Friday, February 11, 2005

Praised be the lord, I got my project done. It turned out okay- personally, I think it would have been better if I could just ramble on and on about whatever I felt like saying on the subject for an unlimited number of pages, but we have this outline to follow. It makes things stupid.

Constitution test is over. I think I did fine, but that is left to tomorrow. I'm hoping to do something with my friends over the weekend.. Oh yeah, tea party. Nevermind.

I'll do something relevant tomorrow, but for now I'm going to go sleep. Good night, you princes of Velegant, you kings of myOtaku.
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Tuesday, February 8, 2005

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate Tuesdays? I hate them.. So very much.
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Monday, February 7, 2005

Pansies, posies and proxies.

Comment Commentary

Alex- I'm not sure, but I think you can have the "special" one all the way through the game if you start over.. Assuming you've beaten it already.

Mimmi- To be honest, ours seems a little small. The one in the next town over is nice and big (two stories, about twice the floorspace), but it's not as nicely decorated. It seems more sterile.

Shin- Yeah, I knew I phrased it wrong. I don't think Ocarina of Time is overhyped- in my opinion, it deserves every last bit of that praise- but by comparison, it's way overkill compared to Majora's Mask. I sort of think of it like algebraic equations: Keep it balanced, right?

Solo- Sadly, it'll probably be even more of a pain than now. I can't imagine how it could be (without being senseless and Penny Arcadey), but Valve will think of something.

Karmi- Ah, I remember that whip well. *whimsy*

Mal- A reasonable statement. Bookstores don't have that musty stench.

Otacon13- I never even had a desire to play Half-Life 1 until I saw the Half-Life 2 trailer. It got me hooked on PC gaming, and here I am today, $2,000 in hardware later.

--

My top 25 most played songs, according to iTunes:

1) Head On (Jesus and Mary Chain cover)- Pixies
2) Distance Equals Rate Times Time- Pixies
3) Me and Mia- Ted Leo + Pharmacists
4) Counting Down the Hours- Ted Leo + Pharmacists
5) Gouge Away- Pixies
6) Crackity Jones- Pixies
7) Letter to Memphis- Pixies
8) Float On- Modest Mouse
9) The One Who Got Us Out- Ted Leo + Pharmacists
10) Black Math- The White Stripes
11) Alec Eiffel- Pixies
12) Emerge (Adult Mix)- Fischerspooner
13) Velouria (Coachella 2004)- Pixies
14) Wave of Mutilation- Pixies
15) Here Comes Your Man- Pixies
16) The Sad Punk- Pixies
17) Trompe Le Monde- Pixies
18) Better Dead Than Lead- Ted Leo + Pharmacists
19) The Devil's Cry- Fischerspooner
20) Debaser- Pixies
21) Tame- Pixies
22) Hey- Pixies
23) There Goes My Gun- Pixies
24) The Navajo Know- Pixies
25) Apple Blossom- The White Stripes

My 25 favorite songs, according to me:

1) Apple Blossom- The White Stripes
2) Crackity Jones- Pixies
3) Tip Your Bartender- Glassjaw
4) Me and Mia- Ted Leo + Pharmacists
5) You're Pretty Good Looking- The White Stripes
6) Velouria- Pixies
7) Letter to Memphis- Pixies
8) Lost in the Supermarket- The Clash
9) Advice- The Pillows
10) Heart Problems- Ted Leo + Pharmacists
11) Kimi to Machi Made- Asian Kung-Fu Generation
12) Unmei- Asian Kung-Fu Generation
13) Yasashii Yoake- Yuki Kajiura
14) Obsession- See-Saw / Yuki Kajiura
15) Silent Jealousy- X (JAPAN)
16) Guns of Brixton- The Clash
17) Is This It- The Strokes
18) Not Afraid- Our Lady Peace
19) Omnibus- Katie Skate / Laut Sprecher
20) Catch- The Cure
21) Look At Us (Daddy DJ Mix)- ? It's DDR. I don't pay attention to the artists.
20) Game Over- Ozma
21) Ape Dos Mil- Glassjaw
22) Under The Bridge- Red Hot Chili Peppers
23) Blue Blood- X (JAPAN)
24) Float On- Modest Mouse
25) Don't Fear the Reaper- Blue Oyster Cult

Funny how these things don't reflect each other, eh? This is because I've been listening to some of these songs a long time before I started using iTunes. I'm sure I'm snubbing a lot of songs, too. It's sort of hard to sift through 600 songs and pick 25 you like most, though, so deal with it.

Wow, American Dad was.. Not good. There were a few brief flashes of Seth's genius, but for the most part it was Family Guy characters in what seemed to be an attempt at political satire dumbed down for whatever reason. I'm hoping that Mr. MacFarlane doesn't waste much more time and energy on American Dad, lest the new episodes of Family Guy (starting next week, w00t) suffer.

Oh, and I got none of my essay done today. I'm pretty sure that if I just skip a couple of mO updates I'll be able to divert that writing energy to less than five pages of Nazism.

And good news! My Norton Internet Security stuff stopped working because of retarded serial number stuff! Thanks, RIAA, for screwing me over.
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Sunday, February 6, 2005

Half-assed revelations!

Comment Commentary

Alex- Exactly. I'd like to take this character further, but I'd feel bad, given the Pope's current physical condition. Even if he was healthy as a horse, I'd probably go to hell for it.

Mimmi- I had a funny feeling you'd say something like that.. ~_^

Shin- I had you in mind while doing it.

--

Newsflash, I posted on OB. It must be a sign of the endtimes. For some reason, I have a desire to post tonight. Let's hope this is just a phase, or else Lucifer will part the earth and send his hordes of lost souls to feed upon our sinful souls.

--

I beat Half-Life 2 today. I thought I had a while before I was done with it, but it turns out I only had two more chapters to complete before it was over (one of them was more cinematic than gameplay, though). It didn't disappoint in any way, though I was aggrivated with the cliffhanger. In the back of my mind, I was expecting G-man's monologue to be longer and more elaborate. It wasn't as creepy as what he said in the beginning of the game, either.

Now I have to wait six years for Half-Life 3. Great.

It's always bittersweet to beat a game that you love playing. Knowing that you're not going to gain any new experiences from a game that relies more on single-player than multiplayer is sad, and at the same time there's a strong feeling of insignificant accomplishment. I'm assuming it's like watching your kid go off to college.

Spoilerness:

I could go on and on about how amazing the second gravity gun is, but I'm tired. Let's just say that there is nothing greater than picking an enemy up by his leg and chucking him at two of his buddies.

End spoilerness.

--

I went to the library today. I can't remember the last time I was there.. It's been quite a while. As far as I can remember, I've never gone to the grownup library for entertainment- it's always for research. This time was no different. I picked up five books on World War II propaganda for an upcoming essay.. These look like very promising resources. The internet wasn't very helpful, because you can't type the word "Nazi" in Google without coming up with a thousand pro-Hitler websites.

Our library is nice. The building is decent-sized, and it's nicely decorated. The computers are all in a little pit, as I like to call it. In the middle of the first floor there is a sort of indentation, with three stairs leading down into that area, which has a bunch of old-looking computers and desks. I didn't really need to use those, except for searching for books in the database.

I remember the second floor. There's a winding staircase up there, and it used to be filled with magazines and newspapers. They closed that area off recently, it seems, because there are "staff only" signs everywhere. All the magazines are stuffed in the back now.

I saw a couple of friends in there trying to research, too. It was funny because they somehow found a way to their procrastinate research.. In a library. A LIBRARY, for God's sake.

Libraries are the kind of place I feel at home in. It's comfortable, quiet, and intelligent. I need to go there more often.
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Saturday, February 5, 2005

"Alleged Fanboy," or "The butter grease against the keys makes me feel at home."

Comment Commentary

Mimmi- Yeah, just look at the Jackson Five. If it had been the Jackson Four, we wouldn't have all these wacky child molestation accusations taking up valuable newstime.

Shin- But what do the contestants do with all of those toasters?

Karmi- That cuts deep, Karmi. Almost as deep as the scars of the black man's oppression, you white devil!

:P

--

Finally, the weekend. This week has been a lot more busy than most, for a lot of reasons, and I plan on rolling around in these two days as eagerly as I can in hopes that some of the residue will carry over to next week. I have a very large essay due, which I haven't started on, because I've been too busy with another major assignment for that class.

This is what we get for not having midterms, I suppose.

I started the weekend off playing Resident Evil 4, which is a wonderful way to kick things off. I got to the second disc, and I'm a little torn about my opinion on this part. The game is jumping from setting to setting. It's trying to be too many games in one, I think. The beginning segment of disc two totally sucked, and felt entirely out of place, but once you got inside things picked up a bit.

A bit. Not much yet. I liked the castle more.

Anyway, moving on to the highlight of this post: A new segment that I've been wanting to do for a while:

In memory of the Small-Ass MP3 Gallery. *pours a malt liquor on the curb*

Anyway, I do a lot of sketches and drawings and written things that I would like you all to see. I may as well do them weekly, and "Saturday" starts with the same letter as "Superlative," the greatest adjective in the English language, so there.

Science class is a bore, so I keep myself occupied by doodling in my notebook. There are far, far too many pages to scan, so I sort of compiled them all on a separate page. The monsters are no longer held back by the bonds of margins. Call Godzilla. We'll have a party.

This one's more of a sketch, about the stupid repetitive teaching method I mentioned earlier this week. They're narrowing the mind's range, eliminating any change in the educational process. The hand at the top is supposed to look unrealistic, by the way.

This one, entitled "Idiocy and Redemption," is my favorite. I had four ideas for these odd, semi-surrealistic pieces, and they all had to do with why phones suck, so I may as well group them together.

With a graph. We have math right before art, I think that's why.

I never did the fourth one because I could never find a decent reference image for a photo-realistic gun. Actually, three of these four would be much better off as photography, I think. Same goes for the one with the meat grinder and the deflated brain.

This one.. Is more of a preview. It's supposed to be one of those wooden mannequin models that artists use for proportion and pose referencing.. With a few modifications, yeah? I'm going to take my time with this one, unlike everything else I'm presenting tonight.

Gah, an ugly clown! This is a teacher-ordained assignment gone horribly awry after I turned it in. It was just supposed to be a regular guy, but I turned him into a clown when I got it back. Hard as it may be to believe, it looks a lot better this way.

I was told to make something for the "Student Literature and Arts Magazine" because they had nothing to put in there. I was completely out of ideas at the time, so I made this. I did it sort of absent-mindedly, and I realized after finishing it that it was about writer's block. Well, visual writer's block, anyway.

That's all for now. I'm going to go sleep, because I've averaged five hours of sleep a night this week. Peace out, my pimps, hoes and Republicans.
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Friday, February 4, 2005

It's not unique, it's individual.

Comment Commentary

Mimmi- Hoor-jay. I look forward to it.

Shin- Well la-dee-da. :/

Azure- That perspective has made me think back on my life, and see it in a new light. A light in which I appreciate my lack of serious bias more.

--

Mimmi- It's the cover of the booklet that came with the White Stripes DVD, Under Blackpool Lights. It's good stuff.

Azure- Bleh, that makes me feel bad about myself. More than your neverending backsass.

Shin- I liked "Look at my hands," too.

Tony- They only have two songs that interest me, to be honest. They all sound the same.

--

I truly and completely regret ever convincing my dad to try out Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. Between him on that and my brother on The Sims 2, I don't even bother asking if I can go on. They get sucked into their little worlds.. At least I listen to those around me when I play games.

Weekend's almost here, and I'm glad. No more studying for big tests, though I do have that big essay on WW2 Nazi propaganda to do. To be honest, I think of that as more of a fun extracurricular assignment than a mandatory one. It's easier that way.

The group project part is done. After three days of semi-constant work, we're done with that damned timeline, and we're that much wiser because of it.

And by "that much" I mean "that little."

I think we only learned one thing out of it: SmashTV is a guilty pleasure kind of oldschool game. We have it on one of our old arcade anthology games, and my brother picked it up when we were doing research. If it weren't for that game, we'd have been done yesterday.

It's just so corny, and so simple, and really short (it actually has an ending, unlike a lot of early games), but at the same time I can't help but feel compelled to play it. Part of it might be admiring at the graphics, and how advanced they must have been hailed as back in the day. What's odd is that, despite really simple sprites and nothing that mind-blowing going on in the game, it still lags. It's madness, I say.

I blame the 200-strong mob of disgruntled men in pink uniforms with baseball bats.
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Thursday, February 3, 2005

Holy hell.

I must be really, really busy. I haven't played a video game for two days, and it seems as if all my time has been spent on naps or homework. Despite that, though, I feel more whole and purposeful this way.

(I can't help but wonder if that's a bad thing.)

Hopefully things will clear up soon, and I'll have more time to blow on trying to be witty on some random blog site, yeah?

On a completely unrelated note: The guy that directed Napoleon Dynamite recently directed a new music video from The Postal Service. It's the "We Will All Become Silhouettes" video, and you can watch it here. It's like some sort of monumental, holy joining of Napoleon and Postalness, but the offspring is just a tad off. It's an okay video, and there's something strangely appealing about it, but it's not that great. Oh well.

In the immortal words of Jesus, we out.
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Wednesday, February 2, 2005

Jolly good, then.

FINALLY, I've found an MP3 of that song from South Park. "Let's Fighting Love," the one from the recent anime episode. It drills itself into your head, not for the melody, but for the lyrics. It's the typical Engrish banter you hear in a lot of anime. Good stuff.

Comment Commentary

Alex- I know, I know.. But you are one with the light side, therefore I shouldn't listen to you.

Shin- :/

Alex- Dude, didn't you want to play the original Tsukihime game? That has as much action in it as Xenosaga. Or worse.

Alea- Like, totally.

Solo- I love how you subtly slapped Azure in the face with that last statement. XD

Mimmi- See, I've given up on pointing that sort of thing out to Azure. He's sick enough already, as far as I can tell.

--

I knew it. I just KNEW that if I made a shorter post, people would comment. I may as well do a sentence a day, to see what kinds of responses I'll get.

..I didn't mean for it to be that way, but that's what it's gonna be right now. School sort of snuck up on me- I'm writing this at 6:45. Later, people. I swear I'll elongate this one later.
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Monday, January 31, 2005

*cough*

KOTOR has been distracting me from online-ness. Funny how that game used to bore the hell out of me.
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Sunday, January 30, 2005

No headphones cancel out all noise.

Comment Commentary

Shin- It would have been better if she got in the car, turned up the Tupac and lit a joint, but I can see that being funny.

Alex- It's in case she ever gets caught in a flash flood or riot of the young people who play too many violent video games. DUH.

--

We did a little shopping in Best Buy and Barnes today. I didn't really feel like going anywhere today, but I remembered that I had a little bit of my Best Buy gift card left over. Technically, my brother wanted to go there because he wanted to make little cartoon movies on the computer, and for that he needed a microphone. I tagged along because I wanted to buy Unreal Tournamnet 2004. Naturally, as I can never find anything in Best Buy when I want to see it, it was nowhere to be found, but I decided to get a new holder for my iPod instead. My first one is of high quality, that is for sure. It's made of leather, and has a very nice plastic screen cover. There are two problems with it: First, there's no hole for the click wheel, so you have to open it every time you want to perform ANY interface. Second, it's very thick, if you count the belt clip. It multiplies the iPod's depth by three, and it's hard to fit in a pocket that way.

I had two choices for new ones. There was a leather one from the same company that had the hole, but it was forty bucks. Alternatively, there was a $20 one that I thought was made of plastic. I went with that, and as it turns out, it's made of this rubbery substance. It's definitely lighter, smaller, and more accessible than the old one, but the screen cover is sticky (it attracts hair and fur and pocket lint), which isn't that much of a problem, but it also smells strongly of alcohol and poop.

:/ I can deal, though.

Barnes and Noble is conveniently located two stores over, so we went there next. I also had a Barnes gift card, which is fine, but there's a bit of a problem with that. If there's a book I want to read, I'll borrow it from a library. Instead, I spent about an hour and half browsing through the music section.

It's sad that B&N is the closest thing we have to a record store in this town. The sign on the computer thingers says "Listen to any CD in the world," which is far from true, but that's not what I'm going to bitch about right now. Ted Leo and Etro Anime were in the computer, but they were nowhere to be found in the store. There was a surplus of Pixies, and even Our Lady Peace, but no Ted Leo. It's a shame, but you can't win 'em all, right?

Instead, I decided to finally pick up London Calling. I didn't get the special edition (20-something "never before heard" tracks on a second CD), but I don't miss it. The album alone was worth it, especially for twelve bucks. Well, eleven if you count the discount card.

The case's insert folds out into a poster-sized booklet, which I thought was cool (it was reminiscent of vinyl cases), but disappointingly there's nothing on them except a couple of pictures and the lyrics. Authentic, enlightening liner notes are probably in the special edition.

That's the price I pay for being cheap. Heh heh.

I need to get out more often. I realized today how badly I'm dying for any sort of social contact outside of school. Remembering happier times doesn't help. They only start a chain that only spirals downward, leading me back to where I am right now, you know? I guess that, for the moment, all I can do is smother these feelings in distractions. I think that's why I like games so much. They get me lost in a different reality.

..Dear lord, that was unnecessarily angsty.

A note to Karmi: I still haven't gotten your card! I want the.. Card-ey goodness. ;_;

EDIT: For whatever reason I was watching Toonami tonight- That Megas XLR show, specifically. I'm used to them giving nods to anime and Japanese culture in general, but tonight they totally ripped off Captain Harlock. Same costume, same hair (no eyepatch), same ship.. It was totally copyright infringement. Even though I've never seen that show or been a fan of it, I am angered.
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