Brooks Brown's Lifestream

Palindrone – A sentence that ends with the same nasally lack of understanding that it began with.

Popularity: 42% [?]

One of the great difficulties with any tragedy is that people have all sorts of briliance they want to foist upon you. Some will tell you that they feel your pain when they certainly do not. Others will tell you that you are strong enough to get through it when you feel like the weakest person on the planet.

Some, though, will tell you that time heals all wounds. It turns out that they are right.

I am nearing a decade since I walked away from my high school for the last time, and the time that has passed has done me wonders. I rarely cry. I rarely have nightmares. I rarely slow myself to delve a bit too deep into the abyss. I am doing, for the first time on years. I feel not happy nor sad, angry or upset.

I am finally for once just me. And it feels great.

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I’ll admit that I have a great deal of laughter I’ve spent at the expense of others. Not my best quality, but when someone is acting like a total jackass, I can’t help myself when their world crashes down on them. But – once in a while, there is the case of someone who I don’t know how to react. It may be because they aren’t very smart, or due to their upbringing, or surrounding…or something.

But I can’t bring myself to fully laugh at them. Something about ‘There but for the grace of something something‘ or something.

One of those cases is the Dancin’ Outlaw, a documentary about a gentleman named Jesse White who lives in Boone County and damn well loves to tap dance. He’s not great. He’s barely adequate. But he really does love to do it. What makes the video is his sheer bluntness about his life – openly admitting threatening his wife with death, or huffing lighter fluid, or his jailtime – he just doesn’t care.

It’s actually hilarious, poignant, as well as sad all wrapped into one. I would love to hear your input and opinions, because this damn video is almost hypnotic, just like his (and his fathers) dancing. Just click on the video below to watch Jesse, Jesco, and Elvis occupy a single body.

EDIT: I’ve changed the video from the lame .flv that simply would NOT encode the audio properly to the now DIVX awesomeness. It’s simply better, so get a Divx codec, k?

No video? Get the DivX Web Player for Windows or Mac

Popularity: 100% [?]

Now I’m a few weeks into the holiday season, and I’ve been slammed by work. Coupled with going off of my anti-smoking meds (Chantix was great but I’ve had the weirdest withdrawals from it), my days have been tied up with odd-sleepiness, work, and sadly litle gaming. An hour a night simply doesn’t cut it anymore.

But, in that time I’ve gotten a great deal of variety in, and my picks of the year have finally released, and I’ve gotten my hands on them. And I’m ecstatic about each pic. Here they are, in no specific order.

1. Fallout 3
2. LittleBigPlanet
3. Resistance 2
4. Ninjatown
5. Clone Wars DS

These are my five pics. I won’t say why I left other games off the list – that will be for another rant. But these games all take advantage of specific qualities that I love in games.

Fallout take the open-world game to a new level with an amazingly creepy atmosphere, brilliant story line, and truly user-generated characters. Well done in every aspect, if you enjoy RPG’s, this game is a must-play.

LittleBigPlanet amazes me around every turn. Sure, it’s fun to make your own levels, and the fact that the game is freakishly customizable is good. Those things are great. What really amazes me is the human mind finding ways to invent technologies within the game utilizing the pre-defined parts. How the hell does the brain do these things?

Resistance 2 is the game for the FPS fan who can’t stand another grey and brown generic shooter. With massive enemies, 8 player co-op, and 60 man online multiplayer, it’s different enough to be worth your time. I won’t play another console shooter until this one gets old, and that won’t be for a while.

Ninjatown for the Nintendo DS is one of two DS games I’ve been playing to death. Tower Defense games generally do steal my attention and free time when I’m on the PC, and since they usually don’t include adorable ninjas and meme-filled humor (over 9000 attackers? Please!), Shawnimals are brought to the small screen with a touch of brilliance and I’m adoring another game I can play while eating cereal. Not enough of those.

While I’m hesitant to mention the latest Clone Wars game for the Nintendo DS due to my obvious conflict of interest (I’m paid to talk about it on the net), but it’s actually a really great game. With a fighting mechanic that is furious and fast, and quicktime events that are implemented seamlessly, it’s easily a worthwhile purchase for the portable system we all love.

Popularity: 60% [?]