This week I tried Soy Milk. I was shopping and say that the instructions on the carton read “Shake Well and Buy Often!” I figured that making such a blatant command was such a ballsy move that I’d reward them by giving them a shot. Of the options the store had (plain, unsweetened, vanilla) I decided to go with plain (though I was confused by the idea that “plain” and “unsweetened” wouldn’t be the same thing, but I didn’t dwell on it). Well, anyway, I tried it both as a straight-from-the-carton beverage and as a poured-on-Alphabits thing. My findings indicate that I don’t plan to buy it again any time soon. I can’t say it disgusted me or anything, it was passable and if that was all I had to drink I’d get by, but it isn’t what I was used to. I don’t expect it makes sense to anyone but myself, but I found it was too “high-pitched” (or whatever the taste equivalent of that would be) for my liking. I don’t remember what brand it was, but I’m prepared to generalize and say that they’re all the same. I give it Three out of Six Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System Cake.

Also this week, with Wade being back in town for the briefest of times, I got a chance to Zombies!!! The two of us played, joined by Marq. Now it’s fair to say that I have a pretty pro-zombie attitude. I’m pretty much right in this game’s target audience. But that doesn’t mean I can’t tell something is crap even when it has zombies in it. That said, this is not crap. I very much enjoyed this game. Wade got the rules out relatively succinctly for such a complex game, so it isn’t too confusing so long as you’ve got someone who knows what they’re doing (and it probably isn’t so bad for people who can, y’know, figure things out by reading instructions, but in that category I am not). The game went pretty quick, it felt, and the final run for the winning spot had Wade look like he had it in the bag, only to wind up with me then coming even closer (one move away if that zombie dog hadn’t got me!) and then Marq finally closed in and won. The rapid turnover at the end really made it quite fun. Five out of Six Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System Cake.

So I bought Strong Bad’s Cool Game For Attractive People. Quite good. Quite good. I had played the first Sam and Max game made by the same company, but not the others, but this I went and ordered a season pass for. I truly miss adventure gaming. The days of Sierra’s various Quest games passed far too soon.

While I was ordering from the Telltale Games site I figured that it wouldn’t hurt to also order a shirt with Max, of Sam and Max on it. Unfortunately, instead of ordering a Men’s XL, I ordered a small girl’s shirt. Between this and my recent overly-shiny Ghostbusters shirt, what the chunks is my Internet Shirt Ordering Subconscious trying to tell me?

Life is like pistachio nut where you open the shell and it turns out to be empty and since you weren’t paying attention (you were watching Colbert or something) you can’t tell if you somehow just had an empty shell or maybe you dropped the nut as you were opening it. So you’re looking around on your lap but you don’t see anything and you can’t see anything on the floor and in the end you have no answers so you just have to move onto the next pistachio and hope that it’ll all work itself out.

Now don’t get me wrong, I find the Internet Movie Database extremely useful, as any Internet user is likely to. I mean sure, the comments on any given page are forty-five percent idiotic whining and forty-five percent shallow nitpicking, but I’m able to ignore all that and use it to learn about movies and stuff.

The reason I’m currently calling it an idiot is I’ve started to notice the “Plot Keywords” section. It’s probably always been there, but I only noticed it within the last couple months. At first glance it makes sense to have keywords that sum up significant things in the movie so someone who is looking for say, Viet Nam films is gonna be able to sift through them.

But look at some of the things that turn up in the Keywords! I’ll go to the Dark Knight page to get examples. There’s the ones that make sense, of course: “Vigilante”, “Dark Hero” and “Superhero” are all well and good. But then there’s the truly mundane: “Funeral”, “Gun”, “Bruise”, “Butler”, “Billiards” and “Applause” are all in there.. And we also have the truly inane: “Altered Version Of Studio Logo”, “Heavy Rubber”, “Number In Character’s Name”, “Title Spoken By Character ” and “Punched In The Face” leave me questioning the point altogether.

My main concern here is that these things rarely fit my definition of PLOT keywords. Seriously, if there is anyone who likes “Billiards” enough that they’re looking up movies about it, they’re going to be disappointed by the Dark Knight.

Also, there was a character with a number in his name?

I ordered a bunch of t-shirts a few weeks back and finally got them. The one with the Ghostbuster’s logo is especially shiny and glittery. I assume that means I accidentally ordered a girl’s shirt, but… still… it’s Ghostbusters. And being perfectly comfortable with my sexuality, I’m not going to give up having a Ghostbusters shirt just because of stereotypes against shiny clothing. So there.

And for the record, I’ve eaten like three tubs of Rocky Road ice cream this week to make up for not getting one when I wanted it that time. Oh yes, I can set goals and accomplish them. Threefold.

Little else to report at this time.