An Album I Cannot Recommend

I don't make a habit of talking about it at every possible opportunity, but my favorite band is a metalcore group called All That Remains. I became a fan about three or four years ago after hearing Two Weeks on the radio and deciding to check out some of their music. By the end of the night I had downloaded all their albums and was completely and totally hooked. In 2010 the band released their fifth studio album, For We Are Many, and I thought it was even better than their previous compilations - which by this point I had listened to for hundreds if not thousands of hours. So, I was incredibly hyped when lead singer Phil Labonte "leaked" the opening song of their new album, A War You Cannot Win, three months ago.

Rewriting the Books: Hell in a Cell 2012

I get the feeling that WWE writers don't know how to plan more than two weeks ahead. Or maybe it's just that they're not allowed to. Or maybe it's just that so many of them have been musical-chaired in the last few weeks that it's too much to hope for a little consistency so soon afterward. Regardless, the build-up to Hell in a Cell hasn't left me feeling particularly enthusiastic despite how fresh it is after three months of Punk-Cena and five months of Del Rio-Sheamus. The only match on the card that is an extension of a previously-standing feud is Eve-Kaitlyn-Layla, which I could only care less about if the build actually had anything to do with Layla. Before I go through the card match by match, let's talk about the stuff not on it, with emphasis on one subject in particular:

Rewriting the Books - The Long Road to Hell

So in the middle of making my most recent video I remembered I had said I would have this article up a couple days after Night of Champions. I decided then that instead of framing each pay-per-view with two articles, that I'd combine the reaction to the last show with the build-up to the next one, roughly mid-way through the break between shows. But nobody really cares about that, I'm just talking to myself.

Rewriting the Books: Night of Champions 2012 Pre-Show

Let's get this out first: I've had some very negative things to say about Jerry Lawler's on-screen role in WWE the past few weeks, but I was just as shocked and dismayed as anyone when he suddenly had a heart attack live on Raw this week. I'm glad that there has been nothing but good news about his condition since the incident, and I hope he makes a full recovery soon.

Now, let's get down to business. All six championships are set to be defended at Night of Champions, and it's possible - though far from likely - that the championships will change hands a total of eight times. The current card is as follows:

Cheating Is Wrong...Usually

Growing up I had trouble dealing with the temptation to cheat. I would sneak through cards in my deck when my opponent wasn't looking, I would fudge dice rolls that nobody was in position to see, all kinds of stuff. It was an odd thing that I would pretty much only do it when I was playing against my younger sister. I understood the concept of letting her win every now and then, but I rejected this philosophy outright and would do everything in my power to win against her. However I would also sometimes employ my dice-fudging when playing Dungeons and Dragons. It was just so easy to do it because, in the time I've played tabletop RPGs, I've played with people around a single tabletop maybe...five times in my whole life. As I got older I got more honest, but quite simply, if a person has the opportunity to cheat, and believes they can get away with it, the temptation will occur to them.

Honestly, whenever I'm playing with somebody, I feel more at ease if I know that cheating is out of the question. It's like knowing that I don't have the option of breaking the rules for the sake of winning makes me more focused on working within the rules and just straight-up playing better. More importantly, it makes me more focused on having fun. Nowadays my cheating is limited pretty much exclusively to accomplishing goals in single-player video games that would otherwise be impossible (or impractical...or just boring) to achieve without the help of cheat codes, walkthroughs, exploitations, etc. However, there was one time, fairly recently, when I cheated in a game that involved no less than twenty-five other people...and all of them were fine with it. Let me explain.

Rewriting the Books: Heroes and Villains

For those of you not in the know, Rewriting the Books is a young series of written articles I began a few months ago as a way to scratch my writing itch and to put out my thoughts on the storylines in WWE. Over the past few months, I've had quite a bit of dissatisfaction to express.

Back when I was first getting into wrestling just over a year ago, there was a problem with WWE that slowly became obvious to me: there were too many heels. Too many villains, and not enough heroes to deal with them. Three of Smackdown's most recognizable faces all left action in the span of a few months - Edge retired early, and Kane and Big Show were both written out of action with storyline injuries inflicted by the newly-turned Mark Henry. For a number of months, Randy Orton, the new top face of Smackdown and reigning World Heavyweight Champion, had three main contenders going after his title: Sheamus, Henry, and former champion Christian. Three heels, all feuding against Orton at once. The problem wasn't as prevalent on Raw because it didn't emerge as quickly, but R-Truth's heel turn and injuries to both Rey Mysterio and John Morrison left the WWE quite villain-heavy.

New blog

Just about anyone who's reading this is already a bit familiar with me, but just in case you've never heard of me...Hi. I'm Nick. Online, I'm mostly known as Y Ruler of Time, which is a stupid name I came up with when I was a dumb teenager, but for whatever reason I've stuck with it. Probably because I'm too lazy to change the name in all the places I use it. I make a video series called Read Right to Left which is focused on talking about manga, and I put all the videos on another blog, but I wanted a place to put up stuff that's not directly related to that content and that'd be inconvenient to post to Twitter. In other words, this is an actual blog, the other one is where I like to direct people to watch my stuff. You know, when they're not already watching it on Blip or ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.com.

I have a lot of unrelated interests, so brace yourself for random neck-snapping topic changes between posts. I can also be incredibly wordy when I want to be. Beware the hidden depths that await you beneath the Read More button.