If you're coming here from my online class, welcome! I'm Ben Cardwell and this collection of incoherant rants is my Livejournal. Hi!

I can't sleep tonight. I went to sleep at about eleven last night, and woke up two hours later. I can't go back to sleep. So I'm posting here because I'm board and tired but not tired enough to sleep and GODDAMN IT WHY CAN'T I SLEEP?!

This isn't a new problem. It's been going on off and on for months. My sleep paterns are totally screwed up, and I only have myself to blame. I need some sleeping pills or something.

While I'm awake, I might as well plug my blogs. Creationist Lies and Schrodinger's Blog contain more incoherant ranting from me. So visit them. Please.

I recently bought the game Okami for the Wii.  I love this game.  A little background, in the game you play as the Japanese sun goddess Amaterasu who has taken the form of a wolf to fight the evil Orochi and save the world.  To do this you have to collect thirteen Celestial Brush techniques.  The Celestial Brush lets you use the Wii Remote to draw symbols that activate elemental powers, like drawing a vine to get to a high place, summoning wind to blow out a fire, or slashing over an enemy to damage them.  The controls for the brush take a little getting used to, and there is one brush power that I have trouble getting to work, but overall it works quite well.  You can also use different kinds of weapons to attack enemies.

Okami is usually compared to Zelda, and it is definatly similar.  It uses the same general mechanics of Zelda, collecting items (or Celestial Brush powers in this case) to use in dungeons and solve puzzles, and fighting enemies in real time.  But it is not a Zelda clone.  The entire feel of the game is like nothing I've ever seen.  The art is cell shaded to look like a watercolor painting, and it's absolutly beautiful.  The world has been defiled with curses, so you have to restore nature where ever you go.  So when you enter an area it is dark and dead, but when you leave it is lush and full of life.  You have to earn praise to level up your attributes, like health, ink, and wallet size.  The entire game has a feel all its own, and I love it.  It's a big game, I'm fifteen hours in and I've barely started.  Buy it.  Just buy it.  It's one of my top ten games of all time, no question.  It bombed in its original PS2 release, and it deserves better this time.  If you can get just one game this year, make it Okami.  You won't be disapointed.

Fuck you.

Sometimes I think there's no hope for humanity. And other times I think that there might be.

All right. I'm something of a comic book fan. A casual one at that. I don't usually buy comics, but I generally follow the goings on of the comic world, or at least try to. And things are getting pretty crazy. 

The CIA has a kids page at https://www.cia.gov/kids-page/index.html. I don't know if I find this disturbing or amusing.

By the way, does anyone know how to embed links?

I found a great video of JoCo's song, "I Feel Fantastic." ( Read more... )