Perhaps I’ll do a post like this once per month on a Monday. Mondays are the blackest, most brutal day of the week and, for some reason, I can never seem to stew up good ideas for posts. I figure I’ll review a few things that have been sucking up all my leisure time.

Reading:

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks - This is the follow up to Brooks’ The Zombie Survival Guide. I enjoyed it but not for the reason I thought I would. This book is not a novel. It’s more like a collection of short stories and interviews. I was expecting a bunch of stories about battles against the undead. The book delivers this but wraps a great deal of political and social commentary in with it. My favorite part is when a group of “B” list celebrities pay an opportunistic mercenary to house them in a luxurious fortress during the early stage of the zombie plague. The mercenary’s goal is not only to collect money from the celebs but also to broadcast their life in the fortress as a reality show for all to see. The result is brutal and hilarious.

Playing:

Viva Pinata (XBox 360) - A lot of casual gamers played and loved The Sims. I played and hated it. It was boring and passive. Imagine The Sims except the object is to decorate your house so all kinds of different people want to move in. Then, when they move in, the object is to get them to breed. Sometimes, evil spirits will come and make them sick or kill them outright. Sometimes they’ll kill each other. That’s basically what Viva Pinata is, except it’s packaged so disgustingly cutesy that you won’t notice the brutality when a red monster sneaks into your garden and smashes your bunny rabbit into scraps of paper and pieces of candy. The way to stop this is to wallop said monster with a shovel until it shatters into pinata chunks. I’ve got to admit that I got Pinata and Gears of War on virtually the same day but I’ve spent more time overall playing the former.

Watching:

For years I’ve been waiting for a sketch comedy show to rise up to the standards of Mr. Show. It hasn’t happened yet but Tim and Eric’s Awesome Show on Adult Swim is pretty close. While the first episodes were pretty weak, the last two have been solid. You can watch the episodes for free online if you don’t have cable. Tim and Eric are the guys behind the celebrity cameo-filled Tom Goes to the Mayor on Adult Swim, which is another show I really liked. Bob Odenkirk of the aforementioned Mr. Show was involved with the production of (and appears in) both shows.

Doing:

Painting. Nuff said.