Tag: Shaun

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Keep Flag Happy.com

Shaun

Editor’s Note: Shaun and Dave have switched spots this week so Shaun can pimp his new site and Dave can recover from Vegas. I have no doubt that our radio show is going to lead the three of us to great fame and fortune, but for the past few months I have hedged my bets and worked on a side project with a few like-minded friends, just in case. This side project is keepflaghappy.com, and it launched today. I’m going to explain it to you. Keep Flag Happy is a guide to the numerous happy hour specials in Flagstaff, intuitively … Continue reading Keep Flag Happy.com

Blogs, Shaun, Video Games7 Comments

In Defense of the Ending of Mass Effect 3 (Spoilers)

Shaun

It’s almost a complete consensus: the ending to Mass Effect 3 was a disappointment. No resolution. No meaningful buildup. No closure. By all accounts, a failure on every front. However, after pondering a little more and thinking a little deeper, my question is: is it a bad ending? Or is it potentially the most epically epic ending ever?

Don’t get me wrong; as it stands, it’s a pretty subpar ending. It’s full of inexplicable plotholes. It ends a series built on dynamic choices by shoving three rigid choices down the players throat that have nothing to do with the thousands of preceeding choices to that point. It spends no more than seconds explaining what happens to the characters we have invested hours cultivating meaningful relationships with and getting to know.

So, yeah; by all qualifications, this ending is pretty mediocre, and I can agree with that. Fans aren’t even clamoring for a happier ending, necessarily, just one that doesn’t directly contradict the freedom and tone the entire series spent establishing. That’s like changing the ending of Harry Potter 7 to a black-and-white noir thematic style, where Harry removes his glasses in dramatic fashion and rips the head off Voldemort. Cool, maybe, but it defies everything the series stood for.

How can this ending be anything but a failure? Only if there are events going on that are a little deeper than how they first appeared.

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

Continue reading “In Defense of the Ending of Mass Effect 3 (Spoilers)”

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Peachy Keen

Shaun

I don’t feel like writing anything this week. There, I said it. I’ve pulled back the curtain and given you all front-row access to the creative process. Behind the scenes with yours truly! And this week, yours truly doesn’t care about giving anything useful or interesting whatsoever to read.

Here’s the problem; life as of late has been good. For all the complaining and bitching and general moaning that you’ve had to endure out of my blogs recently — getting old and heartache and some kind of weird cat love analogy — things have suddenly turned solid. My friends are great. I’m at a job that I enjoy. I’m launching a super secret project (stay tuned for more on that). I’ve met a girl who’s so awesome in every way that it defies logic why she even speaks to me. So everything is dandy, and that’s why my writing motivation is gone. Continue reading “Peachy Keen”

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The Ballad of Seamus and Janxy II: Breakups

Shaun

Breaking up is hard. Probably more so in Cat World, where the bonds that tether cat lovers are so exceptionally strong. Seamus knew this, which is why he was so floored at the magnitude to which his cat heart was broken.

His friends tried to reassure him, offering advice on what he could do to ease his pain. Find an especially bouncy ball of yarn. Chase a laser point as it dances across a surface. Stay away from sad songs.

The problem is that all this advice rang hollow, as it is impossible for one cat who has experienced heartbreak to advise another, let alone for a cat whose heart is still intact. One never feels so little motivation for chasing mice than when occupying the depths of the Well of Heartache. And staying away from love songs is a falsity, so common an idea that it has proliferated well beyond its reasonable application, offered from someone who imagines what heartbreak would be like, but who has not experienced it. Love songs are the least of a shattered cats worries.

Try looking through a calendar, with dates like “tour the Cat World museum together” still occupying future panels. Or reaching into your cat wallet and accidentally pulling out a receipt of the hot dogs you bought together at the baseball game, which was the time of your life for every other reason than cat baseball. Or listening to old voicemails only to hear Janxy’s phantom voice, a welcome apparition reminding you of better times that now seem so distant and out of reach you can question whether they happened at all, or were just part of some unfairly joyous catnap dream.

No one told Seamus about that. Continue reading “The Ballad of Seamus and Janxy II: Breakups”

Blogs, Facts of Life, Shaun4 Comments

I’m Old and Get Off My Lawn

Shaun

I need more sleep. I get winded more easily. My knees throb simply from sitting at a desk too long. My hips are kind of wonky. I can’t sleep on my back anymore. I went swinging the other day — swinging on a swing set — and was ill for 45 minutes afterwards and had to lie down. Sometimes I completely lose where I am or what’s going on. Wait, I always did that. Still, the point is, I’m old.

I’m old, and I sort of feel it. 25…a fifth of the way through already, if I live to the conservative age of 125. My high school reunion is in three years. The other day, my roommate was napping in the office of our apartment, and I was napping on the couch. It was a nap party, and no one was having any fun. That’s not true, it was unfortunately spectacular. Continue reading “I’m Old and Get Off My Lawn”

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Have a Nice Trip, See You Next Fall

Shaun

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before…let’s see, I can’t remember exactly how it goes…but it’s something to the effect of “if you’re a nice guy, you don’t finish first. Or even close. More like…last.” Yeah, I think that’s pretty much it. Nailed it.

Truer words maybe have never been spoken. Don’t worry, nice girls: the same applies to you. This acute sort of perpetual misery is all inclusive. Don’t get me wrong; kindness sucking at racing doesn’t apply to every situation. If you suck as a person, it’s hard to be a good friend. Tools and douchebags need not apply for the Nice Olympics. But I tell you what, in my not-as-brief-as-I-would-like-anymore existence on this earth, one of the things that has rang true is there is no better way to woo the opposite sex than to be in a-hole city, population: you. Continue reading “Have a Nice Trip, See You Next Fall”

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Lebanon

Shaun

1. It’s not that I hate dancing, there are just things I would rather do. Like drink poison. In all seriousness, I’m just not that good at it. So that’s why the dancing in Lebanon is so perfect for me; as opposed to American dancing, where I can just blend in to the mass of incoherent writhing bodies, the most popular Lebanese dance, the Dubke, is set up as a circle. This way, every single person has an angle on just how bad I’m botching the steps and struggling for rhythm. I don’t dance with two left feet; it’s more like one left foot, and one horribly mangled left foot.

2. The toilets flush differently. Could be a European thing. I’ll check into it and get back to you on that one. Continue reading “Lebanon”

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A Story About Bailey

Shaun

Here is a short narrative I wrote. It’s about my dog. It’s sad. It actually won the Pulitzer Prize, so…it has that going for it.

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I once heard a saying from someone who believed that, uncompromisingly, women fantasize about being rescued, and men fantasize about being the rescuers. I can’t attest to the statement’s ubiquity, but when I was young, this belief, in part, held to be true.

Looking back now, it’s almost alarming the amount of time I conjuring up ludicrous scenarios in which I could step in, the valiant white knight, and save my distressed damsel from whatever catastrophes descended upon her. Maybe this urge stemmed from a desire to be noticed, recognized for my feats of bravery, and then appreciated thereafter. Of course, I know now that it’s a false way of thinking, to protect someone out of selfish intentions. At the time, it all seemed the same to me. Continue reading “A Story About Bailey”

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Career and Life

Shaun

People’s capacity for settling is staggering.

I’m no exception. My entire life has been one of stark contradiction, dictated by both faceless society and those closest to me. Their words, telling me to stop at nothing to pursue what makes me happy and reach the depths of my potential, and yet their actions and reflected beliefs conditioning me to place no priority higher than that of reaching certain goals as deemed appropriate by the general public’s conventional wisdom. To reach a socially acceptable end, regardless of the means. Attaining goals for the goals sake.

When I chose to get an English degree, I inherently made an entire series of decisions that would seal the next seven years of my life. After all, law was the next logical progression; not because I particularly liked (or even cared about) the field, but because I was told by family/friends/society that it was the only really viable career possible with my area of study. I didn’t forge ahead and take a chance, because I couldn’t possibly conjure that route as a possibility. How could I? Much like the idea of “censored vocabulary” explored in George Orwell’s 1984, if a thought process or idea is foreign to you or completely absent altogether, it’s difficult to formulate those thoughts on your own.

So instead of forging ahead, taking chances, and finding what it was I really loved, I took the safe track and settled for the choice that was put in front of me by everyone but myself. The world told me it’s better to spend your life wondering “what if” then to actually find out for yourself and deal with whatever consequences await. Continue reading “Career and Life”

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Razing Phoenix fans

Shaun

I’m tired of Dave being the only one who writes sports every single week, like he has the corner on the sports market and is shutting us out. To deny him his monopolistic intentions, I’m going to write about sports. So there. Suck on that, Dave.

Suns fans are idiots. I said it. Sure, there are exceptions. I’m an exception. But when you judge a population, you base it off a whole. And the base says that Suns fans are moronic.

They demonstrate this idiocy in many ways. Getting disappointed and jumping off the bandwagon any season the Suns don’t contend for a title. Formulating impossible trade theories for superstars like “Sebastian Telfair and Hakim Warrick for Dwight Howard. The salaries match!” Demanding that we trade Channing Frye when he doesn’t hit 90 percent from three.

However, the greatest example of Suns fan stupidness is, and has always been, their view of Steve Nash, and their willingness to trade him. Suns fans have long insisted we’ve held on to Nash for way too long, and derided the front office for this decision.

Really? Continue reading “Razing Phoenix fans”