Mecca Of Crazy Dreams: Back to back

I keep having these weird dreams:

One night last week I had a dream about Thor X Skyrim. I had to get Thor's hammer to summon the lightning and kill a very powerful dragon. This dream is probably because I keep playing Skyrim and it was storming that night.

Then a few nights ago I had a dream about the revolutionary war:
the weirdest thing about this dream was that it wouldn't continue unless I imagined what would happen next, like writing a book
In the dream, there was this boy who witnessed the death of his parents at the hands of redcoat soldiers. He then decided to fight the battle himself. The little boy ran into a camp of redcoats and was severely outnumbered, but an old man came to his rescue. The little boy asked the old man what his purpose was for also fighting the war himself, and it changed to a flashback sequence.

This old man used to be the owner of a very large and proud plantation. His wife had a child, but the child was stillborn. They eventually bought a little slave toddler and named him Prometheus. Since the man and his wife had no children of their own, they raised Prometheus like he was their own child. Years later, the wife died and it was just the man and Prometheus together like father and son, but the other slaves did not approve of this relationship, so one day they barged into the man's home and threatened to revolt, starting by killing off the man. The man cried for Prometheus to come and save him, but one of the slaves went "Prometheus isn't here for you, now!" which devastated the man, letting the slaves burn down his house while he was still inside. After he came to consciousness, he questioned God why he spared his life in the fire, and he got up and set off to find Prometheus.
This dream probably has something to do with the fact that Assassins Creed 3 and Liberation is coming out and I'm STOKED.

Another dream I had today was about the Revolutionary war AGAIN: this time they were burying someone by a river and saying a eulogy. I have no idea.

Over The Hill.

Well today I turned 20, and boy do I feel OLD. Merp.

Cars.

I FINALLY GOT A FREAKIN' CAR.

After looking for a cars all over the place, my mom finally found me a car. 

It's a white 95 Toyota Tercel coupe. It's the cutest little car and the price the seller was asking for was actually blue book value. The seller had tried to get the air conditioning fixed, but the mechanic that he hired didn't know what he was doing, so I told him not to worry, our mechanic will get it fixed. Because of that, he lowered the price of the car from $1500 to $1400 and I still have lots of money left in my bank account.

I have already began to customize it by putting a hello kitty steering wheel cover (it was the last one!!!) and my own air freshner, which smells good. It's perfect, even our mechanic and the guy who did the emissions test said it was a very good car. This is a little too good to be true, but I got a car FINALLY. The possibilities are limitless...............................................................................................................................................

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Skyrim.

One word: Dragons.

Muthafuckin' Dragons.

This game is amazing. Ok, so I actually had gotten this game from the redbox a long time ago, just to try it out, and I was so frustrated that I was about to rant about it on this blog. However, when I actually gave the game a chance, I kept it for so long that my overdue fee was at least 20 bucks. 

First of all, the plot is awesome:

Tamriel, a continent on the planet of Nirn, is in the midst of a civil war. The Imperial army, lead by General Tullius, are kind of like the Romans in a way, and they hail from Cyrodil, the central province of Tamriel. The Imperial army is in a feud with The Stormcloaks, who want skyrim to be independent from the superior Imperials and from the region. It turns out that the Stormcloaks are incredibly racist, because they are basically a group of Nords, tall, fair skinned people from Skyrim, the northernmost province in Tamriel, and they can withstand the cold. You can either side with the Stormcloaks or the Imperials.

But the main plotline of Skyrim is dragons. You start out as a prisoner about to be executed for crossing the border into Skyrim, when a dragon comes out of nowhere and kills everyone, except for you and whomever you side with. Turns out, the dragons and the civil war were a part of the prophecy by the elder scrolls, that said that Alduin, the dragon-god, is supposed to somehow consume the world..?However, you are a dragon-born, a person born with the soul of a dragon (LOL) or Dovahkiin, and every time a dragon is killed, you absorb their soul and a dragon-born's purpose is to fend off any threat Alduin poses to Tamriel.

I gotta say, if that isn't the most epic stuff, then IDK what is. The plotline is really good, and the fact that theres at least 200 quests, theres no excuse to be bored. The gameplay is very good, I have used maybe 2 weapons throughout the game thus far, and they're two handed weapons, but they are very reliable, I even call my character Thor and my weapon Mjolnir HAHAHA Nord Mythology joke..no really my character is a female I named Loo because this playthrough was originally supposed to be practice.

But what actually GOT me was the scenery..

While wandering to High Hrothgar, I was walking along a path and noticed how ALIVE this game is. I will retell my experience in my best essay writing:

 The weather started out nice as I stayed the path to the highest tip of the tallest mountain in Skyrim. As I wandered, I passed several imperial soldiers, a group of elk, even some traders by the river asked me if I would join them for a drink. As I continued on, the sky got darker and it started to rain. I passed by an old nordic building which is now a bandit hideout, my traveling companion, Lydia, and I, were forced to defend ourselves from the bandits while afterwards looting their bodies for gold. The sky got darker and night started to fall as we finally made it to Ivarstead, which is known for being a small rest stop for people on their way to high Hrothgar. Here is where I heard the tales of the mountains, filled with steep cliffs and frost trolls, and 7,000 steps to get there. One man told me about the greybeards; the inhabitants of High Hrothgar who do not speak, because their voices are so loud that it shakes the mountains. After a good night's sleep, I began my quest to High Hrothgar while climbing the 7,000 steps. I trudged through the snow with all my might and without any encounter of frost trolls, I finally made it to High Hrothgar.

This game has kept my time. Bethesda really did it with this one, I mean, I didn't really like Oblivion, I heard that New Vegas sucked, but I haven't seen a masterpiece like this since Fallout 3. Sadly, I had to return the game today, I had gotten it again for my day off Friday, but I almost cried....jK, no really, I haven't been this attached to a game since AC. I will be getting this game for my birthday next week.

This Is Stupid.

This is a rant on something very dumb. But it's how I feel right now and I'm not sure what to do about it.

So after 2 years of going through financial aid hell, I get a chance to actually attend a real life college. And while I am extremely grateful, this is not the school I wanted to go to, its sort of this lame community college that is now a 4 year university but the name suggests would make one believe it is a community college, and while I have nothing against community college, this new 4 year university or whatever is only my school of choice because I wanted to move into a dorm room, and my financial aid will not finance this room....in fact no one's financial aid will pay for this room. For an example: the federal pell grant gives each student $5500. An off campus student can take the maximum credit hours for both semesters and still get a college refund check in the end. An on-campus student with the pell grant, however, will not even be able to take classes because all of the money will have to go towards a dorm room, and the rooms are so much money that to take classes and have a room will cost roughly around $9000 per semester which would be an estimated $18,000 for the whole year! Whoever in the hell can afford this wont even be attending school, they'll be attending the good schools like UGA or Georgia Tech or Oglethorpe University, which was my dream school as a child, but I slacked off in High School for 2 years so getting into any of these is a negative.

Another thing that annoys me is the orientation, required for all new students, will be from 7:30am to 6:00pm. What the fuck are we doing for 10 hours? touring the new lunar-based classrooms on the moon? There will be meals provided....don't care. And as if these orientations aren't bad enough, I have to be there with other people. Now, not a lot of people know me very well, but the ones that do know enough that I don't mix well with other people, especially the ones in my age group.

I always thought that the better the college, the better the job opportunities afterwards, and one of my biggest fears that I face every day is failure. I don't want to work retail for the rest of my life until retirement because if that's the case I will never have enough to support myself and retire. The only reason why I am trying to go is because after the horrible bad summer of 2010, I'm still trying to rebuild my life, and I've come too far to turn back, (and also they've added a new video gaming development course) but my determination is falling and falling and things that I once wanted to do and loved to do I can't enjoy anymore. Like literally, today in the middle of work, I really just stood there for a moment and contemplated. Not only am I wondering if I should continue or not, but I'm starting to think I'm stupid and will end up flunking anyway (thats why I slacked off those 2 years of high school, because I started to think I was dumb)

And it sucks. The fact is that I can get into a college. I have several times. But I could not pay for them because FAFSA is a joke. And now that I finally finally finally have a chance, I know deep down in my heart and soul that this is not the college I wanted to go to. I wanted to go to a college with sororities and fraternities and student life and stereotypical stuff, not a wannabe school with this...stuff going on. And only like 6 fields of study to choose from WTF?

I'm an ungrateful bitch.

London Is Calling

WOOT! 100th post!


I have always been obsessed with other places, from Tokyo to Greece and right now it's the UK. Everything coming out of the UK reeks of awesomeness, from the music to the television to the style and the food! Also, the Olympics will be in London this year, and I will not be watching them because I don't like sports, but I love accents, and I love British accents. This is a tribute to the stuff that I love about the UK that I have adapted into my own life.

This hoodie

 

I bought this hoodie from an online London souvenir shop last year, and it was awesome. 10 days after I ordered it, it was shipped to me just in time for the fall. The hoodie is bulkier than most hoodies and jackets, probably because it is for UK winters and not southern US winters. 

Fish N' chips

OMG. Last summer on my road trip back home, we stopped at an English pub in San Antonio, Texas. I didn't understand anything on the menu, and frankly it was too hot for bread and stew, so fish and chips (fries) were the only thing on the menu I recognized. Deee-lish!

Telly-vision

Skins is/was this show for young adults and it was about teenagers who didn't care about anything except sex, drugs, and partying, but each character had a central episode, and that character's episode would show the audience a deeper understanding of that character's point of view. It was actually about real issues like love, friendship, death, etc. It was cool but season 6 was really lame, so that's why it's next season is its last.

The Inbetweeners was this show that focused on a group of friends who, "were a step up above freaks, but below the cool kids". It ran from 2008 to 2010, and it had a movie. It was hilarious and since I haven't seen all the episodes, I watch them all on youtube. This show was so great, that it didn't end because it was cancelled, the show just "ran its course". Also some awesome quotes from the show were "awww friend!!" and my favorite one "BUS WANKERS!!" LOL

The fades was this show that was so awesome and no one knows why it was cancelled after one season. It was about this kid who could see the dead. The dead had 2 good sides: The somethings- who were like really good spirits, and the fades- the evil spirits. This show was epic, and it starred 3 former skins' stars! WHYYY!

 The Music

Big ups (more UK slang) to BBC radio one and 1xtra for helping me find the most unique music this side of the Atlantic. I am now aware of some other genres of music (besides dubstep..I don't mean to sound hipster, but I was listening to dubstep in the US before it was cool, and I turned it on to my friends and they loved it too. ) Here are some kick ass songs by UK artists.

Music In The Night by Dr. Meaker (Drum n' Bass)

Easy Please Me by Katy B. (R&B)

                                         

Innocence By Nero (Clean Dubstep)

Foul Beast by Coki (Dirty Dubstep)

Pixelated People by Jess Mills

Note: unless you live in the UK like I don't, this video wont play, but if you manage to listen to the song it is quite beautiful, and I even named this blog after it.

Guns Of Brixton by The Clash

The Fashion

.I am in love with doc martens boots. I don't know how this love manifested, but regardless of whatever trend, I just love these boots and they are #1 on my birthday list, so I am praying for a cold winter so I can wear them every day.

I hope to travel outside the US one day, and when I do, London will mos def. be one of my travel destinations and I will most likely not come back, just kidding, I am a patriot by blood. LOL.

Assassins Creed.

I'm surprised I haven't done my ode to Assassins Creed yet.

I wasn't even AWARE of Assassin's Creeds' existence until people compared it to Tomb Raider and one of my other favorites Mirror's Edge, but I didn't actually acknowledge it until I saw a commercial for the Assassins Creed Brotherhood multiplayer, and I mistaked it for Assassins Creed 2. From then on, I did my research and watched people play it on youtube, to actually buying ALL the games and playing them several times, and also buying game merchandise.

 

In 2007 the original Assassins Creed came out. The story is basically about this bartender named Desmond miles who gets kidnapped by Abstergo, a pharmacutical company. They strap him in the machine called "The Animus", which is a machine that lets you access your ancestor's memories. 2 or the Abstergo workers, Lucy Stillman and Dr. Warren Vidic, want to access Desmond's memories back to the Third Crusade. His ancestor is Altair Ibn-La-Ahad, an Assassin (which are like, ninjas who wear white) who lives in the holy land in 1191 and battles Templars. The ending was a cliffhanger: Altair had found a powerful artifact known as the apple of eden which grants infinite power to it's holder. After the people at abstergo had located it within Desmond's memories, they decided to kill him, but Lucy spared his life.

Since I did not play this series in chronological order, I played this game after I played AC2, and this game does seem a lot darker than the others, mainly because I think the developers were not sure that this was going to work. The game is extremely repetitive, there are no subtitles so you can't follow what's going on, Altair is the only one with an American accent and the graphics suck. But it was really groundbreaking, and the open-endedness of the game is really what got me hooked.

In 2009 Assassins Creed 2 was released. This one picks up where Assassins Creed 2 left off. Lucy, proving herself to be an ally, helps Desmond escape Abstergo, which turns out is run by modern day templars! dun dun duuuun! Together, they escape and meet up with two modern day Assassins (white ninjasuit non included) to put Desmond in another animus, called the animus 2.0, to relive the memories of Ezio Auditore, another ancestor of Desmond who lived during the Italian renaissance. Unlike Altair, Ezio didn't start off as an Assassin until a conspiracy causes his dad and 2 brothers to be innocently executed in front of a crowd. Taking on vengence, Ezio becomes an Assassin through the help of other Assassins and uncovers the truth to everything around him. In the end, Lucy, Desmond, and the gang are all caught by Vidic, but they escape to a safehouse.

This game was like, a total redux to the whole series. AC1 was dark and ominous in nature and in gameplay, but AC2 was beautifully done: gondolas in Venice, rooftops of florence, even a changing night and day system. Plus a little humor. Ezio was also less of a bland character made by some awesome-o character development. We saw him grow from a baby to a master assassin. This game improved on gameplay and graphics.

In 2010, Assassins Creed Brotherhood came out, and while it was the next game in the series, it was more like a Assassins Creed 2.5. In this one, the gang went to a safehouse in Italy to live more of Ezio's memories. In this one, he travels to Rome and.....I guess he just tries to get the apple of eden away from the Borgias, a real life family who lived in Rome during the time and participated in all sorts of debauchery despite Rodrigo Borgia being Pope. Well, they are bringing tyranny to the streets of Rome, and Ezio needs help liberating Rome, so he goes around trying to recruit more people to be Assassins and rebuild the brotherhood, hence the name, Assassins Creed Brotherhood! The ending was a real hoot, too: the modern day crew of Desmond, Lucy, and the rest travel below the colusseum to retrieve the apple of eden, but Desmond ends up killing Lucy and falling into a coma.

Overall, this game was not like AC2 for me. This game didn't really have any character development since we knew everyone, and where AC2 was more of coming-of-age, this was more of KILL KILL KILL DRAMATIC MUSIC KILL KILL...FAIL. This game was probably the hardest in the series for me because if you didn't do the missions a certain way, such as performed a stealth attack instead of just running in murking everyone, or not completing the mission in like, 3 seconds, you fail. This game was awesome indeed, but a bit scarier. However, it is probably the most epic game of the series.

In 2011 I pre-ordered Assassins Creed Revelations. I had been looking forward to it ALLLL year, because it was supposed to wrap up the storylines of both Ezio AND Altair. In this game, Ezio is really old, and he travels to masyaf in search of clues left behind by altair, but the clues aren't in Masyaf, they're in Istan Constantinople. So we have to play as now SSI eligible Ezio and Altair and watch Ezio get his mack on to Sofia, his future wife, but she helps him find the clues. Also, Desmond's mind is trapped in the Animus, so we have to do these first person puzzles to help him fix his memories. Plus Lucy is a templar and that is why she was killed. I had to go on Wiki to figure that out. In the end, Desmond wakes up from his coma and says "I know what we have to do" and the game ends.

When the game first came out, I paid 55 dollars for it. Last weekend I went to gamestop and it's 9 bucks. For starters the game is good, but it is short and unnecessary. I feel like the elements that were placed into the game should've just been placed into a book or something. I felt guilty playing as old Ezio and even WORSE as 90 something year old Altair. The game didn't really answer my questions at all, and it didn't really feel like I was playing Assassins Creed, it felt like I was playing Quest for the apple or something.

And that's the thing about the Assassins Creed series. It's like a spouse; there are things you love and things you hate, and one of the things I hate is how I felt it has deviated off the path of the original game. Desmond was kidnapped, then trained, then almost killed by a machine. Plus it just seems like 2 different game genres in one. For an example, first you are Assassins Assassinating people and being cool and ninja, then the ending of the game turns into final fantasy or something with glowing floaty people and ancient artifacts and magic...WTF? That would be like Red Dead Redemption, the whole purpose of red dead redeeming yourself would be so that the reapers of Mass Effect wont take over the world. It just shifts from one gaming genre to another.

But I have a very complicated marriage to Assassins Creed. The storyline got me, the characters got me, the fact that I can achieve more in a game than I can in real life got me, the graphics, and the fact that I'm a real history buff...it all got me. Plus I can pick up on Italian really fast now, and you'll get me again on October 30th when AC3 comes out!

Assassins Creed...you got me.