Tuesday, November 23, 2004

Well, looks like we're having guests for Thanksgiving at the last minute. To put it in terms that even Azure can understand, my mom's proverbial Devil Trigger has filled and she has gone insane. This always happens, but never around Thanksgiving, because we always go somewhere else.. Generally my aunt and uncle's house, and they must be the greatest cooks ever.

So don't expect me to be on too much today. I still have to gut this room out, and I don't have a hazardous materials suit on hand..
Comments (3) | Permalink

Monday, November 22, 2004

Oh happy day!

Comment Commentary

Mal- *waves a little Stanford flag*

Shin- Just keeping it real.

Alea- Hm.. I think I'll save that for.. Later. <_<'

Karmi- Animal Crossing is SO COOL! I finally paid off my debt to the Nookmeister last week, and now I have a statue of myself, AND IT'S SO COOL!! And then a duck moved into my town, and then I gave him a chair, and now we're the best of friends.

Azure- Honestly, up until I beat The End it wasn't. Now it's awesome.. But I'll get to that later.

Mimmi- *envy*

Solo- Oh man, MSG is so freaking awesome. I was in this one restaurant, and I ordered a burrito. And then this guy with the same name as me ordered the same burrito, only he told them to hold the Monosodium Glutamate, and I had to choose which one was mine. IT WAS SO INTENSE. The steam effects coming off of the tortillas were amazing.

:P

Syk- Ours doesn't count!

--

My brother spent the night at a friend's house.. So it was nice and quiet. I progressed a bit in Nocturne (Finally got out of Kabukicho Prison), and then I spent the rest of the night vegetating in front of the television.

For some reason, Bravo has been showing a bunch of recordings of various Cirque du Soleil shows this weekend. I had been watching some of them, hoping that I would be capable of appreciating them more after "O".. But I didn't. From what I saw from these recordings, it could easily be said that "O" is by far the best Cirque show ever, end of story. I watched Varekai, and some other one whose name I didn't catch. They were both pretty.. Generic in comparison. The music wasn't as great, either.

One of the aspects of "O" that appealed to me was the overall tone of it- unlike the general happiness of Cirque, it was rather somber in appearance. These were very bright and focused on humor, not drama, and that didn't throw me.

The big 25th anniversary thing was cool, though. I caught the end of it. They had characters from all of the different shows walk out onto the stage, and I recognized a few. 'Twas nifty.

Then I watched Family Guy, Harvey Birdman, a little bit of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, and Super Milk Chan.

I saw a little bit of Milk Chan at Anime Expo (on the big screen in the ADV booth showing bits of The Anime Network), and last night's episode was the same one. The show is so unappealing that I enjoy it. People call FLCL crazy, but they have never seen Milk Chan. They say FLCL has no storyline, but Milk Chan blows Fooly Cool out of the water in that respect.

I decided to go to bed when "Mr. Shin" made his appearance. He was this creepy adult dressed up in a kid's school uniform trying to keep these students from going to cram school or something.

Annoying, much.

--

I woke up around nine this morning, to the sounds of The Sims and Melee emenating from downstairs. I sort of tried to ignore it, and I dragged myself out of bed around noon. Then I did a whole bunch of gaming, which will aggrivate Karmi, so I won't elaborate.

Let's just say that I owned The End and he was freaking cool and that I beat him.

My brother's friend is still over here, and I feel like blowing my brains out. It's been Melee and The Sims all day. They could at least turn the volume down, but they say that half the enjoyment of The Sims is in the music.

If there was a variety, it wasn't so bad, but the only thing they ever do is move things around in Buy Mode.. So it's always the same thing.

I now leave you with this to think about:

Everyone remembers the 'faked-orgasm-in-a-deli'
sequence from your kind of movie When Harry Met
Sally. It seems that you're falling for a buddy
or have already fallen for them. Uh-oh. You're
probably caught between the possibility of
having a great relationship and wrecking the
one you have now. You know what they say, it's
better to regret something you did than
something you didn't do.


What Romance Movie Best Represents Your Love Life?
brought to you by Quizilla
Comments (3) | Permalink

Sunday, November 21, 2004

I'm cool because I update.

Comment Commentary

Mimmi- Hells yeah, yay for breaks from school.

Mal- :/ Is this about the school break?

Shin- They don't want the yearbook to totally suck. It's a valid complaint. Besides, it's not everyone. Note how I said "spare one or two people"? :P

Azure- It's more of a social thing than a shopping thing. There's a pretty tight-knit community of DDR players in our mall, and I'm slowly being eased into it, methinks.

Karmi- *could make a very insulting joke about the "suck it up" part on the teacher's expense, but doesn't*

Godel- ..Eh, I'm learning to live with it.

Alea- *thinks about it for a while* Okay, I'm done. What do I win?

--

I forgot to mention that I saw the hardcover edition of the Johnny the Homicidal Maniac collection in Hot Topic at the mall on Friday. It was very, very cool.

--

Yesterday I woke up, took a shower, and put on my "sit around the house and do nothing" pants. They're just some olive green cargo pants that I don't wear out anymore because they're all messed up in the back. I still like them, though, so they were appointed the official Lazy Pants.

And so I did just that. I played MGS3 for a while, and I got to the fight with The End. He's the really old sniper with a parrot on his shoulder, for those of you who care. I have heard a lot about him in reviews- about how he takes part in one of the biggest, most epic boss battles in the history of gaming, so I had high expectations.

Basically, it boils down to this: There are three large, forested areas in which the battle takes place. Possible sniping positions are marked on your map, and if you locate The End he, too, is marked. Until then you're basically running around, taking cover, and listening to the old guy taunt you.

He doesn't really do damage, really- it's a battle of stamina. He uses tranquilizers which deplete your energy, not your health. I must have killed five snakes and eaten five fruits within the forty-five minute period, seen The End four times, and never laid a finger on him. After a while, I just turned it off and played Nocturne.

Spent a few hours listening to music, and then I watched Saturday Night Live and some craptacular movie on the Sci Fi channel until two in the morning. This particular film's title escaped me, but they seemed to be ripping off Carrie. There was some sort of party, and this crazy girl in a dress was using psychic powers to kill everybody.

She died saving her boyfriend, and a year later, he's still thinking about her, after watching everybody he loved get mauled by her. It was stupid. They tried symbolism and original camera angles, but they fell on their face.

Who the hell makes these movies, anyway?

..Yeah, I need a life.

--

Woke up today, and tallied up the total cost of Project Ubercomputer. It came out to $1,845 before tax and shipping and all that jazz, but again, my dad knows a guy with a wholesale license.

..Holy crap, there's a snow flurry outside. Or, at least, a pathetic excuse for one. It's still frozen water, but it's not sticking. My brother's going crazy, heh. I wonder if he'll still love snow after being trapped inside of our grandmother's house by it next month.
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Saturday, November 20, 2004

After all is said and done..

Comment Commentary

Mimmi- I've been telling everyone that it was going to suck anyway. With conflicting co-edtiros, and one being far more stubborn and back-stabbing than the other, shit is bound to fly.. And land on the pages.

Shin- Everyone seems to be against it at school, spare one or two people. Oh well. I'm not in it to be liked.

Alea- We're near the end of our "trimester." That's when transfers are usually made.

Mal- And what if I do, huh!? >:O

--

Okay. Metal Gear Solid 3.

I remember ranting about how they should take a new artistic direction with Metal Gear on AIM.. I thought it would be cool if they sort of changed the visuals to make the game look like Yoji Shinkawa's terrific concept art. The menu of Snake Eater does exactly what I wanted them to do.

And Shin said it wasn't possible. What a lamer.

Gabe of Penny Arcade is not far off when he says that it's like sitting in your backyard for fifteen hours, lying in the grass, and having your friend come out and kick you in the nads every twenty minutes or so. It's all very slow-paced. The guards walk so much slower than in the first two games, it's not even funny. I've adapted with that so now I can be on the computer as I play the game. A lot of it is waiting around for the caution meter to go down.

The graphics are sweet. There's a sort of pale, ambient feeling about most of the colors, and this is most apparent in the cutscenes. The character models are amazingly detailed (my only compaint being that the eyes are a little unrealisic), but my favorite feature by far is the way they do explosions. When certain items go boom, the entire screen become silhouetted in a very distinct way.

Not unlike my previous mO intro.

The cutscenes keep up with the standard established by the series. While the lip sync is pretty far off most of the time, but the motion capture and voice acting is exquisite. Each character has a very distinct voice, and none of them are really that grating. For some odd reason, though, the Ape Escape side-mode is incredibly trashy in the voice department. Colonel Campbell makes his only appearance in the game in Ape vs. Snake, and they were too lazy to pay the authentic actor. He sounds far too angry, and whenever Snake catches one of the monkeys he always sounds too ecstatic about it.

That mode is great fun, though, and funny as all getout.

I could go on and on about it, but there are other things to talk about, you know?

--

Apparently, the journalism teacher was angry all day and on the verge of tears when she was trying to convince one of my friends to stay in the class. She still isn't realizing the real problem, though.. And besides, it's already on paper. I can't turn back now.

We had the first pep rally this school has seen in many years. It was for the volleyball teams- our seventh graders totally sucked, but eighth boys got third in the district and girls got second, I believe.

I got out of Phys Ed for it, which was enough incentive. I could have stayed outside if I wanted to.

They had colorguard (imitation cheerleaders) do a little routine in the middle of it. The song they chose wasn't bad (it reminded me of one of the songs from Cirque du Soileil), but I don't know how they can legally have these girls do some of the stuff they do. It's not like they're stripping or anything, but a lot of it is really suggestive.

When the principal came out to talk, everybody booed him. I felt sort of bad for him, but then I remembered his process of editing the newsletter, and then I felt better.

For some reason we had to go to the second one, too, after that one. This time we got in there after everybody else, so we had to sit on the floor in the front row. It was the same thing, except the principal didn't come out this time.

Heh heh.

--

Went to the mall for a couple of hours earlier. We ended up clothes-shopping, though I mostly did watching and made harsh-yet-playful remarks. They wanted me to try on some girls' clothes, and I said that I would, if all others present would put on something with heinous cleavage.

So I got out of it. :P

After that it was a bunch of shopping, and running in to other people from school. One of the anime fans in my class, it turns out, is related to one of the arcade-lurkers that has approached me a couple times about manga I was carrying. Small world, eh?

Two hours was not enough, though. Two hours is never enough, but my parents never listen to me. Oh well, I have all of next week off, so there's one big oppurtunity for goofing off.
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Friday, November 19, 2004

It's not a matter of if. It's a matter of when.

Comment Commentary

Shin- But Family Guy got enough fanbase to bring it out of cancellation. ~_^

miss april- Watch what?

Mimmi- Most children's books are, in the right context.

Mal- Wouldn't that take forever to transfer?

--

I didn't update yesterday, and for good reason. After school we went over to the mall and picked up Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. The cover is all nice and shiny, giving it a certain quality that makes it stand out from the rest of the cases. We had a couple minutes to blow before we left, so we went to the other regular stores to browse.

While checking out "The History of Metroid" in EBGames (I never buy anything there- I'm a Gamestop man), I noticed that one of the many boxes keeping me from groping Half-Life 2 was open. Curiously, I peeked inside and found a ton of Spiderman 2 and Feel the Magic DS games. My friend picked up Feel the Magic and looked at the back, but I was too afraid of getting kicked out of the store. God knows why.

Game stores are all evil for keeping me away from things even when they have them in the store, end of story.

I played a bit of single-player mode when I got home, and found the menus to be exquisite. They're supposed to emulate three-dimensional holographic touch screens, and they do it well. It took me a second to figure it out, but now it's as smooth as anything.

While its predecessor had a very dark red menu scheme, Echoes has a very bright, white menu. If you saw IGN's little Metroid Prime 2 review image, you know what I'm talking about.

Maybe the game is still just easing me in, but so far I'm finding it to be a little slow-paced and dull. The atmosphere created by the sounds and sights is spot-on, but the gameplay seems to be more bland than I had remembered it to be.

Of course, I only have the power beam, missiles and the Space Jump Boots right now, so I can't come to that conclusion yet.

Multiplayer's interesting. I've never touched Halo multiplayer, but if it's really that much better than Metroid's than it must be insanely cool. Deathmatches are always fun, I think, and it's cool to watch Samus jump around. If you double jump near a wall, apparently you kick off of it.. Didn't know that.

The luster of that wore off fairly quickly, though.

--

It's official, I'm leaving Journalism. Today clipart junkie was loading in all of the Pagemaker fonts.. It was supposed to be a select process, but she had a ton of fonts selected: Many of them pissing on what our theme stands for.

"Why do you have so many fonts?"

"Because they're all so cool!"

"We only need Chase."

"But I like these."

"We're not using them. What happened to consistency?"

"But these are cool!"

"Ms. Taylor, I'm transferring."

It quickly became a scene out of a Greek tragedy or something. All of the people who have half of a brain in that class were all dramatically talking about how much the yearbook is going to suck without me. When I first told the teacher it didn't really seem to register with her. She just smiled and nodded, as if she wasn't listening. She seemed pretty sore by the end of the period.

Well, it's going to suck anyway. No matter what I do, that girl is stubborn with absolutely no artistic vision, and she has the idea that people want different fonts and backgrounds on every page "to mix things up."

Bull. Total bull.

I'm doing this to demonstrate a point. If Mommy's little girl is the co-editor, she should consider this a promotion. She should be capable of singlehandedly making a decent yearbook, without my help. I feel a little bad about leaving the yearbook to be torn to shreds, but the ends justify the means. I don't want to be their slave / techie anymore.

I spent two hours thinking about this last night.. My only regret is leaving good old Stacie in there all alone, with nowhere to go.

:P I know she's reading this, so I won't go into detail.

Anyway, the new trimester starts the week after Thanksgiving, so if my mom calls the scheduling people tomorrow it should all be set. I'll be in art, and with people I know in my new Phys Ed class, and all shall be right with the world.

Woot.

I also picked up Metal Gear Solid 3 today, but I'm being kicked off right now.. I'll be sure to rant about it tomorrow.
Comments (3) | Permalink

Wednesday, November 17, 2004

Wrap your fingers 'round my neck.. Make me feel alive.

Comment Commentary

Shin- I would write more short stories and maybe even a novel if I had a longer attention span. Poems are good because they don't have to be that long.

Mimmi- Your reverence has been duly noted. ~_^

Shin- Uh, more like empty carbs for thought.

Tony- I have yet to see a review of it, outside of EGM. Half-Life 2 and Metroid Prime 2 are everywhere, of course, and they come out on the same day, but I'm confused about why there hasn't been anything for Metal Gear yet.

Karmi- Well, when I was writing it, I thought of it as a play in a dream. It was interrupted as daylight came, but.. Eh, it's totally open to interpretation.

I do agree about the God thing, though. I was sort of in a rut there.

-

Shin- I actually got up at six this morning to finish the notecards for the oral presentation part.

Alea- Eh.. It's been a week or so, I guess.

Mimmi- Indeed.

--

To elaborate on the earlier post, I finished the essay on Sparkling Cyanide last night around ten. After double-spacing (a requirement for this teacher), it came out to five pages. As per usual, I had my mom proofread it afterwards, and surprisingly enough she only had one or two complaints, and they were just about run-on sentences. That's my literary Achilles Heel, isn't it?

I spent forty-five minutes trying to get it printed right. Despite everything looking perfect in AbiWord (the shit-tacular word processor I downloaded for free because I lost Works), there were a bunch of mysterious paragraph breaks that I did not put there. I toyed around with those for a while, modified the borders a bit, and got done just in time to watch most of the Futurama Xmas episode on Adult Swim.

That episode rocks so hard it's not even funny. ..Well, it is funny, quite possibly the best episode, but you know what I mean.

I then lunged violently at my math homework. As I was talking with a friend earlier, he said that the math homework was incredibly quick and painless, so I put it off for a bit. At 11:50 at night, however, things seem to take a lot longer. It only took me fifteen minutes or so (incredibly simple review stuff about exponents), but it felt like forever. Then I had to do the notes for the oral part.

I did the first card, then decided to do the rest in the morning. I actually woke up on time today (insert collective gasp here), got them done quickly enough, took a shower, watched a bit of the news and went out the door.

When I stuffed the report into my backpack, the super-cool plastic cover got bent and now it looks crappy. :(

We spent all of English in the library.. It was one of those days where the entire class goes up there to check out books and do research, if they need to. I just sat there reading Murder in Mesopotamia (crappiest. book. ever.).. Until I decided to go over to my favorite book shelf ever: The self-help one.

Coping with Anger is incredibly funny, in a sadistic way, but it's hard to explain why. I can't help but laugh as I read it.

Today, however, I decided to read "How Big Is Big?" on the Easy Reading shelf. It took me all of five minutes, and I laughed like an idiot for ten. A friend then passed me "Froggy's First Kiss," which is a lot more raunchy when you look at it with a perverse mindset. Everything's funnier when you read it with a friend, and the pictures were (unintentionally) suggestive enough to begin with.

Heh heh.

We came very close to winning our volleyball game today. We were up by fourteen throughout most of it, but then the opposing team figured out our biggest weakness: Two really really shitty players who can't play for shit. And shit.

~_~

This one guy that seems to have devoted his life to flirting with strictly Asian girls (don't know why that matters) was on the opposing team, and he knows how to aim his serves.

Directly at the crap-players.

It sort of went back-and-forth in the last few minutes of the game, and I technically got it tied for us, but the coach dude said that it didn't count because he had "blown the whistle" before the play had ended.

I swear, that guy just doesn't want our team to win and finds an excuse every time.

--

Journalism. I put passwords on the computers and set the screensavers to blank screens to give the illusion of the computer being off. And yet the people that go into that class at fifth period lunch still manage to get in and change everything so it's ugly and POOOORLT TIPDE LIK ETHIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Grr.

To keep people busy, the teacher decided to have them make posters for the presales of the yearbook. I totally owned freaking everybody else with my Photoshop skills.

I sort of came up with a color theme, as a compromise to the "We're doing it color no matter what you say, crucial design guy! ^.^" thing. I would like to keep the road thing, so I toyed around with one picture for the rest of the period. After some motion blur, contrast alterations and adding a cool shiny thing off in the horizon, it turned out good. The bell rang and I didn't have time to save it. I hope the teacher remembered to do what I said about keeping it a PDF.

If she didn't even save it, I'm going to be freaking pissed.

--

After the piano lesson today, I went over to Best Buy to try out the DS display that Alex had raved about. No playable Dual Screen goodness was found, but I actually saw Half-Life 2.

I touched the box.

And it was good.

I stared at G Man.

And he was creepy.

The appearance of HL2 totally eclipsed my anticipation of touching the DS.. I was giddy for about half an hour.

And then I got a shrimp burrito at Rubio's, which kind of was good until the nauseousness set in. Bleh.
Comments (3) | Permalink

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

Holy crap, the essay's done. Now, time to go.. Do.. The rest of my mountan of homework. Gah.
Comments (3) | Permalink

Monday, November 15, 2004

When you're ready, I want you to know.

Comment Commentary

Alex- I hate you.

Godel- Oh no, there was no physical defiling. Just going through the private contents of that person's room.

*cough*

DDG- I've been a good boy, saving up. :)

Mimmi- I'm better now.. For the most part, I guess. At least I'm not distracted by it.

Karmi- Defilement! Glee!

Shin- Yeah, good luck with that. [insert rolling-eyes smilie here]

James- Thank you, James. I've been wanting to do a Saikano layout for a while, but I could never convey the right mood.

Sara- Indeed I am.

Shin- *laughs at you* I'll be playing Snake Eater before you play Substance.

Solo- I don't know how many tissues I went through.

--

Gazing across the moonlit sea,
Clouds in my eyes, inside of me
Are many thoughts, so warm yet cold,
So vivid, and yet, deceptively old,
Of the one, the lead in this emotional play,
The one who made my heartstrings fray.

Act one, the prelude, the beginning of ours,
They danced beneath the vibrant stars.
Hand to hand and cheek to cheek,
Silent love, the savior of the meek.

O beautiful actress, so cunning and sweet,
Continue to dance to the subtle beat.
Sing songs of your trust, reliance and love
So truthful, so blessed by God above.

Act two marks the euphoric state,
No malice towards anyone, no reason to hate,
Asleep in the fields beneath the rising sun,
Their lovely smiles were matched by none.
But as the sun rises and just as they wake,
My heart begins to feel the ache.
The show is now over,
It was all in my mind,
Feelings so strong they had made me blind.

The curtains have closed, get out of your seat.
File out of the theater, walk out to the street.
Deception's the author of this play.
O beautiful actress, I want you to stay.
Comments (5) | Permalink

Sunday, November 14, 2004

O	Orderly
T	Tough
A	Amorous
K	Keen
U	Unusual
S	Shy
E	Eccentric
N	New
N	Nutty
E	Entertaining
N	Normal

Name / Username:

Name Acronym Generator
From Go-Quiz.com

Liek omg!!11!
Comments (1) | Permalink

Young and in lust

Comment Commentary

Semjaza- I don't remember hearing anything about The Incredibles until a couple months ago.

Mimmi- Brave? What did I do that was brave?

Sara- Free showings of movies.. *melts*

Shin- What the hell? Bonuses for the non-subscribers? That's messed up.

Godel- But Cellography is the worst.

--

Yesterday was really cool, but I made a promise not to talk about it, though I don't know why. I suppose I can get away with saying this much: Scrabble, techno, pizza, and defiling of personal space.

*taps nose* Shh, it's a secret.

--

I had cough drops and toast for breakfast this morning. I woke up with a slightly scratchy throat yesterday, and by that evening I was in need of medication. Despite everyone's thinking I was insane, I piled a ton of blankets on my bed in a futile attempt to keep warm. The ever-ironic congestion and runny-nose combination tormented me for the rest of the day. I sat on the couch half-dazed watching VH1's 40 Least Metal Moments as I let the magical effects of Scudafed take over.

That's how out of it I was, and that's why I didn't get any of my book report done. Tomorrow I need to go borrow the book from the library for reference and crank out the five paragraphs, which is bound to take a lot longer than what any "normal" five paragraphs would take.

I think I'm starting to get over this, so I hope I won't have to do that entire report tomorrow night with a tissue in one hand and a pencil in the other.

--

Only four days until Metroid Prime 2 and Metal Gear Solid 3. Woot.

--

My computer has been very uncooperative for the past couple of days. The aggrivating clicking thinking noise that plagued my computer for so long before the hard drive failure has returned, though it's more subtle, and for some reason Half-Life is not running (It works perfectly until I try opening my save file).

I want that new computer.

--

In closing, I would like to say that Kabuchiko Prison is a pain in the ass. The end.
Comments (10) | Permalink