Tarheel Moneghetti

Yeah, my siblings and I think so. My mom goes to daily mass most afternoons and is at the church a lot so she probably knows the priests casually. They probably barely recognize my dad. The parish has had constant staff turnover over the past ten or so years, so the current set of priests has only been there a year, maybe less. Apparently my mom was very surprised when the priest emailed her out of the blue and said "why don't I come over for dinner Friday @ 6:30", but she thinks it would be awkward to decline. Tried to talk to the guy today and didn't get far. Priest wasn't at the parish office when he said he would be and kept me waiting for almost 30 minutes before the secretary informed me he would be unable to meet with me. He did return a call to my home this evening while I was on a Zoom call and managed to irritate my wife. She thought he had an attitude. Lol. she may just be mad because he commented on her accent and asked her what Southern state she grew up in (Answer: Northern Australia). If this isn't about money, I'll be surprised. Besides the "usual" pedophilia scandals, the local diocese has been embroiled in numerous financial scandals. Shady land deals, excessive spending, absurdly high tabs at liqour stores, priests convincing senile parishioners to name the priests as life insurance beneficiaries, etc. I'm not very religious nor am I an fan of church as a institution, so I'm not really wanting this lot to con my parents out of more money. My mom has the usual blind spot for the Church many elderly Italian moms have. My siblings are convinced my mom's going to show her appreciation by whacking me upside the head with a bible. They're probably right.

Yeah, it's four days after Dying Light 2, same day as Sifu, ten or eleven days before Horizon Forbidden West, etc. Seems a curious choice. I imagine it doesn't necessarily rely on the Triple-A crowd for buys, but it seems like it's going to get lost in the shuffle. I feel like Sifu may get lost in the shuffle too, on the other hand, it's getting a strong pr push. Really, Feb and March are already loaded, so unless you're ready to go in January or want to wait until late Spring, I dunno what you do with the scheduling. Going to have to google Omori. I'm not familiar with it, but it had a prime spot in the showcase and people are talking it up on Twitter. Was happy to see Grime getting a console release, though it doesn't appear to be coming to Xbox or PlayStation, so....

It’a funny how much people who have never met Owens or Vince know what’s going on inside their heads. It’s possible Owens just took the money. It’s also possible that Owens likes the crowds and his co-workers and doesn’t dislike Vince as much as fans want him to. It’s even possible AEW wasn’t as interested as we think they are wete. I dunno. I must have forgotten to ask Tony how much he offered KO last time he came over for tea. KO made the best decision for him and and his family. I don’t have a clue about what he was offered or what he was thinking when he decided to re-sign, so I’m really confused how the rest of you know him so well. Odds are Owens decided to re-up after thinking about a variety of factors we have no clue about.

Found out last night that my parent's parish priest invited himself to dinner Friday. I don't really have time to deal with that this week, but I also feel obliged to look out for my parents. So I'm taking time off this afternoon to hopefully go have a chat with the guy. i assume I'll invite myself to dinner Friday if the dinner actually happens. Not really something I'm interested in doing, but, if he can do it, why can't I? I'm slightly concerned about Covid, though that's not an my primary concern. My parents have had Covid in the past (very mild) and are both vaccinated and booster'd. I'm more concerned about what his agenda is. My parents are devout Catholics and this will be the first time in their 80 years that a parish priest has come to the home. I assume he want money. Hopefully, he just wants money, because if not, I'll probably be less thrilled about the purpose of his visit, lol. My parents already donate a fair bit to the church and are well off enough to be able to make a large donation without it being an issue. I just don't like the idea they might allow themselves to be taken advantage of. Anyway, I'll deal with it. Just venting a bit. I prefer venting at people in person, but, in this instance, venting into the void of the internet is probably preferable. People are amazing. Just to be clear, I mean that in the most negative way possible. Amazingly shameless, amazingly selfish, amazing uncaring, etc.

My wife's stats look like that. She spent over 500 hours on Animal Crossing and three hours playing Art of Balance. Those are the only two video games she's played in the past decade. I think she spent more time on Animal Crossing this year than last year. Fortunately, she assures me she's not addicted. I may stage an intervention anyway. Switch had a number of games I really enjoyed this year, but on the whole, I didn't play it much.

I've really grown to hate WWE's version of "No DQ" matches. I know No DQ matches are a pro wres staple and the idea is to protect the babyface by putting the heel over without having him eat a clean pin, but I still get annoyed at the WWE's version of the stip which basically means "anything goes." I'd much prefer it if they gave the ref leeway to ignore interference or chairs or whatever, but still had some boundaries. No DQ shouldn't mean the ref stands there unconcerned while six guys parachute from the rafters and beat the babyface. There's got to be a way to do no dq matches without going to ridiculous extremes. Last night's match didn't even make much sense. Seth and Owens want to keep Lashley out of the match, so they.... attack both guys, which leads to Big E getting caught flatfooted and eating a spear. Wouldn't the better plan have been to interfere on Big E's behalf to soften up Lashley for the Big Ending? Won't be too surprised if E drops the belt on Day One. Not even sure that's a bad idea. Not his fault, but he's obviously not going to draw well or, lol, be involved in feuds we want to watch. Monkey paw something something. Won't be too surprised if Owens wins the belt. His heel turn and recent push supposedly have a lot to do with keeping him away from AEW.

I can relate. I hooked up a PS4 slim last week to check it out and restore factory settings before selling it, and, out of curiosity, i played a few recent releases to see how they ran on a slim. I don't think I'm a next gen snob or anything, but the load times seemed excessively long and annoying after playing Series X and PS5 for a year.

Nordic Shadow of the Colossus imitator Praey for the Gods dropped without warning today on Steam, PSN, and Xbox. Think it's available both PS4/PS5 & Xbox One/Series X. I've been excited for this game for years and really enjoyed it what I saw when I played it in early access a couple years ago. I'm sort of wary about the way it's been released though. Completely out of the blue. Haven't seen any talk about it releasing today or a recent review and the developers didn't say anything about a release date on Twitter, though they did mention a few months ago that they were getting to the polishing phase. The launch trailer and a tweet about the game being released went live after the game was uploaded to the digital services. Someone I know in games journalism is fairly sure no review codes were sent out. Hopefully I'm wrong, but it feels like maybe the game is being dumped on the market. I guess I'll find soon. The early access version looked quite promising. It's mostly boss battles with colossal beasts set in a bleak frozen landscape. The sense of scale is quite impressive. The open world is supposedly huge, but that makes me wonder if the developers bit off more than they could handle. IRRC, No Matter Studios consists is a three-person team. Also, for anyone interested, a new Nintendo Indie World showcase streams tomorrow at noon ET.

Series S has a few drawbacks - lack of an optical drive & not getting the One X patches being the most notable - but it's still a hell of a console. In some ways, I'm more impressed with it than the Series X and I definitely think it's a better value, dollar for dollar. I got a Series S at launch and a Series X in March or early April. I wanted the Series X for a few older delisted games I have to play from disc, but mostly I would have been quite happy with the Series S.

Sony's objection was ostensibly trademark infringement. The companies that tried to sell faceplates featured knockoff PlayStation logos on their plates. The first company with the plates used the word "playstation5" in their web address and vaguely suggested on their website that the product was approved by Sony. The real objection probably is that Sony wanted to sell their own faceplates before the knockoffs flooded the market. I try to only buy Sony accessories or official licensed products whenever possible, so this works for me. I'll most likely buy the light blue and black faceplates and controllers.

I hope that someday I find someone who adores me as much as Cris Collinsworth adores Aaron Rodgers.

Fair enough. I shouldn’t have put it like that. But I’m not really a fan of just collecting a paycheck and not feeling obliged to be a professional. I don’t expect talent to beat themselves up every night, but I think they’re obliged to go out on a consistent basis and work hard to entertain paying fans. Fans don’t buy tickets to see you passively aggressively spar with your employer. At the end of the day, most WWE wrestlers seem to make out well financially. Most people work harder for less pay. I don’t think it’s too much to expect AJ or whoever to put their baggage aside long enough to work a 15-min match. That said, I don’t believe that talent mailing it in is one of WWE’s larger issues.

Entitlement? How so?

Care to name names? If that’s the attitude they take towards their job, I’d like to know who they are so I don’t accidentally waste time watching them.

The show would be better if they could actually do something with their most intesting feud - Kayla Braxton vs. Paul Heyman.

When he's done murdering the dude on the ground, Andre might want to get his right hand checked out. It appears to be 3 or 4 times the size of his left hand. I'm not an expert, but I don't think that's the way limbs usually grow.

LOl, no one would bother to fix a Vikings game. It's a lot less effort to just hang out by the tunnel and remind players who they play for as they come back on the field after halftime. The Vikes blowing a lead in the second half isn't quite as inevitable as death or taxes, but it's not for lack of trying.

Watched the show WWE-style this morning after getting most of the announcements from Twitter last night (WWE-style = liberal use of fast-forward). Even ff'ing through most anything that wasn't a trailer, the show still felt like it was dragging. I feel like most people watch the Games Awards for the trailers, but I still feel a little bad for the creators and the fans who are genuinely interested in the awards. Probably is sort of annoying to win GotY and feel like you're the 52nd most important thing on the show (behind 51 trailers and Keanu Reeves). Game announcements were fine, though I felt like Keighley promising five or six Elden Ring-level announcements was a case of over-promising and under-delivering. As always, I'm bewildered by how excited people get over games that are years away and barely show more than a logo. I've enjoyed Quantic Dreams' previous games quite a lot, so I'm hoping for the best with the Star Wars game - even though it seems like a weird fit for David Cage - but the game is likely several years away. At the rate the world is burning, mutated coachroaches and sentient twinkies might its target demographic. Hellblade II looks incredible and I have a lot of faith in Ninja Theory, but I'll get excited when we have a release date. Same with Alan Wake 2. Big hits for me were Persona 4 Arena Ultimax Remastered, Forspoken, & Cuphead dlc. Tchia and Tunic look interesting too. Not coincidentally, four of those games got release dates and the fifth got a Spring '22 release window, so there's a decent chance we see them sometime next year. Hopefully Ultimax includes the dlc that let you play through an abridged version of the first game. Persona 4 Arena is playable on Xbox through backwards compatibility but I prefer fighting games on PlayStation. Early indications are my PlayStation gets a lot more use than my Xbox next year.

Did not expect this game to come down to the final play.

Forspoken drops on PS5 on May 24. it’s shaping up to be a huge spring for PlayStation

Honestly, I spent half the clip trying to figure out why his penguin costume had so many sharp teeth.

Thank you. I tried my best. Really gratifying to have my hard work recognized this way. Lol, actually, I rather liked Cowboy Bebop for what it was. It wasn't my idea of Cowboy Bebop in some key ways, but that didn't bother me overmuch. I thought the season was quite entertaining until the last arc of the season. I get what they were going for at season's end, and why they felt they had to adapt that storyline now instead of later, but it seemed only partly successful to me. I really didn't expect a season two after the pr backlash. I have no idea what the numbers were like outside of what Rippa just said, but it looked like an expensive show, so.... Personally, I don't feel like I needed to see another season. I would have watched it, but I suspect the live action show would never be the "definitive" Bebop for me, no matter how good. I've not even a Bebop superfan. I'm more a fan of Shinichirō Watanabe, so I'm probably going to pick the source material over any adaption. John Cho was surprisingly good as Spike, though I never got over the feeling that he looks too old to play Spike. I don't remember if the anime ever established an age rage for Spike, but the character model looked young - as do almost all anime characters - and I always got an "old soul in a young body" vibe from Spike. I kind of want a live-action Samurai Champloo adaptation, just to see what that would look like.

The new expansion is considered the final part of Blasphemous 1. The developer is already working on Blasphemous 2. The sequel is probably a couple years away. IIRC, the Game Kitchen is hoping Blasphemous 2 will get out the door in 2023.