So I got to thinking this morning about abortion and women's rights and the whole pro-life/anti-choice movement. I know it sounds aggressive to call it anti-choice, but let's be real, the movement as it exists now basically just wants to ensure no woman has the option to get an abortion. I don't really want to get into the discussion of whether or not abortion is moral or not, because frankly, it has nothing to do with the fact that a woman should be able to make decisions about her own body. But obviously I'm a screaming liberal.
What I was thinking about was the hypocrisy of the "pro-life" crowd. Obviously, this does not apply to everyone, and I am certain there are people who oppose abortion who actually give a shit about the "sanctity of life" beyond talking about it. Can anyone explain to me why the group who screams about how a woman should not have the choice to terminate a pregnancy are the same group that:
*Opposes universal healthcare - Now the reasons why a woman might get an abortion are varied and no one's business but her own, but given that the average cost of an uncomplicated pregnancy and delivery can run around $6-8000, I'd say inability to afford pregnancy may be one factor. Why is the pro-life movement not jumping all over providing every woman in America with free healthcare for her and her child? If we're really in it for the sanctity of life and with the mother's best interest at heart (as is always claimed), why are these same people arguing for free market healthcare? They're SO OPPOSED to Obama's mandated healthcare (which, by the way, includes an essential benefits package that includes pregnancy/delivery), when they ought to be applauding his efforts to provide for mothers and children.
*Promotes abstinence only education (STILL!) - I love that you can make the claim that abstinence-only education is science-based, as though that makes it somehow at all effective. News flash: it doesn't. So I get it, you want to protect kids from scary diseases and unintended pregnancies. Great, so do I. Maybe we should all get on board with actual sex education and free/cheap access to contraceptives (because kids are TOTALLY GOING TO HAVE SEX, REGARDLESS). If people are better educated about sex, they will be safer and make better-informed decisions, leading to fewer pregnancies because they didn't use condoms/don't believe in condoms/think condoms are evil.
*Barely says a peep about adoption - I did not even know promoting adoption was part of the GOP's platform until I read it earlier. Now I'm all for adoption. Adoption is great and more people should adopt. There's a ridiculous number of kids in foster care and that's really sad. Why is this not a bigger part of the pro-life agenda? Rather than spending 110% of their time/money/energy trying to BAN ALL ABORTIONS, maybe they should focus more on encouraging adoption or raising quality of care in the foster system.
*Totally loves fertility treatments - MOAR BABIEZ! Yes, babies are cute, but just encouraging everyone to have all the babies doesn't help the fact that there are already a shit ton of babies in this world, many without homes. Not saying we should go banning fertility treatments, but it's just interesting to me that the goal of the pro-life movement seems to be to have as many babies as humanly possible.
*Really dislikes government assistance programs - They really don't love welfare and food stamps and all the programs that help those icky poors. So a woman who has a bundle of kids and can barely afford to support them should definitely be forced to have another if she gets pregnant (and let's not forget that being poor tends to go hand-in-hand with lack of education, lack of access to contraceptives, etc). This makes total sense.
*Claims to love women - I mean, REALLY. You don't get to try and pass policy that would force a woman to carry her rapist's child and claim you love women. You don't get to force women to undergo a trans-vaginal ultrasound before getting an abortion and claim you love women. You don't get to try and differentiate between "different kinds" of rape, as though some are more or less traumatic than others. These policies are solely designed to shame/scare women into following your moral code and that, frankly, disgusts me. (That is my one super-pro-choice point.)
Basically, I just don't understand how you can with one breath claim to be pro-life, but then do nothing to support that life once it is created. Show me that you're working towards policies that nurture people, that care about the babies that are already born, that treat women like equals, that have the best interests of people (NOT corporations) in mind.
Then we can talk about you calling yourself pro-life.
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Attempt at Blogging #113384797514
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
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
Friday, July 31, 2009
Google Image Search of the Day - July 31, 2009
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="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh14xy3dahyphenhyphengLIjlB5q_0EmE2nJjZ2kSgC4BcnVKH9VCGaYazb5Oy8VJc-Hf_nV0mMK3XsndIN_bAJyl_DKRkpJ0M-Q10jSJQEUoEhzWNuzDi8WrN2i8x-rmDc4sXf8JDsczQQmrc-k6E8/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!
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="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh14xy3dahyphenhyphengLIjlB5q_0EmE2nJjZ2kSgC4BcnVKH9VCGaYazb5Oy8VJc-Hf_nV0mMK3XsndIN_bAJyl_DKRkpJ0M-Q10jSJQEUoEhzWNuzDi8WrN2i8x-rmDc4sXf8JDsczQQmrc-k6E8/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!
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Google Image Search of the Day - July 30, 2009
IN WHICH HE FINDS HIMSELF READING TWO BOOKS AT THE SAME TIME
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
HIS RAGE DRIVES HIM CLOSE TO THE EDGE AND HE STARES INTO THE ABYSS OF SPACE. THE FUTURE STARES BACK.
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.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Google Image Search of the Day - July 29, 2009
WHEREIN THE STAGE IS SET AND THE REFINED FRENCH WHORES REPOSE
After discarding "ribald" as a possibility, I naturally decided to settle upon "quiescent."
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.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Our Hero Receives A Calling
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
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
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:
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?
Monday, December 22, 2008
(I'm going to go listen to My Chemical Romance and write slam poetry)
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.
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.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Return to Innocence
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 longyears 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
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
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
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Impressions: Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth II
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.
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.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Gamerscore, or Someone Help Me
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!
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!
Friday, March 28, 2008
Random blahblahblah
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.
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.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Impressions: Eternal Sonata
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.
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.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Why, God, why?
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.
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.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Impressions: Verdi's La Traviata
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?
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?
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