The collected works of ScottyB

Come and gone. Only 21 more to go (hehehehe)…

It has a tremendous effect on you, only working 4 days a week and having 3 off. I think we all know that from the occasional long weekends we’re granted from the Government. You get more rest, you get more things done, you have more fun and as a result, I think you enjoy and put more into the 4 day work week right after. Its less of a load.

So how did I spent this long weekend you might ask? That’s got me so peachy and stuff?

Slept in, watched movies, played games, watched Seinfeld, spent quality time with the missus and bantered with mates.

In my defense, it hasn’t stopped raining for most of the weekend..

Perfect really. What we’d all probably do if we were to win lotto tomorrow. Well, what I’d probably do anyway. Though I imagine if I won lotto, I’d probably buy some nice cars too and I’d probably end up tracking them a fair bit - though depending on how much I won, I might even have a track built in the backyard of my mansion so I wouldn’t have to travel far to track them at least..

/sidetrack

So yeah, the long weekend. The employed persons dream. I really should save up my holidays more often - I could get used to this.

Or Marvel Ultimate Alliance for the uninformed.

Cast your mind back to the early days of this blog and that’s pretty much all I was playing on the PC. It had consumed all my spare time - and as a Marvel fan (a big one) it was one of those time-sapping items in my game collection. So once again spotting MUA on the pre-owned shelf at EB Games today had me shaking.

I knew that firstly, I could play it on the big 40″ through the PS3. Bonus.
Secondly, it has not one, but two extra characters in the PS3 version (Moon Knight and Colossus).
Thirdly, it was only $50 odd bucks.

I said to myself I’d not pay full price for this one. I’d already bought it on sale for the PC (paid $15) and there was no way I was buying it again, on the PS3, for $119 (general asking price in the overpriced EB culture) and unfortunately, they didn’t stock it anywhere else and I’m led to believe they’ve stopped making it too.

So seeing it appear for ~$50 made it a mouth-watering option. Essentially, I’d still have paid less for the two version than if I had bought a retail PS3 version of it in the first place. I was quickly convincing myself. So quickly in fact, I jumped in the car this afternoon and picked it up. The disc is like brand new. You’d never know it was pre-owned (save for the eleventy billion excessive stickers EB have to put on a pre-owned game.. vile practice. There’s even a bloody sticker on the leaflet in the case!!).

As I played away this afternoon, I realised how ridiculous it was to essentially buy something again, just for the extra two characters and a slightly different gaming experience. But them I’m no stranger to buying duplicates. I’ve been sucked into ‘Limited edition collectors DVD sets’ after already owning the ‘One disc edition’ time and time again.

Ahh.. such is life - too short to be worrying about these things.

It’s clobberin’ time!

I think we’ve established by now that I’m a bit of a creepy-crawly enthusiast.

I am. I love ‘em. They fascinate me. Anything with more legs than I seems to intrigue me.

Though while I’ve seen a whole host and variety of creepy-crawlies, there’s no other creepy-crawly that I love watching as much as the Jumping Spider.

We seem to have a host of these little acrobats around lately - many more than I’ve seen in previous years (maybe I wasn’t looking as hard back then - I certainly wasn’t driven by the macro lens to find new shooting material anyway) and they’re coming in a whole wacky range of shapes, sizes, varying levels of hairiness and colour. One thing they all have in common though, is character.

Watching a Jumping Spider is like watching an episode of Benny Hill. If you added the music, you’d have a show, I swear it. They tip-toe around on leaves in what seems like fast-forward on Nature’s remote control. Their movements have no in between. They are facing you. Then they’re not. There’s no medium, there’s no smooth action between. They don’t try to calmly avert your view or slide out of vision, they are there and they are being noticed - and they know it.

Somehow, they manage to strike poses that would put Jim Carrey to shame, the utter slapstick comedy of their movements is divine. Magically, they’ll approach the edge of a leaf or branch and in one click of movement, they are somehow under the leaf. Again, with no in between. They just somehow defied gravity and now begin to rewrite the laws of physics.

Then to top it off, they’ll have the audacity to pop those massive googly eyes out from under said leaf and stare at you - to make sure you saw that spectacular show.

Maybe I’m imagining it all - maybe they’re only doing what comes naturally to them - evading a predator by any means necessary.

I don’t want to believe this though, its just too basic, too plain, too boring for the wonder that is nature.