John Zeitler

I’ve gone over the details of the test drives pretty intensely over the last couple days on other services, so really there’s very little to cover here that hasn’t already filtered to the people who’d be interested in it. So, the bottom line is that I’m going to be the owner of a VW in a few weeks. I’m a little excited.

Namely because I really want to not be trapped in this apartment on the weekends anymore, and because quite frankly not having a car stopped me from actually doing something that would have been cool this weekend. I had my pick of cool things to do and everything. Some of them were even social.

Not like I’m bitter or anything.

I know that I am very easily frustrated by my own general incompetence. I am also aware that I come down harder on myself than anyone else ever could when I come across a situation that, through my own fault, causes me extended grief. I am further aware that complaining and angsting about it does little good in the long run compared to actively working to remedy the problem.

Today I forgot all those things for about an hour and a half.

But now, on the other side of it, all I’ll say is that I am going to run a game of Paranoia very soon and I am going to gleefully inflict the bureaucratic hell that I have just endured upon an unsuspecting world ten– no, a hundredfold.

Oh yeah, now I remember why it’s difficult to do daily posts. Because every single time I stand at my desk and try to think about what I want to write about, I inevitably trawl through the archive of posts until, an hour later, I find I still haven’t even opened up the post window.

ANYWAY. Today’s the last day of my vacation, and I realize that aside from going home and coming back, I haven’t done much of anything that I really meant to accomplish over the break. Now, granted, what I did do was important and good. But the cleaning, the cooking, a few errands… they all are left to today. Back to the insane, hectic, unstoppable grind.

Bring it on.

There are a lot of advantages to having a very active social life, but there are also drawbacks. I’m certainly not the most outgoing person in the world, though, and I greatly admire my friends who seem to do so much more than I do.

Now, if they’d just lend me their time machines, things would be OK…

Last night, Capcom announced that Mega Man Legends 3– a game I’ve been championing for over seven years– has been cancelled, with no hope of being picked back up. They were very formal and clinical in the announcement.

Related, I would like to make an announcement of my own. Effective immediately, I have cancelled all plans to purchase games bearing the Capcom name, including but not limited to Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3, Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition, Street Fighter III XBLA, Ghost Trick, Okamiden, and Professor Layton vs. Ace Attorney. Capcom sadly has not met the required criteria for my continued business, and it’s with regret that I have to make this decision. Below, I have provided an FAQ for this matter.

Q: Are there plans to purchase Capcom games in the future?
A: Currently there are none.

Q: I want to keep playing the Capcom games I’ve purchased.
A: Capcom games will not be played (by John, at least) during “everyday” usage, but will be brought to conventions and other special events for a limited time.

Q: Is there a chance that game announcements from Capcom will be taken seriously in the future?
A: No, I am afraid not.

Q: Will it be okay to give John special access to Capcom games in exchange for a reversal of his position?
A: I will not refuse delivery of any free games that Capcom may send, but until certain criteria are met, they won’t be played, reviewed, or acknowledged.

Q: Will the money that was going to be spent on Capcom games be used to buy other games?
A: Yes; already, plans are in the works to support companies like Atlus, Nicalis, Aksys, Nintendo, Electronic Arts, Media.Vision, Natsume, Sega, XSEED JKS, Mistwalker, Monolith, Bioware, Carpe Fulgur, Beyond Madness & Genius, Treasure, Q? Entertainment, Ubi Soft…

Q: Can you please give me more information as to why the Capcom purchasing plan was cancelled so close to the announcement of Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3?
A: The project was cancelled for the reasons outlined in the statement.

Q: Is the cancellation of the Capcom purchasing plan related to the departure of Inafune-san from the company?
A: The cancellation of the project is only tangentially related to Inafune-san’s departure.

Q: Will there be any future reconsideration of this cancellation, or is this a final decision?
A: We certainly welcome Capcom to provide a compelling reason for me to reconsider my decision, including resumption of the Mega Man Legends 3 project, a sincere apology to the fans who supported MML3 before its announcement by buying the limited-edition Servbot and celebrating the game, a detailed explanation of the reason behind the cancellation beyond “certain criteria”, the release of a Breath of Fire game in North America, and/or relinquishing the rights to the Mega Man series to Inafune. But, until one or more of those criteria are met, the decision will stand.

Thank you.

I picked up a pair of noise-cancelling headphones this evening owing to three facts. The first is that my previous pair of earbuds had broken (cord snapped right out of the left bud) one morning a few weeks ago, and I needed a replacement pair. The second is that I had a sizeable rewards voucher for Best Buy sitting on my account.

The third is that, while trying to save some money and the rewards certificate, I had bought a pair of cheap stopgap earbuds at a 7-11 downtown the morning that the originals had broken. And that, today, I discovered that they were practically worthless when sitting next to someone who had quite a bit to say about my choice of commute entertainment: an anime. It matters comparatively little which one, because I am firmly of the belief that this woman would have just as gleefully excoriated me for watching SuperBook. I was not, in her words, reading the Bible, therefore I was sinning. She actually said that.

This comes literally eight hours after I had felt, for a little while, that geekery was becoming acceptable in public after seeing a forty-year-old man quietly reading a Batman graphic novel three rows ahead of me this morning.

Oh, and for the record? It was Shakugan no Shana, and I was incredibly lucky that my stop came long before any of the clothes-changing scenes came. I would have hated to have to explain to the paramedics that my minding of my own damn business caused some nutbar lady to have an aneurysm.

I was at work until 9:45p and had to take a cab home.

We’re not talking about today. Ever.

Important lesson for the day.

Apparently I am a subconscious air-raid warden, because if there’s even the slightest elevated light level from what I’m accustomed to, I will not be able to sleep very well, if at all. That was discovered last night when I forgot to turn off the bathroom light, on the other side of my bedroom door, and it nearly kept me up all night.

So I had a nice dinner, take-out. About halfway through it I stopped and realized that they may have given me actual meat instead of the vegetarian version I’d ordered. It’s hard to tell.

This is either going to be a normal night or a very long one…

Folks, it is officially too hot to blog. I’m off to bed under an A/C vent and a fan turned on high.