Wednesday, September 22, 2004

Hypello Potion

“Beethoven Day” was a reference to You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown which is a musical take on the Peanuts comic strips. Like most everything else I reference, it’s worth checking out.

JC Baggee got the reference correct first, and because of that he earns another point. This moves him up one space, and makes him tied for second place with Semjaza Azazel.

Current High Scores
Shinmaru: 3 Points
JC Baggee, Semjaza Azazel: 2 Points
Ben, Solo Tremaine, Sara,
Nerdsy, Mimmi, Arcadia: 1 Point

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Remembering Sonic Blaster

Internet users are mourning the loss of an icon when Sonic Blaster, beloved user of the myOtaku network, was forcibly removed from it’s most popular user listing Monday evening. Since it’s creation on August 20, 2003, Blaster’s simple myOtaku page had raked in over 45,000 hit, and made a fan out of the many who visited it. Following his disappearance from the most popular member listing, those who had grown to love Sonic Blaster felt confused and upset.

Adam making a comment on Sonic Blaster's myOtaku.

Shinmaru, fellow myOtaku user and author of the post “Why Sonic Blaster's myOtaku Owns the Total and Complete Hell Out of Everyone's myOtaku’s” was playing a game of Literati when he learned of what had happened. “It's a travesty. I had an entire post extolling the virtues of that innocent young man, and he was taken out of power!” Said Shinmaru, “It's an injustice.”

While the exact reasons why Sonic Blaster’s visitor count was reduced so greatly remain a mystery, there are those suggest that there was blackmail or foul play involved in the holding of his position. This, along with the poor quality of his site caused several people to resent him. While it’s not uncommon for inactive and poorly-produced myOtakus sites to receive frequent visitors, it is often due to that member’s artwork being featured on theOtaku.com’s fan art site. Sonic Blaster was the exception, and miraculously rose to the top of the rankings without any sort of contribution to the community.

“Well, there was obviously a lot of bitterness regarding the fact that he came (apparently) from nowhere, knew no one, offered nothing, yet held, for a long time, a very prominent place in the rankings.” Said Sara, close rival to Sonic Blaster in the Top 10 myOtaku users listing.

Jealousy and suspicion grew rampant as Blaster’s site received tens of thousands of hits; easily ten times the amount of visitors that most myOtaku sites receive. Alan, technical wizard and known on myOtaku as CRandomHero made a startling discovery, and believed that Sonic Blaster was receiving his massive hits through unsavory means.

The current site, which is obviously in need of an update

“Alan then informed me that he might be using a type of software to artificially boost his visit count,” Said James, Site Director for OtakuBoards.com, “I then showed that to Adam and mentioned that some members might be using it, based on what I'd seen. Perhaps Adam discovered something.”

Immediately following this, Sonic Blaster’s visitor count was mysteriously lowered, knocking him from #1 to well below the Top 500 users. Lesser known myOtaku users such as Chibinarusegawa and iamd14u2nv now rank far above the person who once dominated the site’s popularity.

Adam was unavailable for comment, so the real reasons as to why Sonic Blaster was reduced to greatly remain a mystery. Because of the lack of concrete evidence, he is now a legendary figure. His mysterious descent is just as fascinating as his ride to power. Sonic Blaster is now synonymous with cheating and foul play; making this once-humble Trigun fan a villain in the eyes of his former online friends.

Still, some people such as Shinmaru forever hold a place for Sonic Blaster in their hearts, “Yes. Nobody seemed to give Sonic Blaster a chance. [But] once you get past the blatant cheating he used to become #1, he's really an okay guy.”
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Monday, September 20, 2004

Beethoven Day

Not a lot to update on this part of my post. Nobody guessed the reference, although Mr. Baggee got the closest (Good luck with your Air Force interview, btw.) I must say that I’m sorry, because almost doesn’t count here.

“Cats on Mars” is the name of a song on one of the “Cowboy Bebop” OST’s. One of the best aspects of the series was it’s music, so I’m paying tribute to that, yeah. The scores have not changed, they still are…

Current High Scores
Shinmaru: 3 Points
Semjaza Azazel: 2 Points
Ben, JC Baggee, Solo Tremaine,
Sara, Nerdsy, Mimmi, Arcadia: 1 Point

You aren‘t going to let Shinmaru be in the lead for very long, are you?

---

Ben revealed to me that the library he works at contains several comic books and graphic novels. It’s not an extensive collection, mind you, but I’m sure it has a few quality titles in it. He asked me what titles I recommend, so that is what the bulk of this post is being devoted to.

Here are the graphic novels or comic collections that I recommend. There are a lot of older comics I’d like for you to read, but I can’t remember what archived collections they belong to. Pretty much if there is a comic from 1974 being reprinted, it’s being reprinted for a reason and you should read it. A lot of the Uncanny X-Men reprints are really entertaining, especially those dealing with the classic “Phoenix Saga.”

• Marvels (Marvel)


• The Dark Knight Returns (DC)


• Ultimates Volumes 1 and 2 (Marvel)


• Fantastic Four: Imaginauts (Marvel)


• Superman: Red Son (DC)


• Formerly Known as the Justice League (DC)


• Ultimate Spider-Man Volumes 1-9 (Marvel)


• Kingdom Come (DC)

• Ultimate X-Men Volume 1 [Everything else is garbage] (Marvel)


• The Flash: Blitz (DC)


• Teen Titans: A Kid’s Game (DC)


• Empire (DC)


• Spider-Man: Happy Birthday (Marvel)


• Batman: Hush Volumes 1 and 2 (DC)


• Fantastic Four: Authoritative Action (Marvel)


• Batman: The Death of Robin (DC)


• Justice League Adventures (DC)


• The Kingdom (DC)


• Spider-Man: Blue (Marvel)

These should be available at most Barnes and Noble bookstores, in addition to any other place that sells comic books. Definitely check these things out, since I’m a nerd and know what I’m talking about for once.

In other news, “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow” is one of the greatest films ever made. It isn't very often that I have such a good time at the cinema; the sole exception being the rare comic book movie that doesn't make me want to kill the director. Anyone and everyone should go see this movie. Stop reading this post and go see the movie, I won't mind, really.

Also, I had to pay for yet another speeding ticket today. Perhaps the system varies from state to state (and presumably, from country to country) but getting a speeding ticket in California is a rather big deal.

If you receive three tickets in a set amount of time you have your license suspended for a year, which would pretty much ruin my life at this point. Also, it raises my insurance by 15% for every speeding ticket I receive; gee, I'm sure you can imagine how happy I've been to receive two tickets in the past year or so.

It's not that I drive very fast, but on the rare occasions that I do go over the speed limit it always seems as if there is a police officer nearby. Is it just my destiny to be caught red-handed every time I break the law? Perhaps, but you would think that after the first time I'd learn my lesson.

So I drove down to the courthouse today. Not my courthouse, mind you, but one in the city of Pomona, which is about 30 miles away. After struggling to find a spot (and refusing to pay six dollars to park in the regular area) I made my way into the enormous municipal court building. In my entire life I think I've stepped foot inside of a court three times, and one of those was the Supreme Court in Washington DC. Instantly I became very intimidated by the place. Not only is it enormous, but they do not make it clear which room on which floor belongs to which part of the court. Fortunately traffic court was on the bottom floor so I didn't have to search for long. Had it been on the 12th floor or something chances are I would still be trying to find my way now, six hours later.

I went to window A to pay my bill, where they pointed me outside, and the place I really needed to go in order to pay for my ticket. It was a simple cashier’s desk connected to the courthouse, but for some reason or another it needed to be accessed from outside. From they looked through my paperwork, typed something onto the keyboard and gave me a slip of paper. “You can take this inside to have them process,” the woman at the counter said with a smile I smiled back, and felt a new feeling of empowerment with my small slip of paper. Life would once again be good, because I have my slip of paper!

While text messaging James via my phone, I worked my way through security for the second time. They demanded that I put my phone in the X-Ray machine, and as a result the radiation from it caused my phone to shut off. It took it s few moments to recover, so I struggled to take care of that while I made my merry way back to window A.

The interesting things about courthouses is that they are the great equalizer. No matter what walk of life you come from: regardless of race, gender, wealth or even religion everyone goes to the same court to pay their speeding tickets. I was impressed by the diversity of people paying for their tickets that day, and I thought it was pretty interesting that the majority of people paying for their tickets were women. Maybe they are worse drivers than men? Who knows? All I know is that I’m right there with them, paying $300 because I decided to go over 80 miles per hour on the freeway.

So the moral of this story is: DON’T DRIVE FAST! It costs an awful lot of money and going to court is a pain.
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Sunday, September 19, 2004

Cats on Mars

What do you think of the new color scheme? I was toying around with some different ideas over the weekend and came up with this: which is devoted to Kaworu, one of my favorite characters from Eva. Mm.

The last title reference were three characters from the “Mortal Kombat” video game series. Tony got the reference, so he earns another point. That would have placed him in the lead, were it not for the obscure trivia question of the week.

Shinmaru got the question correctly, minus the spelling error, heh. He earned 3 points for answering it right, thus putting him in the lead!

Current High Scores
Shinmaru: 3 Points
Semjaza Azazel: 2 Points
Ben, JC Baggee, Solo Tremaine,
Sara, Nerdsy, Mimmi, Arcadia: 1 Point

There will be another question reference next Saturday, so until then everyone must earn their points one at a time by guessing the title reference. Yay.

---

I’m in the middle of an AIM chat with Nerdsy, Sara, and Ginnylyn. Although I speak with Miss Sara on a regular, if not daily basis, it has been quite a while since I spoke to the other two. If you are not aware, we are members of the legendary “Digipeeps” clique, which ruled OB in the days when dinosaurs walked the Earth. It wasn’t that long ago, but it sure seems like it.

The four of us, along with the likes of Ben, Solo and Sage spent an awful lot of our free time posting in the Digimon forum, discussing Seasons 1 and 2 of our favorite TV series at the time. It’s funny how different each of us were, and still are, especially now that we don’t have a Digimon forum to give us some sort of common ground.

During the process of creating the “Anime Archives” nearly every thread in the Digimon forum was destroyed. I’m not entirely sure why or how this happened, but what once was the most popular anime forum on the boards ended up disappearing completely. At least I still have my memories of chocolate covered expresso beans, and Otakumons, and JyouLynn, and everyone hating Cody.

Since the Digimon forum kind of faded away, I’ve always felt like the bit of online community it contained was missing. Today I was looking through the boards, and talking to someone about that lack of community, when I realized that it was alive and well on myOtaku. Really, I haven’t felt this close to other OB members since I was able to talk to all my other Digipeeps on a regular basis.

So yeah, thank you myOtaku for bringing me closer to some of my best OtakuBoards friends. Without this silly psuedo-blog I would have lost interest in these boards a long time ago, and missed out on some very cool people.

Speaking of cool people, Jenna sent me a text message last night. She sends her love to everyone, even though a good portion of people who visit this site have very limited knowledge of her. Oh well, it was a nice gesture and her presence is always missed.

…and Juu when are you coming to Disneyland? I can get you in for free, and it would be a lot of fun to meet up with you again… so talk to me about it.
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Saturday, September 18, 2004

Mileena, Katana, Jade

The last title reference was in fact a reference to “Parappa the Rapper,” a music game for the PS1. Even though I never owned an original Playstation, my friend Jerry had purchased it and one night we stayed up until 6AM trying to beat the game. Of course, I’m terrible at it so most of my time was spent watching him play the game. Still it was good stuff, and I have very fond memories of the rapping dog. He’s much cooler than Poochy ever was.

JC Baggee guessed the reference correctly, so he earns the point for this round. Bringing our current scoreboard up to a 8-way tie!

Current High Scores
Ben, JC Baggee, Solo Tremaine, Sara,
Semjaza Azazel, Nerdsy, Mimmi, Arcadia:
1 Point

In addition to today’s reference, this day marks the start of the now-weekly Shy’s Obscure Question! I will aska question, mostly likely a reference to some sort of comic book, tv show, movie, rock band etc. and whoever first guesses the correct answer will receive a large number of points. Today’s question is worth 3 points, meaning it is a question of moderate obscurity.

Today’s Question Is: Name the three MAGI supercomputers, and what aspects of their creator’s personality do they represent?

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1. Along with half of the world, I’m incredibly excited about the release of the Star Wars trilogy on DVD. I don’t know how much of that is a result of clever marketing on LucasFilm’s part, or my own personal love of the series. If my post in Rebel Scum is any indication, I have a huge interest in the movies that I hadn’t noticed until only recently. After seeing my latest paycheck, I doubt I will be able to buy it when it first comes out, though. I spent an awful lot of money on that date yesterday.

2. Never spend an awful lot of money on your first date with someone, especially if they are significantly more attractive than you are. We went out to some Cuban café in Pasadena and I ended up wasting a lot of money on an inedible turkey sandwich. I would have been perfectly happy going out to TOGO’s or something -- oh well.

As expected, the date went poorly, but not in the ways I had expected it to. Apparently this person is a big sports fan and were captivated by some sort of baseball game that was playing on the TV screen behind me. I’m not sure if we actually made eye contact after he discovered the TV, but it doesn’t matter, we weren’t exactly talking about anything. My attempts to start a conversation were lame, and he was too interested in the baseball game to say much. It was too long of a drive and too much of a bother to drive out to Pasadena to meet this person,, and all I got was a handshake.

Bah, who gives a handshake at the end of a date? Even if it were cut short I expect a hug, damn it!

3. I really, really want to see “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow,” which was released in theaters everywhere yesterday. If you recall I had the chance to see it at an early screening in June, but due to my friends being late for the screening I ended up missing out on it.

One thing that really excites me about the movie is it’s unique sense of style. Everything looks like it came straight out of a 1930’s Max Fleischer Superman cartoon, or a Flash Gordon action serial, or something. I’m hoping the characters and plot of the film stay true to it’s origins: including the random pop music number or having the two main characters engage in on-screen sex would definitely disappoint me. Certainly a filmmaker can take the high road every so often and end up with a remarkable film. Go see this movie, now!

4. A short anecdote about weird guests at Disneyland.

So yesterday was my day off (coincidentally, today and tomorrow are also my days off) and I wanted to spend the day at Disneyland. It has been a few months since I’ve played in the park, and with school being in session I figured it was as good a day as any to go and enjoy it. The group of friend I had wanted to assemble were unable to make it, but lately I’ve been spending an awful lot of time with my friend, Rudy, so I brought him along. He hasn’t started school yet, so I’m taking advantage of his free time by hanging out with the guy. (Coincidentally I hung out with him after my date, hm.)

We started our day in Tomorrowland, and went on “Star Tours,” per my request. My appetite for all things “Star Wars” is insatiable at this point, especially with the release of the original trilogy on DVD (see above.) The park was pretty empty for a Friday afternoon, and we managed to walk right on. While we were being assigned to our rows the middle-aged woman in front of us kept randomly grabbing Rudy. At first we thought she had some sort of physical disability, and was unable to walk, but obviously there was more going on.

When we entered our “star speeder” (you have to call them that, because it’s more fun) the woman continued to randomly poke, prod and grab my poor friend. I was oblivious to this, since I was easily distracted by the safety instructions being announced by C-3PO. So throughout the entire ride Rudy was being grabbed by this strange woman, and for whatever reason he didn’t tell her to stop. “I thought she was disabled!” was his argument, but really, after a certain point I’d tell Helen Keller to stop touching me. Of course, I’d be unable to communicate with her, so I don’t know how effective that would be.

On a positive note, I thoroughly enjoyed my trip to the moon of Endor.

5. Hookah smoke, like all smoke, smells bad. I was at a party last night (busy day, huh?) and mostly everyone was smoking Hookah. For those of you who are unfamiliar, Hookah is what the caterpillar smokes in Alice in Wonderland, and it is quite popular among younger people in Southern California. At least, it’s popular with some of the people I’ve ended up associating myself with through work.

Although I have never used it, and don’t intend to, I have made some poorly-informed judgments about the stuff already. First and foremost, the smell makes me nauseous, and I see nothing glamorous about it’s use. Last night was the first time I had ever seen a person smoke Hookah outside of a Disney animated feature, so I was curious and ended up watching everyone else using it for quite a while. Consider it second-hand smoke or whatnot, but it’s very unique odor ended up getting onto my clothes, so for the rest of the night I smelled like the stuff.

Not wanting to drive 40 miles home from the party I stayed the night there, and as a result more Hookah-smell ended up all over me. It got to the point where I needed to roll the windows down while driving home, for fear of the smell having some sort of negative effect on me. The second I got home I changed my clothes; ugh. I can’t even tell you how gross I feel with that stench lingering around me for so long.
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Thursday, September 16, 2004

You Gotta Do What? You Gotta Believe!

The last title was a reference to a specific episode of the TV series Angel, where Angel, the main character gets transformed into a puppet. No amount of explanation about the episode will make it seems like anything more than a terrible waste of time; you really just need to see it yourself to understand how good it is.

Tony was the first person to get the reference, so he earns the point. I’m assuming that the scoreboard will get much more interesting once we have many, many different scores and players on it Also, I might do a “lightning round” reference at the end of each week, worth anywhere from 2 to 5 points. What do you think?

Current High Scores
Ben, Solo Tremaine, Sara, Semjaza Azazel, Nerdsy, Mimmi, Arcadia: 1 Point

I’d like to thank Solo for figuring out what was wrong with the links on this site. Apparently quotation marks are bad.

Also, I‘d like to thank Tony again for the comic book I received in the mail yesterday. It prompted me to write this comic book-related post, which is hopefully the first in a series of mildly informative comic book articles on this site. Miss Arcadia express an interest in Zatanna, so I‘ll start with writing about her..

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Comic Characters You Know Nothing About #1:
Zatanna, Deus Ex Machina of the DC Universe

This is Zatanna, Mistress of Magic and quite possibly the most powerful character in the DC Universe. Although she has been a member of the Justice League for several decades Zatanna is one of it’s most obscure members. This is due to the fact that she has a very rich history and a complicated superpower. It is difficult to include her in a story without also explaining these things, so as such she her appearances are somewhat few and far between. Let’s start from the top, shall we?

Her father, Zatarra, was once the world’s greatest sorcerer (and coincidentally he made his first appearance in Action Comics #1, the first comic book Superman ever appeared in.) Zatarra worked as a stage magician to conceal his secret identity as a real magician, and also it would give him the chance to travel the globe without much suspicion. So Zatarra would travel from town to town, performing each night to captivated audiences who could the secret to his "magic tricks." After each show Zatarra would patrol the city, and dispense of any evil-doers he came across.

Even though he was insanely powerful in the field of magic, Zatarra was unpopular. Because of this fact, the character was doomed to obscurity; after a string of guest appearances following his debut Zatarra left comic books completely. Not to be heard from again for many years.

Then Zatanna burst onto the scene. Like her father Zatanna was a talented sorceress who traveled the globe to fight crime and perform stage magic (hence the costume.) In addition to fighting crime, Zatanna visited the four corners of the Earth in an effort to find her missing father.

Fortunately she wasn’t alone in the search, and every so often a fellow hero would help her in the search, and provide her with some helpful clues. Zatanna guest-starred in some of DC’s most popular comic books during this time: Hawkman, The Atom, Action Comics, Batman and even Superman. Over two years and a dozen comics later Zatanna found her father, and the happy magical family was reunited once more. Now that they were together again the two of them could go back to their quiet lives as local crime fighters, right? Wrong!

Zatanna appeared in a somewhat regular stream of comic books for the next decade or so, always as a guest-star and never n a comic book series of her own. This was pretty typical for female characters, especially during the 1960’s. In mainstream comics, Wonder Woman is the only female character to have a long-running series of her own. With 60+ years her comic completely dwarfs the second longest-running female series, Spider-Girl, and was just created in the past decade. It just seems that nobody likes to read comics with a female lead.

Thanks to her guest appearances, knowledge about Zatanna had spread throughout the comic book community. Everyone loved Zatanna, and wanted to see her in exciting adventures of her own. In the 1970’s fans got to decide who the next character to join the Justice League of America would be, and Zatanna won by an overwhelming margin! It makes sense to have her in the group, anyway, since she is just as, if not more powerufl than the other members.

Now, I haven’t bothered to explain Zatanna’s superpowers yet because well… they are hard to explain. Her power is to make the intangible tangible, her power is to shape reality, her power is to make the unbelievable believable. Confused yet? Good, you should be.

Long story short, using her inherited magical gifts Zatanna can do basically anything she wants. You want to tie up the bank robbers? No problem. You want to stop an alien invasion by putting a protective force field around the Earth? Easy as pie. You want Superman to eat dog food? Sure!

By reciting the desired effect of the spell backwards, Zatanna’s magic can do just about anything. And better yet, other forms of magic are the only thing that can negate her powers. This means just about everyone can fall victim to this. Defeating the Joker is as simple as saying “Amoc a ni si rekoj!”

Yes, over the years there have been very few adversaries who could stand up against her might, and I’m sure you can imagine how having a “Deus Ex Machina” like Zatanna would make for some very boring Justice League stories. If you have someone like her on the team, it is impossible to come up with any sort of challenging obstacles for the group to face. DC Comic Editors saw the flaw in having her on the team, and quickly disposed of Zatanna. First she was moved to the very unpopular Justice League International, a home for second-string heroes, in the early 1980's. When the comic was finally cancelled due to poor sales she faded out of the spotlight once again.

That is until fairly-recently, when the creators of Batman, the Animated Series decided to include her in an episode. Just seeing the classic character back in action caused a huge demand for new comic book stories featuring Zatanna. She soon received her own special one issue comic, and returned to the Justice League as a “reserve” member.

So there you have it. She still pops up from time to time, but for the most part she is doomed to a series of cameos and guest appearances. This Summer Zatanna has seen an awful lot of action, though. In addition to her latest guest appearances on TV's Justice League Unlimited she has a very important role in the mini-series Identity Crisis. By the end of the year it appears that the Mistress of Magic will make a return to a regular monthly comic as well. Yay.
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Tuesday, September 14, 2004

Self Esteem is for Everybody, Self Esteem is for Everyone, You Can Dream and be Anybody, But Self Esteem is How You Get it Done

So the last title was a reference to an episode of "The Simpsons." Solo got it first, so her gets the point, bringing our current high scores to...

Current High Scores
Ben, Solo Tremaine, Sara, Nerdsy, Mimmi, Arcadia: 1 Point

At this point it is still anyone's game, set your brains to "obscure" and have fun trying to guess these random titles.

I'm more than willing to start a group therapy session with you, Miss Arcadia. We should just start an AIM chat titled "Bitternesss Convention" one of these todays and rant away. It seems like it would be quite productive.

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Have you ever been on a date with someone who is significantly more attractive than you? I’m doing that tomorrow, and I’m not quite sure how to react. This person is leaps and bounds beyond what I could possibly hope for, so part of me is very curious as to why they agreed to meet me in the first place. Just from talking to them in person, I get the impression they are a little self-centered, which is fine by me because I have no interest in just talking about myself throughout the entire date.

We’re meeting up in Pasadena, which is halfway between where they live (LA) and where I live (The Valley), this leads to another problem because I don’t think I’ve ever actually been in Pasadena before. I’m sure there is stuff to do there, but this is really the first time either of us have been in the area, bleh. If the lovely Jenna were still around she could help me out, since I believe the area is a frequent haunt of hers. I’m looking in your direction, Shinmaru. What is there to do in Pasadena?

Them being so much more attractive than me is something I should be happy about. I get to date someone hot, yea! But that’s not how my mind works, and this little issue of attractiveness has been bothering me for the past few days. I’ve spoken to a few people about it, and their responses have been bizarre and not very reassuring.

My favorite so far has been, “You know how you see gorgeous people holding hands with ugly ones on the street? Some people don’t realize they are beautiful and date homely guys instead.” Hmmmm….

Maybe if I write shorter posts I’ll feel more motivated to churn them out on a daily basis.

Please read my sign-up for ‘Rebel Scum’, I spent an awful lot of time on it. Also, please sign-up yourself because if nobody else joins in on this I will be very upset for wasting my time on writing that.

Edit: Why won't my html work!? Argh!
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Thursday, September 9, 2004

Yvan Eht Nioj
Mimmi was correct. "Spectacular, Spectacular" is the name of a song from Moulin Rouge. For those of you who haven't seen it, I recommend you watch it right away, or multiple times.. when I first saw the movie I hated it, but upon a repeat viewing I decided that this film is awesome. Arcadia also guessed correctly, so I guess she deserves a point as well.

Current High Scores
Ben, Sara, Nerdsy, Mimmi, Arcadia: 1 Point

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Life is just a pain these days. I don't really feel like complaining these days; I don't have to look hard to find someone in a worse position than I'm in. Lately I have just been in the most terrible mood, and there's no good reason why I should be feeling this way. Part of it might be lonliness, I guess, I really can't think of anything else that would keep me so depressed.

Does anyone else have long bouts of depression for no good reason? I sure do. *sigh*

Outside of that, there are some nice things going on in my life. I had a nice discussion with my Newspaper advisor not too long ago, just talking about some concerns I had about the quality of this paper. He cares just as much about my college newspaper as I do, only he's giving the staff some distance so they can grow... only it has backfired and nobody is being very responsible with it. In the future he wants me to take a larger role on the staff, perhaps an editor of some sort... right now I'm the only person on staff with any real sort of Journalism experience. It can make things very frustrating.

That keeps me optimistic about that particular class; leaving me with only four classes that I officially hate, yay.

Moving onto other things, I received a lovely post card from Miss Sara yesterday, featuring none other than Felix the Cat himself. If you don't know, I'm a nerd and a huge fan of classic animation. I had sent Sara a few postcards earlier this summer, so it got me thinking... if postcards are so much fun to send, then why doesn't everyone send them? Expect some sort of myOtaku postcard-thing to be announced in my next post or two…

Bio is now a moderator for the Arena Underground, who knew? I sure didn’t. Bio will do an excellent job in keeping our newest forum in order, I’m sure. Congrats to him.

Speaking of The Arena, here are some exciting new threads I’ve come across…

Cliché by Ouka looks like it’s going to be a very interesting. It’s similar to Anime Stereotype High School in the sense that it not only pokes fun at clichés but glorifies them. This is horror-themed, which is something that doesn’t get done very much on the boards.

Star Wars: Rebel Scum by Siren is another fun concept that could make for a potentially cool RPG. I urge any Star Wars fans to check it out, especially since we haven’t had a decent Star Wars RPG in quite some time.

Sonic the Hedgehog: Lost Lost…. by Lady Katana is a “mature” Sonic the Hedgehog RPG. It’s definitely a different approach to the source material, and completely different than the type of stuff being done in other video game RPGs. Video games RPGs seem to be in the middle of a second golden age right now, heh. The projects already out there are great, and other good projects are slowly being put together… it is a great time to be a gamer and an RPG-er on OB.

Edit: The links are not working correctly, even though the html appears to be correct.

Also, cats and rabbits cannot produce offspring. In my last post I said they could, but it turns out my friend was lying to me. The idea that cats and rabbits can reproduce is just an urban myth, and something that I completely fell for.
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Tuesday, August 31, 2004

Spectacular, Spectacular

The last reference belonged to a fictional product featured in the cartoon "Rocko's Modern Life," that ran on Nickelodeon for a couple of years. In hidsight, it was one of the best Nicktoons ever created (second only to "Invader Zim", of course.) I know that "Rugrats" and "Spongebob" popular, but I feel like both of those shows have survived long past their peak... which is something that "Rocko" never had a chance to do. Good stuff, hopefully they'll start releasing those old Nicktoons on DVD season long boxed sets; I know that being able to see classic episodes of "Doug" would make me happy.

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So in the grand tradition of copying other people's ideas, I'm going to leave this post somewhat random (ie: short and lazy.)

1. I played Literati for the first time today with Shinmaru, and so far is appears that we are evenly matched. He won the first match (barely!) and I ended up the victor in the second. In the second match it seemed like both of us had a terrible collection of letters, so for the bulk of the game we were making very small words. So much fun, I wish I had signed onto the tournament.

2. "Pe" is a word. Apparently it has something to do with fencing. Who knew?

3. Solo would probably know. He is somewhat of a fencer if I remember correctly, or at least he used to be...

4. PoisonTongue knows about all sorts of things, including, but not limited to science fiction movies and their connection toMoby Dick. When I first spoke to the guy I was i a bad mood, but by the end of our conversation I felt quite a bit better. Yay.

5. I'm starting work on a short story of sorts. It's for my crerative writing class, and loosely based on The Wizard of Oz. I'm really excited about the idea behind it, but I realize that it will take a bit of research to write. The seven awesome members who visit OB Anthology should look forward to seeing that in some type of incarnation in the near future.

6. In keeping with the tradition, it appears that Sage has vanished from the face of the Earth as well. This happened immediately after he was assigned to post in "hero." Authorities believe there is some sort of a conection at work here, but are reluctant to blame the RPG itself for their mysterious disappearances.

7. Speaking of RPG's James and I have been doing a bit of brainstorming on a new Pokemon RPG for the Adventure Arena. Both of us basically had the same idea at the same time; so it was only natural for us to collaborate on it. This will be more than a typical Pokemon RPG, though. Between the two of us we are completely rethinking the world that is present in the games.

It will be many, many moons before that is launched, though. I believe James has another project in the pipeline for when Kill Adam wraps up (which won't even be for months) and I expect "hero" to take a good deal of time to complete, especially given the rate at which some people have been posting, or more correctly, not.

8. Did you know that rabbits and cats are able to produce offspring together? I found this out recently, and am very curious to see what they look like. These offspring are not capable of reproducing, though, so it is impossible to breed a race of cat-rabbits (or "cabbits," if you are a fan of the Tenchi animes.)

9. Has anyone been readng Identity Crisis? It is a comic book murder mystery featuring some of the lesser-known members of the Justice League, and very interesting so far. Some of the content and characterization is a little questionable, but overall I think it is the best mini-series I have read in a good long while. Tony should go and pick it up if he has a chance, since I know nobody else who visits this site reads any comics books.

10. I'm looking forward to Labor Day, since I get holiday pay (double-time) at work. In addition to that, there is a special trainer meeting that I need to attend after my scheduled shift, and they are paying me overtime to show up for it. 13 hours of double-time makes me very happy.

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Edit: 11. I just noticed that the lovely Mimmi was not on my friends' list! The mistake has been corrected, and she is on the list, yay.

Mimmi = Coolest myOtaku theme ever. Literati4eva!
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Tuesday, August 24, 2004

Tropical Plumber
I'm sorry, Nerdsy. I did not notice the comment you left regarding the "Solomon Grundy Wants Pants Too" title. Had I noticed it I would have awarded you the 'point.' Since it would be rude to take away Ben's 'point' now anyway, I've decided to give it to both of you.

Sara was correct about the "Soda versus Pop" title. It is a reference to a specific commerical that used to air on Fox Kids about Digimon. At the time we had a very active thread on the boards about it... heh.

Current High Scores
Sara, Ben, Nerdsy: 1

PT: I love Quark Express. Before we upgraded to Quark we were using Adobe Pagemaker, and in my personal opinion that is the worst program ever made. I would have preferred MS paint to produce our newspaper over that monstrosity. It's very easy to use once you work past the annoying little details that it has with printing.

Vixon: I have not seen the commercial you are talking about, but it does sound pretty funny.

Shinmaru: You are going to Cal Poly Pomona, w00t! We will have to hang out, or meet, or fight to the death, or something. Good times will be had by all.

SamSandy: I'll give ColourDeaf until Thursday to post, and if he fails to do so I'll replace him. Aside from the great sign-ups I have received so far, terra and Queen Asuka are both interested in joining (and were unable to sign-up in the first place for whatever reason.) I may open up sign-ups during the weekend again if his character needs to be replaced with another. Anyway...

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Working five days a week and schooling five days a week is starting to wear on me a little bit. By September 1st my schedule will be a little more sane, though. I started doing my homework after I got home from Disneyland last night, which was about 1 AM. Ergh. My first newspaper story is due tomorrow, and I've barely even started it. I'll put more time and effort into the Chaffey Breeze after the busy Summer season is over.

One thing I do manage to find time for these days is comic books. Boy, do I love comic book these days. On average I buy two or three books a week, which admittedly isn't a lot, but over time stacks and stacks of the things have started to pile up in my room. My Mom is attempting to get me to throw them away, but I claim they will have some sort of value later on and are worth keeping. Of course, this is true, but I have no intention of getting rich off of a comic book collection. I just want to be able to read them again and again whenever I want to.

Speaking of my room (at least, my room was mentioned at some point in the previous paragraph) construction is still going on in the attic space that will become my own room in the future. I have big plans for this room; I have already decided what pictures and posters I am placing on every square inch of my walls. My walls, I like the sound of that.

I'll have to cut this post short since I need to leave for class soon. Read and comment, or something.
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Monday, August 23, 2004

Soda versus Pop
The last post's reference belonged to an old advertisement that used to air for the Cartoon Network. It featured the Legion of Doom sitting around and arguing how they were going to defeat the Superfriends. Lex Luthor demanded that he receive a pair of pants first (he was in a speedo of some sort) and Solomon Grundy wanted pants, too. He already had pants, though, so there's some humor in that. Yeah.

Ben guessed it was from Justice League, which is somewhat of a correct answer. So Ben is currently the only person who has guessed a reference correctly. I'll come up with a scoreboard or something to put in the quiz results box once we have a good number of people who have guessed these references correctly. Also, I guess that is entirely dependent on the amount of posting I do, so let's get started, shall we?

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I started "real school" again, and I think I might actually enjoy it this time around. My classes are English, Creative Writing, Newspaper Production, Newswriting and Computer Graphics. With the sole exception of my Newswriting class (It's a really basic newspaper class, and I know most, if not all of the stuff already) I'm very excited about them. Computer graphics will be especially interesting; I have been doing an awful lot of drawing lately and I'm hoping to learn how to dress up some of my comics on the computer; if nothing else it will teach me how to use Photoshop better, and that's something that will come in handy online, if nowhere else.

It's only been a few days, and I am having some issues with my classes already. First and foremost, the entire staff of the college newspaper has no idea what they are doing, in terms of producing something with a certain degree of quality. Although my high school newspaper wasn't perfect, it looks infinitely more professional than anything these people have managed to produce. The current Editor in Chief has no idea how to use Quark Express (which is the program we put together pages with,) on the first meeting I had to explain to him how to print. This sort of thing makes me very sad, and I have a feeling that by this time next year I'll have some sort of role on the editorial staff.

My Creative Writing assignments are also incredibly vague. I guess she is doing this to promote our creativity and see what we come up with, but most of us are struggling to figure out what the assignment is actually about. In our last assignment half of us turned in opinions pieces, and the other half turned in literary analysis’s (sp?). Creating boundaries for the assignment sparks more creativity for the students, especially when it gives them a clear idea on what sort of things it might be graded on. Oh well. I turn the work in, even if it bares no resemblance to her original idea for it, whatever that was.

But I’m thrilled to be back in school again. I can’t even begin to emphasize how much I enjoy the idea of being in school, regardless of whether or not I enjoy the classes themselves. Moving on…

…If I had a nickel for every time ColourDeaf didn’t post in “hero,” I’d have one nickel…
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