Fear and loathing

Woke up this morning to news that the Bush campaign is reducing their ad buys in Oregon, which is basically admitting they cannot win the state. So that's good news.

Hunter S. Thompson tells it like it is:

Of course I will vote for John Kerry. I have known him for thirty years as a good man with a brave heart -- which is more than even the president's friends will tell you about George W. Bush, who is also an old acquaintance from the white-knuckle days of yesteryear. He is hated all over the world, including large parts of Texas, and he is taking us all down with him.

Bush is a natural-born loser with a filthy-rich daddy who pimped his son out to rich oil-mongers. He hates music, football and sex, in no particular order, and he is no fun at all.

I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000, but I will not make that mistake again. The joke is over for Nader. He was funny once, but now he belongs to the dead. There is nothing funny about helping George Bush win Florida again. Nader is a fool, and so is anybody who votes for him in November -- with the obvious exception of professional Republicans who have paid big money to turn poor Ralph into a world-famous Judas Goat.

Nader has become so desperate and crazed that he's stooped to paying homeless people to gather signatures to get him on the ballot. In Pennsylvania, the petitions he submitted contained tens of thousands of phony signatures, including Fred Flintstone, Mickey Mouse and John Kerry. A judge dumped Ralph from the ballot there, saying the forms were "rife with forgeries" and calling it "the most deceitful and fraudulent exercise ever perpetrated upon this court."

But they will keep his name on the ballot in the long-suffering Hurricane State, which is ruled by the President's younger brother, Jeb, who also wants to be the next President of the United States. In 2000, when they sent Jim Baker down to Florida, I knew it was all over. The fix was in. In that election, 97,488 people voted for Nader in Florida, and Gore lost the state by 537 votes. You don't have to be from Texas to understand the moral of that story. It's like being out-coached in the Super Bowl. There are no rules in the passing lane. Only losers play fair, and all winners have blood on their hands.

There's more, and you should read it.

Played a bunch of PS2 demos last night. Ghost in the Shell was kinda cool, but there's something about games based on that series that don't do much for me. Sure, it's fun to run around shooting stuff, but the levels were pretty basic and the enemies just sort of stand there and let you shoot them. On the other hand, you are in Section 9, so you're just so damn cool that of course they're going to be stunned.

Robotech: Invasion was somewhat disappointing. I wanted to like it, really I did. But take the most depressing Robotech series, add in a game which boils down to running in circles and firing a couple hundred rounds at giant Invid, sprinkle with some useless transformation (You can go from a guy on foot to... a guy... on a motorcycle! WOO!), and you're left with... not much.

On the other hand, there was the new Ratchet and Clank. I liked it, I liked it a lot. Though the demo for Up Your Arsenal didn't have very interactive environments like in Going Commando. I'm guessing it was mostly that it was an early build, though. I'm a huge fan of these games, so I'll be picking that up soon. (It comes out on Election Day, even, so maybe I'll play that instead of watching the returns. Oh. Wait. I think maybe I was going to go to a party that night. Not sure now. Odds are I'll be spending the day doing get out the vote.)

The last demo I played was Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. I totally loved the first Metal Gear Solid. Played the heck out of it. (It also helped that there was a Versus Books guide, makers of the best FF7 guide known to man. That gem can fetch over $100 on eBay if you have one and want to sell it. I won't be selling mine...) But MGS2 and now MGS3 have not been as much fun, in my mind. Perhaps it's the over-emphasis on style over gameplay. It could be the controls. In order to do some of the fun stuff, you have to have 3 buttons pressed simultaneously. And you have to do it all the time. Playing a game should not be like trying to Ctrl-Alt-Delete a stupid Windows box.