Friday, September 3, 2004

AMD > Pentium > Celeron > Peanut butter > Your mom
Comment Commentary

Shin- I envy you.

Starbound- I like shocking/horrifying art. The drama is good.

Mimmi- Well, the blade is dull, meaning that he couldn't slice a log in half. Well, in one try, anyway. And it's still pointy enough for stabbing.

..Yeah, I know.

Godel- Wow, I did not know that. *trots off to Merlo's Cutlery*

Mal- Damn schools with far superior arts programs. *shakes fist*

--

I think it's time for a little Pikmin 2 update.

For a couple of days I was pretty stuck in the game. There were no areas I could access without the aid of blue and yellow Pikmin. That wouldn't be that much of a problem.. If the blue pikmin weren't behind an electrified fence that only yellows can touch, and the yellows were nowhere to be found. Thus I was stuck, with no accessible treasure, wasting days gathering red Pikmin.

Now I forget exactly how, but I finally found a little area in one of the areas that you could throw your Pikmin onto. Then I found that you could go around another way by yourself, Pikminless.. This, of course, was much easier with the help of the second captain, Louie. Soon enough, I found a piece of a globe that let me go to a new area and find the yellow Pikmin, which in turn got me the blue Pikmin the next day.

So I explored. There were tons of little areas that were only accessible through the magic of the aquatic blue Pikmin, and I came across three new caves filled with wonderful treasures.

And they are all insane. Each one of them is more freaking crazy than the last. Throughout two of them, explosive rocks drop from the ceiling and, if you're not careful, they can take out all of your Pikmin. I lost thirty-something the first time one dropped, and there were a couple other incidents that were almost as traumatic. By the end of the eight-layer Bulblax Kingdom cave, I had thirty Pikmin left, mostly yellow. The Emperor Bulblax was the final boss of the level, and so I weighed the options.

Me, thirty Pikmin.

Him, the ability to crush fifty Pikmin in one fell swoop.

Me, carrying most of my hard-to-come-by Purple and White pikmin which are not quite as useful in such a battle as Red pikmin.

Him.. Well, isn't it obvious? I left all of my treasure behind and hauled ass. Similar events occured in the other two caves.

So now I suppose I'll just have to build my resources and try to find more above-ground treasure, heh.

Number of Pikmin: 432
Number of Treasures: About thirty, I think.
Amount of debt paid off: 3300 Pokos.
Louie's condition: Still alive, but I hope he dies a painful death, because he sucks.

Teh SillyCircus Day 19- I think that Raiden would get more fanfare if he died.
Comments (3) | Permalink

Thursday, September 2, 2004

Strawberry-Banana smoothies always have too much strawberry and not enough banana.
Comment Commentary

Shin- Thing is, out here in Palmdale, most of the movies/TV Shows are filmed in the middle of nowhere (We are the desert, after all), so we don't get any cool pictures of celebrities.

Solo- Well, for some reason I find it hard to recall what the Pikmin 1 title screen was like, but I do know that the snazzy snowy background found in the sequel wasn't in the first one.

Godel- Yeah, I wonder if Nintendo got paid for product placement, heh.

--

I do not like fairs. Fairs are lame. I was dragged to our local fair and it sucked. My family was all eager to go to the fair, I was not, and I was dragged along anyway.

I wasn't in such a bad mood on the way there- I was quiet, yes, but I wasn't complaining or anything. We got there, walked to the front entrance, and surveyed the new fairgrounds. It didn't have the personal feel that our old fairgrounds had.. I had become accustomed to the old fairgrounds, with its big trees and.. Well, grass. It was bigger, though.

There was a booth with some anime wallscrolls in the back, which quickly caught my eye. Upon further inspection I found a wide variety of imported Japanese CDs in the front (FLCL OST 2, no price tag, and I didn't have my wallet), and some swords to the right. I went to the back and found a bunch of pirated anime DVDs, as well, mostly recently licensed shows and some hentai (!). They had Naruto episodes one through 130-something for $120, and I didn't buy it, because I could get the same thing for $90 off a couple sites I'm familiar with..

My brother, of course, automatically went to the swords. He found one he liked, asked the Engrish-speaking tent dude how much it cost, and he bought it. My twelve-year-old brother bought a relatively sharp sword from a dealer without any showing of ID.. Don't you need to be eighteen to buy weapons like that?

We then trotted over to the art hall where my mom automatically found the craft section she came for. I decided to take some time to look through the art..

And what art it was. For amateur (And in some cases, even high school-level) artists, some of the stuff there was amazing. Of course, there was the occasional crayon drawing by a first-grader thrown in, but I was pretty impressed by quite a few pieces. The one I liked most was this beautiful portrait of a woman done in graphite by some person in their sophomore year of High School. The detail was amazing, and the eyes were so lifelike. Her face was even textured to show slight signs of freckles and such on her.

And it got second place to a bland picture of a lily. I want to know who judges these things.

There were three or four entries in the Computer Graphics category, most of which did not impress me at all. A lot of them were poorly textured, low-quality 3D images, but there was this one picture of a road sign that was posterized along the outside that was pretty sweet.

Assuming they do have a junior high school Computer Graphics category, and I ever recover PhotoShop, I would have so schooled each and every one of the entries (Well, there weren't any, so I would have been guaranteed first place). I plan on doing so next year.

Then the trouble started. My brother wanted to go on some rides, I didn't, so my dad went with him and I tagged along (It's better than looking at quilts for an hour). My dad tried to "negotiate" me into getting an unlimited ride wristband thing through his tried-but-not-true "Come ooon" technique. I didn't feel like going on any rides not because I was afraid of crashing into a cotton candy booth and dying a horrible yet sugary death, but because I didn't want to go on any rides. Simple as that. I ended up watching my brother and dad going on some rides. Every time around they would say "Come on, Nick!" or something along those lines..

And by the second ride, every other person was also yelling "Come on, Nick!" at me. Not in a supportive way or anything, but with the tone you get so often in the pre-graduation social structure. That really pissed me off.

It was around this time the Smashmouth/Maroon 5 concert was starting. I was surprised this hokey little area could get such high-profile bands. Did I go? Of course not. I don't even know than two of those bands' songs combined..

And nothing else that interesting happened there. My family got dragged into several carnival games, my dad tried to negotiate a "Winna winna winna" out of each of the carnival-barkers, God bless his little heart for trying, I saw some people I vaguely know and didn't say anything to them, I didn't eat anything, my brother picked up his sword from the crazy illegitimate anime shop, and we left.

And fairs suck. I know I didn't give any real legitimate reasons, but I'm a bit pressed for time right now to list them all.. I don't want to get into a rant, either. :P

--

And my old computer lives. My dad finalized his work with Yahoo! customer service, bought a five-in-one Norton Anti-Just-about-everything program that he bought. I think he's become paranoid about computer security now, which isn't all that bad, heh. I'm going to have to wait find a few more anti-spyware programs before I start doing any serious internet browsing, though..

--

Mowing the lawn is so much easier with two people doing it. My dad's been helping me out with edging and trimming bushes lately, which is cool, because the progress can continue even when I go inside to get some water. Unfortunately, this revelation came late in the lawn-mowing season, and the secret of the Gods will have to wait until next spring to really be put to work.

And with that, I bid you all adieu.

Teh SillyCircus Day 18- School resumes on Tuesday, as does Piano. Am I happy or am I sad?
Comments (3) | Permalink

Wednesday, September 1, 2004

Purple Pikmin are Danny Devito, white Pikmin are Michael Jackson. Simple as that.
Comment Commentary
Shin- W-Well you're dumb. >:O

Godel- Heh, it's just a movie about this guy who was born without any immunities, so he had to live in a plastic bubble all his life to avoid dying. He travels the country in a mobile bubble to stop his friend and girl next door from marrying the wrong person.

Mimmi- Haha, don't worry, I'll equally balance my time.

--

A lot of movies are filmed out here. We're in a dry, desert area not too far away from Hollywood, you see; so a lot of the deserts you see on television and in movies are out here. Yesterday, I forgot to mention one of the many cool things about Bubble Boy- He grew up in Palmdale (Our sleepy little suburb) and they actually called it that. I thought that was pretty neat.

--

Pikmin 2 is as awesome as I had expected it to be. About a week ago, I watched the little intro cutscene on IGN and fell in love with the franchise all over again. It was cool to see the high-quality visuals on a screen wider than 200 pixels..

The backgrounds and textures are where the game's graphics really kick ass. In the second area you can explore, cherry blossom leaves are falling everywhere and they look incredibly realistic. Each of the items you collect looks remarkably identical to their real-life counterparts, and the Empress Bulborb even had a glistening quality to her humongous body. It's breathtaking.

The controls are basically the same as in the first Pikmin, with the addition of the Y button to switch between captains, and the Pikmin's AI has been improved a little bit. If a Pikmin knocks a pellet off of one of the pellet pansies, they'll automatically carry it back to their onion, which is very good (Unless they do that in the middle of battle for some reason). My only complaint with Pikmin behavior so far is that if you get too far away from the onion as your Pikmin are coming out of their ship, they don't automatically follow you. They just stay put.

The purple and white Pikmin add some great new elements to the game, as well. The purple ones are incredibly heavy and can carry ten times the weight of any other Pikmin, and the white ones are small, fast, poisonous when eaten, and can find treasure completely buried underneath the earth. I haven't really seen any creative puzzles involving the white ones yet, but it's not like I have been playing for too long.

Another cool aspect of the game is the treasures that you are scouring the planet for. They're all basically trash to us, but some of the items (like the orange, for example) can be sold for 200 pokos.. That's about one fiftieth of debt, if the remaining mathematical knowledge inside my head is right, heh. Nintendo was pretty creative with what they put in the game- there are batteries, 7up cans, and most notably Nintendo items such as a Game and Watch and an N64 control pad, and a lot of things have brand names on them, which suprised me. The batteries are Duracell, the bottle caps say Dr. Pepper on them, and the tin of shoe polish is Kiwi brand. To add to the coolness, your ship gives the items lots of really lame names. I believe the orange was "Citrus sphere," the lip gloss was "Lifesaving cream," and so on. I think the control pad was called "Wonder pad," or something along those lines. It's really awesome.

There's more I want to talk about, but I'm being dragged to the local.. Fair.. Thing. I'll add that on later.

Teh SillyCircus Day 17- Well you should have gone before we got in the car.
Comments (3) | Permalink

Tuesday, August 31, 2004

SEN'S MYOTAKU- BROUGHT TO YOU THROUGH THE POWERS OF INNUENDO

Comment Commentary
Shin- Oh, is that why? I thought it was because you cared..!

Solo- *nods* One of the major reasons I'm taking the custom route is so that I make sure that everything is upgradeable. The guys at Best Buy are lying thieves (Conspiracy!).

Mimmi- Yeah, yellow's very Rrr. The gray one's a bit of a Grr, though, so it's a possibility. ~_^

Godel- It does suck. So many movies I can't see..

And I'm looking forward to Hero mostly because of the cinematography.. I'm not a big fan of (real) people flying around and fighting, but I'm gonna make an exception for this one. :P

Mal- Don't worry, just another week and I'll be in the same boat as you. Karma always has its way, too, so rest assured that I'll have a horrible time.

--

Another excuse to get a new computer: Our current HP has speakers that attatch to the sides of the monitor, and the little clip things on the right speaker broke off. I can stand the speaker up and get the same basic sound, but it looks really shoddy and pathetic.

--

I just got finished watching Bubble Boy on Comedy Central, mostly because nothing else was on, but I found it to be a mildly entertaining movie. It certainly had a wide variety of characters, some funnier than others (Bright and Shiny cult > the Phreaks), but they all had their moments.

Spoilers ahead. If, for some reason, you take such a comedy so seriously, and want the "amazing" plot twist to surprise you, please skip the rest of this segment.

I felt it was a little weird how Bubble Boy (His name escapes me right now, even though I just watched it) automatically forgave his mother after she told him that he had developed immunities (He wasn't born with any, and that's why he was in the bubble) at four, and she had just been shielding him from the world for the next fifteen or so years. I figured he would be angry and that his mom would get what was coming to her, but it was all a happy ending. Psh. I did not like that.

And Pippy and Pappy own you.

I remember a lot of people complained about Bubble Boy when it came out, and how it made fun of the "differently abled" people in the world, but now that I've seen it I don't really know why. If nothing else, it sort of empowered people with no immunities, and the jokes were hardly focused on the fact that he had a horrible condition. Sure, he couldn't really fit through doors that well, but I pitied his situation more than laughed at it. The supporting cast is what made it great.

But whatever. These people complain about everything.

--

Just picked up Pikmin 2 at Gamestop, and I'm going to go play it now. I'll put up a bit of an overview tomorrow.

TEH SILLYCIRCUS DAY 16- Progeria is nature's cruelest joke.. Well, either that or the platypus.
Comments (3) | Permalink

Monday, August 30, 2004

I don't care what you say. Ernest Goes to Africa is a modern classic.
Comment Commentary
Shin- Butch's adventures bored me, and Uma's performance was remarkably appealing.

DDG- See, this is where it gets good. Shin wants to see what people end up talking about when they start running out of things to say. I sort of see it like a scientific study where people study the behavior of animals in dire circumstances.

But maybe I'm reading into it a bit much.

Mimmi- For me, ten minutes is overstaying.

Godel- Yes, so could I, but there are so many other things to go on about, and so little time to do it all in.

--

I surprised myself today when I willingly got out of bed- fully energized, mind you- at 9:15 AM. I later decided this was because I had a reason to get out of bed, and that reason was Pikmin 2.

After getting dressed and checking on a few sites, I woke up my brother and forced my mom to drive us to the mall at 10:15. I rushed over quite quickly to Gamestop, and found the guy at the desk saying that the game shipped today, but won't be on the shelves until tomorrow.

In retrospect, I really should have seen it coming, considering it has happened to me so many times before, but it's been a while since the last incident. I still reserved Metal Gear Solid 3 and Metroid Prime 2, with five dollar deposits on each, so the trip wasn't an entire loss.

My brother ended up playing the original Pikmin when we got home, and I was forced to help him get the pieces. It's sort of funny how I was directing his every little movement, as if he had no free will- it was like I was Olimar and he was a Pikmin. Ironic, wouldn't you say?

--

CRH totally schooled me last night in our first round of the Literati tournament. The scores were pretty back and forth.. For about two turns. After that he was totally dominating, and he ended up winning by a good ninety points.

Fortunately, it's two out of three, so I still have a chance to win. It's small, but it's there. :P

--

I really didn't have that much to do today, so I continued my little research project about concocting a home-built computer. I browsed Xoxide.com for a while, and I put together a little chart comparing the several cases that I'm interested in. I think that it has come down to the Raidmax Samurai and the Logisys Phantom II, but there are still a few cases that just might win me over.

Of course, this is the easy part. Selecting hardware is where it gets tricky, especially when you consider that I'm basically doing this unaided except for occasional conversations with a couple people online, and that all of our previous computers have been pre-made by companies like Hewlett Packard and Acer.

But I won't ramble on about this; I'm sure it's not that interesting.

--

I now close this post with a list of summer movies that I want to see.

- Hero
- Garden State
- Napoleon Dynamite
- Collateral
- That one movie where the guy's girlfriend goes missing and he ends up staying with his stalker neighbor
- That other movie where the woman remembers having a kid but everybody says she doesn't and there's something about government censorship

I really would go see a lot more movies if I had the time and ability (No, Mr. Ticket Stub guy, I don't have a valid form of identification).

Teh SillyCircus Day 15- Thank God I got this up before midnight.
Comments (4) | Permalink

Sunday, August 29, 2004

There is no stronger bond two men can share than having the same watch jammed up their asses over a seven year period.
Comment Commentary
Shin- You know, I still haven't counted how much cash I have on hand. I really need to do that later.
Starbound- It's not that I find all abstract paintings to be incredibly- in fact, there were some in Borders that looked extremely well-done- But a lot of ones that you don't find in highly esteemed art galleries seem to be trash, heh. But I'm not an art critic.
DDG- I just need a college loan.
Mimmi- Not tormented, just corporate and uninspired. :P

--

I just got finished watching Pulp Fiction on Bravo. I only came in as Mia was interviewing Vincent with her video camera, and because it was basic cable at four in the afternoon, it was pretty heavily edited, but I enjoyed it. The Golden Watch chapter (Or segment, if that's what you would prefer to call it) started out rather slow, but it picked up by the end. The whole Mia and Vincent ordeal was probably my favorite part (though Jules conversing with the coffee shop robbers was also cool), but I don't see much of a point in comparing them all.

The editing was pretty nice- for the most part I couldn't really tell where there was any editing done, but there were a few blatant slipups. In some situations, though, I suppose there isn't much else you can do except for just mute the dialogue for a second. That's something that bothered me when I was comparing the edited Reservoir Dogs to the original version. All of the profanities weren't all that necessary- there are some instances and characters where language can be used to enforce a bit of dialogue, but with good actors the character's emotions can be expressed without spitting out the F-bomb twenty-six times in one scene.

I still have one question for Bravo, though: Where'd the gimp go? :P

--

Time for some filler content.

THINGS THAT ANNOY ME

Elitists. There's nothing worse than a fat Asian dude at a convention pointing out any minor flaw in anything you do. I came into contact with three or four of them at the last Anime Expo, and they all suck, simple as that.

Celebrities blindly promoting video games. If they don't know what makes a good game and the only thing they talk about to promote it is the graphics, the industry is better off without them.

Pesky neighborhood kids. My brother has met a couple of kids in the neighborhood and had them over a couple of times, and now it's like they have to be here every day. Perhaps I'm just not the social type (What am I saying, "perhaps"?), but I don't like how they come over once and then cling to your leg for the rest of their lives as if you're the only thing keeping them from death.

Public protestors. Get a life.

Extreme Republicans/ Extreme Democrats. In the end, it doesn't really matter. They all end up working together in the government, anyway.

People who dislike Evangelion when they only watched it once and that was five years ago and now they could have a much higher opinion of it. Yeah, that's right, Azure. I'm talking to you. :P

People who dislike people who dislike people who dislike Evangelion when they only watched it once and that was five years ago and now they could have a much higher opinion of it. *cough* Azure, again.

People who waste precious blog space with lists about things that annoy them.

Aha, I win. There are still many other things that annoy me, but they shall be complained about in a different post (Whenever I remember them).

Teh SillyCircus Day 14- Two weeks down, eighty-something to go.
Comments (4) | Permalink

Saturday, August 28, 2004

But mommy, I wanted the pink surface-to-air missile launcher.
Argh, I lost the post but it kept the title. Damn.

Comment Commentary
Shin- Starbursts can bite me.
Mal- Yeah, I know I am. :P
Shin again- Yeah, I know, but what can you do?
Azure- USB ports are your friends. Alienware has eight of them, which I think is uber-cool.
Syk3- Has anyone had the balls to call her Captain Kirk yet?

--

The two-story Borders Bookstore in a nearby town has a bunch of paintings hanging up in their staircase. Last week I took a moment to pay attention to the paintings, and then I noticed that they were actually for sale.

Most of them are rather lame abstract ones. In fact, a good deal of them are literally just little splatters of paint across a canvas. I then thought to myself, "Hey, I could do that," and guess where I am now.

That's right, I have a few paint brushes here, with some canvases I found in my brother's closet, and I'm going to spend this week doing a bunch of half-assed abstract paintings all for the money. Corporate greed shall get me $200 a piece! :D

Because it's all for the cash, I'm sure that karma will be entirely against me and that something is bound to go wrong, but whatever. At least it gives me something to do.

--

Mimmi invited me to play a couple "teaching games" of Literati earlier today. She totally schooled me in the first round, but it was closer in the second game.

It was funny. Throughout the first round I had 90% consonants, and I was dealt almost nothing but vowels in the second round. That's what lead to my defeat. *sigh*

But if was fun. It prepared me for the setting that will be held in Shin's upcoming Literati tournament- One on one. I had been used to four people at a time, but now I know what to expect.

Especially if Mimmi is my opponent in the first round. XD I'm so screwed.

I really doubt I'll get too far. I'm not too creative with my words.. But hey, there's always Literati Tournament Two: Return of the Tiles to look forward to.

--

UPCOMING GAMES I NEED TO BUY:

August 30- Pikmin 2. I wasn't really that excited about the game until I watched the opening cutscene on IGN, which was cute, charming and hilarious all at the same time. I'm splitting the cost with my brother, who only shied from Pikmin 1 because of the thirty-day limit. I will also be reserving Metroid Prime 2 and Metal Gear Solid 3 on this day.

September 7- Silent Hill 4: The Room. I have never really played a horror game, let alone Silent Hill, which is supposed to be the king of them all, but the footage I have seen really intrigues me. This one is probably going to result in another war between my mother and me playing these kinds of games, but my dad seems interested enough in this to blindly purchase it without reading the content descriptors.

*Quagmire voice* All right.

September 21- DDR EXTREME. A new DDR mix, what more do I need to say? There doesn't appear to be any groundbreaking gameplay additions (That's on the upcoming Xbox installment, Ultramix 2, which I sadly cannot buy), but the selection of songs is amazing- it's like a "best of" mix.

November 15- Metroid Prime 2: Echoes and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. This is going to be such a joyous occasion, full of gaming splendour and violence. These two games are top priority- I have to check out my cash flow and see how much cash I'll have to buy games- so in the event that I only have enough cash for two games (Which is EXTREMELY likely), these two are the ones I'll have to go with.

January 11- Resident Evil 4. Another little game that will introduce me to the horror game genre; I wanted to buy it the second I saw the E3 trailer. It makes me sad that the pushed it past the holiday season.

--

Of course, odds are I won't have the $230 (excluding tax) to buy all these games, but here's the beautiful part: Birthday + Christmas = the greatest gift of all: Checks from my many, many relatives.

Teh SillyCircus Day 13- "It's either money for games or money for college, now what's it going to be?"
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Friday, August 27, 2004

Which dance would win- the Macarena or the Charleston?
Comment Commentary
Mimmi- Most of my ghosts turn out that way. *sigh*
Shin- I feel a strong need to injure you. It's probably just all the sugar, though.
Solo- I'm not a big fan of chocolate, heh. I prefer fruity-tasting, brightly colored candy.
Starbound- There are ungodly amounts of calories in Jolly Ranchers, but they are also delicious. At least their taste compensates for the content a little bit.
Mal- Rock on.
Syk- Your teacher told you his first name? Creepy.
Shin- I don't even know who you are anymore. Starbursts?

--

We went off to Thousand Oaks, a very upscale area, to visit relatives- most notably a new baby.

Our family has a rather strange history with children. I was the first kid of this generation (on my dad's side, anyway), and each kid after me had been male. My mom and my aunts have a little bet going on during each pregnancy about what gender the kid will be.

No girls yet, but I don't really care. Most little girls I've come into contact with are bitchy.

Today we went off to see baby number twelve, as well as the rest of his family (Two parents and four other kids).

After greetings were exchanged, something I sort of knew would happen occured. My aunt mentioned that she bought my cousin an MP3 player recently, and they "didn't know how to get songs onto it."

And so I, mild-mannered web graphics dude OtakuSennen, ran off to find a telephone booth so I could transform into Tech-Support-man, with the computer-fixing powers of five completely oblivious noobs.

It was a small flash MP3 player- not an iPod or anything- from Virgin, and it was hard to figure out how it was supposed to plug in. They said the only thing that came with the player were the earbuds, no USB wires or anything. That struck me as odd, until I noticed the little hole on the side of the player. Upon further inspection, there was a USB thing built into the player, so there was no need for any wires. The only trick was getting the shiny white cover thing off. It was really hard to open, and because it wasn't mine I didn't want to damage it, so I had my cousin keep on pushing at it. Eventually it got off, and we went over to the computer.

No USB ports in the front, and one in the back. Lucky me, the MP3 player was too bulky to fit into the port because the monitor and keyboard plugs got in the way. I told them to go to Best Buy and find a USB extension cable (They had to write it down), and that was the end of that.

Then they all wanted to go play Gamecube. I really had nothing else to do, so I went along with them, and watched as they sifted through their very large plastic box of Gamecube games. A lot of the games were kiddy / lame. They wanted to play Billy Hatcher, so I quickly distracted them with Custom Robo.

Their controllers were messed up as well. The comfortable plastic thing on the control sticks were all missing, so my thumb got stabbed every time I made a movement.

Turns out they also had a huge tub of mediocre (for the most part, anyway) PS2 games. I noticed an Athens 2004 instruction manual for PS2 on their desk, to give you an idea of the games they like to play. If you're going to spend such ungodly amounts of money on games, you may as well buy good ones.

Oh well, their loss. They're only twelve, eight and four, anyway.

After much conversation, we got a call from my other aunt talking about how her four-year-old son wanted to see us, so we ran over there, woke the kid up, and just played around for a while. Their other kid is ten months old, and he's my favorite of all the little Monchichi children running around these days. I'm not sure why. I usually don't like small children. If they're obnoxious, or too cheery, or too needy, I want nothing to do with them.

Little four-year-old girls who are self-absorbed and make their face go all scrunched up and say "pleeeeeeease" in response to anyone who says "no" to them. Those kinds of kids I would actually kick in the stomach hard as I can without much remorse.

After that little visit, picture taking and all, we ended up getting invited to my dad's entrepreneurial uncle's house for dinner. I had been craving greasy pizza- the kind you would find in a bowling alley- but by some strange twist of fate we ended up with a tasty Freschetta instead. Not quite as good, but a fair substitute. We stood around and talked for a while, and my brother got a ton of attention for his drawings. Desperate to outdo him, I ended up re-sketching the first comic I put up (The one with the republicans and the John Kerry signs). I'm pretty sure nobody got it, but my dad mentioned afterwards that everyone in that house is a devote Republican, so I may have just pissed them all off.

Hopefully my writing's too sketchy for any of them to read it.

--

We picked up our new glasses in Valencia today. Mine took a while for me to adjust to, but they're fine now. The weirdest thing about them is that they don't fit around the back of the ear like my old ones; they just go straight and stay close to the head. It's not that big of a deal, but whenever I smile or laugh the back of my glasses go up a little bit. It sort of tickles, actually..

--

And now the computer's back. And it's not installing the Sims. And whoop-dee-frickin' doo, everybody blames me. Gah. I don't understand why it's not installing. Half-Life and Opposing Force went in perfectly.

Teh SillyCircus Day 12- GAH.
Comments (3) | Permalink

Thursday, August 26, 2004

Capitan Kirk.. Ese no es logico.
I swear, some of my best comic ideas come when it's two in the morning and I'm laying in bed trying to think of things that will bore me to sleep.

The first one if very text-oriented, and the other is completely visual, apart from some labeling, but either way I need PhotoShop back. Paint Shop Pro's text always comes out too jaggy for my tastes.

--

Well, I got through one of the bags of Jolly Ranchers last night, and I had to brush my teeth three times before I couldn't feel any more plaque on the back of my teeth.

It was a good back- Lots of purples and few blues- but it lacked heart, and that's what I look for in my bags of candy. Let's see if its predecessor can fill that void today.

I've never really bothered buying the other kinds of Jolly Ranchers. You know, the tropical ones and stuff like that. Overall, I guess I'm not a passion fruit/pineapple-ey sort of guy, but I might just take a risk one day, buy a bag, hate it, and drown it in holy water because it bastardized the franchise.

*cough*

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We took our computer back to Superior Electronics on Saturday because it wasn't loading particular CDs, and we still don't have it back. They're saying they "Don't know what's wrong with it yet," but I think they're just lazy and haven't gotten around to doing anything. I just want my computer back.

Teh SillyCircus Day 11- Oh my God, that image sucks. Why the hell did I even put it up?
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Wednesday, August 25, 2004

Mm. I bought TWO bags of Jolly Ranchers today.
Yes, that's right. I plan on heading out to get more by ten.

My father, mother and I went to this glasses store called "Optyx" today to pick out new frames. My brother, who doesn't wear glasses, came along as well, feeling outcast and rejected. I found my pair relatively quickly, my dad found something nice and conservative (But too round for my tastes), and my mom spent the longest amount of time pulling out pair after pair, trying them all on, and going back to the previous one.

Mine are basically like my current ones only made of a lighter, gunmetal-ish material, and they don't curve to fit the ear. I think that might be a problem, but it's not like I do anything too athletic, anyway.. But my main goal was to find glasses that look similar enough to my current ones so that people won't make a huge fuss over it once school starts up. I'm guessing some people who know me better will take a bit of notice, but I'm hoping it won't be drastic.

I am not a shopper. I generally go to exactly what I like when it comes to shoes, or clothing, or anything like that. There are times where I might take a little more time to browse, but generally I want to go in, purchase the needed item, and get out. This totally irks my mom, but whatever.

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I forgot to mention that I watched Insomniac: Sloshed in Translation when it premiered a few days ago. In case you aren't aware of the show, Insomniac follows this stand-up comedian as he stays up all night talking to various people and witnessing the crazy things that happen late at night in big cities. This time around the guy went to Tokyo, which was basically the only reason I wanted to watch it. I don't normally watch the show; it's not my sort of thing, but seeing a bunch of Japanese girls trying to communicate through Engrish would make it worth my time.

And it was entertaining. When I go to Japan, I want to mess with all the locals and sleep in one of those little coffin/bed hotels. I want to mess with the locals and experience all of the weird cultural differences firsthand (..Well, maybe not the penis festival, but you know what I mean).

I like how he was saying "Chin chin" all night thinking it was "Cheers," while it was really "penis." Good stuff, haha.

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For a couple weeks now I have been leaning more in the direction of customizing my own computer and having the guys down at Superior Electronics take care of the dirty work, but I'm back on the Alienware side again (For the moment, at least.)

I had turned my back to Alienware because of my discovery of the Raidmax Samurai 908 case, because of its surprising five 5.25" bays. This, added to my misreading of Alienware's tech specs, made me aim for a completely customized computer. Yesterday I went back to Alienware.com, looked over the chart again, and found that I had made a mistake- Alienware didn't have just two USB ports, I had only selected enough items to take up two.

So now I'm back to Alienware, with no sign of the money for buying it in the next four months. *shrugs* I can live off of this laptop (And the desktop computer, if it ever gets the Yahoo! stuff installed) for now.

Teh SillyCircus Day.. 10, is it? Bah, I'm too tired to check.


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