Monday, September 13, 2004

Once you hack, you can't go back.
Comment Commentary

Shin- Well, I wouldn't go as far to say that football are nuts- it's just that the freakin' insane people are attracted to football, for some reason.

Mal- Nah, the Soccer gameplayers are best at rioting. It's all sort of reversed in people's moms' basements.

Godel- Well, Bit Torrent or however you spell it. *nods* I still can't help but look at it as file sharing, though.

StarBound- Mmyep, I don't trust Hewlett Packard anymore (all the stuff they sold us is beginning to fall apart).

Des- Damn straight squared!

--

Not to enforce Shin's recent mauling of my mO, but I've dropped down to #72.. I can't believe I was at fifty-nine just a little over a month ago. I don't really understand why all these noobs are overtaking people with all of their lame, poorly constructed posts and awful themes. It must be because they do a lot of wallpapers and fanart and the like. And so begins a brand new half-assed campaign from yours truly:

Yes, instead of spending hours upon hours perfecting a piece of art, it is now all the craze to pump out tons and tons of fanart faster than an Irish Catholic housewive did with kids in the early 1700's.

That's right, I went there. *cough*

In case that amazingly polite and competent analogy didn't get the point across to you, here is an equation that is so simple even a half-decent artist could understand it:

(Pencil + Scanner + Paper + Lots of scribbling anime eyes) x 434 = high myOtaku rating.

It's a proven method, too. Neither Shin nor Solo would be where they are today without their abundance of fanart and wallpapers. Who needs witty, engaging entries on a blog service to be popular?

--

Well, once this scanner starts working again, I will be putting out more fanart, and I hope for it to be good, not as what I ranted about above. I have a couple nice little doodles lined up already (I hope to display TheOtaku's very first Saikano fanart), so.. Yeah.

--

The school gave out our student planners today. They cover's a lot cooler-looking than last year's, but the interior theme is sort of immature. It has a bunch of pointless little facts forced into each page. There's something about toenails growing three times slower than fingernails, Mandarin is spoken by one third of the world, and plenty of other useless tidbits that are only worsened with silly little corresponding doodles (..other than mine).

And sure enough, I lost mine before the day's end. I took it out for the map of the US in the back for a Social Studies project, and I realized I didn't have it after lunch. It turns out that my friend picked it up, so I'll have it back tomorrow. Still, it's not a very good sign.

--

I picked up a plain, black leather wallet for $6.50 at Target today to finally replace my old one that I got in a Wienerschnitzel kids meal around six years ago. I was hoping to pick up the NES controller wallet at Gamestop (It's a Hot Topic link because I'm lazy), but people are already questioning my abundance of Nintendo-related shirts.

And quite honestly, they have a right to. I don't really wear that many shirts other than my Nintendo ones nowadays.. Methinks it's time for a bit of a wardrobe expansion.

Teh SillyCircus Day 29- "Damn you, damn this computer and damn the RIAA."
Comments (3) | Permalink

Sunday, September 12, 2004

Why shouldn't I go to the next level without saving? Is that too risky for you, ya noob?
Comment Commentary

Godel- Even if I like a song when it gets stuck in my head, I want to stab the corresponding artists repeatedly with a rusty spork (Yes, there are sporks outside of plastic) by the one-week mark.

Shin- Well I did, so there.

Aleia- Parades and skits? I don't recall any parades.. Have I been missing out on the complete experience this entire time and never knew it? *plot twist*

Mimmi- Yeah, I tend to have that kind of effect on people.

--

Our house is generally very open. Most of the time we sleep with our doors open, and it's very rare that anybody actually closes a door, except for ones that lead outside.

Now that football season has started up once again, though, a few things change: Instead of doing her quiet cross-stitching while watching primetime comedy on the WB, my mom is once again her crazy rabid Steelers-loving self.. And that results in a lot of screaming and overdramatic gasping on Monday nights and Sunday mornings. It's surprising how loud she gets, and it oftentimes disrupts things I'm doing, so this is just about the only time you can really expect a door to be closed.

I am not a football fan. Sure, I'll occasionally sit in a room and watch a little bit while doing something else, and I'm pretty adept at catching the ball during Phys Ed, but I don't like it. In fact, there are no organized sports (including WWF and the International Ping Pong Tourney) that I follow or even remotely obsess over. Because physical activity sucks.

--

I'm probably going to begin my computer part-gathering campaign this week.. Apparently, my parents want to buy one or two components every month so that the cost isn't as "devestating" in the end. I think I'll throw together an outline of the needed items and a preliminary price later.. Of course, I'm still not sure if all of the items will work together. I probably have to run it by someone knowledgeable about it all before I waste money on a faulty power supply or something like that.

And I still don't know shit about actually putting together a computer, heh. There's no better way to learn something than through practice, though..

I can't help but thing I've typed that exact same little segment before with slightly different wording before.

--

The more I think about it, the more I think the old hard drive may not have really lost everything. Doesn't a hard drive take at least an hour to reformat? Perhaps just the operating system was lost.. Heh, I still may be able to salvage all my MP3s. I've sort of started searching for them all again, but it will be extremely hard to find a lot of them without the aid of a file-sharing program.

*contemplates BTing like Azure* Hm.


The guys at the computer store could have just been trying to make even more profit. They sold my dad a new networking card for no reason. Our old one worked perfectly fine.

--


Watching IGN's latest Sims 2 video is absolutely hilarious, and I'm thinking of it as a sort of motivation to get all of this compu-business finished.

I suppose the thing I'm looking forward to most in The Sims 2 most is probably the character and item customization.. Either that or advanced building features. I think I spent more time creating and furnishing houses than actually building my characters' abilities. Oh, and I can't wait to have a family of disfunctional half-alien half-human hybrid babies live nextdoor to a happy, perfect little nuclear family of Earthlings. Now that's craziness that I want to ensue.

Teh SillyCircus Day 28- I think my right speaker is busted.. Excellent.
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Saturday, September 11, 2004

Witty observations have been replaced by the soothing screeches of howler monkeys.
Crap crap crap.

Comment Commentary

Shin- Yeah, I know.

Mal- I'll get to that. :P

StarBound- Heh. ^_^'

Mimmi- Problem with that is school funding. ~_^

--

In the morning VH1 shows their top twenty videos or whatever, and I tend to watch that before school. Sure enough, a Beastie Boys video was on there, and it was stuck in my head for the next several days. I then reflected back to the other video for Two the Five Boroughs, their latest album, and noticed something.

They totally suck.

Each of their songs has all of those weird little sound effects going in the background, along with nonsensical and irrational rhymes. It all seems sort of half-assed, in my opinion. This one didn't even grab me beat-wise. At least the Ch-Check It Out thing had a catchy bridge.

--

The mall today was nice. As per usual, I arrived on time and Christine (A good friend of mine) showed up soon after, and we waited for half an hour for everybody else to arrive. Once everybody was assembled, we went through the typical mall schedule- Arcade, Suncoast, Hello Kitty Store (=_=), movie, food court.

Wicker Park was sort of slow at first.. In the beginning I felt it was sort of a letdown. The main character's best friend's actor seemed insane/stoned, but he seemed to calm down after his introduction scene. The rest of the actors had amazingly realistic performances, though Alex (The crazy girl)'s actor ended up being my favorite. Her role called for a lot of spontaneous mood changes, going from jovial laughter to sobbing within minutes, plus an insane, sinister side, but she did it all in a way that made me feel for her character, and in a way, sympathise with her plight. As nice as the leading male's performance was, I didn't really feel like rooting for him. He didn't grab me.

But the killer for me was how it was all presented in a confusing manner. The movie jumps back and forth between a three-year-period, with no indication of when things are happening. After some conversation afterwards, things became clear, and I had a positive opinion about it all.

I know that wasn't the best review ever.. It's 8:54 and I'm really trying to get this post out on time. I'm probably not going to do an authentic, newsletter-worthy review for Wicker Park, though, because it would be hard to talk about the story without spoiling anything.

And you know how many thirteen-year-old poser-jocks are just itching to find out what happens in this psychological tale of unrequited love and obsession. *rolls his eyes*

--

We just got back from Tokyo Steak House. I hope I won't have to explain what kind of restaurant it is; its name is pretty self-explainatory.

*decides to do it anyway* It's one of those Japanese restaurants where they have the big grills in the middle of the table and the chef cooks your food right in front of you, with all the fancy tricks. We've done places like that a few times before (Kisho in nearby Valencia two or three times, plus Tokyo Steak House in the next town over), but we had never been to our nearby TSH. Upon entering, I was incredibly impressed. The whole restaurant looked authentic- there were private booths where you could sit and have conversation with colleagues, a sushi bar with little boats that the sushi floats by on (Not a conveyor belt, but interesting enough), and sliding doors. The other one wasn't quite like that (Despite their interior decorating, it still sort of looked like western architecture).

Though this joint had the style down to the very last detail, aside from the plastic coconut cups, the employees weren't quite up to par with the other ones. Most of them didn't speak unknowledgeable Engrish, which is a big part of the experience for me. As a matter of fact, most of them were white. I couldn't quite place the ethnicity of our chef, but I could tell he wasn't Japanese. I don't think his little tricks, like spinning the knife around and tossing things onto your plate from a foot away, were quite up-to-par as a lot of other chefs, but he provided little witty remarks throughout the meal. The food was excellent, as well. I love their onions and steak..

Oh, and there was sushi. We ended up getting the sampler platter (as always) and six Spicy Tuna Rolls, but I only got the shrimp and one roll. I was trying to get the salmon, but the salmon is sort of chewy and tastes like crap if it comes apart from the rice. And sure enough, it fell off, so I ate the rice and pretended like the salmon wasn't there.

It was all good, aside from the slightly under-par showmanship of the chef, but the food and atmosphere was perfect. I love their fried rice..

And my mom apparently wants to get one of those grills for our house. I swear, sometimes I question her logic and if her "happy pills" haven't affected her thought process.

Teh SillyCircus Day 27- Updated at 8:58 (11:58 EST).
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Friday, September 10, 2004

Lack of inspiration = lame post title.
Comment Commentary

Shin- I could, but I would only be lying to myself.

Mal- *nods* I want to do an occasional editorial like that, but I don't want it to be a blatant ripoff of Best Week Ever (Like the thread on OB is).

Starbound- Yeah, I'm not that into it, haha.

Mimmi- My work here is done. *flies to another planet*

Godel- I just realized that the list of words isn't a table giving definitions of various stuff.. It's just a list with no definitions and we're supposed to figure them out by ourselves. Sorry. ^_^'

*puts on an Accelerated Reader shirt that is covered with misspellings and backwards E's*

--

Bah, I don't have that much to talk about today. Nothing really eventful happened in school today- a few tests here and there, more multitasking in math, and some Jolly Rancher-eating at lunch, but it was all pretty run-of-the-mill.

I'm really surprised at how quickly I've adjusted my sleep schedule. In just one week I've gone from falling asleep at two to passing out on my mattress at nine. Normally it takes me a while to get into that groove- hell, I never fell asleep before eleven last year.

It's a good change, though. I've actually noticed myself getting up before my alarm goes off. That's extremely rare for me. I don't know how many times I've been dragged out of my bed twelve minutes before school starts and rushed out the door without even combing my hair. And I get bad bedhead.

Now what would really be weird would be if I fell asleep early through the weekend. That would be a sign of the apocalypse or something.

--

Oh, I was more "sociable" today, too. I talked to a couple friends-of-friends that I never really got to know, and it was pleasant. It was all awkward smalltalk, of course, and didn't last long, but it was a good way to waste thirty minutes of sitting around in the bleachers during gym. There was also a tad more gaming conversation, too, though it was short-lived. The guy's name is Nick (I call him "other Nick"), and we talked about Psycho Mantis for a while.. There was also comparison between the original Metal Gear Solid and Twin Snakes.

This, of course, did not last long. I got dragged over to the computer and was forced to draw animals from the Chinese Zodiac for the horoscope section. I swear, anybody who focuses on Horoscope must be the laziest person ever. They're just going to browse a few horoscope sites, splice various predictions together and slap it on a page. And here I am busting my ass for a ton of other sections. It's not very motivating to know that you're doing a ton of work and get equal or less credit than the other people.

--

I'm going to the mall tomorrow with some friends (A final list of who has not been created yet), and we're going to go see Wicker Park. I figure I may as well put together a review for it, just in case the film reviews for the newsletter suck.

...Oh my God. Have I been ranting about the Newsletter for 70% of this post? I need to go lie down..

Teh SillyCircus Day 26- Tales of Wine and Roses tend to get sort of kinky.
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Thursday, September 9, 2004

I didn't know spines could break that way.
Comment Commentary

TheCrowChicky- I feel for ya.

Mal- School started around 8:30 for me when I was in sixth grade.. God, I loved that.

There are a lot of characters, yeah.. I'm keeping pretty good tabs so far, though.

Shin- At least it's not 5:45. :P

StarBound- I've never had a problem with bubble sheets, heh. I like being anal about making sure they're filled in perfectly.

Kat- I feel for you, too.

Godel- But still, how does that tie in with amateur journalism?

--

As mentioned several months ago, I bought Devil May Cry at the Fry's Electronics in San Marcos around June. I loved it from the moment I skimmed through the instruction manual.. And things only got better once I started playing (Okay, okay, Dante saying "Let's rock, baby" in the menu intro is a bit lame). Now I'm not going to get into a big review or anything, as I did that in July, but I figured I may as well fill in anybody who's somewhat new to my mO.

Anyway, I got desperately stuck at the first Griffon (is that how they spell it in DMC? There are, like, five variations) fight. For a while I forgot about the game, but I came back to it recently after rewatching the DMC3 video on IGN. After a lot of trial and error (And redundant interrogation of Azure), I figured out his pattern, beat him, and had to move on to try and pummel some marionettes and these weird marionette-ish things with burning spinny weapons. According to the little enemy list, they're called Fetishes. I found that funny, but a bit of a damper was put on that when I looked up "Fetish" on Dictionary.com.

Fetish (n) 1. An object that is believed to have magical or spiritual powers, especially such an object associated with animistic or shamanistic religious practices.

Why does the dictionary always have to rain on my parade?

Anyway, today I backtracked into the castle and ran around for a while, with the goal of finding the shotgun in mind. I came across it in the library, as my brother had told me (I don't know how he remembered that- he's never played it and I had only found it once before). I still didn't acknowledge that he helped me, though; I was on my way to that room anyway.

Or so he thinks.

And God damn, there is no possible way that somebody could look cooler using a shotgun than the way Dante does it. It's one-handed, and he holds it out in front of him as he sort of stands sideways, and he cocks it just with a flick of the wrist. So awesome. It's insanely helpful against the Fetishes.. I spent, like, ten minutes talking about how amazingly useful it is to nobody in particular.

And then I got through the Valley of Mist level in two tries. The Phantom-impersonators weren't tough enough.

--

Journalism was a hundred times cooler today. Apparently, the principal came in earlier in the day and told the teacher that he was excited to see the first issue, and he would like to see it out by the end of September.

Which, of course, sent the teacher into a frantic must-get-it-done state. Today was all Newsletter, no Yearbook, and we all decided on what we would like to do in it. I said that I would like to do video game, television and music reviews, along with a possible editorial column. I ended up just getting video games, along with some kid I've never seen before, which isn't that bad. It gives me a good excuse to rent and play video games on schoolnights, after all.

For the first issue, we decided we would do two reviews (one per person), along with a Games-to-Look-Out-For sort of thing. I'm going to review Pikmin 2 (because I'm lazy like that), and Cesar (I think that was his name) decided on Street Racing Syndicate. We need to hammer out the details on the preview column, but that will be fixed easily.

We got that all done in five minutes, while everybody else was still barely. It turns out that the guy I'm working with has a friend who's also into games, and he mentioned Metal Gear Solid 3. A bit of awkward conversation soon followed, and a friend of a friend of mine joined in, and after a sudden stop in conversation I walked away and pretended to be busy doing other things.

With all this newsletter business going on, I'm afraid we won't get that much done on Yearbook. I'm going to suggest altrenating our focus every day (Monday Wednesday Friday one thing, Tuesday Thursday the other, then we switch the next week), but who knows what'll happen?

With the recent announcement of several good friends of mine coming into the class and the coolness of today's hour, I think I'm going to like this class more than I expected.

Oh, one last thing on that topic. Last night I threw together a preliminary rough draft of my yearbook cover pitch. Gaze in awe at the edgy simplicity that shall attract critical demographics such as punks, Goths, gangstas and the rest of the Cabbage Patch Family (Don't ask). It looks just about how I had envisioned it. The problem is filling in the title, plus it may be difficult to get the theme to be consistent throughout, considering the only other student who knows Adobe PageMaker is a girl straight out of rehab for an addiction to pink.

Edgy = bigger sales, dammit.

--

Black Hawk Down has remained consistently good so far. I found myself not paying attention as I was reading for a minute during Gym, which is not a good sign, but I've remained focused. I don't want to waste any more time reading the book if it's not on Accelerated Reader, though (I want to read it, but I don't have time to be reading two complex novels at the same time). My English teacher has a lot of kids reading this book called "Go Ask Alice," which seems to be a book about some teenage girl that jumps into drugs.. It looks like it's sort of interesting. I may have to drop Black Hawk Down temporarily, at least until I can see if it can play a role in the complex, illogical tapestry that is this school's AR program.

Teh SillyCircus Day 25- Whoa, I have an excuse to buy Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas now. "But mom, it's for school!"
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Wednesday, September 8, 2004

Just five more.. Hours, mom?
Comment Commentary

StarBound- I've ignored people like that for a long time. It still bothers me a bit, especially after twelve weeks of not having to deal with it.

Shin- It's not punk, really. I just feel that a simpler, gritty theme would sell better (We only sold 300-something yearbooks to 1100 students this past year) among the.. Middle School demographic.

Godel- Hm, I dunno. I was born in 1990 and I'm in eighth grade, though, so.. Yeah.

Mal- It's really unorganized. I'm tired of being the guinea pigs with these things..

Mimmi- Oh, totally.

--

I woke up five minutes before my alarm was set to go off (6:30), and God, how I savored those minutes. I was praying that there was some magical reason that I didn't have to wake up yet.. But sure enough, I got up and was out the door half an hour later.

As per usual, I came into the room last and pulled out my Accelerated Reader book.. Last night I was frantic to find an acceptable book (it did not help that we weren't given a list), and when all other hope had faded I found Black Hawk Down on my dad's dresser. I had bought the original novel for him after the movie adaptation came out, but I had never really bothered to read it.

I got through the first ten pages in class and damn is it good. It's still "the calm before the plunge," and I'm hoping the action keeps the entertainment value of the quiet scenes.

..In retrospect, I don't know why I quoted The Lord of the Rings while talking about a modern war novel, but whatever.

The Hunt for Red October, good as it was, seemed to drawl on for a while. There was lots of irrelevant little details strewn about, and I found myself zoning out a lot because it just lost my interest after forty pages of an unrelated character's story.

Now let's just hope Black Hawk Down is actually on our school's AR list.

--

Today seemed to be evaluate-your-students day. In English, after the reading, we were given Scantron (Cheap standardized test sheets, for those of you not in the know) papers so the teacher could see "what the class needs to work on."

Generally, our Scantrons have twenty-five bubble lines that are nice and big and spread out.. This time, however, all fifty problems were jammed onto one side and the question spaces were more slits than bubbles.. I think I spent more time making sure I wasn't outside of the lines than doing the actual test, haha.

There were a couple more things like that, but the only other thing really worth mentioning about it is that our math teacher decided to subtract one point for every one we answer incorrectly, while leaving it blank adds and subtracts nothing. She wanted to see what we already knew outside of guessing, and I suppose that was sort of an incentive to be honest.

Of course, at least one of my friends didn't hear that, and she ended up guessing on a lot of him. She shall be in my prayers.

--

Today was the first day to pick out lockers for our gym clothes. Last year it wasn't so hard to find a good one, considering we had Phys Ed in second period, but this year we all ended up getting next-to-last pick. I was lucky enough to get my hands on a fully functional one in the low-traffic area that I was in last year.. And I don't have to share it with anyone, which adds to the coolness. Last year I was still quite unsure about how to unlock combination locks (I'm stupid that way), so I had to rely on my two friends to do the lock business for me. It worked out pretty well, but there were a few.. Conflicts. Let's just say that a welding torch and a vat of vaseline got a very good workout that one day.

--

Journalism wasn't so bad today. The teacher handed out little sheets with journalistic lingo strewn all over it. According to the back side, "gutter" means "tombstone." ..Am I missing some sort of connection there?

I just know I'll end up doing the bulk of the yearbook work, but I would also like to do entertainment news.. You know, movie, music and television stuff.

The only reason I would really try to get out of this class would be if everybody else is either lazy or incompetent, leading to a trashy end product. I would refuse to affiliate with that.

I'm going to have to put together a mockup cover design that I'm thinking about pitching in Photoshop tonight, which means that I need to install the scanner/printer/copier/FAX software.. I tried yesterday, but for some reason it wasn't cooperating. Doing my computer's regular lame behavior when it comes to running things off of CDs. I could just email it to my teacher and print it from the school, though.. I might end up doing that.

Teh SillyCircus Day 24- 99-stock Smash Bros. matches with friends can be an incredibly good way to waste time.
Comments (4) | Permalink

Tuesday, September 7, 2004

The Revenge of Harry Potter and his Ragtag Band of Misadventurers
Comment Commentary

Shin- I got my brother In 3D for his birthday, and I don't think he's listened to it.. But it has The Theme From Rocky XVIII on it!

Aleia- Might the title be "Wanna B Ur Lovr" or something along those lines? That one bored me.

Mimmi- Whee.

Godel- Good. Then we have an agreement. *cough*

Solo- Anything Devo-ish is cool. *puts on his Devo hat*

Mal- Probably the mentality and image commonly associated with the artists.

--

I got into bed at 9:30 last night in a futile attempt to wake up early and well-rested. Surely enough, I finally got to the snoozing around 1 AM, and woke up promptly at 6:30 (We all know that won't last).. After a muffin or two, and a double-checking of all my materials ("Binder, check. Okay, I have it all"), it was off to the socially awkward and degrading wasteland that is my school.

On the first day of school, there is a very long and very slow-moving line that leads from where the busses park to the cafegymatorium, where students pick up their schedules. I was pretty alone in the line, except for a friend from sixth grade a few feet away from me, but we didn't talk much. I basically listened to conversations of the (stupid) people behind me and watched the new seventh graders frantically head to the back of the line. It's funny how they all seem so small, and yet I was like them just a year ago.. Heh.

This year there's new administration- new principal, two new vice principals, psychiatrist and all that jazz. Quite a few of them were walking around in suits and sunglasses and adjusting the volume on their earpieces.. I was very much hoping that some slow-motion battle would break out in the middle of the yard, but nothing happened.

I got in soon enough, where a bunch of students were congregated, and sure enough, first thing I hear directly addressed to me. "HEY! Hairy Pothead! *retarded laughter*"

Not a good way to start the day. I didn't let it bother me much, but the thought of injuring them was there.

Time to break down the day into little chunks.

Period 1- Language Arts. I was one of the last people to get through the line, so I came in to a quiet room full of familiar faces copying stuff out of dictionaries. The instructions on the board were extremely vague (It seemed to be more of a jumble of words associated with generic English assignments), but I figured it out eventually.. Copying definitions of various words. Simple stuff.

The teacher is charismatic, but she doesn't fool around, either. She gave out these "dreaded" spelling packets last year that I heard a lot about, which caused some pretty good students to lose a tidy GPA, but I'm sure they wouldn't have been that much of a problem.

She also seems to talk about World War II a lot. Too bad this is Language Arts..

Period 2- Science. GATE ("Gifted And Talented Education") is our school system's advanced program.. And our school only has one GATE-certified science teacher: the one we all had last year. Thus the environment was pretty laid-back, because we already knew what the teacher was like, and the room was full of chatter. I'm feeling a bad omen about the curriculum this year.. Chemistry, Astronomy and a dip into Physics. *shudder*

Period 3- Social Studies. Considering we were all tossed into the only eighth grade GATE classes, we all walked from room 20 to room 21 for the next class. Some new students were like "OMGZ," which I found funny, but in retrospect it was more worthy of a "-_-".

Same History teacher as last year, which is cool. She's one of the young, fun teachers that everybody loves.

Period 4- Lunch! Lunch at 10:30.. Mm, yeah, I normally haven't eaten breakfast by that time.

The cafeteria had burritos, which I absolutely love, when they don't have cheese in them. Sure enough, it was cheese, and I ended up giving it to a friend. They raised the prices for lunch, too.. *sigh* Same crappy food for even more money than before.

Last year, the seventh graders (my grade at the time) had fifth period lunch, and eighth had fourth period. This year, however, it's not as simple. It's all mixed, and a lot of cool people ended up in the lunch that I don't have. This made things a lot more boring.

The rest of the period was walking around and catching up with people. Almost everybody has different hair now. I noticed a lot of people have stopped spiking their hair and are letting it grow out (Ashton Kutcher-style). Stupid fashion.

Period 5- Math. I've never been a big fan of math. It's not creative enough to catch my interest.. This year, however, the math teacher seems nice enough, but I bet she used to teach fourth-graders.. I would describe her teaching methods as "slightly juvenile."

Today's stuff was amazingly simple. Variables. She's giving us a test tomorrow to see where we need to get in the book. Interestingly enough, she's grading on a curve.. That's a first for me.

Things are probably going to pick up quickly, though. I'll be sure to stay on my toes.

Period 6- PE. Another lame thing about the new way things are being run with the new administration: Some of the GATE-grouped students have PE sixth then their elective after that, while others have it the exact opposite.

Well, I'm one of the people who has Phys Ed in sixth, and I am the only person I know in my class. Somehow I ended up with the militant-yet-seemingly fun coach dude, and people seem to take him seriously. Hopefully that will lead to less idiotic remarks from classmates.

Last year's PE was easy- we had a softie teacher. Now we have the hardcore coach that's going to really put us to work, dammit.

Period 7- Journalism. Remember how I was in afterschool Yearbook last year? Well now the teacher who was running that has decided to start a journalism elective, and she decided to kidnap me from the happy world of art and throw me in there. The rest of the class, spare a couple people, looks incredibly bleak and hopeless. I really hope I get 100% total creative control, because I don't want the book to have a different background and text style for every page. It was full of typos, too.. On the pages I didn't do, at least.

I'll see how it all pans out. I might abandon journalism (There's also supposed to be website and newsletter stuff going on, but meh), let the yearbook rot, and return to art.

I do sort of have a cool theme.. I'm going to put together some concept stuff tonight and show the teacher tomorrow. It's not as light-hearted as yearbooks at this age group tend to be, thus I think it will attract more sales. Punk is in this season and all that shit.

And now I have a piano lesson. God, Tuesdays are so packed..

Teh SillyCircus Day 23- Buck the Establishment by shopping at a national goth/punk fashion chain store in the mall!
Comments (3) | Permalink

Monday, September 6, 2004

TV dinners for lunch..? Oh, dare to dream.
Comment Commentary

Shin- I refuse to dignify that with a response. >:|

Solo- Ooh, national. They always just show "Los Angeles" for our area.

Mimmi- Done and done.

Godel- Typing keeps my fingers nice and strong. Getting them in the right "position" is the problem. :P

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You know I am really running low on post ideas when I decide to review a CD I have, song by song. I came up with this idea yesterday (Well, not really.. I did it a while back when Yuki Kajiura's Fiction came out), but the main problem was choosing which CD to rant about. It's not like I really have that many..

But in the end, through the mighty and infinite wisdom of Shin, it was decided that I would talk about Weird Al Yankovic's "Bad Hair Day."

A year or two ago I was heavily into collecting Weird Al CDs. At the time I really had no definite taste in music- I mainly got the records for the humor, and there's always a good variety of music (Which is good when you have no real preference).

Bad Hair Day was one of the last I added to my collection. It never really struck me as the funniest CD ever, from what I had heard of it, so it came last. Predictably, I listened to it a couple times, laughed a bit, and went back to Running with Scissors.

Well, a couple days ago my brother was playing it in his room and I felt extremely tempted to listen. After getting through most of the CD, I had a bit of a revelation- Bad Hair Day is the best of Al's records musically, not comically. I shall now list off the songs and why they all kick so much ass.

Amish Paradise- Parody of "Gangsta's Paradise" by Coolio. It's hardcore gangsta rap with Amish people. How cool is that?

To be honest, I am a small, casual fan of some more dark (musically, not lyrically) rap. I was introduced to Gangsta's Paradise via Amish Paradise, which I think has better lyrics. But that's just me.

Everything You Know is Wrong- Style parody of They Might Be Giants. This one is incredibly upbeat and bouncy, with some of the most random and hilarious lyrics I have ever come across. The entire song is enjoyable, but I particularly like the segment with the surfer-style guitar solo. It sort of reminds me of the end of Pulp Fiction, heh..

Cavity Search- Parody of "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me" by U2. The opening is energizing and catchy, but the song quickly declines into a dull, repetitive diddy with lyrics that are in no way Al's best. The muzak version of the opening is rather cool, though.

Callin' In Sick. While the lyrics are a bit entertaining, most of the song itself is mellow and uninteresting (Aside from the bridge, where the guitar picks things up a bit). I suppose that could be considered the point of the song, if you want to look into it a bit, but that's not that good of an excuse.

The Alternative Polka- Ah, Al's polkas. For those of you who aren't familiar with his music (And I severely apologize to you about this post and the burning isolation you must feel), Al tends to make a medley of popular songs he couldn't make parodies out of and puts them in polka form. Though they are interesting for a while, once you've heard a good deal of them they all tend to melt together. The only things that really make them stand out are the songs used, and unfortunately, I do not enjoy, let alone recognize, any of the songs in this particular polka. Let's move on.

Since You've Been Gone- Since You've Been Gone is an entirely acapella (no instruments, just voices) song harmonized between four or five guys. Most of the lyrics are Al whining about how much he hurts since his girlfriend left him (In disturbingly graphic detail), and the only part that's really fun is the ending line (it makes the song all one big insult).. It's enjoyable to pick out pieces of vocals and figure out all of the different parts of the harmonizing.

Gump- Parody of "Lump" by the Presidents of the United States. As with most of Al's movie-related songs, Gump basically summarizes the story of its popular cinematic counterpart. I found it funny, despite never seeing the movie, and the song itself is catchy as well. Stylin'.

I'm So Sick of You. Lame song, lame lyrics, not funny, not good, let's continue.

Syndicated Inc.- Parody of "Misery" by Soul Asylum. A song about addiction to television with a slick, enjoyable melody. It's mellow in a good way, unlike "Callin' In Sick," and the bridge is a bit "louder" than the rest of the song, but it doesn't break the tone set by the verses.

*gives this one the "Bestest track on the CD" sticker of approval*

I Remember Larry. "I Remember Lary" is a song in which Al recalls his childhood prankster, Larry, and all of the horrible things he has done to him in the past. In the end, Al ends up kidnapping Larry, taking him into the forest and burying him inside of a plastic bag/coffin. The lyrics are rather creative (so many original ways to torture a guy), and the song is not too bad either, despite its being a tad repetitive. This one is one of the songs that my young, impressionable mind absorbed and then had to imitate (Don't go back to Palmdale Lake, and most certainly don't go digging around <_<).

Phony Calls- Parody of "Waterfalls" by TLC. It's R&B.. Uninteresting R&B with generic lyrics (by Al standards, anyway). This is probably my least favorite song on the CD.

The Night Santa Went Crazy. An extremely good closing song for Bad Hair Day, "The Night Santa Went Crazy" is the story of every gentile's favorite Christmas-related character going on a drunken rampage throughout the North Pole, leading to his inevitable incarceration.

Look deep inside your heart. Didn't you, too, know deep down inside that Santa Claus was a cold-blooded murderer by night?

The music is near indecipherable from any other modern Christmas song, with bells and a warm and comforting tune playing throughout, which just adds to the irony of the song.

There were also two extra-gory endings that were only performed in concert, which you can find here and here.

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..And now, in retrospect, I realize that I really, really shouldn't become a music critic when I grow up, because I just plain suck at it. Oh well, I'll be sure to make up for it tomorrow, with a summary of my glorious return to the world of the underbudgeted American public school system.

Teh SillyCircus Day 22- I have a harder time patting my stomach and rubbing my head than patting my head and rubbing my stomach. Is that a learning disability?
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Sunday, September 5, 2004

Skyrocketing backwards
IGN article on Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

"Very reminiscent of the patchy communities I remember growing up with in the 1980s-era California cities of Lancaster and Palmdale, Angel Pine comes complete with its own mom and pop liquor store, a quaint little bakery, a single-screen theater, and a humorously-named motel known as 'U-Get-In.'"

Heh, another little mention. It's cool to see your towm mentioned in such a large public community.

Comment Commentary

Shin- What kind of person voluntarily wakes up before seven on vacation? *laughs*

Mimmi- Tell Schnookums I said "Right back atcha."

Mal- Where did that come from?

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Well, the wallpaper that I displayed on this site a couple days ago is finally up on TheOtaku. Normally I've seen it take three to five days for one of my wallpapers to finally get onto the site, but this time it was relatively quick (Two days, I believe). I am pleased.

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In a somewhat related story, some friends of mine made me throw together a Xanga blog a while back. I posted a couple times about nothing in particular (stuff that I consider to be a little low-quality for myOtaku), and I dropped it.

Recently, however, after examing a few of my friends' rather impressive site layouts, I figured I may as well give my blog a snazzy theme.

And so, once again, I turned to Silent Hill 4. In the process of toying around with the image, I finally figured out one of the things that can make an image look particularly creepy- high levels of contrast.

And so, utilizing the magic of Photoshop, I put together an intro pic, a snazzy background and stuck a pretty cool MP3 in for good measure. You can find the end result here. I doubt I'll update it with anything substantial, but Xanga makes members' control over their pages pretty flexible. My favorite feature is the option of having the main window transparent so you can actually see your background image.

But myOtaku still kicks Xanga's ass.

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I finally unlocked Challenge Mode (Two-player cooperative, but you can play it alone as well) in Pikmin 2 last night. I got around to playing it with my brother earlier today, and it was a lot more simple than I had hoped. You basically run around in a variety of caves, beating up enemies with a predetermined number of Pikmin and collecting items. That is, essentially, the rest of the game, but the levels I've played so far have been extremely simple with no puzzles whatsoever. Hopefully, things will get more tricky in the later stages.

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For the first time in over twelve weeks, I sat down and played the piano yesterday. I was rather surprised that my fingers hadn't lost half their strength and my coordination got totally blown away without practice, but I was still doing rather lame. And for a while it was actually enjoyable. The past couple years have basically been me not practicing until half an hour before the lesson, and that's certainly not fun. Yesterday, however, while playing a transcript of Yuki Kajiura's "BT" (.hack//SIGN), I realized I was enjoying it.

..That did not last long, however, once I got into the difficult and horribly bland technical exercises.

Oh well. I still have a couple more days before the lessons resume. I'm probably going to designate a lot of time tomorrow to practicing.

You want a witty closing comment? Well, too bad. This is my myOtaku, and I'll leave things with a humorous close when I feel like it.

Teh SillyCircus Day 21- Goth is the horrible bastard child of Black Sabbath and Katie Couric.
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Saturday, September 4, 2004

Oh, poppycock.
Comment Commentary

DDG- I never really had that much against Raiden, especially compared to a lot of Metal Gear fans..

Shin- You know, I have always wanted to incorporate that phrase into a mO update, and now that I have I can finally die happy.

Godel- Well now I don't know what to think about what you said.

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After a two-day ordeal, I finally got Photoshop off of Syk. We got a good deal of the download done the day before yesterday, and out of nowhere my internet connection got unplugged (I don't know how), and I thought we had to restart the download all over again.

Fear not, though, for AIM resumed the download at 75% last night. That was an incredibly cool surprise for me.

So then I began to experiment. I hadn't touched a graphics editing program in a month, you see, so it took me a minute to recall all of the shortcut keys and get my settings just right. As for when I got to actually coming up with ideas for stuff to do, I drew a blank. I couldn't believe it. After a good month of creative backup in the plumbing of my brain, with a ton of ideas swirling about with no way to get out, I couldn't remember a single one of them when the moment of truth arrived. So I just messed around with a couple Half-Life images. Soon enough, I found some insipration on IGN, and this is the result.

The image quality is a bit poor for my tastes, but I like it. If I get good feedback from you all, I'll be putting this up on TheOtaku, and if not.. Well, then it was a good piece of practice (getting the feathering right was evil).

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School starts in.. *checks his calendar* ..Three days. In the beginning of the summer, I set myself a few goals. I wanted to resume my studies of the Japanese language, do rather frequent comic strips, read a few thick novels so that I could get Accelerated Reader over with early in the trimester, and keep my bits and pieces of a social life intact through occasional trips to the mall. Well, none of that worked out, as summer is a great time to be lazy and do nothing, but I had a great time anyway. This was my first full, twelve-week summer, because we used to have year-round school. There was no real, long summer breaks- just three to six week vacations spread out throughout the year. Even with three weeks, I would always get bored out of my skull. This time, though, I was completely entertained the entire time.. THROUGH THE MAGIC OF THE INTERNET.

Heh heh.

I've got most of my school supplies (i.e. paper, pencils and a binder) all sitting in a neatly organized pile in my room, but they're not in my backpack yet.. But I'll probably do that the night before we head back.

And I'm not the only person trying to get myself ready for school, either. My dad has this weird fixation on getting me to wake up earlier, so he's been trying to wake me up at 8:00 in the morning every day for about a month now. Today was the first time I actually took the bait and got out of bed. 8:00 outside is so much cooler than noon or 3:45. The air is still fresh and crisp, and it's a little brisk.. So awesome, heh. I love when summer starts changing into fall.

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God, it's frigid cold in this house today.. In fact, I was sneezing so much at one point earlier I ran up to my closet, pulled out my trust gray fleece pullover, and now I'm all warm and snuggly. It feels like fall. :)

Teh SillyCircus Day 20- I'm Pro-Choice, anti-anti-Choice.
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