25A. An open letter to Tommy Wiseau

Dear Mr. Wiseau,

Usually I start letters off with a few witty remarks and an overview of what it's regarding, before leading into the meat of it. Yeah, I'm just going to dive right into this one.

First off, where did you get the 7-million dollars that was the budget for 'The Room'? Can we even call that a 'budget'? How did you even blow through that much on a movie that was, for the most part, shot in the same living room? It clearly wasn't spent on Lisa's make-up and wardrobe; I'm sure you cleaned house at Wal-Mart on every hooker shade eyeshadow and cheap red lipstick under $2. I would love to touch on the horrible acting in the film, but it's such an obvious topic, that I'm going to bypass it completely. I can't even fathom why you would cast these people. At best, Mark's character served as eye candy, and mother was quite entertaining. At worst, we had the sex scenes, which were like watching paint dry. I would like to know if at any point during filming or post-production, you genuinely sat back and said to yourself "Brilliant!"

My biggest issue is that you have the audacity to continue to produce/direct other films. Did you not learn your lesson? And making a documentary about homelessness in America. Let's leave the philanthropy to creative types that the media actually gives a shit about. I read online in a recent interview that you are interested in creating a movie about the life of Heath Leger. How about you DON'T do that? I don't see it ending well for any parties involved, particularly yours.

Lastly, I'm going to end this letter the most shallow way imaginable. You are so unfortunate looking, I can barely stand looking at you. You look like you have serious vitamin D deficiency. Wait, do you? Cut your hair, and then give it a wash. Stop wearing sleeveless t-shirts; it's tacky, and your arms are 87% veins. I don't even know what's going on with your skin, but you need to see a dermatologist.

Pull your shit together, Tommy. You're 41-years-old for goodness sakes.


Sincerely yours,
Amanda

24P. Pokemon for Dummies

Recently, as you may have read, Amanda has started playing Pokemon Red. It's super unfortunate, but she's hopeless. Without me, she'd be stuck in front of Viridian Gym just after getting her starter Pokemon going "WHY, OH WHY CAN I NOT GET IN HERE!?"

I figured I'd help her out a little. Well, a little turned into a lot, and I ended up challenging myself to create a bare-bones guide to the very first Pokemon adventure - Red and Blue. The challenge wasn't just making the guide, but doing it all by memory. It is safe to say I could probably play Pokemon Red entirely by muscle memory.

Now, In order to fully utilize this guide, you'll need the Map I've edited. If I knew where the map was from that I used, I would give massive credit. But alas, I cannot find the source. (So if anyone knows who made it, without the numbers of course, let me know please!)

***I've included the Map and a .rtf version of the guide in a zip folder here: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=8HREQPVJ ***

Good luck, and if you have any questions, feel free to email me at patrickfahey@live.ca.

OH. And if I get around to it, I'll probably make a list of the silly questions I've gotten from Amanda regarding the game. Some of them are pretty excellent.

**I seem to have left out getting the Old Rod in Vermillion. You need it to catch a Magikarp, and to subsequently evolve it into Gyarados. You can find the Old Rod in the building next to the Pokemon Center in Vermillion City.**

POKEMON FOR DUMMIES

I suggest you start with Squirtle if it's your first time playing the game.

1. Catch Nidoran/Spearow here. Spearow is handy because he knows Peck - a flying-type move - and can easily take on bugs. Nidoran (male or female) evolve young (LV16) and can be highly useful in their final forms (evolved using a Moon Stone).

2. Battle with rival. LV9 Pidgey and LV7 Starter, so train up!

3. Free Potion

4. 1st Gym. Use Squirtle/Bulbasaur, Water is good against Ground and Rock types. If you chose Charmander, you'll most likely rely on Ember a whole lot, or catch a Caterpie, evolve it to Butterfree and use Confusion.

5. If you really want it, you can catch a Jigglypuff here, or a stronger Spearow. Not super worth it, but just letting you know.

6. Battle with rival. He starts with a LV17 Pidgeotto. His Abra is useless here, so kill it with anything. He's got a Ratatta and an evolved starter.

7. 2nd Gym. Use Pikachu. Make sure he's level 22 or above, and blast the tits off of them with Thundershock.

8. Catch an Abra here. To train it, have it out first then switch it with another Pokemon. At level 16 it evolves and learns an attack. Kadabra is powerful and super useful. Plus he has a mustache.

9. Talk to Bill. He gives you an important item that gets you onto the SS Anne.

10A leads to 10B

11. Talk to the guy in the big chair. He gives you a Bike Voucher that you can exchange for a bicycle at 12.

12. Bike Shop.

13. Go in here. Search the area around the ladder when you go down until you find/catch a high level (about 29-31) Dugtrio. You need him for the next gym.

14. SS Anne. There's a battle with your rival, but your guys should be trained up pretty well by this point. Right after that battle, there's an item called HM01 that the captain gives you. Use it to teach CUT to a Pokemon. Bear in mind, if you teach it to a Pokemon, you can't remove or replace it like a regular kind of attack.

15. 3rd Gym. To get into it, you need to CUT down the bush using the Pokemon you used HM01 on. You can rely entirely on Dugtrio's Dig attack for this gym. Electric moves don't hurt ground type Pokemon at all. Just remember to heal him up so you don't run out of attacks. Also, the electric lock system is a pain. Examine garbage cans until you find a switch. The next switch will be right beside the one you just found in any of the cardinal directions. If Dugtrio faints, you'll have a Kadabra as a backup. Confusion works relatively well.

16A leads through Diglett's Cave to 16B. Bring along a Pokemon that can Cut.

17. Enter into this building and talk to the guy in the lab coat. If you've caught 10 Pokemon, he'll give you HM05, Flash. Wait till you catch a Voltorb later to use this HM. It's a pretty useless move.

18. Come through here, remember you'll need Cut.

19. Catch a Voltorb here and teach it Flash. Switch out the Cut Pokemon for Your Flash Pokemon for the duration of Rock Tunnel.

20A. The most godforsaken hellhole in the game, save for Victory Road. Make sure you're fully healed and have either a plethora of healing items, including Antidotes, or the use of Escape Ropes/Dig to escape in a pinch. Catch a Machop here, you'll need him much later in the game.

20B. REPRIEVE!

21. Rival Battle. Have fun crushing his hopes and dreams. Leave after you beat him, there are some things you need to do before you can go any further.

22A leads to 22B

23. Go back here with one empty space in your team. Climb the stairs all the way to the top and pick up the free Eevee here. Not particularly useful in this form, but if you use a stone on it, such as Water Stone, Thunder Stone or Fire Stone, it will evolve into a corresponding Pokemon: Vaporeon, Jolteon and Flareon respectively.

24. Go to the top floor here. In the vending machine, get 2 Fresh Water, 1 Soda Pop and 1 Lemonade. Give one of each of them to the little girl here, she'll give you TM's. Save TM13 (Ice Beam) for later, you're going to need to multiply it.

25. Take the other Fresh Water here. The guard will take it from you and allow you to enter into Saffron City, finally. Unfortunately, almost everything is blocked by Team Rocket.

26. Go here. Take the TM29 from him. This is Psychic, one of the most powerful moves in the game. DO NOT use this on your Kadabra, he learns it by himself.

27. Go here. Take your Kadabra. Use Confusion and Psybeam on all the enemies here, you'll have absolutely no problem. When you beat the leader of this "Gym" he'll give you either a Hitmonlee or Hitmonchan. Choose whichever you want.

28. Since you'll have your Cut Pokemon to get into this area already, you'll have it to enter the area with the Gym Leader. She uses grass/poison-type Pokemon, susceptible to Kadabra's psychic-type moves, and any fire-type moves you might have acquired. Kadabra will pretty much handle this Gym too. Before long, you'll have another badge and TM22 (Giga Drain).

29. Come here, and get HM02, Fly. Teach it to your flying-type Pokemon, and it will be able to take you to any city you have already visited. Super handy.

30. The Celadon Casino. If you want to play the slots, you can get a Coin Case at

30A. But its a large waste of money and time. Unless you REALLY want a Porygon, who's not that good anyways. Inside this building you'll notice a Team Rocket Grunt in front of a poster. Beat him and examine the poster, pressing the button behind it and opening the secret entrance to the Rocket Hideout. To get the Lift Key, talk to the Grunt that you beat in here that mentions the Lift Key before fighting him. Get through here, and battle Giovanni - the leader of team Rocket - for the first time. Take the Silph Scope he drops.

31. Fly back to Lavender Town and with the Silph Scope in your items, you can finally see the ghost-type Pokemon. Fight your way to the top, and even if you've used the other Rare Candies you've found before, make sure you save the one you find here. You're going to multiply it very soon. Talk to Mr. Fuji at the end of the long trek to the top.

32. You're taken here after talking to Mr. Fuji. Go talk to him again, and he'll give you a PokeFlute. You can finally wake up the sleeping Pokemon.

33 (2) The reason there's 2 of them is because there are 2 Snorlax in different places blocking your path. He's a tank of a Pokemon, and is very difficult to catch. Stock up on Great Balls and patience. There are ONLY 2 of this guy in the game so don't kill him; on the other hand, this gives you a chance to use a Master Ball on the one you didn't awaken after you've multiplied it.

34. Beat or Catch the Snorlax in front of this building first. Make sure you have your Bicycle in your inventory, as this place is called Cycling Road. As soon as you start going down here, the bike controls itself, pulling you south.

35. This Gym is tricky. All of the subordinate trainers use Psychic-type Pokemon, but the leader uses Poison-type. Make good use of Gyarados and your Starter's power. Use Kadabra against Koga. TM06 teaches Toxic. It poisons the target and deals double the damage on each successive turn. EVERY Pokemon can learn it, but don't waste it. If used properly, it can be very effective in battle.

36. The Safari Zone. You pay 500 for entrance (500 steps), and you can catch any amount of Pokemon you want with the 30 balls they give you. That's not your goal here for now. You need to locate the Prize House, deep in the Safari, as well as the item "Gold Teeth." When you reach the Prize House, you're given HM03. Immediately teach this move to Blastoise, if you chose him. Not Gyarados (unless you don't have Blastoise) - He learns a plethora of excellent TMs.

37. Bring the Gold Teeth here to get HM04 (Strength). This allows you to move boulders. Don't worry about Strength at all for now. By the way, you now have all the HMs.

38. Fly back to Pallet Town. Surf South from here to Cinnabar Island. Blast all the water Pokemon with Electric moves.

39. Heal at the Pokemon Center. This will allow you to Fly here freely.

40. If you really want, you can exchange your Fossil for the Pokemon contained in it here. You'll once again need an empty space in your team.

Here's where you learn to Multiply items. Put the Item you want to multiply in the 6TH SPOT in your inventory by pressing the "Tab" (Select) key on the item you want, and then again on the item in the 6TH SPOT.

Follow these steps EXACTLY, or it won't work. They're marked in Blue Letters on the map.

A. Fly back to Viridian City. Talk to the Old Man, and let him teach you how to catch Pokemon.

B. Fly back to Cinnabar Island. Surf up and down on the side of the island where noted. DO NOT stray from the immediate side of the island. You'll notice that you find the most random Pokemon here. Run from ALL of them. If you can't escape, keep trying. DO NOT FIGHT THEM. You'll eventually run into a "Pokemon" called "Missingno.". He's what you're looking for. Run from him too.

As soon as you run into him, get back on land. Look at your items, and the item in the 6th slot should have a strange symbol beside a 9. This is normal. The item now has somewhere around 160-180 multiples. When the symbol changes to a white space (appears to be a single digit number) the first time, don't worry. It will go down to x_0, which is 100, then drop to x99. You can multiply an item indefinitely, as long as its in the 6th spot of your items, and is a regular number (1-99). This is good for Rare Candies, The Master Ball, Nuggets (to sell), Max Revive, Max Elixir and TMs that you want multiple copies of.

If you want a MUCH easier game from here on out, multiply the Rare Candy and level up your Pokemon. Around level 45-50 here is very decent. The highest you'll ever REALLY need to be is 65. Of course, you can go higher, up to LV100.

Also, TM13, TM29 and TM24 should be multiplied here. Additionally, as you find them, multiply TM38 and TM26.

41. This one is completely optional, but VERY helpful. One of the most powerful Pokemon in the game can ONLY be caught in the Safari Zone. To catch it though, you need to use the Super Rod. Start here, unless you caught the other Snorlax, then go south from Lavender town, dismissing or catching the other Snorlax there.

42. Follow the line from 41 to here, or if you arrived from the North, this is where you get the Super Rod.

43. Get back to the Safari Zone in Fuchsia City, and use the Super Rod to go fishing in the lake in the first area you enter. You'll find Dratini in here. Catch one of those. At level 30 it evolves into Dragonair, and at level 55, it evolves into Dragonite. A suggested moveset for him would include Hyper Beam, Fire Blast (TM38), Thunderbolt (TM34) and Dragon Rage.

44. Come back to Saffron City, and enter Silph Co's building. I'm going to give the speed-through way around this building since it is a VERY confusing place, but feel free to look around. There are a ton of items just laying around.

A. Go to the 5th floor. Head to the opposite side down a central hallway. You'll teleport when you step on the diamond pad. Immediately step off of your destination and then back on the pad. You'll be back on the 5th floor. Go down, and battle that guy. He has an Arbok, no match for Kadabra. Go east down the hall there, and pick up the Card Key.

B. Use any means necessary to return to the 3rd floor. Go down the hallway until you reach a locked door (on YOUR left) that's easily opened by the Card Key. Take the Teleport pad to its destination.

C. RIVAL BATTLE. But you're already prepared for it. No big.

D. Talk to the guy in the room with your Rival. He gives you a Lapras that goes directly to your PC.

E. Take the other Teleport pad in that room up to the 11th floor. Battle the grunt guarding the door, heal up if necessary, then go into the room there to battle Giovanni a second time.

F. When you win, talk to the President of Silph Co. He gives you the Master Ball. You're done here.

45. You can now fight this Gym, since the Rockets are gone. Sabrina uses psychic-types. Just overpower her before she gets a chance to do any real damage. Of course though, to get to her, you need to figure out the Teleport Pads. Or just follow these directions:

A. Use the first one.

B. Go up.

C. Go left.

D. Go down.

E. Go down.

You'll get a pretty useless TM from her.

46. Go back to Cinnabar Island, and enter this building. To open and close doors, examine the front of the statues. This place is a maze. What you're looking for in here is the Secret Key to enter the Gym on Cinnabar.

47. After you get into here, you can choose to battle the trainers here, or examine the machines in each room to answer a Pokemon question. If you get it right, you don't have to battle the trainer, and the door just opens. Blaine, the leader, uses fire-type Pokemon, so Blastoise can just Surf them to death. You get TM38 here, and that's Fire Blast - the best Fire move. You also get Badge #7 here.

48. Now that you have 7 Badges, you can finally challenge the leader here. He uses Ground-type Pokemon. Easy-peasy with Blastoise.

Now that you've collected 8 Badges you can challenge the Pokemon League. But before you do that, there are a few Pokemon that might be of interest to you, and they are all one-of-a-kind. Here's where your multiple Master Balls come in handy. Their locations are marked on the map with yellow letters. (Bear in mind, each 'box' on your PC can only hold 20 Pokemon. So check your limits, and switch boxes if needed, so you don't get into a battle with a rare Pokemon and run out of room in your box.)

A. Zapdos - Electric/Flying type. Travel through the Power Plant to get him.

B. Articuno - Ice/Flying type. You will need a Pokemon with strength to enter here with any success. Remember that Machop you caught in Rock Tunnel? He's perfect for the job. To get here, you need to Surf south from Fuchsia City.

C. Aerodactyl - Rock/Flying type. Go here using your Cut Pokemon. Search around the room for an item called "Old Amber." Go all Jurassic Park at the Fossil Place on Cinnabar, and revive yourself an Aerodactyl.

49. When you've done all your preparing (multiplying Max Revive, Hyper Potion, and Max Elixir are good suggestions), you can come here. Make sure you have your Machop with Strength. Go north, and be stopped by every guard asking for badges.

50. Once you reach here, there is one last cave-crawl before you can get to the Elite Four. This place is full of high level trainers and Pokemon. Catch what you want, collect items, do whatever, just get through it. Also, there's another one-of-a-kind Pokemon in here called Moltres. It's a Fire/Flying type.

51. This is where the Elite Four are. There is a Pokemon Center and a Shop here,

and once you've healed here, you can Fly to and from this place freely.

The Elite Four

TIP: If your Pokemon is out of PP for a move that is powerful or helpful, Max Elixir fixes that right up.

Lorelei - Ice and Water; Starts with Dewgong, counter with an electric-type. Ice is weak against Fire, but not if its coupled with a water-type. Fighting and Rock moves are super effective too, but you can figure out your own strategy here.-

Bruno - Fighting and Rock; Starts with an Onix, counter with a water-type. Once again, Fighting is weak against Psychic.

Agatha - Ghost and Poison; Starts with a Gengar, counter with psychic-type. Stick with Kadabra the whole battle, just use Psychic.

Lance - Dragon and Water; Starts with Gyarados, counter with electric-type. Dragon -type Pokemon are weak against Ice-type moves. Gyarados can learn it, and so can Blastoise. If you have Articuno, he's quite effective here.

You have one more battle after Lance. I won't ruin it for you, but start with an electric-type. This is the hardest battle in the game, but if you play it right, you can win pretty easily.

Congratulations, you beat Pokemon!

After you win, there's a long talking part, the credits roll, and then you end up on the Starting menu. Choose continue, and save your game.

52. One last thing to do after the game is "over." Head here and scuttle around this place until you find Mewtwo. He's the strongest Pokemon in the game, and he's one-of-a-kind too. Master Ball him, and then use an Escape Rope to get out of there.

That's pretty much it. Well played!

E-mail me at patrickfahey@live.ca if you want to use this elsewhere. Thanks!

23A. Facefuck

Oh Facebook...we have a love/hate relationship. To be honest, the things that irritate me most about Facebook aren't about the site itself, but the things people do on it. Some just absolutely floor me. Like the self-taken webcam photos. I don't want to lump these all into one category - some are taken in fun, with friends, those Macbook photo booths, and whatnot. But it's the ones where you know the girl just spent an hour doing hair and make-up, just so she can take narcissistic photos of herself. I mean, we ALL choose to put good photos of ourselves as our profile pics. I get it. But if you're playing photo shoot with yourself to try and get one good shot, you're just a ridiculous human being. Guys never seem to do this. They also don't crop their friends out of photos. This has gotten a little less common since FB started, but some people still do it, and it really GRINDS MY GEARS.
Another one of my favorites are people who vaguebook. I've recently deleted someone from my friends list because his statuses were out of hand. If you are addressing one specific person and you're not mentioning their name, then that's something you should be speaking to the person about, not advertising it. The worst is when people put "...is sad :(" or any other sort of emotion that would have "friends" inquire why the person feels that way. Then there's this other guy on mine whose relationship status changes once a month. He's never with a girl longer than three weeks, so why bother changing it. "Oh, this one's going to last!" Fuck off.

On a less negative note, I love Galen Weston. I'm actually considering e-mailing him, and asking him to come BBQ some PC burgers at my house. Let's face it; my true weakness is tall and lean guys in their 30s, who wear glasses. My favorite of course being this man;

This is probably one of my favorite photos of him. I've recently decided I need to take up guitar so that I can learn every song he has ever made. Some user on youtube uploaded a ton of demos Matt had done on his own with a tape recorder in the early '90s. He actually didn't learn guitar until he was 20. Okay, I have to stop here.

22P. Oh, Blog.

It appears as if I've neglected the blog for quite some time. My co-blogger Amanda has recently posted, and now, so am I.

If you read her latest post, you'd have known that she and I have been playing old school Pokemon games on emulators. She's got Red, I've got Blue. This pass-time of ours has been the most effective blog deterrent since "Man, I'm hungry. Off to soosh!".

But to be honest, it's not just Pokemon that has me distracted. I've been watching Bleach.

No, not that kind of Bleach. The TV show. Yes, its an anime. Yes the protagonist's hair is oddly coloured and very spiky. Yes he's unnaturally powerful. But the thing that sets this show apart from the others is reliability. I've yet to watch one bad episode. No, really. Even with entire sections of the show being filler that wasn't included in the original comics. Anyways, count 138 episodes watched so far at 20 minutes a piece. That's almost 2 full days worth of watching, spread out over 2 weeks. I figure I should write a post on Bleach, but I'll do that after I've finished watching all the episodes that have been dubbed. I really hate subtitled anime.

Oh, silly me. I've left out the most distracting thing of all.

I GOT A JOB!

Yes, that's right. A job. Where one works in exchange for money. And boy, is it the sweetest job ever. If you're ever in Burlington, (Ontario, for those who don't already know) and have been down Lakeshore, you'd have to have noticed the big orange metal thing that kind of looks like this:

Well, sort of. At any rate, it's outside of the Burlington Art Centre. That's where I work. And where I'm headed right now. Segue to an ending!

TO THE BUS! *Trumpet Fanfare*

21A. Gamers gonna game

So, I have recently begun playing Pokemon Red, as I have downloaded a GameBoy emulator to my laptop. I should actually start off by saying I'm a noob. I'm not a TOTAL noob. I owned a NES and a GameBoy as a child, and could pretty much still rock any old school Mario or Zelda game. But gaming was never an obsession of mine. I was always far too social to stay at home with a controller glued to my hands. This being said, Pokemon is completely new to me. I used to watch the TV show, so I'm not completely aloof, but as far as the game went, I can't honestly say I knew exactly what was going on. I've been playing for a couple days now, and I'm still getting the hang of a few things, but I've made a lot of progress from where I first started. I mean, it took me three hours of playing before I realized I had to buy pokeballs to catch the damn things. Then there was the whole saving dilemma I had last night/this morning;

1:31pm Me
hahaha
okay
so, I'm scared to save this thing
because I'm afraid it won't actually save

1:31pm Patrick
i know you can do it :)
save in the start menu
and freeze state/save state

1:32pm Me
how do I get to the start menu?
there's a 'file' menu at the top

1:33pm Patrick
no no no in the game itself.
HOW HAVE YOU NOT OPENED THE MENU YET!?
press enter

1:34pm Me
wait wait
like, I'm playing the game already
I tried to do that this morning
it wouldn't work
i had to start over

1:34pm Patrick
k press buttons until you get a list of things like "pokedex" "pokemon" "item", etc
it just shows up on the screen

1:35pm Me
I've pressed every button on my keyboard
the only 'save' option I have is under 'file'
and that's what I did last time, and it didn't save

1:36pm Patrick
k go to the file menu, and find "controls" or "preferences"

1:37pm Me
I have none of those options...remember, I'm using a different emulator than you

1:37pm Patrick
every emulator has them
there HAS to be a button on your keyboard that opens the menu
there are only 4 goddamn buttons on a gameboy lol

1:38pm Me
I know, but I've pressed everything
even the function buttons

1:39pm Patrick
i posted what you're looking for on your wall

1:39pm Me
you clown, I'm not using kiGB
I don't have those options on gameboy

1:40pm Patrick
i DESPERATELY need a desk
i'm calling you.

That's just a sample of the conversations we've been having recently. Regardless, I have finally caught a Pikachu. I also have a badge, and I'm headed to the next gym so I will then have TWO badges. I'm starting to see the appeal to this game. I've also downloaded an SNES emulator, and can't stop playing Killer Instinct, bringing me back to an obession I had with it a couple years ago. This is getting out of hand.

I haven't had sushi in lightyears. I'm thinking it's on the menu tonight.