the fall's here. I've been busy. I rowed my last race of the crew season yesterday. then my boatmates and I went to the hospital to see one of our coxswains who's got some problems with his belly right now, but he should be fine. then I found out I did better on the SATs this time around. I'm doing all right in school too. then I got Far Cry 2. It's all right.

I'm still mucking about when it comes to girls and haven't got any clear direction at all.

I need to get into college and I think I'll be able to do that.

this relates to pretty much anyone who listens to music. this is one of the most fascinating things I've ever read about music. there is a drum beat called the amen-break. it's all over the place. as soon as this video plays it, you will recognize it. it's an awesome beat. it's used all over the damn place. the video is extremely well made as well very well worth the twenty mintues, I can assure you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac

there's an essay about how this drum beat has the golden ratio (you've read the Da Vinci Code, right?) in spades. this is an awesome beat, and its use says something very interesting about our culture. basically, this is the drum beat to end them all, and I've been hearing it over and over again. I'd like to hear more of it. anyway, here's the essay:

http://www.constructingtheuniverse.com/Amen%20Break%20and%20GR.html

this is the stuff keeping me up at night, you have no idea.

which means crew is back. I like rowing. It's very hard, it's very challenging. it centers you as a result. the most visible thing about participating in crew, from rowing, is that your hands fall off. the skin on your hands falls off. there's blood on the oar handles from the blisters breaking open. they heal tough, but in the beginning, there's blood. I'm a skinny guy and I never gained much muscle from crew, though I could breath better and I was stronger indeed. I like that I have something in my life that is hard. I like having to get to the end of the river and having that be an objective in itself. I don't even worry about that not being the end of practice. There are few things in life like that.

I went to Kentucky with my Youth Group, which I am only a part of because of this one girl, to do some humanitarian stuff or whatever because this girl asked me. I'd never spent so much time with her. We got along fine, but I realized that that whole thing doesn't mean what it used to to me and though it'll always matter, it's just not what it was. I had a good week. My grandfather is from that area of Kentucky, and I'd been around there once before, but it was nice seeing it again. We put siding on a shed. People in Kentucky let their dogs go free, and this girl who talked me into this adopted one for a night thinking it was a stray. Things are strange.

My senior year of high school begins in two weeks. I've got to get my act together. I have the majority of my summer work to do still. I have not seen any colleges, though it is on my mind. I've been reading Don Quixote for part of summer work. It's kind of funny.

I find myself sleeping later. I go to bed earlier because I have no one to talk to on the phone with. I wake up later because I can sleep better without that stress.

Life is getting better.

The gameplay is not so much changed as it is enhanced. I played a lot of MGS3, and the sneaking and such worked very similarly, only with the addition of some awesome new CQC moves, like smothering. The Metal Gear Solid series discusses the role of the soldier pretty heavily, and since soldiers don't just sneak in the shadows, MGS4 has made gun-play better than ever by adding an over-the-shoulder view, which is extremely useful.

The gadgets are tons of fun. The sheer volume of weapons is very refreshing from MGS3, which didn't offer too much variety when it came to that. Thanks to a man known as Drebin, the player can customize the numerous weapons throughout the game, all of which are a lot of fun.

The boss battles are as great as ever, though the camo you recieve for tranqing them out is a little bit different than how it was in Snake Eater. You get to have the face of your opponent now, rather than just their skin. Anyway, between the Beauty and Beast unit and all the others, the boss battles are just as good as the serie's reputation has them, if not better. I'll not talk about the specific boss battles, but I think that they got better as the game progressed, and my favorite B&B was Mantis.

In terms of graphics, this game is unmatched, and probably will be for a long time just as its predecessor was. Partly, it's a clear technical mastery of the medium, but also, the taste is outstanding. The levels simply look outstanding, not necessarily because of raw power but because it's so pleasing to the eye, and that should be the continued aim as graphics technology gets better. This game looks to capture the beauty of people and flowers and sunsets, all in a 'tactical espionage game', and it accomplishs this with wild success.

It's true, so much of this game is cinematics. It aspires to be a cinematic game. The gameplay is in itself great, but it's within the context of a story. I don't know why developers haven't tried with this concept before. Authors use the structure of their sentences to try and echoe their larger point that the contents of their novels convey; why shouldn't video games work the same? This may be the last game of the series, and it ties up everything it ever could with that being the case (watch all the way through the credits). The vioce acting is great, and everything looks terrific. I don't want to say this game is quite philosophical, but it certainly aspires to some kind of philosophy, and it seems to merge it a bit with some kind of comment on the structure of society, which is a difficult thing to do.

Over all, I'd say this was worth about $550, including shipping.