Word up, my homeys. Another weekend approaches.. command?

That's right. RUN. Heh. Anyway, what do we have in store for this weekend... more belated excuses on why Q&A isn't done right on time?

No!

Instead, we have a Q&A posted before you get home from school! On time! A wonderful thing! Nobody over at RPGamer really cares, as long as I get it up before y'all get home from school, ('cause it just sucks if I don't).. .. but I'll tell you it feels mighty fine doing it at the right time, at least in my own little opinion.. and well, that's what this is all about.

So what's up. Let's see.. what's on my mind. Ah yes. California passes Proposition 22. If you voted yes for that measure, I want you to close your browser right now and hurt yourself. I can't believe California, bastion of different mindsets and a self-proclaimed cosmopolitan (look it up, if you don't know exactly what that means :P) forerunner, would pass a measure so bigoted and just downright wrong. For those of you who don't know, Prop 22 basically 'fixes' a loophole in California State Law that (gasp!) allowed same sex marriages from other states to be ... (GASP!) recognized in California! How horrible is this!? How can we have these ... GAY people ... marrying eachother!? MY GOD.. they might be able to put their significant other on their HEALTH PLAN. That'll destroy the fabric of America!

I'm not a really political person, but I dunno. This law kinda pissed me off. People are people, y'know? Gotta let them do their own thing. The big push for this Prop was, "Protect Marraige". Big funding from the churches. Now don't get me wrong. A lot of churches pulled support for this and one of my best friends, who is Christian agrees with me, so I'm not harshing anyone with religion. I'm just saying that there was a lot of Church-funded money driving this thing. Of course, I love the line from a preacher who said, "If your marriage is threatened in any way by what your neighbor is doing, or what his lifestyle is, YOU'RE the one who needs counseling, not him."

Now THAT'S something I can say amen to. I don't care what the Bible says about homosexuality being wrong. That's the church's business. This country isn't about one religion writing the laws that people who don't belong to that religion have to follow. Of course, if we were following what the Bible has to say, then that whole women voting thing needs to be taken back. Who let them have a decision? It says right there in the Bible that they should do what their husband says. In fact, married men should just have two votes, when it comes to ballot time. I mean, the Bible says that the woman agrees, so why should she even have to go out and vote?

Ridiculous. And so is Prop 22. 10 years from now, I'm hoping we look back on this and realize just how stupid this whole is.. I'm already looking back and thinking about how stupid it is. Go do your own thing, and let other people do what they want to as well. If your life is so incomplete that you've got to ruin the happiness of others, just because they're different than you, grab a gun and insert it into that gaping orafice of stupidity that is your head.

</rant>

Now that I've got that out of my system in a public forum, (for those of you who don't have columns read the world over, I suggest you try it sometime, it is honestly quite refreshing..) I say let's hit the letters.. oh yeah, but in the spirit of political activism that I can only get in once every 21 years or so...

Last year on April 30,1999, a gas out was staged across Canada and the U.S. to bring the price of gas down, and it worked. It's time to do something about it again.

This time, lets make it for three days instead of just one.

The oil cartel decided to slow production to drive up gasoline prices. Lets see how many Canadian\American people we can get to ban together for a three day period in April, NOT TO BUY ANY GASOLINE, during those three days. LETS HAVE A GAS OUT.

Do not buy any gasoline from APRIL 7, 2000, THROUGH APRIL 9, 2000. Buy what you need before the dates listed above, or after, but try not to buy any during the GAS OUT. If you want to help, just send this to everyone you know and ask them to do the same.

We brought the prices down once before, and we can do it again! Come on North America lets stand together. WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!. Even if you receive this 100 times keep passing it around, this way you know everyone is being informed and no one will forget!!!!!!!!

Brad:
Okay, this probably wasn't sent by someone as a "Hey Brad, this is important!" or anything email, but just as spam, which I invariably get.. but all I've gotta say is this:

If you don't like the price of gas, go buy an electric car.

Screw this gasout. It's called capitalism. You like it when your boss gives you a raise. You think your company is roses and perfume to every single one of your customers? You think that tons of companies the world over won't screw you out of a dollar to make one themselves? Dream on. It's capitalism. I say buy a ton of gas on those days. Support guys who've been selling gas cheap for all these years. "But $2 a gallon isn't cheap!" .. oh yeah? I bet they'd still sell a ton of gas at $3/gallon. We depend on it. The demand for gas is so high, and the supply is nowhere near it.. that if the price was free-market and determined by pure capitalism, we'd be paying closer to $5/gallon EASILY. Because those guys could charge that, and we'd still buy it. Because we like cars.

Celebrate Capitalism, and don't join the crowds of whiny folk who don't buy gas for 3 days in April, just to have all the gaslords laughing themselves to death on April 10, when you all buy 3 times as much gas, and cause record sales across the board.

Oh yeah, I've got a picture of me gasin' up in Kettleman City on April 30th of last year .. I drove over 400 miles that day to see my g/f at the time.. like HELL I wasn't buyin' gas.

That shield you found, would that happen to be the Escutcheon with 75/50? Also, if it's not too much to ask (I've read about your sleep deprivation), could you please let me know if you find the Sasuke Knife (a Ninja sword). These two items are the only items in the entire game that I have not yet found.

Thanks. Glad you appreciated the tip I sent, btw.

Keep up the good work with the column!

Adam

Brad:
Yes, that shield I found was the 75/50 shield.. it's awesome. It's on one of the pillars, (the right one, I think, as you face from where you start to where Worker7new starts) .. but remember to bring a chocobo, and have whomever's Jump at 5 (Lancer/Thief/Ninja and Jump+1 Boots). I didn't find the Sasuke Knife, but then again, I didn't go down the Deep Dungeon. I wanted to get to Tactics Ogre, so I quickly beat FFT, and well, moved on. :)

On Lufia II, do you have any idea what you do to that huge slime on the bottom? It just cured me and ran away, thus making me have to exit and do it over again.

Joey

Brad:
Hahaha.. Hell if I know. I got as far as about level 73 before these magic throwing things beat the living snot out of me.. haven't been further than that. I'm sure someone has, though.. and well, I summon that person forth to bring their tale of smashing the super-jelly to bits!

I suspect you may be getting more than a few emails about what Google said about Japanese yesterday, and here's one of them! :-) It's true that Japanese does have some simpler verbs than English, but it has other stuff that's at least as strange as English.

For instance, in addition to the entire Kanji system (one symbol == one or more words) it has two distinct but entirely equal phonetic alphabets. Hiragana, the first, is reserved for native Japanese (and some Chinese) words, whereas Katakana, the second, is for foreign loan-words. So you end up with a system of many thousand symbols (of which the large majority of which are Kanji) to communicate in writing, whereas English manages the same thing with 26 characters.

Japanese also has a very complex system of relationships that effect the way things are said. I may be oversimplifying here, but I believe it's correct to state that in English you'd say "I have a nice computer" the same way, regardless if you were talking to Bill Gates or the waitress at the local dinner. This is NOT the case with Japanese, at least not for native speakers. I'm not trying to say either language is better or simpler or more complicated than the other, just that each has their own eccentricities. As for a gaming question, here's one: what do you think about the PS2's supposed development difficulties? IGN64 ran a piece yesterday that had some developers saying the Dreamcast might actually be able to put out sharper graphics than the PS2, due to the PS2's lack of memory for textures and anti-aliasing capabilites.

With so many people dissing the Dreamcast because "The PS2 looks so much better" this changes the playing field a bit. Any thoughts?

-coldjones

Brad:
I'm not much of a fan of Japanese.. I speak French (sortof), German (sortof), and I speak really horrible Spanish on demand. I don't need anymore crazy languages to mix up inside my head, there's plenty there. As for the PS2, I actually just recently, even after hearing about the problems, put some money down on one. My thoughts are this: This is the ONLY reason why Japanese releases before US ones are a good thing. They can fix the damned things before bringing them over and having me play them. :) If I wanted a space heater, I would have bought a Dreamcast! (haha, just kidding.. well okay, no I'm not) .. I'm kindof disheartened by the rumor that not all the PSX games will be playable on the PS2.. maybe I -will- be getting a Dreamcast. Hmph.

Yo man, whats up? You are the coolest Q&A guy in the world. Heres my question, I dont care if it gets printed or not, but at least answer me please. In Xenogears, how did Weltall get in Lahan Village? It wasn't the gear Elly stole, and nobody was inside it when Fei got inside so where the heck did it come from? Ive beaten the game, but maybe it explained this and I forgot but oh well. And another thing, what gear was the one that rescued Elly when the big bomb ship was fallin on the capitol of Kislev? It wasnt Fei or Rico was it? Well there ya go two wholesome questions ready to be answered by the almighty one. Well, see ya. Wing Zero

Brad:
What do you mean coolest in the world. <jedimindtrick> There are no other Q&A hosts in the world. Your name is Steve. Your name.. is Steve. </jedimindtrick>

Right. Now onto business. I don't remember Xenogears in even remotely the kind of detail needed to answer this, though I assumed that Weltall was being driven by someone else, possibly? Or perhaps it was stashed somewhere near the village, since Id used it before, and when he got all NRNNNGHGHGHGHG.. then Weltall's like, "Oops! Time to party!" and came runnin'.. who knows. Someone who's sadistic enough to have played through Xenogears enough times to know this, drop us a line, yo!