Wednesday, September 22, 2004

Jubilation!

Comment Commentary

Shin- I dunno, Gamecube seems a little chubby.. :P

Aleia- *calls his stuff back* Okay.

Mimmi- Eh.. <_<

--

For me, school starts at 7:14. At the beginning of this year I was setting my alarm for six thirty, but I moved it up to 6:05 earlier this week. It wasn't so bad for a while, but last night I had a ton of homework that I didn't get around to doing until nine. After a little stalling and a short break for some prepackaged roasted peanut butter crackers, it was all done around 11:30.

Waking up was hell. I don't know why I found it to be so bad; lord knows I've done worse, but it took every ounce of motivation within me to just crawl out from under the covers. I noticed that today was the first time it was completely dark when I woke up this school year. That probably has something to do with my defiance of waking up..

But the fatigue soon wore off, then came back again, then went away, and has once again returned. That's what happens when your classes altrenate between stimulating and dull, I guess.

The Journalism teacher somehow burned a copy of Adobe Pagemaker, and installation was going smoothly until it asked for the serial number. Of course, there was nothing else to do in the class, so I sat there and read.

Because today was a half day, our schedule changes a bit. We start with period seven, but the rest of the day goes as planned. The only logic behind it that I can imagine is that they don't want us eating lunch at eight in the morning. Having Phys Ed in period six, we ended the day inside the gym doing "free time," which is top secret code for sitting around. I ended up having two or three short conversations with various people I don't talk to too often, and it's glad to see that some friends who drifted away and became "popular" still acknowledge me knowing them, heh.

And now, here I sit. Back to School Night starts at 5:30, and I wasn't originally planning on going, but it seems that a lot of people will be there, so now the question is "Why the hell not?" I won't be there to listen to my teachers explain stuff to my parents, of course- most of the action will probably end up in the field with lots of running around.

--

The longer we go without a functioning printer/scanner, the more I want want to fixate on getting the bugger to work again. The pile of drawings I want to scan has been building up for a while (I have a few I want to put up on TheOtaku, plus I want to start the webcomic up again), and a project is coming up that I need to type. I don't know why I don't just call HP Customer Service.. For some reason, I have a sort of anxiety over talking with people I don't know on the phone. As life goes on, though, such conversations will become more and more of a necessity, so I may as well get over this problem early.

I can't wait to get this one Saikano picture I did up. It's done rather sketchily, just like in the real image, and I am very proud of it. There are no other Saikano fanart yet, and I think it would be rather cool to be the first to use the category.

--

Lame post? Maybe. But it has heart.

Teh SillyCircus Day 38- Screw MTV, I want my History Channel.
Comments (3) | Permalink

Tuesday, September 21, 2004

I feel betrayed just 'cause it's cool.

Monday Commentary

Shin- *cough* Except for the White Stripes.. :P

Godel- Well, you can't not like Star Wars parodies. :/

StarBound- Honestly, I don't give a crap if she cares, lol. I was using her as an example for a rant about human behavior, but I have neither the credentials nor the knowledge to rant about such a thing. :P

Mimmi- Uh.. Sure I am. <_<

Comment Commentary for that lame filler post that angered Godel

Shin- Grr, happy now?

Mimmi- Swing kids? :x

Ken- Hey, that gray was just trying to be friends.

Godel- Grr, are you happy now, too? >:|

--

As.. Quite a few of you know, I spent a rather long time downloading the complete discography of Asian Kung-Fu Generation yesterday. I finally decided to download BitTorrent yesterday, and I figured AKFG would be a good way to kick things off.

In the end, I think it took around five hours (if you count when I turned the computer off for a little while), but by the time it was complete it was time for bed, so I didn't get to listen to too much. By now, though, I've gone through most of them, so it's time for a little reviewing. I haven't really found any way to memorize all of the song titles, so bear with me.

I listened to the songs in the order Quintessential Player put them in, and a few live recorded ones were first in line. I'm not one for MP3s of live performances for several reasons, but the dominating point is the low quality of vocals. I know they touch everything up in the studio, and that it's not really all that "real," but I prefer something good to listen over off-key, slightly improvised performances with groupies screaming in the background. I like how Haruka Katana was sped up, except the vocals were.. Way off. The only redeeming part there was the harmonizing during the bridge. I skipped the rest of the live ones for the moment, and went on to the pre-recorded, doctored up tunes. Some were good, some not so much, but at one point I just had to turn it off. The vocals sounded entirely off, and the tunes were too mellow. Oh, how the skipping button got a workout. Maybe they were just really, really long intros, but to be fair I'll go through all of them some time when I'm bored.

For the moment, though, my favorite songs are Haruka Katana, Kimi no Machi Made (still), Powder Snow, Mirai no Kakera, Denpatou and Siren (Am I gonna be called a copycat? :x). 286 megabytes of music.. And most it was worth the download.

The next order of business shall be the Pillows complete discography, but it's almost a freaking gig, so I might have to wait for a shiny, new, bigass hard drive for that. Plus, at 17kB/s it would take forever. :/

--

We went to the library to check out books today, and it turns out Black Hawk Down isn't on AR. I should have guessed.. I got some short-yet-high-scoring book from the author of White Fang to read instead.. It doesn't seem to interesting, though. I want to read books that I want to read, not bland books that are "right for me." If the motivation behind this system is to get kids to want to read, I get nothing out of it. Damn you, Cornell, for ruining reading. >:|

Journalism.. We're two days behind the deadline now, and the teacher's out sick. I spent all period proofreading some things and writing a list of nicknames for all fifty states, which I will put up eventually.

--

Check out the maximum potential of Photoshop.

In this segment, I talk about stuff happening that I give a rat's ass about. I doubt it will end up funny, so.. Yeah.

Silent Hill movie- Unlike most game-to-movie transitions, I think there may be a remote chance of this one actually turning out well. Silent Hill seems very story-driven, and judging by the quotes from the people involved, they seem rather dedicated to the series, and that's always a good thing. Let's hope we actually hear about it again, unlike other movie-to-game pitches.. Metroid and Soul Calibur, anyone?

Sony reveals the PSTwo- So sexy. Unfortunately, I'm not willing to dish out another $150 bucks on the same stuff- I had the same mentality with the GBA SP and all of its colorful incarnations.

That is one thin console, though. If I didn't know better, I would say that PlayStation 2 went anorexic. Of course, I know this isn't true, because PS2 had a strong upbringing and has oodles of self-confidence.

Necrophilia outlawed in California- Well it looks like I have to move now.

Teh SillyCircus Day 37- New Jersey is the Trailer Park of America. *throws things at it*
Comments (3) | Permalink

*breathes a sigh of relief*

Sonic Blaster is gone, apparently along with some other people. I have jumped up six ranks. Peace is restored to the universe. *breathes a sigh of relif as he goes to bed*

(By the way, this isn't my full post. Suck it up and wait for tomorrow, ya pansies.)
Comments (5) | Permalink

Monday, September 20, 2004

Time for a little math.

Mach x Speed of sound = Airplane speed.

MS = A

Microsoft = Apple. Wake up, America!

--

Comment Commentary

Shin- I'm glad we finally see eye to eye on the issue, my colleague.

Mimmi- Marx Brothers? Are they like the Mario Brothers, only from Queens?

StarBound- Being a secretive control freak, The Sims is right up my alley.

Godel- Well, I have BT now. Let's get some linkage, por favore.

Mal- *shuns you for not getting Winter*

Godel- The first order of business, shunning Mal, is completed. I is happy.

--

It's days like these when I'm really desperate for things to write about. Nothing outstanding happened in school, the weekend was a bore (Saikano manga volume two was a no-go), and weekends seem to be a dry spell for video game/anime news. I guess it's time to pull a rant out of thin air now.

I've written about Weird Al before, but never about my other assorted experiences with the music world, so let's go with that.

My earliest memories of music are probably of my mom playing Barbara Streisand tapes.. She always wanted to be a famous singer, and Miss Babs was always her idol/role model/what have you. Throughout our many, many car drives, she was always singing along to "People" or some other showtune.. By age seven I was really, really annoyed by it. I didn't really have any taste in music yet, though, so I had nothing to drown the songs out with.

Around that same time I was introduced to Weird Al Yankovic through that TV special he did for the Disney Channel. Almost eight years later, I can't really remember a lot of it, and the only segment that really sticks out in my mind is when Al eats the entire table of donuts to "suit up" for Fat. Oh, and the scorpion thing. My parents bought a couple tapes after that (Alapalooza and some other one that I lost pretty quickly), and I fell in love with the parody tunes. Finally, something else was (occasionally) played on the car's tape deck. We listened to Alapalooza for a very, very long time.. In fact, I think the first CD I purchased after that was Running with Scissors, two years later.

I guess the next major thing for me was taking up Piano lessons in third grade. At my elementary school, all of the soccer moms with second graders would wait at the door for their kids so they could walk them out to the parking lot. My mother, of course, was one of them (if you take away the soccer part), and she got into a lot of conversations with various other parents. One of them happened to be a private piano instructor.. And so, after winter break, I walked up to that house for the first time and touched the keys. I guess I caught on rather quickly, but I don't have much to compare myself to. A year and a half later I had my first recital- a Halloween masquerade one- at some church on the east side of town. Mrs. Alexander, my teacher, still requires that everyone memorizes their recital pieces, so I worked extra hard on one "Apaloosa Pony." I still remember how it goes to this day, heh.

*hums the tune for a minute*

It went well. I didn't make any noticeable mistakes (If I recall, there was a slight pause around the thirtieth measure, but whatever), and I felt an immense feeling of satisfaction afterwards. Many recitals followed, some good and some bad (Though I never did horribly), and soon the awesomeness of getting applause somewhat wore off. I still play to this day, but it's a very rare occurence when I play a song that I fall in love with.. The only motivation-striker nowadays is a transcript of BT's theme from .hack//SIGN that I got off of some site a few months ago. It's coming along quite well, I must say, and I might be able to record a playing of it for you soon, Azure. :P

Then came a wave of collecting Weird Al CDs. By the time I got to the 80's albums, the parody humor was starting to wear off, and I latched onto my newfound obsession of anime for music. Hence the JPop phase. This was around the time I got DSL, and Kazaa came into play.

God, was my computer slow because of all the Spyware.

Eventually, my playlist became a tad more.. Masculine, if you will, as I decided to end my isolation from American tunes. Over a period of time, I warmed up to VH1's top twenty countdown, and found one or two songs that I enjoyed. Soon there came a steady stream, accompanied by L'Arc, X-Japan and, most recently, Asian Kung Fu Generation.

And that's that. *runs away to practice piano before the "Omg this post sukz" hordes arrive*

--

Oh, in journalism class news: We found out today that the computer lady went through all the school's computers and removed all the "unnecessary" programs to open up space on the 14% full hard drives. Apparently, she thought Adobe Pagemaker, our newsletter/yearbook program, was expendable, so she uninstalled it and got rid of the disc.

What. The. Hell.

I don't know how we're supposed to make this newsletter with the upcoming September twenty-ninth deadline without the program.. Oh, they lost Windows Image Editor, too, which isn't as much of a loss, considering I have a CD burner, fifty-something blank discs and Adobe Photoshop.

Go me.

--

It's funny how quickly people can change.. There was this one girl, named Kelsie, who was a friend of mine in third grade. She was very nice, and very "untained," as many third graders are, and as the years went on we drifted apart. Well, she's in journalism, and she's.. *shudders* Well, she's one of the "popular" people now, and thus she has the dress code-violating, trendy clothes-wearing semi-ghetto schtick going on. I'm not sure if she even recognized me when I was told to do something on the computer for her fashion column.. She was talking as if she was obligated to try to be nice to a total stranger. Oh well.

Teh SillyCircus Day 36- Don't worry, by happy.
Comments (3) | Permalink

Sunday, September 19, 2004

Once upon a time in a magical, far away land called Cino..

Comment Commentary

Shin- *nods* The Sims 2 isn't my number one priority, but it's up there..

Godel- I see.. But why are people screaming Chinese insults at each other all the time at your school? o_O

Mimmi- I like dreams, period. When I was little I could control my dreams.. That was cool. Too bad I can't do that anymore.

Solo- And bizarre = cool. ;)

Mal- But what about the transparent backgrounds? I think myOtaku should add that.. It would be quite awesome.

Aleia- Come on, Aleia, you're among friends here. Just admit that you were going for the new record. :P

--

I've been telling myself to watch Star Wars for the past few days.. After much poking and prodding, I finally popped our aged VHS copy of A New Hope into our only functioning tape player in the house. We have the old Episodes IV-VI boxset that was released a little while before they were all remade.. At the beginning of the tape it talks about how it is "The way to watch Star Wars.

One.

Last.

Time."

I find that funny, three incarnations later.

There's also an interview with some guy who's obviously not listening to George Lucas's responses to the most generic interview questions ever. When I was little, we would just fast forward through it. Even then it was a trashy interview. Oh well.

I laugh at VHS image quality! HAH! HA HA HA.

Just before the Death Star run, our Pizza Hut came and I stopped the tape and watched a mix of Indiana Jones on Sci-Fi and "When Star Wars Ruled the World" on VH1. I'll finish up ANH tomorrow, and probably get through the beginning of Return of the Jedi tomorrow.

The tapes are the original cut of Star Wars, before the whole CG-renovation thing they did a while back. I do vividly remember going to see the revised Episode IV at the movies with my dad, though, and I was just about the only person in my small, private-school kindergarten class to see it. I explained it all to them, they went with their moms to go see it, and for the next one and a half school years we spent most of our recess time reenacting various scenes, mostly when they're in the trash compactor.

Good times, good times..

However, I can't look back at those times without feeling intense loathing and disgust with my classmates and, for the most part, myself. I would always state facts that I knew were right, and they would always contradict me.

I remember one time when I was at a friend's house, and I mentioned how I heard how NASA found a new planet.. Of course, the kid was talking about how if there any planets farther than Pluto, we would have always known because God would have told us. Or something like that.

This, of course, got me royally pissed, but I didn't say anything. We went to a private Christian pre-school, though, so in retrospect I shouldn't have been so surprised.

I also had one or two nervous breakdowns before I was seven. Isn't that a little abnormal?

Oh, and we always played Chip's Challenge, an old puzzle game that came packaged with some old Windows operating system on the class computer. We would take turns all the time and yell at whoever was playing where to go. When I played I told everybody to stop doing that, and then I would do exactly what they did when I wasn't playing. I was a whiny, cocky, hypocrite and I hate that in a person, even if they're "little and can't help themselves." Whiny little six-year-old girls who have such a huge ego and sense of vanity and yet they look like Mon Chi Chis.. I hate them. Any small child who isn't quiet. I can't help but think that's wrong.

--

And now for some filler content.

OtakuSennen: *looks at Sierra's winter game lineup* Do you think Barbie of Swan Lake: The Enchanted Forest will dominate Half-Life 2?
OtakuSennen: 'Cause, you know, they're really close.
OtakuSennen: It all comes down to the polishing.
Shinmaru007: Yeah.
Shinmaru007: In the end, though, I think that Half-Life 2 will eek ahead.
OtakuSennen: Actually, I think the opposite.
OtakuSennen: Barbie's going to pull forward in the end.
OtakuSennen: After all, Barbie has such a fanbase.
Shinmaru007: We'll see what happens, then, bitch >:o
OtakuSennen: >:o


You're a Winter. You very much enjoy your time
alone but do like other people's company
sometimes. You just need your space. You have a
few priviledged friends who saw past your
colder exterior to find the true you. You can
have pretty bad mood swings (though you hate to
admit it) so you could be soft one second then
storming around the next! But over all, you're
a very pleasant person once people take the
time to get to know you. You're a good friend
for in-depth talks. You're very talanted when
it comes to creative things.


What season are you? (pics)
brought to you by Quizilla

I love CG anime art like that.. It's all so inspirational.

--

My brother's been obsessing over The Sims for a while now, and he went into withdrawral when we lost all our game files. He was so happy when we got the new hard drive, and so disheartened when it wasn't installing. It got annoying as hell. After a while, it subsided, but it came back like a huge, tumbling wave of obsession when the Sims 2 commercials came out. He then tried installing it on the laptop, despite my suggestion, and what do you know, it worked. He's now sitting on the other side of this desk playing the game and talking to me about all the cool new skins he got with Superstar (He bought it a while back but never had a chance to play it). I suppose it's good that he's not trying to touch me and annoy me, but he's talking to me about about Simmy garble that I really don't don't want to listen to. Oh well.

--

It's too bad that there aren't any domestic Asian Kung-Fu Generation (They did Haruka Katana, one of the Naruto opening themes) CDs. I would probably import a disk or two, if it weren't for a couple problems:

a) Almost all of their works are freaking singles.

b) Two-song albums + import prices = not worth it.

They are a very cool band, though, and it would be most awesome if they came to Anime Expo or Otakon for a concert..

A man can dream, though, a man can dream..

Teh SillyCircus Day 35- Oh my God, they killed Charo!

...Eh.
Comments (4) | Permalink

Saturday, September 18, 2004

How many fanboys does it take to screw in a lightbulb? 'Cause the one in here just went out and I can't seem to remember which way to rotate it..

Comment Commentary

Shin- Just goths. Goths hate everything.

DDG- B-But Mr. Nords! Nords!

Godel- Do these shows even have villains, aside from "bad boys" with wavy hair and poor personalities?

Mal- I did, but now that I know who the president will be, I really don't care.

Mal- Nah, you had it the first time.

Mal- Trying to break the record, eh? Well you'll have to try harder- we need four now. :P

Godel- I don't get it. ._.

Aleia- Ooh, we can actually have one that's high-school aged. Now that's an angle the world will love.

Mimmi- Yay, we have enough fanbase for a cult now.

Shin- Just the satisfaction of knowing you're the tenth. That's how things work around here.

--

I had a dream that my family moved into a new house last night. It was a rather large house, actually; it seemed to be vaguely modeled after the house on the Surreal Life, heh. It seemed rather colonial, though, but the paintings hung on the walls were really out-there. It seemed that we won a contest or something, and this was the first time we were to see our new house. I opened a door while going through a hallway, and it led downstairs, to a room that was painted a dark blue with really, really weird images painted on the walls. Deformed, poorly done people, mostly. Simple as they were, they were unnerving.. But the room was very cool, regardless. There was a small step that had a big, circular bed on it, and in the center was a little island (I guess you could call it that.. It was a slightly elevated area in the middle that had a modern-looking desk with a very cool, very advanced computer.

It was a very large, very spacious room, and it was all mine. I felt it was very private and secure, as if it was my own little apartment. A sort of sweet solitarity, where I was free to do whatever I pleased.

And then I woke up to the sound of my brother running into my room and playing that summer camp wake-up song rather loudly on his saxaphone.

--

As a few of you know, I have a Xanga blog, where I mostly talk about real-life, personal stuff. A good deal of my friends do as well, and I spend more time reading theirs than I do working on my own (The theme is still the coolest thing ever, though). When I first came around to the Xanga stuff, everyone did happy, silly entries, and I did the same. Lately, though.. They've gotten deeper, and a bit more philosophical, and I'm a little worried about them. I care about these specific people a lot, and yet they don't really seem to want to open up to me. Might just be the gender barrier..

But if you're reading this, Lee, and even Oni, I hope you two feel better soon. ^_^

--

In computer news, I am extremely close to gathering the components for the computer.. In a way, you could say that I've almost gone gold, heh. Once my dad runs the spec sheet by the techies at work, it's just a matter of buying the parts (Newegg + Overnight shipping = :D) and figuring out who the hell is going to put it all together. But I'm sure I've talked about that before.

Sims 2. Must have. *throws money at Best Buy people* I really can't wait to make my own items for the house. I was browsing the official site last night and saw that someone made an Alienware computer. I'm sure there's going to be a ton more creative items like that, and I would like to contribute to that.

*bitch slaps his outdated Windows 98, 256MB RAM HP minitower*

Teh SillyCircus Day 34- Thou shalt not worship any video card before ATI.
Comments (5) | Permalink

Friday, September 17, 2004

Oh God, the pain! The horrible, dull, not really that awful pain!

Comment Commentary

Shin- I'll let you in on a little secret: The local newspaper is nothing but one bit xerox. :P

Aleia- A bleak premonition of things to come..

Aleia- A bleak premonition of things to come..

Aleia- Wow, three in a row. New record.

Shin- I'll be sure to relay the message.

Mimmi- The odds of me reviewing novels = no. Sadly, nobody at this school cares about good literature.

Solo- It's just the official name of TNT, heh. It was the biggest, most obscure word I could find in my lame Oxford "pocket" dictionary to use as an example.

Godel- None of our school computers have towers. The monitors still sit on top of them. :P

--

Argh, I am in hurt. I woke up sore from the exercise yesterday, and it got better as the day went by, and it came back in a big screaming rush in the form of ten minutes of running in 98-degree weather. I ran a mile in eight minutes and forty seconds, which saddens me. A lot of people did six laps, but I was satisfied running as much as I did without my head exploding from the heat.

Other than that, nothing outstandingly splendid happened at school. I ended up reciting a Beastie Boys song for five bucks.. But in the end it was for nothing. Curse people who don't give money when they say they will. >:O

Oh, I just realized something: Our school's new vice principals' names are Mr. Cox and Mr. Nords. How strange is that?

--

What's with all of these corny teen dramas that networks are throwing out these days? It seems as if WB's entire weeknight lineup is full of beautiful 19-year-old white kids having conflicts.. They all sort of melt together with me: The OC, that other beach one, the one where they're near the beach, the one in the quiet mountain town.. And now there's one where they're all snowboarders? Hell, I may as well pitch one to NBC so they can keep up with the trend.

It's a teen drama.. About people who work at a teen drama! You can't get more angsty than young, talentless actors with all the money they could ever want acting on a television show.

Chad: Rodney, where's my.. Conditioner?
Rodney: How should I know? I use a different brand than you!
Chad: (pins Rodney against the wall) Don't lie to me. We all know my brand is better, even you.

It writes itself, dammit.

Teh SillyCircus Day 33- "But Jessica, I did not have an affair with Tanya." "Damn it, Georgio, don't lie to me. Why else would you be wearing her pants?"
Comments (7) | Permalink

Thursday, September 16, 2004

Customer service is a void from which no mortal soul can escape.
Just checked my email for the first time in a couple weeks, and I got a message from Karmi.


PS: Tell everyone at OB I said hi and that I miss them lots and lots. I'll be back soon, I promise. :)

So be sure to say "hi" in the comment box so she can separate the true friends from the fakers. *PEER PRESSURE*

--

Comment Commentary

Godel- Aw, too bad. Despite my constant complaining, I really enjoy working on yearbooks and newsletters and the like, even when the end result could be overthrown by a monkey doodling on used toilet paper.

Shin- In retrospect, it was a foolish decision, and I shall now hang myself in the town square and hope that God forgives me.

StarBound- Does she do the high-pitched annoying voice when she does the quotes? Because I hate it when people do that. Rikki Simmons is the only true GIR, dammit.

Solo- I like Volume 2 a lot more than Volume 1. The episodes are cooler, though I haven't gotten around to the commentary, and the DVD-insert and disc art is cool as well. There's also a Roman Dirge reference on the back which is incredibly cool, too.

Aleia- Damn those stairs. They are too clever sometimes..

--

We went up to the computer lab to determine our Accelerated Reader levels today. I hadn't been in the computer lab yet this year, and I did not know that they brought in all-new computers. They are, predictably, Dells, but they're sexy Dells, with flat-screened CRT monitors and cool (but not as cool as my Nyko Airflo) optical mouses. It looks like the school really put out for computer stuff this year.

The test was pretty run-of-the-mill. They give you sentences with blanks in them, and you're supposed to choose the right word. The difficulty of the questions fluctuates with your responses, and mine got pretty difficult. They gave me a ton of long, confusing paragraphs and a ton of words that you won't even find in some dictionaries. I got worried when the responses went from "trinitrotoluene" to "climate." If I got a lower reading level, that means I will be able to read easier books. Yay for me.

--

I would consider today the first "real" day of Phys Ed. In the middle of the day, with blistering temperatures of 94 degrees fahrenheit, we had to run a lap and do two heats of sprinting. I don't mean to brag, but I've always been a little proud of my running. It's not like I'm the fastest runner, but I normally get third place in the fifty-yard dash and I'm proud of that (I've also run the mile in 7:49, but that was in the cool, brisk morning, not in 100-degree weather). We then went into the gym and did some pushups. Personally, I find it strange how so many people have such a hard time with simple pushups. I rarely do anything exercise-ey with my arms and I never have a problem with getting fifty out.

..I apologize for sounding braggy.

--

After PE, I got into a conversation with a kid in journalism about computers as we were defragging the computer's floppy drive and reinstalling Word 97. He's pretty knowledgeable with computers, and I even learned a few things (No thanks to you, Azure >:|). It took forever to get the computer to properly transfer the files, and by the time it was all in there it was already time to go. I suppose I'll be blowing a lot of time until it's time to actually start designing the newspaper. The teacher may have me edit some things, but I'm not comfortable critiquing people I don't know.

Oh, and a cool little factoid: We actually got the local newspaper to professionally print our stuff. The minimum number of prints they can do is one thousand, and God knows 95% of our student population won't be picking these up other than to ogle the cheerleaders or use it as wrapper for their chewed-up gum. It's all for the common good (excluding the janitors), I guess.

Teh SillyCircus Day 32- Come on, man, hook me up with some Fable.

EDIT: I'm a generally unfuckwitted, liberal, tight as fuck, relatively well adjusted human being!
See how compatible you are with me!
Brought to you by Rum and Monkey

Hm, 80% compatability with Ken. Interesting.
Comments (8) | Permalink

Wednesday, September 15, 2004

If only all black mages looked like Lulu..
Comment Commentary

Shin- Can I still make fun of acid?

Mimmi- Well why don't you just jam your simple and organized habits in my face!? ;_;

Mal- Personally, I think it blows more than it sucks.

Godel- I'll be sure to check those out.

--

Lack of Karmi = Lack of Ken = Lack of entertaining AIM chats. Karmi, where are you?

It's times like these when I think about knowing people online, and you could die and they would think your phone line just got disconnected or something. But that's a rather morbid thought, so let's get off that subject. I just ate half a bag of shredded Mexican cheese.

--

School was pretty dull today. I finished Go Ask Alice (OMG SHE DIEZ!!11!) and I have returned to Black Hawk Down. I'm about a quarter of the way through it, and it's remained a relatively consistent level of coolness. The black hawk finally went down. =/

I finally sat down and did my Pikmin 2 review in journalism today. The other guy hasn't really done anything for his Street Racing Syndicate review, and we still have to divide the work for the Upcoming Games column. I came up with three games, he came up with one.. I'll probably end up having him do my Devil May Cry 3 as well as his Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3, while I take care of Half-Life 2 and MGS3. Of course, that's subject to change, as long as I don't have to review Budokai. That's one game I refuse to touch.

"But Sen, where's the review?" Oh, right. Here it is:

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Title: Pikmin 2
Console: Nintendo Gamecube
Release Date: August 30, 2004
Genre: Real-Time Strategy / Puzzle

The followup game to Nintendo's reasonably popular Pikmin, this game follows a golden rule of sequels that is too often ignored: If it isn't broken, don't fix it. The game leaves its predecessor's sharp, intuitive gameplay and adds to it, creating a unique and rewarding experience.

In the game, you reprise the role of space delivery man Olimar, accompanied by his new, incompetent sidekick by the name of Louie, as they return to the treasure-infested planet of the Pikmin. Pikmin are small, strange-looking creatures who act as your all-purpose army of workers throughout the game. Just as in Pikmin 1, controlling hordes of Pikmin is simple and flexible, though Nintendo tweaked the AI a bit to make orders more user-friendly. The changes are minor (Pikmin automatically carry enemies and items back to the ship), and they work well without hindering experienced players much.

If the gameplay of Pikmin 2 is the cake, the visuals are definitely the icing. From the advanced character models to the stunning fire effects, everything has high polygon counts and mind-blowing textures that give eye candy junkies an extra treat. If you were a fan of the original, or if you're just looking for an unique, quirky game, pick up Pikmin 2. You won't regret it.

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If I were running a newspaper, I would not accept this. It's too short and lame and I didn't even get into how charming it all is. Stupid 200 word count..

In the end, I'm going to end up doing less newsletter and more yearbook. My theme went over pretty well (I can't remember if I have mentioned that or not- with daily posts, the subjects seem to blur and, sometimes, completely go away).. Among an incredibly select amount of people. Three or four people saw it, I would guess, but they all liked it. Percentage-wise, that's very good. Rationally.. Not so much.

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Hooray, I was right, the Invader Zim Game Slave 2 (With the gamer freak-child named Iggins) is on Volume 2. It was even better than I remembered, heh. Fanboy satire never seems to get tired.

Teh SillyCircus Day 31- One man's trashy update is another man's treasure-filled greatest post ever, so don't complain.
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Tuesday, September 14, 2004

Will the gap between Animaniacs and Histeria ever be crossed?
Comment Commentary

Mal- But weren't you behind me not two months ago? That sucks, Mal. Your myOtaku is one of my favorites.

Shin- Well there's no need for two wallets. Get it together, man!

Godel- A while back I was so ashamed by my old fanart that I deleted all of it. Unfortunately, their 60% ratings still count toward my fanart average, which is bad.

StarBound- Heh, thanks. I get a bit hung-up about it nowadays because I was so close to getting in the top fifty a month or two back.. And it was stolen from me. Grr.

Mimmi- It took me forever to figure out exactly what I was going to write down there. 90% of the time making that picture was dedicated to writing the Atkins thing, heh.

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I dropped Black Hawk Down in favor of that aforementioned druggie diary book, Go Ask Alice, for Accelerated Reader yesterday. It's an easy read (I got to page forty-something after half an hour of reading), which sort of has me worried. The book's AR level is 5.6 and my lowest reading level was 5.7. Last year that wouldn't be much of a problem (Fahrenheit 451, my favorite novel, was 5.5), but this year my teacher seems to be a real hardass about it.

Anyway, the book itself is interesting. It's sort of fun in an eerie way to peer into this girl's private life and hear her descriptions about various highs.. I got over halfway done with it last night, and by this point I was getting extremely frustrated with the girl. On one page she's her happy, energetic self, and she uses the same adjective three times (It's oh so very very very annoying) and talking about how she's never going to touch drugs again, and on the next one she goes on and on about how she's nonconformist and does drugs and how they're so awesome. I suppose that could be considered the truth behind addiction, but things ran dry for a bit.

I'm pretty close to finishing it now. I know that in the end she stops writing in her diary, and three weeks later she's found dead in her room.. It's too bad that she didn't really make me pity her most of the time. But that's sort of the curse of publishing someone else's journal, I guess. You can't edit anything to make it more appealing.

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I picked up Invader Zim Volume 2: Progressive Stupidity in Walmart for $15 after school today. Because of homework and everything, my parents said that we couldn't watch it until all homework was completed.. And that wasn't too big of a problem for me. I just had to read a short story, do some half-assed critical thinking and rattle off answers to twenty-three math problems. My brother, however, was having a hard time with his math homework, along with a big spelling packet and a one-page essay on Neil Armstrong. I convinced him to take a break, though, and we watched the episodes with the baby-looking aliens and Bloaty's Pizza Hog. Gold. Pure gold. As awesome as the first volume was, Progressive Stupidity has so many of my favorite episodes. Oh, I hope it has Iggins. Iggins rocks.

What I'm really looking forward to with the Zim DVDs, though, are the unfinished, never-before-aired episodes. They're supposedly putting the audio tracks to animatics (moving storyboards) on one of the discs. It'll probably be the one that comes with the actual DVD box. Does anybody know if they're still planning on making that pig-shaped holder? As cool as Zim's house is, I really want a big, staring pig to call my own.

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To continue the briefly mentioned subject of my homework, I think I'll talk about how I suck at remembering things. I don't mean to say that I don't comprehend the homework, it's just that I don't remember what homework I have. Most of the time I end up rushing from class to class without writing in my student planner, which is extremely bad.

The thing is, once my mind is cleared and I'm sitting in bed without anything distracting my thoughts, I remember things I didn't when I was occupied, forcing me to finish various assignments at 11:56 PM. I really, honestly don't mean to put things like that off, as my parents suspect.. It just sort of happens, heh. At least it gives me time to rest and lay around when I get home from a long, painfully hard day of dull "advanced" classes and unchallenging, non-productive Phys Ed.

Teh SillyCircus Day 30- "Dear Diary, LSD is so much fun! I tried acid the other day and it is great great great! I think I'm going to try pot next week, and I cannot wait! But after that I'm never doing it again. ^.^"
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