Schizoid

It's been an all-around great weekend and selfishly, for my own records, I'm going to summarize it with this blog. As such, it is likely that none of you will care. The trick is on you however as I do not care that you don't care and since I'm in charge of my own blogging tools, nothing can be done to stop me from waxing on about my personal life at the expense of Giant Bomb!
The greatness of my weekend began Friday. I got home from school and finally found time to play The Path (see my previous entry). As I've mentioned, the game is amazing for those who are interested in experimental games or game design in general. It was the perfect start to my weekend because to play that game is an extremely enriching experience. Of course, after playing The Path I got on Giant Bomb to blog about my impressions of the game. The rest of the night, up until around 7 pm was spent chatting in the Giant Bomb forums which, as most of you probably understand, can be a very entertaining way to pass the time.
At 7 pm, I had a date with my girlfriend. We went to a nearby college town and had dinner. Afterward we came back to my house and watched a film called Waking Life. It was essentially a film in which a loose narrative is woven from the philosophical conversations of different people in a surreal, dreamworld. The most striking aspect of the film was its visual style. It was filmed with real actors and then animators went through the film, frame by frame, drawing inconsistent artwork over everything in the shots. Think A Scanner Darkly but with more dynamic art. It was a great film, which I expected as a fan of Richard Linklater films (his best known work: Slacker). Unfortunately, my girlfriend had a midnight curfew because the previous week she stayed at my house until 3 am. This, of course, was an abrupt end to the date.
I spent the rest of the night on Giant Bomb and Facebook. I was mostly hanging out in the forums which become extremely fascinating late at night or really early in the morning. At some point, I started doing some code work on a game I've been making. The incoherence of the time somehow helped with game making because the tuning of the game that I produced Friday night/Saturday morning is the best tuning I've come across in a long time. I was also waiting on Steam to finish downloading Half Life 2 so I could play a mod called Dear Esther. It was recommended to me by Dr_Feelgood38 in the comments of my previous blog entry. Once that finished downloading, I played around with the mod a bit and then went to bed.
Saturday was a a terrible day until around 3 pm. I suffer from manic depression and I think I was just in an emotional slump which always feels awful because nothing much can be done to address those states. I eventually began to snap out of it though as I played more of The Path, played Everyday Shooter, marvelled at the game tuning I had done the night before, and as I listened to my newly downloaded copy of In The Aeroplane Over The Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel. My day got even better as my friends and I planned to see The Watchmen later. I had heard it wasn't very good, but I definitely needed to get out of the house so I was excited for the rest of the day. We almost got turned away at the theater because one of my friends forgot her ID but luckily we managed to sweet talk the manager into bending the rules. As I suspected, it was not a very good movie but it was at least a "fun" movie and I'll probably see it again with my girlfriend because she has expressed a desire to see it. I got home at around midnight and watched a bit of TV before going to bed.
Now we arrive at today. I don't have any homework or anything to do so I'm anticipating a lazy Sunday. I'll probably play more of The Path and also Schizoid if I can find the time. I'm also probably going to read more of a book called 2666 that I've been obsessed with lately. Other than that I could work on games some more or chat with my girlfriend on AIM and of course I'll be in the Giant Bomb forums on and off throughout the day.