Monday Morning Commute: The Yellow Snow is Delicious

Welcome, friends. This is Monday Morning Commute, the column that details the various music, movies, books, and general chicanery that we as a collective are basking in on a given week. I am currently typing this bad boy from the empty confines of a general writing workshop I run at State University Y. This lovely University that employs me is one of the few actually open in the greater Boston Area after this weekend’s blizzard, which means that I have trekked onto campus for one meager hour (all of my other students cancelled). None the less. What can we do? So I will make use of my time, penning this paean to to the things I dig.

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Dead Space 3 blows

This game has broken my heart. You can expect a larger, more detailed review later in the week. However, short story short is that everything you feared about this title has come to fruition. An entire soul has been excised from the franchise, removing everything that made the experience unique. In its place has been stuffed a Gears of Bore (LOL!) clone, with some Lost Planet, and Dungeon Grind thrown into the mix. It is a dabbler in everything, a master of nothing. It is best served as being indicative of the virus that has slowly transmuted every single franchise into the same amorphous blob during this generation. A slow crawl to an indistinct middle where everyone is ducking for cover,  everything can be leveled up, and nothing leaves much of a mark.

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Devin Townsend in Concert

I should not weep for myself too dearly, for by Friday of this week I will be indulging in the latest Devin Townsend concert. Rendar and myself are packing ourselves to the gills with caffeine, and trekking to the local Guitar Sound Emporium to experience the eccentricity of Sir Townsend yet again. I believe other satellite members of the Group Omega will be there as well, guaranteeing that much merriment will be had as we slay our ear drums, and lather each other’s palms with high fives.

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Doing nothing for V-Day

I don’t generally care about Valentine’s Day, using the day as an excuse to send my girlfriend flowers but nothing else. Give it or take it. This year, I am even removed from that such activity. My Significantly Better Half is in San Francisco for business this, leaving me to fend for myself in almost every sense of the word. As someone just barely above a somewhat intelligent Man Child, not only will I be sitting around on Valentine’s Day,  but I’ll probably also be continuing to forget to buy toilet paper, and feed the fish.

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Community premiere was brutal

I hope that Thursday’s premiere episode of Community wasn’t a good indication of what we can expect from a Harmonless world. The twenty-plus minute slog was so galling to me that I actually had to watch it in two separate installments. The general vibe of the fiasco was that the writers brainstormed a list of tropes that have made the show what it has come to be known for. After doing so, they then went about poorly implementing all of them. Ooh, meta things! Ooh, zany transition into an animation. Ooh, Abed deals with things poorly!

Even still – I hold out hope.

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Comixology is awesome

Since I was snowed in over the weekend, I didn’t run my furtive mission to the Not Typical Comic Book Shop to retrieve the funnies that our LCS never seems to have in anymore. Fuck that. Lacking much to do, and sweating Hickman’s Avengers, I took to the digital. That’s right. Just straight downloaded the fourth and fifth pigs to my iPad. There is something liberating about no longer living in fear of my favorite comic book selling out. Can’t get it? Just fucking download it. I was so pleased with the experience, I downloaded a couple issues of Transmetropolitan that I already own in the physical. Just because. No hunting through comic boxes. No worrying about spines. Crisp, high quality images beaming directly from my wunder-tablet into my cortex.

The future is good.

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Shoveling sucks

If there is an ideal form for shoveling, I am certain that I do not posses it. Instead, my anti-ideal has left me with a back that is sore as fuck. Nothing reminds me of my Soul being bound to a rotting meat cage more than fatiguing more quickly from activities that used to be a cinch. Shovel for three hours? Back in the day it was all, yeah, whatever. Now? My thirty year-old ass labors, and the next day I feel like I have been tooled up with sturdy planks of wood.

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So that is my life in a nutshell at the moment. Nothing too spectacular. What are you gals and guys of the Omega up to.