I maintain that the best thing about Halo is that the enemies at least appear to be intelligent, which makes beating them extremely satisfying

That, and the endless replay value. I always find that different parts of each game feel different every time I play them – which means that the challenges keep changing while the overall feel remains consistent. I nearly finished playing through HALO: CE again for the umpteenth time today, and it’s great fun – and I got stuck at different points, using different tactics, than I did the last time I played it (like 3 months ago).

On another note, I don’t know what’s deadliest in this post. Stepping into a ring with Buakaw, going to Australia, or looking at the instathot’s pic. If you can’t find a good one, that’s ok. We can go for a week or two without an instathot on Mondays 😛

Additionally, it’s a luxury spend but I have found it very rewarding: The Old Testament translation by Robert Altar with his translator notes. Altar is a Hebrew linguist and professor of literary criticism. He brings incredible life to the Psalms and the book of Samuel. Frankly, all modern translations suck at Psalms after reading through his poetry and translation notes.

That Elon Musk tweet is great. Welcome to the party pal.

What you may not know is that the not-so-United States has had a long history of separatist movements and rebellions that goes way beyond The War of Northern Aggression (called “The Civil War” by the victors).

Here in Florida, there were a few days down in Key West during the 1970s where some people declared The Conch Republic.

The funny thing is that Los Federales and the State of Florida actually left the burgeoning republic alone, despite a few days of inconvenience at the nearby naval base, figuring it was either going to do something more or ask for readmission, which it eventually did.

But all across the US, there have been many little and not-so-little rebellions against central government.

Seeing that Florida has its act together more than the fucking stupid menagerie that makes up the former Confederate States of America, I wouldn’t mind seeing Florida as a separate nation eventually.

And there’s already a future President waiting in the wings: Donald J Trump, now a resident of Palm Beach County.

It’s not just the South though: there’s the Cascadian Republic movement up in the Pacific Northwest, and even California went through the motions back in 1858.

The states themselves aren’t peaceful during wide-open times, such as what happened with the pre-War of Northern Aggression dust-up between Georgia and North Carolina over a ridiculously small scrap of land. That’s going on even today between Alabama, Georgia, and Florida over the Chattahoochee River and water rights that Georgia wants to monopolise with its big dam and lake in North Georgia.

You can see by the names of people and places the spots in America where they thought it better to pull up stakes and move entirely, as you’ll see in Montana when you come across the Gallatins who decided Tennessee was better off being a historical footnote for them.

And so you might understand the further historical significance of my saying …

SECESSION NOW! SECESSION TOMORROW! SECESSION FOREVER! 🙂

My Halo journey is very similar to that video, in that I enjoyed the campaigns but hated that the multiplayer was more popular than my beloved Battlefield 1942 or UT2004 (being terrible at Halo 1 MP didn’t help either). It wasn’t until I played through them all on Legendary for achievements that I was able to appreciate the game’s true brilliance.

I maintain that the best thing about Halo is that the enemies at least appear to be intelligent, which makes beating them extremely satisfying. That trait is common to a lot of great FPSes like Half-Life and F.E.A.R.