Guild Hero

So a quick post on some things wrapped up tonight. I watched season 2 of the Guild. Just like the first, it was a whole lot of fun and a joy. The characters are great and I think that's the biggest appeal. The jokes and situations are funny, even though I don't play any MMOs. Great stuff.
Heroes Volume 4(?) also finished this evening. It's clear that it's improving and has improved from it's low and horrible volumes 2 & 3. I like how they killed off some of the characters and feel that at times the writing is good creating unusual situations and bringing back some unusual powers. I feel that overall it's not as good as the first season, but it's back on its way up. I felt the ending was a little bit of a cop out, but they can definitely have some fun with this for next season. (Although the ice woman's recurrence was surprisingly unexpected.)
Other than that, I went to the dentist today. Good to have nice clean teeth :D I guess they'll hurt tomorrow though. One thing that came up was the possibility of braces to straighten up my teeth and fix some of my alignment problems. Although clearly cosmetic and not necessary for me since I'm only minor, it still is something to think about, especially since I'm eligible for invisalign. I still have to do a bunch of research before I make any decisions.

I Can Drive!

Just a quick post about this weekend. It was a beautiful weekend, but besides for taking a bunch of walks outside, I wasn't able to truly enjoy it, although it did warm up the apartment which is always good. Saturday I was stuck in a Defensive Driving Course for most of the day. IBM was offering it so I signed up to get a great discount on my insurance. It was mostly all common sense, but the instructor was pretty good even if he did stray off topic a lot.
I also saw Zack and Miri Make a Porno later that night. I found this comedy to be pretty good actually. Maybe walking in with a title like that sets the bar kinda low, but it passed it. I laughed at several moments even if it was a low brow comedy. The plot was totally predictable and boring, but weak plots in low brow comedies combined with retarded plots in pornos isn't going to produce something amazing.
Didn't really do much else this weekend. I wanted to beat the main plot of Valkyria Chronicles, but some of the parts took longer than anticipated. It would have been nice to go back to PSU this weekend for Blue and White, but maybe another year.

Sunset Strip Bitch

So last night I went to an Eve6 concert at The Chance. I never saw them before and figured it would be a good night out. I was a little concerned about the turnout at first. It was relatively sparse, but people turned out before Eve6 went on. The openers were all local bands. The first and third were pretty good but the second was total crap. Some sort of eighties hair band where the lead singer was like a gay, British cowboy. Eve 6 put on a good show playing most of the hits and a lot of new stuff. I guess most of it sounded ok, I'll have to see when a new album comes out. I really like having the Chance close by to get good bands like this, although everything about the whole ordeal seemed expensive though. There were over 7 dollars in fees on top of my ticket price, I had to pay for event parking which was an additional $5, and the drinks were kinda expensive ($4 for a beer plus tip). It just seemed to add up for only one night out. Oh well, I had fun. Plus, this was my first concert in a long time where I didn't go wild at the Merch table. In fact, I didn't get anything. Can't remember that happening in like forever.

Squeenix and it's Body of Lies

Tonight I saw Body of Lies. This was a great political thriller in the world of spies and the Iraq war. It was a really good movie keeping my attention and following the subtle nuances. My main thing I feel like pointing out is how good Leonardo DiCaprio's latest movies have all been. He has been a very consistent actor and someone who I now respect in all of his movies. I look forward to any of his upcoming movies since they seem to be really good. He's definitely turning into an Edward Norton class of actor in my mind.

So a little bit ago, I posted about the recent love of PS3. I think I spoke too soon, or rather lumped in one company I shouldn't have. Square Enix has really been pissing me off as of late. They used to be my favorite and most dependable game company and now I feel they are worthless. First it seems like they haven't developed anything significant in recent years and not having a DS has certainly made that even worse since I didn't get The World Ends with You. Even more so, they have show absolutely no love to the PS3 and the Sony brand in general even though they used to be almost exclusive publishers. The PS3 has gotten a little love in Japan only with a few PSN titles and re-releases. In America, they have not released a single thing and have taken away exclusivity from future titles. They were planning on a Last Remnant port, but that even seems to be out the window. They seem to now be in love with the Xbox with a few disk based games already released. They even have Crystal Defenders which is fully translated and available in Japan only, but for some reason Xbox only in the US. What got me started was that Square Enix recently announced I think 2 more new Xbox Live Arcade Games. Meanwhile they show nothing for the PS3. It is truly ridiculous how much they are pandering to Microsoft nowadays. The only exclusive that is left is FF Versus 13 and since the regular 13 is behind schedule, seems development is extremely slow as of late. At one point they were saying similar release windows and now it seems like the game will be distant, at best. I'm afraid E3 will hold some sort of evil surprise and this game will lose exclusivity. All I know is that it's difficult to see a company that I once love show no respect for a fellow Japanese system, which happens to be the camp I'm in. I feel a lack of loyalty now. I used to buy a game just because of the distributor was Square, now I almost feel the opposite. Instead Distributors like NIS and Atlus have replaced them. It's a shame when a childhood friend like that drifts away.

Budgeting Woes

So I seem to be having some trouble with my budget. I'm not necessarily breaking my budget or going over it. It's more along the lines of if I allotted money for it, I seem to spend it and having a surplus is no good. Lately I feel I've been keeping the whole floundering anime industry alive with my incessant spending. I've rediscovered Rightstuf's awesome sales and have been purchasing titles like crazy. Now even though I've allotted a set amount each month for entertainment and haven't really gone over it, I still feel guilty. This recent anime addiction is going to turn into my video game addiction where I have a nice collection, but haven't played nearly as many. The same is going to happen to my anime I've been buying I feel. I've bought several series lately: Boogiepop Phantom, Noein, Gunslinger Girl, GTO, Beck, Getbackers, Basilisk, Tsukihime, and several more that are staring me down. Maybe it's just me catching up for not really being into anime that much in the past 5 years after drifting out of it or me only really buying about 1 series in the past 5 years. Maybe it's how I'm kinda caught up buying all of the video games I wanted to get for the current and past generations (which aren't prohibitively expensive). I just know I feel bad for spending my budget.