Bison Hunting and the rest

CBC just had this documentary about this Canadian school trip program in Yukon. Every year these 6 or 7 graders from schools, usually in urban areas, go on a hunting trip to Yukon.

The trip itself seemed amazing. They fished in the frozen lakes in sub zero temperatures, caught huge fishes and sliced and diced them right there, spilling huge amounts of blood on ice and snow. Then they went hunting for a bison. A hunter guy shot down the animal but then the kids were all over the dead thing, cutting away and pulling the guts out right there. What was amazing that not a single one of them went "ewwww", they were all going at it, they all looked so mature eventhough they were so young. It was almost like the Lord of the Flies, seeing a bunch of kids like that.

Anyway, I just thought it was cool and refreshing to see them get tough and dirty as opposed to following the pop culture mentality of going 'ewww' at any sight of blood and guts, not to mention the whole anti-hunting movement thing, which I think is gay. Go Canada!

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What else is new? oh, yeah, happy new year. I was at Rochester with some very good friends this year, enjoying a relaxing and wonderful time. I haven't written much here lately, but I update the Persiblog more often, so, umm ... learn Persian!

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I finished Fable the other night. It's gotta be the most detailed game I've ever seen, not in terms of graphics but in terms of gameplay. The interaction and number of different things that you can do in this game is just unbelievable, and whatever you do pretty much has a direct effect on at least how people interact with you, if not in the outcome of the game.

Set in medival England, you're basically a hero walking around the land of Albion, performing quests. Now you can choose to be a good hero, or a bad hero, or anything in between. But the game is totally nonlinear. You can take a break from the quests and just "live" as a citizen. You can trade (buy goods from one city for cheap and sell at another city for more, making money), go to the barbers and get a haircut the way you want it, get tattoos, wear different clothes (or walk around naked! what you wear directly influences how seriously people take you, and you see that by their reactions). You can woo ladies, marry them! Buy and sell homes! You can also go around doing evil stuff, killing people and taking their houses and then selling them, or beat your wife so much that she'd divorce you (or you can renovate the house and make her happy!!) ... and the list just goes on.

At the end, when you finish all the core quests, depending on how good or evil you've been, the ending will be different. Although I was ultimately disappointed by the ending. I think the golden rule of games is that you HAVE to have a "LONG" cutscene at the end. It's just such a let down to see a 10-second cutscene after putting so many hours in it, no matter how many nice cutscenes you got in between.

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I've started a more healthier lifestyle, I've kept at it for a couple of weeks and I don't think I'm going to give up anytime soon. It's not a resolution or anything, resolutions are gay too. So the fact that I've started this in the new year is more of a coincidence I think. I had to start sometime, so now is as good as any. Surprisingly I've seen a lot of friends also start the same trend, which is very cool I think.