I beat* Fable. This is amazing for several reasons:

1) I seldom “beat” video games. I lose interest about the time they get difficult enough to actually challenge someone who plays them well.
2) I didn’t use any cheats or walkthroughs past the first half of the game. Granted, the cheats I DID use landed me a superweapon early in the game, and shloads of extra experience points via the “Hero Save” trick (Take the Arena quest, fight all the way to the stone trollls, then DON’T continue fighting. Save your game. Exit. Load your game. You have all the XP from the Arena, and you get to start it over)
3) I killed both Maze (the penultimate Boss) and Jack of Blades (the final Boss) with no Will potions left. My tactic of “slow time, enflame, and then pound the crap out of anything still standing” got replaced with actual PARRYING. Oh, and my ranged weapon skill was pretty much maxed out, so when Jack levitated (“clue to player: use your bow now”) I pretty much murdered him. Had I figured out the bow thing BEFORE he levitated (or read a cheat telling me what to do) the fight would have been over MUCH more quickly.
4) My XBox didn’t crash until the credits. Granted, this means I’ll have to beat the game *again* if I want to run around getting experience and buying property and whatever else you get to do if you sit through the credits, but that’s okay. In the last week my XBox has acted up horribly, but this evening I got a few hours of constant game-play out of it.

With Fable put to bed, I can get back to work. I had a nice, relaxing weekend, so I should be all fired up to crank out the comics first thing tomorrow.

–Howard

*Note: My definition of “beat” is “played all the way through the story one time”. Not “unlocked every secret, played in the hardest-of-the-hard mode, then hacked into the game and made it my prison bizzatch.” True gamers will sneer at me, but I ignore their tauntings. In my world, video game difficulty settings run as follows: Way Too Hard, Too Hard, Still Too Hard, This Is Supposed To Be EASY?, How Can A Beginner POSSIBLY Beat This?, and Middle-Aged Dad In Comfy Chair. That’s me, right there at the bottom. Taunt away. The chair is made of real leather, and I’m comfy.

Here’s the Belated Birthday Report. Live Journal readers get to see it entire HOURS before run-of-the-mill, schlockmercenary.com Schlockers.

Thanks everybody!

–Howard

Enough with the morning ritual of reading the news, blogging, and puttering about the web. Sure, this ritual is critical for me as a writer, because I need to stay at least marginally “in touch” with the world, and I don’t watch television so I’m certainly OUT of touch in plenty of regards. BUT… the buffer is 8 inked, 1 colored. I have 7 strips to color, another 7 to pencil and ink, and a whole Schlockiverse worth of scripting to do.

Quit pestering me! I’m busy! This is YOUR fault you know!

–Howard “I learned that trick from a French defense attorney” Tayler

You know, with a name like “Angers,” you’d EXPECT the story to make you mad (assuming you speak English — hey, how are you reading this, anyway?)

Linked from my local paper.

Upshot: There’s this big pedophilia trial going on in Angers, France, with some 4 dozen victims and sixty-six defendants.

My Take: There are half a dozen different angles a blogger could take with this one. I’m interested in two:

1) This provides an interesting insight into how the French criminal justice system differs from the one here at home. Defendents do not plead innocence or guilt at the beginning of the trial. The press is allowed in, but is not allowed to use any of the victims’ or defendents’ names in their reporting. The sixty-six defendants are all on trial at once, in the same room. I’m not passing judgement on the French here — I’m just saying it’s interesting.

2) This quote: “Defense lawyers plan to argue that government social workers, who dealt with many of the suspects, turned a blind eye to signs of abuse.” Okay, tell me PLEASE how this is a valid defense. It seems to me that this argument is an attempt to lay the blame for the crime on the government for not catching the perpetrators sooner. Now I’m not going to claim that this loony abdication-of-personal-responsibility defense is a uniquely FRENCH thing. Far from it! I think they may have learned this tactic from slimy partnership drones here in the USA. I hope and pray, for the sake of the children in France, that this defense backfires conflagrously, immolating the entire defense team along with their clients.

The crime really is an horrific one, and it brings to mind Christ’s own suggested sentence: “it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” (Okay, we can argue the meaning of THAT passage in light of Christ’s other teachings until the cows come home and lie down with the lamb and the lion.)

–Howard