I grew up in a highly religious Christian community. About two towns away from me, there's a town that has a high population of gay people in the town. Me and my mom walk through that town a lot and she loves the town. I do, too, and both of us know some of the gay establishments just because my mom can tell the difference and she points it out to me, like one where each night the place is filled to the max with men dancing and the gay flag. Does that make it wrong? No, it's up to them. I am at least leaning towards bi. I had really bad experiences with the first two boys who I got really close to which I will not post here. Probably the reason I at least lean towards being bi. I haven't told my born-again dad because of fear of how he'd react. My mom is more like it's a choice in my life and I should decide not to be bi than be straight. It's up to her, but I support gay marriage and I support equal rights. Gay pride, I think considering the prejudices out there, yes, they should have it. I read articles about some beliefs of being gay. I've seen my state do everything in their power, including bring out of staters to vote down the appeal for gay marriage. And it kills me because they should have it. As for what they do, it's up to them. I've seen a male and female practically have sex in public, I've seen male/female couples making out in high school in front of the Vice Principal, and no finger raised against them. But the same guy ban a lesbian from kissing her girlfriend on the cheek in the cafeteria on threat of expulsion. Is that fair in my eyes? No, it should be equal rights. It kills me to see things as the way they are, and I hope it changes soon.
Oi... *facepalm* And you used to be my boss. I'm ashamed now. *jokingly* At the top of the banner it says "Notifications" After that, find "Friend Requests" Click on it and click on the check boxes of the avatars that you want to have as friends. It's pretty simple.
He might not, he was owner, don't know bout now. *shrugs and sips tea* Welcome back, DS, you should hang around for a while. Get to know the site a bit now. :P They added new shiny stuff.
yes, it's him. Spoke to him this afternoon. Welcome back ex-god. *bows and grovels* I'm not worthy to be in the same thread as you.
Final Fantasy XII: I was enthusiastic for a game that would fill me till XIII came out. Then I played it, a lot of people are saying XIII. But no, it was XII for me that killed the series, XIII just made it more dead for me. Very hard to get money, had to buy EVERYTHING to use it. The License points one at a time and the board drove me insane. Not including the shifting difficulty level. All flat out, no. Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire: I was close to Diamond/Pearl instead of R/S, but D/P I wasn't nearly as enthusiastic after R/S, so this is my choice. I looked forward to this game for ages, and then when I got it, I rapidly lost interest, very few pokemon, even less returning. Same storyline, which I know, is part of the whole series, but slightly repetitive. NO Team Rocket, and Magma and Aqua doesn't hold a candle at all to the original villains in the games. Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: After OOT, I was foaming at the mouth for another LOZ game. I played that game three times before starting to get bored and that was through the forever damned water temple. I was thrilled to see another installment. I was eh about the time, though I wondered how I was going to get through the water temple in three days. The rest sounded great, then I saw myself playing the same days over and over and over and I found myself bored by it all. The time I hated it, I still do, they made the temples too easy. With the slow-down song, I still found myself beating the temples with two days to spare. At the most, it took me two days to get through the water temple. There weren't enough temples, too many sidequests, the final boss wasn't nearly as good as Gannon. I could go on for hours.
Makes me wonder if Jack Thompson finally crawled out from under that rock he's been hiding und- *gets blasted back 90 feet by gamers screaming: "NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!"* ........ Ow.......... Anyway, to the topic on hand... I think no matter what the retailers do, parents are going to buy these games for their kids. I saw one parent buy his eight year old son Doom even after the retailers told them that it was too violent for the kid and the dad bought it anyway because he thought the kid should have the more the merrier with violence. Yes, he said that. No matter what you do, there's always going to be idiot parents out there. No matter what law is going to be passed, no matter how many stickers, no matter how many fines you add to the gaming and/or retail industry, the kids are going to get it. Whether it be some stupid parent, or some friend who is 17/18, it's going to happen. A friend of mine in Junior High got Mortal Kombat 2 and we played with the bloody fatalities and all. I'm a (mostly) stable adult who hasn't murdered anyone *yet* :P. The kids who play these games aren't going to turn into mass murderers, and if they do, they had issues to begin with. It's horrendously stupid, it was the same with music, tv, movies... The list goes on and on, it'll happen with the Internet at some point, too. If it hasn't, already. It's a part of life and sadly, you have to resign yourself to it. And God-forbid you have to wait a few years for you to reach the golden age of 17 for a few games. At 17, life gets a lot crappier, trust me. Be happy you're not 17 yet and you can get the game and have all the pressures of adulthood knocking on your door. And yes, I do believe in the rating, not only for GTA, but for some other games that do deserve the rating, and I never played war games, so I won't post my opinion on that. Enjoy the kid in you when you can, folks.
The water clones still make him hard as hell for me. He's pretty easy other than that, but the water clones and the ten second mark always kills me. I hate that fight more than Xaldin. Who I found one of the easiest fights, by the way.
I was taught both in my school. I didn't even realize it was a problem until I told a friend of mine years later. It always pissed me off because of the Eve story that is usually tied in. lol... Anyway, I don't believe in teaching creationism. I grew up in a very religious right-wing republican town, maybe the reason why it was taught in the first place after the law basically said you can't. It offends a lot of people's religions and it shouldn't be taught. About it, I'm evolution for a few reasons. One, the bible was written a hundred years after Jesus' death. Historical fact, people who have pitchforks and torches. Also, to point out another thing, only rich white people and monks could write back then, well and merchants. Not many woman, and probably not many others. With this, the bible is going to be written in the point of view of the person who wrote it and beliefs of that person will be in that book, not the person who said it, or Jesus words. I believe in god, I don't believe in religion and especially not creationism or the bible.
I'd probably go looking for others. If I couldn't, I'd probably try to live as long as possible with the food I could find.
You bring up a good point mixt. I think mostly today, *advanced apologies to whoever is a parent out there* they're very worried about their children. Children playing in the street could be kidnapped from a random person driving down the street or hit by a car, kids can get killed by walking down the street, or anything like the sort. I remember a few years ago a mother was shopping and her nine year old son begged her to let him go home on the subway by himself because he was bored. It was on the other side of New York. She gave him the money, money for a phone call, she said kids lose cell phones as the reason she didn't give him one, and a map. The kid came back thrilled and fine and her being an editor, she wrote an article about it. The reaction in my POV is like she took her kid and beat him to death in public and then wrote an article about it. She ended up on the news networks and other shows for letting him do so. They believed that she was an irresponsible parent for allowing her kid to do such a thing. Even now as a full adult, my mom throws a fit if I try and take a walk outside at night, and if there's gangs in my neighborhood, I haven't seen any. I think parents are getting to the point where they smother their kids to the point where they go crazy if there's nothing but zero tolerance at the schools, they will make it that way. Schools are also afraid of being sued. With the sue happy nation we have now, the schools are trying to cover their own rears and I think in at least a few cases, it doesn't matter who gets stepped on along the way. It's really sad if you think about it.
Hands Held High by Linkin Park
Sierra Online made a vast majority of adventure games. Googling it I'm sure will help. I never heard of both, but Sierra and LucasArts vied for the top maker of adventure games way back in the 1980's. I have a few ports for them, but are so glitched up it doesn't show half the quality of the game itself. I agree with you, Christhor, it won't happen anytime soon these games coming back. Every generation sadly enough for me sees the games being dumbed down more than giving the frustration level that early generation gamers enjoyed so much more. It's sad if you think about it.
Back in the 1990's, I was playing some computer games before MMORPG's came out and FPS's were still on Doom and other such games. I found a game called Myst at a computer store and considering I didn't have a computer at home back then, I went to a demo one and tried to play it. To my immense frustration and amazement, I couldn't get past the first room. Something about it made me completely and utterly stuck in that first room. A few weeks ago, a series of videos I watch brought up the genre of Myst. Point and click adventure games that make you want to pull your hair out. These games had little or no replay value due to the fact if you figured it out and (hopefully) remembered it the next time, it was a cakewalk. In exchange for this, the developers took the immense pleasure of making it so hard that you couldn't beat it without at least two months of gameplay through it. Games like: Gold Rush, Hero's Quest, Space Quest and other such games were the norm. They had funny scenes that made you want to come back for more punishment even as you die by just walking past the wrong end of a horse. *has had that happen several times, by the way* They bring you back to the olden days before advanced graphics and other such things became more important than a puzzle that got you stuck in the first room with no way out. Anyone else remember these games?
Lately there's been massive debate on the press about the schools policy on banning anything that seems to pose a danger to students and/or teachers. Toy guns, key chains, plastic knives, etc... Being a person in high school during Columbine, I understand where the policy is coming from. Even though not in the state that the tragedy happened, my school had bomb scares for at least a year afterward. Whether or not its tied to the tragedy, who knows. But plastic knives, I don't see a problem, a Muslim girl wearing her scarf as her religion dictates it, I don't see a problem. Real knives, guns and other such weapons, yes I do see as problems. I see why it would be a problem, but imagining most kids who stab anyone with a plastic knife in the eye, or a girl who kills someone with her scarf, now it's getting beyond anything I can imagine. Something in my POV needs to change about the laws. Thoughts?
KHI: Not much, really... Except the dragon. They had to add a freaking dragon that likes to cause massive shockwaves across the screen. That was not a fun battle. Riku/Ansem wasn't fun, either, cept I was using the wrong keyblade. - The mushrooms made me want to kill someone. So frigging hard, so fast changing their themes, so impossible to time right for me. No, just no. KH: CoM: I liked the card system, and actually I did pretty well through it with both Riku and Sora. Had some problems with Ansem, but managed to figure it out at the end. KHII: - Atlantica, after this game, I swore to myself that I'd never play another musical. My sense of rhythm is terrible, and with this, I can never time it right. It took me days to figure out each song. And just the whole thing, ugh... No... I liked it better when it was an actual level you fought heartless in. - The worlds, whose idea was it to make it completely based on the disney movie? I got bored by it so much that I started skipping scenes in at least two worlds. They dropped the ball on this one, though they did mostly make up for it in BBS. Next time, please make it more original for worlds, or at least just one trip to each world. - Reaction commands, I know, some people love it, I hated it. I still think its just a button masher that removes thinking for the player to no strategy to beat the boss. No more of them, for the love of God. KH 368/2: - Not much, overall, it was pretty good. Firstly, it was just the length, I understand where the developers were coming from. But there wasn't really much that happened during the days before the last 100. The last 100 are amazing, and I'd recommend on anyone playing the game for the last hundred. But next time, try to do something for the rest of it to keep it smoother. - Neverland, I hated this level. I hated it more than I hated any other world ever created, except maybe Atlantica in KHII. I loved it in KHI, I used to go to the clocktower to fly all around just for fun. In 368, the controls drove me beserk to the point where I wanted to murder someone. I never, ever, ever, fully got control of my character in Neverland due to the controls. KH: BBS: - "It's a Small World" rhythm and beat along with my terrible sense of both. Six hours to slog through beginner so I could advance Ven's story. Enough Said. - The bosses, for me, it was massively simple for me through the worlds until I got to the end boss for each one. Then I'd be fighting for my life while the boss will happily beat me into the ground. Some massive flux in there in the difficulty of level. - Aqua's story, *ducks as many random sharp objects are thrown at me from Aqua fans* I was thrilled when I found out a girl keyblade wielder was going to be starring. Then I played her side of the story, it was massively underdeveloped, massively underused, and except for a few things, she didn't actually have to be in at all. It killed me, and it was completely unnecessary to make Aqua as they did. I'm hoping in the future, they won't make the same mistake. As for above comment about bosses using elixers. Don't ever mention that again, ever. Something just died inside me when you said that. *do note I had the same problems with that battle*
This always reminds me of Big Bang Theory when Penny plays Halo and keeps killing Sheldon... I'd post the link if I didn't think the admins wouldn't like it, and no, it's not anything inappropriate cept the good ol' Halo violence that's commented on. <> Anyway... I have always played video games, I always will play video games. I don't play FPS mostly because me and aiming don't work well together. *died 8 times in the first level of DOC* And yes, I counted, and yes, I know I'm probably not the norm on it. But I've played since practically the Nintendo age started. Next to my bro playing the SMS all the way to the Wii solo. I think it's wrong for the guys who are playing to make such rude comments. But there's always going to be trolls like that. There's sadly, not much you can do about that. As I post this, a friend of mine is telling me about a squad of all girls who slaughtered fifty men while only lose 12 of their own on equal terms. If that doesn't say something, I don't know what does.
Excuse me while I die of laughter for five minutes. *leaves and intermission music plays* *comes back still holding sides* Thank you, anyway... Wow, this article for someone like myself who's usually very vocal has left me speechless. I just... Wow... The first thing that popped in my head, no offense to author of thread... Did anyone wonder before this that this would become a problem later on? I guess the boosters never twittered, IM'd, facebooked, and god-knows what else. Oh yeah, go to a forum. It'd be funny if they did and thought it meant their school. Isn't it like 2% of the population that doesn't use facebook? Geez... Anyway, wow... That's quite a dilemma, funny, but I understand why they'd be upset. My mom understands some leet or w/e speak and she doesn't even know how to turn on a computer. I guess they should remove it just for their dignity of the school. Again, apologies to the author if I offended you, considering it's your school.
It's ironic how we fought like cats and dogs in one topic and completely... Well, mostly agree on another. lol... I would consider Al Qaeda (has a feeling I butchered that up badly) is more like a cult than Muslim. Yes, they follow the Muslim beliefs, but actually in the Quaran. (again, another butchering) The Quaran is more focused on peace and loving all things more than most bibles. Sorry for my spelling, folks... Religion and spelling doesn't mix for me. I'm not saying the Middle East is all Al Qaeda, but I am saying that in other parts of the world, the Quaren is interpreted in a completely different fashion. The scarves that woman wear is even worn in my home state during the most freezing of times of winter. Does that make them extremist? No, also, from what I hear, the Burka's in at least some parts of the world are still worn outside of the middle east. Does that make those countries extreme religious people? No. On a side note, if anyone asked me to wear one of those Burka's, I'd introduce them to a hammer in their skull several times. But that's just me, in the middle east, a lot of woman wear at least scarves to Burka's depending on what country/in depth into religion they're in. I'm sure if the Evangelical's told my dad to wear and Burka and live in the Middle East on the streets as a beggar he might actually do it. I hope he wouldn't, but he might. There's personal choice in each person, and yes, I know some parts of the Middle East there was no choice. Again, there's a massive list of all the churches who wouldn't allow you any choice at such and such a time. But I want to finish this before 2011. But one example is the Middle Ages, or when America became a sanctuary for religions outside of Christian or Catholic beliefs, jail was the only other option you had during that time in Europe. But with Al Qaeda, there is a choice. You don't have to join if you don't want to. Most do because they either hate us or what the free world represents. It's wrong, but some of the things we have done to them is wrong too. Any cult is by choice, even to the point where you either die, end up penniless, or escape from it. Same with religion, though hopefully not as extreme. My mom met my dad in a cult. That's how I know much about it from her stories she told me to make sure I never was interested in joining one. She was saving her sister from it, by the way, she was at the most a very minor person in it. Anyway, sorry to go in a massive tangent, my prayers go to the family and her friends. Whatever she believed in, she had no right to die like she did.
Okay, I know I'm going to get flamed with this, but here goes: First of all, I do believe in god, I hate religion. For many reasons, a few will be posted here. Also, I go only by the news, because I haven't set foot in any religious establishment except once in Canada to admire its beauty since I found out my dad gave his life savings to the church as an Evangelical. Second, Christianity has at least two different branches, there might be more, probably so. Born again and Evangelical, there's probably hundreds more, but there are bad Christians out there. My dad joined one of the Evangelical churches and still goes there and probably dumps half of his paycheck there every week. There are good Christians who help families who are poor and there are people who kick out family members and disown them for being gay. If not, they bring them to rehab to get electric shock therapy. Yes, I have read an article about it. I'd post it, but I'd get banned at the least due to its very graphic descriptions. And no, I won't give it out if you ask me privately. There are supportive and loving Christians also. Thirdly, despite everything that is flying around Muslims. There are good muslims out there who treat their family like they should. My state, which is kinda weird if you think about it since its locality, has a lot of Muslim families mixed in. I've never talked to many of them due to most families coming after 2000 after I graduated, but I've seen them at markets and at the hospital to get check-ups and such and they seem perfectly happy. There's also ones who yes, stone to death a woman because she had something happen to her that was beyond her control. There are many types of religions out there, and many controversies tied with each one. The problem is, since 9/11 the press and the U.S. have been all over Muslims due to their religion and beliefs, sometimes its good, sometimes it's bad. If this was a child being sexually abused in church, we'd jump to conclusions about the Catholics being the ones behind it. It could be a cult, it could be a Christian church, it could be Mormon or any other religion out there. But we'd go instinctively to Catholics. And yes, my godparents are catholic. And they're some of the nicest people I know. It could be any church, it's partially what we've seen, its partially human nature. The point I'm getting, it could be any religion out there. We have no right to judge which one, we can post our thoughts, but not point fingers at a random religion. Also, I feel for the family, yes, the person was probably mentally unstable. It could be many reasons, it could've been an excuse or any other event that caused it. It reminds me of the tragedy of Columbine shooting where one of the shooters asked a girl if she believed in God and she said yes and he killed her. It's sad, and it happens way too often.
Kudos Cat for pointing out the same thing I was thinking. Yes, it was a great rescue, and yes, knowing Hollywood, there's going to be a book, a movie and a pig, cow and chicken made about this story. They're asking for 20 million to be on tv networks. My mom told me today when she heard about it. I do think it was a great story, but the press went nuts over it and so did everybody who wants to make money off it. Can they at least wait until they recover a little from it?
