snowboard with a yeti eating veggie spaghetti

(Entry title comes from "Gone Guru" by Lifeseeker, which is currently playing in the background)

Yoinked from Amandear because it talks about magazines and books and video games and I couldn't resist.

How many magazines do you buy regularly or subscribe to?

Thanks to assorted rewards programs, I get basically every magazine ever: Cosmopolitan, Elle, Us, Glamour, Harper's Bazaar, In Style, Marie Claire, Martha Stewart Living, O, Allure, Self, Entertainment Weekly, Time, W, TV Guide, Wired, and Details, which I wouldn't ordinarily subscribe to, but it came as a freebie with Wired.

Are there any magazines that went out of print that you miss?

I miss Shojo Beat something fierce. I was also really sorry when Sassy (and wow am I dating myself here) closed up shop.

Do you keep magazines when you finish with them?

I get so many of them that there's just no way I can keep them all without my apartment making a guest appearance on Hoarders. So I hold onto them for about a month (except for TV Guide, obvs) and then I lug them to work and drop them off in the break room.

Do you read the newspaper?

Only online.

Have you ever cancelled a subscription?

No, I've just let them lapse here and there.

Are there any authors whose work you must read when they publish something new?

Stephen King, John Connolly (whose latest, The Burning Soul, is sitting on my coffee table even as we, um, "speak"), Maria McCann, Gillian Flynn, JK Rowling, Karin Slaughter, Laura Joh Rowland, Sophie Hannah, Chelsea Cain, and Mo Hayder. And after being blown away by Knockemstiff and The Devil All the Time last month, I'm adding Donald Ray Pollock to the list.

Have you ever waited in line for a book?

The last Harry Potter book. I refused to go online until I'd finished because I was sure some asshole would post a massive spoiler.

Ever had a book signed by the author?

I have several books signed by John Connolly, who hasn't returned to my neck of the woods in quite some time...probably because he's afraid I'll violate the restraining order.

What radio stations do you listen to?

KROQ, Jack, and KRUZ. For you non-SoCal residents, the first one is alternative and the others feature an eclectic mix.

What TV channels and shows do you watch regularly?

The Simpsons, Bob's Burgers, Hell's Kitchen (god, please don't let Elise win this season), Law & Order: SVU, CSI (the original, although I doubt I'll stick with it much longer because they keep getting rid of major characters and it's annoying), Wilfred, and The Walking Dead, which comes back next month. Yay! G and I also watch Dexter together, but we have to wait until it comes out on DVD because neither one of us gets Showtime. We just finished season 5, and although it was nowhere near as eventful or good as season 4, I didn't think it sucked, which puts me in the minority if the online reviews are to be believed. We're going to start season 2 of The Wire this weekend.

What video game consoles do you play?

I have a Wii, Dreamcast, Playstation 2, Gamecube, and Nintendo DS, and G has an XBOX360 and Playstation 3, so we've got all our gaming needs covered.

What video game series do you play?

I've been a huge Resident Evil fan ever since I first stepped into that mansion back in 1996. At the time, my mom was nearing the end of her fight with cancer, and Resident Evil served as a desperately needed escape from reality for me during the rare hours I was away from the hospital, for which I'll always be grateful. The occasional hiccup like RE: Dead Aim aside, it's a fun goddamn series. RE4 is my favorite, though RE2 and RE: Code Veronica come pretty close.

And need you even ask who my favorite character is? Why, it's sexy, floppy-haired badass Leon Kennedy, of course! Just look at him!





MY BODY IS READY.

...ahem, sorry. Moving on.

I'm also a rabid Silent Hill fangirl, and I've got the t-shirts (and the 138 tracks on my iTunes, and the visit to the Silent Hill themed haunted house back in 2009, and the poster) to prove it. The original is still the scariest fucking game I've ever played, bar none. I always like to say that Silent Hill is the Jacob's Ladder to Resident Evil's Dawn of the Dead; they're both frightening, but Silent Hill is the one that will fuck with your mind, as opposed to Resident Evil's funhouse scares. I damn near had a breakdown in Midwich Elementary thanks to those horrifying little skinless kids wandering around and, you know, stabbing me in the goddamn leg while making that orgasmic moaning sound. The second installment, however, is not just my favorite in the series, but my favorite video game of all time. Yeah, the graphics are pretty dated now, and the voice acting isn't always the best, but the storyline more than makes up for it. It's about a dude named James Sunderland who receives a letter from his wife asking him to meet her in Silent Hill, their "special place". Well, that's all fine and dandy, but she's been dead for a while. James goes to Silent Hill to find out what's going on, and as usual, the place is seriously effed up. There was one pivotal moment where I just sat there gaping at the screen, and when I was able to control James again, I had to pause so I could just keep babbling "oh my god, oh my GOD!" over and over again. Great stuff.

Silent Hill: Downpour was originally supposed to come out next month, but they've changed the release date to March 2012. Ordinarily I'd be supremely salted, but I'll have Dead Rising 2: Off the Record (an alternate version of DR2 featuring intrepid photographer Frank West instead of hawt devoted daddy Chuck Greene) to keep my mind off it until then, so I'm only moderately salted.

There's another awesome series: Dead Rising. It cracks me up when I remember how G and I were so pissed off by the first game that we were about to send it back to Gamefly, but then we decided to try again and now we're in mad passionate love with it and we're always taking it up in a tree and K-I-S-S-I-N-G. I'm not a violent person at all---well, except towards bugs in my apartment---but you would never know it to see me joyfully plowing through hundreds of zombies with chainsaws tied to a paddle.

And Dead Space! Jumpin' Jesus Jehosaphat, if any game comes close to taking Silent Hill's bloodstained sash for SCARIEST GAME EVAR OMG OMG, it's Dead Space 2. I seriously thought I was going to wet 'em at one point, thanks to those awful birdlike monsters.

Oh, and Quantic Dream. That's a developer, not a series, but thanks to the seriously-flawed-but-still-fun Indigo Prophecy and the utterly brilliant Heavy Rain, one of only three games I'd give a perfect 10, I will play anything they ever put out, guaranteed.

Finally, the Professor Layton series and the Cooking/Crafting/Camping Mama games, because after a long day of battling zombies, necromorphs, and serial killers, sometimes a girl just wants to solve some puzzles and make a fucking omelette.