Genre: First-Person Shooter
Publisher: Valve
Developer: Valve
Online Play: 8 Versus/ 4 Co-op
Local Play: 2 Co-op

Set in the zombie apocalypse, Left 4 Dead 2 (L4D2) is the highly anticipated sequel to the award-winning Left 4 Dead, the #1 co-op game of 2008.This co-operative action horror FPS takes you and your friends through the cities, swamps and cemeteries of the Deep South, from Savannah to New Orleans across five expansive campaigns.You’ll play as one of four new survivors armed with a wide and devastating array of classic and upgraded weapons. In addition to firearms, you’ll also get a chance to take out some aggression on infected with a variety of carnage-creating melee weapons, from chainsaws to axes and even the deadly frying pan.You’ll be putting these weapons to the test against (or playing as in Versus) three horrific and formidable new Special Infected.

You’ll also encounter five new “uncommon” common infected, including the terrifying Mudmen.Helping to take L4D’s frantic, action-packed gameplay to the next level is AI Director 2.0. This improved Director has the ability to procedurally change the weather you’ll fight through and the pathways you’ll take, in addition to tailoring the enemy population, effects, and sounds to match your performance. L4D2 promises a satisfying and uniquely challenging experience every time the game is played, custom-fitted to your style of play

• Next generation co-op action gaming from the makers of Half-Life, Portal, Team Fortress and Counter-Strike.
• Over 20 new weapons & items headlined by over 10 melee weapons – axe, chainsaw, frying pan, baseball bat – allow you to get up close with the zombies
• New survivors. New Story. New dialogue.
• Five expansive campaigns for co-operative, Versus and Survival game modes.
• An all new multiplayer mode.
• Uncommon common infected. Each of the five new campaigns contains at least one new “uncommon common” zombies which are exclusive to that campaign.
• AI Director 2.0: Advanced technology dubbed “The AI Director” drove L4D’s unique gameplay – customizing enemy population, effects, and music, based upon the players’ performance. L4D 2 features “The AI Director 2.0” which expands the Director’s ability to customize level layout, world objects, weather, and lighting to reflect different times of day.
• Stats, rankings, and awards system drives collaborative play

Minimum Configuration:

• Supported OS: Windows 7 / Vista / Vista64 / XP
• Processor: Pentium 4 3.0GHz
• Memory: 1 GB for XP / 2GB for Vista
• Graphics: DirectX 9 compatible video card with 128 MB, Shader model 2.0. ATI X800, NVidia 6600 or better
• Hard Drive: At least 7.5 GB of free space
• Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c compatible sound car.

Recommended Configuration:

• Supported OS: Windows 7 / Vista / Vista64 / XP
• Processor: Intel core 2 duo 2.4GHz
• Memory: 1 GB for XP / 2GB for Vista
• Graphics: DirectX 9 compatible video card with Shader model 3.0. NVidia 7600, ATI X1600 or better
• Hard Drive: At least 7.5 GB of free space
• Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card

Why's you gotta be such a dumbass?

In this week’s Room 0 a new story begins telling the story of a Manzai duo that just can’t stand each other and barely hanging together by a thread. Maru plays Osamu, the egotistical self involved tsukkomi who believes that he is the embodiment of talent while Yasu plays Atsushi, the boke who is lesser serious of the two and always has a joke up his sleeve but is stomped on by Osamu for being stupid.

So, Osamu drags Atsushi to Hotel Point to find a justification in his career as a comedian. After winning the Japan Manzai King Competition three years ago, they’ve fallen out of the spotlight for the last two years and Osamu feels as if his talent is being wasted with Atsushi. He flaunts his stardom status in front of the Hotel Proprietor who isn’t phased by the celebrity status and then orders Atsushi around like his lap dog as he rails on him about how much his jokes suck and that he just won’t get a higher score than him.

Atsushi on the other hand grumbles and mumbles but does what Osamu says until the scores come back. When its revealed that Atsushi is just one point higher than Osamu in their personal scores, Atsushi suddenly has the courage to basically tell Osamu to go fuck himself and get him a juice from the fridge. Osamu gives at Atsushi a WTF face and cues to credits.

This week’s Room 0 pretty much follows the last story in the same storyline -> Overconfident character A brings lesser confident/clueless character B to Hotel Point, exploits why they’re so great, then get a rude awakening to find out they suck comparative to character B and thus have a mental breakdown.

I’m soooooooooooooooo blown away with Maru, ahahah! You see, Maru is my #1 favorite member of K8 along with Yoko…. and I’m so used to his ” boke ” and ” happy go lucky ” character that seeing him play an asshole was like ” OMG WHAT’S WRONG WITH MY BOO? ” Ahahaha, it was a bit hard to get used to.

They broke the 4th wall in this episode which was very hilarious and featured Ryo as another ” high score of Room 0 ” with a total point score of 90.

I wonder what next week has in store? What really did happen at that competition? Why has Osamu become so self involved with himself? And why have their relationship deteriorated to one of no respect?

Tomoya must have really fucked up to make his ex-wife this paranoid

I’ve pretty much dropped the ball on My Girl, forgetting that its still airing and catching it in bits and pieces here and there. But I recently saw episode 4 and downloaded 5 and 6 with plans of watching them sometime this week.

Episode 4 pretty much fleshes out Hina’s character in the drama. Mr. Tomoya isn’t a douchebag on purpose to Masamune, he’s only doing it because he sees him as a reflection of himself five years ago. So he’s hard on him — To the point of scolding him in front of a parent, stating that he will never acknowledge him as a father. Well, eventually, Tomoya gets a wake up call and cools off; slowly growing to a compromise with Masamune and his ongoing struggle with being a single father. On the flipside, Tomoya has to live with the mistake he made and the loss of a son he could have had.

My Girl, from the previews of ep 5, seems to be heading in an episodic route. Now that Masaume and Koharu are in check, its now time to explore everyone else and their screwed up family life problems. We’ve now found out what’s eating his mom in episode 3, found out what’s pissing off Tomoya in episode 4, and now we get to see what’s crawling up his boss’ ass in episode 5. I’m also starting to loose interest in this drama, its not as engaging as I hope it would have been.

This episode tackled the issue of divorce and custody, albeit lightly. It made me think about custody rights over there in Japan and how fucked up it is. There’s no such thing as 50/50 child custody once a divorce is final. One parent gets the child and that’s that; parental rights is gone for the loser in the divorce proceedings. This means the spouse can get up and leave with your kid and you have not a single say in the issue. Its a cruel and sad way of doing things and a lot of parents on the short end of the stick really suffer with it.

I don’t feel as if people like Tomoya’s character should be punished for the mistakes they made that lead up to the divorce. If they’re willing to compromise and make change, why make the child suffer? When his son, Yusuke, stated that he didn’t have a father it really bothered me. Yet, its a justifiable situation in Japan. Like being a father only matters if its documented on paper not by blood. Hopefully that simply won’t be the end to Tomoya’s story, but I have a feeling it will be.

There needs to be something engaging in this drama to happen. Its getting stale and fast too.

“Your name even sounds like you belong here,” the bird replied, and Yvo nodded. He straightened the wooden frame upon which was painted a fat black hen.

Somewhere in the caverns of the building, a siren hollered twice and then was silenced. Taking a seat, Yvo shuffled through the papers on his desk until he found the folder labeled “QUALITY ASSURANCE REPORT.” Yes, it was the correct month. He shuffled the rest of them into a pile and set them aside. This report was most important.

“See,” the bird muttered from above and behind him, “How tempus fugit builds rather than destroys. Tempus fugit. You make wine upon which the pests become drunk.”

Sometimes, that bird didn’t make any sense at all.

Yvo looked up through his office window. Outside, a cluster of men in white coats passed him by. One of them, Yvo noted, was a negro. His white teeth shone through his mouth as they chatted, and his dark skin was a blot against the wall. The enduringly blanched corridors of Yvo’s offices made him stand out. He had never seen the man before.

“Who was that?”  Yvo asked, opening the report folder.

“A moor,” the hen replied after a hesitation, “I didn’t know you would allow a moor to be in your trust. Under your payroll. I didn’t know that you had such short city walls.”

“I never hired him,” Yvo muttered, watching the men vanish out of sight. He turned his attention back to the report, which showed an eyeache of a table crammed with figures. Throughout five pages were the full statistics on three different formulae of product and their entire list of effects, manufacturing costs, potential risks in shipping and distributing, storage, and the six summarised opinions of the individual researchers.

“Couldn’t they give me an overview?” Yvo muttered, yawning and tired, wishing he were already on the street at a cafe with an espresso between his fingers. Just sitting in one office for a few hours a day had become far more tiring than manual labor. Frustrated, he held the report up for the hen to inspect.

“Curious, calm yourself,” it said through slitted eyes and crooked beak, “The barbarians of the East, the Czars and the cruelties of Vatican indulgences: do they bleed? Do they breathe? Do they clench the meat of their wives in their hands after dinner, before sunrise?”

Yvo nodded while wiping his brow onto his cuff, not quite understanding what the hen meant again this time. It left a dark stain upon the blue.

“These are mead,” it crowed in approval, and Yvo put the folder down.

Yvo’s hands began to shake as he swallowed the lump in his throat, a sudden thirst upon him. Every day, another headache and the lack of concentration, and his blood would boil underneath his skin. He looked up, squinting, and through the office window he saw a corridor of pipes and bloated steel tanks. The white hallways of his corporate headquarters had vanished, and been replaced by a dungeon of heavy chemical storage. It looked much like the basement where he’d first been employed after he opted out of military service. Yes, this sort of place, great tunnels of pipes and hot blasts of air. Inside of a basement, underneath a warehouse, sweating bullets into a respirator. As Yvo stared into the dark pipeworks, a man came walking past with a rabbit in a cage and then vanished out of sight into the murk and heat.

“Prey!” the hen cawed and cawed, and did not quiet for some hours.

Later, Yvo took out some adhesive labels. He removed the figures from the folder and put them in the middle of his desk. He glanced over the comments his researchers had put down,

“Formulae exhibits a two additives worth of difference between total effectiveness upon the common locust\related genuses and the mammalian CNS. Storage containers of the aforementioned formulae may be placed alongside such common pesticides as our Zyklon clones and other such incognito substances,”

and other words he was in too much pain to read. He scrawled “PIPE FIXTURES” upon one label and put it on the blue folder. He scrawled “PEST CONTROL” on another and placed it upon the yellow folder. Sliding the chemical formulae reports into the blue one, Yvo coughed and turned to face the hen.

“I’m going to get an espresso,”

The hen nodded. Yvo gathered up last month’s pipe fixture quality assurance papers, put them into the yellow folder, and then placed them both into a drawer of files marked at around two decades old. As he walked the corridors towards the exit to the manufacturing plant, he asked his secretary at the front doors for “the name of the moorish scientist.” Confused, she simply smiled and walked him to where his driver awaited his lunch break.

Like a boss

This week marked the final episode for the first story of 0 Gou shitsu no Kyaku. In a nutshell, Hiro tries to kill his ex-fiance and boss but his cell phone rings, distracting him and making him run away as if he wasn’t trying to stab them. He gets a text message from Miyuki and decides to wander around Tokyo aimlessly. Miyuki, on the other hand, spends the rest of the night at Room 0 reflecting on her relationship with Hiro.

At the end, the two realize that even though they’re not similar in social status or intellect, they’re similar in their plight: Two individuals constantly bullied for who they are. They patch up their relationship, Hiro really now appreciating his relationship with Miyuki rather than using it as an excuse to justify himself and the two leave Room 0 hand in hand.

While, on the other side of town, Miyuki sends a text to Sachi who turns out to be the girlfriend of the lead of our next story. She tells him that Miyuki spent the night with some guy, and he tells her he’s not going home tonight because he has to make up some jokes for his manzai act. At first she accuses him of doing something behind her back (ie: cheating) but then he explains to her about how crucial the punchline of a joke is. So Sachi mentions to him that he should just do it at home with his partner, but…

” Nah, I found a better place “

And pulls out a ticket for Room 0.

The only weakness Room 0 has is it’s pacing. While the first episode builds up the drama perfectly, it gets lost between eps 2 and 3 to rush an ending with the final ep. The story of Hiro and Miyuki was a very deep and complicated issue that tried to tell itself in 4 ten minute episodes. Essentially the depth of the story got lost and the rushed ending seemed a bit unsatisfying and predictable. All and all, it was a great entertaining watch — But tried to tell a complicated story in under 40 minutes.

Next week starts the second story in which Maru and Yasu of Kanjani8 take over as a struggling manzai duo that can’t come up with good jokes anymore. I am really excited for this episode because Kanjani8 takes the entire lead for the next four weeks (Maru, Yoko, and Yasu). Friday needs to be here already

I did enjoy the tie in of the two stories, I thought that was nice.

October 12^th

It has been some time since I have felt the need to write anything. Very little has changed in this God forsaken city in the months since we arrived here. I am still alone, left behind by my retreating comrades, too injured to follow as the dark denizens of this giant mausoleum drove them away.

I am still haunted by visions of that day. I still wake at night, half mad with fear, as images of friends torn to shreds in front of me fade from my mind.  I am still terrified that one night I will cry out and bring death down upon myself. I am a mouse hiding from hungry predators. I dare not squeak.

But today something did change. I have seen another living human being, I am sure of it. Stalking the empty city in daylight, hunting for supplies in tombstone tower blocks, I saw her in a sand blasted street below. She was a dark haired girl of no more than 20 years old, walking through the streets heading north. I called out to her, but she did not turn and by the time I had rushed to the street below she had vanished.

Is this why I am here? We came to take back a city we thought abandoned, our army marching forth to push evil that assails mankind for the first time since the darkness came. We were wrong; the city is far from abandoned by our enemy. But today I found we were wrong about something else as well. The city is not abandoned to mankind either. Maybe I have been sent here to find this out, to help those who have survived the madness of the sand swept city.

Tomorrow, I will strike out north to one of my old hiding places. She was heading in that direction with some purpose. I feel certain I will see her again.

October 13th, Morning.

A terrible night, I have barely slept at all. The streets above me swarmed with screeching monsters until dawn. It’s hard to believe they were once humans. Their stench reached down into my basement hovel and saturated my senses. Still, I’d rather them than their masters; the shadow creatures will surely follow them into the area soon. More reason to head north if I needed it.

Maybe the girl knew. Maybe that’s why she was heading north yesterday. I will brave the day once again and pray for good light. That should keep those things away from the streets while I head for one of my old hideouts in the north, an old bank with good strong doors.

October 13^th Evening

The streets were quiet and I made it here safely, though my leg is plaguing me again. It was seized to the point I had to use a makeshift walking stick for the final leg of my journey. God help me if I’m ever found when it’s like this, though I have few ways to defend myself either way. I ran out of ammunition months ago, I keep one bullet in my sidearm in case I need to use it on myself. I will never allow myself to be used against my own friends and family like those things stalking the city.

I guess I’ll have to find someway to fight though, if I’m expecting to help the girl.

Ha! That sounded heroic didn’t it? Go to sleep old man…

October 16^th

I saw her again!

Two days ago I awoke to a sandstorm scouring the empty buildings around me. I was told it did not use to be like this, this area used to be surrounded by forests. It’s all gone now, withered by the cancerous darkness which plagues the land. A desert is all that remains, and this dead shell of a city. Maybe the sand storms are the planets way of trying to clean itself. I was lucky to have rations, because the storm lasted until this morning. I went scavenging outside as soon as it cleared.

The girl saved my life, though she does not know it yet.

As I passed an intersection I saw her far down a street, staring up silently into the sky. I turned and ran towards her. My whole body was singing with elation when suddenly I was startled by howl from the street down which I had been walking. Running for cover I crouched and waited, elation turned to stomach churning fear as the creature passed me by. A four legged monstrosity, black as the night with eyes like burning coals. It was bigger than anything native to this world. I have seen its like before, devouring friend and foe alike on the field of battle.

For some minutes afterward I could not move, frozen in place by fear. When finally I crept from my hiding place she had gone, no doubt running as far from the creature as she could. Had she seen me? I hope so, maybe tonight she thinks of me also.

She was beautiful.

October 18^th

Has she left me? I fear I have been led to my doom. If only she had stopped, if only she had heard my calls!

I saw her at noon, plain in the burning sun. She carried a sack over her shoulder, her dark hair whipped about her in the dusty wind. I knew at once she was leaving the city. But there is no where to go, there is nothing but desert for miles around. Had she finally given in? Had she decided to take her chances in the open rather than continue to suffer this hell? A part of me understood, many times I have thought of throwing in the towel, giving myself to the darkness.

But I knew. I knew that if I could reach her, if only I could make her stop, together we could have survived this place, fought back the darkness. But now it’s too late. She is gone. I have reached the edge of the city and was to damned slow to stop her. I should have given up hours before and found shelter, but I was too damned stupid; stupid with hope.

The sun is going down now and I am stuck in this shell of a building half given to the sands, little more than shelter from the wind, and THEY are coming. The dark citizens of the city are awake, and they have my scent. I can hear them coming, their screams fill the darkness and I have nowhere left to hide.

October 19^th

I have lived long in darkness, but now the light has found me.

The howl of sand awoke me. Tearing through the open wounds of the building around me, blasting the walls and filling the room with dust. A blessing had come to me, a way out beyond the claws of evil. I would let the sands take me, let the storm scour me from the face of the earth. I would let it take me away from this place and its terrors.

The sand stung me as soon as I left cover, a bitter promise, of flesh flayed from bone, of finality. I stumbled out into the street, my eyes weeping as I headed for the open desert. But then they came. Dark shapes moving in the dust all around me, their triumphant cries reaching me over the din of the storm. A bitter laugh escaped me as I realised that my escape had failed, the city would have me after all.

Human faces, twisted and broken, eyes red with rage, passed about me. Their finger nails clawed me as they passed; others knocked me to the ground again and again; and among them, darker shapes, being of pure evil, forms undefined yet mercilessly solid. Their wicked claws tore at my flesh as they howled with manic laughter. Life ebbed from the wounds that they left.

Without warning the dust cleared before me and she was there. The storm battered angrily around her but dared not touch her. This beautiful young girl, her arms bear yet untouched by the searing sand, on her knees, seemingly in prayer. Creatures from the city swarmed around her, and then sunlight pierced the storm above her and from her back sprung feathered wings, giant and beautiful wings that flowed out around her. As she turned to me, her eyes meeting mine for the first and last time, her smile forced me to my knees. Then there was light.

Awesome, blinding light that filled the world around me until there was nothing but white.

When I came to, the girl had gone along with the creatures that had surrounded us. The silence was deafening, the storm had passed and warm Sunlight caressed me. Tears filled my eyes, and through them I made out shapes in the desert, moving toward me. After a time they resolved into familiar forms, vehicles like those that had first delivered me here.

They told me I was lucky they had seen my signal fire; that this was the first time anyone had been out here in months. I could only smile in reply. Now I ride back to civilisation, perhaps I will see my friends again. I have returned from hell, led from its clutches by a beautiful girl.

Thank you my Guardian Angel.

From the diary of Sgt Tom Banks

Leo, the butler at the chancellor’s palace, double-checked the note he’d been handed:

“Five cans of fresh motor oil, eight cans of used motor oil, one bucket of used antifreeze, several tins of factory floor sweepings (This request to be gathered at your discretion, but if you grab less than more I shall be sending you back, be forewarned! R.S.P.), two liters of pigs blood from the freeze. Dinner at 8PM delivered direct to my office, along with the aforementioned goods. Privacy, please! With all courtesy! <<Romolo Salvo Petrollini>>“

The weight of his requests needed a steel catering cart in order to haul through the whole length of the palace. He had to scrub the wheels down in order to keep grease from tracking in on the chancellor’s good carpets and the hardwood floors. By the time he’d arrived at the dumbwaiter, he was out of breath. Through the halls of the empty building, a breeze circulated, rustling the edges of the many curtains and wall-hangings. The chancellor’s paintings, depictions of the ancient and justified driving their spears into the retreating backs of the tragic, dominated the annex beneath his offices. The three-walled room was adorned frame-kissing-frame with original pieces titled such things as “The Triumphant Return of the Exiled” and “Apparitions on the Battlefield that Fled from his Worship.”

A bare patch on the wall surrounded the door of the dumbwaiter used to deliver the chancellor’s meals. It was open. Into its mouth he placed the cans, thanking God that it was electric rather than hand-pulled. He could hear it rattling with the strain of each load. Uncertain, he sent up a note:

“P. Blood is next. Uncertain of weight\dumbwaiter may break?“

Down came the response:

“No question: if broken bring by stairs. Bravo, Leonidas! Vite vite! R.S.P.”

He counted the seconds as the bucket of blood ascended to the tune of harsh squeals. It broke on the second-to-last load, the pail of factory-floor metal shavings and random nuts and bolts. As the dumbwaiter reached the top, he heard the safety mechanism snap into action as the rope fell fluttering to the bottom of the pulley system. This meant he’d have to deliver the meal on-foot.

The hallway to the chancellor’s offices was as long as the palace itself, hence the dumbwaiter. The entire military and political history of the nation passed Leo by, badly lit and looming. Each general stood lit by a brilliant sun in their pious glory atop a hill. There weren’t enough proud hills in the country to fit them all. The door to the chancellor’s chambers was slightly ajar, and even from afar Leo could feel warmth trickling out from within. A hallway lined with the portrait collection of the old royal family stretched between the staircase and that pair of oversize doors. As he approached them, a gigantic black hole in the wall stole his attention.

No, it wasn’t a hole, it was a blank space. One of the paintings was absent. In the palace, the few surfaces left bare of art were the windows. Leo had never seen a piece removed in his tenure as butler. The frame was so large, whoever had taken it down had left a scar in the floor when it fell. With sudden concern, Leo rushed to the chancellor’s office to report the theft. Upon entering, he dropped the lasagna.

The room was hot, a fire roaring up the flue of the fireplace. Spilling out onto the hearth and carpet was a monsterous pile of letters slowly catching as the flames belched out into open air. Romolo was atop a stepladder with his hand drenched in black oil smearing great strokes of it across the breast of the portrait. The face of the subject was thick and glistening with slashing splatters of liquids, running down in heavy tears. As Leo looked on, Romolo hopped down and glared at the canvas.

“Liberation from the mortuary of history!” he screamed before breaking into a howling tenor as he picked up the bucket of blood and hurled the remaining contents into the face of the subject. In reaching for the metal shavings, Romolo noticed Leo’s shocked and frozen form in the doorway and threw up a red-stained hand.

“Salve, Leonidas! Leave dinner on the desk, if you will! Hold all calls!”

Romolo grabbed a handful of shavings, tacks and washers,

“Now you deserve a place in the gallery!”

They sounded much like droplets of water on a wedding-day tent as they lodged into the thick mess. Romolo reached out to grab more, while Leo had already abandoned the offices. His rapid footsteps could be heard retreating down the vacant halls of the palace. Romolo sneered and dug his hands deep into the shavings, letting the oil leak in to seal up his cuts.

In the second to last installment of The Pitiful Life of Hiroyuki Matsuda, we finally learn the reason why Hiro is in the mental state he’s in today. He has no confidence, his boss hates him, his co-workers mock him, and his fiance left him. With this all toppling over on him, he pours himself out to Miyuki in which in return Miyuki tells him to suck it up, that she’s had it way worst than him; that she was mocked as a child for being fat and having pimples.

” I wouldn’t think to kill someone because my crappy boss and shitty fiance betrayed me! You’re weak! That’s why your score is 38 points! “

Miyuki yelled at Hiro. So in a rage, she orders room service and stuffs her face with a turkey leg while Hiro attempts to rate himself again now figuring out his fault. To find out he’s worst off than he was when he arrived, a score of 31 points.

” Sir, where are you going? “

The hotel proprietor askes Hiroyuki, but he soundlessly leaves the hotel.

Next week is the climax and it looks like Hiro is going to try and kill his boss for stealing his fiance.

This episode has to be the best out of the three that have aired. But, what’s good is that Room 0 continues to get better.

The greatest knives in the nation were made by the craftsmen of the company Baldo had inherited from his father. He used them himself in his kitchen. Baldo wouldn’t let his wife do any of the cooking at home. He preferred her soaking up serials beside the radio, and that’s where she would stay.

Half of each day in the first half of the week, he would spent in his kitchen doing all of the required preparations for dinner. He would cut all of the vegetables and he would clean all of the meat, and let it sit for the required hours necessary for it to be true. Before his mother’s unfortunate death, he spent half of the day studying and the other half watching her cook. He had watched her enough times that he could never forget a detail of her work. He remembered the angles that she cut vegetables at, and the specific parts of meat cuts that were sliced off and set aside for stewing in stock. So, when Baldo cooks, he cooks all by himself and he doesn’t let anyone into the kitchen with him.

After Baldo’s father fell ill, he was by himself in that house with more rooms than his father had face-to-face friends. His father, never wasteful, had converted it from the smallest of his hotels into a mansion. And he had kept all of the maids.

The process of cooking from noon until sundown was so precise a series of recollections that Baldo could ruin a dish if it was interrupted. He had placed timers on every telephone for those eight hours of the day, except for one emergency line. Twenty maids had been employed at the hotel, and nineteen of them had attempted to cook for Baldo. Every maid who interrupted his cooking had been caught by one of Baldo’s kitchen knives. With his memory ruined by their meddling, he found himself standing in the middle of a black-and-white tile wasteland, a confused catalysm of ingredients. When her fingers slipped into the tomatoes and stirred them out of turn, and folded in the zucchini and added spice, he’d been stirring the beef stock in silence caught in the memory of his mother’s hand circling the wooden spoon. With the proper order of his memories shattered, he couldn’t remember when anything went into anything else. The piles of garlic and peppers and the entire spice rack became alien, a common confusion.

With his kitchen in a mental clutter, Baldo’s characteristic frustration sent a knife across her face. His attempts to repair the meal were a failure: everything tasted like paper to his spoiled tongue. He slept in a curled ball that night, fighting the urge to smash the paintings off of the walls with his fists. He restrained them between chest and thighs, fingers clenching, and he suffered a lack of sleep that night.

And every night that a maid interrupted his cooking, of course. Nineteen maids were sent home to their families with injuries, he himself driving them to their homes to apologize and provide fiscal compensation for his misbehavior in an effort to quell any chance of ruining his image. Several months of pay, a recommendation for another occupation, anything to keep the family from going to the press.

And then, was only one maid left in the manse, a round-faced and mouse-mannered maid who had never dared to speak to Baldo herself. She hurried about keeping rodents out of the pantries when he was out, and kept dust off of every surface alone and terrified of his knives. After one night of dancing through his stiff, unforgiving memories of how to prepare the most succulent five-courses, he invited her to the dinner table and proceeded to propose in marriage to her over bites of food. Shaking, she accepted the offer, and they were wed with a minimum of ceremony at the end of that week. Her parents found his wealth an inherent charity, never considering their youngest and fattest daughter to be marriage material for anyone wealthier than the shoe-shine boy. Baldo spent their honeymoon cooking once more, and across the dinner table made this proposal to her:

“I will never touch you again, little wife, and you may enjoy the company of any gentleman you wish as long as you do so out of my sight. I do not want a son, and I do not want you to bear children under this roof, for this would be of great embarrassment to me. If you wish for children, make the acquaintance of a widower. You will never interrupt me in the kitchen, not for any reason at all. You may sleep in the suite below the penthouse, it has a radio and its own small kitchen. At 8PM, you may join me for dinner from the Sabbath until Wednesday. The days between I go out evenings, and you must never suspect where I go or whose company I keep. And when I die, you may have all of my money.”

And this wife of his, she continued to dust the house and sweep the floors and dispose of the bodies of rodents. And every night, she sat beside the radio, her only true duty to her husband.

And the nights Baldo came back in the wee hours of the morning reeking so strongly of gasoline, smoke and poison that she could smell him all the way from underneath the cracks of the doors, she continued to keep her mouth shut.

Serials Evaluation/Advanced Excel “magic”

-They’ll post a sample spreadsheet to the blog that will have the formulas in it

-Filtering (highlight entire sheet befoe clicking on filter [in sort area]) – like Scott uses

-IF statements, esp. in conjuntion w/ formatting rules

-Makes the review process easier since all info’s in one place and can filter and sort as the discussion goes, as needed

-Easier to update since they’re now more familiar with the process.

-Can use icons instead of shading for conditional formatting

-downloaded info on journal formats from EBSCOnet so they wouldn’t have to flip back and forth

-use data to tell the story rather than text—takes up less space

-Data validation; list; =[named column of info {such as Action: New, Review Next Year, Format Change, etc.}]

-icon sets are under “conditional formatting”; create new rule; choose icon sets when formatting; can use different colors for diff levels of use (just have to decide what levels are what)

-COUNTER compliance makes it easier to standardize our workflows

-Don’t worry so much about “making the wrong decision”—can always reorder something.

Q&A

-Faculty involvement? Not for cancellations. They’ve moved to trimester and enrollment is up, so faculty are very busy.

-Do they use these spreadsheets as justification? Yes, for audits, chancellors, and other outside groups. easy to hide columns that don’t apply.

Genre: RPG
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: BioWare

Dragon Age will be the spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate, one of the most famous series of Bioware. The battle system will use the party-system will have a wide range of spells, including combos between them and kustomizatsiya deep and emotional story, with different characters will have their own past (and future).

Minimum requirements:

• OS: Windows XP (SP3) / Vista / 7
• Processor: Intel Core 2 DUO 1.4 GHz / AMD Athlon64 X2 1.8 GHz
• RAM: 1 GB
• Video card: Geforce 6600 / Ati Radeon X850
• VRAM: 128 MB
• HDD: 20 GB

Genre: RPG
Publisher: cdv Software Entertainment
Developer: Larian Studios

Divinity 2: Ego Draconis players back again svetaRivellon.Voynata which has passed through the land as a hurricane destroyed many of its cities and has taken the lives of many hora.No this disaster can again be demon povtori.Dreven appeared in Rivellon, and with it the world has returned … and evil protagonist Dragon Slayer has traveled the world in search of drakoni.Na it is destined to learn that the ancient monsters he hunts are closely linked with his fate . do battle with evil, he will find himself in great power over time and eventually will become a legendary ruler of the dragons.

• Read the popular RPG game Divine Divinity
• Huge and incredibly beautiful world Rivellon.Pateshestvaite performing the tasks and fight, nothing restricts the freedom of the character.
• Large selection of weapons and materials for equipment and human dragon.
• In the task of character, there are many options povedenie.Vsyaka action affects the current situation in the game.
• Character is able to create servants of the parts of dead enemies, so that they can fight on his side.

Minimum requirements:

• OS: Win XP / Vista
• Processor: 1.8 Ghz Dual Core (XP / Vista)
• RAM: 1 GB (XP) / 2 GB (Vista)
• Video card: NVIDIA GeForce 7600 / ATI Radeon 1600 256 MB Shader Model 3

Using Cracks, Serials and Keygens

using cracks serials and keygens

Wednesdays have a holiday feeling for me lately, because I’ve gotten back into the rhythm of going to the comics store once a week. I was lured back by the lovely retro-newspaper Wednesday Comics, which came out once a week for 12 weeks in full color, looking the way you wish the Sunday comics page looked. Though those were lovely eye candy, most of the stories inside ultimately disappointed. What’s made me stay, however, is that comics have amazing range. Sometimes poignant, sometimes badass, sometimes just fun. I love the genre-bending that tends to go on. I love hanging on the slow progression of a story that comes out in serial, and then rereading it in a big slurp when the whole thing has come out.

I read and write in a lot of forms, and I find that sometimes I need to change my focus to give me a fresh feeling in a world that’s pretty dense with words. Comics have been doing that for me lately.

I just got home from the comics store clutching Cinderella: from Fabletown with Love–for those who aren’t in the know, we’re talking here about Cinderella, super-spy, and it’s everything I hoped it would be. There’s a nice interview with Chris Roberson, the writer, here.

But I’m far from the only one who feels the magic of Wednesday. Paul Cornell, at the awesome Clockwork Storybook blog (chock full of writers so cool it makes me want to cry), writes, in the post I linked at the beginning of this paragraph:

That Wednesday feeling, where one hangs around I Fanboy (I hope they note I’ve dropped the comma I kept putting in their name, like they were the fan equivalent of I, Claudius), Millarworld and other forums, waiting for the first reviews to wander in, when one can pop into a comic shop, and actually see it sitting there on the shelf (right next to the Avengers titles, hmm, that’s good) is just one of the many lovely things about writing comics. … I think the feeling is quite an ancient one, akin to what Conan Doyle and Dickens and all the other writers of serials for magazines must have felt.

(As an aside, Cornell’s talking about Black Widow: Deadly Origin #1, which he wrote, and which I also picked up this week. (It’s easy to sell me a comic–just write one about a badass female super-spy or assassin or warrior.))

I think he’s dead on with his analogy to the old serial novels. When I’ve read books like The Three Musketeers, I’ve tried to imagine what it would be like to get fed the thing chapter by chapter, to get the story in nibbles and then reread in gulps to make sense of it, to speculate excitedly with my friend about the surprises to come. Those stories work better that way. They’re epic, too big to read quickly or alone.

Comics have this quality, too. I look at Sandman sitting on my shelf, or Y: the Last Man, or any number of others, and I think about what huge, weird, and lovely stories these are. Long live the serial, and all hail Wednesday.