Hyrulian Hero

(TMI/adult content warning)
Well, this is the day, I love this series. I don't usually talk about these things because it sounds like I'm looking for sympathy points but it's necessary for context so buckle up and listen to me whine. I was born to couple of homeless hippies who lived in a bus. Not that I remember this necessarily but I at least think I have a very few vague memories of this time period. A face, a tire swing, a guitar. Anyway, one night when I was nearly three (plenty of years ago), my parents let me stay at my poppy's house for the night (that would be my biological grandpa on my mom's side). They stayed the night in the storage unit they were renting because buses don't have quite the storage space you'd expect when they're your residence.

That night, something set off a propane heater they had going to keep warm. Don't smoke, kids. The resulting explosion and fire wiped out the storage unit complex as well as my parents. I was adopted soon afterward and no longer lived in a bus. My new dad had a best friend who we saw often and his son became my best friend. They had a built-in entertainment center with a big CRT and a drawer underneath. Inside that drawer was a little clutch of NES games. Which NES game stands out the best?

That was my first exposure to Zelda. We had a NES at our house too. And I got plenty of enjoyment out of galaga, Kirby's adventure, and paperboy but there's always something special about playing a game with your friend that only he or she owns, especially when you have to take turns and can rarely beat the first level. The Zelda game that's most closely linked to my earliest days though, isn't LOZ.

From time to time, after church on Sunday, I got to go visit my poppy for the afternoon. He eventually remarried after my grandma died (which was shortly after their daughter died) and his second wife had a son from a previous marriage who was probably 10 years older than I. While my friends and I were stuck playing the NES like paupers, my new step-uncle (?) Had the latest and greatest in Nintendo entertainment technology. Among his meager assortment of cartridges, I came across one with a somewhat familiar label. He didn't let me play it often, probably because I used all of his bombs or something, but he was older than me and was a grafted part of my biological family. So ALttP took on some level of significance to me.

When I was about eleven, my second mom was diagnosed with cancer that was expected to be terminal. After going through chemo and radiation, she somehow recovered and the cancer went into remission. That was a rough time for us, having to say goodbye and making peace with the situation and then having her recover the way she did. Two years later, however, she was re-diagnosed and deteriorated rapidly.

Wind Waker had recently released and I was in the game room either playing Wind Waker or doing a Zelda role play online when I was asked to come say goodbye to her. Puberty is a weird enough time without seeing your mom fall apart for years on end. Three months later, my dad's best friend, who was also one of my best friends from the older generation, died suddenly of a possibly accidental prescription overdose. Every night, I'd crawl into bed and look at the giant map poster that came with my strategy guide. The freedom and humor of that game influenced and called me through those times.

My second dad later got remarried and I went to college and returned a little more independent. When I was 19, less than a year after I returned home, he up and died suddenly and unexpectedly of septicemia. My then girlfriend (later fiance) didn't have much experience with death so she helped me to cope by playing through Skyward Sword with me and Four Sword's Adventures with her brother and their friend. I think we might have played through TP together as well. Anyway, I relate that whole time to FSA and Skyward Sword. They're also bittersweet memories not only because of my dad's death, but because her dad broke up with me (for her) later during our engagement.

My wedding band is the Wind Waker stylized curl, my oldest daughter's name is Hylia, . This franchise is deeply embedded in my life. I have waited overnight several times for new Zelda releases and own probably ten thousand dollars worth of Zelda products. All that to say, I'm driving back to Oregon tonight to visit for the first time in nearly two years so my oldest son will be the first to play TotK tomorrow. Parenthood is beautiful.

Dunked a few agates in muriatic acid and got a pretty good result.

Still a bit of a mess but it's coming along. Played system link Halo Reach campaign today. I don't really get the hate it gets. It's a more challenging campaign than Halo 4, ODST, or 3; plenty of fun to be had.

I'm not saying Ben Drowned is somehow anything more than a creepypasta, but when this is what the dude in his garage "throws in" when you show up to purchase an N64 lot, you have to wonder. Either way, I'm not plugging it in...

The view from my front step. Small mountain towns are awesome.

So I questioned this while alphabetizing the PS2 games. Is Dance Dance Revolution Extreme 2 a different sub series from Dance Dance Revolution? And if that's the case is it a sequel to DanceDanceRevolution X with tweaked branding (X vs Extreme) or are those two separate sub series? I mean, DanceDanceRevolution X is all one word (save for the X) so that seams like ripe for branding confusion. I mean, look at the front of DanceDanceRevolution X's box; the first letter of each word is very defined as it was obviously shortened to DDR in common parlance but it wasn't going under DDR branding because that would have placed it closer to DDRMAX2: Dance Dance Revolution.

But then in Dance Dance Revolution Extreme 2, the X in extreme is formed by the leg of the R from Revolution making me think that this may actually be a follow-up to DanceDanceRevolution X.

Because DDRMAX2 is an entirely separate sub series, right? I mean, look at the branding, it's definitely supposed to be a sub series called DDRMAX, right?
But why is the subtitle on the spine "DDRMAX2: Dance Dance Revolution? Is this to imply that the full title of the game is DanceDanceRevolutionMAX2: Dance Dance Revolution? This is Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3 levels of whacky here.

I count 331. This doesn't include around 60 personal doubles for system link or the 150ish for sale.

Hmmm, what could I be doing?

Is SoDak South Dakota?

We moved up into the hills this week. This is the view from my back window. Lots of work to be done on the house but it's awesome.

I've been playing the Oracle duology since its release and those two games come to mind whenever I discuss The Legend of Zelda as a series. I've spent countless hours riding Dimitri, Moosh, and Ricky around Labrynna and Holodrum. Yesterday, while watching yet another review of Ages, without promoting, without the YouTuber mentioning it, I had an epiphany. Ricky's name is a play on Rocky because they're both boxers. I'll never unhear his voice now and I'm ashamed to admit to missing this obvious Zelda factoid for all these years.

I'm worried. My wife is finally finishing BotW after having put in a hundred hours before having my little daughter erase her save. She likes the game and...I told her she can play Tears of the Kingdom first. I really do think it will be fun to watch a Zelda game I haven't played being played by my wife but at the same time, it's taken her this long to beat Breath of the Wild and I'm going to want to play Tears of the Kingdom spoiler-free (besides what I discover watching her). Suggestions?

Long time ago, my dad's friend, after my dad died, finally took me out to the desert. He'd told me about it for years and it had become one of those sort of mythical places you build up in your mind when somebody you trusts tells you so much about it. Two of his friends, who were older than he, had come across an old cow corral out on the edge of an ancient lake bed and had constructed a shack out of it 40 years previous. That's where we headed.

Well we went out there several times over the next few years and he would tell me all sorts of stories about the area: finding arrowheads, a tomahawk, a broken Indian pipe, sweat lodge rings, WW2 strafing mounds with targets and bullets all over, wild horses, UFOs, murders at the nearest rest stop, it was a land of magic and mystery.

Well one day we were bumping along in the old Tacoma on what could barely be called a two-track, my late dad's friend draining a gallon of Gallo wine filled with green olives (that was his thing) when he tells me a whopper of a story. "Out over yonder there's a barbed wire fence. Now I was out on foot one night and I'd had a little bit to drink, and I found that fence while I was out. It had signs on it with skull an' crossbones so of course I found myself on the other side of it. But I swears, when I looked down, I saw purple dirt!"

I was incredulous as I looked over at him, jug of box store wine tipped back as he peered around it at the steering wheel. 'Purple dirt, yeah'. Dude spilled his wine on the ground and didn't know what he was looking at. Not much of a story anyway but one that he stuck by. I knew him to tell some stories but somehow it didn't seem like the sort of narrative he'd totally fabricate. But later, when I went back to that shack on my own, I found that fence. On that fence were rusty metal signs, official-looking signs, emblazoned with a skull and crossbones, like a story too tropey to be believed. No purple dirt though.

When I got back to town after the weekend, I did a little digging and found that back in the day, a chemical plant up in a city two hours north of where I lived had been contracted by the federal government to produce a little Miracle Gro for the war effort in Nam. Agent Orange. And when the war came to a less decisive and more abrupt halt than many expected, there was a whole bunch of that nasty junk left over in tens of thousands of 55 gallon drums. That they buried in the middle of a desert beside a dry lake bed where only cooky old codgers and curious young men would ever think to look.

My dad's friend is still kicking around but he's got that slightly...unique edge to him. Both of his older friends have since met their respective ends to cancer. The desert is a weird place.