tekHedd – the blog

Happy Solstice, everybody! As we all know, all life, love, and all things good come from our all-powerful lord, the Sun! While you are tipping back a few and enduring your relatives this year, don’t forget the real reason for the season: long nights and short days. Let’s keep the Sol in Solstice!

However, many different religions exist that follow the sun, most of them sadly neglected, and all slightly different. At Solstice time, we know that our worship is an essential part of bringing the sun back to life and therefore ending winter, but we aren’t sure exactly how that works. So, we celebrate the death and rebirth of the sun joyously, but with some confusion. And with cookies. Because we aren’t sure exactly what we’re supposed to do. With the recent dominance of non-sun-based religions, the world may even be at risk of sinking into endless winter. But that hasn’t happened yet, so I suggest we deal with an even more important issue.

Holiday cookies: what gives?

Yes, it is true that simpler cookies remain good throughout the holiday season. Brownies are still choclatey, sugar cookies are still sugarey, and so on.

But there is also this obsession with spicy cookies. Too many otherwise great cookies are ruined by the addition of mint or strange eggy flavors. Cheap colored sprinkles can transform a great butter cookie into a mediocre one. Nuts and spices can turn your brownie into a brownie…with nuts. Way to ruin a perfectly good brownie.

It is too much trouble to drop individual cookies onto a sheet, so some people make bars. They’re sort of vaguely like cookies, except without the shape or texture. To make the bar decision seem intentional, there may be some cheap frosting spread on the top.

And, finally, there is pumpkin. Pumpkin is a squash. If you say you like pumpkin cookies, what you are really saying is that you like cinnamon cake cookies. The simple truth is that squash-based cookies or cakes taste like whatever you put in them to cover the flavor of squash. It’s not necessarily a bad flavor, it’s just not pumpkin flavored. OK?

So, last night, I’m just having a nice conversation on the phone, and I have an insight that I think is actually interesting, maybe even worth blogging about. (Although probably not worth reading.) And I think to myself, “wow I’ll have to write that down later”. And I make a mental note of it and go on talking.

And now it is today. Where is that thought? It seems to be gone! I can’t find it anywhere. Doesn’t my brain remember how insightful it seemed?

Where do these “mental notes” go? There must be a matching “mental shredder” that my brain puts these notes into, after which they are “mental confetti”.

I’ve been playing Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack In Time. The series is as dead as its creator.

Executive Summary For You Executive Types

1. The platforming parts are decent for a change, although not particularly challenging or thought-provoking.
2. The weapons are as usual quirky and cool. However, the arena is fairly blah, and you’ll pretty much just want to use the Negotiator. Just like the last game.
3. The plot is simply stupid, and the script is worse.
4. The voice acting will make you cry.
5. It’s pretty, and has lots of “cinematic” stuff, if that’s your idea of a good time.
6. The gameplay is above average, but won’t win any awards.

More specific nit-picking

In previous games, the characters gave this game its soul. Ratchet was an ordinary guy with a wrench, and Clank was a manufacturing defect who believed he had something to contribute beyond just being recycled. Together they saved two galaxies, and then the first one again.

Gradually, fame has changed them. Ratchet gradually turned into a soulless “cool guy that you can identify with.” Clank, we discover, was created by mysterious persons and has a mysterious destiny, and apparently this has drained his ability to be witty or interesting. By transforming them into characters that market research shows we can identify with, they’ve turned them into characters we can no longer identify with.

And usually the other characters are allowed to be entertaining; not so in this installment! Ratchet’s companion on the quest to find his father (yes I told you the plot sucked) is horribly overacted and cheesy. The plumber makes his mandatory appearance, but he’s all wrong. Clank’s unavoidable geeky little kid companion is… the mandatory little kid companion who makes humorously nerdy comments, that are of course not humorous unless you think nerds are stupid, or are under the age of 5 (in which case you probably won’t get the jokes anyway).

It’s partly salvaged by Quark’s buffoonery and the antics of the evil characters. Thank goodness for evil, and too bad we don’t get to spend more time with them. But nerd jokes abound… apparently being intelligent or goofy-looking is the highest form of comedy. Certainly it’s the best, nay, the only humor you’ll find in this installment of the game.

Where is Path Of Death? Where are the sewer crystals? (Sewer Crystals?!?) Why do we always seem to arrive just a little bit too late? Why do I keep seeing different combinations of the same 6 enemies?

(PS – “Grummelnet”? Come on, guys. Did you even play your own game? Don’t you remember how great it was to be back in a galaxy that has Gadgetron again? You’ve lost it.)