Matt's Cool and Interesting Blog of The New Millennium 

Bookshelf

Over the summer I'm going to put all the books that are important to me in a bookshelf. Everything I read changes me a little, and the books on this shelf will be the most influential. Finally, in one place, all the ideas that I have borrowed to make my personality, my identity, will be together. This bookshelf will be a shrine to everything that has made me, me. I really can't wait to do this.

UT 2004 Rocks!

It's like a finished UT 2003. The new mode with vehicles, Onslaught, is so much fun with about 10 people. Definitely check this game out.

Getting Randy

I've never read anything by Ayn Rand, but I did come up with that joke by myself, and it made me laugh.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day.

Quiz

Matt's Cool and Intereting Millenial Quiz! Take it now.
Take my Quiz on QuizYourFriends.com!

Chicago Exodus

//This is the first half of Chicago Exodus: Book two of the Travelogue Saga, a fictional story I wrote in my away messages on AIM. I'll probably finish it up soon if you want to read it at the AIM screen name "then mattf says". It's really not formatted for this site and not designed for a non-serialization. But anyway, here it is.

Matthew Fister
Chicago Exodus
Part 2 of the Chicago Travelogue Saga

Reality twisted, bent, made right angles with itself. "What kind of nonuclidean fast-food restaurant is this?" I thought to myself.
"What would you like sir?" asked the distorted, ethereal cashier.
"A cyclopean cheeseburger and a side of eldritch fries."

The say black holes are dark, sucking in everything, even light. Infinite density, yet as small as a point in size. My wallet reminded me of a black hole, for it was empty, and I had no means of paying for my fast food.


The cashier stood glaring at me.
"GET OUT!" he bellowed.
Immediately I turned and ran of the McThulhu's restaurant, exiting in front of a strangely empty Chicago street. "What was that rhyme again"

Look left
Look right
Look left again.

I crossed the seemingly safe straight. Darkness enveloped me as the static grip that I had on my y-axis disintegrated. I fell into an exposed man-hole. The problem was that I forgot to look down.

When you fall you lose all sense of time and direction. When you fall into darkness the universe is fundamentally changed. As the light above faded to a point, and then a distant star, and then nothing, I became the center of my universe. There was nothing else. My concerns, my goal of having a perfect trip to Chicago, my dreams of a perfect disappeared. I became nothing more than Matt Fister, and nothing was going to stop me.

I must have fallen for five minutes. Then, as though gravity was reversing iteself, I slowed down to a stop, floating in the oppressing darkness. After hovering for 30 seconds, With a jerking sensation, lost my phantasmic grip and slid out of my spot. This time I almost instantly hit the ground with a thud.

The darkness vanished, and my eyes struggled to get a bearing on my surroundings.

As my sight focused on my surroundings, I became aware that I was in an entirely white room that extended limitlessly in all directions. The roof appeared to be a dome sloping upwards in all directions and girdled with cocentric circles of lights. This lighting scheme had the effect of eliminating my shadow. I searched in all directions for some indication of an exit or some kind inhabitant of this bizarre structure.

Directly behind me I spied two black dots that appeared at the edge of the white room's horizon. As I made my way to them, the circles of lights above became ellipses, skewing away from me. The dots grew closer, and I could see that they were two black buttons, one in the shape of a triangle and the other in the shape of a circle. I reached forward and pushed the triangle button.

Suddenly, after pushing the triangular button, speakers roared with ghastly bravado:

Bah, bah, black sheep,
Have you any wool?
Yes, marry have I,
Three bags full;
One for my master,
One for my dame,
But none for the little boy
Who cries in the lane.

The music stopped, the lights violently clanked off, and I heard a rumbling behind me, where the other side of the room would have been.

Slowly, a sliver of light appeared there. It widened into a crescent, and I walked toward it, shaking in fear.

I reached the center of the room when I felt as though time stopped.

"Matt," a voice whispered to me, "you are a lion on a pool table, you are a man with dragon wings, you are a child in Kindergarten, you are a leaf pedastal. Remember, in the words of Marcel Schwob, 'Laughter is probably doomed to disappear'. Remember the words I sayeth, for I am Ernie to the Max, God of Surrealism."

My universe became white, faded to blue, turned purplish-yellow, tie-dyed itself, and faded back to the darkness of the chamber with a single sliver of light. This encounter made me want to run real-fast, like that kid in that RPG I once made. who ate the peaches.


I seemed to have a memory of walking into the crack of light. There on the pedestal was a blue, glowing orb. I picked the the orb up and suddenly the room began to descend. I can no longer tell if this happened or not, because I was back in darkness in the large domed room, staring into the solitary crescent of brightness.

I walked again, this time for real I thought, into the crescent of light. Inside I noticed a floating face, translucently shimmering.

It said to me "This is not for you."

I immediately knew that this was my arch enemy, Mologmar Teggen. I had never met a Mologmar Teggen before, but somehow I knew he would be the scourge of my life. I was truly frightened.

Behind the ghostlike face of Molagmar Teggen, I made up the shadow of a corridor. I ran straight at the face, and passed through it. As I did this, Molagmar's projection bellowed, "Stop!" I kept running

The stairs led downwards winding around a tight, steep square. I put my hands on both railings and launched myself downwards, sliding down approximately 10 floors.

The staircase led to commercial looking hallway in which high powered winds blew in my face.

Best Puzzle Game Ever: Tetris Attack

Tetris Attack is the best Puzzle Game ever. Others might know this Super Nintendo game through it's N64 reincarnation as Pokemon Puzzle League. In any case, it's a brilliant game with an excellent Vs. mode. It's so skill dependent, too. Whenever we play we know exactly what the outcomes of all matchups will be (I get crushed). Play it!

Lost in Translation

I just saw Lost in Translation, with Bill Murray. This film explores the culture differences between America and Japan. More importantly it speaks of finding yourself through the help of another, even if it is a short meeting.

Bill Murray plays Bob, a washed up actor starring in a Japanese whisky commercial. His wife and fading marriage are back home and he spends his nights in a luxury hotel bar.

There he meets Charlotte who is played by Scarlett Johannson (perhaps a relative of the Sim, Bobby Johannson). Charlotte is in Japan with her workaholic, photographer husband. After the two meet, they explore Japan together. They seem out of place, getting lost in a maze of nightclubs and television shows. Once their time together ends, they realize that they have learned a new philosophy from each other and Tokyo.

I liked Lost in Translation a lot. I'll give it 8.5 Groundhog Days out of 10.

For a less positive review, check out this New Times review which doesn't seem to quite get it...

Movie Review: Starsky and Hutch

I just saw this movie based on the 70s cop comedy by the same name. It stars Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, and, to put it simply, rocks. Check it out: 9 dragons out of 10!

BONUS REVIEW: Starsky and Hutch - the videogame.

This game has got a bad rap. I don't know why, because I think that it's quite fun. It's a simple car chase game, but it has more refined driving controls than GTA 3 and Vice City. The iceing on the cake is that if you have a second player and (optionally) a Lightgun, one person can shoot as the other drives. The bottom line is that it has great gameplay and a good social feature. 8 viewer ratings out of 10.

Shows on Adult Swim

Here I'll rate the various shows on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. I'll focus on the original shows (everyone knows enough about Family Guy and Futurama) and deftly avoid the anime stuff (I really have no idea what I'm talking about if I get into anime).


Home Movies - Pretty variable. One week I'll love it, the next week I won't laugh all episode. Pretty annoying advertisements, too.

Space Ghost Coast to Coast - How can I make fun of Space Ghost. He's the man. The show rules too...Except recently, it seems like it's been running out of steam. What a shame. Did anyone ever go to the ultra cool Space Ghost Council of Doom website. It seems gone now, and redirects to the Adult Swim page. They should really bring that back.

Sealab: 2021 - I love Sealab. I think it's the best thing on Adult Swim.

Mission Hill - They don't show this enough. I like it a lot. The one comedian, with the blond hair, looks really dorky... was in Just Shoot Me and actually in the Seinfeld episode with Gonorrhea... I think he does the voice of the one guy on Mission Hill. I'm not really sure. Anyway, it's a good show.

The Oblongs - I've said this before, but Will Ferrell doesn't save this show. It's just not funny.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force - I really have to focus to get the jokes on this. Either that or lots of caffeine. Really funny when I can pay attention.

And now...

THE BONUS SECTION!

I'll try talking about anime, despite having said that this would be a bad idea.

Witch Hunter Robin - This is a "new" show being run by Cartoon Network. I saw an episode of it while doing some Differential Equations homework. It's very, very dark. I'm not sure why. It has really atmospheric city scenes and stuff, too. It doesn't really seem to have a point though, cause it's not really frightening. Maybe I just saw a bad episode.

Big O - No this isn't the hotdog place, the Original Hot Dog Shop where I get a late night fry fix. One night really late I saw one of these. All of a sudden the show hypnotized me and I had to watch the whole thing. Basically in short the show is this: A guy has this big robot which he uses to fight criminals with big robots and generally act like Batman. There is also this girl, and she actually is a robot. Cool, huh? At the Original Hot Dog Shop, they actually have a menu item called the Big O. I'm not sure what it is, but it would be cool if when I ordered it I got a giant mech.

Cowboy Bebop - Now this is one anime that I like. It's really very cool. Check it out.

Cool Games to Play Over Break

Here are a couple of games I want to try over break.


Munchkin, The Card Game - A 3 to 6 player card game that's incredibly fun and amusing. I played a couple of times at college and it's great. Players backstab each other while trying to get to level 10 by opening doors, fighting monsters, and looting treasure.


1000 Blank White Cards - A card game where the players design all the cards. Get the most points and win!


Brikwars! A table top war game using legos. The rules are really complicated, too.