Tuesday, March 30, 2004

What the--

I AM 25% INTERNET ADDICT! I could go either way. Deep into the madness of nights filled with coding CGI-Scripts and online role playing games, or I could become a normal user. Good luck! Take the INTERNET ADDICT test at Fuali.com

Oh God. These results contradict my very lifestyle. I must go into hiding and contemplate my reason for being now.

I AM 44% GEEK! You probably work in computers, or a history deptartment at a college. You never really fit in with the "normal" crowd. But you have friends, and this is a good thing. Take the GEEK test at Fuali.com

Now that's more like it. *takes pride in his casual geekdome*
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A review of the day's activities.
..Yeah, I've restarted this update three times now due to various issues. I'm going to be brief. Sue me.

I woke up "late" today (6:45 AM.. Yeah. Late.), ate some Pop-Tarts, and got a ride from my father to school.

First Period- Science: We had an Awards Assembely instead of Accelerated Reader and "Family Life" (Sex education, basically), and I ended up getting two or three award things. I don't like the attention, though. I'm just happy with my report card, and I don't need a stupid free hamburger at In-N-Out to feel good about my accomplishment.

Second Period- Phys Ed: ..Yeah. We "get" to play Frisbee Football in a tournament for two straight weeks with me the suckiest team on the face of the earth against a wall of evil 8th grade assholes. Woo-hoo. I sort of enjoy this game, but I would feel a lot better about the tournament if the thing was set up half-decently. They chose our teams based only upon who sits in our little rows we do our stretches in- And I happen to be in a row of obsese people who try to do good but can't and a gaggle of under-achievers who could care less about catching a frisbee. now, next up, we get to play a team consisting of 15-year-old, 6 foot tall people who put too much importance into beating seventh graders into the dirt (metaphorically, of course, in this case). Not to mention the point system goes as follows: One point if a guy makes the point, and two if it's a girl. Now isn't that rather.. Sexist or something, in a way? It's basically saying that girls are less likely to score a point, so their touchdowns should be worth twice that of boys, who are by nature more active. But on every team we've played, the person who's best at catching is a girl, and it's basically no use for us to try and do the same. We have one girl on our team, and she tries to help, but isn't good at the game. Oh well. It doesn't matter; it's just a game.

Third Period- Math: We had to turn in our math notes today, to be inspected. Our school uses this style of note-taking called "Cornell Notes", where you're supposed to write questions about the information in the margins and write summaries at the bottom of each page. It's really pointless, because I never use the questions while studying (Which is the purpose of Cornell Notes), but our math teacher checks to see if we have our questions all set up anyway. I had mine done last night, though, so I wasn't worried about getting a bad grade. We got Progress Reports as well, and by some sick and twisted miracle I have a 95.4% average in the class. It thought that math test a couple weeks ago was going to seriously bring that down to a low C.

Fourth Period- Language Arts: Two words: Prepositional phrases. We spent an entire hour identifying prepositional phrases in sentences, making diagrams of them, and saying if what we found is Adjectivial or Adverbial.. Yeah. I spent the entire period drawing DeathBaby. Who is DeathBaby, you ask? I shall divulge this information in a different post.

Fifth Period- Lunch: I ate some really crappy Teriyaki Chicken and went into my Language Arts room to study for the History Test in seventh period.. I didn't need to go over much more, just what the individual European rulers were famous for, and I was out of there and watching my friends act like jackasses for fifteen minutes or so.

Sixth Period- Art: Some creepy lady I didn't know came up to me and started congratulating me on getting my awards.. It was quite embarassing, as my mortal enemy (Codename: Leprechaun) was walking in the room just as the lady was going, but.. Yeah. It was strange. Anyway, I finished up the last details to my Earth Day commercial storyboard. It's.. Interesting, I guess, but I won't go into detail. My teacher loved it, and now I'm doing one of my sick and twisted comics about the dangers of pollution. In Sixth Period I just get to zone out and draw. It's more enjoyable than lunch, by far.

Seventh Period- Social Studies: We came into the class and took the test immediately. It wasn't that hard, especially because I studied. I spent the rest of the period re-reading a book called The Giver. It's good stuff, but I'm tired and want to get this post over with.

So I dropped off my friends at one of their houses, came home, did homework, went to a piano lesson, and now here I am.

*walks away*
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Monday, March 29, 2004

And now, after a week of pointless updates..
Yes, it's time for my myOtaku to have a more relevant, deep post, and not just some random quiz or chat that I threw together just to keep my page alive.

This topic.. Was somewhat inspired by an update on James's myOtaku, mixed in with some stuff I was dealing with in real life today and yesterday. And a warning to those of you who don't like to read updates that mainly complain about random crap: Look away. This is a pity party just waiting to go Mardis Gras on us.

..Alright then. As most of you know, I am a relatively young person. I don't mean to brag, but compared to 95% of the 13-year-old internet-going population, I am definitely more high-quality in conversation skills and... Typing ability.

And, because of this, I tend to have online friends who are older than me. People like Syk, Shin, and AzureWolf.. In fact, most of my buddy list consists of people fifteen and up. However, despite the small amount of age discrimination on the internet, there are still things out there that I'm isolated about.

You know.. Typical 16-and-above stuff. Real problems, not just trivial junior-high friendship issues.. Stuff like real relationships (Not like "Oh they're going out" when they're really going nowhere outside of school), and job interviews. Stuff like this makes me feel so unimportant and outcast.

And.. In real life, things are the exact opposite. I am at the top of each class, listening to the trivial issues of all of the stereotypes at lunch, and feeling isolated because I don't care about fashion or inconsistent crap that is "popular." Even my two best friends, who used to be right up at the top of the class with me, have basically fallen behind by choice. Their home lives have quickly deteriorated in the past year, and they've been hanging out together much more frequently, leaving me out of everything and saying that I would be "dead" by this point, because of all the random crap that they do at three in the morning.

It's not that I necessarily want to be with them doing all of the stupid things. I just want to be with friends who I can honestly call a confidante, one that I can trust.

Then, one might say, that I should meet my online friends somewhere offline. This then means that the friendships that I established in a world where physical appearance and age do not matter get flipped upside-down. When you talk to a 16 year old person online, it doesn't matter how old you are if you're at about the same level. But if you meet them in real life, they're 8 inches taller than you and such things, making the same conversations you had online becomes extremely difficult.

I think that I may have made the line between real-life and the internet too blurred. The first mistake, I think, came about maybe 8 months ago when I first got into a sort of relationship with a girl from real life, yet we 96% of our conversations were online.

And, the relationship got rather deep. Perhaps too deep to carry out in real life where the internet left off, without getting to that same level in person first. Nowadays, I am still very good friends with this girl, but the issue about talking in real life has not gotten any better.

The Internet was created as a method of communication, and to this day it remains just that (Along with being the world's largest porn library and pop-up ad archive). But many people have taken it too seriously, I think. Real human relationships called love cannot truly be formed primarily in the internet. That movie from a few years back called "You Got Mail"? Yeah. That would never happen and have such a pleasant ending.

Well, I have a major History test tomorrow, so I'm gonna go study. Good night, everyone.
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Random survey thing.

What comes to mind when you hear..
..snow?:	Death.
..rain?:	Snow.
..tornado?:	Wizard of Oz.
..summer love?:	1968
..Jon?:	Athan.
..Mike?:	Salva?
..Shea?:	Scotland.
..banana?:	Republic.
..dizzy?:	Spinning.
..Laura?:	Japan_86
..Juan?:	Hernandez
..car?:	Chevy.
..white?:	Black.
..peppermint?:	Patty.
..New Found Glory?:	Random phrase.
..placebo?:	Love Hina.. (o_O)
..orange juice?:	Minute Maid
..candid camera?:	Retarded
..sister?:	Brother
..brother?:	Doom
..hate?:	Love
..school?:	Juniper
..President?:	Clinton.
..football?:	Jocks.
..rap?:	Crap.
..pop?:	Poop.
..rock?:	Eh.
..punk?:	Ew.
..sex?:	Ooh!
..death?:	Yay.
..baby?:	Little.
..duuude?:	Turtles.
..the end?:	No, God, keep it alive!

The Survey Where You Say The First Word That Comes To Mind. Yay. brought to you by BZOINK!
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Sunday, March 28, 2004

Love Hina
Well, I'm at member number 87 right now, so to keep this possible rise of doom going, I'm making another post today. What about, though? Why, perhaps the most splendiforous romantic comedy manga series in existence.

The first thing that triggered my obtaining the entire Love Hina series was a little chat with Syk3 yesterday. He was telling me a little bit about the series, and his descriptions sparked a bit of interest. I have read a little bit of the first volume of A.I. Love You (From the same mangaka as Love Hina), and the art intrigued me (I'm telling you, dammit, it's the character design), so I decided to dust off my old Bit Torrent program and find the complete works of the Love Hina manga series.

It took me.. Five hours to download the entire series, I think. My parents were suspicious when I left the computer on for a few hours with a little sign that says "Stuff his happening. Touch computer and die". I wonder why.

Anyway, the download was complete by 11 last night, and I got up to page.. Eighty of the first volume, I think, before I went to watch the last bit of Saturday Night Live.

I'm up to page 110 of the first volume now, so I still have quite a ways to go before I could even try and make a review of this series. Let's save it for another day, alright?

---

Also, I've been thinking about Anime Expo lately. All I saw last year (My very first convention outside of that crappy car one my dad dragged us all to) was the trade room. Of course, some of the coolest stuff was in there, like the Bandai preview movies and the Viz manga reading corner/room/booth, but there's so much more to do at AX.

Panels is the main other thing, really. At AX 2004 they're going to have quite the gaggle of guests there. Rikdo Koshi, creator of Excel Saga, is going to be there, as will the character design person from Lain and the story board directors of the YuGiOh and One Piece anime.. But Yuki Kajiura, the mind behind the .hack//SIGN and Noir soundtracks, is going to be there again. Now, if you haven't heard this from me before, Yuki Kajiura was the guest of honor at Anime Expo 2003, and I was really looking forward to the Kajiura concert- It was her first solo concert as well as her first concert in the United States.

But I woke up too late to get there in time to see it.

Anyway, my second cousin is getting married the Saturday of the expo. This is bad, as most of the good stuff happens on Saturday, and if we're invited to the rehearsal dinner I won't be able to make Friday either. This leaves Sunday, all by itself, unless it's also open on Monday.. Which they did last year.

There's so much stuff to do there, yet my parents absolutely won't let me out of their site. Not to mention my little brother is going to want to be there too, and even if my mom does let me go somewhere, it'll have to be with him.

I'm done complaining for now.
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Saturday, March 27, 2004

New stuff!
Yes, as you can see I have a new theme on my myOtaku. You see, this scheme came about a few weeks ago when I watched the end FLCL sequence in slow motion. At certain parts of the song, random (and somewhat kinky) images of Haruko keep coming up for a split-second. Thanks to PowerDVD XP, which I wouldn't have known about without the omnipotent guidance of our dear Syk3.

Anyway, I played the first DVD's end sequence in slow motion, and made a screenshot just as the desired picture popped up.

Problem was, because these were the end credits and there's no textless opening/endings on the FLCL DVDs, I had to figure out a way to get rid of the text while keeping the image intact.

And that is where hell began.

At first, all I did was try and go over the text with a brush tool. Needless to say, that didn't go well, and I consulted Kazuko for better techniques, as he is wise in the ways of this sort of stuff, and he told me to use the smudge tool. To me, it was ingenius. I had never bothered to use the smudge tool before. I never saw that much of a practical purpose for it, until now.

Of course, this took quite some time. I went over it many, many times, and my computer crashed twice, leaving me to start from an early point.

Then, I altered the hue of one of the many Furi Kuri logos, cut it out, and put it in the image along with a green border and line thing to match Haruko's eye and.. Tongue.

I know it doesn't look like much, but it took a long time, and I'm proud of it.
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Friday, March 26, 2004

Woo-hoo, two in one day.
Heh heh.. This is a hilarious MP3, for anyone who's seen The Lord of the Rings (Two Towers and/or Return of the King) or has any sort of opinion about the upcoming Live Action Eva film.

Gollum's thoughts on Evangelion

..Yeah. I found that on this forum.
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I have seen the top of the mountain, and it is good.
I was not in school on Wednesday or Thursday.. You see, we ended up going down to San Diego. My uncle from Kentucky is down there, visiting my pregnant aunt and their sickly mother..

The ride down there seemed longer than most. I was listening to the Furi Kuri OST, which means that time should have passed by quickly, but it didn't. Maybe it was the scenery. The non-freeway, scenic road was dull and longer, I think, than the path we usually take.

Anyway, we got down there with very problem. We stopped at a MacDonald's that still has supersize stuff, (This was really, really out of the way) and they also had PowerAde on tap.. That was cool. I've never seen a fast foot restaurant with my favorite flavor of my favorite sports drink that gets me up and going in the morning. ~_^

Anyhoo, we went to my grandmother's house, said hello to everyone, and went down to a boardwalk.. We had our little dog with us, some jerk-ass senior citezen felt it was his duty to tell us that we weren't supposed to have dogs on the boardwalk (even though we were carrying him and had him basically in my jacket), and we some a couple guys smoking something out of a bong/hooka thing.. :D Gotta love San Diego.

Anyway, the main point of this update is that I have seen heaven. Heaven is.. A wonderful place, filled with cheap DVDs and rows of video games that go on for miles..

It's a little place called Fry's Electronics.

You see, I first heard about this place when my dad went down to San Diego last week. He saw, at night time, a large building with the word "Fry's" on it with two obelisk-ish structures on the outside with electricity surging up and down wires on the inside, like in old horror/sci-fi movies.

Inside, however, it was entirely an Atlantis theme. There were life-sized statues of divers by the entrance, next to a big aquarium filled with sharks. There were big murals with whales and fake mosaics on the walls, and there was a cafe in the center that had elaborate patterns along the carven walls (Well, I doubt they were really carven out of stone. More like plaster..). Overall, it was a really sweet atmosphere, with the products and prices to back it up.

The entire right half of the store was computers and video games.. They had a makeshift arcade machine in there, joystick and all, with a copy of DBZ Budokai running. Next to that was a playable DDR Max2, with two of the good foam insert pads, right there, beckoning me to play.

But I didn't. I took a vow to never play DanceDance Revolution in public, ever again, until I play at least at Heavy mode.

But they had a huge anime section.. I didn't see any Witch Hunter Robin, or FLCL, (There was a good deal of Excel Saga, though), so I bought the first disc of Serial Experiments Lain for $15. Everything was so cheap; it was awesome.

As for Lain.. Well, I haven't watched the entire thing yet. I've seen the first two episodes, and I have rather mixed feelings about it, but hopefully it will pick up. Ep three looks nice, though.
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