Hot day at work today, not as bad as yesterday and the day before though, which were in the high nineties. still hot and humid, made worse by that power washer being used in tight spaces. with all the dust and grime out here, it's a smelly sauna.

I'm sweating bullets out here on the fairgrounds, in the shade, sweeping water out of here with a squigee. but it actually feels good to sweat, to be moving around, even though I think little of the work of cleaning up a restaruant that's out of action for ten months every year. I'm now active for much of the week, and it's a nice change after those two sedentary school semesters. there was that soreness that I remember that comes with activity after so much inactivity. now that has passed, and I'm into work and effort again. I feel like I could keep going. if I try, I might be able to kick this fat of mine for good.

I doubt this work is good on Rodney, my co-worker, however. He's fifty six years old, but I would have guessed at least 66, from his several prominantly missing teeth and extremely weathered features. a vietnam veteran, he's definetly not against using the "G" word when referring to people of asian descent. I definetly don't feel like there's much to chat about between us during the shift.

2 o'clock, time to go to the dentist for that appointment. ditch the grease stained clothes, take a shower, replace them with clean stuff, then head out across town to the davidson family dentistry. the girl at the counter greets me by name, though I don't remember hers after six months.

sit in the chair, bite down on the x-ray tabs, get hit with elementry particles that bombard my teeth in less time it takes for me to comprehend, and I get the good news, no problems. then comes the metal probe that shows my flabby wimp gums have not been buffed up with properly scheduled flossing. I don't know why i stopped doing it so regularly over the winter. maybe this time I'll keep it up until the next appointment, maybe.

4 o'clock on my way out with sore gums and polished teeth. I've got time to stop at the mall. I arrive at the mall with no car accidents thankfully, despite my distraction at trying to spot that baugel restaruant on my way down the street. go to gamestop, look at the 360 isle like a slow person, not seeing what I want. they do have a used Lost Odyssey (finally spelled it right) for 27. but i really want to play Red faction. I don't want to spend 90 today. pick up a quesadilla on the way out with the game, get home, sit down, pop in the game, blow up a few things in the time I have.

5:30, time to head out to grandma's house for dinner. just me alone visiting her after a few weeks. the meal is salmon patties and fried potatoes. the patties are dry. i don't mention it, but I do take some mayo out as a substitute for tarter sauce. I hope that doesn't insult her cooking.

why does grandma have to have the TV up so loud at the table? typical I suppose for people over 80 I think. then after watching the feature on that woman who performed chemotherapy on herself in antartica who finally died of her cancer, grandma brings up how her mother died of breast cancer. this is new, i think to myself, while I respectfully stay silent. she tells me it gets her upset to talk about it, and she goes on, and she does get upset. to see her tear up makes me want to say something but i had absolutely nothing to say. her mother had to go to the hospital and get diagnosed which was the first time she had been in a hospital in 40 years. she had to have her breasts removed one at a time over two days, which i can imagine was the most unpleastent thing imaginable. then she tells me how her father died while she was there in the hospital, under a transparant oxygen tent for his lung cancer. he went into a seizure right there when she saw him, and he died before she could call her sisters to come over.

I wonder why she has told me this all at once. then on the news, still with the volume up loud, there is a story, about a man who lost his fiance-to-be to some freak wave or shore current that I've never heard before. they're walking on the sand, water to their knees, he turns to propose to her, and she's gone, swept away as the water suddenly turns 180 degrees toward the open ocean.

how perfect. another subject to apply my questions of fairness in life. it boggles my mind however. it almost sounds like something you would make up.

but i also want to ask, "did that actually happen?". it's like this subject is so terrible to think about that it brings up some idea of solipsism about life and death in my mind. can self-aware individuals really come to such an end? one is going along as normal, and then everything is turned upside down then there is just nothing? if perception remains in some afterlife, do they care?

there's a lot more I wanted to write, some more details I feel compelled to write down. but right now I'm going to play some red faction.

the countdown to the countdown to the arrival of the retrospective begins in:

250 hours

It's too bad that the second half of the game felt like work to me. There are a lot of things in the game that I'd like to refer to with the offensive "R" word pertaining to mental deficiency. As a stealth game, it fails. I'm thinking that the scale of the game probably should have been pulled back so they could focus on the AI and mission variety. I could have gone without the Kingdom hub world completely, as stealth was pointless when you could only be inconspicuous if you were walking as slow as possible in front of the guards that were positioned ever 20 meters in open terrain.

The last third of the game was when the story became truly interesting, suggesting ancient treasures with magical properties which suddenly revealed itself to be something entirely secular instead. The story had become dissapointly boring with the pondering way the details were handed out to you, namely from the assassination targets.

That is another thing, the assassination structure, even after the beurau-investigations-beurau-again part, didn't allow for much freedom or creativity. You watch an unskippable cutscene, you kill the target(usually while spotted), then you watch another very ham-handed exchange between you and him. The writing just beats you over the head with its messages about ambiguity and how "oh I'm not bad, this is for the greater good, blah blah". I guess I'm just outside of that demographic that doesn't have time for subtlety.

The ending reached its climax of intrigue while hitting the low of gameplay. Yahtzee said the amount of enemies thrown at you made Space Invaders look conservative, and he was not joking in the slightest. There were so many shoulder-to-shoulder foes surrouding me, that at one point, I couldn't even see individual attacks coming at me, because of all the torsos and arms blocking the view. Then I had to run, then I had to fight some more, then I had to run a bit, then fight in some repetitive instant-death fight sequence involving some unwelcome trial and error. Then I got the ending cutscene, which of course, decided not just to suggest a continuation, but to demand one.

Is it really ever necessary to stamp onto the end of the disc "THERE HAS TO BE A SEQUEL" with a billboard-sized branding iron? I killed 9 nine guys who all repeated basically the same message, only to have something new be implied at the end and that's when the gameplay ends?

And while this game was far from great, only hitting "good" because of the thrilling free-running aspects, I'm pretty interested in the sequel. Maybe its because it's so reasonable to assume Ubisoft can make a big improvement over something that so much room for improvement.

I feel bad for not playing this game sooner. Had this since my birthday in January, and I only started it this morning. I was pretty intrigued by the tactical options just from the third mission where you hold off the enemy tank. Now that I just got access to building up a squad, leveling up classes, and upgrading weapons, I feel like I've tripped into the deep end of the swimming pool unexpectedly.

The story I've heard good things about. I've studied a lot of WW2 as a hobby, and it's really interesting seeing a psuedo-WW2 played out with anime characters. The setting and art sty/e remind me of Fullmetal Alchemist, minus the alchemy. I hope there's more intrigue with the intelligence part of the war, with traitors and spies and defections and politics, but I really have no idea what's coming up next.

Something I wrote up all at once last night. Very rough, needs work, felt like sharing anyway:

Navarro pulled off his heavy jacket and threw it onto the couch. The heat outside was blistering but the jacket made for an image he liked, and the air conditioning couldn't cool him off unless he took off some layers first. He surveyed the library he was standing in. He merely looked, neither approving nor disaproving. This wing was just a part of the large reminder that he and his comrades were standing in, the reminder that one of their sympathizers was a very wealthy individual, and that made him very useful.

This executive's little castle might not have seemed to be the best place to have their final meeting before the plan went into effect. But things were working out in ways they wouldn't have dreamed of five years ago. Ceaser Diego was an extremely careful man, able to keep his nose spotless and make himself in fact look like he was dirty with the other side, that of the government, the rest of the pigs. Diego defied Navarro's expectations of him as a petty conniving pencil pusher with no guts. Was it confidence that made him okay the meeting here? In any case, he wasn't nervous about the arrival of navarro's partners. The man may have been old, but he wasn't intimidated whatsoever by these fighters, men that were called brutal, to Navarro's knowledge. He preferred the term "hard" himself. They carried hard calibers, every one of them.

While secrecy may have been garanteed, they weren't flaunting their arrival, nor was diego worried, because he didn't bother reminding them or wringing his hands over this, again, against navarro's expectations. They drove cars, not trucks, and nearly filled his considerable driveway, which sat directly in front of his considerable house, lined with a considerable number of carefully planted palm trees. They weren't being watched, Diego had made sure that not a single clue led back to him, and the government couldn't watch everyone, so the inconsipcuous got to keep their privacy.

They were all down in the basement now, that too a considerably sized one. Diego was no doubt showing off the hardware he had aquired as he said he would. It also served as an excellent command center, with the large television being the centerpeice of diego's personal office, his second to be exact. His first, and more stereotypical office was just in the next room from where navarro was standing right now. He caught a glimpse of it through the open doorway while walking into the study. Large laquered oak table, green carpet, large windows behind that revealing the marble balcony overlooking the back lawn, complete with the fountain, of course.

Navarro didn't feel like sitting. He was too busy to sit, thinking about everything going on, what was going to happen tomorrow. His friends, downstairs, unloading those new guns, paid for with Diego's magical manipulation of bank accounts. He could see their matte black suppressors standing dominantly on the ends of steel barrels sheathed in black and grey composite material, their magazines of ammo almost transparent, making them seem alien and far in advance of their own relatively low tech guns. But this wasn't like they were being tooled up from this meeting alone, no. this was really a top-off to their already considerable arsenal. The body armor that would no doubt be in the boxes underneath the new guns, along with the helmets, would turn them into the most dangerous shock troops imaginable for this nation. With these tools, they would overwhelm the central chambers of the sovereign's office, along with the main chamber of the parliament, with all the members inside.

Navarro allowed himelf to smile with satisfaction, at the fact that they had all trained for this action, taken every detail into account, made sure the timing would be perfect. The council would be taken, all those helpless politicians, their security useless, and the rest of the army would bow down in submission, unable to deal with this checkmate of such magnitude and precision.

He took out his own gun from the armpit holster and held it loosely in his hand. He would not be using that gun on that day. Ideally, bloodshed would be minimal, and there would be no executions of any person, enemy or friend. But he knew it was only right that it be clean and in as perfect condition as possible for the historic occasion. Pressing the button on the side, he removed the magazine, pulled the slide and took out the round in the chamber, and set them on the table at the end of the couch. He took out the rag in his back pocket and took the weapon apart. Laying out the parts on the table, he was interrupted by a call on his cell phone. Diego. Reminding him to be right in his office so they could talk, without being delayed if navarro was taking a drink from diego's not-so-minibar on the other side of the house. Navarro left the gun in several separate parts sitting on the spread out rag on the small table and walked into the office.

He sat down in the chair in front of the desk. He let his hand rest on his chin, elbow on the armrest, a position he didn't normally assume. It made him look tired, or to him, indecisive, something he always made sure to stay away from. He had no doubts, but like he allowed himself to smile, now he allowed himself to mourn. His cousin, his uncle, his closest comrade and his mentor. His family. He closed his eyes and rememberd their words before they parted ways, and before they would be ambushed and killed, added to the tally on the opposite side, soemthing they no doubt kept.

In mid sigh, ready to go back into his decisive image the moment he heard Diego coming, a noise went off. Muffled, but umistakable, coming from downstairs. A grenade. Then shooting. Now breaking glass at the end of the hall, heavy boots running on hardwood floors. Glass crunching under feet. Other sounds as well, shouting, yelling taunts, cries of pain. Downstairs, shouts of "Clear!" again and again, or "Freeze!". And now those voices were up here, on his floor. He heard the front door get blown in, falling off it's hinges and slamming into the floor on it's face, followed by many more sounds of boots and shouts.

Soldiers.

Navarro jumped out of his chair and two seconds considered his options. His gun was in the next room. Going for it would expose him in the hallway, and he heard them moving from room to room, clearing each and moving on. And they were fast, oh, they were doing this fast. Downstairs was compromised, he had nowhere to go, but out. Behind him, the windows, the outside, it was the only choice. He spun around and ran to the window, hitting the edge of the desk with his thigh, but he didn't slow down, just kept himself from tripping over and tore the curtains apart. He didn't try to pull the windows open first, that would waste time, because he guessed right that the latch would be locking them, but unlocking it cost him a valuable half-second and as he pushed open the right window panel, he heard the boots reach the doorway to the office.

He was already stepping onto the windowsill when he heard the soldier behind him to freeze, and as he stepped up to jump out, he saw the reflection of the soldier in the left panel facing back into the room behind him, saw the black equipment, helmet, goggles, vest, and balaclava covering the features entirely. The soldier's shotgun was pointed right at him, but navarro was far too dedicated to escape, or die trying. Both feet now on the windowsill, he jumped foreward, out into the muggy night air, destined to land a few feet downward and onto the ornate stone veranda. The soldier fired.

Navarro could not see it, but while at the arc of his shallow jump, a small plastic cylinder had crossed the gap from the barrel of the soldier's shotgun and navarro's back. He could not see that it had three angled fins sticking out at the backend, giving it a rapid spin. When the object made contact with the middle of navarro's back, while he was experiencing a very brief freefall onto the veranda, short barbs on the tip went through his shirt and stuck into his skin, easily done with the force from a gun behind it. The impact or the barbs would not have caused much discomfort to navarro, who was running on full adrenaline, but the electric current from the device now sticking into this skin demanded his full attention.

His body jerked uncontrollably, and so his landing was thrown off, his legs were no longer steady and prepared, and so he landed in the worst way possible, onto his left knee, while his downward and foreward momentum made his body arc foreward from there at the marble railing. His jaw struck the edge with all his momentum left over after what went into breaking his knee on the paving stones.

The soldier and his comrades caught up with him, and made their way out the window, guns pointed at navarro, who wasn't presenting a threatening target at that point. He couldn't think, he didn't know where he was, it was just the white-hot flames burning in his joints and muscles, and his skin coming apart at the seams from the electricity still being shot into his skin and spread throughout his body, along with the broken bones making up his lower jaw and upper teeth, and his leg, which was once very good at running.

Zip ties went around his wrists, and he barely felt them. he did know a minute later that he was lifted up and dragged by two of the soldiers holding him at the armpits. All the way around the house, which was a long walk indeed; navarro came close to passing out but did not, yet he could not even ask himself any questions about this. Nothing came to him. There was just the moment. The paving stones under his dragging shins giving way to perfectly maniqured grass that had recently been watered. The throbbing in his face and leg accompanied by the sound of cicadas from the nearby woods. The blood in his mouth, and the missing or broken teeth making him aware of his mouth as if for the first time.

There were never any questions, because he got the answers first. Out in the front of the mansion, the government trucks along with armored vans were parked, empty, the occupents out and doing their jobs. His friends, his men, like him, restrained and lined up, those that could stand being walked into the back of the armored van.

He couldn't take in the view for long, because he was still being moved along, being pulled past the line of his comrades and thrown into the van ahead of everyone else, as if he were something too hot or perhaps unstable for the soldiers to prefer to hold onto. Before the interiror of the van engulfed his view, he saw the edge of the action in the direction of the front gate, where there were just two people standing, away from the vans and the flashlights and the orders being barked. Undoubtedly the commander of this force, his helmet removed, under his arm, speaking with the other man. The man in the expensive suit, arms folded, looking in the direction of the action while nodding calmly and speaking sideways to the commander in turn. Diego.