Friday, October 12, 2007

October 12, 2007
Dear Jan,


I got your message the other day after I noticed that I had suddenly lost a couple of your other messages. I guess I just figured for the most part that this was going to be another random, temporary "away while I redesign a couple things" deal. Going by the message you left, I'm guesssing that's probably not the case, is it?

So here we go again, I guess . . .

Going by what little I now apparently know about you, it feels like it's about a 50/50 chance you'll even get this message. But y'know, I imagined here would be as good a way to try as any, as e-mail addresses can be changed, blocked, or outright deleted. So I'm counting on this for now.

I guess I might as well make my point, then . . . why? I know you gave us your answer, that you had to and that you didn't feel free here. And y'know, I get that. You wouldn't be the first person to decide that it was time to move on from this place - Rusty' comes to mind, that artistic Alabaman guy (or was it Arkansas? Probably Alabama). Thing about him, though . . . he told us how we could find him, and we can still keep in touch with him if we wanna. And I like that.

And then we get this other stuff about how you have to be mean to us so that we can forget you . . . yeah, it ain't gonna happen. Again, like Rusty', like DES . . . I've no intention of ever forgetting them. It doesn't work like that, especially not when right after you tell us to forget about you, you say that you'll never forget the good times we had here. Nuh uh, that's not fair to us.

It's almost as unfair to us as it was to up and leave so abruptly. Again.

It's so frustrating. It's frustrating because I want to ask you what's going on, what your mindset is when you're thinking about this stuff; I know the way things are currently going, I'm probably never gonna get the chance, and even if I do you probably aren't going to answer it anyway. Still, I guess it's partly to be expected. You've always been a little frustrating in your own way, y'know? With your veiled words - always poetic, always beautiful - that always hid something else that was just there for us to decode and decipher to get at what you were really thinking about.

I'll admit it, I'm not smart enough to decode them all. And it pained me to know that I couldn't, especially when - like we see now - you do have the propensity to just forget about all of it and be off on your own way again.


Last time we were able to exchange words, you mentioned a friend of yours who no longer wanted to speak to you for that one stupid reason . . . and you talked about how much that whole thing just upset your calm all over.

I'm sure you see the irony there. 'Cause you're good with these things.

Mostly, I'd just hate to think that the last thing I ever got to say to you was for you to "get over yourself." I think I probably hate the second-last thing I ever got to say even more, that "I am absolutely not attracted to you in any way, and I mean that in the nicest way possible." Those ain't so nice to say to people . . . and I can't say they're entirely true, anyway. Clearly I never would have stuck around all this time if you weren't attractive in the way you are . . . it's not a romantic thing either of us are probably looking to pursue, but you've got it.

So yeah, I'm not a big fan of having those be the last things I ever say to you before I respect your wishes to just forget about you. Which, I suppose, is the whole point of why I'm writing all this . . .


So what was it that restricted your freedom here? I really think that's the big question I want answered. I'm sure you have a fine reason and I've love to hear it. I'm sure I'd be thinking too highly of myself to wager that I had a role to play in that . . . but therein lies a whole other thing . . .

Have I ever made you feel tied down or restricted here before? Have I ever done anything but to support and care about you? Unless having that support structure is what you consider to be counter-productive to your freedom, then why the heck do I need to lose yet another friend whom I adore to time? That's stupid.


I'm not telling you that you have to come back here specifically, or that you need to ever apologise for anything you've ever said or done. What I am saying, though, is that I'm afraid I'll never be able to respect your one wish from us: I'm never, ever gonna even begin to forget about you. Whichever screen name you choose to take up in the future, if even . . . you know how to find me. I'll be here, I'll be online (I'd like to hope that you'll also still be online now and then) . . . I'll be around.

I'm hoping in time, you will be too.


'Til then, cutie, you have my love and my knowing that you'll be just fine . . . but I'll still miss ya. No question, yo.


-James
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Wednesday, October 10, 2007

   Q&A: A for Q . . .
What music do you like?

My official answer is rock, though secretly I adore scores and soundtracks from film and game alike. But yeah, for the record, I'm predominantly a rock guy.


Who's your most favourite character in PotC and why?

At this precise moment, I'd have to be boring and say Jack Sparrow because he's basically just all-around awesome and memorable and all that. I do use Barbossa as my model if I speak in pirate-speech, however . . .


What does: 700 - 482, + 94, multiplied by 6, divided by 42, + 8....subtract a few cows and times a piece of parsley.... equal?

Taken as is, as:
700 - 482 + 94 * 6 / 42 + 8 - few cows (average cost of cattle times three) * parsley (cost of parsley plant)
The answer would be 52.57143 - (3831*3) * (1.79)
Which equals -20478.367

If taking BEDMAS rules into account, which would be:
700 - 482 + (94 * 6 / 42) + 8 - (3831*3 * 1.79),
The answer would be 700 - 482 + 6.714 + 8 - 20572.47
Which equals -20339.756


if we actually made it possible to live on the moon, and made it almost like earth, would you go live there if they offered you the best living conditions?

That would most likely depend on my current situation at the time, like jobs, family, relationships, or whatnot. If those sorts of things weren't too much of an issue, then yeah, I think I could go for living on the moon. It'd be good for grins, I bet.


What are your thoughts on sex?

Secular-type thinker. If you find the right person, you both like each other a lot, then by all means, do what ya need to do. That aside, I imagine life would be very dull if it wasn't around. THAT said, life is somewhat dull for me and it's probably a shame.


Favourite ice cream!?

I'm a big fan of coffee-flavoured ice creams. They're tasty.


Personal hero?

Viggo Mortensen. Extremely artistic, musical, intelligent (freakin' 5 languages or more!), and devoted to his trade. As an actor, he gives his all and takes it just as well (like a sword whack), leads and inspires others through example . . . and he bought a horse for the girl stunt rider because he wanted her to have it.

Him aside, my older brother's not bad either . . . he doesn't bug me about things like everyone else in my family.


If you eventually find out you could fly and the abilities necessary for a super-hero (hearing help signs, nightvision, abnormal strenght, ice breath and so on), would you start planning on becoming a super-hero? And if so, would you start planning your super-hero outfit? Describe it for us please.

I would totally become a super hero. I'm just that uncynical about it. I suppose my superhero outfit would be mostly simple ('cause I can't sew for beans) . . . probably something like jeans and a brown leather jacket or something. Would I need a mask? Maybe . . . but really, it's not like I'm famous or anything, so even if they saw my face I doubt many people would know who I was. And of course, I'd armour myself as much as I needed to, depending on how my powers work and whatnot . . . gotta tailor for what ya got, y'know?


Favorite. Dirty. Joke.

I'll give ya a long one and a short one. First the long one:

A man walks into the doctor's office one day. He says, "Doc', ya gotta help me with my problem... my [CUTE FLUFFY BUNNY] is too long!" Doctor goes, "Hmm... alright, let me have a look..." So the man reaches into his pants, uncoils his [CUTE FLUFFY BUNNY] out from around his leg and holds it out.

"My goodness!" the doctor exclaims while regaining his line of thought. "Well, as of now, medical science can't cure you... however, if you're willing to try something a little more new-age..." The man answers, "Doc, I'll try anything."

The doctor tells him, "If you go behind the medical building, there's a small pond with a frog in it... now I don't know how it works, but if you ask that frog to marry you, your [CUTE FLUFFY BUNNY] will shrink four inches when he replies 'no'." The man stuffs his [CUTE FLUFFY BUNNY] back into his pants and thanks the doctor before heading out behind the building.

Behind the building, the man finds the pond and finds the frog. Shrugging his shoulders, he gives it a go. "Hey frog!" he shouts, "will you marry me?" The frog gives the man a funny look and answers, "no."

The man feels a tingle in his boxers and gives himself a check: miraculously, his [CUTE FLUFFY BUNNY] was now down to 16 inches! "Wow!" the man thought to himself, "this is really working!" So again he looks to the frog and goes, "Hey frog, will you marry me?" Again the frog gives him a funny look and shouts back, "No!"

The man feels another tingle in his shorts and gives himself a check: his [CUTE FLUFFY BUNNY] was now down to an almost manageable 12 inches! The man was absolutely ecstatic.

"This is too good to be true!" the man thought to himself. "After all these years I can finally have a life! But still..." The man stopped to take another feel, another measure. "...I guess one more time will be just perfect..."

Again, the man turned to the frog. "Hey frog! Marry me!"

The frog replied, "Holy [feces]! What the [intercourse] is wrong with you?! For god's sakes... No! No! And for the last time, NO!!!"

The short one, I'll let you google the punchline. There's NO way I'm writing that down here . . .

How do you make a little boy cry twice?
(I'm a horrible person, I know . . . but I loves a good dirty joke!)


Favourite character in Heroes?

Hiro Nakamura, hands down. Though I do enjoy a good Claire moment as well . . . but officially, Hiro. Shock, I know . . .


"What is your name?" "What is your quest?" "What is the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow?"

Sir James of New Westminster.
To defeat King Bohan's armies with three style glyphs in every encounter.
Chuck Norris.


So yeah, that's me, I guess.
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Tuesday, October 9, 2007

   Since everyone else is doin' it . . .
In the spirit of plagiarizing Adam, Mimmi, Kei, and Sangome (as well as anyone else who plagiarized them before I did), I'll open up a Q&A.

Ask any question ya want, and I'll answer next time.
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Sunday, October 7, 2007

   This weekend's YouTube is brought to you by FUNimation . . .
I've long since decided that Greg Ayres is quite possibly my most favourite American voice actor (Brad Swaile still holds top spot overall because he's awesome and local). Ayres is just beyond cool and hilarious - Anime-Pulse interviewed him, you should give it a listen to see for yourself.

So why is Greg Ayres awesome? For one, he voiced Shinpachi in Peacemaker (the guy as whom I've cosplayed several times). For another, he voiced Koyuki in Beck(!!!); so not only did he voice the character, but he also got to sing the songs! So he does it at cons and stuff now . . . however, you can feel that his singing for audiences at cons is of a very different style compared to that other guy famous for singing at cons . . . y'know, that one that the girls love and he knows they love him . . . ahem . . .

I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about:



Seriously, it just seems like everyone there is having so much fun . . . it's almost criminal . . .


The moral of this story: Watch Beck!!!

The other moral: Greg Ayres rules. And he has a funny talking voice.


And now if you'll excuse me, I have some Canadian-style Thanksgiving dinner to pay attention to now . . . peace!
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Friday, October 5, 2007

   Now that Bif's outta the way, let's talk about fighting!
This should be an interesting post that goes into my evening internet mindset . . . in case anyone has ever wondered why the hell I post so many random YouTube links every day . . .


I can't remember exactly what I was looking for at the time as I searched for videos the other night (I know, I'm a hopeless YouTube addict . . .). It was something martial arts related, in any case . . . which then led to a clip of random people performing this or that style of fighting . . . which then led to an odd clip called "Human Weapon screws up Human Anatomy".

http://youtube.com/watch?v=lBw7aFLK6TE

Evidently, there's some show on tv that shows martial arts, and this particular one forgot what side of the body the liver was on in their motion-capture 3D example (at least at one point, though they put it on the correct, right side later in the episode). So I'm thinking, "heh, neat . . ."

That leads to more of these 3D "mechanics" animations for more martial arts techniques, from punches to throws . . .


(Here's a short Judo example of what I'm talking about if you wanna watch:)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=8O1CvYVKwpY

So at about this point I now have a separate browser tab on Wiki' (my other internet time-killing addiction) to read up about this "Human Weapon" show which I apparently do not get here in Canada (Turns out the Canadian "History Television" channel is different from "The History Channel"). Suddenly I'm really intrigued by this show's concept: two American martial artists travel the world, learn different fighting styles and their histories, and then after a week of training try it out on a local champion . . . this could make for some good television . . .

Back to YouTube, I found the "challenge fight" between the host and an Eskrima champion (Filipino stick-fighting, among other things). So for the next six minutes I'm watching these two guys just pound the hell out of each other with sticks while the guy gives a commentary on himself and how the fight went . . . then he got smoked in the finger by the other guy (possible fracture) and they call the match then and there.

Yeah, I was sold.

So hopping back and forth over YouTube, I find a few more clips here and there of "Human Weapon", but now I really wanna see a full show . . . here's where Google comes into play . . .

So at this point I still have the Wiki' entry out as my episode guide that tells me which episode is about which martial arts (in case I needed it), and Google does the rest . . .

. . . Google wins, finds a full episode (streaming, no less) on another video site. So I learn all about Judo and become amused when the one host gets completely schooled by the Judo master . . . but he's gracious about it, especially seeing as he's studied Judo for all of a week compared to twenty-odd years for the other guy . . .

From that video, I looked to see what other videos that particular guy had uploaded. Lo and behold, he had a couple more episodes of Human Weapon uploaded! Further, another dude had another one or two!

I spend another 45 minutes learning about Savate, something I've been wanting to look into for a long time just to see how it differs from "normal" kickboxing. Heh . . . one of the main differences seems to be that it's very violent, has streetfighting origins and savateurs fight wearing padded boots . . . so they're kicking each other with boots on . . . . . that's wild. Just sayin', ya can't underestimate the French, they're a violent people if they wanna be . . .

Oh yeah, the host (the other, larger host) fought the Savate fighter to a draw in this one. I was more than impressed with this show and its premise by this point.

So the night continues on . . . I ask Duo (who's online on MSN at the time and by this point had learned all sorts of neat little random facts about Savate) what I wanna learn about next: Karate, Pankration, or Krav Maga. She emphatically exclaimed "Karate!!!" I mused about how I have somewhat of a hate-on for Karate - probably because in my early years of life it was the only one anyone ever knew and I got tired of correcting them on what I studied - but agreed to watch it anyway . . .

. . . by this point, pretty much anyone I was chatting with online was getting an earful about what I was watching . . . either people in Kansas, people in Australia . . . . . I'm bad like that . . .

It's well past midnight at this point. Everyone else has gone to bed or left work. I still have Pankration and Krav Maga to go through . . . . .

. . . as I watch the Pankration episode, I suddenly realised how this related to old-school Greek training and such. Thus, I went to the Anime Evolution cosplay forum, replied in the "300 cosplay" thread with a link to the video in case anyone was curious . . .

After that, watched the thing about Krav Maga (which I hadn't even heard of until that night), was really happy, really excited . . . but I still really wanted to watch the Kung-Fu episode . . .

. . . . . double-checked back to Wiki', it then dawned on me that this is a very new show on History, and as such still hasn't aired about a third of the season's episodes - Kung-Fu is the next one.

I went to bed after that.


So yeah, that's generally how my evenings work. They're not always so video-heavy, but I more or less drift from one thing to the next like that (you should've seen me last Monday when I caught myself up on every single Heroes graphic novel out so far . . . I was up late that night . . .).

. . . and in case you were curious, I watched the Muay Thai, Eskrima and MMA episodes yesterday. I'm just missing one and I'll be all caught up.


In other news, the kids at my kung-fu club performed a couple weeks ago. Some of them are newer than others, and those who aren't as new are half-assing . . . but it's still neat:






Martial arts is an awesome hobby. Just sayin'.
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Wednesday, October 3, 2007

   Who is Bif Naked?
Bif is a Canadian punk musician famous for having a lot of tattoos. She's a bit of a Vancouver celebrity these days since she lives here; she was even a third radio DJ for the local rock station's morning show for a bit one summer.

She's probably most famous for her late '90s and early 2000s.

Hehe . . . just going through a list of songs she's done . . . I totally forgot about "I Love Myself Today", which I used to really love. Other famous songs of hers if you wanna look 'em up are "Everything", "Space Man", "Moment of Weakness" back when she was especially punky (well, "Space Man" isn't really punky, but it's still pretty good - found a neat Final Fantasy AMV done to it on YouTube tonight . . .).

She also did a couple pretty well-recognised covers of "We're Not Gonna Take It" by Twisted Sister and "Nothing Else Matters" by Metallica.


And yeah, my cousin works at the music label she's with.


Here, have her music video for "I Love Myself Today" and bask in the rockin' glory that is Bif:




Hehe, high school flashbacks . . . awesome . . .
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Tuesday, October 2, 2007

   My cousin went to Bif Naked's wedding!
My cousin works at the music label that Bif Naked is a part of.

Bif got married last Saturday.

Cousin went to the wedding. It's pretty neat to be in the know about this kinda stuff.

Cousin also brought home one of the flower arrangements. It's pretty crazy - she broke it up into 3 smaller bouquets. As a gift she also got a box of ultra-fancy chocolates, like the kind with gold foil on 'em and everything. Cousin gave me one. It was tasty.

So yeah, I know someone who's really close with someone famous. I guess it's a start . . .
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Monday, October 1, 2007

   I'm around, I'm around . . .
Picked up Heavenly Sword the other day. It was too short, but it was awesome during that short period.

So you have Nariko, the main character who fights with said-sword. She's hot, she's not wearing much clothes, and she kicks all kinds of ass. Thus, she draws you in . . .

. . . then you meet Kai, and then you see where the true awesomeness of this game is. 'Cause Kai is slightly crazy but ever so expressive so you just adore the crazy flipping-around girl. Is it a kind of moe? Perhaps . . . but with more violence!

Oh yeah, Andy Serkis plays the bad guy. It seriously doesn't get much better than that. He also helped direct the motion-capture stuff for all the characters . . . . . so yeah, Heavenly Sword is pretty . . .


. . . here, have a Kai moment:



I cracked up so hard when they got to the Genji joke . . . oh man . . .

. . . . . now if only Stranglehold would hurry up and come out . . .
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Friday, September 28, 2007

   Healing through YouTube!!!
I finally cut a clip from the "Densha Otoko" drama that I absolutely adore. It's beyond cute:



Gyah hah hah . . . . . Moe . . .
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Thursday, September 27, 2007

For those in the know . . .
I'm feeling less "ehhhh" now.

Thanks for all the well wishes through that time, even if you never knew exactly why.


We're gettin' there, though . . . we're gettin' there . . .
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