Where are all the posts?

So, posting on SG has been fairly low recently. Rather, very low. Considering it has been a vacation for most of our writers, and last time this was the case, we had about two posts each day, it may seem a bit surprising. But, I, at least, have two reasons for not having posted.

The first is a trip to Israel that I went on last week. It was fun, especially because I went with a group of friends and... acquaintances? Well, it's hard to explain. But, Israel is significantly less war-torn than you would expect, especially with the media nowadays. I have to admit, I didn't go to, say, Sderot, during my trip, so I cant be sure that what I am saying is true of all Israel, and I'm fairly sure, in fact, that it isn't, but life in the fair majority of Israel seems to be like that in any European country, in terms of war weariness, and in general, except that they mostly speak Hebrew in Israel. I even saw some people playing soccer a few times! In fact, Tel-Aviv seemed a lot like Bordeau or even Paris to me. Jerusalem, obviously, has some differences, like the conflicting religious quarters of the old city, and fights over the Western Wall, but interestingly enough, even big religious conflicts can be settled by economic means. A few years ago, people from the Jewish quarter of the Old City started digging a tunnel along the buried part of the Western Wall, for religious and archaeological reasons. The wall happens to pass through the Muslim quarter, however, and the Muslims (for some reason) did not like the Jews digging under their territory, so they started throwing bricks at people in the tunnels. Despite the religious value to the tunnel, most people didn't like having bricks thrown at them, and so they stopped digging through and visiting it. However, many people didn't like not being able to visit the tunnel, or dig it any further, and so they came to a compromise: the tunnel was dug so that it ends at a market in the Muslim quarter. As long as the tunnel's visitors brought money with them, the Muslims didn't mind them, and today the tunnel has practically become a museum. Apparently they run summer camps in it too. Oh, the Dead Sea was pretty cool too.

My second excuse is pretty obvious: Brawl. As expected, Brawl is fun. Many feel that it is pretty much the same as Melee, and thus not worth the hype, but, although I agree that it is similar to Melee, I think that the many newer features and rectifications were well worth it. And, the music is much better, but I don't think I need to talk about that any further. I found it interesting that, prior to the game's release, most people who had been keeping up with the almost daily updates had a pretty good idea of what character(s) they were going to be playing as, and for the most part, they seem to have been accurate. For instance, I was sure I'd like Sonic, Meta Knight, and Falco, and aside from Falco being only my fourth-most-used character, with Pit in third, my hypothesis was accurate. I also liked the Adventure Mode more than expected. Most people said something along the lines of: "Subspace Emissary was okay, but considering that Brawl is mainly a multi-player game, it is good enough that they have a real story for single player." I actually liked it, though, and despite the story being slightly hard to follow at times (i.e. the part where they got Game and Watch to join their team was a bit strange...was he supposed to be an enemy before?) it was still good. If only there weren't so many levels where you had to play as Lucas and the Pokemon Trainer, two of my least favorite characters. Some cutscenes were pretty epic, too, like this one.

The other writers might have reasons for not posting too. I imagine that Brawl works for a few of them too. Or maybe they're just lazy. Hopefully we'll get back to our usual posting rate soonish.

On an irrelevant note, apparently not many people liked jPod the t.v. show, as it has been cancelled for next season by CBC. People should develop better taste in television shows. Oh well.

Not much else to say for now, so until next time. Oh, and at pi second, I was in front of Theodore Hertzel's grave =)