Light, Bright and Sparkling

Attempt at Blogging #113384797514

2011-02-10T13:26:00.003-05:00

Hey there, dearest Journal!

I'm sorry I've been such a bad friend to you. I haven't written. I confess, sometimes long stretches of time have gone by without even thinking about you. But you don't have feelings, because you're just a website, so I know you'll forgive me.

Where to start? So much has changed since 2009, when last we spoke. I was an office worker back then, filling my days with files and an enormous Google reader list that I never seemed to get through. I've since left behind that cold world of fluorescent lights and business suits (not that I ever wore them, but saw them all the damn time) for the much more glamorous world of professional baking. I filed my taxes for 2010 today and got to adjust my profession from "Executive Assistant" to "Pastry Cook". It was oh-so-fulfilling, especially since my plummet from wealth to near-poverty comes with a massive tax refund, unlike last year when I had to pay the guv'ment a few hundred bucks. I got a lot out of my years as an assistant, but oh boy, was it time for a change. I'm sooo much happier now, wearing my bright bandannas and eye-catching chef pants to work every day. Sometimes, I get to see the pre-dawn hours and walk through the city as it's just starting to wake up. I even got to work a few late night baking shifts, rotating dozens of pies in and out of the ovens while playing loud metal music.

My days are full of hard work, so much learning about food (my very favorite thing) and eating my fill of sugar and flour (sometimes in actual pastry form and sometimes just plain sugar; I have no pride). I fulfilled my recurring daydream of working for Joanne Chang (of Flour Bakery and Myers+Chang). Many a day in the office, I would wish that I had the skill and knowledge to just jump careers, but I never thought it'd be possible. Then, the opportunity arose to radically change careers and I emailed Joanne about the possibility of interning at Flour for a few months to see if I really wanted to do it. She said yes, and I became Flour's first official intern. Naturally, I'm awesome and they decided to keep me when my internship ended. Social media at work, people! Magical. I foresee many delightful years ahead of me, continuing to learn about the things I love, and hopefully getting better at them.

One of my favorite series of fantasy novels is written by the delightful Lynn Flewelling. I always remember first picking up Luck in the Shadows and reading her author blurb, which lists a collection of random jobs she's held, including "necropsy technician". I loved that, because you only get one life and why not fill it learning as much as you possibly can. Not everyone is lucky enough to figure out when they are 18 what they want to do forever and always, so I'm totally fine figuring it out as I go.

So, here I am. That's my work life. I'm also enjoying the most delightful and easy relationship with Cody, a fellow neighborhood wierdo that I have obsessed over since he first came into my life as my coffee shop crush at Ula. My perseverance in wooing him finally yielded fruit after a year or so and here we are, nine months later, a JP fixture that all the lesbians try to emulate.

There's surely more to come as I get back into regaling my dear, sweet Journal with all of the books I'm reading, games I'm playing and food I'm eating. But we'll ease back into it for now. I also made a tumblr, but I'm not sure I'll use it, cause I rather like blogger. I don't know, maybe I can link them?

Love,
Jon

Google Image Search of the Day - July 31, 2009

2009-07-31T20:57:00.016-05:00

IN WHICH HE DECIDES THAT LOQUACIOUSNESS IS THE SOUL OF WIT AND FUCK ANYONE WHO THINKS DIFFERENTLY

Greetings! It's a bit late in the day to be composing a blog post, so I hope this one is up to par. Today was bit too busy at work for me to find the time not only to come up with a decent word to search for, but also to draft the post. We'll see if I can crank this sucker out before midnight. Almost 10:30p now, so away we go.

One thing I did manage to accomplish towards this today was the selection of the word. It's not a very specific process, as I have just been picking a word at random out of my head and going with it, but today I was stumped. Maybe it's because I was up until 1am last night downloading new music and putting it into iTunes and my iPhone. It was quite a feat dragging myself out of bed today, so my brain has been running on empty. The first word I thought of was "loquacious," but that's a pretty mundane word and I doubted I'd get much good out of it. Of course, after my treasure trove of images today, I've come to realize that just about anything is likely to reward you with hidden gems of brilliance. I think this is what I love most about this new method of forcing myself to write. It's vaguely structured randomness. My brain has never functioned in a way that if I was approached and told, "Tell me a story," I would be able to spin an amusing tale out of my memory. This is probably why when I meet new people, especially groups, I tend to sit in the background and observe for a while, until something that is said inspires me to say something intelligent--or at least funny, I hope. If I could do this on cue, it would be much easier for me to write. Instead, I confine almost all of my writing for the year to NaNoWriMo and Twitter. NaNoWriMo allows me to just spout off the most ridiculous shit I can come up with, paying almost zero attention to plot or organization. Twitter, of course, lets me talk about food almost 24/7, which anyone who knows me would agree is almost all I think about. (PS- I know that's not proper grammar, but who really says it the right way without sounding like an idiot.) Anyway, so I definitely said no to "loquacious."

My aforementioned slow brain function made me actually perform a google search for "Words that begin with _," which is, let's face it, hella lazy. I figured I would lose all of my street cred if I did that, and since I don't really have any street cred to speak of, that would probably be a bad thing. Then it came to me, like a whisper from a glittering angel sent by God to inspire me, like a string of melody from the lute of a Muse--"rapacious" was the word I would use. "Rapacious" would provide me with enough material to write seven blog posts! Maybe not the most SFW word of the day, but it sure beats "propone." (I'm looking at you, Oxford English Dictionary Word of the Day. Who the fuck uses "propone" anymore? Jesus. You're so behind the times.)

And so, word chosen, we move ever forward towards our destiny. (I wonder who would be in my karass...)

Ra-pa-cious
1: excessively grasping or covetous
2: living on prey
3: ravenous (a rapacious appetite)

DESPITE THERE BEING NEITHER BEGINNINGS NOR ENDINGS TO THE TURNING OF THE WHEEL OF TIME, HE BEGINS WHERE ONE OUGHT

Sometimes, you just have to give the right answer. It may not be witty, it may not be thought-provoking, but when tasked with finding rapacious photos...sometimes you must call a spade a spade.

Wow, how fucking original.Some dudes dragging a satyr who's about to do some nude chick. Like this isn't something we've all seen a million times before. I do rather enjoy how Man A on the left is gnawing on the ankle of the satyr. He's all, "Not only do I want to stop you from getting some nookie from this totally willing and not at all frightened woman here, I would also like a bit of goat foot. Nom nom nom." Also, why is a real goat with a satyr? Isn't that weird or something? Like, I am a goat person, why would I want to hang with you, you stupid normal goat. You can't talk, you can't rape, what good ARE you? Ridiculous. I'd also like to take this moment to point out that, while Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series seems to stay relatively close to actual mythology (minus, you know, poetic license to have the gods kicking around Long Island and Manhattan...), Percy's BFF is definitely a satyr. Riordan cleverly leaves out the fact that satyrs almost always have GIANT RAGING BONERS and are drunk all the time. Also, they rape women. I mean, there's this whole bit where the satyrs romp through the woods chasing wood nymphs, but it's all in good fun in the books. There's no sexy times happening. Maybe that's for the best, since the books are targeted at like...12 year olds and not dudes in their mid-20s. But still! Satyrs are not all fun loving hippies like Riordan would have you believe, they are rapacious! If you see one coming, you best get out your mace and lock up your chastity belt. Just some friendly advice.

CONSEQUENTLY, HE SEEKS REFUGE IN FORT WALTON

"Oh noes!" says the baby. Now if there is one thing I hate worse than babies (I'm a nice guy, really!), it's close-up photos of babies. UGH. Why is he making that stupid monkey face? And why are his eyes photoshopped that color? And why so indignant, baby? Is Walmart not good enough for you?? SO SRY! SRY WE'RE NOT MADE OF FUCKING CASH! I'll give him something to be indignant about! I am really not seeing the connection to rapaciousness here, and I'm looking, really I am. Maybe the baby is a great defender of small businesses? Maybe soon he will be used in really creepy ad campaigns where they digitally make the babies mouth move and use adult male voice over. Just imagine Samuel L Jackson shouting "You bought my medicine from Walmart, muthafucka!?" Actually, that might not be so bad. But seriously, this probably came from some parents' blog written from the perspective of their squealing infant, projecting some personality that it probably doesn't have. I mean, just think if my parents had written a blog from "my" perspective as a baby. It would have probably prayed a lot and talked about seeing the face of God in clouds and puppies. Which, when you think about it, is pretty gay...but probably not what they would have been going for. Look at this, it's already 11:30p and I have only used 2 of my photos, this is going to take all night. If only I could get hooked into machine.

FROM THE ASHES OF A FAILED POST COMES A NEW RECURRING FEATURE

What do you say we continue with one of the images from yesterday and make a point of always posting at least one image of an ape in a suit. I mean, I'm unclear just how many of these can possibly be floating around the internet, but considering there's probably a fetish for that, I would not be surprised if I never ran out of material. Thus, it is with great pleasure I bring you the rapacious version of the classily dressed ape:

I really wish I could sit down and have dinner with whoever created this and ask them the pertinent question: "How much?" It would go so well with my decor! I mean, I know the only art I have in my room is a couple Buddhas, a painting of a Buddha and a cardboard cutout of Edward Cullen from The Twilight Saga, but certainly I could make room for what looks like a genteel ape from the 1800s. He looks like he could have been a preacher. Maybe he was? I mean, it definitely does not look at all photoshopped. But really, why? I hope this was a character portrait for some Planet of the Apes role play. I can forgive a lot in the name of role playing. I used to smoke cloves Freshman year of college with this girl Phoebe who did Vampire: The Masquerade roleplay with a group of goth kids at BU. That shit has fiberglass in it! Granted, at the time I didn't know there was a difference between inhaling and just sucking smoke into your mouth and spitting it back out. Not that this is really something one needs to know or even should know since smoking is pretty foul and all. Point is, I definitely thought I was wicked cool smoking black fiberglass-filled cigarettes that tasted sweet like CANDY, and I definitely wished I had the balls to attend a vampire roleplaying group, because how awesome does that sound? Super awesome.

DURING WHICH TIME HE INSPIRES NIGHTMARES IN HIS GENTLE READERS, NIGHTMARES OF SEXY TIMES GONE HORRIBLY, HORRIBLY WRONG

I want you to imagine something for me. Can you do that? Imagine what you'd see if you were looking at the thing that makes you feel so dirty inside, you're not sure any amount of scrubbing would ever make you clean again. The thing that is so terrible that you wish there was another word, like terribad, that you could use to describe it. The physical manifestation of The Beast, whose eyes are busy tattooing 666 over all that is good within you. Now imagine that thing is probably a porn actor. And go!

OH GOD MY EYES! I thought for a brief moment that I would not subject you people to this, but then I recalled that whichever god is in charge of the internet (probably Hades, if he liked kittens) made ME see it when I searched for rapacious, so it's only fair that I payed it forward. Now what does he have to do with the word of the day? Beyond how he raped my soul and shat (with his EYES) in the holes, I honestly don't know. Why does this exist? A billion cute kittens could not make up for the horror that is this. That milky water, that abyssal gaze, the slicked back (and is that silvered??) hair, the terrible wetness. I am at a loss for words. I'm pretty sure this is the Blair Witch.

IN WHICH A MISSED DEADLINE LEADS TO THE POSSIBLE DISCOVERY OF A MISSING LINK

Midnight has gone and gone, my friends, but we carry on. Not because we have nothing better to do on a Friday night. It's not because the upstairs neighbors are throwing a party and I wasn't invited, so I'm writing a blog rather than sit and cry. It's definitely not that I'm crying into my diet coke from the rejection of it all. Srsly. You know what will make us all feel better?

If I were a religious man, if I had even a shred of belief in God left in me, I would swear that this was the greatest proof possible that He existed and was watching us from up Above in His Magic Throne made of clouds and angel wings. In fact, I intend to meditate upon this photo in the coming weeks, months and years of my life, because certainly if there is some deeper truth in this life we all stumble through, it is to be found within the vacant stare of this "rapacious foot biscuit," which I think is possibly the greatest trio of English words ever dreamed up. ("I love you" can go suck a chode.) (It also occurred to me that I did not have this blog set as 'adult,' which is clearly a massive oversight on my part. I apologize if any small children made their way here by accident.) I'm pretty sure I want this on a t-shirt. Alas, that image is small and Zazzle tells me it might be really fuzzy and pixelated. If anyone can figure out how to make a T-shirt with that image on it, I would be forever grateful. The world of indie ironic tees would just explode. <3 onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KNr2f5zXUCM/SnPJzQ54-KI/AAAAAAAAFGE/39NuL9oFLgY/s1600-h/stanleydonwoodgoat_0.jpg">I guess it's a very goat-like day in Blogger today, but obviously this is a pretty standout picture. Not really because it looks like he is about to murder you, but because it reminded me of when I wanted to be an artist. I was probably 10 at the time, living in Tennessee and in the early grips of my video game obsession. Either me or my brother had borrowed this game called "The 7th Saga," the premise of which was basically to play as one of 7 assorted dudes and collect these 7 magic runes to, uh, save the world or something. It was on NES, so followed the 8-bit RPG plot cliche. Basically, it was totally random because the seven characters included a robot, an alien, a demon and a dwarf (not a midget, we're talking your run of the mill fantasy dwarf here). Anyway, I kind of had a thing with the demon character, because he looked sort of like a cow in a robe. Not a sexual thing, just to be clear. Not only was I a bit too young to have sexual things, but I just had a big fixation on cows and thought they were the shit. So I would fill up scraps of paper with these really terribly drawn cows in robes. At the time, I was really jazzed when I could sort of make a reasonable looking figure that was comprised of fleshier stuff than sticks (pretty much the pinnacle of my artistic skill to date). It was supposed to look like this:

SENSELESS RAGE AND A MOMENT OF ZEN EMBRACE LIKE BROTHERS AND BRING CLOSURE...FOR NOW

When you think for a moment about the word "rapacious" and what it could be describing, there is one noun that comes to mind time and again--pigfucker. At least, that's the bit of text that accompanied one of my photos tonight. And to that author, I tip my hat. Rapacious pigfuckers is indeed a gorgeous turn of phrase.

Uh oh! Vault Boy looks pissed. Some rapacious pigfucker just unleashed a nuclear blast that shook the Wasteland to its core and Vault Boy and his pistol are ready for some action. This is the beauty of the Fallout series, creating hardened criminals of small children. Now explain to me why it is that all the computer classes at my disposal at work are like "Excel, Master Class" and "Word; Or, How To Print." If we had a "Photoshopping Bombs and Guns For Fun and Profit" class, I would be there with bells on. If only photoshop weren't so expensive, I could get it and teach myself to use it while creating all sorts of genius images for use on this blog. Regardless, it's time to calm down and begin the slow descent into sleep. To do that, we'll combine two of my favorite things: food and Zen! Enjoy, kids.

Maybe eventually I will blog about what is actually happening in my life, but we'll see about that. Tomorrow is my first tattoo, and we all know what that means--I can't convert to Judaism. Damn, foiled again!

Google Image Search of the Day - July 30, 2009

2009-07-30T08:08:00.047-05:00

IN WHICH HE FINDS HIMSELF READING TWO BOOKS AT THE SAME TIME

Today's installment is sponsored by Cat's Cradle. After purchasing the Kindle 2 a few months back for the express purpose of sparing my back from carting around Anathem, I installed the Kindle for iPhone app. It's kind of like the retarded cousin of the Kindle, so I almost never used it, generally preferring to shrug off my bag and extract the Kindle which, while portable, is not really a one-handed device. On a related note, I used to read/write tweets when I went to the bathroom [why am I telling you this?], and then I was like, "Dude, you could totally slide the Kindle in your pants and read part of a chapter!" But that was cumbersome and a little weird, even for me. The iPhone fits right in your pocket! And it has a Kindle app! So much easier, he thought to himself. Thus, I began reading Vonnegut while my Kindle is preoccupied with a children's series about demigods.

INDEED!

En route to the office this morning, I'm holding my iced mocha in one hand, iPhone in the other, and I'm reading Cat's Cradle. He used the genius phrase "irrelevant tomfoolery" to describe some changing traffic lights. Tomfoolery, indeed, says I! When was the last time you heard "tomfoolery" used? I guarantee it was not recently enough. So it is with a happy heart that I have chosen "tomfoolery" as the word of the day. And what a word! Google Image Search threw limitless options at me for use in today's post. So many that I thought perhaps I should break this into two. Let us sally forth.

tom·fool·ery
Pronunciation:: \ˌtäm-ˈfül-rē, -ˈfü-lə-\
Function:: noun
Date:: 1812

: playful or foolish behavior

WHENCE COMES THE ELIXIR OF LIFE? FROM BOSOMS.

I find it all too appropriate to begin with breasts. After all, we seekers of enlightenment suckle from the Teat of Wisdom, the Teat from which the milky substance of dreams issues. Some men take their breasts far too seriously, but I always say, "If thou can't approach them from a place of tomfoolery, thou shan't approach them atall!" I wonder what jungle fruits that man used to build his lopsided bosoms...likely guava. This would be a great idea for a running photo gag. Travel the world and take pictures of yourself in front of various locales with fake titties stuffed in your shirt. Food for thought!

THE UNIVERSE IS CALLED INTO QUESTION WHEN IT IS REVEALED THAT DUMBLEDORE IS GAY[!?!]

Sometimes, it feels like the Wiccans are right and there's magic in this here world we all inhabit. Take a look at the sky right now (if you live in Boston/Cambridge), for instance. That's some freaky night during the day Benjamin Buttons shit right there and I think I like it. When you think magic, a whole slew of images and characters come to mind from the stories we have heard all our lives. Wicked witches, glittering faeries, voodoo priests, venerable wizards. But does one think of tomfoolery? One might!

This dude has got it going on. The 'More You Know' rainbow is spurting out of his floppy wizard hat, faeries are shooting stars at each other and some green butterfly is chillaxing by his ear. His facial hair is a bit wispy, though...I definitely don't like seeing his lips underneath that moustache. I suspect it's simply poor digital art skillz, but maybe they meant for him to be a sketchball. Also, his green eyes seem to be crying, "Help! These fucking faeries are buzzing around my head like infernal fruit flies! I can't take the stress anymore and may pretty soon use a fireball spell to blow myself apart, hopefully taking some of these goddamn faeries with me. I am dead inside." On the other hand, I could be projecting. But come on, he totally looks lifeless and frazzled. I like to think this is how Dumbledore spent his spare time when he wasn't tutoring Harry Potter or getting killed by Snape. In a word: Gay Tomfoolery. [Ok, two words.]

IN WHICH THE MAGICAL TOMFOOLERY CONTINUES WITH

...WTF?! I'm not quite sure what this is supposed to be. It appears to have a Dali-stache, a pirate eyepatch, hooked goblin nose and a powdered wig like judges and members of Parliament wore. It's not easy being green, so can you blame the big-headed lug for getting drunk with graduating college girls? I'm pretty jealous of that eyepatch though. This one time, I woke up with my right eye totally swollen shut and I thought for a minute I was dying or that I'd gotten a bit of lumber stuck in my eye while I slept, so I called out of work and went to Student Health Services. I waited around in the room while girls came and got pregnancy and genital wart tests, like you do, and finally the doc saw me and prescribed me an $80 bottle of glorified saline with which to wash my eyes. "No thanks, doc," says I, "I just want an eyepatch!" He looked at me like I was high (which I most certainly was not!) and said, "You didn't get anything in your eye, it's just allergies." I took a deep breath, got real close so he could smell the cabbage on my breath [ed. note - not true], and yelped, "EYEPATCH!" This gave him quite a start and he adjusted his glasses with one hand while holding his heart with the other. Usually he just had people cry when he broke the news to them that forevermore they would have herpes outbreaks because of that trick they brought home from the clubz. He wasn't used to demands for eyepatches. Did the clinic even carry them? Couldn't this strange boy just go to a costume store and purchase his own damn eyepatch? Why was he getting his cabbage-y breath all up in my grill like that? This mental litany of question took place in the same length of time it took me to blink my engorged eyelid. On the edge of my seat I perched, waiting, hoping that an eyepatch my way came. Alas! Tomfoolery was afoot and I never got that eyepatch. Still it burns me. I'm a man of good health, no chronic problems and rarely get sick. The ONE TIME I have a swollen eye and I don't even get to pretend to be a pirate for a day. What kind of fucking joke was this? I'll probably carry my rage to the grave, perhaps beyond, if there were such a thing. So I say to this goblin, drink on.

HIS RAGE DRIVES HIM CLOSE TO THE EDGE AND HE STARES INTO THE ABYSS OF SPACE. THE FUTURE STARES BACK.

And you thought those apes at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey were intense. Look at this dude! Sunken eyes: check. Big hairy ears: check. Long, downturned mouth: check. Business suit: check. Fucking pistol: double check. I wonder what's going through his head in this picture. He is clearly all, "Don't mess with me, fool," which is a stance I can appreciate, as it's one I give often myself. Just yesterday, I was browsing photos of people I don't know on Facebook because they came up on my sidebar (you all do this, so don't give me that look) and some peeps had pictures with monkeys and I was all, "How cool! I'd love to have a pet monkey!" I would train him to be just like Abu in Aladdin, a kleptomaniacal monkey who rides on my shoulder and wears a fez. But I'm starting to think my creativity didn't go far enough. Dream big, Jon! I could be the proud companion of a homicidal gun-toting ape! We could star in a buddy-cop film together. People would laugh and say, "He's not a person! He's an ape! HAHAHA! You two are a disgrace to the force!" But ah, Abu and I would get the last laugh. We'd take down the mob, the Russians, we take down all of them. And I'd pin that medal of honor to Abu's chest and we'd embrace, brothers in blood, the blood of those criminals we slew in the name of justice. For Aiur! Then we'd go blow up a creationist museum or something. Think of all the tomfoolery we could get up to! All I want is to turn that frown upside down, Abu.

AND THE PRIZE FOR WTF-IEST GOES TO...

...this dude. Where to begin? I guess his jaunty pose is supposed to be the source of the tomfoolery, but I find this to be a loose interpretation of the word. Also, this makes me feel uncomfortable. Anyone else? Is that just me? Why does he have knobby knees and elbows? Why are his toes and fingers different shapes and sizes? Is he a genetic abnormality? Is this trying to say that even freaks can be tomfools? Is tomfool a word? It should be if it isn't. Holy crap, it is! I'm definitely going to describe myself/other people as a tomfool from now on. Also, why is this monkey's tail shaped like a stinger? What's with monkeys and tomfoolery!? This hasn't even touched on the dude's hair. If I could grow facial hair in that manner, I would, yessir, I would indeed. And the sidepart! And the lighter colored eyebrows! There's something disturbing about this image, almost more disturbing than that creepy eyeless wonder from yesterday. To be quite frank, this is not a monkey with whom I would want to film a buddy-cop movie. TOMFOOL!

IN WHICH THE ALREADY MEANDERING POST FURTHER DISINTEGRATES INTO ITS COMPONENT PARTS--NAMELY, POO AND BUTTSEX JOKES

You knew it was coming. There's no avoiding that the height of tomfoolery is certainly an elephant trunking [neologism FTW!] another elephant. Maybe the one on the right (henceforth Rosa) did not chew her peanuts properly. Ezekiel over there smelled an opportunity and went for it: free nuts where you would least expect to find them. [ed. note -- we apologize for the bad jokes, sometimes we find that there's very little we can do to control him] I say, this seems like tomfoolery for Ezekiel, but I suspect Rosa's of a different mind. You never know, elephants might be freakier than we give them credit for. Or maybe not. No really, to be honest, Ezekiel is totally felching Rosa*. And Rosa seems to be taking one for the team. Well done, Rosa. That inexplicable image is an album cover for some band called Tom Foolery and the Mistakes (I think). Weird. I'm not really ok with this. I call shenanigans.

*credit to Jason for pointing out what is clearly happening in this picture. I was just thinking he was eating peanuts out of her butt.

MERE ANARCHY IS LOOSED UPON THE WORLD

And so our sad and sordid tale comes to a close, as tales tend to do. It may not always be the end of all things or the Second Coming--sometimes an enigmatic image is enough. A couple of pheasants [?!] walking along. Is it tomfoolery or is it a statement on the futile pecking we attempt on our scrambling climb to the top? Remember, only by dancing through life on the wings of tomfoolery can you keep the crushing emptiness at bay. Return tomorrow for another word, another dollar.

Google Image Search of the Day - July 29, 2009

2009-07-29T11:03:00.015-05:00

WHEREIN THE STAGE IS SET AND THE REFINED FRENCH WHORES REPOSE

Greetings, children. Welcome to today's installment of "Google Image Search of the Day." I'm uncertain whether I should include the word in the title or not...maybe it doesn't actually matter. Originally, the intended word was "ribald," [is that right? comma before the quotation mark?] because I was thinking of a word that started with 'ri' and then I thought 'riffin' so I went to Merriam-Webster and searched for 'riffin' and then I saw 'raffine'. Raffine, of course, means "refined: sophisticated," which would have been a fine word, but it's French and you know how uppity Americans get about the French. (I love 'em, though. So much butter and fat and deliciousness.) So then I thought, "Hey, Jon. The French are slutty, right? There were whorehouses in Moulin Rouge, so they must be pretty RIBALD!" For a brief moment in time, "ribald" was the word of the day, but a quick Google Image Search of "ribald" turned up a lot of pendulous bosoms. This wouldn't usually be a problem, given that the subtitle of my blog is pretty ribald itself, but I'm at work damnit. Scribbling this off between emails is bad enough without having pictures of pinups on my computer screen.

After discarding "ribald" as a possibility, I naturally decided to settle upon "quiescent."

1 : marked by inactivity or repose : tranquilly at rest

2 : causing no trouble or symptoms <quiescent gallstones>

Besides the fact that the example phrase is "quiescent GALLSTONES," [WTF, Jeeves?] it seemed like a pretty innocuous word, one that skips through quiescent meadows hand in paw with bunnies riding on the backs of majestic unicorns. I actually got a bit excited to see what sort of images I might find. After all, how bad could it be?

CONSEQUENTLY, HE DISCOVERS HITHERTO UNPLUMBED DEPTHS OF WRONGNESS WITHIN THE INTERWEBS

Rather than delving directly into the mouth of madness, I shall begin with an image I'll ask you to meditate on for a few moments before continuing.

Drink in the peaceful stillness of the water, the sunlight shining through the trees. Sometimes in our bustling, empty lives of corporate greed, we need to slough off our doldrums and sip from a steaming mug of quiescence. Hold fast to your sanity.

WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?! I suddenly feel anything but peaceful and reposed, unless by reposed, you mean dead from murder by whatever the hell that thing is. Now I'm a pretty open-minded guy, or so I like to think, and if we were friends and you were like, "Hey, dude, I'm an artist and I'd love to show you my stuff," I would totally listen and give constructive feedback wherever possible. If, on the other hand, you showed me this, I might seriously have to consider ending our friendship ASAP. This lovely image comes to us courtesy of The Raster Group, whatever that is. The artist who submitted this also had two other images close by, one of which was titled "Happy Time" and was definitely a demon clown inside an insane asylum. I kind of want to shake Kaos' (the artist) hand. Well done, you sketched me the hell out. His/her pictures seem like the natural progression of this artist who hung his stuff at Ula Cafe for a while. They were photographs from inside abandoned Massachusetts Mental Hospitals and they were creeeeeepy. I think if the two of them got together and maybe tried making another Silent Hill Movie, they could be in business.

That's a sweet mask, bra. So I get it. Kid was wearing a crazy monkey mask, probably ran around creeping his parents out with some loud screeching and ooh-ooh-ahh-ahh noises, maybe even broke a vase or two. Mom yells, "Zachary Isaiah Plimpton! Cut that out right now. Time out in the chair, and take that damn mask off before your father sees it!" Zachary slinks over to the wall, subdued from being shouted at. He mutters, "ZIP it, woman!" and chuckles at his little joke. He leaves the mask on because he feels there is something shameful about sitting on black leather completely naked. If he can't be Simba, he'll at least be Rafiki.

Or maybe this is just an advertisement for Saw VIII. Creepy.

IN WHICH ANIME RESTORES THE DELICATE VEIL BETWEEN INSANITY AND GENIUS

And what post about "quiescence" would be complete without an anime inspired drawing! Don't ask how those two thoughts are remotely connected. Just accept it.

I don't even know who that is supposed to be, but she's wearing a schoolgirl uniform and asking me to grab her hand (with feeling)! I suppose her half-lidded eyes are supposed to be where "quiescence" comes from, but I'm starting to feel like the word is mostly used by emo kids for their art projects. There's nothing wrong with that, though. All words have their place.

And so it goes, and so it goes, our lesson has concluded, gentle readers. I trust you will return, and not sporadically.

Our Hero Receives A Calling

2009-07-28T21:05:00.004-05:00

IN WHICH I PONDER THE MEANING OF LIFE

There's something magical about this world in which we live. It's not the smiling, yet filthy face of a child. It's not a shout in the street. It's most certainly not anything involving pregnancy.

No, friends, what I'm talking about is puppetry. I suppose on some level, I've always known puppetry existed, but in things like The Sound of Music or a little kid's basement. Or Sesame Street. Wholesome things, like The Dark Crystal. Ok, so maybe that's not wholesome, but you get my drift. Never did I think some genius would use puppets to enact fake scenes from Harry Potter, let alone that greatest of all Pop Culture monstrosities: The Twilight Saga.

First, let us observe the insanity that is over 65 million hits on YouTube.

HARRY POTTER PUPPET PALS

I've come to accept my place in the world as an observer and sometime chronicler of all things awesome. Once in a while, I think of a witty phrase in the spur of the moment and touch the smallest edge of that Hylaean Theoric World, but whoever created that surely put at least a whole foot inside. I mean, finger puppets and tomfoolery? How can one go wrong?

OH HOW WRONG ONE CAN GO

Though come to think of it, the acting by these stiff puppets was actually far superior to anything in the film. I hope someone does a puppet version of the fourth book and has a bloody puppet get chewed out of a pregnant puppet's stomach, because that is both what happens in the book and HOT. Hot, indeed.

Someday, I hope to have a sliver of the talent of these fine folks. I would like to say I'd use that power for good, rather than to make poo jokes with Harry Potter or used decapitated deer head puppets, but I'm certain that IS good. If anything, I'd tell the tale of Vivi the midget magician and his many accomplishments. Actually, I do have a large number of stuffed creatures on or around my bed (how is this possible at 25, you ask? WHO FUCKING KNOWS, just go with it, aight?), and a plethora of objects that could be used as ridiculous props. Does anyone want to create a video with me? I'm sure we could find a way to tie all of these things into a cohesive storyline!

IT WILL BE BETTER THAN THIS, AS THIS SOUNDS (AND LOOKS) LIKE RETARDED MONKEYS

Google Image Search of the Day - July 28, 2009

2009-07-28T21:00:00.000-05:00

Today's Google Image Search is "excoriate". I'm going to try and Google one word/phrase a day and see what ridiculous stuff comes up, just for the hell of it.

On with the show:

First we have what looks like a demonic rug of some sort. As far as I can tell, the only connection to the word I was looking for are, I guess, its teeth. If it hadn't been taxidermied, I suppose it might be trying to excoriate its dinner. Dericious.

Photo 2, we have Bill O'Reilly on the body of a T-Rex. Um. There really are no words for this. One could wish Fox would excoriate BillO, but that'll never happen. T-Rexes are the Kings of the Jungle or something.

Inexplicably, Canadian Geese. I used to go to this time share my family has down in Williamsburg, VA (first Capitol of Virginia!) every summer in July. It was, cheekily enough, called Powhatan Plantation. Now there's something really American about taking an old plantation, naming it after the tribe of which Pocahontas was a member (aww!) and turning it into a pretty poor vacation destination. I even had a truly terrible buffalo steak in the old slave quarters. Charming! It was after that steak that I decided buffalo were my favorite of all the creatures native to America, and I refused to eat it...instead collecting stuffed animal buffalo, which I named Buffy Buffalo and Buffy Buffalo. (The difference is in the pronunciation. And hell, this was long before Buffy was staking vampires on our TV screens. That's me, ahead of the times.) So I vacationed as a "privileged" white dude on a planation, wtf, and my point is...there were a lot of geese. Like a lot, a lot. Hundreds would roam the streets like hungry packs of wolves. If small children wandered from their carriages or stuck their grubby little baby hands outside of moving cars, geese would flock towards them, razor sharp* jaws snapping furiously, anxious for just a little taste of baby flesh. (And can you blame them? So tender.) These huge groups of Canadian Geese were flecked with one or two Giant White Swans. I always felt like the swans were the leaders, and directed them towards their target. The goose propaganda machine would have you believe they eat grass and rice and other veggie shit. NOT TRUE. They eat people, damnit. This one swan freaking charged me when I was 8 and bit my finger like he was a doggie with a bone. For all I know, he was some sick dog that got reincarnated as a goose. Whoever's in charge of reincarnation has a weird sense of humor, you know? So these big swans ruled over the canadian geese, which begged 2 questions. 1) Why the hell are they called Canadian Geese when they are in Virginia? Not ok. I mean, this is America, damnit. Take your "french" fries back to Montreal, bitches. 2) How do bloodthirsty creatures like swans keep their feathers so white? Do they excrete bleach? Do they, perhaps, EXCORIATE each other? *NUDGE*? Whatever, I say. Scary creatures.

My final thought is, why are the three pictures I chose from google image search all animals. (Yes, Virginia, I'm counting a chimerical T-Rex as an animal.) What if that dinosaur is the missing link, y'all? What if Canadian Geese are being genetically engineered to start the bird flu in Virginia? Brace yourselves.

*I don't know if their jaws are really razor sharp. I suspect not, but just go with it. It makes imagining severed baby limbs that much easier. I mean...wtf?

(I'm going to go listen to My Chemical Romance and write slam poetry)

2008-12-22T23:45:00.003-05:00

Hi Blog,

I love that after my last post, I actually went and downloaded the entire discography of Engima. Only listened to The Screen Behind the Mirror, as before when I had all their music, but ah well. I have lots of gigabytes of space on my computer and nothing with which to fill them.

Someday, I hope to be better about updating this more frequently and about intelligent topics, like those other blogs I stumble across in my travels through the internet. There are so many smart, eloquent people contributing untold wisdom to our culture, if only I knew where to look for all of them. Typically, I have nothing really to say in here, which sadly has become almost a theme for this blog. Maybe I should start over and do something useful, like blog about baking or something. This one feels weird to me, because it definitely does not feel like my old Livejournal from college, where I would spill my issue-of-the-hour to anyone who would listen, but whenever I feel inclined to write, that is typically where I'm at. So, I don't know where that leaves me besides confused.

I have my little paper journal that I write in from time to time, but it's just so much work to write it out by hand when I can type way faster. I despise when my brain operates dozens of times faster than my hand. Laame.

So anyway, I sit here bored on my old bed at home. I'm contorted in some folded up position, because the bed only fits about 3/4 of my body. The mattress feels like a ton of bricks beneath me and I can feel my back slowly breaking without even lying down to sleep yet. It will be a painful few days. Been retreating up here to avoid my parents, with whom I have nothing in common. Sometimes it feels not even our blood. Wah wah. Anyway. I decided that I am a really bad Buddhist, because I consider myself like...a half-Buddhist and that's pretty lame of me. I dig all the ideas and the logic and the positivity, but I am lazy and almost never sit down and meditate. I would say I suck at meditating, but that's kind of subjective and beside the point. So, I sat here for a while, I dunno, probably 15 minutes. Got to say, it was like the other times I have meditated, I ended it feeling super chill and relaxed. Of course, it did not magically make me happy, but I think I was already pretty happy the last few times I tried it.

So resolution or whatever for myself: meditate every day. I've only read Thich Nhat Hanh say it a billion and a half times, but it clearly has not sunk in. I just need to make a more concerted effort to pay freaking attention to my life. Especially lately, I've been walking around in some weird daze, listening to music and staring at the ground. It snowed for three days and I only spent maybe 10 seconds actually SEEING the snow. I remembered because...well, I guess because I remember. I actually paid attention to what was happening at that moment and it stuck. I get this weird feeling that I've been avoiding paying attention lately because I just can't bear to pay attention to feeling like shit.

I've had this really awesome thing happening lately where I go to my room to sleep, and end up curled in a ball crying hysterically. Clearly, I am right in the head. Clearly. No, but it really is not fun, as one might imagine. I've been trying to figure out why, since I don't have a shrink to do it for me, and I really think it's that psychotic irrational fear that no one will ever love me. Tell me how I spent the last year getting into Buddhism and yoga and self-discovery and all that jazz, only to be 14 again and think I'm unlovable. I mean, REALLY. How does that happen? So I sit there and think back to how it was over a year now since someone actually loved me (not that long in the grand scheme of things) and I can't help but freak out about whether I made some horrible mistake (I didn't). But I can't stop it, so I just mildly hyperventilate and wonder if all that last year broke me somehow. I'm not the same person I was then, and I thought this was good, it really is good, but then I also walk around like a zombie half the time. I guess professionals would call that depression, but blah.

I just don't get how this happens in my brain. I distinctly recall everything BEFORE my birthday being all zen and happy and athletic and healthy, and then everything AFTER my birthday has somehow erased that and I'm an antisocial shut-in who cries a lot. This can't be normal, right? siigh. I just feel really broken, or something, and lacking self-worth...attractive qualities, I know. Which should be a good indication of how I feel about this post... ugh

I'm just going to keep throwing myself into new/old pursuits: learning knitting and Chinese, reading better books than Twilight, expanding my cooking, meditating every single day, forcing myself to socialize more. I've got to believe that I will feel normal again soon.

Return to Innocence

2008-10-05T21:50:00.003-05:00

Hello dear blog,

Alas, it has been quite some time since I graced you with my presence and don't think for an instant that I forgot about you. Every day, I've been plagued with the guilt of my abandonment of you. Every day, I keep wishing and hoping for some inspiration to strike, some flash of insight that will give me a topic to expound upon within your illustrious 'pages.' And yet, every day you weep silently to yourself...your creator has left you. He built you up from scratch and thousands of lines of html (which He doesn't write because Blogger does it for him) and then left you like some cheap hooker on the side of the road after having his way with you for these long ~~years~~ months.

Now you know how mankind feels about God. I mean, honestly.

Fear not, kind blog. I have returned, brimming with wit and charm, overflowing with depth and clarity into the trueness of the world around us. It is within you, of all the free webspaces in existence, that I choose to leave my mark on this cruel, cruel world. Much like a dog pissing on a tree, so I shall piss forth my wisdom unto you. I shall chronicle my triumphant return to the glories of my youth and spend the remainder of October 2008 honing my already razor-sharp skills in preparation for NaNoWriMo 2008, or The Year Jon Finally Accomplishes Something, Anything, For God's Sake Do Something With Your Life, Man!

No one knows, least of all me, what direction this blog will take. Most likely it will contain some parts Sarah-Palin hatin' and some parts Gastrointestinal Diary (or, why I am so very, very alone) and maybe some parts random shit that flies out of my head like a way less impressive version of Athena. Any which way you slice it, though, the world (of the Interwebs) is a better place for my being in it.

Perhaps someday a future people will dig up the bones of our civilization and discover my blog over all others (and pray to whatever you pray to that they don't find Perez Hilton first..).

This is a topic I'd like to return to, but for now, I must go download Enigma.

Yours, ever and always,
Jon

Impressions: Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth II

2008-04-08T07:40:00.003-05:00

Here's an impression for you, loyal readers of this here blog: This game is shit.

I mean, really awful. So bad that you are literally (and figuratively, if that is even possible) better off renting Xanadu and dancing around your apartment like a freak on speed than renting this game and hoping for more than the easy 10 achievement points gathered from the first stage, along with a healthy dose of boredom. Ok, so I perservered through the second stage (in hopes of getting more Gamerscore), but while I held out through two (count 'em, two!) playthroughs of Eternal Sonata, I seriously could not bring myself to continue with this game. It was insanely laggy, as though I was playing online in a dial-up connection, even though it was single player and not online. And when the Xbox can barely run your totally mediocre game, something is horribly horribly wrong.

Beyond the lag that made my army stutter across the screen, the game was just plain boring as all hell. I was bored, my roommates were bored, even my Xbox360 was emitting a high-pitched plaintive wail, begging me to release it from the torment of running this game. Or maybe that was just the bastardized version of the excellent LOTR soudntrack, crying into its milk. At the end of the second stage, a "Watcher" rose up from the ground to assault my army. It was a giant squid thing (like the one outside of the Mines of Moria in the first movie) and apparently it summoned a lake with it when it rose from the depths of a snowy mountain. Riiight. Regardless, I was clearly meant to use archers to attack it, as it had flailing limbs that threw any of my foot soldiers across the screen if they got remotely close to it. Unfortunately, there was almost no way to tell the archers from the foot soldiers because the screen was so ridiculously jumbled, and even when I did, I am not sure there was even a way to select all of my archers to make them attack it. What I ended up having to do was move all my guys far enough away that the foot soldiers stopped committing suicide and the archers got bored and moved forward automatically to shoot the squid. Ghey. What's the point of me playing if I have to manipulate the AI to play?

So, I finished the first two stages, getting the achievements for completing all objectives for each stage, plus the one for buying my first power. 15 points and the game took 5 days to get to me. OMG GameFly, sometimes you make it so easy to hate you. I went and wrote a bad review of the game so that others are not suckered in by that 6.7 rating I saw. 6.7 my lily white ass.

Here's to the next game being better. Oh wait, it's DMC4 (for xbox 360 this time!!). Of course it will be better.

P.S. - My boss thinks I'm hot.

Gamerscore, or Someone Help Me

2008-03-31T11:59:00.009-05:00

My name is Jonathan Singer and I have a problem.

I'm totally addicted to collecting Gamerscore. I know this is bad. Everything about it feels wrong. My recent readings on Buddhism have been telling me that collecting things is a bad thing, representing the attachment which leads inevitably to suffering. (More on Buddhism at some later time.) But it's a little sick, the time and effort I will put into eking out just a few more points in a game.

Case in point: Eternal Sonata.

I have had this game out from Gamefly since 2/21/08. I realize that it is a JRPG, and those tend to take a long-ass time to finish. But I should have long since sent this game back to the hell from whence it came, freeing up that spot on my Queue for other, better games (like the recently shipped Orange Box, though I question whether I will play any of Half-Life 2. I tend not to like getting involved in things part-way through, hence my not watching season 4 of BSG when it starts this Friday, because I'm still not done with Season 2, let alone started and finished Season 3). I mean, I already wrote about having finished Eternal Sonata and gotten the 300 and change achievement points that are possible on a first playthrough.

Of course, the game was made by a bunch of sick Japanese sadists, who require you to play through the Encore mode (basically New Game +, except you start back at level 1, with none of your equipment and the enemies all have twice the HP and 1.5 times the strength and defense) in order to get the other 600some points. This is awful. Who thought of this?

[Ed. note - At the same time, I have to grudgingly give the developers respect for making the second playthrough punishingly difficult. Once you got the timing of counterattacks and blocks down in the first playthrough, it was childishly easy. I could wipe out even the bosses that my walkthrough told me were really challenging. Really challenging for people who suck at video games, but not really challenging for me. I am a master. Well, this was before I played Encore and had Captain Dolce (oh the names are so awesome, so awesome. {cf. Polka}) sweep the floor with my bloomer-covered ass. I find myself again looking at how the course of the game has been changed forever, which is how I felt every time I got a new party level and found that the battle system was upgraded with some new quirk or other, that totally made things fresh and clean again. It's quite nice to find a game that I've spent so many damn hours on continue to surprise me, even if part of that surprise is discovering the inner depths of anger as I shout obscenities at the TV screen.]

Anyway, basically I've spent another 10 hours or so on this game, after having completed it once, just to get to the first of the second round of achievements, which was worth 79 points. So that's cool, but brings the time vs points ratio to like...7.9 points an hour. Hard math that. I actually busted out a calculator. No, really. I feel I can admit this to you, friendly reader types.

Now, the next few achievements will be easier to get, as I near the end of the game. And one of them is worth a cool 321 points, which is hott as Paris says, but really, it's a bit sick. I've pretty much lost enjoyment in the game and am now playing solely to get the achievements and send the bitch back to Gamefly, never to grace my sexy black Xbox ever agains! My replay(s) of Mass Effect will be far, far more enjoyable, because at least in that game, there are no children at all (yes!) and the adults are, on the whole (Preparation H feels good...), pretty sexalicious. And there is interactive sodomy, as they say.

Irregardless, I feel myself coming close to the end of Eternal Sonata and already, my spirit feels lighter and free. I don't even know what I'm going to do with myself when I don't have a bunch of Japanese schoolchildren babbling at me about Piu Grave and Shade Cometu. I'll miss you kids!

Random blahblahblah

2008-03-28T10:03:00.003-05:00

Greetings, friends and foes. I don't really have a topic today, but since work is going so insanely slow today, I figured I'd just open up a new blog entry and get to writin'. My poor body is rejecting me today for my poor treatment of it yesterday evening. I had the pleasure of attending an event hosted by Community Servings called LifeSavor. My company, lovely people that they are, is a corporate sponsor, so we got 10 tickets to the event. Being the social presence that I am, I'm on the short list of people who get invited to things like this, which is pretty awesome if I do say so.

The event itself was pretty awesome. I'm told it's one of the best fundraisers all year in Boston and I could believe it. The scale of the whole thing was mammoth, and it was all donated by other companies. And it's all for a great cause, too. Community Servings provides meals to people with acute life-threatening illnesses (cancer, HIV/AIDS, etc) who cannot care for themselves.

So the event was about 6 hours long and I got totally drunk, along with everyone who was with me. It was all good though, because we went to Meritage for one of the best meals I've ever had. So delicious.

I realize this is a pretty boring blog entry, because my mind is mush today and I don't have anything all that compelling to say to you kids. One thing, though. I just saw the film Soldier's Girl, about Calpernia Addams and the man she met and fell in love with before he was murdered. It was terribly sad, but a really interesting movie. I find transexuals quite fascinating, and if you're at all intrigued by that, this movie does a great job explaining it. Also, Lee Pace is a great actor who does an awesome job playing Calpernia. Anyhoo, cheque it out, people.

Impressions: Eternal Sonata

2008-03-24T16:30:00.000-05:00

I know I promised a while back that I would post my impressions of this game when I finished it, and while I did finish it a few weeks back, I have not yet managed to get 1000 gamerpoints from it. Damn you, New Game +!

Anyhoo, I'll go ahead and post what my thoughts are, since the encore mode doesn't add anything new to it. Darn, I just realized that I had totally begun writing a post the other week about gamerscore and Eternal Sonata and then forgotten about it in the blur of a bunch of Japanese people taking over my every waking moment. Now that's over, I find myself to be not quite as un-busy as I suspected I would be. Don't put all your eggs in one basket, the farmer next door always used to tell me.

Regardless, Eternal Sonata. So, I got this game probably 2 months ago now from Gamefly, the greatest invention since Netflix. Ok, well it would be if things did not take like a week to ship to me and if they ever gave me the game I actually wanted rather than things I added months ago, on a whim, like Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker. WTFBBQ, I say to that? Why did that ever look appealing to me? My least favorite part of Dragon Quest VIII was the whole monster trainer aspect of it. Ghey. Anyhoo, sent that shit back.

So I get this game and decide to delve into the lovely world of JRPGs. I think this may be my first super Japanese JRPG. I mean, sure, I played Chrono Trigger/Cross and all of the Final Fantasy games, but they aren't quite as insane as this game is. Close, but not quite.

First of all, its premise centers around Chopin dying in his bed of good ol' Consumption. (Side note #1: No one ever looks sick in the game. They are all healthy looking six-twelve year olds.) As Choppy dies, his mind transports to a mystical, cel-shaded world where the terminally ill are granted magical powers. (Side note #2: There is never any explanation of why this is or what it accomplishes. Most interesting about this is that those who can't use "magic" can still, say...shoot arrows into the sky that rain down and heal your group. Or swing a giant 40' sword that has green-glowing chains hanging off of it. Not magical at all.) So Choppy insists that the world is all a dream, and naturally, in the end, it pretty much turns out that it is a dream and he simply needed to accept death in order for the dream to continue on without him. Of course!

So the chapters in the game are named after famouse Chopin pieces. (i.e. - Raindrops, Revolution, Fantasie-Impromptu, etc.) At either the intro or the end of each chapter is basically a slideshow presentation on the period in Chopin's life during which he wrote the piece that accompanies said chapter. This slideshow includes images of various locales in France (where he lived), Poland (where he was from), Austria (where he went to school) and Spain (where he died). I'll take a moment to note here that prior to playing this game, I knew absolutely nothing of Chopin and have not even gone and researched him on his wikipedia page. (Side Note #3: I totally want to do this now, but I'll wait so that my knowledge of his life in this post is based solely on what I learned in the game.) During this slideshow each chapter, the piece is played while subtitles explain what they believe his mental state to have been while he wrote it. For instance, Chapter 2--"Revolution"--in the game is about the main cast of characters going to visit Count Waltz (the big bad) to get him to stop raping the environment and his people (figuratively). In reality, Chopin wrote Revolutionary Etude while at school in Vienna in response to the revolution going on in his homeland. He was always a sickly child and felt a strong connection to the freedom fighters of his homeland. He wrote the piece as a show of his support for them, despite his physical incapabilities.

Now, Chopin's music (as I discovered over the course of the game), hardly needs a personal history for you to feel his emotions through it. A tribute, I suppose, to his insane musicianship. His pieces are brilliantly evocative in and of themselves, but I must say, it's nice to be able to understand a little more about where he was coming from.

The best part for me, is that this was explained to me through a video game. And at that, a JRPG that has some of the cheesiest plot and characters evs. I just can't really picture the last time a video game taught me anything. Well anything of factual reality.

Anyway, it compelled me to go buy an Essential Chopin cd on iTunes, to which I am currently listening. I always talk about wanting to get acquainted with other composers and such, but find it difficult to go out and just blindly buy something of theirs and get into it. Maybe this sort of game would work well to get the average person interested in amazing music. Chopin has the benefit of composing solely for the piano, so there's a lot less happening at the same time than in orchestral music. At the same time, the piano is second only to the voice in my opinion for conveying emotion. All in all, I encourage anyone to at least give the game a try. I realize I didn't write about gameplay at all, but it's actually pretty nice. The battle system is quick and efficient, not wasting any time with unneccesary loading times and it evolves over the course of the entire game up until the very, very end. So at least it always stays fresh and interesting that way. There are far worse ways to spend 20+ hours, and you always have Chopin.

Why, God, why?

2008-03-13T13:56:00.002-05:00

I don't even have the energy to blog about this right now to the full extent that I should.

But honestly, wtf is wrong with the gay community. Can we just take a look at the paragraph he cites about prevention of STDs?:

Preventing STDs is about having good info and resources, knowing your own body, and communicating honestly with yourself and your partners. There are an infinite number of sexual possibilities and contexts, including sex within a relationship, sex with a stranger, and sexwork. Whoever you are, whoever you’re with, and wherever you connect, you deserve respect, a chance to agree on what you’ll do together, and the experience you desire.

Whoever wrote that should probably be shot in the face. Why is it so hard for the gay health leaders to give real, honest, useful advice?

Anyway, fracking retarded. The world's going to shit and I'm staying off sex for the foreseeable future.

Impressions: Verdi's La Traviata

2008-03-03T11:50:00.003-05:00

On Friday, Jase and I went to the latest stop on our musical tour of all that Boston has to offer, Verdi's La Traviata at the Majestic Theatre by Emerson. It was put on by Teatro Lirico D'Europa, a fantastic company that I intend to see again next time they are in town.

Basically, La Traviata's plot was lifted wholesale by Baz Luhrmann for his movie Moulin Rouge. I just spent a bit of time on the wiki entry for that movie and it really re-asserts the fact that Luhrmann is a genius. I mean, taking an artform that is probably not accessible to a lot of people, or at least not widely viewed, and transforming it into something that shows how much emotion modern music can contain. Amazing. Jason and I discussed this during one of the intermissions. I never realized, though, that his idea to use modern music stemmed from Orpheus. He wanted Christian to seem like something of a musical savant, much like Orpheus was.

Anyhoo, La Traviata tells the story of a beautiful young courtesan named Violetta. She leads life of decadence and pleasure, until she falls in love with a man named Alfredo, who convinces her to move to the country and live with him in peace. They do so, until his father arrives and speaks with her privately, urging Violetta to leave Alfredo so as not to disgrace Alfredo's sister. Violetta meanwhile, is dying and feels this is her one chance at love and happiness. Ultimately, she decides to sacrifice her happiness for Alfredo's sister and leaves him, saying she is returning to an old lover. He follows her to Paris and cruelly pays her back for their time together in front of the entire party. His father rebukes him for his treatment of her. Later, she is on her deathbed and has received a letter from Alfredo's father saying that he explained everything to his son and they are both on their way to see her and atone for their mistakes. Alfredo arrives and Violetta sings a duet with him, imagining their future happiness. She decides to thank God at church and relapses, falling to the floor. Alfredo's father arrives and embraces her as his daughter. Violetta suddenly feels renewed and her pain disappears. She stands and embraces everyone, singing about her miraculous recovery. She faces the audience, turns her head to the heavens, the lights dim and a golden spotlight shines on her as she collapses to the floor, dead.

Basically, it's the saddest thing I have seen in a super long time. I wept when Giorgio (the father) compelled her to leave her love and I really wept when she was dying after finally being reunited with her love.

Overall though, the opera examines the cruel way that a woman in her position was treated. How society was happy to use her for pleasure and then discard her as though she did not deserve to be treated with respect and compassion. She knowingly sacrificed her final chance at happiness to protect the chances of a girl who is not even a character in the opera. Alfredo's sister never makes an appearance, but for some reason, by virtue of not being a courtesan, she is presumed an innocent, while Violetta earns no such compassion. Well, not by most anyway. Alfredo's father seems to realize it only after Violetta so passionately sings of her sacrifice, and even then continues to ask it of her.

When he sees how his son treats her, I think the reality sets in for him. He sees that her sacrifice is greater than most will ever make, which in fact makes her more deserving of compassion and love than those on the upper edge of society, who feel she has no worth and is merely a whore.

I learned that Verdi wrote this based on a play by Alexander Dumas: "La dame aux camelias." It was about a real courtesan in Paris who had died within the same generation of him. This was apparently unheard of at the time to write about someone many considered beneath them. It's quite a moving stoy in that way, that he felt passionate enough about her worth that he wanted to immortalize her in one of the great "high society" art forms. And who wouldn't be moved by a story like that?

Mass Effect, Part 1

2008-02-20T15:26:00.003-05:00

Howdy partners,

I figured I would just keep a lil' diary to bring everyone up to speed on my progress through Mass Effect and the elaborate universe within.

Just a few short days ago, I surpassed where I had been previously in the game--just about to finish up the Citadel section. This was good, as I had seen this first bit played as both a Paragon (goody-two-shoes) and Renegade (giant evil ho), so I wanted to see what happened next. New space dramz!

And boy, oh boy, did I get space dramz! After basically re-creating the woman I had made on Brennon's Xbox (only hotter, and with red lipstick...and evil), I toyed with the idea of pursuing hottie Kaidan, but then decided that obvs lesbian sex would be superior, especially if that Fox newscast was right and I could decide exactly what each person did to the other! Hot sexy minigame! So I nipped Kaidan in the bud and told him to keep his personal feelings to his damn self cause I was having NONE OF IT! None, you hear me? And since my character is a full biotic and Liara (the lesbian alien wench!) is a full biotic, I decided I needed some combat strength to fight the hordes of aliens and eeeevil machines I was sure to face on my galactic travels. Thus, I brought along a little woman named Ashley.

Ashley was totally miscast in the voice acting. She should have been voiced by Wanda Sykes. And I'll tell you why, reader-folk. Because Ashley has a (totally incredible) habit of proclaiming, "Daaaamn!" just the way Wanda Sykes does. It's amazing. Plz go buy this game right now if you don't own it, so that you too can be amused by shouting, "Daaaamn! Commanda' Shepahd! That alien's face is whack!" And in most instances, it's true. That alien's face probably is pretty darn whack. Also, Ashley is a total butch and loves to chime in while my evil ho is talking by pointing her gun at people and saying, "You want a bullet through the head? Back down!" You tell 'em, ~~Soulja Boy~~ Wanda!

In other Mass Effect news, my lesbian relationship with Liara is progressing nicely. I'm afraid to snub her by being my typical evil self, so I play it totally nice only with her, and then on the side, manipulate people into killing one another. It's actually quite fun when you get the hang of it, though I had reservations at first, cause my ho is REALLY mean. She constantly tells people to shut the hell up and give her money and has (once or twice) brutally murdered someone who dared oppose her.

Liara though, is a lovely woman who stands really close to me and says how much it means to her that I saved her sorry ass on that crumbling ruin. Plz. When does mama get some lovin'?

I'm almost done with my second main mission since leaving the Citadel and you know what that means! Well, maybe you don't. But it means that I get to have another conversation to bring me one step closer to finding the lesbian within, and that's never a bad thing. I want my character to be able to appreciate the wonders of the female anatomy, not run screaming from it.

Achievements so far: 75 pts. Pretty pathetic, to be sure, but it's a start. I haven't yet gotten to Two Worlds, which will no doubt be a frolic in the land of suck, but I'm seasoned at that game now. With luck, someone has found new ways to cheat and make it easier to get the achievements. I don't relish the idea of playing through it for another go, because the first go...pretty bad. Maybe they patched it and fixed the bugginess. Who knows!?

Stay tuned for part two, in which I save some more stupid aliens, kill some more stupid machines and come closer to unraveling a mystery that will change the course of the game...forever!

Quick Note on Whininess

2008-02-19T09:47:00.003-05:00

I'm here checking up on my Google Reader when I stumble across this lil gem from Towleroad.

Apparently, some guy wore a cut-off T-shirt to his gym in California with "I need a man or a date, serious inquiries only" on it and had his gym membership revoked. Naturally, I decided to go read the comments to see what the gays who read Towleroad had to say about it. True to form, it was mostly split between reasonable people who admitted that wearing that shirt was incredibly retarded and that the guy probably deserved it, and those who cried wolf at what they see as another instance of the supposed "double standard" that exists for gays, as though a similar shirt worn by a straight guy would not garner complaints from women who felt objectified when they are trying to work out.

As someone who goes to the gym fairly often, I can tell you that even without a t-shirt explicitly stating someone's intentions, it is not often that I can go without being confronted with at least one troll who leers at me all through my workout or flashes himself at me in the sauna. This guy said he did it as a gag, but come on. What do you expect the reaction will be when you basically wear a craigslist ad on your shirt advertising your desire to meet someone? That's gross and troll-like. Guys often (rightfully) feel uncomfortable in the locker rooms because there are always dirty old men hanging around longer than necessary; doing something like this does nothing to remove that feeling, and in fact, probably just makes even more people think gays are dirty trolls who come to the gym with the intention to find a date rather than just work out like everyone else.

And I can't stand these stupid people who post on everything on Towleroad crying about how we're so damn oppressed and how this guy should sue the gym and win a huge settlement (which would never happen, given that someone called the gym and found out that he threatened them). I wonder whether he did that after they asked him to remove the shirt. Just because gays have faced oppression and still do in a lot of cases, does not mean we are entitled to wear inappropriate t-shirts and expect that everyone just let us do whatever we want lest we cry prejudice. The real double standard is thinking that you can wear something like that while saying that we're just like everyone else. Obviously, this is not to say that all gays are dirty trolls. I don't go to the gym to pick people up (except maybe my abs instructor...;)

People like this give as bad a name to gays as the old straight men who leer at girls asses as they run on the treadmills or ellipticals. Leave the trolling to Craigslist and the working out to the gym.

Notes on Lesbians

2008-02-18T11:31:00.004-05:00

Happy President's Day, followers of my blog. I trust your weekends involved many strippers and pendulous bosoms.

My weekend started off to a lovely cultured note on Friday evening as Jason and I attended the Handel and Haydn Society's performance of Mozart's Symphony No. 39 and his Requiem. There was another piece they started with...a very short, albeit quite moving one...but I don't recall the name at the moment. I highly recommend going to see this group perform, as they were incredibly talented. I always love going to the symphony and am determined this year to make it more of a regular occurence. There's something innately satisfying to me to get gussied up and mingle with the sophisticated crowds who frequent Symphony Hall. Though I lack the knowledge of music to really be able to appreciate the finer points of what makes say Mozart's music superior, I do enjoy trying to broaden my understanding along with like-minded people.

Plus, the acoustics in that place are magnificent. There's nothing quite like hearing the angelic sopranos chime in during the middle part of the Confutatis. Or hearing those first measures of the Lacrimosa. Beautiful.

So after we hob-nobbed with Boston's well dressed symphony-goers, we retired to a little Mass Effect and Devil May Cry 4. This was, in short, the foundation upon which our weekend was built, as we spent a LOT of time playing both of these games. And rightfully so, as they are gorgeous games and let us alternate between a fully engaging universe in one and badassery with a go-go gadget demon arm in the other. I highly recommend DMC4 if you have a PS3. To summarize the game in the immortal words of Tara:

"Nero should go swimming. Or something. Naked." - Tara

To which I can only reply, yes...yes he should. Rawr. You know that demon arm has got a few tricks up its sleeve in bed.

Hoo-ey!

So anyway. On Saturday I finally got around to going to my very first Yoga class. And I'm pleased to say that Baby's First Yoga was a wonderful experience. It recalled to me the Zen meditation I did Freshman year of college and sadly got out of the habit of doing. Incredibly relaxing, but a bit more challenging than just sitting on a pillow breathing. I am determined to make it a part of my usual routine because I felt better coming out of that than I ever have after a strenuous workout on the treadmill. I shot Sharon an email afterwards telling her how much I loved it and she suggested some DVDs and books from her instructor, Rodney Yee, so I bought those on Amazon this morning. Super psyched to get them and try them out at home.

So after that, we all went to iParty and bought some stuffs for the Oscar party this weekend. Should be good times. Sunday was a blur of DMC4 and Mass Effect, followed up by A Mighty Heart (which was quite good, especially Angelina's stellar performance) and Moonstruck (with the ever-delightful Olympia Dukakis and Cher). God bless weekend movie marathons.

In other news, I was just introduced to Carrie Underwood's latest video masterpiece: All-American Girl. Please, please go watch this immediately. I died. She's hysterical. I love how tongue-in-cheek she is about everything. Given that she's 100% manufactured pop music, that's a necessity.

Oh, while I'm on the topic, everyone should go buy k.d. lang's new cd, Watershed. She's back with a vengeance with this cd. Truly stunning and her voice sounds better than ever in my opinion. At the very least, check out the live version of her single, I Dream of Spring. She's got a downright sexy voice and is able to carry such emotion in it, which is quite the rarity. I am SO sad that she's gonna be here this weekend and I won't be able to see her. Silly k.d.

Anyhoo, that's all for now people. Back to the grind. On the slate for tonight: laundry, coupled with some exploration of The Citadel in Mass Effect. I have a lot of assignments to do there so that I can get the achievement for having Liara in my party for most of the game. And so I can continue to lesbian-seduce her. Word.

Idiots

2008-02-15T15:13:00.002-05:00

I don't have anything particularly compelling to add to the discussion floating around surrounding the shooter at the NIU killings, but this headline caught my eyes just now.

Police: Illinois campus gunman reportedly off medication

I love that people this obviously unstable somehow think it's a swell idea to just stop taking the medication they are prescribed. And his friends knew he had stopped taking it and had begun acting erratically and they apparently decided not to do anything about it. One would think that if someone needs medication not to go shoot up a school, there should be some plan devised to make sure they are taking it and don't decide to see what happens when they go off their meds.

Also, his eyebrows are freakishly groomed. Weird.

Anyhoo, that is all. Thoughts go out to the slain and their families. Let's hope this impels some people to maybe not vote for John McCain, who believes the right to bear arms is something we have a "sacred duty to protect." Douchebag.

Thoughts on Atonement

2008-02-14T13:31:00.004-05:00

So the kids and I saw Atonement last night because the Lowes at Boston Common randomly decided to stop airing No Country for Old Men. Whatevs, Javier Bardem! Manbob.

I've been rather strongly resisting going to see this movie, despite loving the first (and only) Ian McEwan book I read, Saturday. I mean, that novel was delightfully intelligent and his prose is incredible, but this movie stars Kiera Knightley. Typically...not the biggest KK fan. She's got that whole Zoolander face going on and tends never to eat, which bothers me a bit. But she actually looks quite beautiful in this movie, and were I inclined towards cross-dressing, I'd be very jealous that I don't own her fantastic green dress. Hot mama. And come on, sex against the stacks, amazing.

So anyhoo, saw that movie last night, which far surpassed my expectations of it. I get the feeling, just from having read Saturday, that they probably upped the schmaltz factor, but they might not have. It just seems that epic love story ain't really his bag. If it is, then kudos to McEwan for being very versatile. Yay him. It's shot wonderfully as well, with lots of focus on the characters' eyes. Appropriate, given the point of the movie. I'm glad I didn't have the ending ruined for me ahead of time, because it had quite an impact as you're watching and suddenly Vanessa Redgrave graces the screen. Seeing her in this and Evening (which was fairly crappy all and all) still makes me want to go rent everything she's been in. I think she's gorgeous and her eyes are wicked, plus she's got some hardcore acting chops on her.

Saoirse Ronan is nominated for Best Supporting Actress for this film, which in a year without the much-lauded performance by Cate Blanchett would pretty much be a shoe-in given how much the Academy loves to give that award to debutantes. Still though, she was very impressive for such a young woman. I keep trying to write what was so great about her performance, but I can't really find the words for it. She just managed to take the part (which, admittedly, was great) and invest it with even more depth and complexity, but all in a very subdued sort of way. Very awesome, and worth seeing the movie if only for her.

That's about all I've got for Atonement at the moment.

In other news, it's Valentine's Day, so enjoy that all of you with peeps. I will be enjoying it with some gym action (the workout kind), some Xbox360 purchasing action, and a giant heart-shaped brownie courtesy of TBell. And maybe an episode or two of Lost. And maybe five hours of Mass Effect once everyone goes to bed. I need to work on buffing up my gamerscore from scratch. Sad day! It'll be good times though.

Til next time, kids.

Jonathan Day-Lewis

2008-02-08T22:14:00.000-05:00

That is my new name, or it will be once I realize my life's ambition: to marry Daniel Day-Lewis. I've totally had a wee bit of a man-crush on him since I saw My Beautiful Laundrette in my Gay and Lesbian Film and Literature course at BU. In it, he plays the gay lover of this Pakistani dude in the United Kingdom. It's a really sweet movie and his character is this lovable little thug who hangs out with the tough kids from the wrong side of the tracks (think The Outsiders) but inside, he has a (gay) heart of gold. Obvs, the movie is incredible not because it is gay, but because it stars one of the greatest actors of our time. I fracking love him, which is why I was oh-so-excited to see There Will Be Blood, despite seeing that it was really long, about oil (zzz) and worst of all, had my beloved Daniel sporting a heinous mustache.

I can't bear mustaches since I made the horrible mistake in middle school of convincing my father to grow one simply to amuse me. He then kept it for a good six months to a year (time is fuzzy when you go that far back, but it certainly felt like forever) despite my and my brother's repeated pleas to him to shave the damn thing off, you were so much better off without it and why god why did you ever listen to us. I think in my heart it was payback for treating his face like a joke. But honestly, how was I to know, I was young and foolish.

So the roommates and I decided to go see There Will Be Blood as part of our effort to see as many Oscar movies before the possibly-nonexistant Oscars as we can. Unfortunately, it seems that every year the Oscars get earlier and earlier and the Oscar movies get later and later. And why is it that filmmakers typically refuse to offer any real "film" during the rest of the year. Must it ALL wait til December? Plus then you have amazingly wonderful movies like Waitress get shat on because movies like Juno happen to come out towards the end of the year and I hate you stupid Academy people. I mean, come on, Juno and gang were cute and all, but Waitress was so so awesome and it took more acting skill for Keri Russell to play that role than it did for Ellen Page to make some well-written quips sound funny. Anyway, /end soapbox.

The point here is that Daniel Day-Lewis was in There Will Be Blood, by Paul Thomas Anderson. Now, I'm the first to laud PTA for his amazing direction. He gets incredible performances out of people and typically has the good sense to put super-awesome actors in his movies. I mean, just look at Tom Cruise in Magnolia, Mark Wahlberg in Boogie Nights and Julianne Moore in both. Amazing. Another common thread is that these movies are insanely long and especially in the case of Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood, could have done with a bit of heavy-handed editing. Regardless, Blood is entirely worth seeing if only for DDL, who is ridiculous. He is one of those actors I can watch and forget that he's acting because he so totally inhabits the role that he's playing.

His character in this film is basically one of the worst people I can imagine, which has its own charm to be sure, as who doesn't love a good villain. (Side note: I was totally trolling IMDB earlier to suggest movies to Jason and I came across Kenneth Branagh by way of Emma Thompson (OMG I LOVE YOU, EMMA!) and he was in Othello with Laurence Fishburne and he played Iago which is my favorite villain EVS. Totally awesome.) Well, actually, I do really enjoy the villain in the video game Heavenly Sword, which Jason is playing right now, because the guy is played by Andy Serkis and he's totally insane, just like Iago. That used to be my favorite Shakespeare play, and still probably is. I wish they'd put that on around here somewhere so I could go see it.

but yes, you should all go see Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood, Faithful Readers, because at one point, he froths at the mouth and you see spittle drop to the floor. And that, my friends, is hot. HOT.

Oh man, Jason is not doing well at the bow chick in Heavenly Sword. He was making the arrow fly all over the place using the capabilities of the SIXAXIS controller, which is the gayest name ever for a controller. GAY. Gay like Captain Apollo is when he rubs my back and calls me lover. That gay.

Oh Nariko you hot ho.

I was going to post this post earlier (not this post, but the one I am about to describe) about some article I saw on CNN about video games desensitizing kids to violence. I mean, it's basically a no-shit sherlock kinda thing, though a lot of other stuff desensitizes people in general to violence, but the real important part of the article was that after having the crackpot scientist guy give his shpiel, they actually gave a well-reasoned counter-argument about how video games are simply the latest scapegoat on the war against violence (har har) and that parents simply need to play an active role in their children's lives. But Kotaku beat me to the punch and now I'd look a fool (a fool I say!!) if I were to post about that. Jesus. I mean, right? Right? Totally right, I know. God.

In other news, I am a bit psychotic with the spending today and bought myself an HDTV and an Xbox 360 to be shipped to my home and work, respectively, this week. Yay. I am so very very excited to have a real television on which to play my PS3, cause currently I am using an OLD OLD TV of Tara's that can't really even be called a TV in good conscience, it is that bad. I mean, really. God. The text on the PS3's subtitles is totally awful. Horrible. But Uncharted: Drake's Fortune is great, cause Nate is a total hottie and it is a super fun game that throws zombie vampire people at you about half-way through. Random, but scary as hell. And fun. yay!

So, soon I will be a real gamer-nerd and have all three major gaming systems plus both major portable gaming systems and a big ass HDTV that I'll no doubt be paying on until I'm old (aka for six months). Word.

Ok, we're off to watch Tomb Raider and imagine Angie playing Nariko in the feature film version of Heavenly Sword.

PS: I totally bought new Lucinda Williams, k.d. lang and that-chick-from-the-new-apple-commerical cds. They are all amazing. Thank you. Go buy everything Lucinda and k.d. have ever recorded. You may thank me later.

Parties and pre-gaming

2008-01-25T22:29:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I may have pre-gamed a bit too early on this one. I mean, it is only 10:30pm and I am already so fucking drunk that I pretty much better stop now. I should check myself before I wreck myself. Oh, Sparkz and Goldschlager and Vodka. Maybe not the best combination ever.

I just noticed that Blogger now allows you to blog in Persian, which is awesome considering I just saw Persepolis.

Let me introduce my guest blogger: Erika Saldivar! Have at it, Erika!

so here is the thing it is the 70s all over again here tonight and there are the same things they are young people and there are drinks and there are drugs and in the end we still are not sure if we have figured out anything new we are not sure if we have ever figured out everything new - and so what are we left with? we are left with original smiles for new reasons that may seem the same, but in the end it is always the same things that make us smile right. its light. its bright, and most of all through your fake plastic lenses it is sparkling.

And now back to your regularly schedule blogger, Jon. Hello, everyone. I think Erika really hit the nail on the head as it were (sorry, X-tina!). ::Hi says Jason and flashes his penis:: Jason loves to flash his penis. Sorry for all of you conservative folks who may be a little freaked out by my friend's behavior. So we're back to this party that is going on around me. Now I have had a lot of Sparkz and a some vodka in each one that I have had, plus some shots of goldschlager whenever the mood strikes people. This is the party I have been waiting for since early December. I really want to get so drunk I don't know my name when I wake up. Too often, I wake up and the reality of my life sinks in and I realize that I'd rather go back to my dreams, which of late resemble the Land of Thomas Covenant's mind. Maybe someday I will get leprosy and end up there.

Ok, so now there is Abba playing. I would go out and sing some Mamma Mia with everyone, but the last shot of goldschlager is still sitting in my stomach and wanting to come back up. I think if I give it enough time, I will be feeling much better and can go do another dance in the dark like I did with "One Night Only." Look for me on YouTube.

Lilly and Jason took some video of me and Jason (roommate Jason). They are Maryann Scandalis.

Now they are listening to Britney Spears, so I excused myself to take another crack at blogging during the party. My drunkenness is back to normal levels, which is great, but I am now wearing these utterly ridiculous sunglasses. I don't even know to whom they belong, but that's ok. I will just continue to dance and such. I am glad Erika and Bill came. We have not seen them in ages and they are fun people.

Gimme gimme more, gimme gimme. I mean, I understand the sentiment, but while Britney is fun, she is pretty shitty compared to a lot of other artists. I am really enjoying this
Sparks shit. It's so good and alcoholic. yay! God it's Britney hour. I really do not like her that much. I'd much rather we listen to slash dance to Whitney! WHO JUST CAME ON!!!

god I love me some Whitney. So yeah this party is awesome. Too bad for all you suckers that are not here!

HOLLA!

Mass Effect Retardation - UPDATE!

2008-01-24T13:55:00.000-05:00

Hello, reader, and welcome to my corner of the intarwebs. As you may have noted yesterday, I got a little heated in my discussion of Fox News' treatment of the video game, Mass Effect. Seeing as I discovered the story via several gaming industry blogs, I was hardly the only one to flip out over the unfair treatment the game received on Fox. But today, I come bearing happy news. Not only has the gaming community pulled a stupendous prank on the Amazon page for Cooper Lawrence's new book, The Cult of Perfection, but EA (the company that owns Bioware) released a statement urging Fox to clean up its story and directly refutes the lies that were claimed about Mass Effect.

First, the prank. Seeing as Lawrence spent the Fox segment basically spouting total shit about a game she admitted to never having played, gamers have flooded the Amazon reviews section for her books with one-star reviews in which the comments are typically along the lines of, "There's full on sex that is inappropriate for the children this book targets. I've never read it, but I feel secure in making judgments about it." There have been over 500 of these reviews in the last few days. Now, obviously, there's a level of immaturity in doing something like this, but at the same time, it's nice to see some action taken against someone so dangerous to open discussion. Like I said yesterday, I'm happy to watch a group of people with valid, researched opinions on something, but if these negative reviews mean than 100 less people will pick up her crap and think it's valid, then I'm a happy camper.

Secondly, EA released a great statement in which they attack Fox News' assertion that the game has "full digital nudity" (which it doesn't), interactive sex (which it doesn't) and that it is marketed to kids (which it isn't). Even though it's a video game distributor that is doing the defending, it's always nice to see someone with visibility take a stand to defend the integrity of gaming. The guy from EA pointed out that the side-boob and profile shots of the 'sex' scene are no more risque than you see on primetime television, and certainly less than seen in Fox shows like The O.C. and Family Guy, which is a very good point. Also, he points out that the ratings system on video games is more effective than say, the ratings system on TVs. This is also a great point, seeing as network TV is free to watch for anyone with a television. A game like Mass Effect is hardly available to the vast majority of Americans, seeing as there are only around 17.7 million Xbox 360s sold worldwide as of a few weeks ago.

And that, as they say, is that (for now) on Mass Effect. I will be sure to update all of you on my final feelings about the game once I get an HDTV and an Xbox and can finally play through the whole thing. Until then, I'll have to find something else to write about on here.

Mass Effect Retardation

2008-01-23T16:06:00.000-05:00

As usual, my punniness amuses me. Yesterday, I ran across this article in my daily web-browsings, and it (as most articles about video games in the mainstream news tend to) got my panties in a twist. Of course, it's probably too kind to call Fox "News," but they do have a lot of viewers who love to get spood-fed this crap about video games and it pisses me off.

Now, I haven't had the opportunity yet to play through the entirety of Mass Effect yet, though back in November I probably clocked a good 5-10 hours on it. I mean, first of all, this whole "sex scene" that has all these conservatives so flustered is tamer than 90% of PG-13 sex scenes I've ever seen. It features, as the video game guy in this feature says, "the side of an alien boob." It is hardly smut, and on the whole, looks to me to be done in the same cinematic style that the rest of the game is shot in. In short, if this scares them so much, no freaking wonder GTA makes them shit themselves.

But the thing that drives me the craziest is how everyone who offers an opinion on video games that is not actually IN the industry, has absolutely no clue what they are talking about. I'm totally fine with people feeling that a game with alien side-boob is not for them. It's not for everyone. But for God's sake, don't pretend like you know anything about the context of that scene when you're saying things like, "in some parts of this, you’ll see full digital nudity. Imagine! And the ability for the players to engage in graphic sex and the person who’s playing the game gets to decide exactly what’s going to happen between the two people, if you know what I mean…"

STFU, news lady from Fox. I've watched this scene, seeing as it's blasted all over the YouTubes. There is no image of alien or human vajayjay. There are no dangly bits. That alone makes it not "full digital nudity." Secondly, I (and a lot of other people) would no doubt love to see the game where you decide "exactly what's going to happen," because in that case, we'd be living in a world where pigs fly. And I'd like to see that game not get an Adults Only rating. The fact is, that Mass Effect, even from the first chapter that I have played through features so damn much talking, that I've never seen a talkier game. You have to plan out in advance how to even GET to this sex scene, and frankly, I doubt if even the horniest gamers out there are so desperate to see about 10 seconds of fake side-boob that they have to play through 30+ hours of talky-as-hell video game just to see it. I mean, in an age where porn is available for free whenever you want it on the interwebs, that's laughable. This is not a hundred years ago when petticoats got men aroused. It takes more than side-boob.

As an aside, when I was playing this game, I once went about 2-3 hours where I did not fight a single thing. Brennon, at the time, remarked that the game looked horrendously boring because all I was doing was reading shit. I mean, I can't even count the number of times I've read asinine stuff like "gamers don't read" or "gamers just like to shoot things." I think a game with a complex story and an AI capable of modeling a realistic relationship is--and I know this sounds crazy!--probably better for a person to experience than say...a marathon of Dancing with the Stars.

I also hate how all these people keep acting as though this game is designed to be in the hands of like, 12-year old children. It's rated M for a reason. Even this panel on Fox just sits there and says how it makes the job of parents harder to have to watch what their kids are doing. I mean, fracking imagine that. Actually taking a role in your child's development and helping to guide what they can and cannot play. One woman says that if an adult male has this game, his child will play it when he's not home. Well, either lock it up (gee, that was easy) or use the parental controls that are ON THE XBOX360. Freaking educate yourself and you won't have to worry about 11 year old Johnny somehow figuring out how to seduce a woman and sit through 30 hours of game with the possibility of not pissing her off so that she won't have sex with his character.

People's laziness just never ceases to astound me. Parents seem to think that before this age of technology, parenting was some sort of simple cakewalk where they were all perfect little angels.

And I know that Fox is of course going to blow this all out of proportion, but the fact is, stories about Mass Effect have been popping up all over the internet. This is bothersome to me, because as a gamer, these negative stereotypes are utterly ridiculous. The majority of gamers are not, in fact, 12-15. I mean, I will never understand why people insist on thinking that people who play videogames are inherently anti-social. It is no more anti-social than sitting around watching TV, movies, playing solitaire, reading.. All of these are activities typically done alone, or at the very least, don't promote conversation. So why is it that playing games, which is more interactive than any of these things, is seen as the root of all evil. I'm so tired of being seen as just another member of a group supposedly made up of pubescent boys and obese 30 year olds who live with their mothers and never see the light of day. And the fact is, that the media's portrayal of the gaming community in that way simply reinforces the stereotype for a bajillion other people--ones who actually KNOW people who play video games--who buy right into it.

In the end, I just wish people might for once a) look into what they offer an opinion on and b) realize that the gaming community is just that, a community, and not a collection of ultraviolent, emotionally-stunted "losers."

And frack you, Fox.

Return to Oz

2008-01-23T11:28:00.000-05:00

Ah, my blog. Well, it's certainly been a while. I've been meaning to start writing in this again since I failed miserably at NaNoWriMo. This is now year 4 or so that I have failed, but I still don't want to give up. I mean I was REALLY close this time. There were extenuating circumstances...and those circumstances were not FFXII. My intention is to start writing more often, both in this blog about whatever comes to mind and in a more creative setting, to help myself write faster and thus be marginally more efficient during November. Of course, if I'm still in this job, which I intend to be, November will be a horrible month again...but life will always get in the way if I let it, so I won't. Bitch.

So, update on my life. Obviously, due to my extenuating circumstances, I am single once more. This is me waving my white flag and giving up for a while. I really want 2008 to be the year of me. I want to get re-acquainted with what I like about myself and whatever it is that other people like about me. Sometimes, it's difficult to see the good in myself. It's far easier to slip into a self-fulfilling prophecy about my being boring, but I know I used to think I was a fun, interesting guy. Sometime back in college probably, but I know I felt that way once. It would be a nice change to get back to feeling like that.

Hmm, what else... Been getting into watching politics even more than I used to, so yay for that. I <3 Hillary.

On an unrelated note, while it is obviously sad that Heath Ledger died, let's try to remember that celebrities are no more valuable human beings than anyone else who dies every day. Let this spur people to vote to get us out of Iraq or something.

Also, go see Persepolis, cause it's amazing. Um, pretty much out of stuff to say right now, but lovely to be back and I'll be sure to post something soon about Mass Effect or something. Digital orgy. Plz.

OMGWTFBBQ?

2007-09-28T09:33:00.001-05:00

Remember back in the day when Clinton was president and we actually took steps, as a nation, towards balancing the budget and getting us towards a situation where we might possibly someday be able to NOT owe trillions of dollars?

Well, Congress just upped our credit line AGAIN, this time to $9.815 trillion, which according to Reuters is the fifth time the Bush administration has raised the limit. You know what the debt was when he took office? $5.6 trillion. Jesus fucking Christ. He's almost doubled the national debt in the six and some years he's been in office. Will the insanity never end? Fox pundits were just bitching recently that NASA is spending $500 million on an 8-year trip to space. Now, I agree that NASA spending could possibly be used better elsewhere, but according to 2006 reports, the war in Iraq costs nearly $2 BILLION a WEEK. I mean, come the fuck on. Let's get the hell out of Iraq and we could spend billions and billions on developing warp drives and finding sexy alien races to mate with, and we'd STILL be saving money.

Apparently, though, there's some good news to the equation that I stumbled upon while reading sites about national debt. According to this guy over at The Skeptical Optimist, the national debt is growing at a slower rate than our national GDP, which means that percentage of the GDP that our debt represents (it currently hovers around 64%, ranking us at like number 20 out of all nations for the highest debt) is, in fact, dropping. I guess this is good news overall, though it doesn't so much change my opinion of the Bush administration wasting money willy-nilly on war and stupid abstinence programs, but hey, I'm no economist, so maybe I should butt out of the debate over how much money we owe.

Heck, take Japan from that list of countries by their public (a.k.a. national) debt! They owe 175.5% of their GDP! Guess it sucks to be Japan right now.

Anyway, this website is wicked financial and Republican, but the kind of Republican that makes a lot of sense and is hard to argue. If only Bill-O and Sean Hannity weren't raving lunatic racists and could manage to spout off something mildly intriguing every once and a while. So I get all this guy's arguments about the economy, but still side more with democrats because I don't think a ragingly good economy logically leads to States providing social programs for their residents like they would have us believe. But maybe it'd get that way if we were all rich and happy; we might develop love for our neighbors? I dunno. I kinda lost my point here.

Oh right, I hate Bush and he's wasting my moneys in some desert in Iraq killing people. I'd much rather he spent the same amount feeding starving children or something socially responsible. But I guess I'll just get back to dreaming.

Existence, or The Day Google Found Me, part 1.

2007-09-19T09:35:00.000-05:00

This morning, I opened my inbox and found one from SiteMeter, which tracks the (pretty lame) traffic to my blog. Since I added it, I've had 100 hits to my blog, which is kind of sad, but kind of awesome at the same time. Now most of these were site hits from Brennon's blog and, after I posted my Halloween Review at Final Girl, hits from her blog. Not until today's list did I get hits from random people on the internet.

Most of these random hits are oddly from image searches for "Pathfinder" "The Movie Pathfinder" "Pathfinder viking face" and "movie posters," all directed at the poster I put up for Viking Women and the Sea Serpent. Word. That's totally awesome that someone found my blog through that.

Not so awesome, or perhaps awesomer, is that the only regular Google search that turns up my blog is "bosoms." I need to get moving so I can have some crazy linkages to blog about until I have a giant self-referential blog of nothingness. yay!!

Perquisites, or Why Some Words Should Die

2007-09-18T15:07:00.000-05:00

While proofing a powerpoint deck (kill me, God) today, I came across the word 'perquisites,' which naturally I assumed was an idiot's misspelling of pre-requisites, so I highlighted it and moved on with my day, feeling a little bit better about myself in the process.

Upon giving this expertly noted adjustment to the original author of the .ppt (I should be shot), I was informed that this word (Yes, Virginia, this is sadly a word. [ed. note: I f'ing like punctuation in parentheses, despite what the nazis over at the fracking Elements of English Grammar would have you believe]) is the original source of the commonly used word 'perk,' as in, 'My job has sweet perks, like hookers at the Christmas party and free booze on Fridays!' I'm sorry...

PERQUISITES? That is the stupidest f'ing word I have ever heard in my ENTIRE life, coming a close second to 'nite,' 'brite,' 'lite,' and 'rite,' the creators of which I sincerely hope are stuck headfirst into Cocytus with their toes being gnawed on by evil grammaticians.

Now, I'm not only humiliated for having incorrectly spotted a spelling error, but deeply and irrevocably disturbed at the fact that 'perquisites' even exists and will forever be a part of my lexicon, no matter how many bloody bloody marys I down in the hopes of burning it out of my brain with vodka and worcestershire sauce.

At the end of the day though, I can still (though with new difficulty) hold my head high, knowing that the beeyotch still spelled 'the' as 'th' and used the word 'area' twice in one sentence, when the first 'area' should have been 'candidate,' which is totally not at all related to 'area' and thus HA HA HA.

That's my perquisite for the day! Because if that's not a privilege or profit incidental to my regular salary or wages, I don't know what is.

Robert Jordan

2007-09-17T14:21:00.000-05:00

So, I found out via text from Becky Rupp at 7:36am that Robert Jordan had died last night. It was kind of a weird bit of news for me to be honest. I mean, first I was shocked and disbelieving, but then I got to work and saw news stories and realized that it was true. Then I naturally thought of the long-running joke (though I guess less funny in the past year or two that he's been incredibly sick with some rare disease) that he had better finish up the Wheel of Time before he died, or he'd have a lot of angry fans to answer to. Sadly now he won't have to answer to anyone because he died while still writing the 12th book in the series, set to be the final one, wrapping up an epic that has spanned 73% of my lifetime. He published the first novel when I was 6, though of course I didn't read it until probably Freshman or Sophomore year of high school.

I can't even tell you how many days of my secondary educational career were spent with one of his novels gracing the corner of my desk, allowing me to sneak a few pages at a time whenever waiting for class to start, or after finishing busy work early, or while eating lunch. Since first finishing what was already written of the series at that point, I've re-read it with each successive book he has released, about five I believe. It's become almost tradition for me to read the whole series (9,353 pages, as of book 11) each year, just to refresh myself of its brilliance. Not that the series didn't have its low points or its problems, given that some of the later novels were a bit bogged down by the overabundance of plot and characters and advanced little of the story.

Regardless of that, though, the series he has crafted since 1990 is, to me, the landmark acheivement of fantasy writing. It contains the most complex characters, the densest plots, the most imaginative and immersive reality, that I have ever encountered in a fantasy/sci-fi novel. The characters that he brought to life for me as a teenager have remained with me, having been my constant companions during those years.

He built, using the tropes and standard elements of basically every fantasy novel ever, a unique and fully realized world that has not only entranced my imagination from the moment I opened The Eye of the World, but all things considered, probably absorbed a significant portion of the time I've spent on this Earth, whether through actual reading, online roleplaying (the truest form of geeky homage) or lengthy, passionate discussions with other fans.

It would have been hard enough next year to have said goodbye to the world, the characters, and the mythology of the Wheel of Time, but it is by far harder to say goodbye to the man who created the series that is one of those staples of fantasy writing that fans of the genre will continue to talk about for years. And harder still to think that he died before he could finish his greatest work, one that was so clearly close to his heart and one that helped him fight so hard during his illness.

I took a moment to read through the post his brother left on Robert Jordan's blog, announcing his death, and I confess that seeing Jordan's words used to describe people's loss in the comments section made me shed a few tears of my own for this great man:

“Till shade is gone, till water is gone, into the Shadow with teeth bared, screaming defiance with the last breath, to spit in Sightblinder’s eye on the Last Day.” - Ryan Breen

"Tai’shar Manetheren" - DZ

"May you shelter in the palm of the Creator’s hand Robert Jordan. And may the Mother’s last embrace welcome you home." - Gwydion Quatar

"Ars longa, vita brevis." - Vincent

‘Duty is as heavy as a mountain, Death is as light as a feather.’ - Roshan George

"The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Seventh Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind arose from the Final Breath of James Oliver Rigney, Jr.. The wind was not the ending. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was /an/ ending." - Kotan

---

As the blog announcing his death says, "the Dragon is gone." Rest in peace, Robert Jordan.

Blogging from Thailand?

2007-09-11T09:34:00.000-05:00

Sup?

So, my cousin Jordonne, who got engaged over Christmas break last year to this red-headed dude named Rob, just embarked on Monday with him on a trip to Thailand. They are volunteering to teach English and other assorted good deeds to orphans and small children, bless their sweet hearts. She, following in the footsteps of millions of other travellers, started a travel blog to track their experience there (I believe they went for like 3 months, or 6 months or something.)

Their blog can be found here. Clearly, Jordonne has a penchant for exclamation marks and taking awesome pictures of monks in orange robes (this is why I love her).

All in all, I am insanely jealous of her trip and now I want to quit my job and go volunteer in Thailand. How awesome! Brennon already wants to quit, it could be a genius idea!

She's learning Thai and cooking Thai food and seeing lots of sweet Buddhist temples and all that jazz. It's my understanding as well that the dollar goes a reaaaaally long way over there, which is nice, cause it doesn't go anywhere over here. I was reading up on Thailand and their version of Buddhism (the oldest, in fact) and I still want to learn more about it. Anyone want to go to a Buddhist seminar sometime? Anyone know Where we can find such a thing? There were some vaguely creepy people Brennon and I saw near Brookline Village at some meditation place that I found in my interweb scourings is a Buddhist place, but they seemed...weird, so I don't know. Anyway, read her blog. Yay for Thailand. And so on and so forth.

Frack

2007-09-10T10:47:00.000-05:00

I am such an a-hole!

I posted about Battlestar Hottie and totally forgot to make a sad, lonely use of Frack instead of Fuck. How sad and lonely am I? Missing out on such an easy reference to the show about which I was talking. Such an opportunity can't possibly come again.

GOD! LOSER!

FRACKING FRACK FRACK.

Battlestar Hottie

2007-09-10T09:56:00.000-05:00

After a long, arduous wait, I finally got to start watching Battlestar Galactica recently. I'd heard many good things about it, including Joss Whedon's endorsement of it as the best TV show ever (which seeing as he is my god, predisposes me to love this show), but at every turn, I was thwarted by the TV Nazi (aka Jase, big kiss love you mean it) who would not allow me to watch it while I still hadn't seen Weeds. Well, now I've seen Weeds (also hella awesome; get it? Hella, cause it's set in Cali??) and so my BSG viewing began.

It starts innocently enough almost as though someone is giving a tour of the Enterprise, but a hotter, less gay Enterprise, when lo and behold, it's muthafuckin' Stands with a Fist! Instantly, I became gripped and my pulse pounded along with the indian-like drums that signified drama in this amazing show. (Aside: is it funny that Stands with a Fist is in a TV show where they use Indian drums? Feather not a dot.) At this point, I was excited on one hand by Mary McDonnell, but on the other...ehhhh...it's not that gay!

When I watch space shows, I want gay. I mean, Riker=gay. Sure, he does hot bitches just like Picard, and he has that manly beard going on. But! He also reminds one of a big furry Bear and you just know he and Worf had some hot bizness goin' on after-hours. Totes gay. But Battlestar Galactica was sorely lacking. It has that pseudo-lesbian looking Starbuck (pretty gay name too!), but no sexxxy mens.

UNTIL, guess who steps aboard? Captain Apollo climbs out of his "cock"pit looking sassy and prissily exasperated. As we can see from his gay-ass namesake, Apollo clearly prefers his lovers to be ripped, athletic types. Gay gay gay.

So, from this point on, the show basically is renamed Battlestar Hottie and centers around the romantic problems of Captain Apollo. Who needs evil robots when you have gay relationships? And when, for God's sake, is the bathhouse episode??

Forum Trolling and Plot Mulling

2007-09-10T08:56:00.001-05:00

So, Brennon and I are wicked excited about NaNoWriMo. Well, I am excited paired with a squirmy anxiety about him out-writing me in this year's installment. To mentally prepare myself and stock up on advice, I'm already trolling the forums to scope out the competition. As always when I view these forums, I am struck by how much time people have to participate in this. Some of these people won last year's NaNoWriMo with 110K+ words. That's just insane. I mean, that's like 3K words a day. Who does that?

I'm still toying with ideas for plots and ideas for non-plots. Sometimes I think it may be easier simply to start writing and let the plot go where it will. When it comes down to it, if you let go of "coherency," there's really no hole out of which you can't write yourself. I mean, so your main character dies? Then they can explore the afterlife and find a way to resurrect. Or say your character and plot are dragging, with little to no direction and a boring as hell story... Simply make then board a spacecraft and turn it into a space opera. Or hell, just turn it into a musical. Maybe I'll write a novel that is insanely trippy and just make random shit happen without explanation. Could be fun and kind of ridiculous. Currently, I'm imagining a female protagonist with a pretty much blank personality. I was just reading a thread about Mary Sue's, which are characters that are incredibly talented for no reason but that they are the main character and they exhibit no or very few (and minor) flaws. They are generally well-liked, attractive and insanely cliched. I don't want a Mary Sue for a main char. So I need to either come up with a few believable flaws or I shall just make her a non-hero. I'm leaning towards this at the moment, maybe even making her the villain, though I don't know how convincingly I could pull off a novel centered around the villain.

But I'd like to make her maybe a bit like Nynaeve al'Maera - an angry, hot chick who kicks ass. Or maybe not. All of Robert Jordan's chars tend to be a bit Mary Sue-ish, so I may avoid that route. I'd like to write a story about an average person who skates by somehow but without gaining extraordinary power. But I think I do want to set it in a fantasy world, horse-fantasy as Brennon would say.

I can't yet decide whether I'd like my main char to be live in a city or the country. I don't really even know what sort of plot I'd like to do, but it could be fun to make her run around by herself in the wilderness for a while, make her run into some crazy shit and what not. I dunno, anyone have any fun ideas of who my char is or what I could do with her to start off. I'll probably just let the plot develop as it will, unless I can come up with something I like. I still want to write people into the novel like I planned last time. What say ye?

Catchin' up

2007-09-07T12:16:00.000-05:00

I'm sorry, but I absolutely will not allow Brennon to post more blogs this month than me. I figure I can just post utterly random stuff and win this contest (that exists in my own head) pretty easily.

So the other week, I ordered this nifty little journal type thing to use a notebook at work, but it's all faux-leather bound and with some design on the front (I didn't see this when I ordered it), so I always see it and have the urge to write a journal entry. This is perhaps good for my writing motivation, but perhaps bad for the fact that I can't just bust it open and start scribbling away the way I would like to.

I'm very, very excited to watch Battlestar Galactica again tonight with Brennon. Once he finishes the mini-series I can start watching it again and not have to feel guilty. Whee!

Mayhap I'll take this moment to compose a little description scene of someone's bedroom:

The cheap, lightweight wooden door pushed into the room silently, gliding easily on its hinges. A small pile of abandoned shirts, boxers and socks lay randomly on a skewed pile in the center of the room adding a faint smell to the air that seemed to suggest against closer inspection. The hardwood floor gleamed dully, its once presumably brilliant polish obscured by tangled clumps of dust and hair, out of which dangled miscellaneous appendages of nail clippings, string and paper. This mismatched collection of debris lay scattered, divided by piles of books, cd cases and occasionally furniture. Several bookshelves, inexpertly created out of boxes and rough, splintery plywood held an eclectic collection of books spanning most genres with a heavier emphasis on self-help and books on the supernatural. A few discarded glasses containing various amounts of water stood in a small clump next to the bed, as though a rather inefficient way of stopping a leak which did not exist. The bed itself hardly deserved the name, being as it was an egg crate lying on the floor with a stained sheet on top.

Along the edges of the room, paint chips littered the floor, presumably fallen from the peeling walls. Several water stains crept down the walls, dotted with the holes of years' worth of tenants putting up pictures and posters to make the living space a bit less dingy. Its current resident had no such frivolous additions, instead allowing the room to speak for itself in the low, muttering voice of poverty. In the dirty bed lay a large man, facedown, his long and stringy black hair spread around him like a diseased corona. His naked body was fairly covered in a light film of dirt and grease, intermittently streaked down his back and sides with lines of where his sweat hat done its best to clean him--and failed. His pale skin still held a fading memory of the flush of life within it, but his body lay utterly motionless except for the occasional scutter of a potato bug across his back, each time trailing a drop of two of blood from where its mandibles had consumed part of the newly made corpse.

---

I wish I could write faster. Boourns.

First line?

2007-09-07T10:25:00.001-05:00

So, I think perhaps the best way to handle NaNoWriMo is to go about it the standard way and just write it in a word document and upload it to NaNoWriMo at various points to check my word count. I'll try to avoid placing myself on a schedule as long as I am making decent progress, but I think I'll also avoid plotting it out like I did last time. I mean, it took me a good 15-20K words just to write my first chapter, so if I plan too much, I won't be able to write any of the actual plot. I would like to try just having a first line like I did 2 years ago and then go from there.

Therefore, I'd like people to suggest a really stellar first line. I'll think about that line in the coming months and hopefully by November, have a sketch in my head of at least where I want to start out given the first line.

I think I may also attempt some writing exercises in this blog once in a while just to give myself a little practice writing fiction, specifically dialogue and such. Maybe I'll even get the hang of it and not get so hung up on dialogue when writing my novel. I'd love to be able to just bang out dialogue easily, even if the dialogue isn't great. I just have a self-editing problem when writing it and can't manage to just write like I can with description and such, I end up analyzing whether a line is good or not, which sucks when speed-writing a novel.

So anyhoo, first lines anyone?

Thoughts on NaNoWriMo and blogging

2007-09-07T09:14:00.000-05:00

It struck me last night that NaNoWriMo is just under two months away and I've yet to plan anything for it. I think I may avoid the path I took last year of planning out a plot and backstory for my characters and instead just sit down on November 1st and start clacking. We'll see though. I welcome anyone's thoughts and suggestions on topic, plot, characters, genre, etc. I was so psyched about the idea of writing a cheesy fantasy novel, but it turned into me narrating a video game, which was less fun.

But damnit, I'm determined to finish this year! I got to like 24K last year before I was derailed by Final Fantasy XII. I know that Mass Effect comes out in November, but I'm going to avoid it like the plague. I just won't go near an Xbox360 until December or until I finish my novel. This time around I have a laptop too, which will really help, because I can park my lazy ass in front of a cup of coffee at Starbucks and clack away to my heart's content, which is a much more conducive environment to writing for me than sitting at home with all the inherent distractions of that.

I keep thinking perhaps a mystery novel would be fun, but then I'd definitely have to plan and I don't have any faith in my mind's ability to come up with a believable twist, let alone multiple twists that I'd need to have a halfway entertaining mystery novel. Fantasy seems the easiest route, cause I can just make up whatever I want, but I tend to get paralyzed by the options presented to me and flounder. I may go with magical realism, cause that would also give me lee-way to sort of do whatever I want without totally switching genres, but then I think it'd quickly spill over into straight up fantasy, so I might as well start with that. I really liked my story idea last time and I'm still bitter it didn't work out the way I wanted it to. It was fun doing research for my novel in the MFA , but it sort of fell apart once he went to the fantasy world. Perhaps if I stuck with a fantasy story set in Boston, that would work. It could be like Buffy, except not. But I mean, that show was based in a town and didn't jump dimensions like retarded Angel did, and they had lots of fantasy stuff. I could have my guy be involved or get involved in some sort of group that fights evil. Or maybe he can be a vampire and I'll write a gay vampire fiction. I'm sure that's easy enough to do. A little blood here, some goth music there, some gay sex over here and a title like 'Seduction of Darkness' and I'd be all set.

What say you, readers of LB&S? Should I go this route, or something different? Should I attempt to tackle a novel surrounding the mysterious and pendulous bosoms of a stripper on the run? Maybe the stripper can be a supernatural detective and my novel can rip off CSI and add monsters? Maybe? No?

Also, I learned yesterday that NaNoWriMo teamed up with Blogger (in 2004) to do NaNoBlogMo, where you write your novel as a blog. I wonder if I should do that this year. I mean, that way maybe it could be like a choose your own adventure. People could read what I've written and comment on where they would like to see the novel go, which might spur some ideas from me and help keep me motivated throughout the month. Do any of you readers feel any interest in keeping up with my 50,000 word novel in a few months? I won't bother doing that as a blog if no one will read it, but it could be fun. Like a serial drama. With really bad writing. Yay? Nay?

Rob Zombie should stick to not making movies

2007-09-06T10:42:00.000-05:00

I'm sitting here once more, bored to tears of pain and frustration, willing the world to turn just a lil' bit faster (harder, better and stronger can wait). Alas, I cannot actually move things with my mind. This morning on the train, I thought how useful it would be to be able to mentally hold onto the handrail and how other people would react to seeing someone able to stand utterly motionless while the train attempted to derail itself, but then I realized that in my little daydream, my hair was long and red and I was a sexy woman named Jean. I woke up from that dream real quick, as John Travolta would say.

I'd be such a bad columnist for a newspaper. I never understood how Carrie Bradshaw always had a topic every week of that Sex and the City show. I guess having a team of writers do it for you must help a bit, but still. People do that shiz all the time. I just get bored and thus blog; I rarely have something meaningful to share with you, my loyal non-readers.

But having just heard a cop siren, I did think of one thing to tell you. Last night, I had the "pleasure" of watching the new Rob Zombie remake of Halloween. Now, I won't get into the details of why it shouldn't have been remade in the first place, but I did have a bit of a quibble with his atrocious dialogue. I mean, this man writes like an ADD 12-year old with the mouth of a really disgusting 30-year old. There are only so many times I can hear the words "slut" "whore" "cunt" "faggot" "bitch" "ass" and "cum" from the mouths of children before the totally unnecessary shock value wears off. I mean, ok, so Regan in The Exorcist said "your mother sucks cocks in hell" and "Let Jesus fuck me," but it was somewhat spread out and she sounded like a demon when she said it. All of this adds to a disturbing and shocking movie experience. Zombie's film has so much over-the-top profanity that it is completely and utterly meaningless. You don't feel like these people are disturbed for having said these things; you just think they have nothing to say but filth. Basically, they watched ntohing but Rob Zombie films growing up and this is the product. BORING! Also, Rob, your teenaged girl characters are so far from believable when they refer to cops as bacon and to cop cars as Baconmobiles. Guys call cops bacon; I've yet to meet a girl who does, certainly not a girl who looks like that.

Come to think of it, maybe he should remake the Exorcist! It'll be even MORE disturbing if the priest and Regan's mom sit down to talk about her and the dialogue goes something like this:

Father Karras: "Mrs. MacNeil, your daughter is fucking crazy like a drunken slut on PCP."

Chris MacNeil: "Fuck off, Father Fuckface. My fucking daughter needs your help, asswipe, so stop your fucking bitching over that whore of a mother you had and get to exorcizing, slut! Or can't your faggot ass even do that, you inept little bitch."

Father Karras: "Cunt."

--

I think it's comic gold.

Thoughts about the guy who puts interesting articles in the bathroom stall to read while defecating

2007-08-29T11:13:00.000-05:00

I know it may be lowbrow of me to write a blog entry around this somewhat disturbing practice, but there you have it. I'm a somewhat disturbing kinda guy.

I mean, there are a lot of questions surrounding it. Who is this man? Does he leave these in here because the strain of releasing his bowels draws such a large amount of blood from his brain that he forgets he brought them in in the first place? Is it this selfsame man who leaves shreds of toilet paper littering the ground, the toilet and the handy handlebar used by handicapped people to lower themselves onto the seat? Does he think about his audience when printing out an article from the New York Times? What is he trying to tell me with today's selection: Venturing Into the Mines of Uganda, in Search of the Marburg Virus?

Did I just contract a relative of the Ebola virus when I picked up this article from where it hung limply on the handicap bar? Why did I touch this article in the first place? Ye Gods, did he wipe before or after he placed the article back on the bar? Is there enough anti-bacterial soap in the world to get out, out this damned spot? Am I bat-shit crazy for thinking so much about a toilet article? Did I just purposely make a really awful pun linking toilets, craziness, shit, bats and this article? Would it detract from my brilliance if I had? For once, I have an answer. No, it would not.

However, I still wonder which man on this floor does this. I am sitting here, avoiding work as usual, pondering whether or not I should make a return trip to the bathroom and deposit my own stinking article on that handicap bar. What would this strange mystery man say to:

Craig: I did nothing 'inappropriate' in airport bathroom

and would that make me a creep or a comic genius?

Leave your flames and encouragement below!

See below.

2007-08-29T07:54:00.000-05:00

I've been informed that my references to journalman and henry tilney are less than amusing so we'll try a few without them and see how it goes.

My excitement has dimmed somewhat since I discovered the Dragonlance movie, but that won't stop Rebecca and me from seeing it as soon as it comes out ~~in theatres~~ straight to DVD. I may even need to put on my wizard hat and gold face paint and really make a night of it. You better believe that as soon as I have a release date you will have a Google invitation to watch this lil' nugget of cinematic brilliance. Possibly a double-feature of Dragonlance and Dungeons and Dragons, just to really short-circuit your minds. Gosh, I might have just found my plans for the best night ever.

But alas, now I'm back to the real world of 'working' and not 'geeking out.' I've gotta say, work is wildly overrated. I've found you can really avoid most of it by doing something immediately when asked while the person is standing over your shoulder. Then, they just assume you're always working at hyper-speed and walk back to their desks marvelling at your ability to be the real life version of the Bionic Woman, minus the boobs.

Now if only I were actually a bionic man, maybe I could just pull coffee out of the replicator in my chest, rather than being forced to walk across the street to get it. God, that'd be fun. I bet it's that gross packet coffee though, and not real coffee.

Last night, my fragile psyche was subjected to an incredibly suspenseful movie called High Tension. Without giving anything away of the plot's twist...aliens. It's always aliens. Contact, Signs, Invasion, War of the Worlds, The Others. COOL IT WITH THE ALIENS, DAMNIT!

Anyway, it's not aliens. Buuut, AvP 2 is coming out. Tagline: In Space...No One Can Hear You Scream (been there don't that), On Earth...It Doesn't Matter.

...

REALLY?

Whoever wrote that should probably receive a concrete saw to the gut.

No, but really, the twist was pretty unsatisfying. Basically, The Village had a better twist. At least that movie made sense. High Tension was an enjoyable movie though. Very pulse-pounding.

I think that's all for now. Back later with more excitement about my life.

Random Ramblings and...OMIGOD DRAGONLANCE MOVIE!?

2007-08-28T10:29:00.000-05:00

Dearest Journalman,

I know it's been some time since we last spoke. Nay, 'tis been almost four whole months. Four months without my sweet nothings whispered tenderly in your ear. Four months shivering in cold darkness of your lonely, lonely soul with nary a breath of fresh air or a shaft of penetrating sunlight from my brow, which glistens with the sweat of my intellect. Four months, in short, of Hell. I feel your pain, or rather, I caused your pain and thus bask in it, drawing strength from your suffering, O Journalman. O, how I long for the days where I would post in ye once, twice, thrice, sometimes even thrice plus four times a day! Time flies when you're growing up, living in what passes for poverty among the middle class, working retail and then entering the real(ly boring) world of professionalism.

Yet you've been a constant rock, Journalman. The veritable St. Peter of my soul. Never-changing in your affections and unwavering in your steadfast solidarity.

Enough with the buttering up of my inner parliament, and onto the show: Per usual, I lack a topic for the day. It has been suggested by John Barleycorn that I write an entry about the posts I see all the time in the GameFAQ forums, but he ninja'd that one straight out of my cold, dead hands and I am left with nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

I often miss the capacity to spout off quotes in the most obnoxiously erudite manner that I had in college. Time and lack of constantly being exposed to new poetry and novels have taken their toll on me...

On the other hand, who really cares? I'm moving on to new and better things, like my obsession du jour, www.allposters.com. I've spent the majority of my working day ($18/hr!) browsing movie posters on this website, in an attempt to find either a) new movies to netflix or b) movie posters of movies I have seen to put up in my new apartment with Tara and Jason. The best find of the day is clearly this:

I'm not usually one to fall for pulp-y posters and such, but this movie clearly cannot be anything but amazing. I mean, THIS is what Pathfinder should have been. Of course, Viking women (even scantily clad ones) do less for me than a big, sweaty Eomer, but we can't have everything. I can only hope that netflix has this movie and that I can somehow get my trembling hands on it before I'm forced to run around my apartment in rags, brandishing a spatula spear and making Amazon warrior calls, just to get my fix of bad movies. Not to go entirely off topic or anything, but can we all just note that Eomer played Caesar on Xena: Warrior Princess?? That's hot!

I may have to buy Xena on DVD. I know what you're all thinking. There goes Henry A. Tilney again, buying up DVDs of fantasy shows, but come on. Awesome. I wish Lucy Lawless had been in more stuff.

I'm sorry, can we BACK THE FUCK UP! JUST ONE SECOND!

In my IMDB perusal of Lucy Lawless' career, I just saw that she is providing the voice for Goldmoon in the animated feature film Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight! I'm sorry, why did I not know about this!? If this is some sort of internet rumour, and is not real, I will cry. How awesome! and let's look at who they say is going to be doing voices!!!

Michael Rosenbaum - Tanis Half-Elven
Kiefer Sutherland - Raistlin Majere
Lucy Lawless - Goldmoon
Michelle Trachtenberg - Tika

I may die if this actually comes out. I think I'm actually TOO excited to write anything else about it. /end geek rant.

Let Me Pencil That In

2007-05-09T10:21:00.000-05:00

Dearest Journalman of My Soul,

In keeping with the trend of confessing my darkest secrets to you, I have another one: Google is taking over my life. It has everything I could ever need to organize my otherwise whirlwind of a life. In fact, the How-To of the Day today on my Google homepage is How To Balance School and Word as an Adult, something that I personally find useful, seeing as I do just that. And it gave me some useful tips, such as opening an online calendar to keep track of tests and work things and to schedule study time. I think this is fantastic, so I went ahead and added my whole life to my calendar. Now, if only I had a blackberry and could check my Google Calendar from anywhere.

(Side note: The best part of my job-- getting called sweetie by giant African men. I don't know if this is just because they want to suck up and think that's the best way into my heart, or whether it's because I'm such a flaming queen that they assume I'm a woman, but...I hope not the latter.)

Well, last night I decided to delve once more into the wonderful world of making Chili. Jenna has this amazing(ly easy) recipe, involving beef/turkey, bell peppers, onions and a crapton of canned beans, tomatoes, tomato sauce and refried beans. It fills a giant soup pot to the rim, which is totally awesome, but since my kitchen stuff is totally disorganized, it led to a lack of tupperware to contain my concoction. I ended up bringing about a gallon of it to work today in the hopes that someone will help me to eat it all. I'm slowly building up a repertoire of foodstuffs that I can cook. This is going against years of being kept out of the kitchen when my mom cooked dinner and only being allowed to assist during cake- or cookie-making. I still have a phobia of baking pies because she couldn't do it. You'd think this would cause me to be more motivated to bake a freaking pie, just to prove that I'm a better baker, but it just makes me nervous. But I'm very much into cooking my own meals right now. I've been spending entirely too much money on eating out and ordering in (not to mention booze and video games...or crack). Last night's bean and beef extravaganza cost me a total of 27 dollars and probably yielded something around 15 servings. Pretty good, I'd say.

In other news, I have some sort of uncontrollable urge to own every edition of every Final Fantasy game, even when one version is fully sufficient. Take Final Fantasy IV. I played it on Super Nintendo, I've played the original SNES version on an emulator, I've played the harder JP version of the SNES game on an emulator, I bought FF IV Advance for the Game Boy Advance, despite having already played and beaten the one Chris owned. Now, to taunt me, they are developing a DS version of Final Fantasy IV, which I imagine will include some touch screen capabilities like the DS version of Final Fantasy III (which I found insanely dull after a while). I am hoping (obviously) that this version of Final Fantasy IV will have some more enhanced touch screen stuff, but it's unlikely, because honestly what would you add to a Final Fantasy game that would require a touch screen. Maybe at least they'll do something with the two screens. FFIII DS just put a stupid world map on the top screen, which made it silly that there was a button to pull up the world map, because it just copied what was on the top screen onto the bottom screen and what's the point of that!? REALLY NOW! At least I completed the GBA version of FFIV before this one is created. It would be sad if they released a DS version of FFVI, because I'd buy it and I haven't even done the extra content on FFVI Advance yet.

Ok, I'm geeked out. I may have just lost some of the few friends I have left.

Love,
Me

Over and Over Again

2007-05-04T15:01:00.000-05:00

Journalman,

There's something about this song that pulls up memories from my past. The memories are of how little I like it. Mostly because Tara sang it over and over again. Ba dum pum. ...

Anyway, this was a totally transparent excuse to talk to you again. You don't mind; you never mind, so long as you get a little slice of my love now and again. But there's no need to be waiting for tonight, Journalman, you can have it right now. I don't really have anything in particular to blog about besides my everpresent ennui, and we all know how interesting that is.

Let me just say that I am feeling very off-with-their-head towards whoever set the radio to Magic 106.7. My next job had better play nothing but Swedish Death Metal or I'm going to be having words with HR. Can you feel the love tonight?

Hold on, what was I talking about again? Today, I busted out some old jeans that I purchased during my hipster trash period, thinking that the tighter my pants were, the more people would love me. Alas, I attracted the same few looks of vague disinterest and borderline disgust that I always have. I just cried behind my fake black-rimmed glasses.

So, Journalman, tonight we're going out to get some food (steak tips pour moi) and some boissons (probably Tom Collins, cause I'm an old man) at Flash's before partaking of the newest addition to the Spiderman family. Spiderman 3 has already affected me in one profound way: I will never read another NY Times review. Anyone who writes in a review of SPIDERMAN 3 that it's shady (har har) that they use black as a symbol for evil deserves to be shot, metaphorically speaking. Or maybe tarred and feathered, or is that too racially charged for the Times. Aren't we beyond being sensitive to colors being bad having any relationship with race? White is good and black is evil in color symbology. Get over it. Ugh.

Alright, John Barleycorn just arrived, so off I go on my white horse to get boozy.

Love,
Henry A. Tilney

2007-05-01T12:39:00.000-05:00

Dearest Journalman,

I know I say this a lot, but:

a) We should hang out more often. You're witty and charming and you never talk back without permission. All in all, you're wonderful.

and b) This font rocks my socks.

Regardless, I come to you with a little problem. No, it's nothing so salacious as crack addiction or raging alcoholism. I would never! Instead, it is about my sad addiction to video game addiction.

Yes, I have reached all new lows when it comes to my uncontrollable urges to play games set in fantasy worlds where I can pretend to me anything from a playboy prince to a white bear with a pom-pom on my head. Sometimes, when the mood strikes, I even bring these characters that I so lovingly spend my free time with into the bedroom, much to the chagrin of my lover. It is only when I insist on calling him Zelda that he truly objects. Whatever, he's prejudiced against the letter Z.

In the past six months, I can't even imagine how much of my income has been funneled into purchasing video games and video game paraphernalia. It even reached a point briefly where I was taking my Nintendo DS with me into the bathroom in lieu of reading one of those silly bathroom readers and/or simply doing my business without accessories like normal people.

Ok, this topic bores me now. I had initially opened up Blogger simply to aide in my distraction from work. Anything to avoid being here in thought, since I can't do much about being here physically. I hate when I have no point and then I try to write something anyway and a point does not develop itself. How disappointing.

In other news, my sweet, wonderful man-lover John Barleycorn bought me a Wii this past weekend. By other news, I apparently meant the news I was previously talking about before I got bored with this entry. I have only played the Wii a little bit so far, but it is promising in the fun department. Link rides around on a pony and dishes out hurt to neighboring plants via a wooden sword that he swings when I stupidly shake the wiimote back and forth. I am looking forward to delving into the whole sports thing, but I must say, I'm more intrigued by puzzles and Zelda.

Oh Journalman. Think of me in my absence.

Love,
Henry A. Tilney

Forum Trolls and Onion Knights

2007-04-04T08:52:00.000-05:00

Journalman,

We meet again. You come here often? My place or yours? Rawr.

In a fit of RPG-mania I purchased a Nintendo DS over the weekend, in addition to three RPGs on Amazon.com (Final Fantasies IV, VI and Tactics Advance) and one with the DS (Final Fantasy III DS). Now, some might say that that is a mite excessive with the RPGs. After all, a good RPG takes anywhere from 50-70 hours to finish in a reasonably completionist manner. That's a significant number of days of my life slated for ~~brain-rotting~~ enhancing my ~~strategery~~ strategy.

I began with Final Fantasy III, as the other games have not shipped to me yet. This game hearkens back to the Ye Olde Dayes of White Mages and Black Mages, but they re-vamped it to be 3D and they gave the heroes personalities. Go figure. Way to ruin it!

Anyway, liking as I do to be absolutely perfect in RPGS, I read every single FAQ I could get my hands on and discovered a secret class obtainable only through use of the DS's stupid Wi-Fi system. Now, since I have about four friends total, and I'm the first to own a DS, this is clearly an impossible feat. Fie on the DS people. Or is my fie premature?

I decided to do a little trolling of the message boardsat GameFaqs to discover a solution to my seemingly insurmountable problem. It turns out, people exchange Friend Codes ALL THE TIME! So, I made a little account and posted asking for some friends. Two people replied, so we added each other and when I approached the moogle mail system next time, I had a letter awaiting me from Jeff. Jeff sent me a stamp for Master Devout (I've yet to discover what that means/does for me, but I'm excited regardless). So now, with a few more Moogle Letters and some hard work, I may just unlock the Onion Knight class for my dear sweet party. Granted, the Onion Knight supposedly sucks until you reach level 94 or so, but I'm diligent and hard-working and I will make it through the rain.

Love,
Henry A. Tilney

Flinging E-Fireballs at Friends

2007-03-30T14:34:00.000-05:00

Dear Journalman,

This is the new diversion me and John Barleycorn and I discovered today. The premise is this:

Using only pictures and a brief description of your "turn" in the subject line, you e-mail back a forth a LARP battle. This enables you to use the limitless resources of the internet, tempered only by your imagination and Google-image research skill(z), to send all manner of e-assaults against your e-enemy. (EENEMY?) The true gems of this game come when you acidentally stumble across a website containing a man with a homemade shield whilst searching for "tower shield" on Google.

Honestly, it doesn't get much better than that. Until the next time I play, anyway.

Thy Bosoms Are Indeed Pendulous

2007-03-30T09:50:00.000-05:00

Dearest Journalman,

Only six posts in the several months since I began this blog, (Dear sweet Jesus, I really enjoy this font) and I have yet to delve into the secret world within the pendulous bosoms of a stripper on the run. That's mostly because a blog devoted entirely to the thoracic cavity would bore you, my loyal journalman, and it is for thee that I write. When I was a child, not only did I win the hearts and minds of the teaching staff at my elementary school through strategically-placed hugs and apples, (Oh, the possibilities!) but I also played a lot of video games. Less hugging and apple-placing occurs now (at least with my educators), but I am still a loser who plays far too many games. One of them used to be Dragon Warrior. You played a random hero who first saved the princess from the dragon in the cave (original!) and later defeated the Dragon Lord. You could be named any of 456,976 names, given the four spaces available to you. My brother and I, naturally, stuck with the simple and to-the-opoint "THY." So struck were we by the profusion of thys, thees, thines and thous that we decided we might as well add to the mix and have them refer to our hero/ourselves as THY. Sample dialogue:

KING: THY! Thy sword swing true at thine enemies. Thou art our only hope, THY. Our hopes go with thee, THY.
THY: ::stands there silently::

THY did his damnedest, trudging through dark, dank caves and poisonous swamps in search of the Faery Flute--the only item capable of neutralizing the deadly Gold Golem. In subsequent play-throughs, we would rename our hero THEE or THOU, just to spice things up, as we slayed dragons and slimes alike.

In other news, the stress of exam time has caused me to gnaw off most of my nails. I find this to be very obnoxious. I had, after all, been doing so well, but I backslid into my old habits. I shall simply have to force myself to take conscious control of my own actions again. Whatev.

As we go into this ~~long~~ weekend, let us reflect on the fact that bosoms are only pendulous if they are large/old/fake and that is a-ok.

Yours in life and as long as the internet persists,
Henry A. Tilney

My Slow Descent Into Alcoholism Eye Jelly

2007-02-09T10:56:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, following a rousing day of surfing the web, emailing and reading up on the life of the recently departed Anna Nicole Smith, I shlepped myself over to school. Thursdays for some are Grey's "I'll become as bad as ER soon, give me a chance!" Anatomy night, but for me, they are Anatomy and Physiology night. Oh, the irony. I had great plans for the evening after class, so I wasn't overly anxious during class. I arrived early and began to read Wizard's First Rule, a trite-fest of a fantasy novel that uses caricatures of people to make the reader understand who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. For example, bad guys are pedophiles, murderers and rapists. Good guys save babies, promote equality and cry a lot. Anyhoo, for some reason, I can't put the damn book down (even though I've read it already), so chances are, I'll finish it (all 900 pages) before Erika and John Barleycorn finish our book club book.

Regardless, lab turned out to be a dissection of cow eyes. Come on, how awesome. I got to say, "Out, vile jelly!" while I poured the vitreous body out of the eyeball. Even better, our lens was still attached to the vitreous body, so I plopped it around on my hand and thought fondly of Dragon Warrior. Everyone should dissect an eye at some point, because they are wicked cool inside. Lining the back is this iridescent membrane thing that is greenish-blue and shines. It's hot. Hot like your face.

After class, I meandered my way over to Somerville and watched the tail end of a rousingly dramatic Grey's episode and then settled down with a dinner of popcorn and tea (mm) to watch The Descent with Devrie. As gory as the first time I saw it. Still scared me shit-less.

That is pretty much it for my day yesterday. Thrilling, I know. Today, I'm going to avoid working and try and find some food here shortly. We shall see. I miss Finale's chili, but I am unsure I want that sitting in my stomach all day. Someone amuse me, please.

Staff Meetings

2007-02-07T10:20:00.000-05:00

Ah meetings. Today, I sit here clack-clacking at my keyboard, monitor turned surreptitiously (and somewhat neck-breakingly) away from the meeting going on behind me. This is from well-honed instincts to cover up what's on my screen, begun by hiding porn and illicit IMs from my mother in Middle/High School and furthered by my old boss, who was constantly looking out for me as though I had porn and illicit IMs on my screen (which I most certainly did not).

As with all of these meetings, the ice is broken by everyone listening to the (not funny) stories compiled by the head honcho between meetins. He finishes and they all chuckle at his inane tale about Deal or No Deal? or how his dry cleaning was messed up, God forbid. During this time, I cut myself with staple removers (which look like fanged rabbits). *cutcut*

I really have nothing further to write on this topic as I can tell it would simply send me into a frenzy of vicious rhetoric against both my job and the corporate world in general. This would bore my audience (ha!) and myself.

Last night, I saw "The Lives of Others," a lovely German flick about pre-Berlin Wall-tearing down Germany. It followed this dude who followed this couple and became a mite obsessed with them. It's delightful and everyone should go see it. but see Pan's Labyrinth first, because it is a superior film. Ok, I'm angry at my job again, so I should sign off here.

(Defiled) Unicorns and Candy Canes,
Henry A. Tilney

Book clubs

2007-02-02T14:50:00.000-05:00

After a grueling couple of months under the strict taskmistress that is Erika, I finished the first (and least difficult to read) selection of our Sexy Book Club (tm), Post Office. As you all know, I have long wanted to be a postal employee, spending my days in long shorts, walking through the bustling city streets to deliver girly mags, manly mags, personal letters and bills, bills, bills to the people. Right. [ir]Regardless, we (me, Jason, Tara, Erika and John Barleycorn) met up at Bukowski's (naturally) for some beer-infused conversation about the life of Chinaski, that raucous drunk who is worlds different from his creator, Charles Bukowski.

The consensus was that Jason and Tara have no taste and Erika, John and I are clearly awesome Literature-types. I kid! But I think more people should have bookclubs, because they arouse a certain sort of controlled anger, which I feel is conducive to building and maintaining strong friendships. At the end of the day, no one hated one another because someone liked Chinaski's ass all covered in geraniums and someone else liked when the book was over because it meant he or she could move on to greener literary pastures.

To follow up drunken screwing, I made an executive decision to read Neverwhere, the first novel by the inimitable Neil Gaiman, who warms my heart and my pants whenever I think of his writings. He has a greater imagination than almost anyone I have encountered either in person or in writing. This may be because he tends to write about fantasy worlds on the cusp of our own, which seem to be such a small step to the side of our reality as to almost seem believable. But I don't want to rant about Neil here; I'll save that for the bookclub.

In other news, life continues on as life tends to do. Not that I want it not to, but you know, it does and that's that. It seems some people whose pseudonyms resemble taco bell have an issue with my old-school MUD name from High School. So! I am changing it. but not to my real name; rather, to the name I could only be so lucky to have.

Love and buttercups,
Henry Tilney

p.s. - What would he have to say about me writing a journal and signing off as him. LOL!

2007-02-01T15:29:00.000-05:00

So here I sit at my desk, once more marvelling at the fantastic(k)ness of this font. Honestly, we should add more 'k's to the English language, because it makes words better. To give you two prime examples: Fantastick and Magick. Magick, especially, should have the 'k,' to give it that flair(e) of Old(e)ness. That, and Tara freaking hates it, so I giggle a little on the inside whenever she twitches at the spelling.

Work has become a glorious feast of craziness, filling my days with actual work to replace the busy work that had been a part of my former job description. This leads me to removing my shoes (I sweat) and typing long emails to myself and my co-workers. Long and extravagant pieces which say what needs to be said in exactly as many words as possible, times two. This both satisfies my need to be long-winded as well as my need to hear keys being struck at a rate of over 70 wpm, which happens less often in my office than others. Fie working on phones all day! Emailing is clearly the way to run a business. Even as we speak (or rather, I type very quickly), I am pretending that this email is crucial to the success of our business and that some client on the other end is awaiting this with breath so very bated that if I don't complete it soon, we may have an asphyxiated client on the other end of our oh-so-unstable T1 line. And that would be very bad.

On to my point for typing this entry up in the first place: I don't have one. This is hardly new with me; I despise points, mostly because I have trouble crafting whole blog entries around one specific detail. This makes me envious of bloggers like John Barleycorn and Erika, who are both capable of sitting down with a topic or an opinion into which they wish to delve. I, on the other hand, type whatever comes to mind. Ah, burn it. I don't really give a crap. I do what I do and I like what I do. I really and truly am looking forward to being home at some point tonight and watching me some Buffy/reading me some Neil Gaiman. It seems nothing requires dissection in tonight's lab, so what that says to me is that I get to go home at a semi-reasonable hour tonight, hungry, cold and tired, but not smelling of formaldehyde.

That seems to be all that wants to come out of my head today. Take it or leave it. But regardless, leave me a comment, because if I don't receive emails in my inbox from somebody besides Bank of America or TurboTax, it may be time to find a new career in crying myself to sleep. Pity: it works.

Greetings, Earthlings.

2007-01-31T11:17:00.000-05:00

Dear Journalman,

I decided, after much deliberation [that holy god, this font is awesome..what font is this? It just says Font. Damn.] that I need to join the ranks of fuzzy lemmings (are they fuzzy?) walking over the cliff of blogdom. My LJ is dead-like, so a fresh start was needed.

This, my friends, is my fresh start. I will use this forum to bequeath unpon you my informed opinions on politics (ha), literature, music, movies, foodstuffs and the nature of God. Also, whatever else comes to my mind. Ponderings and such, if you will.

It took quite some time, roughly two to three rotations of our beautiful ~~little~~ medium-sized planet, for me to select a name that was neither trite nor pretentious nor a liability for future professional employment. Bosoms makes it non-offensive. Trust me. The title was taken from a letter which Jane Austen wrote to one of her relatives regarding her heroine in Pride and Prejudice. She saw Lizzie Bennet as "light, bright and sparkling," which clearly she is.

Anyway, that's all for now, folks. Stay tuned til the next episode.

Love,
Gidaren-kun