Wednesday, June 22, 2005

GAAH.

Comment Commentary

Alex- I have this theory that I'm more gangsta than most of my minority friends. I watch too much BET.

Shin- What does that make high school? A banana split with a bruised banana and strawberry syrup?

Tony- I still have no antivirus.. I feel like I'm some sort of whore who could contract syphilis at any given moment.

DDG- *holds up fist with pride*

Alex- And I'll be.. Either Arsenix or OtakuSennen. Wow, I'm amazing.

satan665- I always hear people gushing over Batman: The Animated Series, but I don't understand why. I mean, I was pretty young when it was on, and I watched it, but I didn't find it any better than any other cartoon. I'll probably have to catch the reruns or something.. I feel out of the loop.

Godel- "Smart big word-drawer."

--

OH GOD YES.

The Invader Zim DVD box. I found it for cheap in Best Buy today.. The top folds out (just like on the show), and inside is the little GIR toy. I squealed when I saw it.. It's not just GIR. It's red GIR. I kind of figured that you'd pull the DVDs out of the top, but instead the front opens up. It doesn't come with all of the episodes, of course- I've already bought those. Instead it comes with a Bonus Feature disc that I haven't watched yet.. I'm most interested in the voice recordings and storyboards for unanimated episodes. Of course, the extra never-before-seen 24 seconds of the Xmas episode is also worth a gander.

The Bonus Feature disc has some fucking awesome art, too. Non-Zim fans probably wouldn't appreciate it, but I'll scan it tomorrow. It is definitely, like I said, fucking awesome.

And that is all.
Comments (4) | Permalink

Saturday, June 18, 2005

So... Ninjas.

Comment Commentary

Shin- I wonder if it will have mic support.. Heh heh, then I can yell at you and get my ass handed to me by you at the same time.. In the comfort of my own home.

satan665- I'm a Pepsi guy myself. Does this mean that I'm too cool for you people now?

Alex- *holds fist up*

--

So, today was the day where we got our payment for reaching our AR goals this semester. It was an "ice cream party" during seventh period. We don't do anything in there anyway (except stand around in the heat), so we decided to go.

This is a completely accurate description of what I saw. This is not made more strange than it already was:

The cafeteria was empty, except for two tables with a bunch of seventh graders (one of them wearing a white collared shirt with a black tie for absolutely no reason) sitting there, eating their ice cream, and not talking. The janitor was organizing trash bags in the corner, and there were some teachers sitting by a folding table that had some fudgesicles, crunchsicles, and vanilla-sicles on it.

Nobody was talking.

I went up to the table, and picked up a fudgesicle. I unwrapped it. It was half-melted, thin, and tasted bad. I poked it with my finger and it bent in half. It was essentially frozen shit on a stick. Once you ate it you had to go back to wherever you were before.

It was the perfect materialization of this entire school, summed up into one item of junk food. I'm sure that I could have written a thousand words about it, if I had a laptop handy at the scene.

Once that was over with, I just went back to PE and sat there for the rest of the day.

--

Saw Batman Begins today, and that movie is awesome. If you haven't seen it yet and you have any sort of remote enjoyment of the franchise, you must see this. And even if you don't, you still have to see it. Or else I'll cry.. And my crying isn't very fun to listen to.

Anyway.. I never really had any respect for Scarecrow before, but after seeing this, my opinion drastically changed. I won't elaborate, as I'll spiol teh moovie if I do!1

--

Downloaded the Microsoft AntiSpyware beta just now. I've heard pretty good things about it, plus I've been having a few weird incidents lately. I still don't have antivirus, just spyware. Of course, that doesn't leave me feeling very safe, but I have all of my "important" files backed up on the other hard drive, so I won't go postal if this hard drive crashes.

Unlike last time. That scarred me for life.

--

In English this year our teacher had us make little compliments for everyone in our class. I took my time with every single one of them, trying as hard as I could to think of something special and unique that I share with each person. There were one or two cases where it was inevitable that I would pull a cheap one out of my ass, but I even found one for the kid that moved here last month that I have never said a word to in my entire life.

And what do I get back?

Twenty-eight "smart" or "good drawer" things and five worthwhile ones. You'd think that there's nothing else about me other than drawing and getting third-highest grades on history tests.

EDIT: Oh shit.. The dreaded Brad Pitt noise banner is back. That's not good.
Comments (7) | Permalink

Friday, June 17, 2005

Screaming is better.

Comment Commentary

Azure- A few people from school had seen most of this stuff already anyway.. I didn't promote mine much at the meeting. It didn't have a poster board, so it didn't get much fanfare.

But I can tell you right now that I did more work on this than anyone else did on theirs (though it wasn't intended to be for the project).

Tony- *random conversation reply* How are the extra features?

Godel- I don't remember the last time my art teacher made us do anything.. The people at my table literally haven't done shit all year. Last semester he gave them A's with "satisfactory" citizenship.

Solo- I don't care about the color in the Crazy 88 scene.. But they still have more than us, as well as a cool cover (if I'm remembering it correctly), so I'll still be holding out.

Shin- Well, they're not fatasses. I was just making fun of my friends who, in reality, are quite skinny.

But that doesn't explain why we always got stuck hitting the rapids first.

--

So.. Today.

We did our first "promotion" recital today, which means we went through that stupid little faux-graduation ceremony for three periods. All of my friends ended up playing some part in the ceremony- be it master of ceremonies or just reading a poem- but I wasn't assigned anything.

And I'm fine with that. I really don't want to stand up in front of those people and do something that staged and impersonal.

But for some odd reason, the teachers running it still want me in the front row. Maybe it's so I can sex everything up.

Other than that, we're not doing anything in school. I did the math we were supposed to do today a week ahead of time, so I just kind of sat there the entire time.. Then we compared handwriting in art. Phys Ed we just stood there.

Only.. Five more days and I'm out of there. Then a week. Then summer school.

--

After school I went to an old friend's house, made amends, and bonded oncemore over a Halo 2 LAN party. There were ten of us there, total, on three TVs, and though I watched more than I pwned, it was still enjoyable.

I guess you could call it my first larger-scale gaming.. Gathering? I dunno, but that was my first LAN party, and it was as I expected: A bunch of nerdy guys high-fiving each other while throwing cans of coke onto the pile.

And what a pile it was. There was a mountain of used cans. It was kind of scary, actually. Like it could devour you at any moment.

We were there until about nine. Nobody came to pick us up, since nobody loves us. Angst.

--

I've been playing a lot of Soul Calibur II recently
.. On hard mode, you see, since normal is boring. I don't know why. I should be practicing Melee more, since I challenged Shin at AX, and I tried, but it seemed incredibly dull to me. I don't know why.. Hopefully the new Smash Bros. for Revolution will rekindle the flame.

--

What will I be doing this weekend? Well, I intend on seeing Batman Begins, and having a couple of friends over for the sake of Guild Wars, Half-Life and whatever the hell else we feel like playing. Also, I'd like to sleep. A lot.
Comments (3) | Permalink

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Comment Commentary

Tony- Better yet, I would like to see some sort of "Complete Tarantino" boxset, with all of his movies in it. The only one I own is Reservoir Dogs.

satan665- Or maybe they get some sort of sick, twisted pleasure out of watching you squirm as you see your hair fall to the ground.

Shin- Yeah, I "wrote" my story "last night" "with my group." It's "awesome."

Annsie- Cool? Who needs cool? I wear a damned black jacket in 100-degree weather.

--

So, got my portfolio done. I kind of skimmed the last few months.. Altogether, it was 26 pages, I think. It was fun.

--

Six Flags was cool. X was boring, Goliath is still my favorite ride there. I went blind for ten seconds.

Oh, and on the water raft ride, I got totally drenched, because I got stuck with all the fatasses on one side. >:|

We dried off by going on one of those spinning rides. It worked wonderfully.

The reason I'm not elaborating on any of this for endless, unnecessarily long paragraphs is because it's late, and I need to study for a History test. Later, peeps.
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Monday, June 13, 2005

Hurts my eyes.

Comment Commentary

kiowanman- I'm sick of your accustations. SICK, I tell you!

James- I'm still waiting for some sort of uncut Kill Bill boxset with decent extra features. That's the only reason I don't own the saga yet.

Godel- Hooray for irony.

Shin- Hell no, I was asleep. When my brother's not home I like to savor the silence.

--

Oh God, my hair.

Oh God, my hair.

..Oh GOD, my hair.

It was so nice before. Just how I like it. I was comfortable with it. I loved it.

And then, for the sake of graduation, my mom demanded I get a haircut.

I told the haircut lady what I wanted, and she didn't listen. I said a quarter inch off everywhere, piecy.

I don't get it. She seemed to understand the English language (more or less), and she repeated what I had said, but somehow she did not hear me.

And now my hair is reminiscient of this.

But not quite so receded.

I am very, very angry. So very angry. Witty metaphores and clever observations cannot describe my anger.

..God, am I this whiny every time I get a haircut?

--

I don't remember if I mentioned the creative writing assignment in English here. We were put into groups to write short stories.

Groups.

For short stories.

It doesn't work out when you're put together with a bunch of stupid slackers.

I was supposed to write it this weekend, but I didn't, so I just paraphrased somebody's story that I read on a message board. I would have just copy/pasted it, but things turn up in Google. I changed the names and adjectives, and now I'm all set.

..Of course, I sacrified Family Guy and American Dad for it, but was in too much of a frenzy to care.

--

Six Flags tomorrow. I'm hoping I'll be able to enjoy it.. Due to some conflicts with friends, that might not be possible, though. Plus, it's supposed to be hot as hell tomorrow. And I refuse to wear shorts, as I am Nick, and I am shorts-less.

I've been debating about whether to bring my iPod or not. I could use some music tomorrow, but I'm also paranoid about losing it. What's the point of having a portable music player if you can't carry it around with you, though?
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Sunday, June 12, 2005

Comment Commentary

Solo- Yeah, I tend to keep my shirt on at the beach.. I got teased for it, but when I was the least sunburnt white boy in the school the next day, I got the last laugh.

James- The whole metaphore thing was pleasant at first, but I got tired of it. The humor was okay.. But I still like the shotgun fight sequence in their house most.

Shin- I didn't want to see it, really. I just went as an excuse to get out of the house.

--

So, notice anything different? *twirls around and stares insidiously waiting for a reponse*

Heh. Well, it's obvious, of course, that I have a new theme, but it's a ritual of mine to ramble about how it came into existence in updates.

This one revolves around some photos on the White Stripes website, which departs from their typical red (mostly) and focuses on green. I enjoyed the colors in their Blue Orchid video, so I just kind of threw something together for their new album's release.

I had it done a week in advance, but I only put it up today because I had been trying to decide on which song to upload. I just decided on Red Rain ten minutes ago, and it's up now. From my point of view, it's much better than the previous techno thing, since there's actually a theme to it. I just wanted to use pink last time.

I initially had the title of this update in the intro, below the banner, but I took it out. Sort of took away from everything else's wordless mystique.

Anyway, feedback would be appreciated.

--

Nobody else has been home all night. My brother's at a friend's birthday sleepover and my parents went out to see Cinderella Man. So I've been sitting here, playing guitar, listening to music with the volume all the way up, doing this mO stuff, and hooking up these new phones we got.

Our longtime home phone was lost somewhere for two days recently, and it was left on.. So we couldn't find it through the locator button or anything. We found it eventually, but the thing doesn't work anymore, so my mom went out and got some new ones.

It's a set of four phones, so we can have them in different places in the house, but it only requires one phone cord. They've been sitting in this room for the past few days, in their pretty little plastic packaging, glaring at me like the little bastard-phones they are. Since nobody else was home, and I was bored, I decided to set them up.

First I had to open their containers. This was the kind of plastic containers that inspired this comic, which as we all know is some sort of demon-plastic that takes a fucking guillotine to open. Ten minutes and several cuts later, I had the thing open, and I had all the components laid out.

Then I realized I needed a DSL adapter.

We had one for the "transitional phone," but at least for the new phones' charging period, I needed two. The only other one in this house that works was hidden behind my brother's desk, which has lots of shit on it. It was very heavy, but I managed to move it, and grabbed the adapter. I plugged it in, hooked up the other phones, and the mission was complete.

They ring weird, though. It sounds not of this earth.
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Saturday, June 11, 2005

Best left unheard.

Comment Commentary

Tony- Yeah, but I sure as hell don't tell them that.

Shin- It makes you a N00B. LOOOOSER.

Godel- That reminds me of all of these older Pixies fans I've been discovering (I know their fanbase is older, just for the record).. For example, my uncle and my English teacher's husband. Actually, he and I got into a conversation about their live performances when we ran into him at the mall today. He got excited when I told him about the PixiesDisc live recordings.

--

So, the beach.

I had this huge blanket and lunch boxish thing along with my packed backpack to take with me at first.. My mom has a history for packing in way too much stuff, and she took the liberty of putting together my things before I had the chance to (The best example is when I went to this science camp thing for a week in fifth grade.. Everyone else had a couple of duffel bags, but I had this huge-ass luggage thing that I had to lug up this huge-ass hill. I used half the clothes), so I spent about forty-five minutes consolidating everything into just the backpack.

I'm good at packing things in there.

The ride down was uneventful. We got stuck in the front of the bus, and the teacher people kept yelling at us each time we turned around in our seats. We got there, listened to the lifeguard's schtick, and set our stuff up. I promptly ate my food (I was very hungry.. No breakfast), and then wasted time in the water. We made the great wall of china out of sand, along with "Mount Penis," named for its unfortuante shape. They all got stepped on by my asshole friends who weren't involved.

There was this one little kid on the field trip that was getting sucked farther into the ocean.. He wasn't in any danger or anything, but one of my friends tried to grab him by the shirt anyway. Instead, he accidentally grabbed the kid by the skull and pulled him up out of the water like that.

It was quite humorous.

As far as sunburnage went, I my next got a little sensitive, but it's not that bad. I remember one time we were in San Diego and my dad decided to spend a day at the pool. He forgot to reapply sunscreen- on a very overcast day- and got so very red all over. He was.. Quite miserable, heh.

So, yeah, it was okay. Not the greatest time ever, but it was enjoyable.

--

I put that drawing I was talking about on DeviantArt today. Whorage.

I scanned it at 300dpi, which is rather high for my purposes, but it was intended to be a gift for a friend, so I wanted it to look nice.

The DA version is obviously a lot smaller, but the on-paper version came out nicely. I did it on thick paper and everything. It's the good shit.

--

Went to see Mr. and Mrs. Smith today.. It was a mixed bag. It had its moments, of course, and some of the action sequences were pretty cool, but the dialogue was atrocious in parts. I just know I'll be quoting Brad Pitt's "Jesus Christ.. Mother of God!!11" for weeks.

Instead of staying at the mall, I just decided to leave. There wasn't much for me there tonight anyway.

--

My semi-uncle apparently overdosed on heroin today. I don't know many details, other than that pretty much all of my family on the east coast is messed up in some way or another now. Be it dealing with death in the family, manic-depressive mental breakdowns, or teen pregnancy.. It's nuts over there. I'm glad I don't have to deal with it all head-on, since I'm over here in California.
Comments (3) | Permalink

Thursday, June 9, 2005

As the alpha moderator gently carries its young by the scruff of their necks..

Comment Commentary

Solo- It brings back a lot of memories for me. Though a lot of it is just "God, what was I thinking?"

Asuki- But.. They're ugly!

Shin- What, you have MORE question marks that I have to notice to realize it's sarcasm??

Godel- ._.

Tony- But not the shit, eh?

--

Sometimes I find it absolutely mind-boggling how stupid some people around here are.

I went into Best Buy yesterday and bought the new White Stripes CD, Get Behind Me Satan, and much to my surprise it was only $10. I didn't know that Best Buy discounts items on their release dates (This will result in a lot more CD-buying and a lot less iTunes-ing.. For new releases, at least). It was a fairly uneventful shopping venture-

But I had to wait for my ride for about half an hour. I saw a lot of people pass by, all doing different things. Most of them were okay.. But as I was waiting in the shade on the side of Best Buy, some ghetto kids walked by. I had the CD in the pocket of my jacket, and the kids come over and ask me if I shoplifted the CD. Obviously, I shook my head.

And they laugh at that. Oh my God, I actually contributed to the economy as well as the music industry by paying for something instead of stealing it! What a loser I must be! I should shoplift more from now on, and while I'm at it, I should start wearing cheap Tupac iron-on T-shirts and run around the school giving out empty threats like it's Halloween!

But that's enough of that. The sarcasm was thick there, and it was a rather low blow. Of course, I could go a lot lower, but it just irks me to think that one can be ridiculed for not being the refuse of society.

As for the actual White Stripes CD.. Everyone was saying that the album features very little guitar, but focuses on piano and marimba. This is very true, and though I was very let down by the album, it's grown on me a bit. It sure as hell isn't my favorite Stripes album, but it's not a major letdown.

Tickets for their shows at the Greek Theatre are going up for presale tomorrow.. I want to go, but at the same time I'm not sure. And I have no idea why. It's a band that I'm a big fan of.. Why am I not excited?

--

I drew this really cool Harajuku-inspired person in art yesterday.. I spent a lot of time shading it today. After that I scanned it, and right now I'm messing around with it in Photoshop. It's pretty cool- I'll be putting it up on my DeviantArt probably tomorrow.

--

There's a field trip to the beach tomorrow for all the people who reached their AR goals three times. I did this, and I'm going, but I'm not particularly excited. It's just a day out of "real" school and not much else.

Next week we have the end-of-the-year Six Flags trip, which I'm a little more excited about, but due to the times that we'll be there, and the fact that they're not closing the park from the public, we'll probably hit two or three rides and wait for some stragglers to show up and go home.

The year's almost over, and that's all I'm anticipating. Then I have a week, then it's summer school, than a couple more weeks off, then school starts again.

I must be in a pretty neutral mood right now. White Stripes concert is meh, beach is meh, six flags is meh, end of school is meh.. Ew. That's lame.
Comments (3) | Permalink

Tuesday, June 7, 2005

Distraction.

Comment Commentary

Tony- That's the general idea of marketing, isn't it? "We command you watch it right now, dammit"?

Shin- Hence, Shinmaru vs. the World.

satan665- I've only seen two or three episodes of each.. Everything will pan out.

Dagger- The whole gang war/brothel thing going on in episodes 2 and 3 bored me to tears. I loved the first episode, though.

--

So, that project I was supposed to do for two years? Yeah, I've decided to compile my digital art (Photoshop + PSP8) from the past two years in a little book with commentary and stuff. It's kind of fun going through my old stuff, but at the same time, I want to stab my eyes out.

Once I get it done, I might just put it up here, for all of you sad people who weren't forced into looking at my old shit and pretending to like it. ~_^
Comments (5) | Permalink

Sunday, June 5, 2005

What a waste of recreational time.

Comment Commentary

Tony- I was under the impression that he usually uses a beer can or something like that, but most of that is just based off of DVD footage.

PsychoValkyrie- They have good pancakes. Maybe it's just the pancakes that I normally eat, but these actually tasted nice. All other pancakes I remember suck.

Shin- It's worth it just to see the dumbasses do stupid shit (like the drunk Japanese girl who jumped on top of the Pixies tour bus and couldn't get down).

--

So, the piano recital.

My teacher does a good number of recitals yearly.. Though oftentimes it's a group of teachers instead of just one. That makes things a lot longer and a lot less personal. This time it was just her students, though, in the church where I went to preschool. We do lots of recitals there.

I've been practicing my piece nonstop for the past couple of weeks. It was pretty mechanical by the time of the recital, but it's customary to worry about messing up.

We're all organized by level of expertise in these. I'm in the third of four rows (advanced intermediate, I guess), which is mostly made up of people a little older than me. Funny thing, though- the teacher's son is in the sixth grade and the person right after me. I guess living with your teacher gets you some enrichment.

When my time finally came I got up there, anxiety-ridden, and didn't bother bowing. That's not good. Very poor stage presence. I went through the song smoothly, with only one or two barely noticeable mistakes, but at the end I hardly nodded my head, smirked, and went back to my seat. I don't know what's wrong with me- everyone else bows, smiles, blah blah, but I can't bring myself to do it. People probably think I'm a psycho loner recluse or something.

But that doesn't matter. I don't perform in most recitals anyway (I know I said earlier that she does a lot of them- I just don't join in the madness often).

After that I came home and I've been on the internet ever since, reading weird crazy stories about I don't know what. You know, "fake" blogs about people caught up in blair witch-type circumstances. The one about the two spelunker dudes who find some sort of demon-cave, another one about some group of kids who keep disappearing one after another and throw clues in on their blogs. It's interesting stuff.. Not necessarily believable, but it tickles my fancy like Alternate Realty Gaming.

--

Paranoia Agent and Samurai Champloo are on tonight.. I can't remember if I talked about Paranoia Agent last week. It was a really intriguing first episode. It's pretty trippy, like Lain (I still need to watch the rest of that series) and seems like it would be a lot more accessible to non-otaku viewers. I remember Tony saying that he figured Champloo would be that way, but it wasn't. At this point in Paranoia Agent, I could see the show gaining its own following outside of the typical anime crowd. But it's too early to be sure.

Either way, I enjoy it, though the character designs are nasty.

EDIT: Congratulations, you just found an edit I made five months after this post's original publication date! Why, you ask?

Because I need to put this link somewhere.

http://gymnopedie.net/happytogether.mp3
Comments (4) | Permalink