The ten most common things Amanda and Dini say while playing Mario Kart Wii:

1. Dammit!
2. Noooooooo!
3. Fuck you, Donkey Kong!
4. That bastard!
5. Auuugh!
6. Is that you?
7. I fell again!
8. Where am I?
9. Oops!
10. Hahahaa!

Labels: play

Behold the tangle. A lot of it was scavenged from work. Who throws out perfectly good decades-old systems and games? Fools, that's who!

Labels: play

That Sega Genesis I salvaged from a junk heap works just fine! Well, it's a little jittery, but once you give it the old blow-in-the-cartridge maneuver, it works like a charm. Although, that was the case for these things when they first came out new, so maybe I'm just nitpicking.

I was perusing the shelves of a downtown video game store that actually sells old Genesis and NES games for really cheap, and snatched up NBA Jam, because Amanda has fond memories of playing it back in the day. Not the Genesis version in particular, but it's all good :)

I also picked up a second controller for the bugger (one actually in worse shape than the one I found with the system). It is necessary for good old fashioned one-on-one combat. I totally kicked her ass in game one. I'm awesome.

I didn't just want to get a sports game though, so I also bagged an ancient classic by the name of Ecco the Dolphin. I remember playing this game about three million years ago. I also remember playing the sequel, and the Game Gear version. They're all hard as fuck. You play as Ecco and try to find your dolphin buddies and go to the past and the future and stuff. It's weird.

Finally, in an abrupt change of system and on a wild impulse, I snagged Diddy Kong Racing for the N64. That game rules. You can race in a car, a plane or a friggin' hovercraft. It's awesome. You should go play it. Now! That's what I'm gonna do!

*abrupt end of blog*

Labels: live, play

Let me tell you about young Gavin Stover. A simple hunter lad from the West, he travelled to the East to seek the aid of heroes in ridding his land of the marauding orcs that plague it. Little did he know that he'd be thrust into a wide world of adventure!

Why, just the other day, Gavin caught a squid-like chest-burster in a big bag of salt, where it thrashed and bubbled, dissolving to death. It had of course been accompanied by shards of both sternum and spinal column, as well as a bucket's worth of bloody entrails, due to the fact that it had just leapt from the thorax of a comrade-in-arms.

After that Gavin embedded a battle axe past the unprotected pectorals of an orc, splintering the ribs and decorating the landscape and himself with the reddish hue of internal orcish whatnots.

Then Gavin went on to fire some arrows at a wyvern while his companions tripped it up with some rope and hacked it into yummy wyvern meat, a feast suitable for gala events or box socials or just some good old fashioned camping out in orc-infested foothills.

All of these things accomplished with the roll of some dice! That's right. Gavin Stover is none other than your friendly neighbourhood Matt. I'm into the thick of a role-playing game over at Stuart's place, RuneQuest to be precise. I've wanted to get into the traditional tabletop pencil and paper RPG type stuff for a long while, and it's a good old time.

So it finally happened, true believers. I went over to the other side. That dark and terrible place that your standard carbon-based meat unit fears like nothing else. But, my fellow land monsters, you only fear because you do not understand. I forgive you.

I'd like to extend my thanks to Stuart, Steve, and Mike for putting up with my n00b-like ways for the time being. Oh, and the rest of you might be subjected to Gavin's exploits every now and again. That's just how it's going to roll around here now. Pun definitely intended.

(P.S. Isn't Wikipedia great?)

Labels: live, play

As I sit here eating my way through three hardboiled eggs, one of them horribly mutated thanks to my less-than-delicate touch in placing them in the pot, I am contemplating.

My contemplations have led me to the conclusion that I must tell you about my online handle. I'm sure you will find this most fascinating. Wait...wait...I've got to watch an episode of Family Guy while I eat these eggs. Hold on.

Okay, I'm back to this now. After Family Guy I worked on one of my comic projects for a bit. Did the drawing and inking and now it's in the scanner, but I didn't scan it yet. I also ordered a pizza which will be ready in 15 minutes. So let's write a bit more!

I guess it's fitting that all this time is passing while I put this post together, as my online handle, in it's entirety, is chr0nometer, which relates to keeping time and the passage of time in several forms.

The name actually made it's first appearance on the old SWG Genboards, the common way we refer to the original Star Wars Galaxies General Discussion Forum (have fun looking through that archived nonsense, sports fans!). I was surfing some random gaming site when I saw an ad for SWG in one of those fancy animated tower banners. Intrigued, I clicked on it, and entered an online world of wonderment that I'm still involved in to this day. That was...seven years ago? Eight? Maybe!

Previously I went by handles like Dreadnaught and variations of such, but I thought it was too evil sounding. The name I registered with, though, was the obnoxious all-caps CHR0NO, with a fancy zero in the center to mix it up. Despite what many people would later think, I didn't take the name from the game Chrono Trigger, as I hadn't even played that game and was scarcely aware of it at the time (though I have since played almost all of it, and it's pretty sweet...so far!).

Anyways, I was actually looking for online nicknames in names from old Greek mythology and whatnot, and came across Chronos, the personification of time (not to be confused with Cronus, the titan). Chronos is apparently also the god of space, and emerged from Chaos (the dark void from which gods spew). He was imagined as incorporeal, serpentine, and had three heads (a man, a bull, and a lion), though these days he's usually portrayed as the Father Time figure, the old guy with the clock and sickle fetish.

Regardless of all that, I just thought it was a cool name, and I like discussing weird stuff like space and time and spacetime and continuums (without having any actually scientific knowledge or facts) so I dumped the "s" off the end, and went with CHR0NO. Historical records would claim that I had it in all-caps because I had caps lock on when I entered my name, but truth be told, I just liked how it looked :)

It was only after I started going by CHR0NO that I realized that "chrono" and variations of such were quite common across the intarwebs. But I paid no heed, because I was the only one with that name on the Genboards, and that was good enough for me (some other n00b showed up later with a chrono-ish name, but he wasn't as slick, so we paid him little attention).

As is my custom, though, I started switchin' it up. I dropped the caps and went by chr0no_riggs for a while. I must've just finished watching Lethal Weapon or something. I thought it was kinda cool, but don't think it was too popular with the folks about town! After that nonsense I went to full on chr0nometer, because that's what a lot of people were calling me anyways, as a nickname for my nickname.

There's actually been a lot of nicknames for my nickname, which is sorta weird. I don't mean one or two, I mean...ten...or so. They've included such clever names such as...hang on, pizza's here. I'll continue in a second...

Okay, I'm done with pizza now. I watched an episode of MXC while I was eating it, the one with Team USA versus the World. Pretty awesome. Onwards now!

So yeah, nicknames for my nickname. They've included variations such as chr0nomenon, chr0nosaurus, chr0-magnon man, chr0ntastic, chr0nslice, chr0ns, chl0no (that's my evil clone), chr0nopants (my favourite), chr0n00b (something pretty much only Rec calls me, that English git!) and what I think is the first nickname nickname I got, I think also from Rec: chr0nads (ho ho!).

For a while I started going by ridger, as Ridger Khronos is the name of my SWG character that just became my regular every-day SW character (using Ridgerion a few times in fantasy settings!), but I soon switched back to good ol' chr0nometer (or chr0no, for short!).

Well that's that I guess. The world is safe for another day.

Labels: live, play, write

Whenever I get angry, or bored, or just when I feel I need to celebrate, nothing beats the warm satisfaction I get from crushing a velociraptor between a palm tree and the grill on the front of my jeep. But the fun doesn't stop there!

Next it's time to deploy a giant glowing spike-ball on a huge chain from the aft hatch of my off-road deathmobile to snare the fresh corpse, dragging it through the foliage and underbrush to a glowing pillar of light that sends it floating off to velociraptor heaven.

Alternatively, I might deploy the spike-ball first and snag one of those fine-feathered bipeds trying to escape the gruesome frenzy of my senseless vendetta, just to hear the savory crunch of a prehistoric femur turning to powder.

Try Off-Road Velociraptor Safari to satiate your salacity for saurian-slaughter. Nothing's more awesome then death from above at 100mph.

Labels: play, write