The Unthinkable- Hiatus until 12/16

All right, I'm going to level with you. I really wanted to keep the schedule I set in the last post. But then I got sick and have been trying to convince myself that I would not be Patient Zero in the zombie apocalypse ever since. The good news is that today I am certain that I am a human and will not be the first of the living dead. The bad news is that humans have to worry about grad school and I have several major things to take care of over the next 12 days. Luckily, we're in a lull at work so I should be able to make up time there. Oh wait, I'm lying. We're about to enter the second busiest time of year for the world of Residential Life.

So here's the deal. I have at least 20 pages of writing to do over the next 2 weeks and 3 finals to study for on top of that in addition to my other responsibilities. So I'm putting the blog on break until the 16th, when the world finally slows down. So I need to be producing about 6,000 words over the next twelve days plus studying plus two presentations (which are literally no sweat for me). It's not impossible, but I also know I won't be able to put the normal effort I like to put into my blogs. Also, as you might have inferred, while 6,000 words is the bare minimum of what my professors ask of me, I will more than likely exceed that total which will be great for my grade and bad for my spare time.

I offer you a promise: come December 16th, there will be new content and new postings every day from then until the end of the world. Or December 22nd, which ever one comes first.

Status Update

So, I've not posted on here in nearly a week, I figured I could at least keep everyone informed as to what's up.

Assassin's Creed 3- Beat. I feel great personal shame in having beaten this game so quickly. I swear, I actually do have a life.
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood Review- Not started
Iron Dirigible Update- Started, but will have to be scrapped. It was a mid-season retrospective but then games happened and changed all of it. I don't know what I'll do.
Health Care Take Home Test- Almost finished. It just enervates me.
Last Night's Election- You can count the number of Election 2012 posts I've made on one hand. Let's keep it that way.

Rock Superstardom

I'm just letting you all know that I've decided to pursue my dream of being a rock n roll legend. Guitar Hero and Rock Band 2 have convinced me of my supernatural guitar playing prowess but I needed a band name, some hit singles and a truly great album to launch the dream. Well, the wait is over!

I present to you: "Horses & Bayonets" the hit single from the album "Binders of Women" from the newest rock n roll band: Pioneers of Outsourcing!!!!!

It'll be insaaaaaaaaaaaane!!!!!!

Making the Most of Tragedy

I've spent the last few posts talking about fantasy football. It's easy to get wrapped up in the opiate of sports and humiliating the Bean on so many levels. I could regale you with stories of how the Barry family is solely responsible for 2/3rds of all Bean family defeats this year. But I digress. The thing is, it's easy to forget how fragile everything is. Last night, tragically, in the blink of an eye, my The Walking Dead save file died. Three and one quarter episodes worth of progress gone in an instant.

This painting is a metaphor of what happened last night. The zombie is my save file, the hammer is my Xbox 360, and I am the little girl. I guess Lee Everett (the dude swinging the hammer and the player character) would be like fate or something? I don't know, I'm getting too deep again!

 The silver lining in all this is that, as a part of getting psyched for Season 3 of the TV Show and because I really wanted to play Episode 4 last night, I will be replaying the whole thing starting tonight. I've wanted to talk about the series for a long time now, but I never seemed to get the timing right. But this time, I will blog about the whole shooting match as it goes down! Get psyched for the return of the walkers, people!

No, that's the return of the White Walkers. But both involve large groups of the shambling dead, so we'll call it even.

Patent Pending

So tonight, a discussion with some of my Econ friends led me to the decision to invent a new type of restaurant genre: Dude Food. Dude Food is primarily burgers, wings, and pizza. I may yet open a restaurant called Dude Food which specializes in those three things. There could even be a lucrative sponsorship deal: The English Muffin Power Hour, brought to you by Dude Food.

In other news, I am now the #7 suggestion when you type in "English Muffin" on Google. This is awesome!

And your Top 5 Squadmates Are...

Coming tomorrow night! Ironically, I spent the night talking about Mass Effect and watching documentaries on Mass Effect rather than writing a blog post about Mass Effect. It's far too late to get the full final five up tonight (which I estimate will be at least 3,000 words) and I need to go into detail because now my picks are getting controversial, as many of my close friends left one of my Top Five to die. But I need to post something, or else the Mass Effect momentum will be lost in the dark space between mass relays. So I will leave you with Martin Sheen explaining the story.




And now, Shepard fights some space zombies.

The Mass Effect Fortnight

First and foremost, I'd like to say that I am aware every single word in the title discourages readership from the fine honeys. But for Mass Effect, it's worth it. Before I continue, I must point the fine honey demographic to their sanctuary poem. Are all the fine honeys gone now? Good. Those honeys that remain have proven their status as ultra fine honeys and should be commended by their peers.

This was on Page 1 of the Google Image search for "Fine Honeys". I'm just as confused as you!

Mass Effect 3 is coming out in just two weeks and I couldn't be more excited. I've been looking forward to this release ever since I completed Mass Effect 1 all the way back in 2007, when the economy was still booming and I believed you just needed a bachelor's degree to get a decent full time job. Mass Effect the franchise has always had the best combination of setting, story, game play and player agency of any franchise out there. Mass Effect 3 is in the unique position to have the best, most widespread game play (being the first game in the series to offer multiplayer) and offer the best story (as the long built up to third and concluding part of the story, Return of the King style). While I could go on for a while, I have a test to study for tomorrow and I have, like, five goblins who need some industrial poisoning. So I leave you with this excellent article on Mass Effect's importance to Science Fiction.

I'll see you tomorrow when the Mass Effect Fortnight continues with the Top 16 Squad Members in Mass Effect 1&2. Why 16? Because there are only 16 squad members in the game. If I did a Top 5, then it'd really just be a Top 3 plus Wrex and Garrus. And if I'm gonna go to the trouble of a Top 10, I might as well take a little extra time and do the last 6 people.

Fall to Pieces

From the get go, let me be clear, this is not a normal English Muffin Power Hour update. I know there isn't a "normal" EMPH update by the regular definition, but normally they're lengthy, funny, and generally impersonal. I don't normally like writing about myself, because it comes off as self-absorbed and I prefer writing about things that are interesting. I also avoid writing about things which are melancholy because there's enough suckiness in the world today without me contributing.

The net effect of those beliefs is that when I feel sad, I don't blog. In fact, almost every lengthy stretch of time without blogging can be attributed to something bad happening to me. I won't go into detail about what's happening, but life has been very rough for me lately in pretty much every way. The kicker is that, without a lot of imagination, life could be a lot better than its ever been for me right now. I could go into detail, but I'm in no way comfortable with that. I will not be beaten down by these times, I promise you that.

The good news is I have a lot of real good ideas for updates. I know I've fallen behind on Iron Dirigible updates, but both of those will be written in the next 48 hours. I even have a tentative daily update schedule filled with subjects that I could write 500 words about at the drop of a hat. I mean, I'm not sure if I can keep up with such a schedule, but having ideas drafted out ahead of schedule will certainly help.

Well, I don't want to reveal my crazy schedule yet, and I can't come up with a funny conclusion. Instead, I leave you with one of my favorite songs made in the last ten years.

The Classiest T-Shirt

Back when the blogathon first began, there was a series of natural disasters which struck the South. Dozens of people were killed and thousands of lives were changed by the tornadoes. In Ancient Greece, the only way you could respond to a tragedy of this magnitude was to offer a sacrifice to Zeus, Poseidon, or possibly Boreas and hope that the oracle saw good things coming your way. But luckily, in the modern age, you can buy a classy t-shirt instead. They are only $20 and the proceeds all go to the Red Cross.

Now for the cool part: this t-shirt (and t-shirt website) was designed by my friend and colleague Joanna Jones (whom I shall henceforth refer to as the JoBot). Now, while I was putting one foot in front of the other for two and a half hours last weekend, the JoBot was putting together an entire relief effort. They even have classy facebook badges and ways to pretty up your twitter (if only I tweeted). It blows my mind that I have friends who can do stuff like that.

Now, I'm going to go way out of my element and actually comment on fashion. This is for you, sassy fine readers. This is a classy t-shirt. It doesn't try to grad your attention with any flashy logos, crazy colors, or dudes riding a dinosaur (always a sign of high fashion), it just stands there and acts awesome. It's a nice basic color that would be real easy to accessorize to (if you are a fine honey) and won't show pizza grease that badly (if you are a dude). The simple logo means that the t-shirt can make a graceful transition to quilt form once you get tired of wearing it. Most importantly, the simple design means that less relief money is spent manufacturing the t-shirt and more money makes it to the hands of the Red Cross. Truly, this is the tuxedo/black dress of charity t-shirts.

On an unrelated note, I've spent an unusual amount of time lately talking about greater causes and charitable work. If this keeps up, people might start thinking I am a mature and socially responsible individual. I'd better start talking about video games and/or funny internet videos before I develop a reputation.