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I made this felted Batman for my husband for Easter this year.

Although I had to mash the symbol onto the belt to make it all work, I was proud… and so were my folks who were visiting at the time! That’s enough warm fuzzies to last awhile, especially as my husband liked it as well. :3

You can peek in my Etsy Shop to see what I have available for sale, by the way. As of this post many wool felted critters are up for sale!

*sigh*

All right, I’m an avid HOME player – a crazy one that owns more than 2 thousand HOME items (clothing, furniture, one-piece avatars) and 40+ personal apartments. I go there at various times of the day and night, check up on stuff, play all the new games and stuff. You know.

EDO OF NIPPON (Granzella)

And there was almost no one so damned excited about Granzella’s Edo of Nippon as I was. I mean … we get katana and period outfits? Hooray! Although they cost quite a lot ($1.99 each in most cases) I scoped out what I wanted and then bought a sardine seller outfit and a haori coat with pants, sword, and the swordsman’s female haircut. The whole shebang, right? Nah. When the game opened, I saw that you had the ability to buy stamina recovery and vitality medicine, so I bought that as well as the Edo apartment space (since I’d been waiting for it anyway)!

One would think, after buying every god damned thing the game had to offer and equipping myself to the teeth, that I could play the game properly. After all, you can jump and swing a weapon like a “real” console game, right?

@#$%! No way! Do NOT think you can play the game by yourself. This thing is unbearably hard as HELL. Even if you have everything they want you to buy, it’s impossible. Jesus! I’m badass at games like this on the console, but this one? Forget it. Oh, and to play multiplayer (where you may have a chance) you have to know and friend each person you want to play with (@#$% it Home, not again with the friend-exclusive shit)! Ugh. So I’ve kind of given up on that for now. The only good thing about buying everything was it gave me furniture and clothing I’ll actually use.

So there I am, disgusted by something new already. Argh. Well, I’ll try something else, right? Sure! Why not…

x7 – Sony’s “Exclusive” HOME Club

If you have Playstation Plus (why should I pay for that since my husband already is, by the way, and we share a PS3), or own any of the Exclusives items that are expensive (those I do have), you can get into this “VIP Area” of HOME.

I should say it’ll be a hit – I know people will love it. I know it… annnnnnd this lowers my opinion of the human race significantly once again. Basically, take the Playboy mansion with whores strutting (the NPCs bang their hips around hilariously in an effort to be sexy) about in bikinis and garters, add a SINGLE MALE in the pool wearing sensible swimwear (nothing like a bikini bottom, of course, men have more respect for themselves). Take this mix, shove in some bouncers and dudes in shades, a bar, and a go-go area dance floor, and you’d think it would be enough to degrade us all, right? Hell, no! Now we have the “flirting” game, where you honestly whore yourself around and if you’re enough of a slut, get a crown that says “HOTTIE” if you get on the leaderboard for it or some such asinine thing.

…

Oh, and there are special awesome deals – really low-priced shit — some free items, and preview stuff you can buy before the rest of Home. That’s what this should have been more about, the good stuff. But instead we sort of focused on what the idiots wanted, of course. UGH.

“Home’s so great, we have a GREAT community!” … of flirting, groping, perverted, trolling idiots that talk sex 99.9% of the time? Yes.

Is that good?

NO.

That’s what makes it so hard to find friends on Home. It’s mostly assholes. If this place solidifies them into one area, perhaps that’s another good thing (I wouldn’t hold my breath), but you won’t catch me going in there except to nab the freebies and sales.

Good lord! *pant pant pant* Okay, okay-okay-okay. Maybe I can find something new that rocks. Maybe. Hopefully. The ARR! Cutthroat Pirate’s game? No, always packed and I don’t want to be a crewman. I’m into pirates, see, and I want to be a Captain. I’ll tag along as an extra for some shit, but f-ed if I’m gonna be a crewman on a PIRATE ship. Uh…. um…

nDream’s OMG-Trap-o-Matic

nDream’s has upgraded Aurora into 1.5, meaning there’s a lot of stuff that isn’t ready yet. Heh. Oh, except the clothing items that make it even easier to level up (I liked that, seeing as it was taking me ages). And the Trap-o-Matic! This is, basically, a big tree-trunk/hairy beast-leg looking thing with an iron trap on the top. You go up to it and “set a trap” down, then wait 24 hours.

Yes.

24 hours.

Then you come back when the time has counted down on then sign to 000:000:000 and get your item the trap caught… except that the trap can be empty. When the trap is empty, it recommends that you “buy the four leaf clover chair”, because that will up your chances of getting stuff. The problem with this is it keeps being empty for me, AND I HAVE THE GODDAMNED CHAIR.

Also, I hear there’s an avatar and a personal space, so that might be neat. But the other items are copies, palette-swaps, if you will, of items they have for sale in the shop. So when you win, say, the ‘Gift in a Box’ companion, it will then tell you ‘HEY THERE IF YOU LIKE THIS, GO BUY THE THING IN A BOX COMPANION WE SELL”! But, why, nDreams? I don’t like that item. This one’s free – and the same f-ing thing. Huh?

All in all, a frustrating time on Home lately. I love the land shark companion – I’ll almost always be using that baby now, and I adored the fact that Lockwood re-released the “Baron’s Egg-celent Plan” for easter. That’s great! But all of these other things that were hyped up weren’t what I thought they’d be. Just an excuse to get you guys and gals to nickel-and-dime you to death… because it works, and they know it.

I’ve started putting completed jewelry up for sale on Etsy – check the shop out!

There are new Wool-Felted critters up for sale as well, a hedgehog, whale, tadpole and more.

Click the image there to go to my Etsy shop. There’s currently only a few up (including a $5 mini ninja), but there will be more! There’s also FREE SHIPPING to those that order the felted ball critters!

Discover Credit Card harps on its “cash back” policy, where you earn money with them by buying shit with their card. I’ve been with the card for more than a decade, but they’ve recently added a whole ton of bullshit to this “feature”. They slam it in your face all the time, ‘what card gives you money back for buying crap?’ But let’s face the facts – they really don’t anymore, either. Unless, of course, you buy an item worth several hundred dollars all at once.

The card used to give you an option at “$25 cashback” to receive it, or just pay off your card with that amount. That amount has now been raised to $50, for one, unless you get one of these “GREAT OFFERS” they have…

Shit. They want me to get savings cards. Eat here at Chili’s! Get this card for your iPhone! Do this, do that!

I don’t get those cards, okay? I never do, and never will unless they’re completely free. I don’t want to eat at Chili’s (or whatever place is advertising with them). I want my twenty-five-fucking dollars. $25 is hard to earn with the tiny %, but I managed it now and then, and it was always nice to get. $50 is completely unreasonable, which means they’re basically trying to force people to get those card deals and whatnot. Now, too bad I have way too much money on that card and it will take years to pay off, but I’m seriously considering not using it anymore to do so. I’m not happy with the way its treating me right now.

Deposit your Cashback Bonus directly into a bank account starting at $50, in $50 increments.

Ahhh, screw you.

I’ve listed on eBay almost since the site first came out. In the beginning, it was a fabulous place for collectors to resell items and help themselves out. Then it began to be more popular, so that it was a great place to sell almost anything and make a little profit on the side! But how the tides have turned in the years as it grew and grew. It is a VERY dangerous place out there in eBay-land, if you’re a seller.

eBay caters exclusively to the buyers of items on their site.

This may not sound bad to many, but if you want to sell anything, you’re in for a world of hurt. Yes, they make it sound like you get “free” listings, but believe me, they’re not free when you consider their exorbitant fees and the hassle you have to put up with – not to mention losing money in the end (I’ll explain later).

eBay charges fees on your shipping costs now

…yeah, I didn’t believe it either. So because the cost of shipping anything has gone up lately, now we’re being punished twice as a seller. Once by the USPS (folks don’t like high shipping fees, of course) and now again by eBay when they charge us to ship. I see why they’re doing it – some folks rip people off by charging $100 shipping and making the item a penny, thus trying to trick buyers. But this is not the majority of sellers, and you’re punishing us all.

eBay does not let sellers give negative feedback

So now the buyers have you by the balls and they know it. Buyers have become bullies, demanding things that are NOT in their rights and threatening negative feedback, knowing they don’t have a single thing to worry about in return!

eBay lets buyers bid on items they should be shut out of

Don’t want to ship Internationally? Of course you don’t – hell, out of all my years shipping, I lost more money that way by underestimating costs and people not wanting to pay when they realized it wasn’t going to be a handful of change to ship to Italy from the States. So I mark my auctions “ships to USA only”. Wanna know what happens if a buyer comes along from Canada and wins the item? I have to file a complaint, and then they have to agree to cancel the win. They have the power, even though they are in the wrong. This recently happened to my husband and prompted me to write this post. What’s worse, the asshole PM’d him and said ‘maybe you shouldn’t fucking be on eBay, I’m gonna give you negative feedback’.

Maybe you should learn to read, you idiot! We need money and the feedback he gets to earn money on eBay. But because you can’t have your special toy from Comicon, you’re going to throw a tantrum and ruin someone’s life a little more. YOU can’t have this toy – we can’t ship Internationally. WE lose money we need to keep our home, feed our fur-kids and ourselves, and believe me, douche, we need it. We don’t have fucking health insurance, and neither one of us can even think about going to the doctor. I have many severe health issues that need treatment and I haven’t gotten any help there for years. AND YOU’RE GOING TO FUCK US OVER BECAUSE YOU CAN’T HAVE A TOY?! And besides this it’s your fault you won because the auction itself clearly states “does not ship internationally”?

eBay, for Christ’s sake, if we say “no International”, block the users from bidding!

There’s more, believe me. Much more. eBay has become a hassle and it’s not worth it anymore.

So yeah, I’m still playing Silent Hill: Downpour.

It still sucks, but it’s better than the last 2 installments (counting the one where you weren’t allowed to even fight, WTF). So like a true fan, I’m plugging away and nabbing some trophies until the HD 2 &3 disc comes out (fan spleee)!

Aside from the fact that I can’t do those ‘OMG-WALK-THIS-NARROW-THING-WITHOUT-FALLING’  bullshit, because the assholes have the camera change to wherever they want it during those events, I’m kicking ass with the enemies like usual. Thank goodness they went back to 3rd person fighting mode. That special combat close-up crap is stupid, and it doesn’t lend itself to the series well.

My game apparently has more rain than my husband has been seeing, or maybe it’s just that I walk around in it like an ass (lol). He’d never even seen the lightning or knew what it was when I was playing, and he keeps asking me if I have a flashlight. LOL. Which I do, I just don’t use it. I’ll end up using the UV when I get it, but I don’t like to use lighting when I play Silent Hill. I’m not scared by much of it anyway, it’s at least a little creepier when I don’t use a flashlight.

Already killed enough and ran away for those trophies, so now I’ll just progress the story … except I CAN’T FIGURE OUT WHERE TO GO. I had to quit just because of this tonight! There’s no clue, rain downpours every five freaking seconds so I can’t see anything, and Murphy isn’t talking. And, hell, even if he was he’d just say “I gotta get outta here’ or something inane like that. Nice tips, guys. “Hey, don’t die” is just as good a tip as what he tells me for “help”. Bleah.

(and Happy Birthday to my Mother-in-Law, who rocks btw)

Here’s all 3 songs from the “Musical Pot of Gold” item found in the Music store of PS’ Home. The quality is a lot poorer than usual for my vids because I didn’t want that “clacking” sound to disturb the music being recorded.

“The Choice Wife”
“The King of the Fairies”
“Set Dance”

(No “Whiskey in the Jar”? Elly SAD.)

The Home Space is the Hillside Apartment, I’m wearing the “Tops and Tails” Rat head and tail and there is the “Sprocket o’ Cog” companion alongside me. Happy St. Patty’s!

Also, since I was uploading some videos, I found one of our 2 small poodles and made this:

Get down, Zuul. Get funky. xD

http://air-lobster.com/blog/shop/stories/

Dirty Romance Everlasting: Series 4 is available on Nook and up for sale there in the shop! There’s also a new short (8,ooo words) story up for sale as well, entitled The Family.

Will be doing more shorts for .99, as I’m losing out when folks seem to like my work but only want to pay that price :p

SPOILER ALERTS. Don’t read if you haven’t played yet.

No.

No no no no no no no no no.

First off, LET ME PLAY THE GODDAMNED GAME. I sat through 20 minutes of opening movie cutscenes when I wanted to play a @#$%ing game. I was irritated from the start, hated it when the guards are clamoring for me to “move it” when the game doesn’t tell me how to run. If you’re gonna make guys bitch at me for moving too slow, THEN TELL ME THE CONTROLS TO RUN, as you are telling me everything else! Nope. Sure, could’ve looked it up, but I’m in-game here and don’t wanna get up and break the “mood”.

So I kill a disgusting fat blob that I wished I didn’t have to see or hear. Not satisfying. Don’t know why, don’t care yet – there’s nothing scary, nothing creepy, just prisoner shit. Now I’m on the bus, blah blah, more movie cut scene crap, oh my freaking GODDDD… oh, yay, the sign said “Silent Hill”.

1) First satisfaction: nerd glee at the road sign

This faded fast as it still slowly, slowly, slowwwwly led me through more cut scene… hey, I can finally move! And now, the bitching begins. (Yeah, begins. You haven’t heard anything yet). Damn it, American developers, you’re doing it wrong. “It” being Silent Hill, that is. And blast it, horror in general, if I may say so. I would like to say it now, in bold, screaming caps:

TENSION IS NOT HORROR.

Walking across a log with fear of falling is not horror. It makes me tense up, yes, but that’s where American horror game developers do horror completely wrong in my opinion. It’s not scary, it just makes my gut crunch up. ‘OHMYGODIMIGHTFALL’ isn’t the sheer horror of not knowing what’s making the sound behind the closed door or just around the corner. And now, oh great. Cop bitch treats me like crap. At this point I was so irritated with my game experience in general as a SH fan that guess what help she got from me? Zero.

2) Second satisfaction: hearing her scream as she fell to her death (and wishing it was the game developers instead)

All right. Still no monsters. Still nothing frightening. I grit my teeth and plug onwards like a true fan, hoping against hope for something good. Now we introduce the journal – I can’t see shit on it, the pages are tilted too far away and who the FUCK writes that faintly with pencil on paper? JEEZ. Okay, that’s useless… oh. Oh, wow. More “tense” scenes. Run away from the scary fire, slide down the scary maw of doom (get hit once and game over) run away from the scary red death – whatever the fuck that is…

Are you seeing something here? The same shit, over and over. Run away from something, you can’t fight it, oh my GODDD isn’t that “scary”?

No.

The word is “annoying”. That’s what it is.

I finally get to some monster action, and then all I fight are two flipping creatures before it slams me with the first main-story puzzle… which I can’t figure out by myself. Apparently I have to have tokens to play this game, I can see that, but the game progressed me forward naturally to this point and I don’t see where I can get them. I know, the sky tram thing. Where is it? How do I get there?

How do I open the @#$%ing map(s) again?! The buttons are shit, I keep throwing items when I don’t want to, and like I said, I can’t remember fast enough after an hour or more of game play how to open up the map or menu to get a first aid kit or anything. Not very intuitive, I must force myself to remember. Hopefully that’ll get better as it progresses, but let me tell you, I’m not hoping for anything. I think it sucks. If I haven’t had any fun in that much time on a game, it sucks.