girlofprey

I have a Playstation 3. I do not have Playstation Network.

Playstation Network is Playstation's online service type thing, for anyone who doesn't know. I don't have it, and generally I'm pretty fine with that. I'm not interested in playing Multiplayer games, I'm not interested in playing Multiplayer mode on any of my current games. I kind of go and play video games to be on my own with an activity, and so I can kick, shoot and run into things with abandon when I'm in a bad mood or just don't care. The last thing I want when I'm playing games is to suddenly be flung into a new one with a bunch of strangers, and have to co-operate with them. Largely. I'm sure the multiplayer experience is lovely for lots of people, and maybe I'd really enjoy it if I actually tried it. But at the moment it holds no appeal for me.

The other main thing you can get through online services is DLC, downloadable content, which is like extra bits tacked onto popular games, or extra items, or sometimes extra - vital - bits of the story that the developers felt like making you pay a bit more for. Again, I'm not really that bothered. I come to most games late enough that by the time I want to buy them, a Game Of The Year edition is out if they've been REALLY popular, which collects the game and all its DLCs onto one physical disc. Awesome.

However, it's starting to look like I might have to get Playstation Network. Because they've started/have continued making things that you actually cannot get anywhere else.

There's a webcomic artist I like and follow on Tumblr, and she was doing some work I think on a game called Skullgirls, or she talked about it a lot anyway. Skullgirls looked really interesting, so I figured great, I'll buy that when it comes out. No. It's a Playstation and XBox exclusive, and you can only get it online! Due to intense popularity, we will be selling it for PCs now! Eventually! 'Eventually', however, means nothing, like it probably sounds. They keep putting the date for eventually back. I literally cannot tell when it will be. Then there's Infamous. I have many issues with the Infamous franchise, but I love the games, and I was really happy that I'd played all of them so at least I couldn't be spoiled for any. But no! They made a new little adventure with vampires! You can only get it online though! No Game Of The Year editions for you! And they might make more adventures in the future! Who knows!!

And then there is Okami. Okami was a game I noticed years ago, before the Playstation 3 was out, before I had a games console. It's about a Japanese goddess fighting demons, who takes the form of a white wolf. I really wanted to play it, but I didn't have a console, le sigh. I still haven't actually used the second hand Playstation 2 I bought a while back, but I did toy with the idea of getting a copy of Okami, so I could play it on that when I did get it out. But then it was okay! I heard they were bringing out a HD version of Okami that you could play on the Playstation 3. So I figured "great, I'll get that!". I trawled the internet looking for release dates, looking for UK release dates. I couldn't find anything. Eventually I got bored of not finding anything and temporarily forgot about it. It was supposed to be in the autumn or winter of this year, and I figured I'd hear about it when it did come out. Then a few weeks ago I saw somebody talking about Okami, and I decided to look and see if it had come out yet, or if the release had been delayed, or if they had some news about when the release date was, or what. It turned out it HAD been released, at the end of October. On the Playstation Network.

So yes. The amount of things I want to get from Playstation Network are sort of piling up, so it looks like I'm going to probably end up getting on it. Even though I've heard many tales of Playstation Network's service being shit and shutting down for weeks at a time. Even though people on Cracked.com keep telling me horror stories about the future of gaming and online security measures (no 5 on that list). To be honest, if those security measures end up happening I'm probably going to need an internet connection anyway, so I may as well get used to it now.

The thing is, apart from anything I thought that getting an internet connection for my Playstation would just be annoying and inconvenient. Having to get wires, having to find a spare phone socket thing, probably have to get dad help me sort it out. It literally only just occured to me this week that we have wifi. And I looked up the Playstation 3 capabilities, and you can totally use wifi on it. So it looks likes it going to be easier than I thought. Assuming the connection works, that is. And assuming it's not too big a drain on our Broadband.

In other news, I totally intended to watch the Text Santa thing last night. But then I didn't. Happily someone had uploaded the only thing I really wanted to watch it for: Snow Whitechapel. A parody and combination of PRETTY MUCH ALL THE CURRENT ITV DETECTIVE DRAMAS I LOVE THE BEST. It is beautiful.

I have not finished LA Noire, but here are some thoughts anyway.

( LA Noire, up to the beginning of The Set-Up )

Things:

• The second/last episode of this series of George Gently was just on. It was a lot more to do with Gently and Bacchus than the setting, which I think is what the previous episode was lacking, so once again it was quite grand, yay.



• I finally listened to The Decemberists' The Hazards Of Love album in one go all the way through yesterday. Man. It's quite depressing. Things make a lot more sense now, but a lot more horrible stuff happened than I thought it did, and the ending is slightly sadder. Although we never really got to 'the end' the end, so you can make up your own ending for it really, if you want to. And the thing is, what's good about it is that some of the lyrics are so full of euphemisms and odd phrasing that you can sort of interpret them a lot of different ways, and a lot of people do, and some interpretations are a lot sadder than others. It's interesting really, because it was apparently first conceived as a musical, before the band realised it was "unstageable", so there must be an actual story to some of the bits that are quite vague, something they would have had to depict on stage - unless that's why it's unstageable. But I'd assume some of the story was a lot more specific than is in the lyrics, but there doesn't seem to be any sign of the band saying what it is or isn't. But I suppose that's part of the fun of it, and there's plenty of plays where people endlessly debate the meaning or what certain words or passages mean. So it is good. Really really sad though.



• Also, I had some further adventures in looking things up online. Like Casey Affleck. Now, I know what you're probably thinking, 'he's Ben Affleck's brother, he's not even up to BEN AFFLECK standards (whatever your feelings on Ben Affleck), he's probably shit'. But no, I saw him in Gone Baby Gone, and he was actually really really good in it. But an article or an interview online or something said that he picks his projects with GREAT CARE, and doesn't do films all that often, so I thought 'oh, fine', and resigned myself to waiting for him to do something else. The next film he did was The Killer Inside Me, which as far as I could tell, was about how sad it is to be really violent and beat women to death. It may very well have been a really good film, and I think there is a place for looking at what abusers are like as well as what it's like to be abused. But it didn't feel like something I really wanted to watch, or not at the time. So I decided to wait for the next film of his, whenever that would be.
  
  I looked him on imdb yesterday - and he's in FUCKING EVERYTHING. I mean, not everything. But a lot more than the 'He's a talented and elusive artist, OKAY' article led me to believe. He's in all three Ocean's Eleven films! I've seen at least one of those, and never noticed him. His next film coming up is a comedy with Ben Stiller! The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, which I almost saw because it has Sam Rockwell in it briefly, he has a main role in! He IS Robert Ford!! Dude. I mean, in a way it's nice, because it means there are a lot more films I could see him in, and he's more likely to bring out a new film soonish, that isn't all about beating up women. But dude. I was CRIMINALLY MISLED about the scarcity of Casey Affleck films.



• I have now seen the new Haribo advert. And wept.

Hello. I've not been posting much lately. I've been playing InFamous, basically. I'm at that weird point where I want to loook around on the internet and see what other people have said about it, but I also very very much don't want to be spoiled for it. So I'm being strong. Mostly. Anyway. I'm really enjoying it and playing it a lot.

Also I had kind of a bad night last night, when I had what I thought was a perfectly normal bath, and managed to wreck up the kitchen ceiling again. Slightly worse than before, really, because it seemed to have run down one wall to the window and dripped onto the windowsill. It's just annoying because mostly it doesn't happen and I didn't think I'd done anything odd last night, except maybe the water briefly got a bit high. I didn't think it was a problem, but apparently it was. So I'm going to have to not let it get high at all in future, and hope that solves the problem. Mostly I was worrying that maybe having 2 hour baths was what I was going to have to change, and I didn't really know how when OCD generally makes things take so long, or at least that it would be hard to change if I tried to. But I have 2 hour baths pretty frequently, and water has only come through to the kitchen ceiling twice. So I'm going to go with the 'not letting the water get that high' plan, and hope things go well from there. And if not, look at trying to reduce the amount of time I have baths for. That seems like the best plan, at the moment.

Hmm. But anyway. The TV tonight has informed me that the new series of George Gently starts next Sunday, which makes me quite happy indeed. In some ways I'm expecting it to be terrible, because the first three/four series' were great, and it's hard to imagine the BBC being able to keep it up, the way the Miss Marple dramas have gone a bit rubbish recently. But perhaps they will suprise me and still be great. I hope they do. But anyway, new George Gently, rah!

So. We're onto day three of my staying home on my own, and it's all going pretty well so far. I have managed to feed myself and the animals both days, and use the dishwasher and put the clean pots away, and clear up the dog's droppings two days in a row, which turned out to not be as bad as I thought it was going to be. My parents have a system with plastic bags. It's probably no good for the planet but it's fine with me. I did think there was going to be a dealbreaker today when I let the cat out, then heard her meowing outside the garage door and went to let her in and found a dead mouse on the driveway. But then I closed the garage door again, with her outside, and when I opened it again later, she'd eaten it! Or most of it. So hurrah.

In other news, Coronation Street was fine tonight, but I could have done with less of Peter grabbing Carla. And Roy's mum not being a Tory. But whatever. Also in Emmerdale, I love Chas and Cain, and Gennie, and quite like Nikhil when he's not being awful to Gennie. Ahem.

Otherwise, I have mostly been watching George Gently (oh Bacchus), and attempting to play two new PS3 games. Basically, watching 666theheartless666's LPs has made me want to play games myself, so I picked up Batman: Arkham Asylum and Kane and Lynch: Dead Men in Morrisons on the cheap. So far, I'm shit at both of them, but I have only been playing them for about an hour each, so there we go. I'm thinking I need to focus on just one for a little while, the way when you buy a few new films, you probably shouldn't watch two scenes of one, and then stop it and watch two scenes of the other. And so on. Anyway. We'll see how that plan goes.

In any case, it's worked out sort of well that I ended up staying with the dog, because I'm taking it as practise for when my parents go away in October, and talking about that with my mum made me realise that Connotations is actually on over one of the weekends they're away. So we need to sort out something with the dog for that aswell. Which is obviously better to know now than in October. So that was a good catch, at least.

( Tonight's Coronation Street )

Anyway. Other things I have been doing lately: I went to see the Horrid Henry film last week with my mum and nephew, and it turned out to be actually quite good. It started out seeming like it was going to be all about how school is rubbish and you should never do homework, kids, and really irritating, but it turned out not to be. And loads of the actors/characters were really good. Especially Anjelica Huston. And Dick and Dom were in it, wearing eyeliner. Which was kind of a suprise.

Single-Handed continues apace, although I loved Jack slightly less in last week's episode. ( Sort of spoilers )

Also, I have been catching up on Inspector George Gently. I got Series 1 last week, and I finally saw the pilot. ( Spoilers for the pilot )

And sort of because of that, I've ended up watching more of the second series of Luther today. I was watching it when it was on, but I think the second episode of it was on the week we went to Prague, and my parents watched it while I was doing something else, and then I never caught up with it. But I remembered after finishing Series 1 of George Gently that Lee Ingleby played the psychopath in the first two-parter. And in some ways I didn't want to watch it, because I thought the switch from lovely detective to crazy murderer and then back to lovely detective might be a bit jarring. But then I remembered that I've seen Series 3 of George Gently, so after I watch Series 2 I won't have any left, and if I watch Luther after that, the last thing I'll see of him will probably be the crazy murderer. And I'd rather not have that. So basically, I did watch it.

( Luther spoilers up to 2.03 )

Oh yes, and Sugartown finished last night. Sadly, without any slightly abusive incest, as I might have hoped. Or [incest spoilers], I guess. But quite lovely-ly all the same. And it seemed to me to be setting itself up for a possible second series, which the BBC might go for, although I can't imagine what the story would be in another series. We'll see. But I enjoyed it, anyway. Between Sugartown and Eastenders, I'm feeling slightly let down on the slightly abusive incest front. TV is such a tease, sometimes. Also, after three episodes and the full mini-series, I still don't really know if Max is meant to be the older brother or Jason. Which seems like a failing of the show's somehow. Maybe I just wasn't paying attention properly. I might try looking it up.

Anyway. So they're my TV adventures lately. Also, there's been Hollyoaks. Hurrah!

So. I had a 'courtesy call' from the Department for Work and Pensions this morning. I have been decided to be capable of some forms of work. ( How I feel about that )

Anyway. Some happier things include: ( Slight spoilers for Coronation Street from Friday ). I really liked Scott and Bailey last night, even though ( sort of spoilers ). And a comedy email newsletter I have been getting for a bit basically justified all the months I have been getting it today, by informing me that the Psychoville finale is on tonight, not on Thursday. I'm really enjoying Psychoville at the moment, especially last week's episode, so I'm glad to have heard about that (although it was on series record anyway, it turned out).

Also, is it my imagination, or did Horrible Histories repeat a sketch they'd already done in Friday's episode? The one with Queen Elizabeth? I'm really sure I'd seen that before, down to being able to predict what happened up to the end of the sketch. Either they've repeated it, I saw some sort of preview somewhere, or I HAVE THE POWER TO SEE THE FUTURE. That's all I can think of.

Also, is it my imagination, or are there tons and tons of new dramas, and detective dramas, coming out at the moment? Maybe I've just not been very into the genre before, and this happens every spring, but my god. There are tons on, and I'm having trouble watching all the ones I like the look of. I watched Vera all the way through, and I would have liked to watch the Shadow Line, but I just don't have the mental room for it alongside everything else I watch. I was sort of interested in Case Sensitive, but again not enough to remember to watch it alongside everything else I was watching. I missed Exile with John Simm as well. I'm watching Scott and Bailey at the moment, have started watching Case Histories, I think new Luther is starting this week, and according to the itv drama preview, they have a couple of new shows on the way, including a new series of Single-Handed. Now, I'm pretty happy about there being a new series of Single-Handed, but I hope at least some of the other series' finish before I start watching that. Seriously. Is it just me, or is this a thing this spring?

I did quite enjoy Case Histories, though. ( Spoilers )

Hello. I went to jekesta's for the weekend to watch Eurovision with her and cakesy. Which was lovely. I was rooting for Iceland and Moldova and possibly Ireland, but Azerbaijan stormed through. Somehow. Also we watched MANY OTHER THINGS. I can now proudly say I have watched all of the paintball episodes of Community, and the latest Parks and Recreation (I am a fool to not keep up with it), and roughly half of Crusoe. Neither Crusoe nor Friday are kings of Narnia (probably). But that doesn't mean it would have been weird for them to make themselves crowns.

Also jekesta watched Vera with me, which was lovely of her. Now she too knows how lovely Vera and Joe are, and how slightly incompetent at being police they sometimes are. Also I saw some of Summer Holiday for the first time, and was only squicked out by some of it, and while cakesy was there we saw one of the weirdest episodes of Columbo ever. Apparently if you date the main witness of a murder you commit, you can nearly get away with pretty much anything. Also, sharks help solve crime. Fact. Um. Sort of.

Anyway. We also watched So You Think You Can Dance (oh, Rithy), and Doctor Who. Well.

( Spoilers for The Doctor's Wife )

Anyway. I'm back now. I got the Settle-Carlisle line back to Leeds, which sadly now appears to be the Leeds-Carlisle line. It was still lovely though. There were all sheep and lambs in the fields, often getting spooked by the train running past. I quite love the train journeys to and from Lancaster.

In other news, money. After accidentally leaving a gap in my sick notes and not hearing anything from the Department for Work and Pensions about it, I wasn't sure how much I had last week. So I checked just before going to Lancaster, tomake sure I had enough for train tickets and food and stuff, and they had totally paid me, and I had £300. I'm pretty sure I have quite a lot less than that now though. After going straight out to New Look to buy some clothes I'd been wanting but didn't think I could afford, and then some random bits of jewellery from Topshop, and then some t-shirts when Threadless reprinted some designs I'd wanted. But I'm hoping to keep it a bit more under control from now on, and I should be getting paid again on Thursday anyway. Yay.

In other news, next week isn't looking like it's going to be a fun week for me. I was thinking last week that it was going to be tough, because I had a doctor's appointment that week, then my first new counselling session, then my disability assessment, then my confidence course. But then I remembered that no, my doctor's appointment was this Friday, so it wasn't so bad. Then this morning I got a letter from my doctor, saying that sadly my doctor's appointment on Friday would have to cancelled, so could I call up to arrange another. I called up and the earliest they can see me is next Monday. So it is pretty much going to be like I thought it was going to be. Hmph.

Also, re: this week's Oglaf: askdfjklasdfhjkasdfnhj what?

The only things I have to say at the moment seem to be about TV I have and haven't been watching. I haven't been watching much of the snooker. I don't think I really have the patience and/or stamina to watch an entire snooker match, or even session sometimes. I'm trying to build myself up, but I'm not there yet I think. Also, I didn't watch the Royal Wedding. I was thinking about it, but I got up on Wednesday to watch the snooker, and I got up on Thursday to go to my course in Wakefield, and I knew I'd be getting up on Saturday to listen to Adam and Joe, and I was really tired, so I decided to just sleep instead. I did see the dress later on though. I quite liked it, although I don't think it was very exciting. If it was me, I'd probably have had a massive train, made of gold. And possibly some chainmail. It's possibly for the good of the country that I wasn't either marrying Prince William or designing that wedding dress.

The TV I have been watching: On Thursday, Long Lost Families. Is anyone else watching this? It's a sort of reality programme about Davina McCall and Nicky someone reuniting long lost relatives, usually people who have been split up through adoption and have been searching for people for years with no luck. So it's a fairly emotional/manipulative set-up to begin with, but on Thursday I was properly bawling my eyes out. The first week was pretty sad, but this week we were following two people, and one of them was a man searching for his real father who he never knew. The man's mum and his dad had been teenagers when he was conceived, and they hadn't got married or anything. And the man didn't know why his dad hadn't stuck around and helped raise him or be part of his life, and the dad's family had a bad reputation, and the man's family had always told him his father was a bad man. But when they found his dad - who was currently working as a carer for people with autism - he'd said that basically when the man's mum had gotten pregnant, her mum came round to the house and shouted at him about it, and then told him to stay away from her daughter, and stay away from the family, and everyone he knew had told him to just forget about it and pretend he never had a son. The only time he ever saw his son was just before he was six months old, when he saw his ex-girlfriend pushing him up the high street in a pushchair, for two minutes. And then he'd left town, and never wanted to find his son because he'd never been a dad to him, so he didn't think he had any right to try to be part of his life. It was so sad.

And the other person was a woman who'd given her son up for adoption to try to save her marriage. She'd been married, also as a teenager, and had a young son by a man, and then she and her husband split up, and not long after they split up she had an affair with a black guy. A few weeks after that she found out she was pregnant, and when she told the black guy he didn't want to know. Not long after that, she ended up giving her marriage another go, and there was a chance the baby was her husband's, and she really hoped it was, because they'd already talked about having the baby put up for adoption if it wasn't his. But then she gave birth, and the doctor told her the baby was mixed race, so obviously not. And she begged her husband to just try taking the baby home and raising him like he was his, and they tried for three months, but eventually the husband just said he couldn't do it. So she gave the baby up for adoption, but she'd talked to the couple who were adopting him so they knew she didn't want to, and she gave them a letter to give to her son saying she'd always want to be part of his life, and she'd be there for him if he wanted her to be. But he hadn't gotten in touch in 30 years, so she just wanted to find him to make sure he was well, and had had a good life, and to ask him not to hate her. They found the son, and it turned out he was really well, and he'd been looking for her since he was 14 or 15. It's just REALLY HARD to find people, sometimes. So that didn't help with the not crying thing. It is quite a manipulative show in some ways, they have this thing where the people give the producers of the show letters to give to each other before they meet, and they end up reading them out on camera, as though that's a THING THEY WOULD TOTALLY DO, and they wouldn't want to READ THEM PRIVATELY OR ANYTHING. But it is quite lovely a lot of the time as well, if you like quite tear-jerking stuff.

ALSO, I watched So You Think You Can Dance again this week. It's really weird this year, I think, because in almost all the couples the girls seem to be better than the boys. Or better at performing, as well as dancing, at least. Apart from Matt, and possibly Luke this week, I can't think of one boy who stands out when they dance with their female partners. And I know they want to keep their boy/girl couples, but it just seems really sad that they'll be getting rid of a girl every week, when they could get rid of two not-great boys. Although it's weird as well, because people are getting used to their partnerships now and starting to get on well together, so it's a little sad to see couples split up as well. I'm really glad that ( Spoiler ). The dances are often really good though - a bit odd sometimes, but usually good -it's just that they are often one-person shows at the minute. Which is quite sad.

And that's it sort of. Except that I watched Vera tonight. I quite liked it, I liked Brenda Blethyn and Vera, and I like her DI and her relationship with him. And yay, Gina McKee! But some of it seemed a bit farfetched, or unexplained. Which is a bit of a shame. Hopefully it will improve a bit next week.

In non-TV news, I got a letter from Yvette Cooper, because I sent her an email from 36 Degrees about the NHS. She and other labour ministers are against changes to the NHS, for the record. And I love Dawn. And I love Charlotte. And I love Priti (ETA: I have now fixed this link so it's the right one). And I hate the people in the comments who hate Priti. FUCK THEM. FUCK THEM ENTIRELY.

Oh, also, I have been playing Folklore again, and I have pretty much finished four realms with Keats, so I have only one more to go before I can hopefully move on with Ellen again, yay! I got stuck again, at the same point I pretty much got stuck with Ellen I think, so I did the same thing as I did with Ellen, went back to the realms I'd already finished and tried to make my creatures stronger. And then I managed to finish realm 4, and nearly chapter 4. Keats still annoys me a bit, but less so now, and even less so if the story goes the way I think it will. Rah.

So. Tomorrow I'm planning on playing more Folklore, watching at least some of the World Championship snooker final, and also trying to fill in my Incapacity claim questionnaire that needs to be back in to the people who sent it to me by May 6th. Possibly forgoing either the snooker or the Folklore to try to get that questionnaire finished. Chances are.

There's something about the spot outside the big Waterstones in Leeds that drives all Big Issues sellers to madness and despair. The current one's definitely new, but there's the same 'Big Issue, please. Big Issue, please. Please! Oh, come on...'. It almost makes me feel bad enough to buy one.

I'm sending back my uni house keys today, since the lease ends on Saturday. And I'm pretty sure my student card has run out. It's the little things that get to you. End of an era, and all that. Mostly I'm upset I'm going to have pay full price for cinema tickets, after 21 years of putting it off. Hmph. Non-me people might be interested to know Waterstones are giving 10% student discounts on everything and 3 for 2 on textbooks, though. I'm slightly more worried about my housemates, whose boat hasn't even been okayed as 'floatable' yet, and have nowhere to live. I suggested the conjugal quarters at university, since J got his funding (hurray). They were less than amused.

TV detectives! Why didn't I think of TV detectives in my top five list? Like, any of them? Columbo! Columbo could solve my murder! And it would be less annoying, because everyone would know who did it from the start. With a tip of his cigar and swirl of his coat, it'd all be solved before bedtime. I imagine my murder wouldn't be a very complicated affair, having probably been smacked over the head after pestering someone unto death, and he'd just have to look for the person with the residual rage in their eyes. That Jessica woman couldn't solve it, because she's quite annoying, and it's all a bit inappropriate. Also, fodder for her next book? I don't think so. Miss Marple could have whack, though. She tends to trail handsome young detectives and lesbians around with her. And knit.

Steve Irwin has died. Which is a bit of a jolt. But not really a suprise, given what he actually did for a living. It's even sort of fitting, like Grizzly Man. I sort of wish I liked him better so I could feel worse about it, but I feel bad for his wife and kids. We can just assume he knew the risks, I suppose.