price of nothing, though. Also, I'm recruiting players to play in the DarkStryder campaign I'm running this summer. It's a Star Wars campaign I'm going to run using the d6 system, a simple system that I believe is one of the best ever developed. You can get a brief overview of it here.

More as it develops. If you're interested in playing in either game, let me know.