barnes and noble lately and a pokemon rant

so after looking at the barnes and noble here, the borders here and in tyson's corner, the waldenbooks here, and the barnes and nobles in enfield and holyoke, i am unable to find a copy of book 4 of otherland, "sea of silver light," in acceptable (to me) condition. i found some in mint, but they didn't have the nice covers! those smooth covers feel like heaven to me. you know what i'm talking about, right? i can just run my hands over those covers forever.

i finally ordered it here. 3-8 days. if it comes and it's also in bad condition, do i have to buy it?

few things i noticed:

the dark tower is out! damn. $35 hardcover. i'd get 30% off with a membership, but that's still $24.50 for a book. plus, i would kind of rather prolong it.

book 3 of neil gaiman's baroque cycle is out. he's prolific.

the manga section is huge. it's huge at all bookstores now. it's crazy. makes me wish i had the money to blow on it.

there's some big comic book by neil gaiman, sandman endless nights. the cover is so fucking beautiful. gold lettering on a cover made of the same magical material that makes me happy inside. i flipped through it and it looked like erotica... i thought that was weird.

america: democracy inaction (get it? eh?) by jon stewart is out. the made-up (i hope) quotes on the back cover are hilarious. i'd never heard of it until i saw it on the rack, but it looks interesting.

there's some 2 hour farscape movie event on... what channel? i forget. i saw a bookmark stating that on the customer service counter while ordering my (hopefully) pristine book. i thought jess or erik moser might like that. it's funny, the series is out on dvd. it must have been popular somewhere.

[skip this part if you don't care about pokemon. or dungeons and dragons. which i find unfathomable, but hey]

i don't think i wrote on here that i got pokemon fire red. jillian was thinking of getting one of them, so when she decided to get leaf green i thought i might as well. it's much better when you have two games and two gameboys available. i did my usual routine of starting the game 6 times to make sure i got one female of each starter and one male. each male also had to be the best type, you know - bold for tanks, modest or jolly for special sweepers.

it's really cool. playing the original with all the new bells and whistles is really a lot of fun. and trading with the wireless adapter is so awesome. i am curious whether that adapter only works with pokemon, or for linking any game.

it still bothers me how badly the game is designed. the types are inconsistent. ground AND rock? they're practically the same thing. why is bug a type, but all birds are type flying? how come dragon is a type? and why is charizard fire/flying? all dragons are flying. same for gyrados. it's blatantly a dragon, but it's water/flying. and how is normal a type? it should be the same damn thing as fighting.

things like this need to be represented by pretty charts. if they can't be represented by such, then they are flawed. look at the elemental planes in d&d. you have the primary, the quasi, the para, and the energy planes. look at how they're connected. that's how it's done. the pokemon designers just pulled it out and have stuck with the same flawed system since. how is dark a type? what is its opposite? if grass > water > fire > grass, where does electricity fit in? if water is opposite fire, then how is fire also opposite ice? they even added two more types, steel and dark, because psychic was clearly so powerful. before those two, psychic dominated.

another example i just thought of. wow. i keep drawing on more and more nerd. look at magic the gathering. i don't know what's changed in the past couple of years, but richard garfield designed the game with five colors. white black green red blue. plains swamps forests mountains islands. simple. five points on a star. each point is allied with the two adjacent and opposed to the two opposite. pretty. that's how it should be. and all of the relationships make sense. without me telling you, you should be able to place those 5 colors in their proper positions.