Timeline, or That Movie That Does not Understand Science.

So while I was at my uncles house they were all like let's watch a movie, an I was all like, I don't really watch movies, an they were all like, here's a good one, we'll watch Timeline. So I grabbed a beer and sat on the couch and we watched Timeline. I'm also having a hard time not putting Timeline in italics like TIMELINE because that's how my brain thinks it should look. I would warn you about spoilers, but there is really no point with this film.

This movie was about a company that ships things anywhere in the world with magic their teleporter. Except something goes wrong and it starts sending shit back in time. So then they send some people back in time because the butterfly effect hasn't been invented in this movie. But they only have a six hour window to go back in time, fuck around and come back. After that they are stuck in 14^th century France. During a battle. Because you know the magic teleporter necklaces that let you come back have a limited battery life or some shit.

Well of course like, half of them don't come back, or they do come back but the machine fucked up and they are like dead. Like really, really dead.

But then! Then they find this archaeologist dude who totally played that old guy from that one movie with the guns, who wants to go back in time because he does not understand science. So he does and then he gets captured by the invading English because he is a modern guy in glasses wandering around 14^th century France during a battle.

I can't stress the battle part enough.

So then his plucky son, Male Protagonist # 1 that I hated because he brought Female Protagonist #1 an already opened beer while she was working on a dig site because that's totally okay, so they could have a hilarious moment where she doesn't see him and knocks it over, and then she drinks it because accepting already open beers from your bosses son is the best idea ever that nothing could ever go wrong with that plan, find out Old Guy is missing when Male Protagonist #2 Old Guys assistant discovers a note that Old Guy wrote on some leather back in 14th century France knowing that they would find it at the dig site at the same location in modern day France.

Got that? No. Whatever, it's really not import other then Male Pro #1 and #2, a French dude, Female Pro #1 and their nerd friend get on a jet and go to corporate teleporter Co. Which of course tells them everything that's happened minus the covered up murders, because telling a bunch of people that have a good reason to hate you, no loyalty, and are possibly security risks that you have a freaking teleporter that you are hiding from the rest of the world can never go wrong at all.

So they get there and Teleporter Co. is all like, we need you to get the Old Guy back. So they agree because six hour window OMG! Excpet nerd boy says no fucking way don't you understand how this works? And I'm all I know nerd guy! They should ask for triple overtime pay! With hazard pay. But they don't cause they are retarded and they just get in the machine and go.

And then, well, the exact things you would expect to happen when you just up and go to 14^th century France during THE MIDDLE OF A BATTLE. Or course everyone spoke modern French and English because um, reverse butterfly effect?

Two extraneous characters that had no names die, but not before one them accidentally destroys the teleporter by teleporting back with a grenade like an idiot. Frenchy dies because he is not English. The rest of them almost die because they are sticking out like sore thumbs. Like you do.

But then! Male Protagonist #2 saves a looking girl who is now Female Protagonist # 2. Also he is the only one in this whole party besides Old Guy that 1: Knows the local English language and customs, 2: can fight with medieval weaponry and 3: is a badass.

Also the company guy sent back with them is being totally reasonable and they all hate him for it. Then eventually he gets stabbed for it. Then wacky time travel shit happens. Then everybody gets captured at least once by various people.

More butterfly effect shit goes down and then it's the big battle to take the English at the Castle. Where instead of how the battle was supposed to go, our intrepid dumbasses heroes:

Save Female Protagonist #2 who was supposed to be the turning point of the battle through her death.

Teach the English how to make everlasting Greek fire because why the fuck not?

Show the French a secret passage into the castle.

Oh and then they blow up pretty much the entire back half of the castle.

Because that won't change the future. Nope not at all. Then male Protagonist #2 stays with his Female Protagonist #2 in the past while the others go back to the freshly repaired teleporter because apparently things like health care and clean drinking water were not important to him.

So all four of them come back. From the past. Where they blew up a castle.

Then my uncle asked me how I liked the movie or something I had to explain that because they didn't take into account either the rotation of the earth, or it's movement through outer space, that everyone would have died in the vacuum of space when they teleported because it is stuck to only one location. Then I also said that I didn't like Male Protagonist #1 and then I asked Scott what his name was and he didn't know.

Then I had to explain that when you bring the Female lead an already open beer and tell her you like her and she gently lets you down because you are the bosses son and she loves and really wants to keep her job here, it is not okay to show her throwing herself at him for comfort at every available opportunity in 14^th Century France in the middle of a battle.

And my uncle gave me a weird look and then I looked at my aunt to back me up but she was asleep. And then Scott was all like it's late we better go and then we did but now I'm still like, not that's not okay and if going back in time to save your boss isn't enough to keep you on the payroll I don't think that dating his son should be within your dignity.

And Scott was all like, no she went to him for comfort and fell in love with him.

An I'm like, no that's not what happens. I don't tell men I'm not interested and then start throwing myself at them when I get scared. She was a strong women who stabbed a dude to death with a motherfucking arrow who clearly did not need a man to get her through that shit.

An then Scott was like I think you missed the point of the film.

An then I'm like, no, the point of the film is that no matter what you never want to get into a teleporter.

Which I believe is what we can all take away from this film.

TIMELINE. Sorry I'll stop now.

Wheeee. TIMELINE.

I'll stop.

So I Read the Hunger Games.

Since there was a big media shit storm, and young adults are losing their ever loving minds, I decided to read The Hunger Games. Since the last book I read in this genre that young adults were losing their ever loving minds for was Twilight, there was really no way this could be bad. (That was sarcasm.) I didn't really know what the book was even about until a heard a synopsis on the radio. Teenagers killing each other in a gladiator arena? That sounds awesome! Have you ever had to spend time with a teenager and haven't wanted to pit him or her against each other in combat after hearing them whine and complain about stupid bullshit?

I know right?

But I digress. Here's a standard spoiler alert, because I am going to tell you how this bitch ends. YAR HAR AHEAD CAPTAIN THAR BE SPOILERS!

I have to say the writing in this book was pretty good... for the first three pages. It had the grim spare quality that I have come to associate with set-in-the-future-dystopian-world. Then it dissolved into just spare. Let me put it this way. I can't picture what the main characters house looks like, or what their town looks like. I have no idea. But I know exactly what everyone was wearing at all times. Yeah. I had a great sense of the people, but no sense of how they fit into this world.

So mostly it was a sense of characters walking around big blank white spaces that would have elevators, trains, and hover cars in them.

So the story follows whiny teenage number one, um, what's her face. Katniss. That was it. Right from the bat I knew where this story was going. No mystery there. It was a little disappointing. I knew she was going to get picked for gladiator time, and I knew she was going to win. How? Because all the main characters in the entire goddamned book tell her she is going to win. And she wins. But there is a least a twist, in that her companion, whiny teenager number two, ah, er That Guy, falls in love with her during gladiator time. Which is pretty awesome multitasking if you ask me.

Except she does not love him back.

Which is awesome.

The ending, or I should say, the lead on into the next book was pretty good. But here's what really got me, the book in set in Appalachia. You know, the place where I live. So that was interesting enough to keep me reading. Although yet, again, she doesn't describe it very well.

So I dunno. I would recommended this to a young adult before their parents figure out that it's about government sponsored gladiator combat? Probably. For that age group I think this would be a fine read. For adults? I don't resent the seven bucks I spent on this book, so take that as you will. But if you love teenager on teenager combat- that's not the porno kind- then this book is for you.

If on the off chance you were reading this to see if the book was inappropriate for your child, I would have to tell you that it's probably fine. Except for that bit where Side Character gets stabbed in the stomach, or the bit where they turn all the dead competitors into mutant werewolf things by stealing their eyeballs and then setting them loose at the last three survivors, or the bit where the mutant wasps sting everybody and they all have horrible trippy hallucinations from the poison that makes them relive terrible memories from their past and think that the dead bodies are crawling with horrible green slime. Other then that it's totally fine.

Totally.

You should read it.

Oblivion: The Elder Scrolls IV Sucks Donkey Balls.

I got this game for free, thank the sweet lord.

I spent more time stuck in corners, the floor, or redoing shit because auto saving when I complete something is apparently very hard for it to do. In fact I developed this theory that every time Oblivion auto saved it was extremely painful for it and therefore it kept that to a minimum.

The other problem, and oh boy, there were problems, was that I had no idea what was going on. I have never played any of the games in this series before, so I had no idea what the fuck was happening half the time. What the fuck spell was that thing shooting at me? Nobody knows? I have to fight the terrible menu system and fish through four pages of shit where my map should be to find out? Wonderful!

What's going on? How can the city watch materialize through a locked door into the basement with me, and yell at me for taking a book when I am surrounded by skulls and pentagrams and dirt encrusted shovels? I think I spent more time wondering what the hell was going on then I spent excited about what I was doing.

Why do the NPC's not move there heads and bodies at all when they are talking to me? Oh they move there head slightly, but have you ever had a conversation with someone who was wearing an invisible neck brace? Right. Now imagine talking to a whole world of people who are wearing invisible neck braces. It gets kinda downright creepy after a while. Like I landed in the kingdom that was attacked by a guild of angry chiropractors who were hell bent on their revenge.*

The thing that really tipped me over the edge though, the thing that made me want to put my fist through the game disk, was the horse. First off all the horses looked weirdly like what a ten year old girl would draw if you asked her to draw you her dream horse. Seriously I saw a purple horse. A motherfucking purple horse. Riding the horse was a exercise in sadness. Steering the horse, was well, interesting. Also, the horse had only one speed, as near as I could figure out. That speed was slow. Forget about galloping around on a majestic steed, it was more like lumbering around on some sort of alien that was wearing a horse skin to fool the humans, Men in Black style.

To add insult to the many horse related injury's I sustained was the fact that I could not fight from horse back. At all. Not even shooting off some spells. So that meant every time I was attacked by something, and there was a whole shit ton of somethings, I had two options: One try to out run the problem on my alien skin horse, or two, get off the horse and kill the thing.

Which is how I ended up fighting a wolf at the bottom of a pond.

I don't think I can make myself play this game anymore. It is painfully obvious that this was a PC game that they smashed into working on a console.** I think I am going to put in a new game, and stop ranting to the Internet about a game that came out in 2006, because I am a mature adult like that. Yeah. Shut up.

* I think if someone hasn't made this game, they damn well should.

** This probably made an awesome PC game, but not a PS3 game. My map has a god damned mouse pointer on it. Why? Why the fuck? Oh never mind.

The Walking Dead TV Show: A Review.

I know what you're thinking. In answer, no I still don't have TV, Scott purchased the the first season.

Now, I have a friend who talked very highly of the comic so when I saw Scott pop the DVD into the computer I sat down to watch it with him, because zombies. Eating people. What's not to love?

In a nutshell: It sucked.

Really. Read on to learn how badly.

(YAR HAR CAPTAIN, THERE BE SPOILERS AHEAD!)

Okay, I didn't bother to learn any of the characters names, so I will call the main character, Bad Decision Bob.

Bad Decision Bob, is a cop, who gets shot while responding to a your typical criminal shenanigans. He ends up in the hospital, where his partner, who I shall be referring to as Sensible Steve, comes to visit him.

Bad Decision Bob wakes up in the hospital, disoriented. He quickly realizes something is wrong, since there were more mangled corpses in the hallways then is normal for a hospital. Also, subtly, there is a massive double metal door that is chained closed with the words 'DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT OPENING THIS DOOR' written on it in what looks like blood. Also zombies are on the other side moaning, and reaching their hands though the crack.

What does Bad Decision Bob do?

If you answered 'he staggers out of the hospital in his underwear with out even so much as a god damned jacket' you'd be right.

Fast forward a bit and we learn that Sensible Steve has already organized a camp of survivors, saved Bad Decision Bob's wife (and by saved, I meant with his penis), and son, and is already making elaborate raids into the city for supplies.

At this point in the story Bad Decision Bob has obtained a horse, proceeded to ride it smack into the middle of Atlanta, and get it devoured by zombies. He flees the hoard and has to crawl under a tank for safety. Before blowing his own head off so as not to become undead, he has an epiphany and crawls up though the bottom hatch of the tank. Loosing all his guns, food, ammo, and clothing in the process.

If you had just escaped zombies, and had crawled into a tank, what would you do?

If you answered: 'try to start the tank” congratulations you are smarter then Bad Decision Bob.

At no point in this series did I want Bad Decision Bob to survive. His escapes became so improbable that I began to feel like the producers were just fucking with me. If you could have a training manual for how to survive the zombie apocalypse in the walking dead universe, it would just feature a picture of Bad Decision Bob with a red line though it and the words 'avoid at all costs.'

Bad Decision Bob makes decisions like acting sensibly murdered his parents.

I didn't not watch anymore beyond that episode, based on the fact the precious moments of my life were slipping away, and I was never going to get them back. Had I watched more, there is doubt in my mind that Sensible Steve was quietly rebuilding society, possibly using solar panels and lots of chain link fencing, while Bad Decision Bob was probably trying to figure out which way his pants went on.

Here's a hint buddy, the zipper goes in the front.