Thoughts for today : - This one should have a comments section
Blatantly biased elitist comments by 'high-ranking' (or blabbers enough to be interviewed) employees praising their own company is pretty annoying to read but especially in the world of games and ESPECIALLY that of the consoles. The latest grinning monkey pundit to describe the light shining out of his own arse is Aaron Greenberg. See, grin grin grin: 
chuckle, wheeze, pampering hotel-interview smiles: 
(both photos © 1998 - 2004 MegaGames. All rights reserved) I understand that through being maybe paraphrased, him describing Wii fans as people who are "going to want to graduate to an Xbox 360 experience", may make Aaron Greenberg (if those are his real vowels) seem a little stuck up his own backside. But that's paraphrasing, right ? "You see they're not buying games on it, right?", he said. "They're buying it, it's like something they break out when people come over, and it's maybe a fun thing, but it's almost like the same people that buy a karaoke machine, you know? They're not really buying it for games, they're just buying it as a novelty." This man obviously hasn't heard of Rock Band and Guitar Hero. I do also enjoy his brushing off of such factors as a console being 'a fun thing'. Who wants that? When were games ever touted as brilliant for not being novel, inventive or new ? OK, apart from many bad FPS shooters, but they often go down in flames anyway, leaving inventive new FPS games to flourish into maturity through even more creative unexpected ideas. Games such as HL2 and Halo 3 had very novel features invested in by creative intelligent people not thinking the same thoughts as everyone else. But it's not just that and Nintendo being more often than not at the #1 and #2 spot in sales or the fact that many what may be deemed 'hardcore' gamers, ie those who play games a lot and have experience with a history of playing games to back up their preference for whatever title or genre, own a Wii to play said games (people like me). It's that once again someone, and this goes to anyone from any company doing this, has not only voiced that they think they are the monkey's nuts but then deemed it fit to attempt to throw shit in the face of people buying competitor products, even those buying both theirs AND the competitor product. Sorry to go on but I really doubt anyone has seen fit to read this whole self-indulgent vent of mine. I'm probably just miffed that it seemed so targeted at me, having yet to graduate, Lolz. More of the interview here. P.S. On the subject of graduation, I have just been informed that I passed my second year of uni and that I have, for both reports on my industrial placement, an A. Woo! On the weekend I visited the Harrod's department store or 'Compendium of Consumer Tat'. The central piece I was directed to by my friend Agoritsa was The Egyptian Escalators. They're an eye-catching sight and gave me some impressive vertigo to look at while traveling up and then down their exhaustingly slow bling rides. Note to anyone wanting to find them: do not ask the staff with 'Information' sashes on where they are, you will just be pointed blindly in conflicting directions unless the info-bod happens to be stand 5 seconds from them (as we found on info-bod #6). The escalators were commissioned in '95 and built by '97 and I know this from the text on an AlFiad-faced Sphinx at the lowest entrance to the escalators, with which is what seems to be a very old log.  The escalators are a mind-boggling construction, especially when you consider how completely covered the entirety of the 6 floors are with impressive busts, statues and seemingly authentic architecture. Some of it is very tacky but at such an expensive to construct tackiness that is still impressive. The whole thing apparently cost £20,000,000. I tried to calculate if it was worth it on the way up and personally think he got a pretty good deal. The whole thing is far bigger and more complex than I'd imagined.
At around the central floor within the construction is the Diana memorial fountain. I hadn't realized that this thing was an indoors item and found it to be quite a creepy surprise to see it. Possibly far more spine-tingling was the amount of people, gathering around it and behind the photos of these two dead people, having their photos taken, grinning. There were also people commenting to each other about how these tourists didn't understand what the fountain was about who would then go and take far-too-close close-ups of the tiny glass pyramid containing the ring Dodi gave to Diana and the wine glass it was secreted in. The wine glass had some sort of rusty bacteria looking substance in it that must be developing over time which I surmised may be able to bring her back in some sort of Jurassic Park scenario, probably spurred by that log. I didn't take any photos of the fountain as I found it far to painful fitting an irony to be like that at a memorial to the death of a woman who died hounded by mindless paparazzi. Also, it was shit. 
I did try to get photos of the architecture about the wells and balconies surrounding and under the escalators but my vertigo meant most of my photos came out quite blurred - I think I should have the sketches working in the gallery now so you can go there now and rejoice.
That's all folks, - Daniel | 
