Ah yes, New Years. A time for writing up cliché riddled remembrances and looks back and whatever else to fill blog space.

Hey, this is a blog! I should totally do that as well!

55 – My final tally for books read in 2012. It really should have been 56, but I kept getting distracted from the Napoleon biography I’ve been slowly working my through for a good portion of December. My goal at the beginning of the year was 50, and I thought that was madness. Apparently not.

Writing – I need to do more of it. Hell, I WANT to do more of it. This doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to post here more often, but I do intend to try to keep it going a bit more consistently. And I need to find a few projects I can sink my teeth in to (and that will hopefully not turn out to be gigantic time sink nightmares like the Ambush! squad idea turned out to be). And maybe, MAYBE mind you, I’ll try to tone down the obscenity rate a bit. Just a bit, though. Oh don’t worry, I still fully intend to be an overly judgmental curmudgeon.

WOW does this suck! – Insert this comment for television in general. Seriously, what in the Hell is this crap? I can’t really blame networks since what they’re putting out there is getting good enough ratings to demand more of it be produced. I’m certainly not minding being out of step with society when society apparently wants more of this train wreck horror. I realize that there are actually decent shows on out there, but I tend to fill my time with other things (coming right up…). Aside from spending too much time gazing at The Food Network and televised sporting events, I tend to ignore the TV entirely.

??? – I have no idea how many games I actually played this year, but the number was high. Some were complete dreck, but there was a lot of good stuff that came out in 2012. I’m still trying to decide whether or not Mass Effect 3 will earn a spot on that list, but maybe the fact that I’m over 10 hours in and uncertain says it all (though it was the basis for one of the best gaming articles I read all year). So maybe it’s time to sit down and write up a Top Ten…

Hell with it, this deserves it’s own spot – Okay BioWare, it’s time we had a chat. What is with the horribly uneven writing in your games? The Mass Effect series has produced some great conversational moments and some of the best characters I’ve ever encountered in a game. It has also produced things so shockingly embarrassing that I find myself turning down the volume for fear that someone might hear the schlocky crap pouring out of my speakers. Do you let the main writing team get half way through your scripts before handing the project off to the 12 year old sons of said writing team?

And no more talk about your games having a ‘mature depiction of sexual relationships’. The goddamn porn industry has more in common with a mature depiction of sex than your ‘Choose from the chatty, hollow fuck puppets that make up your crew!’ nonsense. It’s weak. It’s lame. And it became decidedly creepy when you started bringing actual women in to the mix.

Hey nerds! You know that girl from Chuck? Yeah, we bit mapped her face on to a game character! And then in the third game, we’ve brought in IGN presenter girl Jessica Chobot as well! You can’t bang em in real life, but you can totally plow em in the game!

Ugh. Not since rumours of Tomb Raider nude codes promised really, REALLY pathetic shut ins a chance to check out fake pixelated tits has gaming seemed quite so skeevy.

Also further proving that you’re blind or stupid (or both), you apparently decided that the aforementioned Yvonne Strahovski needed to be sexed up with bigger curves…

Yeah…I totally see where they were coming from with that…

Writing 2 – Apparently this is the 106th blog post of 2012 for me. That’s not bad, but the fact that August – October saw more than half of that amount show up, with only 11 coming in the last 2 months of the year, comes back to that consistency issue that I mentioned earlier. I’d like to try to even that out a bit.

Hey focus, where did you go?! – Word to the wise : pictures of very attractive women tend to be distracting. Add those in AFTER you’re done writing.

Hey, music is pretty sweet! – Yes, I do enjoy sharing my latest horrific, tuneless discovery with all of you. But I also actually listen to music that I LIKE from time to time.

Last year I (and the rest of the Earth) listened to a lot of Adele. But I also found The Hellacopters, Butch Walker and The Derek Trucks Band to name a few. There was a lot more than that, but I don’t really want this to just turn in to a massive list of band names.

And this year? Again, I could list a lot of bands. A LOT of bands. But I’ll limit the damage. Oh hai, The Reverend Horton Heat (thanks for telling me about these guys, Liam)! You frankly couldn’t kick more ass if you tried. Lindi Ortega is just damn good. And then we come to In This Moment. I can’t stop listening. There’s always some kind of hook that makes a song or a band or what not latch on and not let go, and apparently they have one.

And as anyone who knows me will know all to well, I am a total sucker for a sweet ass power ballad.

What in the fuck is ‘Melodic Metalcore’? – Is this the point we’ve reached with music descriptions? Everything broken down in to such minute sub-genres as to become a pointless and incomprehensible smattering of nonsense? There is no human being who can give a definition of what this type of music even is without talking out their ass. That description is as meaningful as an Assault Weapons Ban that decides that my Bushmaster .223 is legit but yours has to go because yours has a pistol grip.

1 – The number of existential crises/expositions of misery/admissions of failure/blah de blah I spit forth this year. What can I say? I’m not often accused of subtlety. That’s especially true of self criticism, where I tend to get angry and beat the ever living piss out of myself for awhile. And that’s not a bad thing because it might actually batter through the shell of stubborn obstinacy I wrap myself in.

+ – I tried Google +. Then I basically forgot about it and walked away. Now I seem to have returned for at least a brief dalliance. I dunno, it seems like a way to communicate without requiring all the bullshit and the constant torrent of updates that were part and parcel of the Facebook experience. Will I stick around? Who knows.

Writing 3 – So, I really want to do this in some form for more than just fun. Enough with the back sliding bullshit spiral of boring ass jobs that leave me less than fulfilled. Turns out there’s a lot of writing you can do for money. So I guess this is going to need some reading and research, eh? I keep hearing that this Internet thing is more than just an awesome porn repository, so I guess I’ll find out if that’s true.

And since I need to learn how to actually write ‘for realz’, some of that there schoolin’ is also going to be in the cards. More research! Sweet merciful crap, I’mma get me some edumacatin’!

There’s other stuff I’m looking at as well that goes beyond a job, but I’m not getting in to that. I have to give you poor bastards some reason to actually come back here from time to time…

New stuff? Trying something different? Even Kim Kardashian is getting in on the act, deciding to try having something come OUT of her pussy for once. I’m going to guess that I’m the 565,000th person to make this joke. So yay for me.

But I still don’t do New Years Resolutions. So that pretty much wraps this up.