Heroes: Pass/Fail

Why am I still posting these???  Ugh, the show is getting worse... 

Hiro is in the hospital getting seen for his tumor while unconscious.  In this state he is undergoing what I can only describe as the typical hero's battle with the underworld/afterlife.  In this "struggle" he is on trial for putting himself before the time and space continuum. 
The defense is Kensei/Adam Munroe and the trial is judged by Hiro's father.  While doing good for many, and somehow helping tons of people, it is apparently considered "selfish" to save one person while letting Sylar live.  How does that make sense, because of all the other times he didn't kill Sylar.  Even after stabbing him with a sword in season 1.  He pleads not guilty, and eventually changes his plea, and gets magically healed by his mother's ghost.  Ludicrous.  Sylar killed without Hiro, so Hiro not doing anything then PRESERVED Sylar's timeline with the exception of getting Charlie's ability. 
Then the healing?  Come on, while he can be a good character, some of these people gotta go.

Samuel is trying to get his old lady friend to like him again.  She doesn't go for it, so he sends her on his way, and very maturely destroys a town.  How grown up of you Samuel.

Over in college land Claire is pushing Gretchen away from herself personally.  Sylar shows up and tricks Claire into thinking he has abducted Gretchen.  Then attempts to get some information from Claire through his new touchy feely power.  She stabs him in the eye, and runs away.  Then goes back to her apartment to untie Gretchen(who is a very cliched Sylar in disguise).  They hide in a closet and have a heart to heart.  Claire realizes she's a friggin idiot for letting a single aspect of herself rule her life and decides she wants some Gretchen love.  Sylar gets the idea he may need to lose his power to become more normal. 
He then lets Claire know that he didn't abduct Gretchen and is on his merry way after watching Claire come out of a closet to go come out of a closet in the cafeteria with Gretchen.  Nice.
What happened to the vengeance quest???

He then is out to find Parkman and have baby touch and go possibly stop his abilities.  Lame- In posts a long time ago I suggested that Parkman team up with baby Parkman to wipe Sylar's powers.
http://joshuabarsody.blogspot.com/2009/04/quick-pre-heroes-post.html  and
http://joshuabarsody.blogspot.com/2009/04/heroes-i-am-sylar.html

Oh, and where did Tracy go?  Or Molly?  She's been left without any familial support for a long time, both surrogate fathers have forgotten about her.  Or any of the other people that just fall off the Heroes world, they all just disappear.  Underwater breather, Claude, Luke, or Samson- where are they???  Why isn't Samson looking for a way out of his cancer?  He would be a hell of a villain for the many good guys to fight.  Epic is what is the potential.  Maybe he already has the healing, Sylar can get them without killing, so perhaps he already has it and it's just not activated???

I would also like to see Peter and Sylar work as a team.  Or Sylar absorbing Peter's ability and becoming an empath- feeling so much would make him an overly emo leader, but with the capacity to do something about it.  I mentioned this a long time ago as well.  There is also stupid Peter not taking Sylar's ability, and all subabilities problem still.  WTF Heroes writers???

I can't believe I'm still doing these...

Heroes: Close to You

More late Heroes postings.  Yay...  not really.

In this latest episode Hiro and Ando go and save Mohinder from a Mental Institution of some sort.  They kind of wind up in the Institute then all escaping.  In the end they teleport away... and show up in Noah's apartment.  Wow, big surprise.

Samuel and the Xerox man go off to find the girl Samuel likes.  They get her away from Noah and Matt who are attempting to get info.  They track her to an empty field, the carnival teleported away or something.
Noah is also sort of told to rebuild his relationship with Claire by Lauren.

Lydia is not happy with Samuel, and tries to do a call to Peter.  I think it would be sweet giving control of the Carnival to Peter, it would be in the best interests of all involved.  He's an empath and wants to help people, and they are a bunch that need to be helped.

Peter and Angela have dreams involving a terrible future of Emma's.  Peter goes to her place and smashes her cello.  She gets pissed and sends him away.

Blah blah blah.  Oh, yeah, Parkman is having bad feelings about not going after Sylar when he had the chance.  Lame-o.  He is always running.  Oh, can't use my power, can't help my friends, shut up Parkman.  Does he even remember his adoptive daughter Molly?  Loser.  Grow a sack and start DOING something.  He has a power to seriously mess with Sylar.  Think about it, he could get in Sylar's head, root around to find where he keeps the "sweet spot" that regenerates his body, then use Sylar's own telekinesis on Sylar to have him cut it out.  Easy peasy.  But nooooooo, he'll probably keep being a whiney baby.

Ugh.  I'm sick of these posts, too much potential that isn't being followed through.
I'm quitting for now.  Maybe the next post will be more enthusiastic. 
Maybe.

Heroes: Let it Bleed

Gabriel Gray goes back to the circus and realizes his Sylar is limp.  By not killing Samuel and becoming even more powerful, but he lets him live.  Then finds out through Miss Touchy McToucherpants that he is afraid of being alone.
Why doesn't Sylar use the truth hearing to get information from Samuel? Or just take the power of Samuel without killing him?  So many things could be done...
Also, I'm pissed about the Puppet Man getting whupped again.  That could be such an amazing fight.
He gets a tattoo of what he wants, and it turns out to be Claire.  Creepy.  So he heads off to stare in her window.

Claire is a whiny idiot again. "Oh, how could you lie to me dad? Did you forget what Sylar did to me?  He 'Bad-touched' me in the brain meat!"  He let you live stupid.  So she makes Noah leave the funeral for Nathan.  (Good call on that, eliminating Sylar's use of Nathan's face to gain political power)
She has some talks with Peter.  Peter goes off looking to be a hero and gets himself shot.  Then Claire reprimands him for not letting things go.  Dumbass, she's doing the same thing.
Peter get's Claire's exboyfriend's (West) flight ability and flies off at the end of the episode. 

Noah catches and interrogates the speedster for information.  He kind of befriends him and they make a hesitant deal to eliminate Samuel.  Edgar decides Noah is to violent, and doesn't want his family hurt or separated, so he abandones the plan.

That's about it for now.
Lame.

Heroes: The Fifth Stage

A quick post of the last episode before tonights new one.

Claire and Gretchen steal the magic compass from Noah and go to the circus.  Samuel uses deception to make Claire want to join.  In the end Samuel gets a man to fight him, but doesn't fight back, Claire steps in, and the man leaves.  Samuel has him killed later and the body dumped in a truck.

Noah has a odd encounter with a past almost-fling, but she had her memory wiped so she is hesitant to believe him.

The main portion is Peter going after Sylar to retreive Nathan.  He finally gets the Haitian's power to negate Sylar's abilities and put them on a level playing field.  He uses a nail gun and punches and harsh language to beat Sylar up, then tries to erase the "Sylar" parts out of Sylar.  Obviously Peter should know that healers cannot be mind wiped- a fact proven time and again, they always get better.
Anyway, Nathan comes out, and they try and bond on the rooftop where Peter walked on air.  Well Nathan in an act of retardedness tries to commit personality suicide by diving off the edge, but wouldn't his flight be a natural response to save him?  Well he smashes into a car below, after Peter and Nathan say their goodbyes, and heals and shifts back into Sylar, who waves to Peter and walks away.
HELLOOOOOOO people- Nathan's body is still in a containment unit and can easily be revived with a healthy dose of Claire blood, so we'll probably be seeing more Nathan.  There's also the potential for Sylar to take on Nathan's persona for his own personal gain.  More power for himself to do as he pleases.

Where did Parkman go to?  He looked to be on a determined mission, but as to what it was...  ???
I look forward to Parkman becoming a serious force to be reckoned with.  Another nightmare man, but perhaps for good. 

Whatever- I have to wait and see how things go.

Christmas cards 2009!

Sorry I haven't been posting much lately.  Life has been beating the crap out of me.  Life can be a real jerk sometimes.
Anyhow, I spent a month making and deleting or losing(computer crashes) or being just not happy with how the good ones turned out.  In the end I just stuck with two small but nice ones.
Hope readers enjoy.

 

Heroes: Thanksgiving

Noah Bennett stalks his old coworker, Lauren, at a grocery store and asks her to to join Thanksgiving dinner with himself, Claire, and his ex-wife and new boyfriend "Doug".  While through the episode he keeps up the idea that it's not a date, but it pretty much is. 
Noah even gets to meet Mr. Muggles new puppy friend, Miss. Lovegood. 
Well, he kind of gets Claire back together with Gretchen and makes some good with the ex-wife & her man.  Claire is back to being miss stupid, "oh, my life is SOOOOO difficult, blah, blah, blah!"  What the hell Heroes writers? Claire needs to learn that she looks normal, and can heal from damn near anything.  She's got it easy.  I hope they fuck her up bigtime, some serious pain (maybe psychological) to teach her that she is very much a normal person. 
At the end of the episode, she steals one of the compasses from her father and convinces Gretchen to go on a road trip to the carnival of stupidity.

Peter and Angela have an awkward family dinner with Nathan/Sylar.  Nathan/Sylar is fighting with itself for control of the body.  To make matters even stranger, the Petrelli holiday is a forced dinner with the Sylar part, and as soon as he finishes his food, he decides to cut open Angela's head.  Nathan ends up fighting bcak and flying away.  And of course the writers need to be slapped in the face- Peter would have taken the Sylar base ability, he's had it before and knows how it works, why wouldn't he get it to start stock-piling tons of powers.  He has access to the closest power to his own original ability and didn't take it.  He's a fool.  The only other way he could get to Sylar now is by getting the Haitian's power and killing him while dampening the healing.
Oh, another side note, wouldn't Claire's blood bring Nathan's frozen body back to life???

Samuel learns about his power's potential from Mohinder's film reel.  Why didn't Hiro just bring Mohinder into the now?  That would solve the hiding him part. 
Anyway, Samuel still won't give Charlie back to Hiro, and flaunts it as the reason Hiro can't kill him.  But of course there is a way around this, as mentioned in my Heroes post like 2 weeks ago(maybe last week's episode).  Things get tense and Hiro and Lydia go back to the night Samuel's brother was killed by a "government man".  As it turns out, Samuel killed his own brother, and upon Hiro and Lydia's return to the now- Samuel blames it on Edgar.  Hiro saves Edgar to help at a later time.  By the looks of things Hiro is inadvertantly building an army to eliminate the growing Samuel problem. 
Hiro could even go back to right before Charlie was taken save her and kill Samuel, thus solving everyone's problems.

Whatever, I must be a lover of painful writing because I continue to watch this crap.  If I, of all people, can think of simple solutions to all these in show problems, I am sure MANY others have found alternative solutions, which means there needs to be better writers on the show. 
What happened to all the awesome of the first season? 
I quit for tonight.
More complaints after tonight's episode.

Heroes: Brother's Keeper

A mobile last minute post before tonight's new episode.
Tracy is losing control of her abilities and goes to find Noah Bennett She instead finds Claire and they have a low grade lesbian moment. Claire gets frozen and her foot breaks off. She thaws and apparently grew a whole new foot. She needs to look into organ donation.
Hiro jumps back in time and gets ahold of a film telling of Samuel's full potential. Why doesn't someone jut kill him? With all the powers around him it shouldn't be that difficult. Even Hiro could just teleport Samuel's head a fraction of a moment through time and space- a hell of a spectacular decapitation. Maybe even teleport it into Samuel's own hands a few minutes prior to doing it. So Samuel would be all WTF?! My own head! Then kerplowey, his own dissappears.
Over in Petrelli land- Peter gets info from the Haitian pointing to Nathan being Sylar's body. Nathan and Peter go find Nathan's body which as not disposed of as it should have been, then go to find Parkman...
...and Parkman is conveniently healed by Peter. Parkman tells them that Nathan only needs to touch him to be reunited with Sylar's mind- so much for mental powers. Well, big suprise, Nathan touches him "accidentally" and now Sylar is somewhere in his own body while it still believe's itself to be Nathan. I would also lke to note that Peter specifially takes the flight power- so instead of getting a random one he knows which to take. That also leads me to wonder why he still hasn't taken Sylar's main power and subsequently all the sub-abilities??? Peter's an idiot. If he got them all he could use Sylar's own ability to cut out the healing power(the magic spot) from Sylar's body, and finally kill the guy.
Well, they take off and Parkman is full on powered up- using it to escape from the hospital/police custody.
I think that is a good enough on the spot episode recap.
Later peoples.

Heroes: Shadowboxing

Trying for a super quick post.

Sylar's body wakes up at the carnival as Nathan, gets up and flies away.  Then at the end shows up at Peter's apartment saying he may be in trouble.  Sylar's body contains his original ability, so if he accesses it can he fix Peter's neutered ability?  Reverting Peter back to the Badass-ness he held in the first season would be awesome.

While Rebecca is telling Mr. Bennett about who her target really is(himself- a vengeance quest for killing her father, very cliche) Samuel is trying to build a divide between Claire and her father.  It doesn't work to well, and Samuel eventually tasers Rebecca to help his own case, and make Noah look worse.  Noah also figures out that the sinkhole killing many was done by Samuel and also finds out that the compass could be used for bad things in the wrong hands.
Also, Gretchen decides that her life is more important than Claire's friendship and leaves.  So no more lesbianic scenes.

Peter is learning that the new power is draining himself while he heals many patients from a train wreck.  He also sees Emma do some medical work and points it out to her, she tries to say she learned it from TV or something, but then admits it's from medical school.  She also tells him about the nephew of hers that died because she couldn't hear him while he was drowning.  Peter tells her she saved the little girl earlier, and passes her the girl's tiara.  They had a moment.  Oh wow, how unexpected.

Then Parkman and Sylar are pushing each other around, trying to gain the upper hand in the body's pilot seat.  Parkman has the advantage of the telepathy, but Sylar doesn't care about killing people, so it becomes a difficult inner battle.  Sylar tells Parkman that he can't win because Sylar will kill everyone involved with his body-theft.  In the end Parkman tells Sylar he will kill someone to stop Sylar, himself.  He left a note with the waitress at a diner saying he had a gun and will kill everyone, the police arrive and Parkman makes Sylar mimic pulling a gun out, and then gets shot.  Very cool.  I figured he would have suicided, but this works as well.
What I don't get is how Parkman can't just take Sylar's mind and stuff it in a comatose person's body.  Or just set up a mental vault and keep him in it for good.  He would then be stuck with absolutely no way to do anything.  He can control minds, which means Sylar should have ZERO influence over him.  This bothers me a lot.

Screw this, I'm done for now.

Fat Princess

The Legend of the Fat Princess, for Playstation 3, is a wonderful multiplayer game along the lines of "Capture the Flag".  Only the flags are the opposing teams' princesses.  You have to build and defend your own castle, upgrade characters, and stuff the princess so full of cake she turns into a giant blob (which in turn makes it very difficult for the oppostion to steal her back, as they must carry her).

(The pic is of my Ranger character after stuffing her with lots of cake)

There are 6 distinct types of characters in the game: a villager, worker, ranger, mage, warrior, and a priest.  Everyone starts as a villager and is very weak but can slap others to make them drop things and have a chance to daze them.  As soon as you pick up a hat from either a dispencer in your castle or on the battlefield after someone drops one upon their death, you gain the abilities of that character type. 

Each of the other classes has 2 levels.

• The worker is quick and can mine metals and chop down trees to help build and upgrade things.  They begin with more life than a villager and have an axe to defend themselves.  The 2nd level is a Bomb thrower.  These little guys are very dangerous, they can blast the hell out of everything in sight.
• Rangers start as distance fighters with a bow and arrows.  Their upgrade gives them a slower but more powerful weapon, a blunderbuss.  Very fun medium ranged character, medium life bar, medium attack power, and fun for beginners. 
• Mages start as fire users, sending out blasts of fiery death, and once upgraded they can use ice to slow, freeze, and damage enemies.  Unless you are with a group, these guys can be slaughtered quite quickly.  A side benefit with this upgrade is a magic potion dispencer starts giving out a bottle that if thrown on enemies(or dropped on yourself) will turn anyone in blast proximity into a chicken.  Chickens have the least amount of life, but are fun to run around jumping, pecking and squawking as. 
• A warrior begins as a simple, strong fighter with sword and sheild.  Their upgrade provides a huge attack bonus with a large spear and a charging slash, as well as a life bar boost.  They have the most life and are fairly difficult to kill.
• Finally, the priests.  They are originally healers, being able to heal, and eventually upgrade to dark priests, able to drain the life force of enemies in the nearby vicinity.  Very helpful for friends, but choose to be them only if you have lots of backup.  They don't stand much of a chance out on the battlegrounds on their own.

The game itself has both Single Player and Multiplayer options.  In Single, you can learn the Legend of the Fat Princess, by playing through a series of story based games, all based on parts of the whole Multiplayer game, such as killing the opposing teams entire group (Team Deathmatch).  The second Singleplayer mode is a gladiator arena where the player must defeat wave after wave of enemies in a stadium.
Multiplayer Mode: This is where the game is really amazing- teams of up to 16 versus 16 people in the capture the princess or team deathmatch modes.  Unbelieveable amounts of death, in your choice of either bloody gore, or my own choice the, inexplicably more disturbing, "Clean" fights.  With this setting every enemy defeated explodes into a mess of teddy bear parts, confetti, toys and various candies like lollipops.  This is hours of insanely fun entertainment.

I highly recommend this game.

2012: A Lesson in Stupidity

First- I would like to say this is not just about the movie.  Although I'll get those comments out first since the commercials are what prompted this post.

From what the trailer looks like, the movie appears to be hours of John Cusack escaping from a killer crack in the ground.  It follows their car.  Then waits for them at the airport and continues following their airplane.  I can't guarantee it, but the crack could might actually follow them through water at some point.  Then possibly in space as well.

Since time immemorial groups of people have been spouting off worldly doom.  Hellfire and brimstone in a global catastrophe causing the deaths of most the worldly populous.  Well, I would like to say the odds of it happening are roughly zero.  I have an obsessive nature when it comes to studying religions, mythologies, and the like, and all the old tales don't tell of apocalyptic destruction.  A perfect case would be the Revelation of John the Beloved.  The book itself is a key to the internal war that comes to each individual.  It is NOT mass human extinction, where believers of such and such are magically brought to an eternal party in the clouds with a giant bearded man.  No, not that at all.  It is the path of spiritual birth and growth every person must make.

The Mayan calendar points to the end of an age, the end of an era. (Besides the fact that the calender had to end some time, hell, ours end once a year and we celebrate the birth of a new year)  Cyclical change on a massive scale.  Mind you, it obviously is not an instantaneous change, but the long, slow birth of a new way of life.  A gradual tipping towards mankind's maturing nature.  A growth towards worldly illumination.   Hopefully mankind will stray from it's current focus on base wants, and more towards a love of the higher internal selves we can become.

People need to stop believing that the ancient civilizations were inferior.  They were NOT FOOLS.  It seems to be an unstoppable misconception that the cultures of antiquity couldn't have been smarter or wiser than us, but that is a foolish mistake in itself.  The reason all their creations, be it their myths or architectural marvels, have such endurance is because they MEAN so much.  The great power behind such symbols gives them strength, an everlasting meaning to those people with the capacity to see behind the veil of sterile material translation.  A recognition or resonance in ourselves.  Reflection of the eternal in the everyday self.

I don't understand how people in general can put so much credence in an ancient culture's calender, but have absolutely no faith in the same culture's other beliefs.  Sure some groups can't have ALL the answers, but if they could produce astronomical calculations that are as good as ours, why wouldn't  they be right about the other things?  It drives me crazy talking about things like this to people.  We should not be expecting Ragnarok, or Armageddon (which, by the way, is a LOCATION, not an occurance- look it up Rev. 16:16 "Then they gathered the kings together to the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon").  No, we should not expect Earth splitting upheavals, or fantastic events (apart from the typical large storms/earthquakes/etc. that happen anyway), no blazing infernos scorching the land from stars falling, none of that.  We need to understand all the old writings point to internal changes.

Any culture that could make pyramids had to have a knowledge beyond the common, not to mention they had the means to build them, which we would struggle with today.   That culture's wisdom should be heeded, their thoughts immortal in truth.  The Mayan's didn't proclaim the end of everything in 2012 is part of a natural cycle, a very long continuing progression of life, and should not be feared.  Nor used for monetary gain, as is the case for the movie coming out tomorrow.