Friday, November 12, 2004

I pod, you pod..

We all pod for iPod.

Comment Commentary

Shin- I've never bothered reading EGM.. Do they ever do preview discs?

Mal- I'm just glad that somebody agrees with me.

Godel's collection of funderful comments- It must suck being the daughter of a principal.

Karmi- That's like saying Julia Roberts wasn't a hooker with a heart of gold in Pretty Woman. It's just wrong.

Mimmi- No, there always has to be at least one annoying child. <_<

--

The Incredibles rocked. That's the easiest way to describe it. It didn't seem like a Disney movie at times- it wasn't sappy or constantly trying to be funny.. Hell, there was a little blood, suicide attempts, explosions, and hints of adultery. My only complaint is that they laid the whole family unity thing on a bit thick when they all finally meet up on the island and work together as a team to open a collective can of whoop-ass.

But even then, that was only agitating for a second.

For those of you who saw the previews before the movie: Which do you think is going to bomb more: Chicken Little or Cars?

--

The whole sixth-grade-teacher-over-for-dinner thing went over well, I guess. I spent most of the time hidden away in this room with the door closed. For some odd reason, whenever somebody comes over, this room becomes the designated "dump all your shit in here" room. The only time I came out was for the food, which wasn't anything that great. Salad and some finger food. I was left hungry, only to feed my appetite with the surprisingly tasty rolls.

A special note to Karmi: I failed you. The coolness was not had. ._.

I'll be at my friend's house in a bit.. It's not a party, it's not a get-together, and it's not a box social (Aw..)- it's a "thing." Just sitting around. Should be fun.

EDIT: I never realized how oversized my intro image was. o_O Oh well, it's fixed now.
Comments (5) | Permalink

Thursday, November 11, 2004

I'm my own personal freeloader.

Comment Commentary

Shin- Nice pun, Shin. *high five*

Godel- If I had my way, I would get National PB&J Day off.

Karmi- Well, to be my best, best friend ever, you have to do a little maintenance. :P

Mal- Yay for bastardization of franchises.

Mimmi- That's mean. >:|

Solo- Mimmi hit the proverbial nail on the head.

Karmi- Hazing = No thank you. I don't see the point of being in a fraternity, anyway.

But not all of them are bad. These two graduates (They both got 3.7 GPAs in their senior year) came to our door today with some sort of magazine subscription deal. If they sell enough, they get a two-week tour of Europe. They were really nice guys, so my mom ordered two years of EGM. o_O

--

My brother had one of his friends over last night. Generally, when my brother has a friend over it's a lot more of a hassle for my parents (compared to when I have friends over). With them, they demand the inflatable mattress, pull out a thousand blankets, and sit it in the middle of the living room, making walking around difficult for everybody. Then they want to watch movies and play a thousand board games.

I just sit there with my friend and play games, falling asleep blanketless on the couch.

After watching Family Guy I went to bed, and I was kept awake for two hours thanks to their incredibly loud Tekken playing. I awoke to the sound of Melee's Yoshi's Island Level's music playing, accompanied by Falco's irritating grunt noises.

I had promised my dad that I would assist him in setting up this tool shed they bought the other day. I didn't really do much until the actual putting together of things began.. Before that I was trying to shut my brother and his friend up as they built a bigass fort out of the cardboard box that the shed came in.

I spent about five hours outside putting the thing together.. For a long time there it reminded me of the plastic ruins of some long-lost Dwarven mine.

It is now official, the formal name of the tool shed is "The Ruins of Tohlshed, realm of Plastor the Sturdy."

:)

--

My mom decided to have my brother's teacher to our house tonight for his IGP (I forget what it stands for, but you basically sit around and talk about the kid's strengths and weaknesses). Thus, my mom has been cleaning like a madwoman all day, and she's stressing out about what she should make about dinner. Or if he's even expecting any food.

I, personally, don't care if the house is clean or if we feed him. The only thing I'm worried about is the awkwardness of having my former teacher in my house.

The going-ons of tomorrow: Mini-party at a friend's house (translation: Sitting around eating pizza and listening to Aquabats and Ozma) and beginning my book report. Hopefully.
Comments (5) | Permalink

Wednesday, November 10, 2004

Ha ha.. Canada.

Comment Commentary

Shin- I change my wallpaper a lot more than I change my screensaver. In fact, I don't even have one anymore.

Sara- A wise decision.

Mimmi- Argh, it got changed by Miss Clipart Junkie. She changed the font and added ".........................................DONT TOUCH" at the end. I don't even know why I try anymore.

Molletta- As did I. There's some real Michael Phelps fanbase among girls in my class, and it was fun to watch their reactions.

Karmi- Have I ever mentioned how you're my best, best friend ever, Karmi?

Godel- Y'see, the problem with the Van Helsing fanboy baby thing.. I doubt that kid's testicles have dropped yet, so.. Yeah.

Shin- *me too*

Solo- I was under the impression that frat boys made up the majority of Halo's fans. Oh well.

Semjaza- My interest in Metroid Prime 2 tends to go up and down. I've had it reserved since August, and I'm sure I'm going to enjoy it, but Half-Life 2 has kept me consistently giddy. It's probably like you said in the MP2 thread, though- there hasn't been that much news about the game for a while.

--

From the minute I got into class the Halo 2 insanity was apparent. One friend of mine- Tony- somehow I got away with reading the strategy guide during AR. It sort of continued throughout the day, though the high point was when crazy semi-ghetto metrosexual guy got into a big debate with Tony and one of my Nocturne brethren about Halo, Killzone and Echoes. I was grinning as I listened, but I didn't join in. Nocturne dude would have appreciated a pro-Half-Life 2 comment, though.

No physical activity in PE today. It was vision and hearing test day, and we had to take turns reading letters and raising our hands every time we heard a noise. I began reading a new Agatha Christie novel as I was waiting (Murder in Mesopotamia, which sounds like a children's educational mystery title), in the back of the room, ignoring all of the chattering assheads that plague that class.

I went up into the library in Journalism to download a few fonts and the page backgrounds to a couple floppies. The teacher got this semi-decent computer that's strictly for journalism antics, and for the yearbook theme I had to transfer these things over.

Because.. You know. Every freaking floppy drive in this school, spare one in the library, is broken.

--

I laughed at the Mantra as they all withered (especially Gozu-Tennoh, that bastard) thanks to Nihilo's magatsuhi drain.

I haven't really tried to make it this way, but all of my answers to the "important" questions in Nocturne seem to be pointing toward the neutral alignment. I initially wanted to join the Assembly of Nihilo, just because I disagree with the Mantra (The Bush/Kerry complex, you know?), but then I realized that I don't really like their goal either.

That's right. I'm going third-party.

--

Four day weekend because of.. Which holiday was it? One of those holidays that nobody really cares about, because they don't get turkey or presents on it..

Well, anyway, I would like to do something cool with this time off, but it will probably boil down to sleeping and working on this book report that's due on Tuesday. It's the redundant five paragraph dealie again, and it shouldn't be as hard the second time around, but there's an oral presentation accompanying it. I have no choice but to do it on one of Agatha Christie's books (They're the only AR tests I've passed this year that are over 100 pages), and I'm leaning toward Sparkling Cyanide right now. It's already divided into three parts for me, and it's more fresh in my mind.

Evil Under the Sun was better, though.

So if I'm not online that much for the next few days, now you know where I'll be. And finally, Semjaza's Shin Megami Tensei site is up, and if you don't visit it you're not my friend anymore.
Comments (6) | Permalink

Michael Phelps dun got arrested.

Excellent.

Comment Commentary

Shin- Hah, you can't make fun of Metroid Prime. I am the victor.

Solo- I still can't help but marvel at the variety of levels in this game. I mean, how many games have epic half-hour boss battles (excluding turn-based RPGs)?

Mimmi- That's what I was going for: Making grown women cry. :D

Mal- What, the 3000-visit wino? :P

Syk- ...What Chandler said.

Karmi- Goddamn English language.

Syk- Quit keeping it real. >:O

--

Blah, I have been bogged down with homework for the past couple of days. I haven't really had time to post, and at the same time I don't really regret that. I haven't had much to post about, heh. Nothing in the way of Half-Life or Saikano, haven't seen any movies..

Oh yeah. The Halo 2 invasion.

Even freaking Hal Fishman of KTLA evening news was going on about Halo 2 last night.

I'm sorry, but that is just overkill. I would even be disgusted if they did that for Metal Gear Solid 3. No game, regardless of its coolness, should have that much attention.. Until one is elected Senator or marries with Britney Spears.

I suppose that is to be expected, though. Microsoft-based franchises are bound to get enormous amounts of attention.

I have several classmates who were practically orgasming over the game after school today.. It's just insane.

But there's no point to complaining- it will all blow over by the time Halo 3 is announced.

EDIT: Oh yeah.. Journalism.

Got stuck in the class alone with clipart junky, angsty volleyball girl and crackhead Zim fan today, installing programs onto the new "yearbook only" computer.

Problem is, I have no serial numbers (they're the burned bootleggy kind, you know?) for any of the programs. That alone isn't so bad, but when you have people constantly telling you to "fix this...!" it's just frustrating.

There seems to be some sort of constant war going on regarding the screensavers on the class computers. One minute the crazy little Van Helsing fanboy is toying around with the maze one, then the next it's a Scrolling Marquee about "Alexis + Christian 4ever." Somebody put a password on one of them today, and I found that funny.

My constant idea has been "You all suck for constantly changing the screensaver." Then clipart junkie comes over and changes it to "DO NOT TOUCH>.......this is for yearbook only...."

I compromised with "If you touch this computer you suck, and if you change the screensaver you suck even more."

o_O

Will I ever do anything important in there?
Comments (9) | Permalink

Sunday, November 7, 2004

Crazy Eights of the Winnebago Tribe
Comment Commentary

Azure- I'm so loved.

Shin- But what if I'm lazy?

DDG- It's my special day! :D

Mal- *nods* 1984 sounds like a fine piece of work.

Mal- But the big question is, will I remember any of them?

Godel- That's mean.

Karmi- Have that many people really been changing them? The only one I have noticed is James (recently, anyway).

Solo- I'm in Xen now, where you have to fight that spidery bastard. I've played a bit into Opposing Force, but not too far. It's cool, so far.

Shin- But what of your avatar?

--

My trusty Bose headphones are officially dead today. A couple days ago I realized that the pieces that are used to keep the adjustable metal parts in line were coming off. I sort of blame how I take them off- I tend to pull it to the side, which is bound to cause stress.

They are amazingly wonderful headphones, and they shall be greatly missed. I would buy replacements if they weren't so freaking expensive.

These were the ones we won in a raffle at Circuit City, remember?

I suppose I could tape the things together, but that would be a pretty lame solution. *bitch slaps his crappy computer speakers*

--

On Friday I went over to my friend's house to drop off his copy of Halo that my other friend borrowed a few weeks ago. I was told to take his copy of Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance in exchange.

After playing it for a bit, I little question developed in my head. Am I just spoiled by Soul Calibur II, or do all other fighters I've ever played suck?

I thought Tekken had slow response time.. But in Deadly Alliance you finish pushing all of the buttons for an intense combo before the first segment is even completed. The three types of fighting styles for each character is a cool twist (though I tend to stick with the weapons), but overall the most entertaining part of it was asking myself "Why am I playing this, again?"

I just wanted to fly across the screen as Raiden, but nooo, he's a hidden character. Psh, whatever.

And the fatalities were all lame.

--

Today was pretty uneventful. I woke up around nine, watched some television, told my mom the Steelers were playing (she was surprisingly quiet throughout it), and wasted a lot of time on the computer. A lot of headway was made in Half-Life, as I mentioned earlier, and I'm having a hard time surviving the fight with the spiderey dude. I can beat him easily enough, but when I do I'm so low on health that I get killed by all of the mini-crabs before I can escape the hole. It's sort of lame, heh.

And then I watched Spaceballs for the first time, which is like the worst parody film ever. No, scratch that, it may very well be the worst comedy to ever disgrace the genre. It was just stupid.

The moral of the day: If you ever fly somewhere, make sure you horde all of the roasted peanuts. In the event of a plane crash stranding you on a desert isle somewhere, you shall become the designated supplier of protien.
Comments (6) | Permalink

Saturday, November 6, 2004

Meep.

Comment Commentary

Shin- Yes, that would be most excellent. :o

Alex- I have no clue who Gus Van Sant is, lol. Shin's right, I'm talking about the White Stripes.

Mimmi- Moo is a bad thing?

Shin- You tell him.

Syk- I knew my joke wasn't subtle enough.

Karmi- When you're a part of it, maybe.

Solo- How many more levels are there until I'm done? It's not that I want to be done with it- it's just one of those games that makes me think "Holy hell, I've been playing for how long and I'm not done?"

Godel- You'd think that. >:|

Mal- I look for good books but I never find any! I spent fifteen minutes searching for 1984.

And I'll read Catcher in the Rye eventually. It's required reading, no?

Shin- The whole world is against me. ._.

--

I hit 3000 overnight, it seems. Last time I checked I had 2980-something, and today I found that I had 3008.

Mucho thanks to everybody that has visited this blog, and I would like to say that you all deserve purple hearts (brains?) for tolerating all of the crap I put up on here.

Like that picture up there.

I have a friend over right now, so I can't say much more.. If I decide to do something about the 3000-visit thing, I'll do it tomorrow. Until then I'm going to go.. Eat Panda Express and play Nocturne. I'm so festive.
Comments (6) | Permalink

Friday, November 5, 2004

Say what?

Comment Commentary

Shin- Super-Libertarians.

Ahem.

Mal- Very good point.

Mimmi- Heh, I actually tried out for the school volleyball team last year. I didn't really want to, but I got dragged into it because they weren't going to have a team if they didn't have more people try out. I blame my friend.

--

We did four-way volleyball in PE today.

The most moronic game ever. Balls were just flying everywhere, nobody was serving properly, and many a person got hit. After a whole bunch of "What the hell, Nick?"s, I actually ended up saving a couple points- not that anybody was keeping score.

--

Journalism was.. Better today. Things got done, mostly on the newsletter (I typed up an interview with the VP), but I do think that "last day of freedom" comment the teacher made yesterday was really off. I spent more time talking to people today than I did yesterday.. And this time it was actually with more than one person. As per usual, even when I tried to be heard nobody even thought I was talking, but good old Stacie helped make my thoughts known.

But the teacher must have been sedated or something. These kids were listening to American Idiot (ugh) on a CD player.. But not with headphones. One of them had brought bonafied speakers to school, and they were listening to it in the back of the room.

It took everything I had to tolerate it. I would go on a rant about all of these lameass rock bands that are popular right now, but I'll save that for a rainy day.

Then these kids were playing around with their cellular phones. They were all calling each other and testing ringtones.. It was pretty chaotic. At least a couple articles got done.

--

I just got back from a lovely trip to Barnes and Noble. It's always been a bit of a ritual of my family's to go there, but generally my routine there generally remains the same: Magazines, manga, music.

Today's was actually interesting, though, for numerous reasons. The first thing, I guess, was that I found a copy of this month's PC Gamer opened (non plastic wrapped), with the "world exclusive Half-Life 2" review inside. I merely skimmed it, ogling the screenshots (there was one of a graveyard area) and checking out the pros and cons.

The pros were basically everything, and the cons were merely this: People you direct can be somewhat hard to work with, and the textures get kinda-sorta weak in larger areas. Those are like the smallest gripes you could ever come up with in a game. It almost led me to believe they were just coming up with something to put in the cons section because they would be called biased otherwise.

Final score: 98%. I want a GeForce 6200.

Speaking of Half-Life, I finally got to Forget About Freeman today. I'm so tired of fighting those hulky aliens with those odd curvey-bouncy weapons. I've just resorted to using my RPGs to take them out in parts.

But back to Barnes.

I spent a remarkable amount of time in the music section, listening to clips of songs from a ton of albums that I've been lusting after recently, including stuff from Glassjaw, Etro Anime (mostly for Danger, which you can listen to in the Digital Devil Saga trailer), The Pixies, Our Lady Peace, and even Maroon Five.

Surprisingly enough, B&N's album list included a little Pillows and X Japan. There weren't any reviews or anything (though The Pillows had a four star rating), but it was nice to see some recognition. This way I can't entirely yell at them for boasting about having every CD in the world in their library.

Well, they don't (Nothing but Penalty Life!), but they earned points regardless.

All of the touch-screen sample things were incredibly frustrating, though. Either the sensors were being uncooperative- if you tried to hit W you would get K- you had to punch the screen to get any response or the headphones were busted on each of them. I'm proud that I figured out how to compensate on one of them, and listen to a few clips.

Did I buy anything? Nah. I would have liked to, but I didn't have any money on me.

They still have Elephant for 19 bucks.. What the hell?
Comments (9) | Permalink

Wednesday, November 3, 2004

I could have done that.

Comment Commentary

Shin- Ugh, basketball.. Another sport I'm useless in.

Mal- Yes, exactly.

--

"Enjoy your last day of freedom, Nick, because tomorrow we start working on the yearbook."

So said my Journalism teacher.

It turns out I'm not the only person sour about this class.. Anybody with half a brain in there agrees with me.. We all want out. We all feel as if we're being used.

I met up with my former art teacher after school and asked him what I need to do to transfer. Apparently, I need to have one of my parents call the school, and have them set it up. He says that he only has two art classes anymore, and that they are both "horrible," but it wouldn't be bad at all if I sat with the other sixth period art "veterans." I basically ignored everyone last year anyway, so I don't see what could be so different.

The problem is, I would feel really, really guilty if I dropped out now, just as things seem to be "picking up." The yearbook would be utter crap without me, and I don't know if I could stand looking at it- or the teacher- ever. I would be fine with doing things outside and/or after school.. Maybe I'll do that.

--

I'm sure you all have noticed how stupid the media can be about technology. CNN, Fox News Network and the rest of the gang are all talking about spyware as if it just popped up overnight. Then, in their impressive yet pitiful attempt to connect every story to the presidential election, they all talked about how Kerry or Bush would change the technology industry in the next four years. It's obvious that they're both among the legions of old fogeys (despite Kerry's windsurfing) who, for some unknown reason, are physically and mentally unable to comprehend even basic terms.

Internets, for God's sake! There's more than one, apparently. Thank you, Mr. President.

But the tech-news atrocity that takes the cake is this rat bastard, Kurt the Cyberguy, technology correspondant for the KTLA Channel 5 news. Every other night he comes up with some useless segment about things that are just stupid. Examples:

Internet bullying! Like, oh my God, kids say "ur gay" to each other online! Scandal, I say!

This one wasn't so bad, but it came out only a month after the game. *rolls eyes*

Like we really need an article about the latest political flash animations and a THQ game adaptation of a Pixar movie.

He did something about Enter the Matrix a while back, and praised it like there was no tomorrow. It was insane.

There have been one or two segments that have kept me from wanting to kill him entirely, namely a Paper Mario 2 thing and a reference to Silent Hill, but I can't stand the guy.

I could go on and on about him, but I have a novel to read.

PS: While The Assembly of Nihilo is an incredibly cool place, I am a little aggrivated by the puzzles. They're nothing that mind-bending (maybe they weren't even meant to be puzzles?), and they take up too much time. Like Ken before me, I play games like this mostly for the story (though Nocturne's gameplay still kicks ass), and I just want to get on with it.
Comments (2) | Permalink

Tuesday, November 2, 2004

Ugh..

How many times have I used that as my post title?

Comment Commentary

Shin- :P

Mimmi- I blame group conversation. In fact, I should probably blame everything on group conversation. It's the social interaction of the devil, I tells ya.

sweetcandy006- Deal.

Semjaza- I saw that too.. I don't know where they came up with that.

--

Shin- Fight the power, man.

Azure- Yes, you're missing it. The joke is wasted on you!

--

I think today was the last straw.

Remember how I mentioned that all of the ghetto / remedial kids were stuffed into Journalism? Well, for some reason she has us all doing basic English lessons out of our books.. Citing resources, and crap like that. We also heard two long anecdotes about good journalists in the past..

It was a repeat from last year. I'm not kidding, she said the exact same thing word for word. I didn't even bother doing the work. When I asked her, "Is it just me, or is this class turning into remedial seventh grade English?" she responded "Yes, but not for long."

We then had to line up in alphabetical order according to our first names.

I am giving it two weeks, and if things don't change I'm going to transfer back to art. In the end, it's all for the best- I get a much more expressive elective with a much more coherent teacher, and in the process my PE period is switched to the end of the day. That's when everybody else has it, so I'll be among people that I actually know.

It's as if it was meant to be. :P

Speaking of PE, we're starting volleyball this week. Not only am I worthless in baseball, I'm also very bad at volleyball. I can't wait until we do football and hockey.. That's where I have the mad skillz.

--

I made some decent headway in Nocturne today. I leveled up for a while, my Inugami transformed into some other elongated floating thing (it looks stupid), and I beat Thor's ass with relative ease. I switched Magatama between battles according to the enemies' strengths, and I think that had a good deal to do with it.

Did I decide to join Thor and his band of homies? Nah, I remained undecided. Nihilo seems nicer, though the leader of these guys was insanely cool.

Me: Yeah, that's right! Abuse that Manikin in chains!

Oh, and Dante was fun to beat. He was.. Much easier than I had heard him to be, but it was fun. His dialogue didn't really feel all that Dante-ish, but it wasn't a bunch of shitty one-liners, either.

I got my ass beaten by the second Fiend, though. His meditation move steals HP and MP, and it's near impossible to make any progress each turn. It was like taking one step forward and two steps back.

I can't remember when I had saved last.. Hopefully it was after Dante.

Shall I persist in trying to defeat the monk Fiend? Yes, I want to collect the Candelabrum, even if I don't know what they're supposed to do.

In other news, Karmi has returned from her sabbatical, and it's great to see the pinkness again.

*runs out of things to say and just walks away*
Comments (1) | Permalink

Some random AR thing I found

3. Make sure your questions are about important details from that part of the book. Don't ask picky, trivial questions that others won't remember if they take your quiz.

Right.
Comments (4) | Permalink