I’m not a gamer. I play video games from time to time, and I’ve been known in years past to play them to excess, but I’m really not a gamer.

Still, I had to try out On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode One from Hothead Games and my friends Mike and Jerry over at Penny Arcade.

In short: I loved it. It was challenging, but I was able to beat it. I was short 50 parts for an additional weapon-upgrade for Tycho’s tommy-gun, and none of the characters had their full +15 overkill bonus (they were all at +10.) Honestly, I don’t think those additional 5 damage points make much of a difference in the final battle… not unless there are multipliers attached to them.

It earns its “M” rating very cartoonishly. The jokes are obscene, the dialog is about what you’d expect from a Penny Arcade comic, and you spend a lot of time killing fellow human beings for little more than the crime of being hobos, clowns, barbershoppers, or mimes. Oh, and the little “fruit robot” is there (in great numbers — he’s your source of parts), and you can “distract” him with an orange.

I’m not a better human being for having played it, but I did learn a thing or two about the craft of animation by watching closely. It’s quite pretty, and I liked the music. I LOVED the writing. Jerry Holkins does things with words that border on sorcery. Not to knock Mike’s craft at all — I love his artwork — but it’s Jerry’s writing that always carries the day for me.

The game is definitely worth the $20 I spent.

I spent the last week reporting each and every thing I ate via Twitter. This was a very successful week for me, too, in that I was able to see what I was eating, where I was weighing in, and how I was progressing overall.

Then Twitter went down over the weekend, and I binged.

Let’s face it: I don’t want my diet to be a slave to the whims of somebody else’s technological issues. So… I’m going to be taking my Twitter diet to once-daily Live Journal posts. These will be friends-locked, but if you want in on the custom list just reply below. I’m sure all 700 of you don’t want to know what I’m eating, but I’m also sure that a few of you DO want to know.

EDIT: Oh, dang. The only way for me to include people in a custom group is for ME to friend THEM. *sigh*. No offense, folks, but just because you’re interested in my eating habits doesn’t mean I want you on my friends page (which is cluttered enough as it is.)

I suppose I could create a group?