Phrank: Minutes Late

Sorry, I was playing my new game, The Ship, for the last four hours, lost track of time. It's pretty good, it's an interesting blend of Sims and Counterstrike. I haven't played anything other than computer opponents so far, but I'm looking forward to playing real people. Also, I got some nice stuff of my registry, and a bunch of awesome stuff, it was a great Christmas. Thanks everybody!

Phrank: Game Damage!

So there isn't much going on to talk about, I get to post on Christmas next week. To fill in this post, I'm gonna recommend you check out the pilot episode of Game Damage. Check it out here: http://www.gamedamage.net/
This is a video game tv show pilot by Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation and two of his friends. It's actually pretty good, though Yahtzee is less funny when you have to actually look at his deadpan face instead of a funny cartoon. Still, very interesting stuff, I hope this takes off. Greg, you definitely should check it out and tell me what you think!

Also, for my wedding, Lisa and I are thinking of catering it ourselves, to save money and I personally would enjoy it more. Let me know what you think of it, siblings!

Phrank: The Eleventh Hour

Of the Eleventh day, of the Twelfth month, etc... Not much to say today. Finals coming up, and then I'll be home soon. KoL Crimbo season is in full swing and practically lag-free. If you haven't commented with your birthday on Lisa's post yet, please go ahead and do so. It means a lot to her. This coming Patriot's game should be interesting, with Matt Cassel as a possible start, and Teddy Bruschi is out, according to my sources.

Phrank: Christmas wish list

So there seems to be some issues with getting me stuff for Christmas. If you're really stumped, a KoL or XKCD t-shirt would be greatly appreciated. I wear a large shirt and here are my preferences if you decide to get me one. The following links are XKCD shirts, any KoL shirt is good.
StandBackScience
Just Shy

More importantly, I would really appreciate this poster. It's cheaper than a t-shirt, and would look way cool in my room. We're all pretty geeky here, and it's pretty cool. Height Poster

This is probably the funniest Muppet's video I've ever seen.

Phrank: Thanksgiving Special

This Thanksgiving season, we have lots to be thankful for. I, in particular, am thankful for my wonderful fiance, Lisa, for the wonderful times we have together as a family, for Matt Cassel, for raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens, brown paper packages tied up with strings, these are a few of my thankful things. One thing we do not have to be thankful for is Pachebel's Canon. Watch the following video, so as to learn why Pachelbel's Canon in D haunts us to this very day. Greg, it relates to cellos, so you better watch it.



Thanks for a great Thanksgiving, here's a link to our first post ever in the blog, and it was about the legendary and infamous Munchkin game that still divides us to this very day. I did enjoy this game of Munchkin today, I mean, Rat on a Stick was hysterical. That first post was on March 24, and kicked off our sibling blogging. We're within four months of one year of posting, and it's been quite a year so far. Well, enjoy your month of Christmas music, now that Thanksgiving is over!

Phrank: Movies and Music

Alright, three key things to talk about. Quantum of Solace, Twilight and something good other than me from the 80s.
1. Quantum of Solace is a good movie, no debate over that. However, as a Bond film, I don't think it really qualifies. This falls into the similar category as Casino Royale, as a Becoming Bond film. I think it's at the end of this movie we can assume he is the Bond of legend, not just an elite agent with a vendetta on his mind. Also, this movie did a spectacularly bad job of explaining the villain's plan. I won't go into anymore details, but I felt very confused by the villain's plot portion of the movie. Still, it's an excellent movie and worth seeing, though I think it falls short of being a Bond movie.
2. I'm seeing Twilight tonight with Lisa, 12:05 showing. It's very exciting, though my expectations for this movie are incredibly low. I think this movie is going to validate a lot of the critique about the book, which I don't think is necessarily true. I think Bella is a perfectly written teenager, which is one of the hardest characters to write or understand. So here over dramatic personality lends itself to drawing a lot of flak because real people don't act like that. I would out forth that teenagers do, which is part of Stephanie Meyer's skill as a writer. However, this movie is probably going to make Bella look like an over dramatic whiny person, but I'm hopeful.
3. Check out this song/video!

It's called Freeze Frame, and it reminds me of the Duck Tales theme song. I heard it on the way back weekend this past Friday, and I knew this was blog worthy immediately.

P.S. Check out Yahtzee this week, he delivers two more interesting commentaries on Fable 2 and Fallout 3. I still enjoy watching his reviews, even though I've come to realize my standards are nowhere close to his. I enjoyed Spore quite a lot, even though it does have some timing issues for certain stages. I also enjoyed Halo 3, but that game is part of a trilogy and does not stand well by itself. Yahtzee's reviews are entertaining and offers a unique critical eye to the games he reviews.

Lisa: Phrank's Hero!

Title suggested by Francis himself : )
So Frank's computer has a virus that has disabled his internet, so it's up to me. Hi guys!!
Ummmm, what to write about. Well, Francis went to a play tonight called Pericles: Prince of Tyre. Apparently is was very good, nice and entertaining, and even better than the Patriots game.
NaNoWriMo!! My story is almost at 6,000 words, and I am way far behind. Frank has a but more written than I do, but we're not sure how much yet cause part of it is not on his computer. We're having a writing marathon this weekend. We both have to write nearly 20,000 words to catch up. That's a lot.
I guess I could write about wedding stuff, but there's nothing really exciting to report, except that my dress came in : ) Other than that, we're basically waiting until we have more money to do anything. It kinda sucks. Oh well. We're getting married this summer, even if the reception doesn't have any food. At least there will be cake though.
I recently moved to Uxbridge, which is really spiffy, cause the house is great, and I'm closer to both Holy Cross and the good ole' NA. Super!!
I'd really like a puppy, or a kitten. I have a fish, a betta named Kirk that Frank actually bought for me, from his school, just about two years ago. He's red. Kirk, not Frank. So the other day I was cleaning his water, and I could have sworn he only had one fin!! The right fin was nowhere to be seen. I completely searched him (at least as completely as one can by looking through a fish bowl) and there was no fin. I was kinda sad, and a little disturbed that he was randomly missing a fin. And then, when I went to feed him that night, the fin was back! It was so weird. I'd even checked earlier to see if the fin was pressed against his body and it wasn't. Strange Kirk, odd just like his namesake.
Anywho, this post is kinda long, so I'll go now.

Placeholder for a real title

Boy howdy, little bro Frank swooping in to save the day. Greg texted me earlier today to post for him. So here I am. I'm way behind on my nanowrimo, though after the 4,000 words I wrote today. There were space pirates, and Greek gods and evil clones. What else more can you ask for in a story? A guy named Gilbert that talks to much, which my story has! Greg should be posting something later, but he's covered for this week. Here's a video for you:

Phrank: It's just so... Cute!

Siblings, I hate to bombard you with yet another Spore creation of mine, but I can't help it. This is my all time favorite so far of my creations, the ones Lisa's made are a thousand times better, but this one is incredible. I affectionately call it Stay Puff. http://www.spore.com/sporepedia#qry=sast-500177758352 It looks vaguely familiar in a way I can't quite place. It gave me quite a few chuckles today when I made it.

If you want to see a clever spin on the election, watch this week's South Park. It's really quite funny without being disrespectful to either candidate. Certainly one of the better episodes.

Also, I got to play Fable 2 this weekend at Mark's house. It's the same silly Fable storyline and game universe, which are actually quite fun to play with, but with a pretty sweet 2-player mode added. Once I got my character to legit hero status, I was able to hop into Mark's campaign as a hireling with the same abilities and equipment slightly weaker than his. It worked out pretty sweet, and this game packs less of the fairy tale happiness overkill of the first one and more of the dark and sinister world the hero overcomes.

Phrank: Disney Movies!

I spent my shift at Kimball today talking to the freshmen workers about Disney movies. Among the many that made favorites were Lion King, Aladdin, Wall-E and Finding Nemo. There was certainly some noticeable generational gap, and almost all of them were big fans of High School Musical. Treasure Planet and Emperor's New Groove were two other Disney films that got mentioned for favorite. Tell me siblings, what is your favorite Disney movie?

Phrank: Happy Birthday!

Yesterday was Lisa's birthday! She's now 22, which is not one of her favorite numbers, but still, Darwin would be proud of her survival. I spent all of Tuesday with her, where we watched the last five episodes of Heroes, and did some more wedding planning. We also picked up her birthday cake and ice cream cupcakes, which was delicious.
Tomorrow, I'm going to take her to Roger Williams zoo for her birthday, so she can see the polar bears, if they are still there. I also get her an awesome birthday present, but I can't say anything about it since it's a surprise. We're gonna go out to eat after the zoo and probably catch a movie back at her house.
This Saturday, my friend from home Kent is getting married, so we're going to that as well. The following weekend is family weekend, so hopefully I'll see some of you up here at Holy Cross.

Phrank: Let the Good times roll, in case...

God does show, in the end, but that's not really what my post is about.

First and foremost, a non-binding resolution for every member of the Walek estate to participate in National Novel Writing Month, this November! Basically, the point is to write 50,000 words which is 175 pages, from November 1st till midnight of November 30th. The goal is quantity, not quality. Now we can all be novelists! I'm signed up and I'm pretty sure my fiancee, Lisa, is going to be signed up as well. It'd be cool to have a bunch of us siblings doing it to. Just sayin'
Speaking of Lisa, she's moving to Uxbridge! That makes her about twenty minutes closer to HC! Lisa and I are going to be featured on the Kimball dining room menu for Family Weekend which is Oct. 25th, I believe. Perhaps you'd like to attend HC for this crazy weekend. I know I'm going to be nonstop busy, but it'd give you a chance to see what HC life is all about.
I'll be home at some point for Columbus Day weekend, not decided on that quite yet, I have a football game on Saturday, but after that, who knows! Speaking of football, I bought Madden 06 for $2.99, having a blast playing it and Spore.

One other crazy thing I'm doing during the month of Movember is letting my mo grow to raise money to combat prostate cancer. Quite a month coming up!

Phrank: Nothing Much to Say

Life has basically been work, classes, Lisa and Spore. Not exactly in that order, but I really have nothing exciting going on. I work all out on classes from Monday-Thursday and work from Friday-Sunday. Any free time I do find, I spend with Lisa. Things are going fairly well, no news is good news I guess. This presidential election is certainly entertaining. Watching the Vice-presidential debate as I write this.
I did download the Spore patch and it is playing so much better now. Very exciting!

Phrank: It's Thursday?

I've completely forgotten it's Thursday and I've lost track of time a bunch of times over the past couple of days. I blame this in Spore, my new video game. It's pretty fun, not sure how much replay value there is in it, so there's essentially only three different play styles and the majority of the game is cosmetic. But having a carnivorous predator race of giant pink fairies is its own reward, I suppose.
Here's a link to my Spore account, this is the pink fairy of death

Here's the first version of this creature, fresh from the water with its brand new legs!

Enjoy, I'll probably post some different creature pics next week!

Phrank: G.K. Chesterton

The following are two videos of an author by the name of G.K. Chesterton, who I'm studying this semester in my class on Catholic modernity. The first one is a video of Chesterton at a Worcester college, being inducted as a Crusader. Hmmm, I wonder... The video quality is pretty bad, but he's the largish fellow on the left side of the center.


The following video is a snippet from a play based on Chesterton's essays, and some slight biographical info. I really enjoyed this video, even if it was on Godtube.




The book we had to read for class, "The Man Who Was Thursday:A Nightmare" is a funny, theological/philosophical debate against Western pessimism and despair. The story was engaging and entertaining and then at the end shifts into something so deep and profound, it was incredible. Truly a masterpiece of Catholic literature.

Holy Cross vs. Harvard football tomorrow night, at Harvard. Should be a really fun and exciting game for the band!

Phrank: Video game story time!

So it's been a couple of days since I played KoL, but it was good, I needed a break. I've gotten very busy organizing the news publishing team for KoL Coldfront over the past few days. As far as school goes, I've got kind of a weird schedule. I only go to class five times a week, over the course of three days. 2 classes Tuesday, 2 classes Wednesday evening, 1 class Thursday. I spend my weekends back in North Attleboro, working my summer job even though it's no longer summer.

This picture is a cute summation of a game I've played several times, Mark and I spent a good half-hour when he first showed it to me identifying all the people in it. If you've played the game, it's incredible. If you haven't, well, at least it's cute. In case you're wondering, the game is Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind. Very cool world-immersion RPG.

Bill, you didn't post again this week. Is something up or did you just forget? I think we may have to convene the tribunal of punishment, and see if a punishment is in order.

Fall is swiftly descending on us, siblings, so please share with the rest of us: what is your favorite thing about fall/autumn

Phrank: The Secret is...

Elizabeth, the secret to a good chicken parm is in the breading of the chicken. That makes or breaks the deliciousness of the chicken parm. No challenges for a few weeks now, interesting enough.
The Republican National Convention is in full swing this week, after some issues with the impending arrival of Hurricane Gustav on New Orleans. Sara Palin, the Alaskan governor and now Vice-Presidential candidate spoke yesterday and McCain speaks tonight.

Classes have started up for me and it's been a slow beginning. One of the three classes I actually had this week was canceled, so not much to talk about on that front. Alumni weekend and homecoming and the UMASS marching band this weekend, should be a crazy time.

My car broke again today. It looks like it's the battery that died, hopefully it's not the alternator. When this car does finally bite the dust, it will not be missed.

Phrank: Amnesia and Cupcakes

I always come up with great things to write about for my post earlier in the week, and by the time it comes to post, I've forgotten them.
In answer to Elizabeth's question, the best part of coming back to school is the freedom to keep my own hours without having to explain it to anybody. If I want to stay up till 5 in the morning every day, I can. If I want to get up at 5 in the morning every day, I can. I think you get the point.
I've always enjoyed my time at Holy Cross, and as excited as I am to graduate, get married and live in my own place, I will miss this campus. It's magical, not in fairy kind of way, but the practical summon weather kind of way. I feel safe here, like the campus is protected somehow.
In other news, the marching band field show is British Invasion themed, and we're doing "Paint it Black"-"Pinball Wizard"-"Can't Buy Me Love Magical Mystery Tour version" Should be an intriguing show to put on.

Here's Yahtzee's update for this week, definitely worth checking out.

Phrank: Cheesecake is delicious, again.

Not much to say siblings, it's been kind of a dull week. Lisa and I are working towards finish booking everything for our wedding. Congrats again to Greg for his good news. I met with a photographer on Wednesday, which is more in Lisa's and I's pricing range.

By the by, the pygmy hippo was featured in Lewis Black's Root of All Evil. So that makes my last post that much more awesome. In answer to Elizabeth's question, Beet is one of my favorite characters, but I would say my absolute favorite is Kissu. Yeah, I know he can be a spineless coward, but when he's on his game, he does the most amazing things.

Phrank: Wrightfully the worst!

So before I get to kindling the ashes of the game I dislike the most, I want to make something clear. I realize my posts/comments over the last few weeks have irritated some of you, and I'd just like to apologize. Most of what I've said was in jest or well-meant teasing. It's a shame I can't josh you kids around like I used to, but it's certainly not worth fighting over. Whatever happens, I'm glad we did this blog, it's nice to see what all of you post from week to week.

Alright, the game I hate the most....

Suikoden 3, hands down. I've never played a game that had so much potential and then terrifically bombed out after playing it for a couple of hours. The game sold itself on featuring 40+ characters/main people to interact with, a castle building section ,3 unique viewpoints for the game, and basically an all-around awesome J-rpg. It was an uncompromisingly difficult equipment/item system, an unforgiving dueling system, the storylines were confusingly intertwined and a lot of dead time to slog through.
I expect bad games to be bad, like the LotR games or the Eragon game, I knew they had little to offer in terms of content/gameplay. This game offered a lot in terms of potential and then collapsed on itself. I gave up trying to slog through it and have pretty much tried to forget it existed.