The Billionty-Oneth Geek: Older Than 8 Since 1991

LEFT FO' DEAD!!! TWO!!! Released in the Fall of 2009, Left 4 Dead 2 is the sequel to the 2008 first person shooter hit. Once again, you and a band of unlikely new heroes join together in escaping the zombie apocalypse. This time, instead of trying to escape the metropolis in Pennsylvania, your team finds itself trying leave the city of New Orleans. This heart pounding adventure will bring you across cities, swamps, a shopping mall, and a creepy carnival just to name a few. My exposure to the first Left 4 Dead game was at a minimum so I can't really make a proper comparison, but from what I hear, they made a lot of improvements in the year between the two game releases. One such improvement was the addition of melee weapons which has to be one of my favourite features about the game. Sure it's fun shooting zombies with your rifle, but nothing is grittier than standing toe to toe with a zombie and whacking it in the face with an axe or a guitar. The unsung heroes. So while...

I try my best to keep this site from being too diary or journal-like, but today I'm going to be intentional in breaking those walls down. This weekend was an awesome weekend and I feel like it'd be a loss if I didn't describe it. But hey, I'm a geek, so I'm going to relate this to geekdom first of all. As you may know, I love gaming (stop the press!). But even before that, I'd say first and foremost, I love story and through gaming I'm allowed to be whisked away on adventures and fantastical journeys. Which a lot of the time, is why I like single player games more than competitive multiplayer. But there is a caveat to that statement. You see, the sub-genre or option that I enjoy even more than a single player story game is a game that has a co-op campaign. Being allowed to go on an adventure with my friends trumps going on an adventure by myself, which is why I love co-op more than competitive multiplayer — I'd rather play alongside friends than agains...

"A SyFy Original Movie". That should have been the tip off. This was a bad movie and again I fell for it when I saw the title. Mongolian Death Worm . I have to watch it, I thought to myself. I can't even find any images or posters of this movie, it's at that sort of level. The movie takes place in Mongolia and follows a treasure seeker named Daniel who is trying to uncover the lost treasures of one Ghengis Khan. According to local folklore, giant mythical death worms guard Khan's buried goods. Meanwhile, an American oil drilling company has set up shop in the desserts of Mongolia, exploiting the land for the oil. Unfortunately their drilling awakens the supposed legendary worms and they come to the surface hungry... hungry for human flesh. First of all, what's funny about this movie is that it takes place in Mongolia. Normally this wouldn't be funny at all, but watching this movie, you cannot distinguish between Mongolia and the rural areas of Mid-We...

Air is a comic book series created by writer G. Willow Wilson, published by Vertigo Comics. I don't know how Vertigo does it, but they continually produce riveting titles. It's rare that I've been disappointed by this company, and Air , thankfully, continues the winning streak. Air tells the story of an acrophobic flight attendant named Blythe who is whisked away on a grand adventure. On a routine trip, she is tricked by a group called the Etesian Front into transporting terrorist plans as she flies from country to country. She meets a mysterious man on a flight named Zayn, an Interpol agent in disguise, and together they discover that the Etesians are the real terrorist. As the story continues, Blythe and her friends traverse across different lands trying to stop the Etesians and their nefarious plans. Sounds normal right? It's not so simple though as I'm trying to keep the spoilerish things out of this review. The story is wonderfully put together with the endi...

I think it was my friend Leslie who dubbed it "The 26 Days of Music", I liked it and went with it. Although in reality, it was more than 26 days as I took weekends off to not listen to music at all. So one late night in May, I was looking through my iTunes library and saw that I had so much music with zero plays on them. On the whim, I thought up of an experiment: everyday I would only be allowed to listen to music by artists that began with a certain letter. I started with the letter 'A' and progressed alphabetically forward everyday. I updated my Facebook each day and asked friends to recommend me what bands they would listen to based on that day's letter. A flood of recommendations ensued. Because I decided to do this on a whim, I had no foresight into what would happen. Needless to say, it bloomed into something that I did not expect. It was an interestingly experience in that I learned a lot about my friends and myself. From my friends, I learned what typ...

Earlier last week I was browsing around on IMDB as I normally do and was looking up the movie Stigmata — a movie that I hadn't seen in a long time but enjoyed when I was a teen. I looked up its director, Rupert Wainwright, as I wasn't familiar with any of his works. Well, it turns out that he hasn't done too much since then but one of his upcoming movies is a movie called Waco due next year. I remember the Waco incident very faintly. I think I was only 8 or 9 years old at the time, but I remember seeing pictures of the big fire on newspaper covers everywhere. It caught me and my brother's attention as it graced the covers of those "Globe News" fake newspapers (you know, the ones at your grocery store that are filled with ridiculous stories like UFO's, big foot, and Elvis sightings?). I remember there was one particular cover story that claimed that the leader of the Waco incident, David Koresh, was in fact Satan himself. I don't know why those ne...

It was quite a turbulent but eventful week this last week, filled with high highs and low lows. As I mentioned in the previous posting, my small group at FT pulled off our third coffeehouse event with amazing results. I felt so elated at the end of the night, with the feeling that it was a success. On the flipside, that same night when I got home, I received a rejection from an interview I had recently and felt majorly down about. I've received many rejections in the past and moved on after each one, but for whatever reason, I felt overwhelmingly disappointed after receiving this one. I think I pegged more hope into it than I should of, and thus after such a high, I crashed down. But the timing was interesting. You see, this past weekend was my friend Keith's bachelor party cottage weekend. My friend Matt and I were going to go up earlier than everyone else on Friday just to bring up gear and goods, and to enjoy the general peace that nature had to offer before 8 burly men wou...

This past Tuesday, our small group organized our third Coffeehouse, this time with the theme of "Summer". It's kind of funny. At the end of the previous two events, I thought to myself, "there's no way we're going to top tonight". Yet, somehow we do everytime and this time was no different. We had two meetings in the previous months just to outline things we wanted to do and improve. I feel as though we improved on each of those fronts. With each event, everything is pretty much free but we asked for donations to support various groups. This event was sponsoring the Ontario Pioneer Camp, a non-profit organization/camp for kids and teenagers. For myself, it was sort of different this time around as I didn't really get a chance to kick back and relax during the evening. I was moving back and forth just checking on my fellow teammates to make sure they were okay and if there was anything needed. I was giving general help whenever needed (ie. the pow...

In Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things , author and researcher Randy Frost takes a look at a growing phenomenon across America: hoarding. He investigates this issue not by going straight at it point by point, but rather does it more effectively by telling stories. True stories. Harrowing stories but some hopeful stories. Regardless of, I found that each story had this tinge of sadness to it. The book opens up with the story of the famous Collyer Brothers. The Collyers were two wealthy but reclusive brothers who lived together closer to the beginning of the 20th century. Langley Collyer who was handicapped by a number of sicknesses and disabilities (including blindness) was taken care of by his brother Homer. They were agoraphobic, hardly leaving their compound and taking refuge in the comfort of their home located in upper Manhattan. They feared burglars who in the past would break in hoping to steal all sorts of wealth but found nothing but junk. After incidents lik...

Just as I had surmised in an earlier, this summer is not looking well for movies. Brandon Gray of Box Office Mojo wrote a great article ( here ) that gives more details into how the summer is doing thus far. The early word? Not good. In terms of total grossing, May was down 11% compared to 2009 and even worse, attendance dropped 19%. Gray blames the lackluster titles combined with the lackluster marketing accompanying them. When Shrek 4 opened underwhelmingly, I thought it might be an indicator of things to come. Then this past weekend the Sex and the City sequel and Prince of Persia were released with low fanfare, reinforcing the weak summer. If you look at the release schedule ahead, it doesn't look to be good either. The only title looking to be a winner is Toy Story 3 , as far as heavyweights go. But who knows, there might be sleeper hits. 2010 should be glad that it had Avatar and Alice in Wonderland which both did bonkers for business, because without them, this year ...

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is the first huge budget video-game-to-movie adaptation in a while. But with failure after failure in other franchises, will Prince of Persia be the movie that finally brings success to the genre or will it be another dud? Prince of Persia tells the story of a young prince named Dastan, who when a child, was nothing but a lowly thief scouring the streets of Persia. After a chance meeting with the king where he witnessed Dastan's courage, he was led to adopt him into his royal family. Dastan, now older, fights alongside his brothers, protecting the land of Persia from their neighbouring enemies. On one particular battle, Dastan comes across a sacred dagger, a treasure to their enemies, with the power to reverse time. During a celebration after the battle victory, an act of treason occurs within the royal family and Dastan finds himself in the middle of a ploy orchestrated by someone close to him. Along with Princess Tamina, from the neighbourin...