Forum Trolls and Onion Knights

Journalman,

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

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

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

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

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

Love,
Henry A. Tilney

Flinging E-Fireballs at Friends

Dear Journalman,

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

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

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

Thy Bosoms Are Indeed Pendulous

Dearest Journalman,

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Slow Descent Into Alcoholism Eye Jelly

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

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

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

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

Staff Meetings

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

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

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

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

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

Book clubs

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

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

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

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

Love and buttercups,
Henry Tilney

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

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

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

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

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