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.

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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

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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..

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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?
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