Poe-Tay-Toe or Poe-Tat-Toe? I guess we'll never know

Well right this minute I should be studying for my upcoming physics final which essentially decides my grade for the entire class. Lame. Well not that lame, rather, LAME!!! Yet rather, my mind is focused on vegetables rather than fundamental wavelengths and flow rates. Well, one vegetable in particular, Potatoes. These tasty little morsels are interesting to me for more than one reason. Not only have they been a history altering source of food, but to me, ones choice in how their potato is prepared says volumes about where they are in their life.



To begin with you have mashed potatoes, these come in two varieties however only one will be discussed here. The “instant” variety is the choice of children. One of the leading reasons for this is that its instant, providing a quick fix for kids of any age and mothers with kids of any age. Boil water, add flakes, and you’ve got something the kids can devour as “sustenance,” between meals. Aside from the instant aspect of this meal is the fact that mashed potatoes are easy to eat. When you’ve barely mastered the fine art of swallowing, mush is about as easy as it gets. After having my wisdom teeth out I found mashed tatters to be a virtual gift from god. (It really is a fine art; everyone still gags from time to time; showing that, swallowing is also an imperfect art.)



Next are tatter tots. These are representative of everyone’s formative preteen and early teenage years. Tatter tots are almost always processed and marginalized amongst the members of potato family. How better to represent the angst of those wondrous years of awkwardness than manufactured faux potato bits. Also it goes with every kind of condiment.



French fries are the transitionary category representing those years when one must determine who and what they’ll be. French Fries don’t work with everything the way that tatter tots do. They instead feel slightly more refined. French fries come in different shapes, sizes, and baking directions. For this reason they represent the gradual diversification of individuals through college and work and life. But best of all, they go good with fry sauce. I likes fry sauce.



The most dignified and regal of potatoes, the baked potato. This potato knows exactly who it is and what it wants to be. It only needs simple condiments to reach true deliciousity. Butter, always. Sour cream, depends on the day. Salt, well it goes with the butter. The true beauty of the baked potato is that it works as the base of and anchor of so many good meals. One must love the simplicity of the baked spud. The other reason why the baked potato works as the adult is because it can regress to mashed status; yet still maintains a superior succulence to the instant variety.



The only potato that could possibly represent old age are has browns. Worn down and wrinkly, more often than not over cooked, especially when ordered from a restaurant, it just screams with the cynicism that over takes so many seniors.

Heroes

I figure that if I’m going to try to post or blog I might at well do it on something that I enjoy thinking or talking about. So odds are this will be an on going series. Odds are also that it will get more attention than my other writing ideas.

So with out more ado, here we go:

Spider-Man


I think that there is a reason why people continue to read about this guy even when his most recent storyline sucked pretty hard. The “Back in Black” storyline was okay, and Civil war focused on Spider-man as one of its central characters. There’s a very good reason for this, Peter Parker excels as a character because he’s known to fail as a hero. He fails a human too. It’s these failures that have come to define the character. From the very beginning, Pete’s inability to be the man he knows he should acts as a catalyst for the events that shape him as a superhero.

Yet most importantly, and as the tragic hero he so desperately tries to be, the web head continues to save the people that alternatively love him and hate him. Its his failures that continue to drive Parker on ward. Every time Peter loses someone he cares about it, the character faces it as an individual and three dimensional person, not the two dimensional construct he is. Others characters through out the marvel universe find their own ways of dealing with the pain of loss, but Spidey’s is often the most convincing. Maybe this is because his character is steeped in lost.

Another reason for Spider-Man’s prolonged success is that in a realm of intense science fiction and far flung circumstances, Peter is still the everyman. Even in his “civilian” life the web head chose to enter the field of teaching. The character isn’t magical, or the result of military experimentation. He’s a victim. Pete’s motivation at its truest and most innate form originates in his guilt. Guilt from his failure to save Ben, Gwen, and everyone else who’s had to suffer due to his inabilities. I’ve got to believe that everyone has felt these feelings before.

Spiderman is lovable because he’s the underdog we all wish we could be, the kind that succeeds. He continues to get back up when it all comes crashing down. From under a pile of his own emotional baggage, the damages of the world around him, and the consequences of his failures Peter continues to struggle towards redemption that only he can grant himself.

Super Smash Brothers Brawl

This is the game I stayed up until midnight for. So far I’ve got to believe it was worth it.

To begin with I’ve been playing these games from back in the days of tri-pronged controllers. Man, I miss N64. Super Smash Brothers has always been a game franchise that was interesting to me. As an adolescent it was all that I could hope for. Pikachu electrocuting Samus. Mario throwing fireballs in 64 bit glory at Nintendo characters he would otherwise never encounter, it’s a beautiful thing.

The next installment, Super Smash Brothers Melee, diversified the number of situations that could be created. Now Donkey Kong could through Gannon around like a rag doll. The graphics also increased spectacularly over the old choppy N64 graphics. Melee culminated into one of, if not the, best games for Gamecube. This isn’t saying a whole lot, as anyone who own a Gamecube can attest to, but I’ve got to believe that this game would have thrived no matter the console it was placed on.

So, now we reach spectacle, the main event, the show stopper, the purpose of this article: Super Smash Brothers Brawl. While many of the characters remain unchanged I find this game to be up to the standards of its predecessors and some of the new features actually add a greater degree of strategy. The most prominent addition to previous installments is online play. While I’ve actually yet to engage in this myself, I’ve heard that it works with relative ease and precision. Some of the more complex features, like the ability to face random opponents, aren’t functioning at optimum capacity yet, the ability to “Brawl” friends is up and running, which is more important to me. The next thing that I found to be new, aside from characters, was the brokenness that is the final smash. While that last statement makes me feel substantially more dorky I it’s incredibly true. Connecting with these uber attacks pretty much ensures a KO.

Now, here comes my one gripe with the series. The stupidity that is clone characters. As of the release of Super Smash Brothers Brawl, there are now three characters that play the same, with only minimal changes. These characters are Fox, Falco, and Wolf. I would like to pretend that this is the only time it occurs but sadly it isn’t. Gannon and Captain have the exact same move set with the only difference being that Gannon is slower but stronger. Way too often this happens. I’m glad that most of the new characters don’t fall into this category, but even the few that do stick in my teeth and prevent this game from attaining the glory its capable of.

To conclude I should say that Super Smash Brothers Brawl is easily the best fighting game on the Wii console. It is easy to pick up and like any good game it takes seconds to learn but much longer to master. Even with the new control scheme SSBB plays excellently.

P.S. - On an unrelated side note, smacking your knee on a safe absolutely sucks, absolutely.

Gotta Start Somewhere

So I figure I’ve had this blog for about a week at least now and I haven’t posted anything yet, I should probably do something about this. Well here goes.
Amongst other things lately, like all college kids I’ve been lost in thought about what to do with my life. It’s even more fun because I’m a senior at the age of eighteen. While this might sound like brag, and to some extent it is, it puts me in an awkward position at my university. I go to a school that is the second choice for many, which fits into my personality just fine, but puts me in classes where I sleep through lecture and score in the top ten percent on every test. Once again brag, but accurate if unfortunate. I miss the fun challenges and diversity of classes that I took while in high school.
Another thing that I miss is being able to do nice things easily with little to no accountability. I was on a thing called social committee in my Senior English class in high school. This was awesome because it allowed me to do fun things for people like celebrate their birthdays or make sure that they got things on Valentines Day. This might not sound like a lot but it was engaging and I know it made other people at least look forward to school if not enjoy the classes more. This was really one of the more enjoyable aspects of my senior year.
So I guess the connecting line here would be the lack of connection I feel now in my senior year of college as compared to my senior year of high school. It’s really caused a jump in my apathy levels. If only they could find a cure for apathy; would anyone care?
I’m sure I’ll get some more posts up here eventually, but for now this can start it, and hopefully they’ll be more enthusiastic or uplifting at the least.