Hilarious Double Dragon II XBLA Game Description (PIC)

Check out the hilarious description on Xbox Live for the newly released Double Dragon II: 

"That's Gold, Jerry! GOLD!"

How Do You Feel About Love/Relationships At This Point In Your Life?

This was a forum topic I recently encountered and the following was my response:

At this point, having been married, single and everything in between, as well as seeing the experiences of people around me and reading about these things online, I have to say that I am opposed to relationships in which the two parties are living together. At least for now. I own my own house and am perfectly content being alone in it. I have absolutely no desire to live with another woman at this point (I have lived with 2 in my life).

As far as relationships that don't involve cohabitation go, I am not necessarily opposed to them but at this point in my life I don't even want that. To be honest, I have much more fun hanging out with friends/my brother than I ever did with a girlfriend/my ex wife. Really, if you take sex out of it, you have a friend, but in most cases, one that isn't as fun to be around as are your male friends since females and males are often so different (what they consider fun, the conversations you can have, etc). Of course I am generalizing here but that's the nature of the conversation.

I really believe that despite what we tell ourselves, access to sex might really be the biggest/most potent motivator for the forming of relationships. Not many relationships survive without it and guys will go to extreme lengths to put up with **** that they would NEVER take from friends and the reason for that is sexual desire- which, if you really want to deconstruct this, is simply the biological urge to procreate. I believe that alone is the basis for all of it, and everything else is  a nice little narrative constructed around it.

Theism and Belief: Why is the Burden on Us?

An atheist and a theist engage in a friendly debate about the topic of god; specifically, whether or not one exists. The crux of the atheists' argument is essentially that the evidence for the existence of a god is lacking and has not led to the acceptance (on the part of said atheist) of the hypothesis that such a being exists. The theists' bottom line sentiment is that the evidence is sufficient for people all around the world (him or herself included) and it is up to the atheist to accept this evidence/open their heart/be open minded etc (there are many platitudes that are used in this situation).

This discussion has taken place innumerable amounts of times throughout history, and I don't see any reason to believe that it will not continue to do so for at least the foreseeable future. What I find particularly striking about this fact is that the existence of god is one of the few topics for which it is acceptable to claim that the burden of belief/being convinced lies not on the strength of the evidence put forth to bolster the claim but rather on the target(s) of said claims. A few other topics for which this is true are UFO's, bigfoot and the Illuminati/New World Order. Would anyone care to venture a guess as to what it is that these topics have in common? 

There is no proof that any of them exist (none of them do in my not so humble opinion). 

11 Years and 1000's of Hours of Gameplay Later I'm Still Learning How To Play Ninja Gaiden

Ninja Gaiden (Xbox) released in 2004, and since then I have played it (and its various incarnations) for thousands of hours. Literally. And even still I find myself, from time to time, learning new things. Either through experimentation or by watching videos/reading other people's forum posts. Just a couple of minutes ago I learned a new boss fight strategy while watching a Ninja Gaiden Black karma run video (Master Ninja difficulty) on YouTube. (For those who play the game(s), if you didn't know, you can OL UT Murai (if there's essence available) by first hitting him with >Y. Then simply OL UT him on the comedown.)

Now, don't get me wrong. I am not saying this depth is exclusive to Ninja Gaiden. Nor even video games.  Nor is this the only (or even close to the biggest) reason I love the series. It's just a small aspect of it that I find to be really cool and part of the reason I keep playing after all of these years. 

And for my long time readers, yes, I am still yammering on and on about Ninja Gaiden. It will never end so 

The Reality Of Working From Home

I have been working from home for the last two and a half years or so and despite what you may think, it's no paradise. When you think of working from home you might imagine waking up at noon, commuting to your office downstairs and proceeding to work in your pyjamas. Sitting at the laptop outside on a sunny day, sipping a coffee and listening to the radio. Lunches eaten in front of the t.v. Maybe a quick sandwich followed by 45 minutes of Call of Duty multiplayer. Taking half days off (or maybe even full days) whenever you damn well feel like it.

You might imagine yourself designing you own custom work schedule, something much different than the typical 9-5, Mon-Fri. Perhaps you think you would work twelve hour days for three days in a row and then have four glorious days off each and every week. Or perhaps you'd work five hours or so a day, seven days a week. Work everyday but much shorter days. But, hey! You're working from home, so you don't even need a stupid schedule! Just work whenever and however you want, totally on a whim with no pre-programmed schedule to follow.

You might imagine these things and you might think that it all sounds like absolute heaven. What you wouldn't  imagine, however, is the reality of it.

PS Vita Review

Alright, let's just get this out of the way: The Vita is gorgeous. I mean, just look at the damn thing!

Eye Candy, anyone? 

That's a sexy piece of hardware. And seeing it in motion, with that 5-inch OLED (multi-touch capacitive) (touch)screen displaying high fidelity graphics in ridiculously sharp, crisp detail is something else altogether. I absolutely adore my Nintendo 3DS but just look at it:

It's cute and all but it's not even close. If you were to poll the average consumer as to which portable they believe to be the most pleasing to the eye the Vita would come out on top almost every time. Sleek lines, no wasted space, amazing screen....it's a beauty. 

Now that we got that out of the way, let's dive into this review, because "looks ain't everything, kid." 

Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 Plus (Vita) Ninja Race Mode Tips

I have thus far only completed Ninja Race 01 (there are 5 courses) but I can offer some tips. These tips are for playing as Ryu Hayabusa; I have not yet tried playing with any of the secondary characters.

-Lunar Staff is obtained after beating Chapter 1 in the story mode- do this first.

-The Lunar features quick combo kills using weak, weak, strong. This is much faster than square, square, triangle, shuriken cancel, triangle with the dragon sword.

-The Lunar is also fantastic for crowd control, unlike the DS. Standing neutral strong, either stand alone or chained into a combo is good, as is the standard weak, weak, weak, strong strong. A good one for quick limb detachments is chains starting with towards and square. This is a poke with range and power and like the other combos mentioned above it seems to grant some crowd protection in the same way that VF combo strings do. The dragon sword does not carry this advantage.

-The Dragon Sword does have the flying swallow, but it whiffs too much sometimes and therefore wastes too much time. There's no whiffing with the Lunar staff.

-Minimize ET/UT usage. Keep it to the purple essence or health if you don't need it. You'll definitely want to avoid using the green essence for them as green grants time bonuses. The white essence grants speed and power bonuses so try not to utilize that for ET's/UT's either, unless you're at max speed/power or you're in trouble.